Li Jishan's lieutenant waited at Yaozikou until the evening of the same day before waiting for the bodyguard.
But there were still two miles away from the waist entrance, so the escort team stopped and sent scouts to explore the way first.
The lieutenant general had anticipated this a long time ago. The heavy crossbow catapults were all camouflaged and could not be spotted unless they got close.
The soldiers also lurked in the cracks in the rocks.
From a distance, this stone crack cannot hide people at all, but it is getting bigger and bigger inside.
Where did the scouts have time to look so carefully when exploring the road? They ran to the high ground on both sides of the waist and scanned around. No enemies were found, so they sent a signal to the back, and then continued south.
After the scouts left, the deputy general and his men emerged from the cracks in the rocks.
But what the deputy general didn't expect was that Liu Qi was too cautious.
Even though the scouts had already explored the road, Liu Qi still divided the escort team into ten teams. Only after the first team passed the waist entrance, the second team would continue to set off.
This is also a common practice used by escorts when escorting escorts when they encounter terrain where they are easily ambushed.
If someone attacks the first team, the following teams can react quickly and fight back.
Many bandits immediately chose to give up when they saw the formation of the escorts.
But Li Jishan's lieutenant was not a bandit, but a veteran who had followed Li Jishan in the north and south.
After discovering the change in the escort formation, the deputy general immediately adjusted his strategy and sent two hundred men as quickly as possible to a mountain road four miles away from Yaozikou.
They did nothing but sit on the roadside to rest and chat, but their horses' heads were pointed in the direction of their waists.
Not long after, the scouts sent by Liu Qi arrived and found so many party soldiers sitting on the roadside, so they immediately turned back to report.
At this time, all ten escort teams had passed through Yaozikou and were gathering. I heard that there were more than 200 Dangxiang people four miles away, and the direction of their advance was towards Yaozikou. Liu Qi, Niu Ben and others agreed that this was the target of the Dangxiang people.
patrol.
After discussion, Liu Qi, Niu Ben and others decided to temporarily retreat to Yaozikou, and then take the branch road at the other end to avoid these party members.
But when they just entered the waist entrance, the deputy general led his men to launch an attack.
After Liu Qi and the others passed through the waist opening, they relaxed their vigilance and were caught off guard.
Although the heavy crossbow and catapult blueprints obtained by the Dangxiang people were the first-generation products manufactured by Jin Feng, their power has been greatly improved through improvements by Dangxiang craftsmen. They are mounted on the high ground above the canyon, directly covering the entire canyon.
In just the first salvo, one-third of the bodyguards were killed or injured.
Fortunately, Niu Ben found a protruding boulder in the canyon and there was an open space below, so he took the bodyguards and hid in it.
This huge rock is located on the east side of the canyon. It protrudes about three to four meters and is tens of meters wide from north to south. It temporarily blocked the attack of the party members.
The deputy general sent people to adjust the angles of the heavy crossbow and catapult many times, but they were still unable to attack. In desperation, he had no choice but to send people into the waist mouth to kill the escort head-on.
However, the heavy crossbows carried by the bodyguards had a farther range than them, and more than 30 of the 100 men sent by the lieutenant were shot dead before they even got close to the boulder.
The lieutenant general could only order a temporary halt to the attack.
The escorts did not dare to step out of the boulder, and the two sides remained in a stalemate.
The deputy general had no choice but to run back and ask Li Jishan for instructions.
Nowadays, the combat effectiveness of the Zhenyuan Escort Bureau has been recognized, and Niu Ben and the others also carry heavy crossbows and grenades. If we want to kill them, many of our own people will inevitably die.
There are only 2,000 people in the Dangxiang border defense camp. If too many people die because of this incident, Li Jishan will not be able to account for it.
After thinking again and again, Li Jishan decided to get rid of this problem.
"Since it's difficult to attack by force, let's trap them at the waist first and wait until King Liang comes."
Two months ago, King Dangxiang suddenly decided to launch another southern expedition against Dakang. The King of Liang in Li Jishan Pass was the commander-in-chief of this southern expedition.
There are also factional struggles in the Dangxiang royal family. The commander-in-chief of last year's Southern Expedition was Li Jikui, who was Li Jishan's distant cousin.
Because the southern expedition led by Li Jikui failed, many other nobles in their lineage laughed at them.
Therefore, in Li Jishan's eyes, Niu Ben and the others were just a trivial matter. What was really important was the Southern Expedition plan and Qing Huai's clinging to Qingshui Valley.
If it weren't for Qinghuai and Tielin's army, why would the Southern Expedition army have detoured to Xizhou?
Li Jishan was worried about Qing Huai, but he didn't know that Qing Huai, who was far away in Qingshui Valley, was ordering the Tielin Army to assemble.
General Fan from Weizhou City got the news and rushed over immediately.
General Fan became anxious when he saw that Sergeant Tielin had already dismantled heavy crossbows from the mountains on both sides of Qingshui Valley.
He hurriedly broke into Qinghuai's tent and found him sitting on the ground with his head down, drinking. He slammed the table angrily and asked, "Qinghuai, what are you going to do? If you withdraw without any reason, you will be beheaded!"
"behead?"
Qinghuai sneered and raised his head: "Then you come and kill me!"
Only then did General Fan realize that Qinghuai's eyes were red and his eyes were fierce, as if he wanted to eat someone.
"Qinghuai, what happened?" General Fan asked in a low voice.
He knew that Qinghuai would not withdraw his troops without any reason. Something must have happened that he didn't know about.
"What's the matter?" Qinghuai smiled miserably and slapped a letter on the table: "Read it yourself!"
General Fan quickly picked up the letter and read it.
After a while, General Fan's face turned pale.
He finally understood why Qinghuai wanted to withdraw his troops.
The letter was sent by Qing Xinyao. The letter told about the fourth prince's seizure of the throne, and also said that Duke Qing's family had been executed.
"This is impossible!" General Fan shook his head: "This letter must be a fake. If so, why didn't I receive the news?"
"Why else? Because Chen Zheng not only robbed my Qing family, but also your Fan family!"
Qinghuai patted the table and said, "Everyone in your family is dead, who will send you a message?"
Hearing what Qinghuai said, General Fan sat down on the ground.
He understood what Qinghuai meant.
Qing Xinyao said in the letter that after the fourth prince Chen Zheng seized the throne, he immediately destroyed the Qing family, leaving the Qing family without a chance to report the news.
The Fan family is also a staunch war party and has always been close to the Qing family. If the fourth prince can do this to the Qing family, he may do the same to the Fan family.
"No, my Fan family has a lot of hidden secrets in the capital. Even if the house is ransacked, they can still send me a message!"
General Fan still had one last extravagant hope in his heart: "This must be false."
"That's because all of us pigeon breeders have been bribed!"
Qinghuai smiled miserably and said: "My brother sent someone on horseback to deliver this letter. After receiving the letter, I sent someone to search the pigeon house and found that the letter had been sent to the capital a long time ago, but the pigeon farmer did not follow it.
I said!"
After saying that, he grabbed a handful of paper from the ground and threw it on the table: "If General Fan doesn't believe it, you can go back and check your pigeon breeder!"