"Hahaha, Mr. Yangming burned hundreds of thousands of Xianbei to ashes. I am completely convinced. After I return, I will report the truth. I believe that the lord will reward you generously."
Under the soaring fire, Yan Liang, who had been tensing his nerves, finally breathed a long sigh of relief. At this moment, he was looking at the fire in front of him and laughing. Zhu Hua first used the fire horse formation to disrupt the rear of the Xianbei people, and then used this wall of fire. Yan Liang has long been impressed by this series of clever tricks to prevent the mad herds from attacking his own army.
The method of this fire wall is simple, that is, the sergeant is ordered to light the fire horizontally. This area is an area where mountains and grasslands are connected, and the grass is knee-high. It is late autumn at this time. Once the fire is started, it can quickly form a prairie fire. Zhu Hua Lest the fire would not be strong enough to frighten the herds, each sergeant was ordered to bring enough saltpeter, sulfur and other fire starters. When these things were ignited, the fire would get out of control, and the flames would shoot up to a height of three to four feet, and the livestock would People are afraid of fire, so how dare they rush into the fire?
Although there was no wind in the valley, the fire naturally spread to both sides. The blazing flames were daunting. Faced with it, both the Xianbei people and the herds in the valley chose to stay away. The crazy herds finally faced the fire. Showing a trace of remaining sanity, they all turned around and continued to wreak havoc on the Xianbei people's already shattered battle formation. The Xianbei people had lost their last will to resist. At this moment, they were howling in panic, thinking only of what to do. Able to survive between iron hoofs and fierce flames.
In contrast, the soldiers of the Jin army were much more leisurely. Zhu Hua had thought up a clever plan early in the morning to avoid being attacked by fire. Before Guo Huai went into battle, he left behind and mobilized thousands of soldiers to cut grass and dig trenches to clear a long path. Four miles, more than a hundred paces wide, the fire isolation area allowed Yan Liang to stand as steady as Mount Tai, fully appreciating the magnificence of the fire soaring into the sky in front of him.
Yan Liang is right. Zhu Hua's fire is indeed very fierce. Prairie people use fire to be careful. They will clean the camp and the surrounding grass before setting up camp. After each use of the fire, they will carefully check whether there are any remaining fires that have not burned out. , if there is a child in the tribe who plays with fire, the adults will give him a severe beating to make him remember. This habit was passed down to them by their ancestors a long time ago, so that they know from an early age that even a little bit of fire can Once ignited, it will lead to irreparable tragedy.
Some people have even seen with their own eyes that after a fire, the grassland with a radius of dozens or even hundreds of miles was burned into a piece of charred land. Not a single blade of grass grew there, and they could only wait for the next year to grow new green...
Therefore, the Xianbei people cannot even think of the strategy of fire attack, let alone use it. They know the consequences of setting fire on the grassland, and they cherish this piece of land that belongs to them more than anyone else.
But Zhu Hua had no such scruples. He started the fire and threw in so many things to ignite the fire. He didn't even think about how far the fire would burn before it was extinguished. With the intensity of the fire, there were no vegetation nearby. It's so lush and lush that if it hadn't rained recently, it's possible that the entire Altai Mountains, which is thousands of miles in radius, would have been burned to ashes.
Hundreds of thousands of Xianbei people were trapped in this valley. First, tens of thousands were trampled to death due to a sudden change in the herd, and now there is a fire. Even if there is another way out of the mountain, we don’t know when it will happen. How many people can survive? To say the least, even if most of the Xianbei people still escape by chance, by then, without the thousands of miles of grassland in the Altai Mountains, the herds will starve to death in large numbers, and the tribes will There will be a fierce fight for survival, and I don’t know how many people will die. No matter whether the battle in Wenyuan is successful or failed, the blow to the Xianbei people will be devastating. Zhu Hua’s strategy is really vicious. , enough to be destitute.
Zhu Hua was as arrogant as ever, and Yan Liang's compliments did not arouse his interest at all. He just looked at the fire that had become a prairie fire with enthusiasm, and his eyes were full of pride, making it impossible to guess what he was thinking at the moment.
Guo Huai seemed to have seen some signs and said: "In today's battle, Mr. Yangming made an unparalleled feat. In the future, Mr. Yangming will definitely leave a mark in the history books."
Guo Huai's words made Zhu Hua wake up, and he saw the corners of his mouth raised slightly. He bowed his hands to Yan Liang with a faint smile and said, "General, it's not suitable to stay here for a long time. It's time for us to retreat. Although the fire has been temporarily blocked, it can't be guaranteed." Burn from the mountains on both sides to the back of us, cough..." Although he was not burned by the fire, the thick smoke caused by the burning was not pleasant. Zhu Hua inhaled the smoke in one breath and suddenly coughed violently.
"Ahem, retreat. What should Captain Su do? They are still inside," Wei Yan also coughed. In fact, even though he was more than a hundred steps away from the fire scene, the blazing heat and thick smoke still forced the Jin army sergeants to instinctively He stepped back step by step. After hearing Zhu Hua's words, Wei Yan asked in surprise, and Yan Liang obviously had the same question in his eyes.
Zhu Hua covered his mouth and coughed: "I heard from my lord before that all the Night Shadow Guards have the ability to fly to the sky and escape from the earth. How can it be so difficult to get Captain Su with such a small fire?" After a pause, Zhu Hua became solemn again. Said: "General, please give the order as soon as possible. As I expected, Xianbei reinforcements from Tianlang Mountain will arrive here early tomorrow morning at the latest."
Seeing Zhu Hua's solemn words, Yan Liang did not dare to neglect and ordered the troops to retreat. Until they withdrew from the area ten miles away from the mouth of the valley, the fire in the sky still had no intention of extinguishing. Instead, it burned more and more fiercely. Looking from a distance, it seemed that the entire Every mountain is immersed in this heaven-reaching flame.
Yan Liang originally wanted to let the army camp and rest nearby, but the raging fire made people feel uneasy. Yan Liang left Shilixia Village in one breath, but looking at the red sky in the west from a distance, It still makes people feel heartbroken.
Running more than twenty miles from the battlefield in one breath was not a pleasant experience for the Jin soldiers who were fighting hard. As soon as the sergeants heard the order to stop camping, they immediately fell to the ground one by one like a puddle of mud, but this At that moment, Zhu Hua appeared again and ordered the sergeants to immediately dig trenches and go down to the stronghold. He also demanded that the trenches be quite strong, as if they were expecting an enemy attack.
This arrangement immediately made some generals in the Chinese Army complain, and they all came to Yan Liang to express their bitterness.
"General, what kind of medicine is sold in the army gourd? We have been fighting with the Xianbei people for a day, and we are not allowed to have a good rest at this time. If this continues, the brothers will not be able to bear it."
As a result, these generals who were asking for explanations were driven back one by one by Yan Liang: "Go, go, hurry up and build the camp for me. You have all seen the strategy of joining the army with your own eyes. You can do whatever you are told. It must be wrong." Wrong, go quickly,"
After sending off his generals, Yan Liang secretly said that he was lucky. On the way back, Zhu Hua had expressed his worries. Although he had blocked the road at the entrance of the valley during this battle, there was still a passage out of the valley. From the valley The first reaction of Xianbei who ran out must be to go to Tianlang Mountain to ask for reinforcements. Tianlang Mountain is more than 200 miles away from here. Counting the time spent in the middle, if the cavalry rushes to the rescue at full speed, it will only take a day and a night at most. He only thinks about it. How to win this battle, but he didn't consider the opponent's reinforcements at all. Fortunately, Zhu Hua thought carefully.
What makes Yan Liang even more lucky is that it only takes a day and a night for the Xianbei reinforcements to arrive, which means that he only has a day and a night to defeat the Xianbei people in Benlangyuan. It can be said that without Zhu Hua's ingenious plan, by tomorrow morning By then, let alone winning this battle, more than 20,000 brothers will be trapped here with themselves.
With these two considerations, how could Yan Liang dare not to obey Zhu Huayan?
After a lot of effort, the camp was finally erected. Zhu Hua ordered his people to dig three trenches around the perimeter and build a wall with the excavated soil. Then he let the extremely tired sergeants rest. Only then did Yan Liang Use your spare time to count the battle damage.
Because of the fire, it is of course impossible to count the number of kills, but according to the total number of Yan Liang and others, the number of kills on the initial battlefield alone was at least 30,000 to 40,000, plus the subsequent trampling of herds and such a fire , the casualties of the Xianbei people are even greater. The most conservative estimate is that the casualties of the Xianbei clan should be more than 100,000. For the entire Xianbei clan, which is less than one million, it can definitely be regarded as a historical record in the history of the nation. A disaster.
In this day's hard battle, Yan Liang's Chinese army suffered heavy casualties. The casualty ratio of the entire army exceeded 60%. More than 6,000 people were injured to varying degrees, and more than 9,000 people died in the battle. At this time, Yan Liang was still able to There are only ten thousand people fighting.
This number makes Yan Liang feel distressed. The 30,000 soldiers of the Chinese army are all old brothers brought by Yan Liang from Jizhou. During the Northern Expedition, nearly 20,000 people were killed and injured in several campaigns. In the future, Yan Liang will return to Jizhou. How can he have any face? Go and meet the parents, wives and children of the fallen soldiers.
And these are only the soldiers who died in battle. Those brothers who were physically intact and mentally stimulated gave Yan Liang a headache. The scene he saw during the day was like a purgatory on earth. I believe that any large number of them will be hidden in the minds of these people forever like a nightmare. There, it will never go away.
That night, Yan Liang had been lying on the mat unable to fall asleep. Whenever he closed his eyes, he could see the bloody scenes that happened during the day, the tragic scenes of the Xianbei women and children before they died, and the bloody and bloody traces of the crazy herds upon seeing him. For Yan Liang, this This kind of reckless man with strong nerves would be a little uncomfortable, let alone those ordinary soldiers.
Those with a strong will will become the strongest warriors if they survive, while those who cannot survive will have their minds collapsed and will live in a nightmare of fear for the rest of their lives. But I don’t know how many people can’t survive it.
When he got up early the next morning, Yan Liang stayed up all night and arrived at the Chinese military tent with red eyes. The same was true for Wei Yan and Guo Huai, their eyes were full of bloodshot eyes, and as expected, they both brought news that made Yan Liang sad. , this night, at least one or two thousand sergeants were nervous and had minor or serious problems.