When Zuo Yuan in Chaisang City discovered that the released soldiers were spreading what they had seen in Pengze at will because of the collapse of their faith, he finally panicked.
Zuo Yuan can be regarded as a decisive person. After discovering the clues, he immediately isolated all the released monk soldiers.
As long as there was evidence to prove that they were indeed chewing their tongues, he would not hesitate to impose severe punishments and severely interrogate those people how they were corrupted and bribed in Pengze County.
Those soldiers who were released after being tortured were not ambiguous. They had no intention of concealing anything, so they confessed directly.
But they insisted that they had not been bribed by the enemy because they saw the confiscated property of the monks who had made money and the accounts calculated by the court generals, and they confirmed that those monks were enriching themselves in the name of the Bodhisattva. Only then did they voluntarily give up their belief in the Ze family.
Especially those monks who were found to have enriched their own pockets, each of them died in such a tragic way. After being injured, pus continued to flow, and finally died of fester.
The ulcers were even more serious than those of normal war-wounded casualties. They completely believed that they had been punished by God, so they were unable to pass away solemnly.
These words were like a heavy hammer hitting Zuo Yuan's heart. His eyes were about to burst, and he roared in a depressed voice:
"Zhuge thieves! How do you have such a heart! You are so vicious! You want to kill people with heartache, and you also want to ruin your reputation. Even after you die, you will continue to pour dirty water. We, the Zeo family, will fight to the death with your Zhuge family! We are irreconcilable!"
After scolding him, he had no choice but to quietly let the monk soldiers who were in charge of torture kill all the prisoners who were tortured.
Those responsible for the torture all felt chilled in their hearts, but they did not dare to resist for the time being. After all, the Zuo family had accumulated power for a long time. After more than three years of repeated brainwashing, it was not something that could be shaken by a momentary scandal.
The torturers finally carried out the order, but little did they know that Zuo Yuan didn't trust them at all. Soon after, he ordered people to kill the torturers who heard the torture confessions——
Fortunately, there are only a few torturers in this group, so there is no need to commit too many crimes. And in order to prevent the cycle of "using new torturers to kill old torturers", this time Zuoyuan paid attention to the "second batch of torturers": Don't ask anything before killing people, those first batch of torturers are Damn it if you don't do your job well.
It can only be said that when an idea arises, its spread is often more difficult to contain than the plague.
Even though Zuo Yuan had tried so many times, he was still unable to stop the monk soldiers in Chaisang City. The people's hearts were gradually shaking. This precarious situation made it impossible for him to sleep at night.
And Zhuge Liang obviously didn't intend to let these thieves sleep.
Just in the middle of the night, when Zuo Yuan, who had been insomniac for most of the night, was just starting to feel sleepy, his confidant, the monk, rushed into his bedroom again and hurriedly woke him up.
"What's the trouble? We can't talk about it until dawn! We finally fell asleep!" Zuo Yuan was so angry that he almost drew his knife because he got up.
The monk shrank back a little, but did not dare to withdraw. He pointed at the sky in the courtyard with a fearful voice. Zuo Yuan had no choice but to rub her eyes and ran to the yard to take a look. There were dozens of bright spots in the sky that were like will-o'-the-wisps, but they were definitely not stars because those things were moving.
"What monster? Don't panic! Even if it's a monster, it can't hurt us!" Zuo Yuan sternly suppressed the guards and monks around him. His words seemed to come true quickly, because without a cup of tea, they saw those Of the will-o'-the-wisps in the sky, two of them obviously fell.
These things are, of course, the "Zhuge lanterns" that Zhuge Liang just created by "replicating himself through the reminder of his elder brother."
Because it only uses light gauze and coated with wax to ensure air tightness, it can be light or light. The air tightness in a short period of time is better than that made of paper, but the durability is extremely poor.
Wax melts easily when exposed to heat. Even if it does not flow down, it will be uneven due to gravity and wind, causing air leakage. The best quality among these Zhuge lanterns can only fly in the sky for half a stick of incense before falling down one after another.
If we really want to make a Kongming lantern that is as durable as future generations and does not need to be coated with wax, the key is to innovate and improve papermaking technology.
The best Zuo Bo paper in the Han Dynasty is still not enough to make a Kongming lantern with excellent air tightness.
But no matter what, this little movement tonight is enough to scare people.
As the Kongming lantern gradually fell down, fires broke out in several places in Chaisang City. This was all because the lantern happened to fall on the thatched roof house and could not be removed for a while, directly igniting the roof.
One or two fires in one night may not cause people to panic, but three, five or more in a row is enough to make people wonder if they have been punished by God.
Just when Zuo Yuan's mouth was dry and he personally ordered his soldiers to gather and patrol the city to suppress the situation, new pieces of bad news soon kept coming.
As soon as he patrolled near the south gate, he saw one of the gatekeepers, a monk-soldier from a junior high school, taking some pieces of silk and giving them to Zuo Yuan, saying they were floating down from the fairy fire in the sky.
Zuo Yuan took it and took a look, and his eyes suddenly darkened: Isn't it obvious that this is following the example of Chen She and Wu Guang, pretending to be a ghost and causing trouble!
There were very few words on those silks. It either said "Zuo Yuan died, Chen Hengsheng" or "Chen Heng died, Zuo Yuansheng". It was obvious that they were openly quarreling with each other!
"Put them all away! Give them to me to burn together! Don't look at them!"
After a lot of trouble, it was said that all the silks put out by the sky lanterns were collected and no one looked at them. However, if this is not true, there is no way to verify it. The more Zuo Yuan thought about it, the more he couldn't sleep, but there was nothing he could do.
…
"It's almost time to persuade us to surrender again, right? If we still can't succeed, then attack by force? If we have to do it, I think before attacking the city tomorrow night, we can put out another batch of lights, and take advantage of the fire to cause confusion among the soldiers in the city, which will be enough to get twice the result with half the effort."
Zhuge Jin and Zhuge Liang outside the city actually didn't sleep well that night, but they were not because of anxiety, but because of excitement and a little nervousness in the excitement.
Zhuge Jin really wanted to confirm whether the Zhuge lantern that his second brother had created in advance by "replicating himself" could have the effect of lowering the enemy's morale and shaking people's hearts.
However, when he saw the many fires in the city and the distant sound of fire fighting at night, Zhuge Jin knew that he had received an unexpected surprise.
He felt it was time to attack.
Zhuge Liang, who was standing next to him, also believed it and analyzed: "Brother, what I have seen is true. Although our army can continue to besiege more to weaken the morale of the enemy, the enemy in the city will probably think so too.
And our army has been trying to persuade the formation to surrender on a small scale for three days. Every day, they just turn back after a slight insult and are not willing to fight. This will inevitably form a habit for the enemy.
I feel that if we scold him again tomorrow night, it will just be the same old trick and there will be no additional actions. We happened to have nine falsehoods mixed with one truth, catching the enemy by surprise! "
Upon hearing this, Zhuge Jin nodded with satisfaction, very satisfied with the rapid growth of his second brother.
But since he is still playing the role of spot-checking teacher at the moment, he is certainly not satisfied with his brother's "conclusion being correct".
He also wanted to take the opportunity to investigate more deeply to see if his brother knew what was happening and why, and how thoroughly he had grasped it.
So he asked lightly and knowingly: "But since the enemy has no countermeasures to our continuous attack on morale, why can't it attack for a few more days?
Then maybe we won't have to attack by force, or even if we still have to attack by force, the resistance will become weaker and weaker. Isn't that good? "
Zhuge Liang smiled calmly, pointed at the map and revealed his elder brother's thoughts: "Of course we can't wait blindly. Although Xingba repelled an enemy reinforcement that came from the sea two days after the siege, the enemy suffered losses. Sooner or later it will come back in a different way.
Their first wave of reinforcements was not large enough, and they did not know the advantages of our water warfare, so they chose to advance lightly by water. After suffering losses, if the second wave of reinforcements comes again, the scale will definitely expand several times. I will also take it slow and steady, coming overland via Lushan Mountain, and no longer try to rush to Penglize Lake.
Counting the days, if the waterway reinforcements are defeated that day, they can return to Haihun County within two days. They will have another day to reorganize the enemy's troops and march for three days. In total, it will take six days at the fastest to assemble a large army to attack. By then We may be attacked from both sides. And now we've spent another three days and can't risk any more.
The enemy in the city didn't know this because our army had been so powerful and defeated its reinforcements so cleanly. After a few days of idle work, I deployed other tricks such as increasing the number of troops and cooking stoves, letting the fleet go out at night and return in the day, etc.
These methods may cause the rebels in the city to misjudge the continuous flow of reinforcements from our army and feel that their reinforcements can no longer be counted on. And if there are reinforcements from Haihun County, they won't be able to see these tricks of our army. "
Zhuge Liang was methodical and analyzed the movement speed and dispatch potential of the enemy's and our own armies. It seemed that the date he gave for trying to attack by force was not just a random guess, but a well-thought-out answer.
The methods he mentioned just now, such as increasing the number of troops and cooking fires, were the result of him following the army to observe Gan Ning's army camp in the past few days. While learning basic knowledge, he also tried to use some ancient military tactics to emphasize the size and power of Zhuge's army. , further suppressing the psychological disadvantage of Chaisang's defenders in the city.
For example, "let the warships secretly leave the water village at night and come back during the day", this is the same as Dong Zhuo seven years ago "let the Xiliang cavalry quietly leave Luoyang at night and come back with great fanfare during the day".
These strategies are not particularly clever, nor are they uncommon, but for novices, they can be a good exercise to check for mistakes and fill in the gaps.
So Zhuge Jin let him explore and practice on his own these days. As long as it's not too outrageous and has no obvious risks, Zhuge Jin won't stop it.
After all, Zhuge Liang had never had any military career before. He only read the art of war, and added his own understanding, brainstorming, and listening to his elder brother.
The ancients before the Han Dynasty wrote about the art of war in a broad and general way, discussing Taoism without regard to technique.
The little knowledge of running an army, marching, setting up camp, and besieging a city, various management practices, and engineering applications can only be practiced slowly by the generals leading the troops.
Who makes bamboo slips too troublesome to use? The previous art of war was all written by people in the bamboo slips era. In the hundreds of years after the invention of paper in the Eastern Han Dynasty, there were almost no new works on the art of war because there were no wars in the world.
Those ancient art of war cannot be as detailed as those written by the Song and Ming Dynasty people who had cheap paper and poor printing skills.
While the enemy is not strong yet, let Zhuge Liang give it a full try, whether it is trial and error at low cost.
…
When Zhuge Jin saw that his brother had finally figured out all the aspects, instead of just getting the right answer by chance, he happily agreed to his request and decided to let Zhuge lantern play again tonight.
Then he took advantage of the same opportunity to scold the formation one last time to persuade him to surrender.
And let the siege troops prepare siege equipment, with arrows on the strings at any time, but they will not be fired.
Everything moved forward in an orderly manner, and the time soon came to night on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth lunar month.
A new wave of torture came on time again. Under the cover of Chen Dao's round shield scolding formation players and crossbowmen team, Zhuge Liang came to the south gate of Chaisang and loudly persuaded him to surrender. The scolding formation players also accurately fired his Word spread throughout the city.
There is no need to elaborate on the content of the slogan, because most of it is similar to the rhetoric used to persuade Pengze County to surrender that day.
The only additional new information is to emphasize that the generals in the southern expedition have many generals and reinforcements are constantly coming to Yuzhang. They have captured other counties except Chaisang, Haihun, and Nanchang. The three remaining counties in Zuo Rong's hands are The county is already a turtle in a urn.
In addition, they continue to spread the scandalous behavior of monks and officials in Zhe Rong's army who used the name of Buddha to secretly make money and were punished by God. But there is actually no need to say more about this part, because the prisoners whose faith collapsed that Zhuge Liang released into the city have already done it for them.
Zhuge Liang just couldn't accept the results. He didn't know whether they did a good job or not, so he could only make the same old talk.
Whether it was Zuo Yuan or Chen Heng in the city, facing this kind of torture, they felt endless and inexplicable uneasiness in their hearts.
They were very uneasy, but they couldn't tell where their uneasiness came from. They just felt that anyone could be an enemy, and everyone could be suspicious of them and stab them in the back.
Zhuge Liang was still there, constantly persuading the officers to surrender, tearing apart the relationship between the county soldiers and the monk soldiers. The Zhuge lanterns in the sky were still falling silk, or falling out of control, causing fires one after another.
Finally, when his suspicion reached its limit, Chen Heng, the former commander of the army in the city, finally could not bear the psychological pressure and took advantage of the opportunity to command the army to put out the fire and launched a mutiny in the city!
Zuo Yuan had already been suspicious of him before, so he did not let his troops guard any city gates. It was also a lesson learned from Pengze County. He ensured that only monk soldiers guarded the four gates, and the county soldiers could only serve as reserves.
But there were so many fires in the city, no matter how careful Zuo Yuan was, it was impossible to stop Chen Heng from putting out the fires. Chen Heng knew that the other party was becoming more and more suspicious of him, so he finally refused to do anything and turned his heart to the outside world, regardless of the success rate of doing so.
The prisoners who were released said that the highest officer in the county army in Pengze County was just a Qujunhou, but after the surrender, he was not liquidated by the court, and Zhuge Lieutenant was promoted to Army Sima.
This news is very good for the former county soldier officer who was coerced. This thorn has been stuck for several days, and now it has finally officially sprouted.
As more and more fires were rescued in the city, shouts of killing were heard. Zhuge Liang, who continued to scold the formation and supervise the battle outside the south gate, immediately caught the situation keenly.
"The county soldiers must have abandoned the secrets and turned to the bright side! Or some of the monk soldiers who have seen the true face of the Zuo family have figured it out! Xingba, quickly organize a strong attack, don't miss this opportunity!"
Following Zhuge Liang's order, Gan Ning was about to launch an attack. Zhuge Jin also noticed signs that the army was about to move out, and hurriedly came from the Chinese army's tent to remind him:
"Xingba should not underestimate the enemy. Looking at the chaos today, it is still worse than that in Pengze County a few days ago. At least the county soldiers were able to seize the door and open it. Today, the fighting is probably only in the city, and you have to attack the wall first. "
"It doesn't matter, whether it's rushing through the door or climbing the wall first, it's not too different - the top of the wall is already in chaos. At worst, we don't climb towards the tower guarded by the monk soldiers and look for the unnoticed walls in the corner. It's time to climb up." Gan Ning had good eyesight, and he keenly judged the suitable point to attack by taking advantage of the chaos by observing the density of torches on the wall in the dark.
"Okay, Xingba, be careful. If Chai Sang wins again, you will definitely be the first to win. I will immediately promote you to the rank of captain. I will vouch for it first, and then I will write to General Zhengnan later and tell him that I have promised him. Yes." Zhuge Jin also promised boldly.
Then, I saw Gan Ning snatching another shield from the scolding warrior, holding two shields and starting to command the newly built ladder truck to rush towards the wall——
Well, it may be a little inaccurate to say that it is held in hand. It should be that the left and right shields are put on the crooks of the arms with rope hoops, so that the palms are free, and it is better to climb and hold the rungs of the ladder.
If you feel that this action is not intuitive enough, just imagine Li Zilong’s Draco Saint Cloth Shield.
The bandits at the top of the city saw the Han army beginning to attack, and they quickly began to resist. However, due to internal fighting, arrows were shot sparsely, and the threat was much less than usual.
Only when Gan Ning's army broke through to the base of the wall did the defenders' firepower density begin to increase, and rolling logs, stones, and sheep's head stones began to join the sequence of smashing down.
However, the Han army today also used covered ladders instead of simple flying ladders. The rolling wood was not enough to break the protective wall of the ladder, and the rocks were thrown too close to hit the main body of the ladder with a low slope.
Only relatively light sheep's head stones, each weighing no more than two or three kilograms, can be thrown far and hard enough. A soldier hit by such a thing will immediately suffer a bloody head injury or death on the spot, even wearing a helmet. There will be dents.
Fortunately, there are not many soldiers throwing sheep's head stones, and their throwing is not as accurate as the players. After Gan Ning paid the price of three or five Jinfan thief Paoze dying in battle, he still spotted an opening and flew up to the wall.
"General, spare your life, we are county soldiers! We are fighting monk soldiers! Don't get me wrong!"
There was chaos at the top of the city. After Gan Ning killed a monk general and several monk soldiers, he was so frightened that the Danyang County soldiers nearby knelt down and begged for mercy and gave way to avoid being affected. They all emphasized that they had abandoned the dark side and turned to the bright side.
After the initial chaos, Gan Ning finally organized the regular soldiers at the top of the city and treated them as if they were on their own and out of the way. Gan Ning himself led more and more soldiers to the city and rushed towards the tower.
There were monk soldiers all around the city tower, and they did not dare to deploy the original county soldiers. Zuo Yuan personally guarded the south gate tower and found that Gan Ning had broken through the wall on the flank and gained a firm foothold. He had no choice but to let the most stubborn and direct monk soldiers launch a counterattack and personally supervised the battle.
He was also afraid of death, but he knew there was no way out. Once the south gate tower was taken, they would all be finished.
"There are not many enemies! While they are still on a firm footing, rush forward and push them off the wall!" Zuo Yuan shouted at the top of his lungs, waving his sword wildly to urge the monk soldiers to rush forward and kill them.
"How dare the traitor do this! Die!" When Gan Ning saw this commanding monk in the crowd, he was immediately furious. It was these guys who had seduced so many people into doing evil. It was an unforgivable crime.
After a bloody fight, Gan Ning still fought his way through the city wall and walked along the wall for at least a hundred steps. Finally, together with the others, Gan Ning hacked Zuo Yuan to death with random swords.
The monk soldiers on the tower of Chaisang South Gate were gradually killed and dispersed. The Han army opened the city gate and welcomed the rear army swarming in.
Sima Chen Heng of the county soldiers who rebelled in the city also had a surge in morale and waved his sharp knife at the usually domineering monk soldiers.
Two hours later, the noise in the city gradually died down, and Chaisang was finally completely captured. There are only some scattered tasks of searching for and suppressing escaped thieves, which may last for a long time, but it will not affect the overall situation.
