After capturing Liangshan, the Qin army did not launch an offensive that night. Zhao Jun also fell into the huge shadow of losing its granary. He just stepped up to strengthen the barriers, rectify the battle and defense equipment, and prepare for the Qin army to attack again. In particular, the hilltop where Zhao Kuo's tent is located is the only hilltop among all Zhao Jun's camps where the position has not fallen. It is expected that the next target of the Qin army may be it, so the Zhao army stationed here is even more nervous.
Zhao Jun has more than 400,000 people gathered in a small area. It is not easy to eliminate them. It will be very painful for them to bite back. From the perspective of dividing Zhao's army, the general trend is to capture the foot of the mountain where the big tent is located; and Bai Qi is particularly unhappy with the southern fortress group, which is on the main road to attack everywhere. If he cannot capture this, he cannot attack other areas. He pushed his tent to the hill on the bank of Danshui, aiming at this fortress group; seizing Liangshan also meant threatening the fortress group.
At yesterday's meeting, Wang Hao and Wang Ling both believed that after capturing Shicheng, seizing Zhao Jun's commander's tent as soon as possible would be conducive to quickly defeating Zhao Jun. If the rear leaders are knocked out, a few forts here and there won't do much harm. From a general perspective, seizing the granary only compressed the Zhao army, but did not divide the Zhao army. The situation of immediate annihilation of the Zhao army has not yet been formed. If Zhao Jun stubbornly resists, there will still be many battles to fight in the future.
Immediately attack Zhao's main position. The biggest obstacle is the lack of troops in Shangjun. Since Shangjun has a sparse population and is located on the border, a large number of defense forces must be left in various places. Therefore, Shangjun only sent more than 10,000 prisoners, and the rest was made up of animals. The 10,000 livestock brought by Shangjun have already played an important role in Anyi, Gaodu and Duan. Shangjun Wei launched several exploratory attacks but failed to find Zhao Jun's weakness.
Judging from the attack process last night, the rational use of swordsmen is a key point. And at the foot of the mountain, how to use the swordsman is also a problem. There are almost no tricks in that mountainous area, so we can only attack hard, but no one dares to use swordsmen to compete with each other. But the Shangjun army just couldn't afford the expenditure. After the Northern Army belonged to Bai Qi, the Shicheng Royal Tomb belonged to only two troops, the Guanzhong Army and the Shangjun Army, with a total of 30,000 people. Even if 30,000 people were used to storm Zhao Jun's main position, it would not be enough. Therefore, although the idea of dividing Zhao's army is tempting, it will be difficult to achieve without making major adjustments to the military strength.
Everyone agreed that capturing the granary would immediately change the strength and weakness of the enemy and ourselves, and would give the enemy a huge shock. Therefore, the final consensus was to capture the granary first and then decide on the next direction of the attack. Bai Qi believed that there was no need to further adjust the force to attack the southern fortresses. Each unit could start the attack from where they were, so he focused on attacking the fortresses. In his battle report to the King of Qin, he wrote: "Since I have seized Zhao's food, I will attack Zhao's door and enter his court again. It will only take a few days to defeat Zhao!"
After learning from Sima Jin that there was actually not much surplus grain in the granary, and that he was just being used as a shield by Zhao Kuo, Zhao Jun's military morale probably would not be drastically weakened because of this. This feeling of being taken advantage of by children also subconsciously contributed to Bai Qi's determination to capture the fortress on the southern front and teach Zhao Kuo a lesson, letting him know that seniors cannot be used casually.
That night, Bai Qi led a dozen followers and a public servant from the Danshui Camp to the Dongling Camp secretly. After ordering the army the next day, Bai Qi followed the Qin army who changed defenses and went up Liangshan. Two public transport passengers from Dongling also followed up the mountain. Bai Qi inspected the camp's defense with three public servants.
The entire camp spans several miles, with the northern part housing troops and the southern part serving as a granary area, separated by a camp fence. When the Zhao army was stationed, a battalion was set up here, mainly stationed in the north. The southern part of the granary was not allowed to enter without orders. To the south of the granary is the fortress area, with Zhao military camps on the east and west sides. Therefore, the Zhao troops stationed in the camps are actually equivalent to the security forces and generally do not have combat missions. And they cannot be stationed for a long time to avoid corruption. Usually, each battalion rotates at a rate of five or ten days. The twenty battalions rotate once, and it is usually time to update the soldiers. At that point, the veterans leave, the new recruits take up their positions, and the rotation begins again. However, the fall of Shicheng exposed the east and north sides of Liangshan. The Liangshan defenders, whose selection criteria were based on loyalty rather than proficiency in fighting, were no match for Bai Qi. When faced with an emergency, they acted carelessly and made repeated mistakes, causing Liangshan to fall overnight. Continuous attacks failed, and he encountered a swordsman again. Naturally, he suffered heavy losses but gained nothing.
But now Liangshan is occupied by the Qin army, and the defensive posture is completely different from that of the Zhao army. There are Zhao troops on both sides of the mountain. They are only two or three miles apart. Every move of both sides is in the eyes of the other side. And the whole camp had to be defended. The camp was 300 paces vertically and horizontally. Calculated as one person per 100 paces, 600 troops were needed to garrison, so a battalion of 500 men was arranged; an additional 100 archers were stationed in the archery tower.
Bai Qi and others instructed the public officials and official officials on the key points of defense. Everyone entered the granary area, where five large granaries stood majestically. Entering inside, it was empty. Only the fifth granary still contained a large amount of soil in straw bags. Bai Qi went over to take a look, and said to the official: "If it is built on the wall, will it be solid?"
The official said: "I am too stupid to do this!"
Bai Qi replied: "I look at this warehouse. Each of them has a hundred people, which is also a camp. Half of them live in the building and half of them live in the warehouse. They patrol frequently and there is no way to slow down."
The official immediately asked the official to send an order to bring up another battalion and garrison it in the warehouse.
Exiting the granary is the back door of Yingzha. Thirty people were arranged to watch here according to the ratio of ten steps to one pawn. After Bai Qi and others arrived, the lookout on the opposite side immediately sounded the bamboo tube warning. A general of 100 people climbed up to take a look; not long after, another general of 500 people also boarded and took a look. Bai Qi said to the official, "The Zhao people are about to attack. What can we do?"
The official said: "How can we attack it?"
Bai Qi said: "If he sees us wandering around, he must not be a pawn. If we attack him, we will definitely gain something!"
The Duke said: "If this is true, I would like your Majesty to retreat, but I should reject it!"
Bai Qi said: "You reject it, I will sit back and watch you reject the enemy!"
The 100-man generals and 500-man generals on the opposite side all went down. But the expected attack did not happen. Bai Qi shook his head and sighed: "I am a slave who keeps myself to myself!"
The news of Bai Qi's close observation of the southern camp was reported to Zhao Kuo. Zhao Kuo simply said, "I know!" He did not believe that Bai Qi would attack those solid systems, and Zhao Kuo himself would not attack either. He still ordered that while strengthening the main position, he also ordered all armies to prepare to attack the enemy in front of them. Just when Bai Qi thought that Zhao Jun was a "self-defending slave", he discovered that Zhao Jun had sent a large number of troops along the Nanshan line.
Another battalion of five hundred men went up the mountain. The public officials and official officials urgently arranged the five hundred people into defensive areas, and the soldiers took up their positions. He also arranged for manpower to carry out all the bags of soil from the warehouse and build them on the inside of the camp fence. Since the direction of the attack was not from the southern camp area as Bai Qi expected, but from the valley to the west, Bai Qi was a little surprised: What was the purpose of this attack?
The 10,000 generals who had lost their granaries recovered some of their combat power after being supplemented by five surrounding battalions. He combined these five battalions with his own five battalions to form a ten-battalion attack group. After breakfast, the first wave of two battalions immediately launched an attack on the granary position. At the same time as the attack on Liangshan, the attack on the Sixth Battalion of Nanshan was also launched one after another. The three Zhao troops facing the Sixth Battalion were restricted from attacking the front, and each camp could only send one battalion to attack.
The battle started right under Bai Qi's eyes.
There are no fancy formation changes, just a dense square formation advancing forward. After entering the distance of a hundred steps, the two sides started a bow and arrow battle. After reaching the distance of fifty steps, the combat soldiers began to charge. At this time, the defending side's strategies were different. Some used archers to fight back, and some used their own fighting skills to counterattack.
The first wave of attacks was quickly repelled, the second wave of attacks followed, and the previous process was repeated.
Bai Qi asked about ten of his followers to participate in the battle, and he and the public servants also took up bows and arrows to shoot. The official did not allow them to stay on the front line and forced them to fight in the archery tower. Bai Qi fired a few arrows from the archery tower and found that he could hit the Zhao army's column about fifty or sixty steps away. This discovery made Bai Qi very happy. He and the public servants bet on who could shoot more Zhao Jun. Bai Qi's archery skills are considered to be at a high level among swordsmen, while those of public chariots are even worse than swordsmen, and can only be considered as general archers. When Bai Qi shoots three arrows in a row, he can usually hit two of them, while the public servants can only hit one arrow, or all of them miss.
When the second wave of attacks began, Bai Qi's entourage was also arranged by Dr. Gong to go to the arrow tower. Their shooting skills are better than those of public servants. When Zhao Jun advanced to a distance of fifty steps and prepared to launch a charge, the archery tower was able to deliver a fatal blow at this time: a dozen people could shoot down a dozen people at this distance of a dozen steps. Death fell from the sky, leaving the attackers with no hope and retreating in disgrace.
Five waves of attacks were launched, and it was already noon. All the Zhao troops stopped their attacks in unison and returned to their camps: it was not easy for a bowl of porridge in the morning to last until now; each battalion had run dozens or hundreds of steps, and it was considered worthy of that bowl of porridge. .
After repelling the Zhao army's attack, Bai Qi asked the Qin army to place lookout posts on the archery towers, and send more sentries on both sides to face the enemy instead of arranging more sentries. The sentinels must be effective, and if they encounter enemy sentries, they must be brave enough to drive them away. The public officials and official officials all responded one by one. Bai Qi and others then left.
On this day, Bai Qi observed the fortress area from the south and deepened his understanding of the fortress area: the fortress groups supported each other and formed their own system; every time they attacked a fortress, they had to deal with the attacks of other fortresses; and when attacking, After the next fort, there will be little damage to the defense system, and other forts can still take on defense tasks. Bai Qi tried to figure out the connections between the fortresses over and over in his mind, trying to find the weakest link and attack it. But there seems to be no such link. Every link is important, but without any link, the system can function normally. It's really difficult to attack here. This made Bai Qi feel troubled, and also somewhat admired Lian Po!
