"Brother Mai, why are you acting like this?" Xue Shixiong was shocked when he saw Mai Tiezhang.
The Mai Tiezhang who appeared in front of him had an unkempt face and unkempt beard. Although he had lost a lot of weight, he was full of a fierce and fierce aura. If it weren't for the sufficient light in the tent, Xue Shixiong would have suspected that this was not Mai Tiezhang, the general manager of Guazhou in the Sui Dynasty. Stick, but a real big horse thief.
"Hi!" Mai Tiezhang neither sat nor stood, half lying and half lying with his legs crossed, and waved his hand carelessly: "I am a horse thief now! Horse thieves all look like this, what's the matter? What’s all the fuss about?”
"Do you really think of yourself as a thief?" Xue Shixiong smiled bitterly and sat down at the main seat.
"I was originally a thief, and now I'm just picking up my old career. If the court allows me, I'm willing to hang out like this forever." Having said that, Mai Tiezhang still sat up straight, and he said carelessly: "Xue Brother, I don’t know, but this life of being a thief is so unfettered, it’s really enjoyable.”
Xue Shixiong shook his head and asked, "How is the situation here?"
Mai Tiezhang said: "I have conquered all the horse thieves in the north of Shanshan. Due to the Sui Dynasty's troops in Yangguan, Murong Zhao could not spare any extra troops to destroy us, so he had to gather the soldiers and civilians in the north and west of Shanshan Lake. In other places, these territories are my territory for the time being. Hehe, we are now playing games with the Tuyuhun people in the name of "Shanshan". Those leaders planned to take the opportunity to occupy the entire Shanshan when the Sui Dynasty and Tuyuhun were fighting fiercely. , and then march towards Qiemo."
"Then what?" Xue Shixiong asked curiously.
"Then? Then we will establish the Shanshan Kingdom!" Mai Tiezhang chuckled and said happily: "If the general manager doesn't give me a task and you don't come to help me, I will become a king."
After hearing these words, Xue Shixiong couldn't help but laugh and said: "Okay, brother, I haven't seen you for half a year, and you are actually a king?"
Mai Tiezhang glared at him and said, "I don't want to be a bad king. This is just the talk of those daring thieves. Don't take it seriously, brother. If it spreads, I will be in trouble."
"So you know how to be afraid!" Xue Shixiong smiled, nodded, and asked, "How many troops do you have now?"
Mai Tiezhang showed a proud look on his face and said triumphantly: "More than thirteen thousand people."
“So many?” ?”
"The largest group of horse thieves are mainly descendants of Han Ba, the king of Shanshan. After they were destroyed by Tuyuhun, they have been moving around Shanshan. The leader of this generation is named Han Liu, and he is a Huhua Han who is brave but not wise. After he cooperated with me many times, he realized that he was not the leader, so he took the initiative to serve me as his leader. It was only with the help of his thousands of warriors that I had the strength to attack the Dazhong tribe of Tuyuhun and developed so fast. ." Mai Tiezhang said with a smile: "After we joined forces, on the one hand, we annexed and gathered the small groups of horse thieves who could not survive. On the other hand, we attacked the various tribes in Tuyuhun, and then followed the example of the general manager and distributed weapons and equipment to those slaves. ; After these slaves, who had been exploited by Tuyuhun, came back to be the masters, they were even more ruthless to their original owners than the real horse thieves."
Xue Shixiong asked: "How effective are your soldiers?"
"You can rest assured." Mai Tiezhang explained with a smile: "Because we have been fighting non-stop, those soldiers who cannot fight have died in the war. As for the rest, all of them are elites They may not be as upright as our Sui soldiers, but when it comes to personal combat capabilities, they are definitely better than the soldiers."
"That's good." Xue Shixiong felt relieved after hearing this. They now have a total of 28,000 elite soldiers. Tuyuhun seems to have a large number of people, but Tuyuhun's army is scattered everywhere, and the advantage in military strength cannot be condensed into a fist. . The enemy they will face is not more than 50,000 elite soldiers, but small armies. As long as Tuyuhun adopts a wandering approach and continuously erodes the enemy's vitality in the next battle, Tuyuhun's military advantage will be exhausted sooner or later.
When Xue Shixiong expressed his thoughts, Mai Tiezhang was silent for a while, then nodded: "Then let's do it like this, I will be responsible for luring the enemy out of the city."
Xue Shixiong's army has not yet been exposed. They can completely concentrate their superior forces and eat up the Tuyuhun army of 20,000 to 30,000 with lightning speed. As long as this strategy is completed, the elite troops of both warring parties will be balanced.
As for the so-called string control people, Mai Tiezhang didn't take it seriously. Those string control people were only slightly stronger than the farmers in the Central Plains, and their fighting will was not even as good as those who were very family-oriented and could fight to the death to protect their parents, wives and children. Farmers from the Central Plains, this kind of controllable people can fight with the wind, but once the war enters the most difficult stalemate stage, they will often become deserters in the first place, causing the elite soldiers to collapse.
This is why Yang Shuang likes to attack the elite Turks first. As long as the elite soldiers are crippled, it will be useless no matter how many string-controlling men the Turks bring. Of course, the premise is that your own army must be able to fight, otherwise, it will definitely be torn into pieces by a huge number of string controllers.
Xue Shixiong asked again: "By the way, how many people are there in Shanshan City?"
Mai Tiezhang said: "Originally there were only five thousand people, but we made the noise a little more fierce. Murong Zhao was afraid that we would harm the eastern and southern parts of Shanshan, so he deliberately withdrew 10,000 elite soldiers and 10,000 miscellaneous soldiers from Sansha City. Now, The strength of the army is more than 25,000, and the current general is Murong Fuyun's brother Murong Shijie. As for this man's ability, ha... I don't know. Anyway, he is well-known in Tuyuhun, and he can be regarded as a good person. Tuyuhun is a capable general."
He is now the local overlord of Shanshan and knows the enemy's situation in detail. He simply introduced the whole story in one breath: "Sansha City is located southwest of Yangguan. There are 50,000 soldiers and horses there. The general is appointed as the Grand Marshal of Shanshan. Murong Zhao; and in the south valley of Dangjin Mountain Pass in the southeast of Yangguan, the Immortal King Murong Tieren is in charge, and his military strength is 30,000. In other words, the Yangguan garrison has 80,000 enemies, and the defense pressure is extremely high; so-called If we defend for a long time, we will lose. I am worried that Tuyuhun will capture Yangguan by surprise, so I am eager to win a big victory to reduce the pressure on Yangguan."
Xue Shixiong was silent for a while and then said with a smile: "I think this Murong Shijie and his 25,000 troops were used by Tuyuhun to deal with you. What do you think?"
Mai Tiezhang nodded his head and said: "Murong Shijie was originally here to deal with me, but in the final analysis, my soldiers are still a bunch of horse thieves. Except for their personal combat strength, they are not as good as an upright army in all aspects. I am I am not afraid that they will die, but I am worried that the influence will be lost to Tuyuhun, which will increase their prestige and affect the layout of the general manager. So I took the initiative to avoid them and wait for your arrival. "
Xue Shixiong laughed: "Since he is here to deal with you, this is what we can use."
"That's true!"
"I don't know much about Shanshan. Where do you think is more suitable for an ambush?" When Xue Shixiong learned from Xue Min that there were garrisons in Putao City and Qitun City, he gave up his plan to raid Shanshan City. After all, there are so many soldiers on the road, how can it be possible to annihilate them all? And once one person escapes, he loses his ability to surprise others.
"I have already considered this issue." When Mai Tiezhang said this, he took out a map and walked to Xue Shixiong, handed one end of the map to Xue Shixiong, pointed at the map with his free hand, and said : "The enemies we face are not only the troops in Shanshan, but also the 80,000 troops in Sansha City and Dangjinshan Pass. The army at Dangjinshan Pass is relatively far away from us. Its mission is to cut off our Sui army from entering the base camp - - In the Qiangtang area, they will not march westward to Shanshan unless they have absolutely no choice. They will basically have no impact on us and can be ignored. But the army in Sansha City is not the same. Not only are they large in number, but if they Come to help or cut off our retreat. We will undoubtedly lose this battle. The defeat here is not that our army cannot fight, but because of insufficient supplies and inability to follow up. It will inevitably be taken away from our retreat. We must stay away from Sansha City. Let’s fight somewhere.”
Mai Tiezhang pointed at Putao City and said: "After I capture Putao City, I will retreat to Peacock Lake, twenty miles to the northwest. It is a lake formed by a tributary of the Peacock River in the north. This area is fertile, Except for the two roads to the north and east, this oasis is surrounded by large sand moraine. As long as these two roads are blocked, the war horses will not be able to run. If the enemy is introduced here, we will attack from both sides. , completely annihilating this army here. After that, we will station an army here. Even if all the enemy forces in Sansha City are dispatched to besiege us in the future, we will detour back to Peacock Lake, and then turn north along the tributary. Kongque River, and used the narrow river bank sandwiched between large sand moraine to fight and retreat, thereby completely jumping out of the encirclement. If they stepped on the sharp sand moraine to pursue, the war horse would be useless after running for twenty miles at most, and lose the war horse. How can they catch us? Of course, this is the worst case scenario and I don’t think it will happen.”
At the end of the story, Mai Tiezhang became full of energy.
"Wonderful!" Xue Shixiong looked at the terrain and praised loudly.
. . . . . . . .
The time gradually reached the third watch, and the city was already dark, and the entire city was shrouded in a gray moonlight. Shanshan City has the characteristics of the prairie people. Except for a square city wall, there is not a single building in it. All military and civilian residences are tents. Therefore, the brightly lit Chinese army tent can be seen from a distance.
Murong Shijie was still awake at this time and was discussing military affairs with a group of generals. Murong Shijie is nearly forty years old, and his face is particularly rough due to wind and sand erosion, but his burly body is as straight as a green pine, and his eyes are as sharp as an eagle.
There was a map on the desk in front of him. On the map, the Western Regions and the Hexi Corridor had been completely painted in cyan. That was where Tuyuhun's ambition lay. He would first occupy Guazhou and Yizhou, and then move toward Ganzhou, Liangzhou, Hexi Province, and Ganzhou. March into the Huang area to realize the Tuyuhun people's plan to occupy the Central Plains step by step.
"General, the Sui army is at the border. The pressure is huge. Do you think we are..." The generals argued fiercely around the map, and one person said loudly.
That's right, their enemy has always been the Sui Dynasty on the Chenbing border, not the petty thieves in Shanshan.
Murong Shijie looked at the general who spoke and asked: "You mean to raid the Sui army somewhere, defeat the Sui army all the way, and reduce the pressure on all parties?"
"Exactly."
"No!" Murong Shijie quickly analyzed this plan, then shook his head and rejected it. He said: "The battle lines between us and the Sui army are intertwined, and various places are in a stalemate. We have a large number of troops. If we send troops without authorization, the Sui army will definitely follow. If we march in all directions at the same time, with the strength of Tuyuhun, we cannot last long. Moreover, if Yang Ji provokes the war, he must order all the Sui armies to guard against our surprise attack. If we go to surprise the Sui army, we will give Yang Ji the opportunity to send troops. excuse."
"General, I think we can give it a try. Our situation is very critical now. If we cannot lift the siege of the Sui army, we will be exhausted by the Sui army sooner or later!"
"Crisis? What crisis can there be? The Sui army hasn't fought yet, and you are all panicking?" Murong Shijie's eyes flashed with a stern look, and he said angrily: "I and several kings have told the Great Khan a long time ago: It is said that the Sui Dynasty was an unprecedentedly powerful country, the whole country was very tough, and the whole army was looking for new enemies everywhere. We tried hard to persuade them to avoid the Sui Dynasty and focus on expanding southward and strengthening themselves. After decades of accumulation, Then he came back to compete with the Sui Dynasty, but the Great Khan didn't listen and insisted on robbing the merchants in the Hexi Corridor. Now it's okay, the little wealth he grabbed neither Tuyuhun nor the Sui Dynasty. The Sui Dynasty has set its sights on our Tuyuhun! The various armies currently confronting each other consume countless times more materials than the wealth they grabbed every day. The pastures and fertile fields in the country are also in ruins due to this confrontation, which has caused huge harm to the people. The trauma, if this continues, sooner or later my money, food and supplies in Tuyuhun will be exhausted by this confrontation."
The generals thought carefully about Murong Shijie's complaints, and a cloud of sadness appeared on their brows. If it were in the past, they would be leading the tribesmen to nomadically live among the grasslands and green water. But now, all the men Going to the front line of the war has caused the cattle, sheep and horses at home to become fat and thin, and to die... It can be said that all the negative consequences of the confrontation have been revealed.
If things go on like this, is that okay?
Just listen to Murong Shijie continue to say: "The Sui Dynasty is too powerful. The Sui army pinned us at the border and cannot move. If the Sui Dynasty sends troops from Fuzhou, Shuzhou and other places again, we will face a complete defeat!" He paused! After a while, he added: "There are also horse thieves in Shanshan. These thieves are so good at seizing the opportunity. They actually took advantage of the confrontation between us and the Sui Dynasty to secretly strengthen themselves. If we let them continue like this, this Another huge threat.”
Murong Shijie is a man who has been on the battlefield for many years and defeated countless famous generals from outside the region. He has a thorough understanding of the current situation in Tuyuhun. At this time, as long as the Sui Dynasty sends another army to Yizhou, the confrontation front line will be lost immediately. Balance, or collapse!
What he didn't know was that Zhou Fashang, the commander-in-chief of the march on the Songzhou Road, had already put down the Wuman rebellion in Xizhou and was leading the triumphant army to take up a new position. His new position was the commander-in-chief of the march on the Songzhou Road, which was extremely military in nature. As long as he marches westward from the Gansong Mountain area in Shuzhou, he can enter the hinterland of Tuguhun and cut off the connection between Tuguhun and the Dangxiang (Tuoba Chi Ci tribe) and Bailan Qiang.
"General, what should we do now?" A general asked in a deep voice while everyone was silent.
"Try to lure out the horse thieves in the territory. Only after we deal with them can we free up our hands to do more things." Murong Shijie's eyebrows beat one after another. He rubbed his eyebrows, feeling extremely angry.
He tried many times to lure Mai Tiezhang into a decisive battle with him, but the opponent didn't buy it. He kept avoiding the truth and attacking the weak, and grew stronger in the battle, resulting in the tragic scene of thousands of miles of uninhabited northern Shanshan, with corpses lying everywhere, which made the already The exhausted Tuyuhun was devastated and panicked.
A general smiled bitterly and said: "These horse thieves are extremely cunning. We have lured them before, but they didn't fall for the trick at all. How can we lure them?"
Murong Shijie thought for a moment and then said: "Tomorrow we will assign four thousand soldiers to sit in Putao City and adopt a defensive posture against the horse thieves; while the main army will move north to Sansha City, then detour south and lurk in Shanshan Lake area. As a result, Putao City will have an army of five thousand. In order to defeat the defenders of Putao City and open the gate to the east, the horse thieves will definitely mobilize in full force. This is our chance to defeat them in one fell swoop."
The general obviously didn't believe Murong Shijie's judgment, and asked: "But will the bandits be fooled?"
"I think so!" Murong Shijie sneered and explained patiently: "On the one hand, these horse thieves have long wanted to attack the densely populated and wealthy eastern and southern Shanshan areas; on the other hand, they have never failed so far. However, the entire army became arrogant. If our army hadn't been stationed here, they would have killed them long ago. Once the main army 'left', their strength would be twice that of the Putao City defenders, and they would not be able to invade at all. reasons."
Having said this, Murong Shijie glanced at the generals one by one and continued: "As for the news of the main army's 'departure', I think they will also believe it. Just because they took advantage of the confrontation between the Sui Dynasty and Tuyuhun The strong ones are obviously full of confidence in the Sui Dynasty, and feel that we Tuyuhun cannot defeat the Sui Dynasty and do not have the strength and energy to deal with them, so the 'leaving' of our main army is in line with their judgment. And even if they are not fooled, we will Nothing to lose."
The generals talked a lot, and they all agreed with Murong Shijie's judgment. If it still didn't work, they would have to think of other ways.
————
Thanks to the book friend "Sword Soul Platform" for the reward!
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