Huo Qubing had nearly five thousand troops behind him. They were the same troops that Li Gan and Yao had recruited to attack Nuoqiang.
After Yao Zhao was ordered to return to Chang'an to report on his duties, this group of troops was all led by Li Gan and has been active in Xiguan.
Li Gan spent nearly ten months gradually exploring the Qilian Mountains, found a passage, and completed the hiding of troops as ordered.
Fortunately, there had been a major cleanup of the surrounding Qiang villages before, and there were no Qiang people nearby, otherwise it would have been difficult to keep the whole process secret.
In the early hours of this morning, Huo Qubing came to the border to join Li Gan, and then led Roshna and other envoys to advance quickly in the mountains.
Li Gan had explored the road in advance and built plank roads on some cliffs where it was difficult to travel, making it barely passable.
The plank road is to drill holes and stuff wood into the cliffs to build a passable road. It is also called a complex road. It started during the Warring States Period.
The Han army was very good at this.
In the past, the Marquis of Huaiyin built a plank road secretly to Chencang. The training project of the forbidden army also included the plank road crossing the cliff.
When Roshna and others saw the plank road, they realized that Huo Qubing was fully prepared, which was far beyond their expectations. It was obvious that he had made arrangements for this battle very early on.
After passing through the Qilian Mountains and arriving at the other end, Roshna, Zhang Qian and others saw nearly five thousand elites waiting here, ready to go.
Huo Qubing commanded the troops and immediately launched a surprise attack.
They fought their way out of the Qilian Mountains and marched north. They became a surprise force beyond everyone's expectations and rushed into the hinterland of the Western Huns from Yanzhi Mountain and Wushaoling.
The road is wide and the sea is wide, so you can swim freely.
Then they marched straight north, attacked Fupu tribe, and set fire to the camp.
Cruelty is synonymous with war. There is no need to be kind to the enemy, otherwise it will be cruel to oneself.
It was already the morning when the sun was rising, and we met the third tribe along the way.
In the sound of Huo Qubing waving his hands and giving orders, the rear army, like wolves and tigers, led by Li Gan, killed the tribes in front.
The whole army took long bows and fired two rounds of long-range shots while galloping rapidly. The bowstrings trembled and arrows rained like rain.
Then when they reached a distance of fifty feet from the target, they switched to firing with crossbow arrows, and finally close combat.
The Xiongnu tribe on the opposite side was not completely defenseless. Huo Qubing led his troops to fight all the way. Not only did he crush a small group of Huns' outposts on the way, but he also overturned two tribes, both of which were in flames.
During the attack, it was impossible to carry supplies, so the fire burned them all.
This third tribe was a medium-sized tribe inhabited by thousands of people. The Han army did not conceal its location and was discovered by them when they rode in.
The entire tribe immediately mobilized, sent out a signal for help, and set fire to cow and horse dung, forming a cloud of smoke that rose into the sky.
At the same time, wooden thorns to resist horses were set up outside the tribe.
After the leader gave an order, even the children and women in the tribe who were over seven or eight years old picked up the sharp spears made of wood, with a fierce look on their faces, and prepared to fight the Han army to the death.
"The Han people are coming and want to rob us of our cattle, sheep and horses, but I will never agree! Let me fight these Han people to the death..."
The leader of a tribe in the tribe shouted loudly and was mobilizing the entire tribe to fight.
There was a buzzing sound, and before the leader of the tribe finished speaking, Li Gan opened his bow, fired two arrows in succession, and shot him to death through his throat!
Li Gan inherited his father's archery skills and ranked among the top ten in the Han army.
The Han army's cavalry attack with bows and crossbows as they approached had killed about a quarter of the Xiongnu men in the periphery.
Some of these Han army recruits from Yulin and Hubenwei came to Xiguan with Yao Zhao two months ago, but they are all carefully selected tribesmen.
Moreover, the nearly two months of battles and continuous fighting have allowed this tribe to grow rapidly.
At this time, nearly five thousand soldiers and horses rode towards the Xiongnu tribe.
Huo Qubing stationed his horse a little further away, accompanied by a small group of soldiers, Luo Shina and other envoys, as well as Zhang Qian.
When the front army charged into the formation, they used Li Gan as the leading edge and formed a front-line formation.
Li Gan shouted repeatedly during the charge, gathered the troops at the rear, and waved his gun in the air.
The war spear sent out phantoms one after another, just like throwing spears, destroying the enemy from a distance.
In the Xiongnu tribe, several leaders-looking people were stabbed to death by Li Gan one after another from the air, and their blood spattered down.
The team changed rapidly during the charge. The two corners of the rear formation were the first to accelerate and advance, changing from the front formation to an inverted vertical triangle. Then the two rear columns began to close and gallop relative to each other.
The middle area where the queues intersect is the Xiongnu tribe.
The entire tribe was merged by the team and crisscrossed over it.
In the end, the Han army's cavalry formation turned into a crossed X shape.
From a distance, the troops seemed to be closing like a pair of scissors, sandwiching and slicing the Xiongnu tribe in the middle.
When the horse's hooves stepped over, everything was involved in the array and shattered.
This is the most lethal basic formation in the military formation, the scissors formation, which is very fierce.
Because in the process of opening and closing, the army will wave the war guns in their hands like lightning, forming a stab. After the queue passes, any enemy within range will have at least one bloody hole penetrated by a war gun.
After two sweeps back and forth, scissors opened and closed, very few Huns survived. There were corpses everywhere on the ground, and the blood was red.
How cruel... Roshna turned her head away from the distance.
She also knew that there was no room for mercy in war, but she just didn't want to witness this process with her own eyes.
Roshna turned to look at Huo Qubing, just in time to see his eyes as calm as ice and snow.
The experience of this night made Roshna truly realize how powerful this general, who was less than twenty years old but already famous throughout the world, was. His flexibility in using troops had taken commanding operations to another level. .
Seeing his marching and fighting process, Roshna and others felt emotions that were difficult to express in detail.
With the Huns taking the lead and occupying a favorable terrain, Huo Qubing's dispatch of troops almost changed the situation on the battlefield of the Western Huns.
No one could have imagined that he would come across from the Qilian Mountains and cut straight into the Yanzhi Mountains and Wushaoling areas.
The Huns' food and grass were threatened, and the situation was invisibly dominated by Huo Qubing.
He seized the key point of the Xiongnu's food and grass, and the entire Western Huns' troops and horses were mobilized and rushed to intercept and stop it.
The battlefield situation has therefore undergone tremendous tilt and uncertainty.
Who wins and who loses depends on how Huo Qubing fights next.
All the art of war and means of war are actually teaching soldiers how to find the enemy's weaknesses and avoid the actual situation to attack them.
This is the meaning of the deceitful way of the soldiers, and the strategy of attacking with troops.
Military strategists use deceit on the battlefield. Whoever can outwit his opponents and take advantage of himself to earn maximum results with minimum expenditure is the basis for invincibility.
There are always clever military strategists who use less to defeat more, because they can concentrate their advantages, stir up the overall situation, and attack the enemy's weakness.
Faced with a head-on attack, he actually fell behind.
Only when encountering each other on a narrow road or attacking forcefully, what matters is courage.
The real competition between military strategists is about command methods, the wisdom of looking at the battlefield, and seeing who can turn the tide and tease the opponent in the palm of his hand.
Roshna's mind was filled with thoughts and she asked, "What is Huo Hou going to do next?"
"Let's fight the Huns first."
Huo Qubing said calmly: "I will eat these small Xiongnu countries bit by bit and see if even the lettuce comes!"
Because the Western Huns were adjacent to the Western Regions, they were similar to the many countries in the Western Regions. The tribes were also called small countries. This was a difference caused by geo-culture.
After Huo Qubing spoke, he made a gesture, and the soldiers immediately sent orders to set fire to the camp, withdraw their troops, and prepare to attack the next place.
After destroying a small Xiongnu country, the Han army quickly completed the push.
"We defeated several Xiongnu tribes in a row, and the Xiongnu are already alert. Wouldn't the fire of the burning camp expose our position faster?" Zhang Qian said from the side.
“So what if it’s exposed?
Let them come and take the opportunity to mobilize the Western Huns soldiers and horses to see what ambushes they have here. "Huo Qubing said calmly.
Zhang Qian was also well versed in military affairs, and he even personally led troops in official history. He seemed to have some understanding after hearing this.
Soon after, this small Xiongnu country burst into flames and burned fiercely.
The Han army, led by Huo Qubing, rushed to the next Xiongnu tribe.
"Huo Hou seems to like to raid and destroy the Xiongnu tribe?"
Roshna was a little surprised. This champion was very persistent in breaking the camp. After finishing one place, he rushed to the next one, as if he had rehearsed it in advance.
"If I can't join forces, I'm afraid future generations will scold me."
Everyone was puzzled and didn't understand its meaning.
Huo Qubing actually refers to the historical champion Hou who defeated the enemy camp in succession in the Battle of Hexi.
Historically, the champion came out from the northwest corner of Longxi, passed through Lanzhou in later generations, passed through Wuting and went upstream, and advanced westward along the grassland on the north slope of Wushaoling.
Then pass the Tuopu tribe, the Hunu River, and the Shiyang River. After that, they fought for six days and defeated five small Xiongnu countries.
Its combat policy was to kill those who resisted in the corner, and those who were willing to join the Han Dynasty could surrender without death.
Doing so divided and disintegrated the Huns' will to fight to a great extent.
Huo Qubing then crossed Yanzhi Mountain, which was later known as Dahuang Mountain in Gansu Province, and continued to advance northwest for hundreds of miles, meeting Hunxie and Xiutu.
The two sides fought fiercely. Faced with the superior strength of their opponents, the Han army still defeated the two coalition forces.
Make the opponent's remaining soldiers retreat and flee for their lives.
The Han army gained a lot in this battle. Not only did they capture Prince Hunxie, Xiangguo, Duwei and other leaders, but they also beheaded nearly 10,000 people and achieved their first victory on the North Road of the Qilian Mountains.
However, Champion Hou also suffered heavy losses in this battle, with less than half of the more than 10,000 troops remaining after the war.
These troops were no longer enough to continue advancing, so Huo Qubing led his troops back to the foot of Gaolan Mountain, south of present-day Lanzhou, and encountered a joint sniper attack by the Huns King Zhelan and King Luhou.
Huo Qubing commanded his troops to defeat the two coalition forces, greatly boosting the power of the Han army, and finally returned to the army victoriously.
This was the whole process of the First Battle of Hexi. With tens of thousands of troops, he broke through the opponent's two prepared blockades by the coalition forces, and defeated the enemy's five small countries, officially kicking off his reputation as the God of War.
The current situation has changed, and Huo Qubing has also made adjustments. He instead fights out of the Qilian Mountains and runs northward into the hinterland of the Western Huns.
However, the strategic goals of the two generations of Huo Qubing are highly unified, both of which are to attack the enemy with weakness.
After entering the hinterland of the Xiongnu, the route that first routed the Tuopu tribe overlapped again, and it was strikingly similar.
Huo Qubing is now planning to reveal the great achievements of the historical Battle of Hexi. The Six Days and Five Kingdoms must be done.
The sun is like fire.
At noon after the Han army galloped away, a group of Xiongnu troops rode to the burned tribe.
Everyone in this Xiongnu tribe rides on a tall horse. All members look cold and solemn, and there is an invisible murderous aura as the team marches.
There are nearly ten thousand people in the entire team, and the leader is middle-aged, tall and thin, wearing a wolfskin robe, and his eyes are sharp, as if they can shine and make people feel breathtaking.
After he led his men closer, he inspected the remaining traces of the battle underground, and a slight look of surprise slowly appeared in his eyes:
"The traces outside the tribe are almost all the hoof prints of the opponent's riding horses advancing in a straight line, entangled and fighting, and there are no hoof prints of changes in advance or retreat.
This shows that the resistance of the tribe was completely crushed by the opponent. What an elite team. "
This man's eyesight is quite powerful, and he can analyze the general situation of the battle just by looking at the hoof prints.
Behind him, on the left side, there was a thin Hun woman. She sniffed the air and looked at the horse hoof prints on the ground.
When Huo Qubing left, he did not use his marching strategy and his hoof prints were obvious.
The woman smelled the scent to make sure that the hoof prints were not deliberately left by the Han army to mislead the soldiers, so as not to pursue them in the wrong direction.
After a while, the woman said: "King Zhelan, they are going west."
It turns out that these soldiers and horses are the famous Zhelan Cavalry of the Western Huns, a powerful army inherited by the Huns for a long time.
At this moment, the team was led by King Zhelan and pursued westward.
In the afternoon after they left, two more groups of soldiers and horses came to the burned Xiongnu tribe.
One of them is the subordinates of King Hunxie.
The other team was led by a young Huns around twenty years old.
This Xiongnu young man is tall and thin, with raised eyebrows and sharp eyes. He is Luo Tanjian, a disciple of Yudu and the son of Da Shan Yu Yi Zhixie.
Three groups of troops pursued each other in the direction where the Han army disappeared.
————
Chang'an, in the next two days, received battle reports from the Xiguan front one after another.
"The 40,000-strong imperial army that left Chang'an has accelerated its march and has reached the northwest border pass."
"The champion marquis led his troops into the Western Huns. Within two days, they successively destroyed Tuopu, shoveled sacrifices, Xiaolan and other five Xiongnu kingdoms, and burned all the food and grass!"
"The Hunxie tribe and the Xiutu tribe of the Xiongnu have a combined force of more than 10,000. The Zhelan tribe has 8,000 elite cavalry, and Shanyu's son Luotangjian has 8,000 troops. Three groups of people are chasing Huo Hou to intercept them."
"By yesterday afternoon, Huo Hou led his army to turn around to meet the enemy, with the target being Xiutu's troops who were pursuing them.
At the right time, the various Xiongnu tribes separated to encircle us. Unexpectedly, our army was pursued from multiple directions and dared to counterattack.
The two sides fought, and before other Xiongnu soldiers came up to encircle them, more than a thousand of Xiutu's troops were killed by Huo Hou's army.
Our army retreated before the Xiongnu tribes surrounded us.
By the evening of yesterday, Huo Hou's troops had frequently crossed paths and fought fiercely with the Huns' pursuers from all walks of life, but they all escaped before the enemy could encircle them. "
Dong Xu, who was in charge of reading the war news, was sweating on his forehead, and he could feel between the lines that at this moment, on the grassland of the Western Xiongnu, the storm was turbulent and murderous intentions were everywhere.
Huo Qubing's orthodox soldiers fought thousands of miles away.
The situation of being pursued by multiple Hun soldiers was deliberately created by him to test the reality of the Hun's arrangements.
Huo Qubing may have other strategic intentions, but no one knows yet.
In the study, there were people who knew military affairs, such as the emperor and several generals, Dong Zhongshu was also considered half, and he also heard other smells from the war news.
Huo Qubing fought against these Xiongnu tribesmen one by one, and was able to withdraw at any time during the process, which showed that he firmly controlled the initiative.
However, messages coming one after another still make people feel their hearts tightening.
When surrounded by enemies, if you are not careful and get entangled, you will fall into a deadly battle.
Another person would never dare to act as unscrupulously as Huo Qubing.
In special operations, this is called going deep behind enemy lines.
Dong Xu swallowed and read out the last sentence: "Huo Hou sent back the last message this morning, saying that he had used the marching strategy to get rid of the pursuing troops and start the next stage of the battle plan.
At present, Huo Hou's traces have disappeared again, and no new news has been reported for several hours.
However, Zhang Jun, the governor of Xiguan, sent a message saying that the army had left the pass and entered the battlefield. "
There was uncontrollable joy on the emperor's face, and he looked at the ministers and said: "The champion Hou commanded his troops to defeat the five Xiongnu kingdoms in two days. I want to know who else, the famous generals of ancient and modern times, can do it?"
According to my oral instructions, I will kill the champion princes into the Western Xiongnu, and inform the world as if they have entered an uninhabited country, so as to boost the morale of our Han people.
Then I issued an edict to the Xiongnu Chan Yu Yi Zhixie, telling him that my general will destroy the Xiongnu. Let him bow his head and come to court, otherwise he will be beheaded the next day! "
"Wei!" Dong Xu bowed and agreed.
…
The sunset shines in the evening.
On the Xiongnu grassland, a Han army suddenly rushed out of the mist and galloped rapidly from north to south.
The entire team was as murderous as a long sword unsheathed.
After the early stages of attacks, camp breaking, testing, and confrontations with pursuers, it was time for a real fight to intimidate all parties!
In front of Huo Qubing is the camp where the Xiutu tribe and the Hunxie tribe were jointly stationed. It is a key location with great strategic significance.
Ps: More updates are in progress, asking for votes~
(End of chapter)
