Colorful silks were fluttering, flags were flying, and a large number of troops gathered outside the main tent of the rebel army. The atmosphere was solemn and murderous.
In the rising sun, the rebels under the city beat their war drums. The soldiers under the city spread out and gathered. On the west wall of Zizhou, there were crowds of people. In this early morning, the atmosphere of confrontation finally escalated. Everyone's hearts were tense, and both sides of the battle formation were waiting in a chilling manner.
On the roads and hillsides a stone's throw away from the city wall, groups of rebel soldiers gathered there. The generals of each team rode on war horses with proud and determined expressions. It was obvious that the dominance of the battlefield was on their side.
Crossbows were set up on the top of the city, and the soldiers gritted their teeth and felt anxious. On the defensive side, no one could predict the direction of the war. Even Lu Bin, the commander-in-chief of the defending army, was in the midst of a war between heaven and man.
After entering the shooting range, the first wave of arrows roared across the sky from the top of the city, splashing blood among the charging crowd below the city. The soldiers below the city held their shields high and pushed ladders made from nearby wood and put them on the city wall.
The sea of people washed away, the rain of arrows struck, and long ladders spread with malice. Several elite rebels rushed forward under the leadership of the generals. On the other side, there were crowds hugging the giant trees, preparing to collide. city gate. The four-foot-high outer wall, just a stone's throw away, is like a thin string stretched in everyone's heart, constantly trembling, as if it might break at any time.
Zizhou Prefecture had long been prepared for the rebels' siege. Boiling water, kerosene, stones, and arrows caused huge casualties to the rebels in the first place. Weapons, blood flowers, spear points, flames, under the sky, the scene of fierce battle continued near the wall of Zizhou City.
Arrows flew through the sky, piercing into shields, soil, and human bodies. Shouting and wailing merged into one. The person who was shouting one moment may have turned into a corpse the next moment. Those who wanted to rush up the city wall had boiling water poured over them, leaving them covered in blisters and blood oozing out of their skin. They fell from the ladder with swords and guns in their bodies. Some of them broke their arms and legs, and some of their necks, staining the ground red. The defending officers and soldiers used long wooden poles to support the rattan fireballs and threw them out. They landed on the heads of the rebel soldiers who had no time to avoid them, and then the fireballs rolled away.
Various wounds, gushing blood, stumps, just like Shura massacre, countless such scenes are being staged around the city wall. Looking from a distance, dozens of wooden ladders were hung on the wall, and crowds of people surged up and down. The soldiers under the city were also constantly holding bows and shooting, suppressing the city head in order to create opportunities for their own troops to board the city.
Although the rebels who attacked the city suffered a violent blow, the huge numerical advantage still put great pressure on the officers and soldiers defending the city. Under the attack of the rebels who were like a swarm of ants all over the mountains and plains, Zizhou City was like a rock in the strong wind and huge waves, being washed away crazily by the crowd. However, due to the strong city and sufficient preparations, Zizhou City still stood firm.
The goshawk flies across the sky. Under the sky, the land is vast, with mountains, rivers, wilderness and oceans, boundless.
People are like ants, coming and going from different directions on this land, pursuing their own meanings in the blink of an eye. At this moment in this eternal time, on this land known as the "Land of Abundance", hundreds of thousands of troops were facing each other inside and outside the Zizhou city wall.
Thousands of miles away from Shu, in the north, forces were running around in order to take advantage of this disaster.
Baozhou City of the Dingyuan Army was located in the military center of the northern Song Dynasty. Yang Yanzhao, who had just been appointed as Chongyi Envoy and Baozhou Yuanbian Inspection Envoy, was sitting in the garrison camp of Baozhou City, listening to the reports from his scouts.
The scouts reported that the Liao Kingdom was mobilizing troops and seemed to intend to invade the south. Baozhou is located on the border between Song and Liao, and is always the first to notice any changes in the Liao Kingdom. A few days ago, the imperial court issued an order to the generals at the border to pay close attention to the changes of the Liao army and maintain combat readiness at all times.
Yang Yanzhao had been in the Liao Kingdom for nearly twenty years, and he already knew the tactics and methods of the Liao army, so he frowned when the scout reported this information. Song and Liao fought for many years, and both sides were always watching each other's every move.
In recent years, the Song army has been weak, and the Liao army has always controlled the initiative on the battlefield. Therefore, the Liao army gathered troops from time to time to intimidate the Song army. When the Song army also adjusted its army and tensed up its nerves to prepare for the battle, it dispersed again. Going to the army, his actions of crying wolf again and again seemed to be deliberately teasing the Song army. Even so, Song Jun did not dare to be careless and was always prepared. After all, he never knew when the wolf would really come.
To the south, in Zizhou City, in order to maintain the consumption caused by this confrontation, Zhang Yong, the magistrate of Zizhou, constantly traveled among the various wealthy gentry families to raise money and food, and encouraged them to send their servants to guard the courtyard to cooperate with officers and soldiers to defend the city.
On the other hand, Zhang Yong ordered the civilian teams recruited to demolish temples and Taoist temples everywhere, tearing down all the houses, furniture and other wood inside to make arrow shafts for bows and arrows, and removing the brass Buddha statues and Sanqing statues in the temples and Taoist temples. Turn it into copper water and let the blacksmith make it into arrowheads and make arrow clusters to alleviate the shortage of military supplies for the city's defenders.
In the large tent of the Chinese army of the rebels under the city, as the commander of an army of 200,000, Xianggui, the general of Zhengdong, looked at the simple sketch of Zizhou map hanging on the wall in the big tent without saying a word, and was thinking. What are you wearing?
Zizhou City is a fortified city in Shu, second only to Chengdu Prefecture. The city is high and deep, easy to defend and difficult to attack. There are sufficient grain, grass and ordnance in the city. It seems that it has been prepared for the arrival of the rebel attack.
What makes Xianggui even more annoyed is that Zhang Yong, the magistrate of Zizhou, is not a man of great merit but is good at fighting. This man took advantage of the dry autumn and ordered people to clear out the mountains and forests more than ten miles away from Zizhou City a few months ago. They were burned to prevent the rebels from using the trees in the mountains to build siege equipment.
The ladders and logs used by the rebels to attack the city today were cut from the mountains and forests more than ten miles away. It took a lot of time and energy from completion to transportation to the front line to attack the city.
In addition, a few months ago, Zhang Yong also recruited victims who came to Zizhou City to seek livelihood, widened and strengthened the moat outside the city, and built a dam upstream to cut off the river water and store the water in the upstream. river course.
When the rebels came to attack Zizhou, they did not notice the water storage in the upper reaches. The rebels who came from Xichuan thought that Zizhou was suffering from a drought like Xichuan and that the moat had no water, and they were complacent about eliminating an obstacle. Unexpectedly, just when the attack on the city was most critical the day before yesterday, the defenders in Zizhou City sent a small force to quietly sneak to the water storage area upstream of the river, dug up the dike, and the rolling river water roared down from the upstream, killing the people hiding in the city. In the dry river, the rebels who were hiding from the rain of arrows from the city were rushed to pieces. The rebels were cut off from the front and the front, and they were in a mess. Seeing this, Xianggui had no choice but to withdraw his troops and fight another day.
From Zhang Yong's precautions a year ago when Lieutenant General Shu was still in chaos, to Lu Bin's determination to fight to the death, to the great help from various wealthy families in the city, and the trust and support of the people in the city for Zhang Yong, the governor, during this period Each person is like a gear that is so tiny that it is almost invisible, inheriting their own cause and effect, and finally converging into a visible but still insignificant tide of destiny.
