Chapter 251 Shameless
In the sixth year of Guanghe, it is night on June 25th.
At this time, the Han soldiers gathered in the dry pond were dejected. The ups and downs of yesterday's battle in Guancheng made everyone dizzy.
On the 23rd, Yuanling City was destroyed. On the 24th, thieves surrounded the city.
At that time, there were two thousand soldiers in the city, including 500 county soldiers, 500 powerful tribesmen, and 1,000 nearby reinforcements. In addition, Guancheng is an ancient city. It has been the fiefdom of Guan Shu, one of the three uncles, since the Western Zhou Dynasty. The city is intact and the city defense is strong. It stands to reason that it can be defended for a period of time no matter how it is defended.
But the bad thing is the new wave of reinforcements.
This reinforcement was sent from Xingyang County, and the main body was Xingyang's county soldiers and powerful soldiers. Facing the Yellow Turban thieves, they advocated holding on outside the city, which meant that they had to attack to defend the city. But not long after the more than a thousand Han soldiers came out of the battle, they were violently attacked by the Yellow Turban Army, and they could only retreat and suffer under the city.
Fortunately, three more Han soldiers came from nearby at this time. They were Mao's soldiers from Yangwu in the east, Ren's soldiers and Pan's soldiers from Zhongmu in the southeast.
These three are all well-known powerful men in the neighborhood. Among them, the Mao family of Yangwu was not well-known at this time, but in the medieval period, the Mao family of Xingyang became a famous martial arts family. Among its three generations, there were four founders of the country.
The head of the Mao family in this generation, Mao Yan, was a disciple of the old Taiwei Liu Kuan. When the Yellow Turban Army invaded Henan, the Mao family started a discussion.
Many tribesmen believe that Yangwu, where the Mao family is located, is in the easternmost part of Henan County and will not be attacked by the Yellow Turban Army from the north, so it is better to stick to the local area.
But at that time, Mao Shaoqi, the son of the head of the family, stood up from his seat and said to his father:
"A real man lives in the world, and when he is born, he will be a marquis, and when he dies, he will be the food of the temple. If not, living in leisure can cultivate his aspirations, and "Poems" and "Books" are enough to entertain himself. As a martial arts family of the Mao family, we must make achievements to become famous, so that we can live in peace for a long time. Officials in counties and counties ”
Seeing that his eldest son was so majestic, Mao Yan laughed and took 300 people from the tribe who were good at fighting and handed them over to Mao Shao to help manage the city.
As for the Ren and Pan families in Zhongmou. One of the leaders was Ren Jun and the other was Pan Zhi. One of them is a wealthy person in the county, and the other is a scholar of Confucian classics in the county. They are both great people in Zhongmou. Especially this man named Ren Jun. In another life, when Cao Cao was passing by Zhongmou to challenge Dong, he would join the army with his own troops. In the future, he would take over the farming affairs, open up soil and colonize valleys, and enrich the country.
The reason why these two families came to help was because Xu Guan, who had succeeded General He Jin as the Yin of Henan, was imprisoned and died in August this year because he failed to defend the Taishan bandits from outside Henan.
The newly appointed Henan Yin is the half-brother of General He Jin, He Miao.
As soon as He Miao took office, he ordered all the major tribes in Henan to send volunteers to rescue. Zhongmu was not far from Guancheng, so the Ren and Pan families arrived first, and Yangwu Mao's soldiers arrived last.
But although Yangwu's Mao soldiers arrived last, they were the most adept at fighting, especially the young general Mao Shao, who was extremely powerful. As soon as he entered the battlefield, he killed three Yingchuan Yellow Turban generals, directly stabilizing the position of the Han soldiers under the city.
It was precisely because these three powerful families joined the battlefield one after another that the Han army eased the battlefield situation.
At that time, the general in charge of the battle against Guancheng was Yu Jin. In addition to the thousand men under his command, there are also the Runan Yellow Turbans with a thousand men and the Yingchuan Yellow Turbans with a thousand men under their jurisdiction. Their troops are no more powerful than the Han soldiers in the city.
Yu Jin, who had always been cautious in using his troops, did not plan to attack by force, but held the city walls and waited for follow-up reinforcements to arrive.
But there was Mao Shao, who was not afraid of tigers even when he was born. As soon as he gathered the troops of Zheng's tribe under the city, he began to launch a counterattack against the forbidden fortress, hoping to take advantage of the situation to drive away the Yellow Turban Army and break the siege of Guancheng.
Mao Shao acted as the forward, Ren Jun acted as the midfielder, and Zheng Hun acted as the successor, attacking the forbidden camp. They held torches and burned down dozens of sentries, but the one guarding the front camp was Zhang Da, Yu Jin's most reliable general. Zhang Da dispatched his archers to return fire, and Mao Shao, Ren Jun, and Zheng Hun suffered heavy casualties. They did not dare to Continuing to go deeper, I had to go back to the military city and continue to wait and see.
But the situation soon reversed.
Another Yellow Turban Army entered the battlefield. Just looking at the flag, there were two thousand people.
Ding Sheng came here. He had a thousand old soldiers under his command, and a thousand new Yellow Turban soldiers from Runan. Two thousand soldiers appeared on the south side of the battlefield, and together with the Yu Jin tribe in the west of the city, they attacked the Han soldiers in the west of the city.
Afterwards, a fierce battle broke out inside the city.
The five Han soldiers of Mao, Ren, Pan, Zheng, and Zhang were stationed in Guan Shuling in the west of the city. This was a high ground in the west of the city and was guarding the rush to the west of the city.
When Ding Sheng's former army rushed to Guan Shuling, the Han soldiers were digging and building a fortress. Seeing the bandits rushing towards them, Pan and Zheng continued to camp, while Mao, Ren, and Zhang rushed forward to occupy Ding Sheng's army.
At the beginning, the number of Ding Sheng's soldiers who rushed to the high ground was too small. They were attacked by three Han soldiers and had to retreat. But soon, the reinforcements from the headquarters behind and the reinforcements from the Yu Jin Department in the south arrived one after another.
The reason why the reinforcements arrived so quickly is because both Ding Sheng and Yu Jin guessed the purpose of the Han army camping on this high ground.
Obviously, the enemy wanted to set up several camps from the high ground to the base of the southern city wall to build a defense line less than two miles away. Its purpose was to strangle the Taishan Army's siege route from west to east, and use it as a foothold outside the city to provide a fulcrum for the subsequent Han troops to advance.
Having seen through this, Ding Sheng and Yu Jin both sent troops to support them.
The five Han soldiers stationed in Mao, Ren, Pan, Zheng, and Zhang could only barely hold on in the face of the Yellow Turbans who were constantly advancing on the highlands. But suddenly they heard the sound of fighting in Guancheng not far away, and soon they saw several apricot-yellow flags planted on the head of Guancheng.
Guancheng was lost!
It turned out that when they were resisting Taishan's army, Yu Jin ordered Chang Xi to pass through the south of the city and launch an attack directly from the north. Guancheng only had about a thousand troops in the city, and many Hedgehogs gathered in the west city because they wanted to support the five Han soldiers in the west of the city. Therefore, not long after Changxi launched his attack, he entered Guancheng.
At Guan Shu's mausoleum, the first to collapse in despair was Zheng Hun's troops. They hugged their young master and wanted to run southward. Later, Ren's soldiers also withdrew, but Mao, Pan, and Zhang's family were still holding on.
The Mao clan soldiers on both sides persuaded the young master Mao Shao to let him break out of Xiangdong, but Mao Shao was furious and pointed at himself:
"A real man is currently fighting to the death, but An Neng can escape like a lost dog?"
So he joined the battle group with his trusted soldiers.
At this time, Lieutenant Zhang Xian had died in battle. This man was one of the two county captains in Xingyang. He was ordered by the county king to lead 500 county soldiers to aid the administration. He is now dead in Guan Shuling. He was loyal to the state.
Mao Shao led his men into the battle group, killed several people with his own hands, and rescued the besieged Pan Zhi. However, more and more Taishan troops soon surrounded him. The military chief Chen Qin was under one banner. Seeing Mao Shao's bravery, Let people come forward and say:
"Guanjun is a warrior. If you have Chi Jia to surrender, you will be rich and noble."
Mao Shao was furious and scolded the Taishan army believer:
"Slave dog, how despicable are you to dare to say that you want to give me wealth?"
After saying that, he bent his bow and shot the believer.
But unfortunately, there were countless good archers in Taishan's army. Seeing Mao Shao's ignorance, four or five good archers immediately took the bow and shot.
Mao Shao underestimated the Taishan soldiers and was shot with two arrows immediately. Fortunately, he had armor and the arrows did not penetrate deeply into his flesh, but he fainted from the pain.
Mao Shao's subordinates did not wait for Mao Shao's refusal, and immediately rushed out from the west with Mao Shao on their backs, accompanied by a wave of Pan Zhi's clan soldiers.
But even so, they were trapped in an abandoned pond in the west together with the Zheng and Ren soldiers who were the first to break out of the siege.
On the outside, there were many Taishan troops watching eagerly, but inside, there were remnants of defeated soldiers and lost dogs. They were in panic all day long, and it was night.
——
Mao Shao, who had been sleeping for a day, finally woke up. The first thing he did when he woke up was to drink water.
An older servant of the tribe gave some turbid water to Mao Shao, but Mao Shao just took a sip and spit it out, and scolded his old servant:
"Dog slave, what kind of horse urine are you giving Nai Gong to drink? Is it also drunk by humans? Come quickly and bring honey water." The old servant sighed. Seeing Lang Jun wasting this little water, he felt distressed. He took a sip of the dried water. Lips trembling:
"Mr. Lang, there is no honey to drink. This is the only water we have now. This is the water we squeezed out after throwing it two feet away. You have spit out half of it."
Mao Shao ignored the old servant and struggled to get up, but he felt weak. With great difficulty, he stood up and took a look at the current scene with the help of two guardsmen.
I saw more than ten bonfires scattered in a Ganpi pond. Looking around, the Han soldiers were like dead dogs, lying motionless beside the bonfire.
Mao Shao looked hard into the distance again and saw countless fires outside, knowing that they were the bandits surrounding him. Mao Shao, who was familiar with the current scene, no longer thought about the honey water. He sat on the ground and sighed:
"Cangtou, how many soldiers are left in our family?"
The old servant said nothing, only looked at the soldier next to him and asked him to speak.
This soldier is Mao's warrior and Mao Shao's right-hand man. When Lang Jun asked, he only told the truth:
"Mr. Lang, there were three hundred brothers when we came, and they are still with us now."
Xu couldn't say anything, so the man held out two fingers to indicate.
Mao Shao frowned:
"Two hundred left?"
"No, there are twenty people here."
No matter how prepared he was, Mao Shao couldn't accept this number. He was shocked:
"Why did so many of our Mao family members die? It's because I can't help them!"
Mao Shao burst into tears as he spoke. Although he was brave and brave, he was still young and could not accept the death of these tribesmen.
In his opinion, his journey will surely be a great success, and these songs of his will also follow him. Why was his result different from what he thought?
Only then did he realize that this was war.
Mao Shao was sobbing and thinking about how to explain to his family. The soldier over there comforted him:
"Mr. Lang, don't be sad. Not all of the clan members who didn't come are necessarily dead. We will break out separately at that time. They may have been separated."
But Mao Shao still ignored him. After wiping away his tears, he suppressed his sobs and said to the old servant on the side:
"Three generations of my Mao family have worked hard to achieve the success of these 300 families. But with one careless move, my three generations of Mao family's hardships were wiped out in just one day. I really feel ashamed of my ancestors."
Neither the old servant nor the soldier knew how to persuade him, so they had no choice but to remain silent.
After a while, Mao Shao recovered on his own. He asked about the current situation in Pitang:
"We have twenty soldiers left, what about the others?"
The soldier counted on his fingers:
"Lang Jun, we really don't know the number of other soldiers, and no one is counting them at this time. But I made a guess and found that Pan's soldiers are about the same as ours. The head of Pan's family has visited you several times before, and I am grateful for you. The two of us moved closer together to rely on each other. The Zheng family and the Ren family over there were the first to withdraw and had the largest number of soldiers. There were probably six or seven hundred people hiding in the pond. ”
The soldier said it here, and the old servant over there also added:
"Then Zheng Hun is not a human being. If we hadn't rescued him before, he would have been killed by the bandits. Later in the battle with Guan Shuling, it was this man who escaped first, which was why we were defeated like this. There was an official before, who should be The officers under Zhang County Lieutenant gathered around Zheng Hun and cursed him for being the cause of the defeat in this battle. But Langjun, do you know what Zheng Hun said? He said that he was a lowly eunuch. , How can we bear such a big responsibility? Even if we have such a failure, we are all inferior to others.”
After hearing this, Mao Shao was furious and cursed:
"This Zheng Hun is so shameless. I have never seen such a shameless person in my life. He is a son of a noble family. He came to the court at a young age, has a famous name all over the world, and holds an important position. Is this called a rare eunuch? And after that If something happens, it has nothing to do with him if he doesn’t think about serving his country.”
He finally suppressed the idea of going to Zheng Hun to argue with him. He also knew that Zhen and Zheng had a falling out, and his twenty people would definitely be in danger.
Mao Shao thought for a while and asked again:
"How are our weapons and equipment now?"
He needs to understand the weapons and equipment of his people. No matter what happens next, these are the guarantees of survival.
Still by Najia Shidao:
"Lang Jun, we are pretty good in this regard. Half of our twenty brothers have knives and a third mate."
"Is this good?"
Mao Shao couldn't bear it anymore. Why was it all bad news?
But who would have thought that the soldier should have said:
"That's true. When you are able to retreat, it's already a lot of courage to be able to bring armor with you. Because these are the thieves' soldiers. Lang Jun, you have to know that the Pan soldiers who retreated with us, three There are only three knives among more than ten people. In comparison, our brothers are already very courageous.”
Mao Shao's veins popped out, he pinched his temples with his fingers and said calmly:
"Then what do you think we should do next?"
Neither the soldier nor the old servant spoke.
"How much food is left?"
Mao Shao didn't ask about water. In the situation just now, if there was still water, would he still be given muddy water to drink?
But the soldiers and old servants all shook their heads and said that there was not even a grain of millet.
Mao Shao was a little dizzy. It looked like he was going to die here.
No matter what, what else can be done when it comes to this.
So, Mao Shao smiled sadly and said:
"In a moment, you two will dig a hole for me so that you can bury me. Although I am not a minister, I don't want to die in blood."
But the soldier and the old servant still shook their heads, and finally the soldier confessed:
"Lang Jun, we don't have to die."
Mao Shaoqi:
"Why?"
The old servant pointed outside and then stopped talking.
Mao Shaochu was puzzled, but suddenly he understood. He pointed at the two of them and gasped:
"You dare to sell it?"
With that said, Mao Shao struggled to pick up his knife.
But the old servant suddenly sobbed and hugged Mao Shao's leg:
"Lang Jun, we are all cheap. If we die here today, we will die in other ravines and fields tomorrow. But you are the bravest of our Mao clan, you cannot die here. Our Mao clan has overcome thorns and opened up fields. It has been three generations, but it is still unknown. All of us believe that only you can lead our Mao family forward, so the Mao family can live without me, but we must not live without our husband."
After a while, Mao Shaocai murmured:
"It turns out that I am the shameless person!"
(End of chapter)