Chapter 452 Beard
When Wei Kang committed suicide in shame, his uncle Wei Duan was dispatching new battalion leaders to fill the newly vacant front line.
In fact, Wei Kang has always been raised under Wei Duan's knees. He is more like a son than a nephew. And Wei Duan has always trained him as his successor.
And Wei Kang lived up to his expectations and grew into a leader of the younger generation in Kansai. He was eight feet five inches tall at the age of fifteen, and his literary and martial arts were among the best.
Zhao Qi, a famous scholar from the same county, even praised Kong Rong, the leader of Guandong Confucianism, in his exchanges with this magnificent figure in his hometown, calling him "elegant and ambitious, a tool of greatness".
But now this great weapon is broken like a broken jar in the Zhongren Pavilion.
Wei Kang's subordinates were worried about the general's condition. When they turned back, they saw the general committing suicide on the slope.
After being shocked and crying, all the military officers collected the bodies and took Wei Kang's death letter to report to their commander.
Wei Duan was already busy dealing with the war. When he suddenly heard the news, he swayed on his horse.
He suddenly thought of what he had just scolded Kang'er for saying.
"You give me back my children, give me back my children. My brothers are all dead, how can you still live? How can you still live?"
……
Wei Duan tremblingly took Wei Kang's death letter. It was a thin piece of paper but weighed a thousand catties. The letter read:
"The young man is the young master of Wuling in Xijing, and the elder is the minister of Tianjie in Kyoto. The carved carriages and carriages are decorated with flowers, and the flowers are full of flowers. The fragrance of Kyoto fills the city. At night and day, the sky disintegrates, the world is like morning dew, and the body is like duckweed. I know the prosperous dream by fate. One game.”
There is also a small text under this sentence of death:
"Which one is true, the smell of powder in Kyoto or the smell of battlefield?"
After reading, Wei Duan burst into tears.
The greatest sorrow in the world is that a white-haired person sends a black-haired person to death. If the black-haired person is forced to die by himself, it will be even more painful.
But all the pain and regret were buried in Wei Duan's heart, and he now wanted to devote all his energy to this war.
This is no longer an ordinary war, this is a civilized battle for their family, a battle of life and death. There is no room for failure.
Why don’t you, the leaders of Guizhou, understand? Without their family, you are just wild beasts in the forest, and you can also be called human beings? It was they who created writing, recorded civilization, and stabilized the country, not you beast-like Guizhou leaders.
Wei Duan looked resolutely ahead, where the fighting was still going on.
……
One hundred crossbows fired one hundred thousand arrows towards the slope in front of them in one moment.
There were no living creatures there, and the Han army's infantry school camp originally placed there had suffered all losses and had withdrawn from the battlefield.
But the rain of arrows is not always scary, at least for Xu Rong, who is now leading troops to fill the front.
Xu Rong, a native of Liaodong, was a Sima in the front department of Wuhuan Colonel.
He marched slowly with his thousand-man troops and part of Wuhuan's cavalry. Behind him was the central Sima who protected Wuhuan's captain, Xingju, with two thousand troops.
These two troops were the elites that Lu Zhi specially divided up and supplemented to Wei Duan by dividing the strength of Colonel Hu Wuhuan.
Now Wei Duan directly sent the two battalions to the front line.
Xu Rong was also shocked and horrified by the tragedy on the battlefield, but it did not scare him.
What's more, a wonderful sense of connection came to Xu Rong's heart.
He felt that he was fighting bravely for a noble and great goal, which was a feeling he had never felt in any battle on the frontier before.
Being in this vast battlefield, a huge battle involving more than 100,000 people, I became one of them. Xu Rong had never felt like at this moment that his brave fighting was so closely related to the fate of the big man.
I, Xu Rong, help the Han Dynasty and help the big man fall. Awesome!
Previously, the Han family was a very vague thing. Xu Rong had never been to Kyoto. He only heard that it was very prosperous and the most civilized place in the land.
But even though he had been told since he joined the army that they were protecting Wuhuan Xiaowei's headquarters as the Han family's Great Wall in northern Xinjiang that would never fall, Xu Rong still felt that all this was false.
Why does the Duke of Kyoto, who is far away in the world, want me, a native dog from Liaodong, to protect me?
But now, the nobles from Kansai are lying at their feet, and the heroes from Kanto are fighting beside them. Warriors from all over the world are fighting side by side under the banner of the Han family.
Xu Rong had this feeling. The Han family really existed on this battlefield.
He Xu Rong, a rogue warrior from the farthest corner of the empire, risked his life for our great Han in Jizhou!
Xu Rong, who only felt the supreme glory, shouted with his Liaodong accent:
"For the Han Dynasty, we will fight to the death!"
After saying that, Xu Rong accidentally stepped on the corpse of a soldier from the infantry captain camp.
The corpse was young, but the muscles on its face were extremely distorted.
His abdominal cavity was torn open by two giant arrows, and his intestines flowed all over the floor, and then these intestines were trampled to pieces by the retreating robes. In other words, this person is in pain to death.
Xu Rong just glanced at it and looked at the overwhelming enemy troops in front of him.
……
As the arrow rain from the Taishan Army led by the Recruitment Division ended, the Central Army's attack also began.
The attack included 10,000 people from the Central Guard Army, 1,000 from Zhu Lingzhi's Iron Spear Division, 1,000 from Lejin's Iron Cavalry Army, 1,000 from Li Wu's Iron Armored Army, 1,000 from Hu Wuqiu's Tielin Army, and 1,000 from Yu's Poison Camp. In addition, there are 3,000 people from Chen Huan's tribe and 2,000 people from Xu Zhong's tribe.
About a thousand steps away from the slope of the Han army's front line, the seven battalions and tens of thousands of soldiers began to march.
As the commander of these ten thousand people, Yu Jin personally led 200 people to the battlefield to direct the attack.
Originally, when the army entered the battlefield, it should have been lined up in a column, and it happened to rush through the line channel that had been cleared by the Recruitment Department.
But Yu Jin did not arrange it in this way, because the column marching team was too scattered and it was easy to waste the impact of this wave.
Therefore, Yu Jin placed the most powerful Chen Huan's troops on the far right, followed by Xu Zhong's two thousand troops, and then the five troops under the Chinese army lined up towards the west ridge in sequence.
Xu Zhong then advanced first, and the entire military line formed an echelon of troops with the right wing in front, and then lined up to attack the remaining 4,000 men of Wei Duan.
The advantage of this arrangement is that the Taishan Army's strength advantage can be maximized to eat Wei Duan's remaining 4,000 men in one fell swoop.
In this way, with the roar of arrows from both sides, the two armies got closer and closer.
On the opposite side, from Wei Duan's perspective, twenty squares were directly pressed against him.
The formation arranged by the Taishan bandits on the opposite side was a typical horizontal formation, with fifty people in width and ten people in length marching.
There are six blocks on the far left, and behind them are seven camp heads with a long snake. Wei Duan immediately understood that the opponent was trying to flank his left wing and wanted to eat him in one fell swoop.
But how can things be so easy?
This wide formation can indeed surround and annihilate oneself, but when marching on this slope, how can this formation not be chaotic? And because the distance between formations is not large, they do not have enough space to change their formation and marching direction.
Thinking of this, Wei Duan had already made a decision.
As for Yu Jin, new reinforcements were dispatched to his command from the rear.
Those were the four cavalrymen of Li Hu, Li Fu, Li Bi, and Xi Shen. The two thousand assault cavalry were moved by Yu Jin to the original position of the ten thousand infantry formation, ready to support the infantry in front or expand their victory.
On the way, a knight from Xi Shen's tribe broke his neck because his horse tripped.
This is the first official of this department to die in the battle of Zhongrenting. At this time, it was the eleventh day of August, the first year of Taiwu, at three o'clock in the morning.
On the Central Front, the war broke out.
……
Xu Rong of the Han army concentrated his attention. When the enemy army reached 200 steps, he began to shout:
"Bow!"
Thousands of people in his department drew their bows at half angles and were ready to shoot.
Before Xu Rong's attack, Wei Duan told them that if the battle failed, they would become benevolent and shed the last drop of blood for the sake of the Han Dynasty. The glory of our ancestors and the wealth of our descendants depend on this battle.
And how many enemy troops are there opposite them?
No matter from which aspect, it is several times his. Outnumbered, these sergeants all knew what the outcome of this battle would be.
But Xu Rong's front troops protecting Wuhuan had their own pride. As one of the few standing legions in northern Xinjiang, they were small in number but well-equipped.
Each person has a bow, thirty arrows, a ring-headed sword, a pair of iron armor, and a large spear.
In other words, these thousands of people can be used as archers at a distance, can be used as riflemen to carry the line up close, and can be used as swordsmen to fight for their lives.
At this time, Xu Rong's horn had sounded three times, and the whole battalion was ready for the final battle. All the flags have been unfurled, showing military might on the northern slope.
Looking at the yellow ocean below, shining with the unique brilliance of fine armor, Xu Rong was lost for a while.
Wait for the chief official to shout:
"The enemy has one hundred and eighty steps."
Xu Rong suddenly came to his senses, and then gave a sharp order:
"Cum!"
After receiving the order, the platoon leaders at all levels lowered their flags and guns, and the entire army fired arrows.
Xu Rong's troops were stacked closely together, and the arrows they shot were thick and fast. In the first round of orders, each of the Wuhuan officials shot ten arrows.
Then came the second round of orders, and the third round of orders. The arrow pots at the waist of each official were all empty.
It's a pity that Xu Rong's counterattack was fierce, and the soldiers were also very powerful, able to shoot thirty arrows. But the effect is not great.
Because what was facing them was not an ordinary army, nor even an ordinary elite, but the real elite of the Taishan Army, the Central Guard Army.
If the Han army's Wuhuan school officials and officials are standing troops, then the Taishan army is the standing army of veterans of hundreds of battles. Every sergeant inside is a veteran with more than three years of combat experience.
Their equipment is the most elite in the Taishan Army. The armor he wears is not top-notch leather armor or pierced armor, but full-body armor weighing forty kilograms, including pocket armor, iron face, greaves, and iron walls.
These tall central guards held banners in their hands and advanced firmly in the rain of Xu Rong's arrows. Although from time to time someone was hit by an arrow and fell to the ground, the whole army still kept moving.
In the blink of an eye, we have reached a hundred steps.
A drop of sweat dropped from Xu Rong's forehead. He suddenly pulled out the knife and shouted:
"For the sake of the Han Dynasty, rush!"
After saying that, Xu Rong personally led the guards and rushed downhill.
He knew that facing such an enemy was the only last resort.
Xu Rong took the lead in the charge, and the morale of his officers was high. The bitter cold of Youbei shaped their suicidal character. Under the leadership of General Jia Yong, courage defeated fear.
The drummers in the rear beat the military drums frantically, and the Han soldiers in each row put down their rifles and began to charge.
Suddenly, a hail of arrows hit from the east side. It turned out that on the east side where Xu Rong couldn't see, Chen Huanbu, who had moved ahead, had been waiting for a long time.
The Chen Huan Division was the earliest organized archer unit of the Taishan Army. Although the Taishan Army expanded later, the troops were also changed from the original pure troops to the flower troops. But Chen Huanbu is still the most powerful long-range unit in the entire army.
Chen Huan's bows and soldiers are all in one word.
You never know where he's going to land a round of arrows.
Just like now, Chen Huan had already hidden the archers in the formation, and from the outside it was impossible to tell that there were any archers. Then when Xu Rongbu was killed, Chen Huan, who had already been prepared, waved the flag and launched.
Xu Rongbu, who was charging downhill, thought that there would be a showdown between brave men, but no one expected that the shameless enemy troops on the east side would make a sneak attack.
The Han troops fell to the ground like wheat, and suffered heavy losses under the power of Chen Huan's rhubarb crossbow.
Only fifty steps away from Taishan's army, Xu Rong's important military officer Zu Wei from Fan Yang was fatally wounded.
An armor-piercing arrow with a triangular iron cluster head penetrated directly through the armor on his flank, causing blood to flow all over the ground.
His guards helplessly supported their general, listening to his last words:
"If you are still alive, go back and tell my Wu'er to take revenge! Revenge! Revenge!"
After saying that, he died of anger.
Not only Zu Wei died in the battle, but also two of Xu Rong's generals and six of his generals died. Due to the death of a large number of grassroots military officials, the entire impact array lost its restraint and began to scatter.
This is the spirit of Chen Huanbu. While covering the attack, the marksman also carried out precise strikes.
Xu Rong, who was not so far forward, was also hit by an arrow, and his face was scratched, but it was fine.
He loudly ordered to the tribe next to him, the young trumpeter:
"Blow the trumpet and form a formation."
The trumpeter's arm was hit by an arrow, and the blood flowed uncontrollably. He was ordered by Xu Rongrong to blow the horn with all his strength.
The thick trumpets sounded, and continued until he himself fainted from bleeding.
Xu Rong's judgment was correct, because the Taishan Army in front sounded a rapid drum beat, and the Taishan Army, which had been advancing slowly just now, charged.
What kind of army is on the opposite side? It can achieve this level of cooperation.
But there was no time for Xu Rong to sigh. The distance of fifty steps was chiseled up under the charge of the Taishan Army holding the flag with the word "乐" high.
This is Le Jin's cavalry army. These warriors selected from the entire army show outstanding fighting skills even when they are on horseback.
The wet mud did not hinder their charge. In just one breath, the yellow clumps smashed into the red clumps, annihilating the red at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Le Jin kept looking for the Han general on the opposite side. He could not wait to present the enemy's heads to the king.
However, he led his troops to drill through two columns but found no one. Just when Le Jin was about to give up, he saw a thick military official in Sima Rong uniform in a corner.
The most eye-catching thing was the general's meticulously groomed beard. It was the neatest beard Le Jin had ever seen. It can be seen that the owner of this beard has a delicate temperament.
But I'm sorry, you belong to me, and your beautiful beard.
"The young man is the young master of Wuling in Xijing, and the elder is the minister of Tianjie in Kyoto. The carved carriages and carriages are decorated with flowers, and the flowers are full of flowers. The fragrance of Kyoto fills the city. At night and day, the sky collapses, the world is like morning dew, and the body is like duckweed. I know the prosperous dream by fate. One game.”
The death poem of a Han military nobleman laments the sadness of people leaving in troubled times.
(End of chapter)