"Report!... There is a Wei army on the other side of the river trying to get behind our army to watch the flag. It is suspected that they are guarding Wei Ji from the east of the river!"

During the siege, Qin general Wang Jian received such news.

"Wei Ji..."

Changxinhou Wangjian turned his head to look at the river and saw that on the other side of the river, a Wei army could be vaguely seen heading north quickly.

Wang Jian was no stranger to Wei Ji, the current governor of Hedong in the Wei State. After all, when Wei Ji was still in Longxi, they had clashed with each other many times.

At that time, the Wei State in Longxi had only a few generals who could make Qin feel troublesome, and one of them was Wei Ji.

"I didn't expect that we would have to fight again so soon..."

Wang Jian said secretly in his heart.

Similar to Yang Quan Jun Ying Bo's thoughts, he also felt a little regretful about this. After all, he still had a pretty good feeling about Wei.

However, what is different from Yangquan Jun Ying is that Wang Jian is not as sentimental as the former. Since Xianyang has decided to attack the Wei State, he will not hesitate at all and will never be like Yangquan Jun Ying.

He is so tangled and tangled - just like Gongsun Qi, the Marquis of Wuxin, and Ying Hua, the Lord of Weiyang.

While Wang Jian was thinking to himself, more than a dozen warships were passing by on the river in the distance. On the leading flagship, Pu Banwei Wenxu stood on the bow of the ship with his arms folded, watching Xia Yang's offensive and defensive battle with an expressionless face.

"Is that the warship under Puban Wei Wenxu's command?"

Wang Jian murmured in his heart. He suspected that Wei Ji and Wen Xu might go behind him and attack his camp.

However, he was not worried, because today was just a tentative siege of Xia Yang City. The main purpose was to feel the strength of Xia Yang City. Therefore, Wang Jian only brought half of his troops, so there was no need to worry that his camp would be invaded by Wei Ji and Wei Ji.

The two men continued their sneak attack.

The problem is...

He turned his gaze to the Xia Yang City in front of him and immediately frowned slightly.

There was no other reason than that the front army that was responsible for the first round of attack exerted very little pressure on Xia Yang City. Most of the soldiers were shot to death by crossbow bolts fired by the Wei army on the city before they even got close to the city wall.

Although there were two phalanxes on his side with more than 3,000 crossbowmen shooting at the Xia Yang city wall, they were still unable to effectively contain the Wei crossbowmen on the city wall - there was a significant difference in range between the crossbows in the hands of soldiers on both sides.

.

"Report!... Two thousand general Chang Hu was shot dead by Wei soldiers!"

This is what the soldiers who came to deliver the message said.

"..."

Wang Jian was stunned for a moment, frowning and looking at Xia Yang in the distance.

Chang Hu, a two-thousand-man general, was one of his fierce generals and one of the former army generals responsible for attacking Xia Yang. He never thought that he would die in battle so easily.

"Is it a sniper crossbow from Wei?"

Wang Jian frowned and thought.

As far as he knew, the Wei State had a long-range weapon specifically used to snipe enemy generals, the sniper crossbow, which required two to three Wei soldiers to operate.

The target is only a single target, so the threat of this crossbow is very high.

The Qin State also purchased some of these weapons from the Wei State back then, but it was obvious that the sniper crossbows used by the Wei Army were more than a little more powerful than the ones sold to the Qin Army - mainly in terms of aiming accuracy.

"Bang bang bang——"

The trebuchets in the Qin army's array began to be put into use, throwing out stone projectiles the size of millstones.

But unfortunately, since Wang Jian's army only has more than 20 riprap trucks at the moment, and the Qin soldiers who operate the riprap trucks have not received such training, the pressure caused by these more than 20 riprap trucks on Xia Yang City

, not as big as Wang Jian originally estimated.

"It seems that Xia Yang is preparing to take a defensive stance. In this case..."

Wang Jian frowned and thought, and immediately ordered: "Send the order and withdraw the troops."

To be honest, Wang Jian, the Marquis of Changxin, actually wanted to see Xia Yang's defensive ability again, but the counterattack ability of the Wei soldiers who could not withstand Xia Yang was too strong, causing huge losses to his soldiers, so Wang Jian decided to withdraw his troops in advance. After all, Xia Yang defended

He basically understood the general strength of the army.

"Ding ding ding——"

"Ding ding ding——"

Accompanied by the sound of trumpets, Qin's army slowly withdrew from Xia Yang City.

Seeing this, on the tower of the north city gate of Xia Yang, Mao Bo and Xue Jian, the deputy generals guarding Wei Ji in the east of the river, talked privately. They both felt that today's attack on Xia Yang City by Qin General Wang Jian was really anticlimactic.

"I guess they came here to test the reality of our army." Mao Bo affirmed.

Xue Jiang nodded, then looked at the machine-operated repeating crossbows on the city wall, licked his lips and said: "Speaking of which, the military expenditure of the Hexi Army is really enviable. There are forty or fifty repeating crossbows on the northern city wall alone... Domestic

It was once said that General Sima An was the third richest man in the Wei Dynasty. I didn’t believe it at first, but from this point of view, even if he misses the mark, he is not far off.”

Mao Bo nodded repeatedly when he heard this. His Hedong Army was not as luxurious as the Hexi Army.

"By the way, today's battle, please write a battle report to Lord Wei Ji and General Sima An."

"Well, I'll write the battle report, and I'll leave it to you to clean up the aftermath of the battlefield."

After the two agreed, Mao Bo returned to the outpost in the city to write a battle report, while Xue Jiang supervised his soldiers to open the city gate, clean up the corpses outside the city, and recover undamaged arrows and other objects into the city.

Two hours later, Qin general Wang Jian led his army to retreat to the camp. As expected, Wei generals Wei Ji and Wen Xu were attacking his camp. The two sides fought fiercely for half an hour. Seeing that Wang Jian's troops were in large numbers, Wei

Only then did Ji and Wen Xu choose to retreat.

After repelling the Wei army's invasion, Wang Jian returned to the commander's tent in the military camp and considered countermeasures based on the map.

Today's war seems to have started but ended, but Wang Jian also saw certain problems from it, such as the joint defense of the three cities of Xia Yang, Fenyin, and Puban. Once Wang Jian led his army to attack Xia Yang, Wei Ji in Fenyin would

Wen Xu from Puban would immediately lead his army to attack, not choosing to confront Wang Jian head-on, but waiting for an opportunity to attack Wang Jian's camp.

This means that Wei Ji has a high degree of trust in Xia Yang and believes that Xia Yang City is enough to stop him, Wang Jian, for a while and support him until Wei Ji and Wen Xu capture his camp.

However, judging from Wang Jian's tentative attack on Xia Yang today, Xia Yang's defensive capabilities are indeed extraordinary, so much so that his army lost 2,030 soldiers today, even without posing a threat to the city, and even one of the 2,000 soldiers.

The man will be shot to death by Wei soldiers.

"It's hard to fight..."

He got up and walked to the straw couch in the tent. Wang Jian lay on it with his arms as a pillow and closed his eyes to rest.

As far as what I saw today, Xia Yang is a fortified city that is difficult to capture. In addition, Wei Ji is on the side, and General Wen Xu can respond at any time. In this case, if you want to capture Xia Yang, it cannot be said that it is impossible.

It's possible, but it's really difficult.

"Is there any way to get rid of Wei Ji?"

Thinking of this, Wang Jian immediately thought of the mountain road from the West River to the east of the river. But as far as he knew, there was a strong city called "Beiqu" standing in this mountain road. In the early years, when the Wei State was still

During the war with Korea, Wei Ji, the defender of Hedong, spent a lot of energy repairing this mountain city. So when Li Mu, the defender of Yanmen, sent his army south, his deputy general Li Ren was eventually blocked outside Beiqu City and could not attack Hedong.

pose a threat.

I don't know how much time passed, but suddenly a guard came into the account and reported: "General, General Ji Dong is back."

After hearing this, Wang Jian immediately sat up, nodded and said, "Ask him to come in."

Immediately, a general stepped into the tent and saluted Wang Jian with clasped fists.

Ji Dong is a general of three thousand Iron Eagle Cavalry under Wang Jian. When Wang Jian decided to try to attack Xia Yang today, he asked this general to lead more than two thousand Iron Eagle Cavalry to bypass Xia Yang and head towards "Heyang" in the south.

I want to see if there are any loopholes in Wei Jun's overall defense zone.

"How's the situation...um, what happened to your face?"

Just after asking, Wang Jian noticed a scar on Ji Dong's face, which seemed to be a mark of being cut by some sharp object.

"It's Hu Qi."

Ji Dong touched his cheek and explained: "When the general led the cavalry to Heyang, he happened to encounter a group of Hu cavalry. Although the general had no intention of entangled with them, those guys blew the horns to attract them.

The Hu cavalry nearby attacked the general and his soldiers..."

"Hu Qi...could they be the Hu slaves who herd Sima An's sheep?" Wang Jian asked in surprise.

As far as he knew, in addition to the Hexi Army, there was actually another force under the command of Hexi Governor Sima An, namely the tens of thousands of slaves he had conquered in Sanchuan County. Later, after Sima An was transferred to Hexi, those tens of thousands of slaves also followed Sima An.

Hexi is mainly responsible for herding cattle and sheep for the Hexi army - if the once powerful Jie tribe has now been reduced to the guard dogs of Wei, then these Hu Rong are Sima An's shepherd dogs.

What is puzzling is that Sima An is not friendly to these Hu Rong slaves, and is even cruel. He only gives those people the most basic needs of life, and he does not know why those Hu Rong slaves are so loyal to Sima An.

"Since we met Sima An's shepherd dog, it means that there is a ranch belonging to the Hexi Army in Heyang..."

Wang Jian murmured to himself, as if thinking about whether to send troops to attack those pastures.

But after careful consideration, he still gave up, because the sneak attack on those pastures would not have much impact on the pattern of Hexi. What's more, Sima An's "Shepherd Dogs" had many more people than his Iron Eagle Cavalry, so there was no need to go there himself.

Not happy to find it.

More importantly, when his Qin army captured Hexi in the future, those pastures would become the main facilities of his Qin state, so Wang Jian did not want to destroy them.

After thinking for a moment, Wang Jian finally decided to slow down the attack on Xia Yang City and speed up the construction of siege equipment. At the same time, he sent people from Xihe to attack "Beiqu" in Hukou Mountain to see if he could open up the situation from there.

.

As for a comprehensive general attack on Hexi and Hedong, he does not have the ability for the time being and needs to wait for Wu Xinhou Gongsun Qi to lead the army to this area.
To be continued...