Chapter 283: A surprise attack on Guanzhong

The road from Hanzhong to Shu is difficult, but it is also difficult to walk from Hanzhong to Guanzhong. You have to cross the vast Zhongnan Mountain (that is, the Qinling Mountains now). There are generally three roads: one is to walk Baogu, the second is Luogu, and the third is to walk Ziwu Valley. Among them, the most recent and most convenient road is Ziwu Valley. In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Wei Yan offered his advice to Zhuge Liang, who was to walk Ziwu Valley and attack Chang'an. Ziwu Valley was therefore the name meaning, and he set off at midnight and walked out at noon the next day. It only took six hours in total. Of course, this is just a general statement, but the shortest time is an indisputable fact. Two conditions must be met at the same time. For a moment, the canyon is straight and the distance is the shortest. The second is that the road is flat and you can walk cavalry. Otherwise, if you can only walk infantry, it is impossible to cross Zhongnan Mountain in half a day.

In the middle of the night, the night was pitch black and dark clouds covered the moon. In the distance, there was a huge mountain in Zhongnan Mountain. A sharp cavalry marched rapidly in Ziwu Valley. This was a huge cavalry team with about 20,000 people. What’s special about it is the equipment of this cavalry team. It consists of 30,000 war horses. One of the war horses was not a pack man, but a tiger squatting cannon. That’s right! This is the most famous cannon cavalry in the Liaodong army.

This cavalry was led by General Deng Jian and was ordered by Li Weizheng to attack Chang'an. It should be said that this was the most important move after sending troops to destroy Lan Yu in Sichuan. Taking advantage of the Yan army's southward attack on Shandong, he transferred the Guanzhong army to Tongguan with the bait of the alliance, and then attacked the King of Qin.

The team marched rapidly among the mountains and ridges. They set out in the afternoon and arrived in Xi'an City at dawn the next day. At the third day, the team stopped to rest for a while. Deng Jian immediately ordered the staff of the army to bring the sand table map. Deng Jian surrendered to the Liaodong Army when Li Jinglong lost his first battle. Although it was not very long, he was the most flexible person among all the surrendered generals who used Liaodong tactics. Therefore, he was appointed by Li Weizheng as the main general in this surprise attack on Guanzhong.

The biggest feature of Liaodong's tactics is the use of intelligence and maps. Intelligence is divided into two categories. One is military intelligence, including garrisons, number of people, equipment, generals, combat effectiveness and other intelligence, and the other is political and economic intelligence, population, taxes, officials' favor, etc. These two major types of intelligence in Guanzhong are collected and all reported to the capital, and military intelligence is recorded and copied and transferred to Deng Jian for a copy.

Among these military information, there are the situation of garrisons in Ziwu Valley. There have been three important fortresses in Ziwu Valley since ancient times. After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, Ziwu Valley became a civil and commercial road and lost its military function. The Ming Dynasty established a patrol department in one of the fortresses to investigate the people coming and going and collect commercial taxes. After the Qin King occupied Guanzhong, he changed the patrol department to a garrison fortress. At most, a thousand people were stationed. However, as the corruption of the Guanzhong army prevailed, a large number of soldiers fled, but the officers concealed and did not report it in order to get empty wages. Therefore, the name of the garrison in Ziwu Valley was Thousand Households, and there should be one thousand garrisons, but in fact there were less than two hundred people left.

All these important information was passed to Deng Jian, and there were even two Liaodong army scouts in the defenders of Ziwu Valley, which made him know this marching well.

A faint light appeared in a small temporary tent. Two military staff members in the tent inserted a small yellow flag at the end of Ziwu. "General, this is our location. There are less than thirty miles of the entrance of Ziwu Valley, and fifty miles from Xi'an City."

"Where is the defensive fortress in Ziwu Valley?" Deng Jian asked.

"Here!" Another staff officer inserted a red flag on a mountainside not far away, "and fifteen miles away."

Deng Jian blew out the candle, stood up and the personal soldiers outside the sect and said, "Send the order to continue! Stop ten miles later."

The army continued to move forward, and after about five miles, two scouts returned to report: "The Ziwu Fort is very quiet, and the defenders did not find the army south coming, and they have contacted the spies lurking in the fort."

Deng Jian, a fortress with less than 200 people, would not take it seriously, but he was worried that someone in the fortress would leave and go to Xi'an City to report the news, which would fail his surprise attack and cause unnecessary casualties.

He immediately ordered a thousand-hu army to move forward quickly in a walk, and to the front of Ziwu Fort, the remaining 20,000 troops continued to advance. Finally, when three miles away from Ziwu Fort, the army was finally discovered by the garrison of Ziwu Fort. The castle was suddenly in chaos. The guards guarding the fortress, a Qianhu general named Liu, yelled and ordered the soldiers to prepare for battle, but he packed up the embezzled silver and gold and ran away. But no one listened to him at this moment. Under the instigation of two spies of the Liaodong Army, nearly a hundred angry soldiers surrounded him in the yard and chopped him to death with random swords. Thousands of silver were snatched away by the soldiers.

When the imperial army was still one mile, the 200 defenders of Ziwu Fort had abandoned their swords and guns, knelt on both sides of the mountain road and surrendered to the imperial army. Dozens of other unwilling to surrender fled north, all stopped by the vanguard who cut off their way. Dozens were killed and captured, and none of them escaped.

The smooth march in Ziwu Valley greatly boosted the morale of the army. Deng Jian gave the order, 20,000 cavalry speeded up their horses and rushed towards Xi'an City.

Since the Qin King Zhu Chuang and Li Weizheng reached a secret agreement, the 100,000 troops in Guanzhong gathered in Tongguan area and were preparing to go to Shanxi to cooperate with the imperial army to fight. At this moment, there were less than 10,000 defenders left in Xi'an City, and most of them were stationed near the Qin Palace. There were only more than 3,000 soldiers and horse envoys in the nine cities, responsible for defending the city and maintaining local public security.

It was dark, and white mist filled the fields outside Xi'an City. The city walls were also filled with white fog like gauze floating on the city walls. The visibility was very low. The situation outside the city was basically invisible from the city walls, but this was nothing to the defenders. There had been no war in Xi'an City for decades. Year after year, day after day, soldiers changed their guards, handed over, and then passed it to their sons. No one had ever thought that an army would attack Xi'an City, and most soldiers didn't know what war was like.

The defenders on the city were starting to change the guards. The soldiers who had been squatting on the city all night were already exhausted and were anxious to return to their rooms to sleep. Most of the soldiers who came to take over the duty were gambling all night, and all looked listless. For them, if they could not stand guard at the city gate, this patrol would have no meaning. Who should they guard? Who would they patrol? They were just walking around boredly. It would be best to find a corner of the city to make up for their sleepiness. No one knew that the danger had arrived.

At this time, two soldiers guarding the gate rushed up the city and visited the lower house. They wanted to know how many merchants were going to enter the city, which was related to their income today.

A soldier had sharp eyes and suddenly found a large group of black people in the fog approaching the city gate, but the fog was everywhere and he couldn't see the specific situation clearly. He immediately closed his hands and shouted, "Hey! Who are you?"

"We came from Zhenwei Escort Agency from Chengdu and escorted a batch of money and goods to Xi'an City. Thank you for your hard work."

The soldiers guarding the city immediately ran to report to the hundred households on duty today. The hundred households were surprised. The escort agency was a fat sheep. How could he encounter such a good thing? He immediately ran up the city tower and leaned down to watch. The fog had dissipated a little more than just now. He saw that there were indeed more than a hundred people under the city, all wearing black clothes, and several carriages also appeared from the fog. There were heavy boxes on it and a large escort flag was inserted.

"You wait for another half an hour and we will open the door."

"No! I made an appointment for delivery time. If Jun Ye refused, we would go to another city gate."

Whoever catches such a fat sheep will be whoever is there? How could a hundred households let go? He kept shouting: "Open the door! Open the door!"

The east gate of Xi'an City rumbled open, the suspension bridge was lowered, and dozens of soldiers guarding the city rushed up, rushing to the escort agency team, shouting, "Check! Open all the boxes, we must check them all."

But what greeted them was three dark earth tiger squatting cannons. The leads on the cannons were burning wildly, and there were streams of blue smoke. At first, some soldiers found something was wrong, and they screamed and turned around and ran away. At this moment, the three cannons fired at the same time, like a shocking thunder. Flames spurted out from the muzzle, and hundreds of projectiles shot into the city cave. Dozens of soldiers fell to the ground with screams or fell into the moat. All the dozen soldiers in the city cave were killed, including the Baihu, who opened the door. His body was penetrated by the projectiles and he fell to the ground and died.

The earth-shaking thunder shocked all the soldiers at the East City Gate. At this moment, more than a hundred studs pulled their swords and rushed to the suspension bridge. Large boxes in the carriage were also lifted up, and fully armed soldiers jumped out of the carriage, shouting and jumped out of the carriage, and rushed into the city gate.

Three cannons were the signal. Three miles away, 20,000 Ming army cavalry came to Xi'an City. The dense sound of horse hooves hit the earth, and the earth was also shocked. The gate of the East City was fighting in a group. Three hundred most elite Ming army and more than 500 defenders were fighting for the city gate. The swords were flying and the shouts were shouting and killing the sky. The three hundred Ming army were all very skilled in martial arts and defeated the defenders step by step. At this time, the defenders at several other city gates also discovered an abnormality. They rushed from all around to the East City Gate, but halfway through, the Ming army's cavalry had arrived. A large group of cavalry rushed into the East City Gate like lightning. The defenders threw their helmets and fled into the city.

At this time, all the residents of Xi'an City were awakened. Only the sound of yelling on the street was shocking, and the sound of horse hooves hit the ground. Every household was panicked. Men rushed into the kitchen to grab kitchen knives, and they used tables and chairs to press the door. Women were busy placing the pot on their faces, while children crawled into the cellar water tank. Almost everyone thought it was Yan's army coming.

But there were also brave men who quietly pushed open the window and looked out through the crack in the window. When they saw the Ming Dynasty's dragon flag flying in the wind, they immediately became happy. It was not the Yan army, but the imperial army was back.

"Listen to the people in the city, we are the army of the court and will not hurt the people!"

"We are a large army of the imperial court, please don't go out for the time being!"

Hundreds of soldiers rushed in the city and shouted to stabilize the people's hearts. At this time, the battle was not over. The fierce battle in front of the Qin Palace continued. The five thousand soldiers guarding the Qin Palace were the guards of the Qin Palace, who were loyal to him. They fought to the death to resist the wave after wave of the imperial cavalry. The battle was very fierce. The ground was covered with broken limbs and broken arms, flesh and blood were flying everywhere, and blood flowed into a river. The pungent smell of blood was filled with inside and outside the palace.

The Qin Palace was in chaos, and nearly a thousand concubines of Zhu Ci were screaming and hiding from all over. Zhu Ci was so scared that he hid under the bed, trembling all over. His guard officer led a group of guards into the room, slashed two concubines to death, and dragged Zhu Ci out of the bed.

"Give me your life!" Zhu Ren howled like a pig.

"Your Highness, we will protect you and escape!"

The guard officer shouted loudly, and dozens of guards carried the extremely fat Zhu Cheng to the harem. At the gate of the harem, an army of nearly a thousand people was already waiting here. They stuffed the King of Qin into a carriage and ran towards the north gate at a speed. But just after running less than a hundred steps, thousands of cavalrymen in front blocked their way. Nearly a hundred cannons were scattered, and the black muzzles were aimed at them.

Deng Jian waved his hand coldly, "Light!"

The soldiers quickly lit the leads, and in an instant, hundreds of cannons were fired suddenly, the sound of cannons was deafening, white smoke covered the streets, and there was a scream opposite, mixed with the neigh of war horses, hundreds of people were killed by cannons on the spot.

After one round of launch, five thousand cavalry burst into a scream, "Kill!" They waved their maces and rushed towards the Qin King's guards. Although the remaining hundreds of guards fought to the death, they were too small and were soon overwhelmed by the killing of the Ming army...

The head of the King of Qin was raised high by a bamboo pole, and thirty cavalrymen passed on to the public in Xi'an. Wherever they passed, there were excited faces everywhere. The evil King of Qin died, and the city of Xi'an was completely boiling. Hundreds of thousands of people went to the streets to celebrate, and the sound of firecrackers on the streets came one after another.

More of them were crying from the heart, resounding throughout the city, "Long live the Ming Dynasty! Long live the Prime Minister Li!"

The news spread quickly throughout Guanzhong as if it had grown wings, and the entire Guanzhong land was filled with joy. Three days later, the 100,000 troops in Tongguan officially surrendered to the court and accepted the adaptation. At this point, Li Weizheng's chess in the world successfully completed a game in Shaanxi.

With a crisp sound of 'bang!', Li Wei was dropping a black piece on the chessboard and smiled at Xie Jin and said, "Sir, I lost this game!"

Xie Jin looked at the chessboard for a long time, but saw that the situation was over, so he had to push the chess and admit defeat. He smiled bitterly: "Prime Minister, your game of chess is quite similar to Guanzhong chess! First, he used temptation, and then unexpectedly, and used a surprise attack to kill people and seize the city. I am a way to know you."

"What's wrong? Do you think my Guanzhong strategy is not powerful?" Li Wei asked with a smile.

"It's not that victorious, and it cut off the way King Yan's way westward in a timely manner. This is an extremely wise move. It can only be said that the King of Qin did not see the true attitude of the prime minister. He thought he was of value and wanted to use it for the glory and wealth of the second half of his life. Unexpectedly, the prime minister slaughtered him with one knife." Xie Jin shook his head, as if he didn't understand Li Weizheng's decision very much.

"Do you think it's a pity for me to kill him?"

"There is one thing. He is the eldest son of the late emperor, and he is obedient and has a high value in use. It is a pity to kill him."

Li Weizheng smiled faintly and said, "I think it's worth killing him in exchange for support from the people of Xi'an Prefecture and Guanzhong."

"What does the Prime Minister mean?" Xie Jin was stunned. He heard something in Li Wei's true words.
Chapter completed!