It was the fourteenth day since the army set out from Julu County and headed north, passing through Xindu County and arriving in the north of Bohai County.

In the territory of Nanpi County, Bohai County, in broad daylight, a village was on fire. From a distance, cavalrymen wearing fur and armor and looking like stomachs could be seen setting fires everywhere. There were faint screams and the sound of women shouting from the village.

, a robbery is taking place here.

Liao Hua, the vanguard general of the Julu Army, was scouting along the road with a group of scout cavalry. Suddenly he saw thick smoke rising into the sky in front of him. Liao Hua immediately became alert. He quickly sent two scouts back to report, and he took the rest of his men to continue the investigation.

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Less than a mile ahead, he heard the sound of hoofbeats and the roaring of horses and horses ahead. Liao Hua took his bow and arrow and dismounted. He ordered his soldiers to lead the horse to a secret place to hide, and he approached on foot to conduct a detailed investigation.

The closer he went, the closer the sound of people came. When he reached the entrance of the village, Liao Hua crawled down in a grass ditch with only his head exposed and a pair of eyes carefully observing the burning village.

The plundering of the village was coming to an end. The cavalry were driving the cattle and sheep that had been plundered from the village, carrying the bags of grain they found. The woman who survived the disaster was tied to the back of the horse and was being pulled. Watching the woman walk slowly

At one o'clock, the whip came down with a snap, the woman screamed and cried, and the group of cavalry laughed and became even happier.

Liao Hua carefully counted the number of the cavalry and retreated quietly.

At this time, the Julu Army Brigade, Li Mengxi, Liu Bei, Guan Yu and others were discussing the marching strategy.

The current problem facing the Julu Army is that they have no intelligence, they don't know where the enemy is, and they don't know what the enemy is planning to do. They are here to fight against thieves and put an end to chaos. If they don't know where the enemy is, how can they fight against thieves?

The only information at hand is the message from Liu Yu, the governor of Youzhou - "Zhang Chun and Zhang Ju of Yuyang rebelled with tens of thousands of Wuhuan cavalry."

First of all, Li Mengxi was not sure who this pure Zhang Ju was, but judging from their names, they should be Han Chinese.

Another one is "rebellion", which means that it is very likely that Zhang Chun and Zhang Ju were officials of the imperial court, not outsiders.

The barbarians outside the border often rob and leave, but it is different if the imperial officials rebel. The Han people will never rebel just to plunder, but will definitely want to become stronger and achieve success. In other words, Zhang Chun and Zhang Juer

Yuyang County, where people rebelled, must have become the rear and foundation of these two people.

The information is limited and not much can be inferred, but what can be inferred is important enough.

Since Yuyang is the foundation of Zhang Chun's Zhangju, it is impossible for these two people to give up their foundation easily. Furthermore, since the traitors started in Yuyang, there is no doubt that the war will be centered on Yuyang.

External diffusion.

I don’t know what the military situation is like with the enemy, so I will go straight to Huanglong and attack Yuyang. It is expected that the closer to Yuyang, the greater the chance of encountering a battle.

While everyone was discussing, suddenly a scout came hurriedly from the front, "Report! There is an enemy situation ahead! There is an enemy situation ahead!"

Li Mengxi, Liu Bei and others immediately looked serious.

The marching army immediately stopped where it was, and the messengers immediately passed the order backwards. The long convoy began to shrink, and the soldiers quickly lined up to guard the front and the left and right intersections.

Soon after, the pioneer officer Liao Hua also returned.

Liao Huayan saw no large enemy troops in front, but only a small group of cavalry looting villages.

Li Mengxi had some concerns. He only saw a small group of cavalry looting the village. It didn't mean that there was no large group of people. Maybe the large group of people was not far behind.

When Liao Hua talked about the cavalry plundering the village, Li Mengxi frowned and said, "General Liao Hua, what did you see that group of cavalry dressed up?"

Liao Hua said with anger on his face, "He waits for the ones that wear fur more than the ones that wear armor and stomach, like beards."

Beard is not a name for bandits in later generations. Beard corresponds to man. Man is a Han man, and beard is a barbarian.

Upon hearing that the barbarians were plundering the people, Liu, Guan, and Zhang were furious and immediately sent their cavalry to kill the barbarians.

Li Mengxi was also furious, so he calmed down a bit.

To exterminate the barbarians, we must have a plan for how many troops to send, how to march, and how to hunt.

He immediately took out the map to discuss with everyone. Corresponding to the map, the army has now reached the south of Bohai County, within Nanpi County. Further ahead, there is Nanpi City, which is the important city of Bohai County. But judging from the current situation, the Huqi in front dare to act unscrupulously.

plundering, it is very likely that Nanpi City has fallen.

Li Mengxi decided to capture Nanpi City. At this time, what was more important than attacking the city was that the Hu people were looting everywhere. He had to rescue the people and strangled the small groups of Hu cavalry scattered outside.

The information is insufficient. We don’t know how many enemy troops there are in Bohai County, nor how many villages have been plundered by them. What’s even more troublesome is that Bohai County is such a large area. If you are unfamiliar with the place, if you want to rescue the people, the march route must be very difficult.

The coverage needs to be detailed enough and wide enough, but in this way, you have to walk on both big and small roads. It would be good if the scout can find the big road. It is easy to get lost when walking on the small roads.

The problem is that the Julu Army also has insufficient cavalry. If there are enough cavalry, no matter how many enemy troops there are, they will just press them all the way. If there is insufficient cavalry, we have to consider the retreat. We have to consider that if we encounter the enemy's brigade, we have to quickly retreat back to the original route to fight with them.

The armies have converged. If they can immediately retreat back the same way they came from, they must not get lost.

There were more than 1,500 cavalry in the army. Li Mengxi carefully looked at the map of Bohai County. He felt that if he wanted to use a dragnet method to search layer by layer, at least five lines of cavalry would be enough.

Li Mengxi asked Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and others, "General Guan, three generals, are you enough to lead three hundred cavalry each?"

"sufficient!"

"enough!"

"That's good," Li Mengxi pointed to the map, "I intend to divide the entire cavalry army into five groups. Each group will have 300 cavalry marching along the main road. When we encounter a village on the road, we will explore every village and never miss another one.

The village will never leave any village alone, and it will never let go of a barbarian."

"Our army is not familiar with the route and is afraid of getting lost. We should bring a paper flag to lead the way and place the flag wherever we go. If we encounter an enemy group or are short of food rations, we should quickly return along the flag road."

The strategy was finalized. Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Chi Zhi'er, Liao Hua, Wang Lu, the former Huangjin Xiaoqu commander, and Lu Zhi's nephew Lu Zhong joined forces. There were five cavalry groups with seven days' worth of food and enough arrows. Each of these five groups of cavalry, each

They all brought a thick stack of paper flags to guide the way. After the deployment of men and horses, 1,500 riders, led by various generals, galloped in all directions along different roads.

After the cavalry passed, smoke and dust billowed on the road. Li Mengxi and Liu Bei watched the cavalry brigade leave. He thought about it and felt that there was no need to worry too much. There were 1,500 cavalry accompanying the army, all of them were elite, and all of them had good horses and good armor. Especially

Yes, one-third of Chizhi'er's cavalry team are elite Xiliang cavalry. When encountering a large group of enemies, it is absolutely no problem to defeat them without fighting and retreat intact.

Also, there are cold-forged armors and cold-forged horse armors in the army. Although there are only one and a half sets of horse armors, one set is on Zhang Fei's horse and half is on Guan Yu's. These two people are wearing cold-forged infantry heavy armors.

, and immediately criticized the cold-forged vest, who injured the two of them.

Looking back at the marching team stopped on the road, Li Mengxi frowned, "Let's continue marching to Nanpi City."

It is not safe for the army to stop in the middle of the road. It is better to find a base and station it. Also consider that the army is the backing of the cavalry. If any of the five cavalry groups is defeated and retreats, the army will be responsible for responding. The cavalry is pulling forward to search.

The enemy had to move forward to respond to the enemy in time. This meant that the army had to find a place to station and move forward. Considering that Nanpi City might have been breached and they would have to attack the city sooner or later, they simply went directly to Nanpi City.

Go straight.

The marching team shrunk, and the single-car train became a double-carriage train. This was so that in the event of an enemy attack, no matter which direction the enemy came from, the soldiers would retreat to the middle of the vehicles, and the front and back would be covered by sidecars.

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But there was a problem. The roads were okay, and the avenue was wide enough for two rows of cars to squeeze in together, but something was wrong with the cars.

The grain and grass vehicles in the army are sidecars, that is, only one side has a plate and the other side does not. The advantages of the sidecar are that it saves materials and is easy to make, and secondly, in actual combat, soldiers can easily get on from one side.

Since sidecars only have panels on one side, it is worth discussing whether they should go left or right.

The discussion a long time ago was that when defending the city, it was discovered that there was no uniform regulation on the upward and downward direction of the flow of people, which could easily cause confusion. Li Mengxi was accustomed to walking on the right, so it was stipulated that when defending the city or marching, he should uniformly walk on the right.

Since the march is on the right, in extreme situations, such as when passing through mountains and valleys, the road can only accommodate one vehicle. At this time, an enemy suddenly comes from the front. At this time, it is best to

The best way is to immediately turn the front car sideways.

At this time, when driving on the right, the vehicle can only turn left and cross to the left. At this time, the vehicle panel is on the right, which can just block the vehicle panel in front.

It was precisely because of this consideration that we decided to place the panel of the sidecar on the right side.

But now it seems that when marching on the main road, the carriages are all on the right side. If we are marching in the same direction, we can only cover the right side or the left side.

Li Mengxi sat on the horse, looking down at the sidecar with the right and left covered, frowning.

(Is it so difficult to make a mistake? Is it so difficult that a sidecar should have two panels? But, if so, how difficult would it be to climb on board? What is the difference between a car with panels on both sides and a van? Loading

The amount is too small...)

Just as Li Mengxi was thinking about it, Liu Bei looked back and pointed at the advancing convoy and said, "Xi'er, look at this car, I think it would be nice if there were plates on both sides of the car..."

Li Mengxi grinned. The hero had the same opinion. When did Liu Bei have such keen observation?

Sidecars definitely cannot be equipped with panels on both the left and right sides. This will not only affect the transportation capacity, but also be detrimental to actual combat, and increase the difficulty of manufacturing. But sometimes, it is really necessary to cover both the left and right sides.

Liu Bei and Li Mengxi were discussing on the roadside while riding on horseback. The first method they discussed was to make accessories. In other words, one side of the sidecar was made dead and the other side was made movable. When there was nothing to do on weekdays,

, remove the movable vehicle panels and tie them to the bottom of the vehicle to take with you. When you need to defend the enemy left and right, reinstall the vehicle panels.

This is the first method. Li Mengxi thought about it. If the car panel is to be easily tied to the bottom of the car, then the car panel cannot be too wide. It must be the same width as the body. Only with this width can it be easily carried.

Also, a long hardwood board is not light in weight. Carrying such a board takes up dozens of kilograms of load. Food and grass have always been a big problem. It may not be enough to transport all the grain, and it will waste dozens of kilograms.

It is a bit of a luxury to use the power to pull a piece of wood that is not very useful.

Therefore, Li Mengxi felt that it would not be a good idea to add such an accessory to a sidecar.

The second method is to keep the vehicle as it is without accessories, with all the sidecar panels on the right side. In this way, the right side can board the vehicle for combat, but the left side cannot.

Ladder equipment can be added, and a short ladder can be added to each sidecar. In times of crisis, the ladder can be directly moved out for climbing operations.

The ladder is much lighter and does not waste transportation capacity so much, but there is a new problem. The ladder is light, but it is not very practical. The wooden boards can block the rain of arrows, but the ladder absolutely cannot.

The price/performance ratio of ladders is worse than wooden boards, so ladders are even worse.

The platform of the sidecar was too high, and soldiers standing on the ground could not shoot across the platform. Li Mengxi thought of two methods, one was for soldiers to shoot from the gap between the vehicles, and the other was to use a shield ladder for temporary combat.

In daily tactical training, the triple shield array can be put directly on the wall, so what's the use of a small sidecar?

When Li Mengxi thought of this, he suddenly realized a tactic that could extremely restrain the sidecar formation.

The advantage of the sidecar is that it is equivalent to a simple fortification. It has height advantages and shielding advantages. This allows the sidecar formation to have an advantage in long-range shooting with the enemy, and can also occupy the advantage in close combat with the enemy.
To be continued...