Chapter 143 Bloody Battle
Yuan Shao acted swiftly and decisively, and immediately mobilized all the troops he could to attack the city.
The army marched towards Hulao Pass with earth-shaking steps like a tide. The thick clouds in the sky brought everything on the battlefield back to the most primitive cold weapon battle.
"kill!"
Thick smoke billowed, and there was a flash of swords and sabers at Hulao Pass. The beating of drums could not stop the sound of the miserable fighting.
The coalition forces, with great momentum, attacked Hulao Pass with the help of human wave tactics. This was the third attack launched by the coalition forces today.
Dense human figures, tall and heavy siege equipment, arrows covering the sky, endless corpses on the ground, and more were soldiers roaring madly and fighting each other.
The generals in Hulao Pass also stood on the city walls and fought bravely. As the main generals, they represented the confidence of the army.
If even they are not there, how can the soldiers on the city wall give their full efforts?
"Wenyuan, are these princes crazy?" Dian Wei personally experienced the brutal siege battle with hundreds of thousands of troops fighting in the battlefield for the first time, and was even more captivated by the crazy momentum on the battlefield.
"If we keep fighting like this, the city won't fall, right? We won't die here, right?"
Dian Wei wiped the blood off his face and spoke to Zhang Liao beside him with a ferocious look.
However, Zhang Liao turned around and commented on him coldly. The lack of any emotion in his eyes made people feel uneasy.
Looking at Dian Wei, who was an extraordinary martial arts master, Zhang Liao was very disappointed.
He actually noticed a hint of panic on Dian Wei's face. Although the tragic battlefield was heart-wrenching, this kind of expression should not appear on the faces of generals like them, and should not come out of Dian Wei's mouth.
Zhang Liao had a cold face and shouted in a voice without any emotion: "Dian Wei, do what you should do. If you continue to speak nonsense and shake the morale of the army, I will execute you!"
When he mentioned the word "behead", Dian Wei even felt a naked murderous intent from Zhang Liao.
Dian Wei was startled for a moment, with a hint of anger and trembling in his pupils.
How dare a mere Zhang Liao kill him so easily?
But when he saw murderous intent in Zhang Liao's pupils and a lack of emotion on his face, he was suddenly shocked and realized that this friend who used to call him brother was not joking, nor was he insulting him.
If he continued to talk nonsense, I'm afraid the other party would really order him to be beheaded.
For a moment, Dian Wei's scalp went numb and he felt a little embarrassed. That was his dignity as an unparalleled strong man. He could not tolerate someone weaker than him threatening his life.
Even in such a horrific battlefield, his combat power as a skilled cultivator was still terrifying, and Zhang Liao was really not strong enough for him to kill.
But he did nothing. He was deeply impressed by Zhang Liao's ability to lead troops in battle, and he felt that he might really be wrong.
"Here!" As if venting the complex emotions in his heart, Dian Wei suddenly shouted and silently pounced on a coalition soldier who jumped onto the city wall.
Zhang Liao was silently looking at Dian Wei at this time. Dian Wei was definitely a strong man, but he was definitely not a good general, let alone a general suitable for the battlefield.
As a powerful man, he actually did not have a strong heart. The coalition forces outside the Great Wall were so weak that even he could see that Xu Rong deliberately showed weakness to the enemy in order to effectively kill the coalition soldiers.
Dian Wei was so overwhelmed by the momentum of the hundreds of thousands of troops that he couldn't even see clearly the strength of each other.
He was not worried about his own safety even though his internal energy had left his body. It was simply unreasonable for Dian Wei, who was far superior to him, to ask such a question.
Even though Dian Wei was a rookie, he shouldn't have made such a serious mistake.
After years of fighting on the battlefield, Zhang Liao had a heart as hard as steel. He knew very well that as a general or a commander, he must not show any sign of cowardice or panic no matter what.
As long as he can always stand on the top of the city wall, his soldiers will feel as if they have a magic needle in their hearts, and this will allow his troops to devote themselves to the battlefield wholeheartedly.
The battlefield was bloody. Even a strong man like Dian Wei, who could compete with anyone on earth, would make such a mistake after witnessing the momentum of the battlefield for the first time.
There was a flash of reluctance in Zhang Liao's eyes, but he still aimed his killing intent at Dian Wei. Only in this way could he help Dian Wei quickly enter the battlefield.
Being cowardly on the battlefield is undoubtedly equivalent to handing your life to the enemy. No matter what, he doesn't want to see Dian Wei die on the battlefield because of cowardice.
After all, the battlefield is ruthless and anyone has the possibility of falling. Even Lu Bu cannot guarantee 100% that he can survive and win every time.
Behind the coalition forces of the princes was a dark mass, with tens of thousands of soldiers supporting the formation. In front of the formation were countless supervisors holding long swords and roaring with their thick red necks. In front of them were already countless corpses lying densely packed.
The soldiers charging in the front looked at the supervising team behind them in horror, fearing that if they ran too slowly they would be caught up and brutally hacked to death by this group of evil spirits.
The soldiers at the front were those who had become deserters last night and were then recruited. They were thrown directly into the cruelest battlefield.
Only in this way can they wash away the shame of being deserters, and it is also a way to make them regain their fighting spirit.
The coalition forces deployed a total of 120,000 troops on the battlefield this time. From the beginning of the siege to the nightfall, they launched countless fierce attacks and paid a price in countless blood.
The majestic Hulao Pass still stood firm, the city walls were covered with arrows and ladders, and countless traces of blood that had not yet dried up, along with the strong smell of blood, shocked the nerves of every soldier.
There was also a pungent stench floating on the battlefield. As veterans of the battlefield, the soldiers all knew that it was gold juice.
Gold juice is one of the most effective weapons for defending a city on the battlefield. Most of the soldiers who survived the battlefield and were drenched in boiling gold juice would die from bacteria.
This bloody battle lasted for a whole day and night until Xu Rong began to mobilize a large-scale long-range army, and Yuan Shao stopped the fighting.
The next day in the big tent, Yuan Shao announced the battle losses in front of everyone.
The troops lost nearly 10% of their men, but in contrast, the surviving recruits were no longer the same after having gone through the trials of blood and fire.
Soon, the various princes were arranged with battle plans, and this time, with Yuan Shao making it clear, all the soldiers were under unified command.
Yuan Shao also directly used his own wealth as a three-generation official to guarantee that if anyone dared to take advantage of this opportunity to encroach on other people's troops, the other princes would rise up and attack them.
It is precisely because of this that the coalition forces' military orders were consistent this time, and the command of the troops was handed over to Yang Lin, the only person in the coalition who understood large-scale troop operations.
Ju Su was very excited. He had studied hard for many years just for this day. He cooperated with Yang Lin and used the coalition forces to form a Xuanxiang army formation.
The effect of the military formation is very simple. It is a simple mental strengthening military formation that allows the coalition recruits to withstand the brutal siege battlefield.
"Where is Ding Jianyang? Why haven't we seen him yet?"
After the third day of siege, Yuan Shao asked in the central army camp.
As one of the two most powerful troops in the coalition, he was a little tolerant. After all, the border soldiers had experienced far more battles than the soldiers in the Central Plains who had been away from battle for a long time.
Besides, Ding Yuan was still a disciple of the Yuan family and had rebelled with him before, so he still cared about Ding Yuan very much.
I hadn't seen Ding Yuan report to the camp before, and I thought something had happened in the Bingzhou army. After all, the attack on the camp a few days ago had caused a lot of trouble for all the princes, and even he was working overtime without sleep.
"Reporting to the leader, the Bingzhou military camp is in chaos and no one is seen." Cao Cao, who had been missing for many days, had a strange expression on his face.
Following Xun Yu's advice, he placed the main camp in a more remote area, under the pretext of guarding the central army.
The seemingly dangerous place is actually the safest. It can be said that he is one of the few princes who suffered no losses in the coalition.
The only ones left were Sun Jian and Liu Bei. The other princes had more or less encountered some sniper troops, but only he and Sun Jian's families were not harmed at all.
"How can this be? Send people to find Ding Yuan immediately. If he escapes from the battlefield, he will be executed without mercy!" Yuan Shao was anxious.
At this time, he no longer cared about the friendship between his disciples. The most important thing was to stabilize the morale of the army.
If Ding Yuan really ran away, who knows what the coalition forces would be thinking.
In an attack on the camp, the most powerful troop in the coalition ran away, and they were members of his Yuan family. What would the other princes think?
How can we fight this battle?
It was not until the third day that the coalition forces discovered Yuwen Chengdu, and only then did they learn from him about Ding Yuan's fate.
Their Bingzhou Army had been completely wiped out. Not only did Ding Yuan die at the hands of Lu Bu, but tens of thousands of Bingzhou troops also surrendered to Hulao Pass.
Yuan Shao comforted Yuwen Chengdu, who had a cold look on his face, but he felt helpless deep down in his heart.
The destruction of the Bingzhou Army, no, the surrender of the Bingzhou Army to the enemy.
This made the already severely damaged coalition forces even worse.
Li Ru's previous attack plan was extremely effective, and in one battle, nearly 100,000 people were turned into deserters.
Not many people actually died in the battle, most of them were killed in camp roars or camp bombings.
Using deserters to attack the city is their only means at the moment. After all, after fighting for several days, attacking the city is basically equivalent to committing suicide.
Even if Yuan Shao took the lead in organizing a team of powerful generals to break through, it was of no avail.
Xu Rong specifically placed the Shesheng Battalion on the top of the wall to prevent this elite team from launching a breakthrough.
As soon as a top master with internal energy leaving his body showed up, the Shesheng Battalion would immediately organize a wave of concentrated fire and sniping to kill him.
Many generals were injured. They could still block hundreds of arrows with their skills, but when thousands of arrows covered their bodies, even top masters were not gods.
Most of the masters, including Xue Rengui and Yuwen Chengdu, were hit by several arrows.
The energy of humanity suppressed their strength, and they had no way of performing operations like transforming energy into wind.
I can only barely protect the vital parts, and the rest of the body is really left to fate.
The unlucky Zhang He under Yuan Shao was even stabbed by more than a dozen arrows. If Guan Yu had not helped him, Zhang He might have been stabbed to death on the top of the city wall.
In fact, Yuan Shao's strategy was correct. The elite team broke through to the top of the city wall under the targeting of the Shesheng Camp, and the coalition forces attacking the city tied up some of Xu Rong's energy.
However, Lu Bu, Dian Wei, Huang Zhong and others on the top of the city wall were lined up in a row, which made the generals on the top of the city wall a little desperate, and they could only jump over the wall and run away one by one.
Regardless of whether they can win or not, there is 100% no problem in stopping them.
With the Shesheng Camp lurking somewhere unknown, they couldn't stand on the city wall at all.
If they were a little greedy, they might all be killed on the wall of Hulao Pass.
All the princes looked at Xu Rong on the top of the city with extremely ugly expressions.
They knew that Yang Lin had tried his best, but this was how siege warfare was. Apart from using unusual tactics, they could only fight with their lives.
The princes did not think of no solutions. They contacted the various noble families behind them and tried to let the noble families sabotage from the inside, to achieve internal and external cooperation.
If Li Ru was the only one in Hulao, perhaps the noble family could really play a role.
After all, maintaining the logistics of hundreds of thousands of troops is really not an easy task.
Most of the counselors and officials in the coalition forces were stuffed into the logistics pit. In addition, there were many people who were just slacking off, so the logistics of the coalition forces was also a huge pit.
However, there is Chen Xi in Hulao Pass, a perfect bug machine. Although Li Ru can't understand it, the logistics of Hulao Pass runs smoothly.
Chen Xi even had time to observe the people's livelihood around Hulao Pass, although Li Ru felt that Chen Xi was just skipping work.
However, Chen Xi claimed to have gone deep into the grassroots, and there was no problem with the logistics of Hulao Pass, so Li Ru could only let him run around and even transferred Fei Xiong to protect Chen Xi.
When it comes to protection, Fei Xiong can definitely be ranked among the top three in the world. His ability to escape through mid-air is definitely more reliable than any other guard.
With the assistance of Chen Xi, Li Ru perfectly displayed his brilliance as a top strategist. The people stationed by the aristocratic families in Hulao Pass were no match for Li Ru.
Li Ru simply set up two traps and almost dealt with all the rats in Hulao Pass.
There is no way. All the heads of the aristocratic families are no match for Jia Xu and Zhou Yu, so how could some of the people who were placed in the position possibly be better than Li Ru?
If Li Ru had not left some spies to inform the coalition forces, there would not be a single person from aristocratic family in Hulao Pass.
Hulao Pass maintained a low-intensity battle. Not only the coalition forces were training, but Xu Rong and Gao Shun were also training.
Moreover, with the city walls as a support, it was easier for Xu Rong and his men to train their troops.
Li Ru even sent Ma Chao back to Luoyang and replaced Qu Yi with Hulao Pass.
After all, using cavalry to defend a city sounds very flawed, so it is more reliable to use crossbowmen to defend the city.
Qu Yi also seized the opportunity to hone his vanguard corps. After all, Feixiong and Xianzhen, who were at the same level as him, had already gotten ahead of the vanguard.
Even Qu Yi had a hunch that the Yulin Guard might not be a simple imperial guard.
Although the Yulin Guards looked like they were at the top of the imperial guards, Qu Yi always felt that the three of them combined were not enough to defeat them.
With this calculation, it means that among the four imperial guards fighting the Yellow Turbans, he is the only one left standing still.
Unwilling to give up, Qu Yi thought hard and finally decided to advance by stepping on his opponent's corpse.
Huangfu Song once said in class that there are only two ways to make a legion stronger.
The first is training, which is to transform various food resources into internal energy through training, and steadily enhance the strength of the soldiers.
There are many ways to train, but the core content is to convert resources into combat power. This method is slow but extremely stable and has no risk.
The second method is to kill. Find an evenly matched opponent on the battlefield and kill him to win. Then convert the various auras of the dead soldiers into internal energy and absorb them. This method is fast and has no risk.
The only thing you need to worry about is how you can win. Battles between equals are full of variables, and no one can guarantee that he can always win.
If you can keep winning, then your army must be the strongest.
Conventional methods take too long and he can't wait. He has a hunch that time will change very quickly. If he can't keep up with the times, he will be eliminated by the times.
The genius Qu Yidu has already found his opponent who will advance first, that is, the Baima Yicong who are acting as archers and shooting at them under the city wall.
This kind of cavalry that came and went like the wind had disgusted Xu Rong before. Before this, Xu Rong had never thought that a cavalry archery unit could fight against the archers on the city wall.
Bai Ma Yi got up in the morning, had breakfast, then carried a pot of arrows on his back, ran from the east end of Hulao Pass to the west end and then turned back. After shooting all the arrows, he returned to the camp to rest.
The whole process went smoothly, and Shesheng Battalion was unable to catch the white horse. The lock that Shesheng Battalion was so proud of became meaningless at this moment.
Their lock could only capture the afterimage of the white horse, and they couldn't even lock onto where the white horse was.
This kind of army with a speed of over 200 kilometers per hour really made Xu Rong sick. It was not until the arrival of Qu Yi that the activities of the White Horse were restricted.
Gongsun Zan was also disgusting enough. He led the White Horse Volunteers and was invincible across the grassland. All the casualties in the battles were the inevitable result of his being outnumbered by the enemy.
But ever since there was an extra guard on top of Hulao Pass, the casualties of their White Horse troops skyrocketed.
In the past, when Hulao Pass was captured in one day, their Baima Yicong might only have a few dozen casualties, or one or two new recruits killed, and the casualties were basically zero.
Now, dozens of people die and hundreds are injured almost every day.
If the coalition forces had not provided him with crazy reinforcements, his eight thousand white horses would have been defeated long ago.
However, the high-intensity combat did pay off after all. He originally had only 800 guards under his command, but now he had almost 2,000 guards under his command.
It can be said that the battlefield is definitely the best place to improve your strength. As long as you don’t die, you will definitely make progress.
Because those who have not made any progress have already laid down forever.
The bloody battle in front of Hulao Pass lasted for nearly a month until Chen Xi could no longer bear the noise of the war and forcibly dragged the clouds and rain to start raining. The war came to an end.
In the military camps of the twenty-eight...twenty-seven princes, there was a strong iron-blooded and bleak atmosphere. However, when the princes in the big tent saw the resolute faces of the soldiers, there was a hint of satisfaction on their faces.
The coalition forces paid a heavy price for fighting continuously for many days. Nearly one million coalition forces lost more than 10%. However, the princes sitting in the big tent did not show any bleak look on their faces. Instead, they nodded frequently.
The tragic casualties of nearly 100,000 made the soldiers of the coalition forces seem to be reborn, and their military discipline and morale were no longer the same as before.
They are training their troops at the cost of their soldiers' lives, in an effort to build an elite army that is strong enough to defeat Hulao Pass. They are very satisfied with the changes in the army.
The result made them happy. After paying the price of 100,000 soldiers, the overall strength of the coalition forces almost doubled, and the coalition forces even began to have their own guards.
In their eyes, nearly 100,000 lives were just cold numbers, just tools for them to fight for interests. No one cared about the corpses that were constantly cremating on the side.
The coalition forces were already immersed in great joy, and they were pleasantly surprised by the changes in their troops.
They were all immersed in the tremendous progress of the coalition forces, which further magnified their ambitions.
In this chaotic situation, the aristocratic families who had long had ulterior motives followed the trend and accelerated the pace of dividing up the Han Dynasty.
Taking advantage of the fact that the influence of the Han Dynasty was blocked within Hulao Pass, the aristocratic families quietly began to erode the land of the Central Plains.
If the aristocratic families in Luoyang had not been driven out of Luoyang, they might have already accomplished the task of dividing the Han Dynasty.
As the most prominent aristocratic family in the world, the Runan Yuan family, with three generations of officials in four generations, was extremely powerful, with students and former officials spread all over the world at home and abroad. The ambition that grew from this was clearly seen by everyone with a discerning eye. Many aristocratic families understood that the Yuan family intended to replace the Liu family.
In Yuan's view, they had great reputation, enormous wealth, deep-rooted personal connections, and almost no weaknesses.
It was natural for them to replace the Liu family, and many people couldn't believe it until Yuan Huai was driven out of Luoyang.
In the previous generation, the three brothers Yuan Cheng, Yuan Feng and Yuan Huai made the Yuan family of Runan overshadow the Liu family.
Yuan Feng and Yuan Wei, one was Sikong and the other was Situ, both reached the pinnacle position of ministers and pushed the power of the Yuan family to its peak.
However, the Yuan family also had a lot of headaches. They had finally caught up with the time when the Han Dynasty was at its most decadent, but they were still unable to unite their forces, gain greater benefits, and achieve their ultimate goal.
Because in this generation, the Yuan family had two sons who were outstanding enough to compete for the position of head of the family.
Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu.
Moreover, due to their mutual hatred and different strategic goals, they have become enemies, and different voices have also emerged within the family.
Those who supported Yuan Shao believed that Yuan Shao's great talent and strategy would make the Yuan family more glorious, but as the legitimate son, Yuan Shu naturally had the right to inherit the Yuan family.
The aristocratic families are not democratic parliaments, and they still pay attention to the distinction between the main line and the branches. Moreover, Yuan Shu is not necessarily worse than Yuan Shao.
If there were not so many noble families in the outside world who were eyeing the family covetously, the Yuan family might have already split up by now. Yuan Huai's desperate attempt to gain power in Luoyang was based on this consideration.
If Yuan Shu and Yuan Shao were really allowed to fight each other, the Yuan family might be in big trouble.
Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu went to Jizhou and Yuzhou respectively, and both of them developed very well. Compared with Yuan Shao's stagnation in Jizhou, Yuan Shu was even better, and even had his hands in the surrounding Jingzhou and Yangzhou.
Originally, the Yuan family had decided to support Yuan Shu, but Yuan Shao's position as the leader of the coalition of princes made the Yuan family waver. It was not a good thing for a big family like theirs to have children who were too outstanding.
No one in the coalition forces noticed anything unusual about Liu Bei, who was sitting with them.
Liu Bei clenched his hands so tightly that he didn't even notice his nails piercing his palms, because those who died were all his subjects of the Han Dynasty.
Facing the iron-blooded army, he only felt cold, and being among such a group of princes made him feel even more dazed.
He was not a pedantic person. He knew that reform and change would inevitably require bloodshed and sacrifice, and that more people would be persecuted by the aristocratic families and become displaced and miserable.
But he could not accept it. He could not accept the attitude of a group of princes who lightly used the lives of their soldiers as bargaining chips.
He had observed that, if the foreign princes sometimes showed a trace of grief, then almost no local princes treated their soldiers as human beings.
