All Heavens and Worlds Modified History System

Chapter 220 Zengtou City

"Ruler~Release the arrow!"

"Buzz buzz buzz~~~" A wave of hundreds of arrows flew out and pounced on a group of cavalrymen who were trying to approach the formation to harass them.

The arrows penetrated the ground, and dozens of riders fell to the ground with their horses. The others hurriedly pulled their horses away.

"Keep moving forward!" Chen Ran shouted, "Everyone, maintain your formation. You can move slower, but you can't stop!"

Although his voice was loud, it was impossible for it to reach the ears of thousands of people.

This was actually a shout to the soldiers around him, who then passed it on to the various units and, most importantly, the drummers and buglers.

Of course, the most important thing is the flag bearer who follows Chen Ran holding the big flag.

As long as the banner keeps moving forward, each department will naturally see it and have a backbone.

When the size of a battle formation exceeds a thousand people, it exceeds the individual's command limit.

Command must be taken over through various means. Even Chen Ran has no way to do it unless he can equip every sergeant with a communication system.

The people in Zengtou City are also getting anxious.

Although they have more cavalry and better mobility.

But at this time Chen Ran was heading straight for the market town of Zengtou City, and their families, clansmen and wealth were all in the market town, which forced them to give up their advantages and resist with gritted teeth.

"Why does the chief's fighting method seem so familiar?"

"If you read the history books, you will know that this was the way the Han and Tang dynasties dealt with the northern tribes. They went straight to the old camp and forced them to give up their harassment and engage in a decisive battle."

"The chieftain actually used the same tactics he used against the northern tribes to attack Zengtou City?"

"There's no difference. There are also golden people here in Zengtou City!"

In Zengtou City, Zeng Tu rode his horse to Zeng Nong and shouted, "Amin (father), the Song army is too tight, we can't charge!"

Not only was it impossible to charge forward, it was even difficult to get close to an army array equipped with a large number of bows and crossbows.

"Amin." The second son Zeng Mi also ran over and said, "The Song people are almost in the town. What should we do?"

Zeng Nong's face turned ashen.

Use the advantage of mobility to harass the large infantry formation, and when their formation is loose and their morale is low, then attack and defeat them in one fell swoop.

Once the infantry collapses and scatters, what follows is an easy and enjoyable process of hunting down and harvesting.

This has been the traditional tactic used by northern tribes to deal with the large formations of Middle-earth infantry for thousands of years.

But once the opponent's formation does not move at all, this tactic will immediately lose its effectiveness.

This is not the most terrifying thing. The most terrifying thing is that the Song people have captured their old camp and are now completely ignoring the troops outside and rushing towards the old camp.

I can go by myself, and even take my sons with me.

But if this happens, the old camp will be finished and he will have nothing.

"Have you ever heard about King Wanyan's victory over Liao?"

Zeng Nong suddenly mentioned the matter of Wanyan Aguda's conquest of Liao, which made his sons a little confused. We are in a hurry to go to war here, why are you mentioning something thousands of miles away?

“I have heard of it.”

Zeng Nong's originally cloudy eyes gradually became firm. "King Wanyan defeated Liao by charging head-on with armored soldiers and defeating the enemy in one fell swoop!"

"We have no way to retreat now. This is Song State. Without the pasture, even if we escape, the best we can do is become bandits."

He drew his sword and said, "Today is the day of life and death for the Zeng family. Let's learn from King Wanyan and defeat the enemy head-on with supreme courage!"

"Amin is right." Zeng Tu shouted, "King Wanyan defeated 700,000 with only 20,000 men! Can't we, with only 5,000 to 7,000 men, defeat these few thousand weak Song people?"

"Yes, rush over and kill them all!"

Zeng Nong's sons all agreed, saying that what the Wanyan tribe could do, they could do too.

The Jin people mustered up their courage and began to fight desperately.

They first drove the vassal Song troops to charge into the battle.

But faced with the neat queues and arrows as dense as locusts, these vassals who were only trying to make a living collapsed quickly as expected.

Next, it was the turn of the Zeng family and the hundreds of recruited gold men.

It was a morale-boosting mobilization, the gist of which was that we were now in the territory of Song State, and if we were defeated this time, we wouldn't even have a place to bury our bodies, so everyone had to fight to the death.

The encouragement was effective, at least these hundreds of Jin soldiers had the courage to charge.

As they galloped over on horseback, the Song army's formation finally stopped.

The archers quickly formed a battle formation and released wave after wave of rain of arrows.

The long soldiers in the back row followed forward, with the various long weapons in their hands pointing diagonally forward, forming rows of long soldier jungles.

When horses face weapons directly, they will instinctively become afraid.

The Jin people knew this, so they blindfolded their horses in advance and then charged directly into the long jungle at all costs.

Under the huge impact force, the long soldiers in the front row suffered broken bones and tendons, and their weapons were broken, causing heavy losses.

Chen Ran was also a little nervous.

He was not worried about whether he would lose the battle, but whether the soldiers in the front row could withstand the psychological pressure.

When fighting, the front row always suffers the greatest losses. Once they can't withstand the pressure and turn around to flee, the entire army will collapse.

Fortunately, sufficient food and wages, strict military discipline, and long-term training achieved results.

The soldiers, whose rows had been broken down in succession, finally held on.

As for the Jin army, the impact of the high-speed charge was blocked and resolved by the long soldiers. After losing the impact, it was their turn to be unlucky. The first to rush forward were the archers.

The general impression is that archers are very fragile, the kind that will be killed if someone gets close to them.

But in reality, archers who can draw the bow and shoot arrows for a long time are all strong and powerful.

The crossbowman is a little worse, but it takes strength to shoot a crossbow!
Far from being weak, they are actually the elite in the army.

The short weapons that Chen Ran equipped them with were also very interesting. They were not the swords and knives commonly used by the Song army, but heavy weapons such as short axes, melon hammers, and bone hammers.

These archers rushed forward, first hacking and smashing at the fallen Jin men, then pulling down the Jin men trapped in the formation, and then hacking and smashing them again.

It is obvious that these weapons are not designed to deal with Zengtou City, where most of the people wear cloth clothes and at most leather armor.

These are all designed to deal with the northern Jin soldiers, who have a high armor-wearing rate and whose elite troops are generally equipped with a full set of iron armor!
There were many reasons why the Song army suffered repeated defeats in the early stages of the war against the Jin army. One of the important reasons was that they lacked effective means to deal with the Jin army's elite assaults that were like iron cans.

Slashing with swords, stabbing with spears, poking with sticks, none of these are effective against iron armor.

Chen Ran knew all this, so he updated his equipment early on.

To deal with tin cans, axes, hammers, and bone fragments are the most effective weapons for breaking through armor.

In the era of cold weapons, only elite troops could withstand a 30% casualty rate.

Chen Ran estimated that the Northern Jin people, who were at the peak of their morale at this time, could probably withstand a casualty rate of 40%.

It is obvious that these Jin people in front of them do not have the same strong courage as the Jin people in the north.

As the Jin people trapped in the formation were slaughtered one after another, the remaining Jin people could not withstand such a blow and began to flee on horseback.

It was not until this time that Chen Ran released the mounted infantrymen who had not had enough training time and asked them to ride horses to chase and kill.

Insufficiently trained mounted infantry are not capable of fighting against real cavalry.

Chen Ran kept them under pressure and only let them go when he was chasing them.

The next thing is simple.

Capture Zengtou City, clean up the battlefield, receive the spoils, resettle the prisoners, etc.

It was not until the evening that the preliminary statistics were delivered to Chen Ran.

Their own casualties exceeded two hundred, most of whom were caused by the first few rows of soldiers who collided head-on when the Jin army charged.

As many as seven or eight hundred enemy soldiers were killed, most of whom were Jin people.

Including Zeng Nong and his five sons, all died in the battle.

Apart from anything else, the Jin people still had the courage to lead the charge.

As for the vassal Song people, most of them became prisoners.

As for the two instructors from Zengtou City, Su Ding was killed in the battle and Shi Wengong was nowhere to be found.

It is said that he ran away on a good horse.

In terms of captured items, the most important ones were horses.

In and around Zengtou City alone, the number of horses seized reached thousands.

In addition, there are five villages within a hundred miles. If all of them are captured, it is estimated that there will be tens of thousands of horses.

There are innumerable types of supplies such as grain, bean cakes, fodder, salt, money, etc., and the quantity is too large to be fully counted for the time being.

"No wonder nomadic fishing and hunting tribes like to rob." Putting down the spoils of war, Chen Ran also sighed, "It's really a profitable business."

The battle was won, the land was occupied, and all the goods were collected.

If it were a nomadic fishing and hunting tribe, they would have taken the spoils back to the tribe’s main camp to enjoy them.

But Chen Ran is from Middle-earth, and people in Middle-earth value land, so he was thinking about how to completely occupy this land.

If we take all the horses away at once, there won't be enough pasture to accommodate them in Qingfeng Town or Qingzhou.

Even if they could be accommodated, Chen Ran was not willing to take them all away, because he did not want to make a one-time deal, but wanted this ranch to continuously supply him with horses.

The local government of the nearby Song Dynasty is not blind and will definitely report any movements in Zengtou City.

If the local authorities can be appeased through bribery, what do the bigwigs in the court say?
Especially the big boss behind Zengtou City, how can he not take revenge after cutting off his source of income?

"This matter needs long-term consideration." Chen Ran decided to enjoy the joy of the harvest first and deal with the follow-up matters later.

A few days later, Chen Ran called a meeting of all the leaders.

"Hu Cheng." He called Hu Cheng's name directly, "You stay here and look after the ranch and the horses."

Hu Cheng was obviously stunned. He didn't expect Chen Ran to let him be a horse breeder.

"Hmm?" Seeing that he didn't say anything, Chen Ran's eyes immediately swept over him.

"Yes." Hu Cheng saluted hastily. "I accept your command!"

"You must take good care of the horses and not let them suffer too much loss. You must also strengthen the training of the military horses." Chen Ran assigned him a lot of tasks and targets, and finally said, "Do your job well and don't make things difficult for your sister."

Hu Cheng suddenly shuddered and responded in a loud voice, "Yes, sir!"

Chen Ran left all the cavalry infantry behind and had them train in this vast pasture.

After all, cavalry will be an indispensable force when fighting against the Jin people in the future.

He stayed for more than a month to arrange many matters of the ranch. After everything was ready, he withdrew his troops and returned to Qingfeng Town.

While still on the way, I received a shocking news.

"The Liangshan bandits attacked Gaotang Prefecture, broke into the city and killed the prefect!"

(End of this chapter)