Red Mansion: Seizing Jiangdong, starting with pirates

Chapter 213, Arrows Shoot Enemies

As time passed, the siege never stopped.

The traitor in the city was just a minor episode.

Amid the roar of artillery fire, the Huaiyin army charged towards the city wall like a tide.

The artillery shells hit the city walls, sending rubble flying everywhere.

Deng Ren commanded the troops to defend the city and also used artillery to counterattack.

A shell fired through the dense crowd, plowing a bloody path.

The artillery in the capital is no worse than Fang Yong’s, because Fang Yong’s artillery was purchased from the capital.

The grassland people enslaved many craftsmen in the capital, forcing them to work day and night to make cannons and ammunition.

But artillery was only part of the siege.

The cooperation of soldiers, the command of generals, morale, etc. are all very important factors.

Ma Laohei and Zhai Xun were responsible for the west gate and south gate of the capital respectively.

Li Sheng was originally responsible for attacking the east gate, but his command ability was insufficient. After attacking for a while, Fang Yong asked Zhang Yuan to replace Li Sheng.

Nowadays, extremely fierce battles break out in the three gates every day.

Generals issued orders through command flags.

The soldiers occasionally dispersed.

This was to avoid the intensive artillery fire from the city.

Sometimes they gathered together because the artillery fire on the city temporarily cooled down, and they took this opportunity to gather strength and launch a fierce attack.

More than a thousand Huaiyin soldiers climbed up the ladders. Some encountered falling rocks and rolling logs, while others were hit by gold juice and arrows.

Many Huaiyin soldiers unfortunately fell during the climb, but many others climbed up successfully and started fighting.

The commander of the Huaiyin Army was observing the situation on the city wall, and seeing a gap in the grassland people's defense, he immediately waved his command flag.

A large number of Huaiyin troops rushed forward like a tide
A Huaiyin soldier climbed up the city wall and chopped down with a knife, cutting off the hand of a grassland man. The man screamed while holding his severed arm.

A grassland man nearby swung his knife and attacked, but was blocked by the Huaiyin soldiers.

Suddenly, a grassland man from the right raised his gun and stabbed at him.

The Huaiyin army was accidentally stabbed.

Fortunately, the teammate behind climbed up in time and used the round shield in his hand to provide cover. The two of them cooperated and fought powerfully.

The people of the grassland rarely cooperate with each other and basically fight on their own, which is a huge advantage for the Huaiyin army.

Deng Ren was commanding the battle seriously when his soldiers came to report urgently.

"General Deng, the southern section of the city wall is in danger!"

Upon hearing this, Deng Ren immediately ordered the reserve troops to be sent to the critical city wall to stabilize the situation.

In order to win the battle, soldiers on both sides fought with all their might, using every possible means.

At the west gate, many of the city walls were broken by the roar of artillery fire.

Chen Zhengdu ordered people to use the method of pouring water to turn it into ice to quickly repair the city wall.

Ma Laohei ordered his men to light a fire under the city, pretending to melt the ice, but in fact he secretly poured a lot of sulfur into the fire.

Sulfur releases toxic fumes when it burns.

Chen Zhengdu originally thought that Ma Laohei wanted to melt the ice on the city wall, so he didn't take it seriously. He didn't expect Ma Laohei to be so despicable as to use poisonous smoke.

The grassland soldiers had never seen such a thing before. Some of them found it novel and took a few deep puffs.

"What kind of smoke is this? Uh uh uh... Pawn!"

Chen Zhengdu was caught off guard for a moment and thousands of people were poisoned to death, and the city was almost breached.

Afterwards, Chen Zhengdu ordered people to block their mouths and noses with wet towels to break the poisonous smoke from Ma Laohei.

The battle was going on intensely, and both sides were suffering heavy losses. Wei Xing, who was stationed in Fangshan, wrote a letter to Fang Yong.

Wei Xing believed that although the grassland people were not good at defending cities, they had a large number of soldiers and the capital was very strong, so it would be difficult to capture the city in a short period of time.

In this case, the best way is to surprise.

He was willing to lead a special force, go through the Taihang Mountains, and directly attack the grassland people's rear, which was the direction from which the grassland people came.

Although this strategy is simple to say, it is difficult to execute.

The biggest problem is how to pass through the Taihang Mountains.

It is extremely difficult to lead a large army through the wild mountains and wilderness.

But Fang Yong finally agreed to this strategy and gave Wei Xing 10,000 people in exchange for Gao Li to garrison Fangshan.

The reason why he agreed to Wei Xing was that from Fang Yong's perspective, he didn't know that the food and grass on the grassland had been exhausted.

There are more than 100,000 people on the grassland and they have sufficient troops. It is impossible to capture the capital in a short period of time.

Although Wei Xing's strategy was very risky, it did have the potential to end the war early, so it was worth a try.

In addition, Fang Yong’s food supplies are running low.

Although he had double the grain harvest and plenty of food, the consumption was huge. With more than 200,000 soldiers and horses to feed, plus the disaster relief work in Shandong, a huge amount of food was consumed.

According to estimates, the remaining food will be enough to last for four to five months.

Fang Yong has already ordered the military ration officers to distribute grain sparingly and be a little more economical so that they can hold on until June. By then, if there is a good harvest in the rear, they can supply more grain.

I wonder if the grassland people can hold out if the war lasts for a year...

Kah Khan didn’t know what Fang Yong was thinking. If he knew, he would probably vomit blood.

A year? He struggled for a month!
Now that the army has run out of food, Li Hao is desperately trying to find food, even at the cost of plundering food from officials and civilians in the city.

The army's food rations had been forced to be reduced by half a few days ago, and morale was very low. Kah Khan had to go to the city wall in person to boost morale.

This is the section of the city wall that Gao Zhi and Bazin were responsible for defending.

According to Deng Ren's deployment, the Han people and the grassland people should work together to defend the city walls.

But the reality is otherwise.

Firstly, Bazin did not know how to defend the city, and secondly, he did not want to be commanded by the Han general Deng Ren.

Bazin believed that the correct approach should be to let these Han people take the lead and reduce the casualties among the grassland people.

Gao Zhi had a good relationship with Bazin. In order to please Bazin, Gao Zhi ordered his soldiers to go to the front and take charge of most of the dangerous defensive tasks.

Bazin was very pleased with this.

The relationship between the two became closer as a result.

After Kah Khan climbed up the city wall, he saw Gao Zhi commanding his soldiers to fight bravely and taking the most dangerous tasks on his own initiative. This made him mistakenly believe that Gao Zhi was brave and fearless in moments of crisis, which changed his impression of Gao Zhi.

On the other side, Fang Yong was inspecting the tunnel digging progress of the Hu brothers.

Suddenly, news came that Kah Khan had climbed up the city wall.

This made Fang Yong very happy.

Hurry to the front line.

When we arrived at the front line, we saw Kah Khan boosting morale on the city wall.

The other person was wearing a white-gray fur coat, had a majestic appearance and extraordinary bearing, and exuded a convincing aura when he spoke, making him very conspicuous on the city wall.

Kah Khan's body is currently standing on the city platform, and he is protected by several personal guards holding shields. It is naturally impossible for ordinary people to cause harm to him, but Fang Yong is different.

What a God-given opportunity!
Fang Yong immediately ordered someone to find a soldier's uniform, put it on, and then disguised himself as a soldier and charged forward.

When he was about 200 meters away from the city wall, Fang Yong picked up the big bow on his back, jumped up to a height of eight or nine meters, then used his luck to lift himself up another two meters.

He drew his bow and drew his arrow, "whoosh!"

(End of this chapter)