My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 354 Xiahou Yuan: It’s not me who is blocking everyone’s path to wealth, it’s Guan Yu who is blocking everyone’s path to wealth!

In the following days, Cao's army, inspired by this kind of chicken blood, continued to attack fiercely regardless of casualties.

Mi Zhu and Tian Yu were indeed "gradually losing their strength" and had to retreat, gradually abandoning all the camps outside the city and completely retreating back to the main urban area of Qu County.

However, in this process, Tian Yu also tried his best to bleed Xiahou Yuan and continuously consume Xiahou Yuan's soldiers, weapons and supplies.

It was early October. Xiahou Yuan's troops had been besieging the city for more than half a month and had been attacking for more than ten days. Xiahou Yuan was still unyielding and, relying on the increasingly sophisticated siege weapons, he began a full-scale assault on the city walls.

He seemed to have lost his original intention, forgetting that he was only here to surround the enemy and attack the reinforcements, and he was going a bit too far.

Whenever it was late at night and everyone was asleep, Xiahou Yuan would calm down and feel a little scared.

Guo Jia reminded him several times: "General, if we continue to attack fiercely like this, the casualties will be too great. If we delay for a long time, if Guan Yu brings his main force to rescue us, we may not be able to completely annihilate him. Think twice!"

Xiahou Yuan's first reaction was reluctance. He gritted his teeth and replied, "How can I stop at this point? We have already lost so many men and horses. Don't you know that the first push will lead to the second push and the third push will lead to the third push? Besides, it was you who asked me to attack you forcefully in the first place!"

Guo Jia calmly pointed out: "This is a different time. We had to attack at the beginning because the camp in the east port area had not been cut off, and Mi Zhu might get support from Zhou Yu by sea. As long as the external aid continues, Mi Zhu will rely on the camp to consume us, and the morale will surely be high, and the defenders will have the confidence to keep defending.

Now the port area has been breached by our strong attack, and many facilities have been burned down. The county town of Qu County itself is not near the sea, so we can surround it and attack the reinforcements. After Mi Zhu abandoned the camp in the east of the city and held on to the city wall, the defense was greatly enhanced. General, you must not forget that our primary goal is to attack the reinforcements and annihilate the enemy's main force. "

After this analysis, Xiahou Yuan finally calmed down a little, but he found himself in a difficult situation.

Once the desire for robbery and getting rich overnight is ignited in tens of thousands of soldiers, it is difficult for the commander to suppress it.

So many people have died, and everyone has suffered enough from injuries and illnesses. The only goal now is to kill all the enemies in the city and snatch all the rewards given by Mi Zhu.

If Xiahou Yuan dared to put on the brakes at this time, the army might mutiny.

After thinking it over, he finally felt that the army's morale could be used, so he held on a little longer. Maybe even if Guan Yu brought troops to help, as long as his own morale was high and his numbers were still much larger than the enemy's, he could still win!
If Guan Yu came to reinforce in person, he could say that it was Guan Yu who prevented tens of thousands of troops from realizing their dream of getting rich, and these soldiers would unite against the enemy and tear Guan Yu to pieces!

Rather than letting him bear the wrath of blocking someone's financial path, it is better to let Guan Yu bear it.

Just when Xiahou Yuan was feeling anxious and hesitant, after several days of consumption, Guan Yu finally brought the main force of the Xuzhou army to reinforce Qu County.

Also during these last few days, after Tian Yu retreated to the main urban area, the firmness of the defense and the courage of the defenders in the city to fight to the death also increased abruptly. This situation really puzzled Xiahou Yuan and Guo Jia at first.

Is this a desperate struggle?
Later, just before Guan Yu's arrival, Xiahou Yuan heard with his own ears during an inspection of the siege that Tian Yu had his men shouting on the city wall to boost morale. The content of Tian Yu's shouting really gave Xiahou Yuan a chill.

"Don't be discouraged! Old Xiahou Yuan has fallen into General Fubo's trap! Lord Mi's decision to defend Qu County was not his own, so don't worry about being implicated! This was all General Fubo's plan, and General Guan will come to rescue us soon! The Han will win! The Han thieves will lose!"

"So many people have died, but he is still risking his life for the small town of Qu County. Cao's army is still willing to fight for his life. This shows that Xiahou Yuan must have noticed that our army has generous rewards and Lord Mi has given everyone a heavy reward. So they want to break into the city and seize the wealth!

The battle has come to this point. Once Qu County is broken, Xiahou Yuan will not leave anyone alive! He will massacre everyone in the city, kill everyone's family, and take away all the money that Lord Mi has rewarded everyone with! So if you want to live, fight for your life!"

When Xiahou Yuan heard these battlefield rumors, he was also somewhat shaken and unsure. Unfortunately, it was too late.

Was all this really Zhuge Jin's trick? Wasn't he fighting Chen Gong, Mi Zhu and others? How could Zhuge Jin intervene so early?

Moreover, Tian Yu did not seem to be an easy person to deal with. Although he was young and had not made any outstanding achievements, he was able to figure out the technique of boosting morale and knew the benefits of his promise to massacre and plunder the city after it was captured.

After these words were shouted, the courage of the soldiers defending the city to fight to the death would surely be aroused. How could they quickly capture the city?

……

This day was already the ninth day of October.

It had been more than a month since Xiahou Yuan entered the territory of Donghai County, and he had stayed in Qu County for 26 days.

And the thing that Xiahou Yuan was most worried about and looking forward to finally came true: Guan Yu finally brought the main force of the Xuzhou army to reinforce Mi Zhu and Tian Yu.

Xiahou Yuan was well-informed. His cavalry troops were usually idle and could not be used to kill people in sieges, so he would send out as many scouts as possible as far as possible.

When Guan Yu's troops were still one day away from Qu County, Xiahou Yuan had already discovered it in advance. He immediately ordered to stop the siege and let the soldiers rest for most of the day, catch up on sleep and treat their injuries.

He also provided extra meals as rewards to the three armies, so that every soldier had several full meals. He even took out the meat and dried fish that he had marinated and prepared for use, in order to boost morale as much as possible.

A day passed quickly, and on the tenth day of October, Guan Yu's army arrived at Qu County and chose to set up camp twenty or thirty miles south of Xiahou Yuan's camp.

Both sides were very cautious. They did not make any small moves or attempt to raid the camp at night. Perhaps they both thought that the other side would be patrolling closely at night and would not leave any loopholes.

However, that night, Xiahou Yuan received a message intercepted by his subordinates in the central army tent, which made him even more shocked and uncertain.

The news was sent by Zhang He's cavalry - Zhang He's cavalry had just moved from Tancheng to Quxian in the past ten days, ready to participate in the decisive battle. As for the task of blocking the Yishui waterway in Tancheng, it was no longer important at this critical juncture. It was more important to concentrate the troops.

Zhang He got straight to the point: "General, the soldiers in our siege camp shot down a few pigeons in the evening. They flew from Guan Yu's camp in the south of the city to Qu County. There must be some pigeons that escaped the net and were not all shot. The silk tied to the pigeons' claws had the same content.

It was to inform Mi Zhu and Tian Yu that the reinforcements had arrived, to reassure them, and to let them take advantage of our army's defeat... and attack from both sides. This was simply too much contempt for our army!"

Xiahou Yuan's face turned even darker when he heard this, and he took the letter and read it himself. It actually contained not only the contents Zhang He had just relayed, but also some contents Zhang He did not dare to say.

In the letter, Guan Yu clearly told Mi Zhu that Zhuge Jin had also secretly come to the front line. Previously, it was Zhuge Jin's plan to let Chen Gong pretend that he had "a plan but a low position, unable to control the officials of Donghai to follow the plan." Now it is time to close the net, and Xiahou Yuan will definitely be defeated in the future.

Seeing this, how could Xiahou Yuan not know that Guan Yu had deliberately leaked the secret to him in order to disgust him?

In ancient times, carrier pigeons were used to deliver messages. This technology gradually emerged in the middle and late Warring States period, and by the end of the Han Dynasty, it had been more than 600 years old. Therefore, any knowledgeable military general would be familiar with carrier pigeons.

However, the pigeon training technology of this era was not sufficient to support the delivery of secret messages. They were only used to convey news that they did not want outsiders to know.

Firstly, the loss rate of homing pigeons is too high. Even if no one uses a bow and crossbow to intercept them, they can only release five or six or even seven or eight homing pigeons, and only one of them can return to the nest. The others either fly away or are killed by birds of prey such as hawks.

Secondly, the use of homing pigeons is actually very limited. You can only spread information from one moving object to another, or even from one object to another. It is impossible to use homing pigeons to find a moving army. This is because the principle of homing pigeons is to return to their mother nest.

Only by temporarily taking the homing pigeons that have lived in a certain nest for a long time away from their nest for dozens or even hundreds of miles, and then using their homing instinct to fly back. If the nest is changed frequently, the homing pigeons cannot be trained well. In this case, the homing pigeons that Guan Yu used to send messages to Mi Zhu had to be raised in Qu County all year round. Before the battle, the pigeons were taken away from Qu County and then flew back after being released.

If Guan Yu delayed a little longer, these pigeons would have been away from Qu County for so long that they would even forget that their mother nest was in Qu County. The pigeons would then be useless and would have to be retrained.

Therefore, Guan Yu's courage to use carrier pigeons to convey the news of reinforcements meant that he didn't care at all about the message he was about to deliver being intercepted by Xiahou Yuan.

He knew that only one out of five or six pigeons could reach Mi Zhu, and the others were either eaten by birds of prey or intercepted by Xiahou Yuan. But he just wanted to let Xiahou Yuan see this news, to undermine Xiahou Yuan's confidence on the eve of the battle!
His intention can be described as "evil", but, after all, all is fair in war.

And at this moment, Xiahou Yuan had no choice but to fight.

The only thing he could do was to block the news as much as possible and prevent the spread of the news in Guan Yu's secret letter that "Cao's army had fallen into the trap". He hoped that the soldiers would be kept in the dark and not think too much, but just focus on fighting.

Unfortunately, how many of them could he block? Guan Yu released more than just these few pigeons before the battle, but these few were shot down and handed over by Zhang He.

What if there were other people shot down and were seen by literate officers at all levels, but were not reported? Would this panic of being tricked spread among the army? How much could it spread in one night?
These hidden dangers were beyond Xiahou Yuan's accurate grasp.

……

After another night of rest in grief and neurasthenia, early in the morning of the 11th, the two armies left their camps to meet the enemy.

Guan Yu's army marched from south to north, and Xiahou Yuan's army marched from north to south.

They left the camp at the beginning of the morning hour, and by mid-morning the two camps were facing each other, with swords drawn, ready to begin a fair and decisive battle.

Xiahou Yuan didn't know how many reinforcements Guan Yu would send, and the reconnaissance scouts he had sent out before did not dare to get too close to Guan Yu's army, so they could not find out the exact number of the enemy.

When Guan Yu was on the march, he often used deceptive tactics, or had his horses drag branches along the sandy roads, with smoke and dust billowing so that one could not tell the strength of his troops from a distance.

Guan Yu also didn't know how many people Xiahou Yuan had lost in the successive attacks on camps and cities. He only knew how many troops Xiahou Yuan had when he entered the country.

Therefore, both sides were unable to estimate the size of the enemy until the very last moment.

Both sides knew that this battle was unavoidable, and they had to fight no matter how many enemies there were, because if anyone turned around and retreated at this time, they would be caught and hunted, and would only die a more miserable death.

The sunk costs paid previously are already too huge for both parties. No one can give up the chips that have been put on the table, and they can only follow the bet to the end.

"Guan Yu is worthy of the title of a famous general. It turns out that the reinforcements he brought were no more than 15,000 people at most. In this battle, our army still has an absolute advantage in numbers!" After the two armies faced each other, Xiahou Yuan carefully observed the enemy formation and came to this conclusion.

The emotions that were disturbed by the pigeon incident last night had calmed down a little, giving Xiahou Yuan more confidence in victory.

Guan Yu on the other side also had a stern look on his face. He narrowed his eyes and glanced coldly, thinking to himself, "After a series of bloody battles, Xiahou still has 40,000 to 50,000 people left? In other words, after a month of entering the country, he only had more than 10,000 casualties? The remaining people can still go to the battlefield? This determination is extraordinary.

But even if so many people were able to move, they must be exhausted, injured and their morale was low. It is estimated that Xiahou Yuan promised some generous rewards to keep these soldiers' courage. Once this breath of courage is dissipated, it will not be difficult to defeat Cao's army! Moreover, our army can also announce that Xiahou Yuan has fallen into a trap to undermine the enemy's morale! "

Guan Yu took a deep breath and had a plan in mind.

He knew very well that during a war, even if no other factors changed, just letting one side's army think "we have fallen into a trap" would itself be enough to have a huge negative impact on their combat effectiveness.

War is ultimately about morale. Once morale collapses, no one wants to put in any effort and just runs away. No matter how many people there are, it will be useless.

After both sides had their plans in mind, Guan Yu also proudly went out to call Xiahou Yuan to answer. At the same time, he also asked a group of shield-holding scolding hands to follow and help amplify his words, hoping to "leak" a few words in the end to undermine Xiahou Yuan's morale:

"Xiahou! You have been trapped in a strong city for a month without making any progress. You should know that you have been tricked! Chen Gongtai's strategy is of low status and he cannot control Zi Zhong. That was just a trick that Zi Yu helped me come up with!

You have Guo Jia by your side, boasting your wisdom, but you can't even see this. We have lost 10,000 or 20,000 soldiers, countless weapons, and all the soldiers are exhausted. What can you use to fight me today? Surrender early and I will spare your life!"

The scolding soldiers shouted out Guan Yu's words one after another. Xiahou Yuan was also furious and asked Cao Jun's scolding soldiers to curse back:
"Guan Yu! Don't be so arrogant. In the past five or six years, you seem to have accumulated some fame, but you have only bullied the southern barbarians. Apart from Yuan Shu and Sun Ce, who else have you defeated? Today, I will let you southern barbarians know the might of my Central Plains cavalry!

You weak southern dogs, lowly barbarians, are nothing but chickens and dogs in front of our northern tiger and wolf army! If you want to fight, then fight. Why bother talking so much? "

(End of this chapter)