My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 382: Every move failed, every step was miscalculated

It seemed that it took Cao Ren only more than half a day to chase Zhao Yun from Fuli County all the way to Qi County.

But if you really look at the map carefully, it is sixty miles.

In other words, Cao Ren's army walked sixty miles from leaving the city in the early morning to the afternoon. Before they met Zhao Yun, they had already walked thirty miles.

This was also thanks to Cao Ren's fighting on the interior lines. He did not need to carry baggage supplies or camping equipment, and only needed to carry rations for two meals a day, so he could travel so easily.

The troops around Zhao Yun were all cavalry, and they had walked thirty miles less than Cao Ren's infantry, so the difference in physical energy consumption between the two sides was huge.

In this situation, if Cao Ren caught up with Zhao Yun after the infantry and cavalry joined forces at the hour of Si and wanted to have a head-on battle with him, it would be too easy for Zhao Yun to delay the battle.

Zhao Yun sent a fast messenger to inform the infantry troops surrounding Qi County to prepare to withdraw slightly to the south, abandon the plan of besieging the city from all sides, abandon the camp in the north of the city, and transfer the heavy infantry and supplies to the camp in the south of the city.

On the other hand, the cavalry troops also turned back to harass and distract Cao Ren in time to delay his attack. When Cao Ren arrived, Zhao Yun relied on the northern camp to resist for a while, then ordered the light infantry to set fire to the northern camp, and retreated to the south of the city under the cover of the cavalry.

Cao Ren attacked repeatedly, which took the entire Shen hour and half of the You hour until it got dark, and finally forced Zhao Yun to burn down the siege camps on the northeast sides of Qi County and retreat to the southwest.

This is because Zhao Yun's army had only arrived in Qi County for a day and a half, and had not yet established a stable camp and built defensive fortifications. Otherwise, if the fortifications were a little stronger, Zhao Yun would have dared to rely on the camp to wait for Cao Ren to fight to the death.

Cao Ren saw that the siege of Qi had been lifted on two sides, it was getting dark, and he was exhausted by Zhao Yun. His soldiers were too weak to fight anymore, so he had to implement a backup plan and let the army go into Qi to sleep and rest until the next morning to fight again.

Thirty to forty thousand people poured into the small Qi County, filling the county to bursting with people. There were not enough houses, so the people were forced to sleep in the open air, leaving all the houses for the army to live in.

Fortunately, it was the end of summer and early autumn in the seventh month of the lunar calendar, and the weather was not cold. The people of Qi County were not starving. They just had to feed mosquitoes, which was already good compared to freezing to death.

But Cao's army would certainly disturb the local people when they occupied the houses to sleep. The food stored in many people's homes, or the laying hens raised by the occasional well-off farmers who were not too poor, were also looted and eaten.

As for whether any women were violated by Cao's army, it is impossible to count.

Moreover, after entering Qi County, Cao Ren still had a plan in mind: he was very worried that Zhao Yun would retreat in the dark tonight. Not giving him the opportunity for a decisive battle would just keep him hanging and consume his troops' physical strength, making him "run back and forth" in vain.

So before going to sleep, he called his generals and staff and told them: "The whole army cannot sleep peacefully tonight. It is just right to send a small group of troops to raid the camp tonight. We must make sure that Zhao Yun has no peace of mind. If Zhao Yun wants to leave, we can find him in time."

Man Chong frowned upon hearing this and advised: "Zhao Yun has always been calm and meticulous, and he is strict in managing his troops. I'm afraid that robbing the camp will not work, and it will cause the soldiers to die in vain..."

Cao Ren raised his hand decisively, his face grim: "Of course I know that Zhao Yun is strict in military discipline and thorough in defense. I don't expect to defeat the enemy by raiding the camp. But we are outnumbered and I can afford it! Not only will I raid the camp tonight, but I will raid it more than once! What if a few hundred people are killed or injured each time? I want Zhao Yun's entire army to be unable to sleep all night and have no chance to sneak away.

"Wait until tomorrow morning, when our army is well rested and energetic, and then we fight him, Zhao Yun will surely die! Even if he has strong armor and sharp weapons, it will not save a tired soldier who is weak and awake!"

Man Chong was startled and dared not say anything more. He thought to himself that General Cao was indeed a ruthless man who would do anything to achieve his goal.

For a general with 40,000 soldiers under his command, it is definitely worthwhile to pay one or two waves of casualties of hundreds of people in exchange for the enemy's poor sleep on the eve of the decisive battle.

If this were to be realized, tomorrow we could indeed count on Cao's army's physical and mental advantages to make up for a large part of Zhao Yun's army's advantage in weapon quality.

Everything went according to plan. That night, Cao's army organized two raids on the camp, one at the beginning of midnight (11 o'clock) and another at the beginning of yin time (3 o'clock) in the second half of the night.

……

In Zhao Yun's camp south of Qi County, Zhao Yun went to bed early and was not worried about being raided at all.

It's not that he didn't expect Cao Ren to raid the camp. With Zhao Yun's caution, he had already taken precautions against everything.

The reason why he slept so peacefully was that Zhao Yun had been guarding Huainan for the past two years, constantly training and honing his troops and upgrading their equipment. Many of the army's supporting reconnaissance technologies had also been upgraded, and they were equipped with a number of inconspicuous but absolutely useful gadgets.

All of these things were made by Zhuge brothers without exception. For example, when Zhao Yun's troops set up camp tonight, the soldiers on the arrow towers and turrets lit a fire for lighting and placed a relatively smooth, thin copper cover behind the fire.

To put it bluntly, this thing is just like the reflector cup of later lamps. Although the focus of the concave parabola has not been accurately calculated and the reflection efficiency is not high enough, it is much better than traditional torches and bonfires that have no reflector cups at all.

What is the biggest pain point of traditional torch lighting? The light is evenly scattered in all directions. At night, the area next to the torch is the brightest, which makes the sentry himself very bright. Soldiers who come from a distance to attack in the dark can see it accurately and shoot arrows in the dark, often killing the sentry first.

It is impossible to see clearly whether there are enemies in the distance by torches alone, especially when looking from a bright place to a dark place, the vision is very poor. This is also an important reason why the ancient army was easily robbed. You can only rely on sending out night guards and scout patrols to detect the enemy in advance, and it is difficult to solve the problem by lookout.

Zhuge Jin only needs to use a little optical knowledge from later generations, copy a few concepts of lamp reflector cups that he has seen in his life, and roughly forge and polish them. It does not need to be precise, as long as the problem of whether or not there is one is solved first, it will be enough to bring about a qualitative change.

In particular, Liu Bei's army had begun large-scale mining of Jiangxi Copper Mine in Yuzhang County four or five years ago, and the output of copper mines increased every year. If the extra copper was used to mint coins, inflation would occur, and no strategic materials could be purchased during the war.

In this case, copper has a much better reflective property than iron. Pure red copper is also soft and easy to shape, and is less likely to rust and dull than iron. It would be perfect to use it to make some reflective cups for the military to use for patrols.

(Note: In theory, silver and aluminum reflectors are more efficient, but there was no electrolytic method for smelting aluminum in ancient times, and silver was too expensive. Copper was enough, and most mirrors in the Han Dynasty were copper mirrors.)
At the beginning of the midnight hour, Bian Xi, a general sent by Cao Ren to launch a surprise attack, arrived outside Zhao Yun's camp with hundreds of Cao's elite soldiers.

He was secretly delighted that he had avoided Zhao Yun's cavalry patrol and found a gap in the patrol cycle. As a result, when he was about to touch the camp wall and prepare to set fire, he suddenly felt a flash in front of his eyes, as if he saw some unclear beams of light sweeping back and forth.

Because a torch with a reflector is far inferior to a searchlight, Bian Xi did not suspect anything and was just slightly dazzled, thinking he had seen it wrong.

But more than ten seconds later, a rain of crossbow arrows came towards him, and Cao's army retreated quickly. Bian Xi was also hit by a crossbow arrow, and most of the soldiers he brought were injured and retreated miserably.

At the hour of Yin, Cao's army changed its leader and the direction of the attack, resulting in more than 200 casualties and almost no results.

The generals were afraid of being punished, so they went back and cried about their failure, while explaining that Zhao Yun's entire army was on alert and slept with their eyes open, and that they had deployed dozens of times more troops to guard against the enemy, so they could not succeed. So although our army's sneak attack team was defeated, it also seriously disturbed the enemy's rest.

Cao Ren was still sleeping at the time and did not personally listen to the report at the first time. He just summarized the situation for Man Chong first.

At the end of the Mao hour, after Cao Ren woke up, Man Chong reported these unimportant news to him.

After all, Man Chong was mentally prepared. He knew that if he attacked the camp, he would lose. There was no need to make a fuss about the death and injury of hundreds of people. It would be better to let General Cao rest up and have a better chance of winning the decisive battle after dawn.

After Cao Ren woke up and listened to the report, he didn't care. He waved his hand proudly and said, "It doesn't matter. I can afford to die with 200 casualties. It seems that the goal of 'making Zhao Yun's army sleep badly' has been achieved. Today's decisive battle will win!"

……

At the beginning of the morning hour, the sky was already bright. Cao Ren's army opened the east gate of Qi County and left the city one after another. Strong bows and crossbows were ready on the top of the city wall to prevent Zhao Yun from suddenly attacking and seizing the gate.

It took three or four thousand people two incense sticks of time to finally walk out of the city gate and form a battle formation outside the city.

Zhao Yun also walked out of the camp slowly and formed a battle array, confronting Cao Ren in the east of the city.

Compared with yesterday, Zhao Yun has 17,000 men today, including 11,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry. Cao Ren still has 40,000 men.

But Cao Ren thought to himself that he was protected by the city walls and his army had slept soundly and had plenty of energy, whereas Zhao Yun was in a makeshift camp that was not very solid and was worried about being attacked. With this kind of strength decreasing, wouldn't our army be sure to win?

"Zhao Yun, you bastard! Yesterday you used the strategy of tiring out your troops, fighting and retreating to consume my energy, but you didn't expect me to go into Qi County to have a good night's sleep and give the soldiers a good meal. Now I am fully refreshed and ready to fight you. Your troops had no peace of mind all night, and you still think you have a chance just because you have a few more pieces of armor! Today is the day you die!"

When the two armies faced each other, Cao Ren brandished his sword and cursed loudly, and the Cao army's cursers also spread Cao Ren's words far away.

Zhao Yun on the other side was not angry at all after hearing this. He sneered and responded, "Cao Ren, you bastard, you fell into our trap again! You can ask the defeated soldiers who fled back to the camp to see if they were shot by crossbows a hundred steps away before they even touched the camp wall! Our army is sleeping well too, so you don't need to worry about it!"
Moreover, Yunchang should have bypassed Qulu County from the south of Suishui and approached Gaixia. He is only one county away from Fuli - this is the price you paid for sleeping in Qi County all night. Now, even if you don't fight me and retreat immediately, I am sure I can catch you! By then, Yunchang will be able to reach your flank before you retreat to Fuli!"

(End of this chapter)