My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 561 Heaven wants to defeat you, how dare I go against Heaven's will
Cao Cao certainly didn't gain any advantage by being scolded by Liu Bei face to face, but he didn't suffer too much either.

In terms of justice, right and wrong, loyalty and treachery, Cao Cao's sophistry and excuses were not reasonable at all.

But how many of his soldiers cared about loyalty or treachery? After Cao Cao's purges over the past decade and the gradual decline of the prestige of the imperial court in the last decades of the Han Dynasty, almost no one in Cao's army cared whether they were paid by the Han Dynasty or whether they were working for the Han Dynasty.

Among the court officials in Xudu, those who still cherished the Han Dynasty were only some old guards. But ordinary soldiers obviously did not have any old guard sentiment.

In contrast, Cao Cao's words more or less pointed out a minor moral flaw of Liu Bei: Liu Bei's camp, over the past years, seemed to have "been able to predict in advance when the imperial edict would change from favorable to unfavorable to them." So from that point on, Liu Bei's camp began to find excuses and no longer obeyed the imperial edict.

If we look back from the result, Cao Cao's words are not wrong - because in this life, Liu Bei has a time traveler named Zhuge Jin by his side. Zhuge Jin certainly made a brilliant plan in advance to help Liu Bei get the most out of the court: all the imperial edicts from the Xudu Emperor before the Yidaizhao incident were obeyed. All the imperial edicts after the Yidaizhao were not obeyed.

But unfortunately, even though Cao Cao was so perceptive and observed and summarized this phenomenon, it was just a phenomenon, and Liu Bei could completely explain it as a coincidence.

Cao Cao had no evidence to prove that Liu Bei had planned from the beginning to use a certain time point as a turning point and selectively obey the imperial edict.

Cao Cao's nonsense was ultimately just empty talk. As for the actual effect, perhaps one or two of the hundreds of Liu Bei's soldiers would be inspired by Cao Cao's words and start to "reflect" on their lord's actions. The influence was almost negligible.

After the foreplay of the verbal battle over righteousness ended, Liu Bei waved his sleeves, signaling Zhang Fei to prepare for the attack.

However, before the formal attack, Liu Bei had to shout a few final military words to attack the enemy's morale, especially to remind the enemy that they had fallen into a trap.

After Liu Bei waved his hand, someone immediately brought up several heads and a row of captured Cao's spies.

Liu Bei pointed at the heads and told the scolds to say, "Cao thief, if you want to fight, I will grant your wish. But before we start, I will make you lose clearly, so that when you die later, you won't be a confused ghost!
Have you seen these heads? These are the secret messengers that Guo Jia sent to deliver a letter to Xiahou Yuan last night! Humph, you thought that you could make a detour to Yangping Pass and contact Xiahou Yuan to attack our army just because you have forced Yide to retreat dozens of miles in the past two days.

Little did they know that this dangerous path over the mountains to deliver the letter was a bait deliberately set up by Shi Yuanjiao Yide! Your messenger was killed by our ambush long ago! I knew that you had already divided your troops and taken a detour, and now that you are outnumbered, I chose to fight you today!
Now Xiahou Yuan is deceived by my suspicious troops, and he will not dare to leave the pass today. Cao Xiu and Cao Zhen were transferred away by you one after another, how many troops do you have left? I have assembled 200,000 main forces, waiting for today!
Cao thief, you have been treacherous all your life, and you always thought that you had the upper hand in terms of military strength. But you didn't know that today, when comparing our two armies, your military strength is already inferior! All soldiers, listen to my order, attack one by one, and capture and kill Cao thief! "

After Liu Bei gave the order, the executioner next to him chopped off the last few captured spies in front of the soldiers of both armies and kicked their heads to the opposite side.

With Liu Bei's ethics in warfare, he certainly would not kill the surrendered soldiers. However, executing a few spies before the battle did not violate the etiquette. In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Zhou Yu chopped off Cai Zhongcai and the other two who pretended to surrender and acted as traitors as a sacrifice on the eve of the Battle of Chibi. This was all very reasonable.

Because spies are equivalent to spies, and for any country, spies are not protected by any order. When Liu Bei's army captured these people last night, they did not persuade them to surrender, but tortured and killed some of them, leaving a few behind to be killed at this moment.

Cao Cao was furious when he saw this. He looked around and saw that although they were indignant, their indignation seemed mixed with worry and hesitation. Cao Cao was secretly depressed: Liu Bei's move really dampened his morale before the battle!
"All the generals, follow my orders and fight to the death. Do not move rashly! Use the spear array to defend against the enemy! Do not listen to Liu Bei's lies! I did not send a messenger to contact Xiahou Yuan last night! Our army did not split up! Liu Bei's army is not as strong as ours, do not be fooled by him! The advantage is mine!"

Cao Cao shouted harshly, and the generals of Cao's army quickly made preparations to meet the attack. They ordered the spearmen and halberd soldiers to move forward and form a dense hedgehog-like formation to block the front of the valley.

The soldiers in the front row were equipped with large shields and were in a very orderly formation. After that, every hundred steps in depth, there were crossbow teams interspersed among them, who could use their maximum range to shoot upward and projectiles to attack the enemy's rear row when the two armies were locked in a stalemate.

This formation was also readjusted by Cao's army after learning the lesson from the bloody defeat of Pang De and Zhang Fei.

When Pang De and Zhang Fei fought, the front armies of both sides were mainly cavalry. This was partly because the Xiliang army led by Pang De was good at using cavalry, but also because of coincidence, Zhang Fei was able to make full use of the advantages of double-sided metal stirrups and high-bridge saddles in the offensive.

Now, the more than 20,000 Xiliang soldiers led by Pang De were annihilated by Zhang Fei, and the cavalry combat power of Cao's army has been greatly reduced compared to a month ago. In addition, Cao Cao also knew that Liu Bei had a unique weapon for cavalry warfare, so Cao Cao naturally had to counter the moves and play to his strengths and avoid his weaknesses.

In today's battle, Cao's army will not use cavalry as the vanguard, but will rely solely on the hedgehog formation of spearmen and iron halberd soldiers as the front.

The generals of Liu Bei's army were also good at tactics. Liu Bei was assisted by Zhuge Liang and Pang Tong. They had predicted Cao Cao's plan and knew that Cao Cao would use spears to defeat cavalry. Therefore, Liu Bei's army also used a halberd formation as the first step, but they mixed more crossbowmen in the gaps between the halberd formations to supplement the firepower.

Zhang Fei and Gan Ning, as the generals in charge of attacking the central army of Liu Bei's army today, each led a large number of troops and launched attacks in turns.

Soon they engaged in a battle with Xu Huang and Le Jin's troops on the opposite side.

"Suppress the rebellion and kill the bandits! Suppress the rebellion and kill the bandits!"

"Serve the king and fight against the rebellion! Serving the king and fighting against the rebellion!"

Both sides shouted slogans that shook the earth and rushed towards each other in an orderly manner.

The narrow Chencang Valley meant that the front width of both sides was only a few hundred people, but the army of more than one hundred thousand people was blocked in the valley in waves, fighting like a long snake formation.

Soon, the valley where the two armies met was dyed red with blood. Hundreds of bodies fell in the continuous charge. Bows and crossbows flew in a chaotic manner, landing at a large angle behind the enemy formation, forcing the soldiers in the back row to raise their shields and lower their bodies. However, because the formations of both sides were too tight, it was difficult to even make room for escape.

Also, because the battle was too intense, the generals on both sides did not have the opportunity to lead the charge themselves.

Both Zhang Fei and Xu Huang could only ride their horses behind the formation to supervise the battle and urge the soldiers to advance together.

"Today is the day to defeat the rebels and kill Cao! Soldiers, Cao's army is weak today. Cao's enemy has been fighting for half a day and his energy is exhausted. Let's make another effort, and our army will surely win!" Zhang Fei's signature loud voice roared repeatedly in the crowd to encourage the soldiers.

The soldiers seemed to be inspired by Zhang Fei's momentum, and Liu Bei's army was indeed more rested and alert. After a bloody tug of war, Liu Bei's army finally began to move forward steadily.

The Cao army on the opposite side, after initially holding out with great force, finally began to show signs of exhaustion and their formation began to loosen.

Zhang Fei was overjoyed upon seeing this, and shouted even louder, "Fight harder!" He even seized the opportunity to personally pick up the iron shield and hammer, ready to dismount and fight with the army on foot.

With Zhang Fei as an example, other generals of lower ranks also began to deploy forward, taking the lead and fighting hard together.

Cao's army was forced further and further back, and generals such as Xu Huang and Le Jin began to show serious expressions and began to continuously deploy reserve troops.

At this moment, a sudden shout came from the side and rear of Cao's army, about three or four miles away from the front line.

All the generals of Cao's army were shocked and couldn't help but distract their attention to the situation on the southern flank.

Cao Cao himself was also startled. He quickly leaned on the shaft of the cart and looked towards the hillside to the south, "What's going on? Where is the shouting?"

It turned out that Liu Bei's army took advantage of the opportunity of fighting and retreating this morning and ambushed the last flank troops, and chose to launch the support at this moment.

The commander of this ambush was none other than Wei Yan, who led 4,000 elite Danyang soldiers. They had retreated to the depths of a forked valley on the south slope at 9:00 this morning before Zhang Fei abandoned this position, and hid there.

Cao's army was advancing in a hurry, and because they were familiar with the local terrain in advance and knew that this was a dead-end valley with no way out, they did not divide their troops to search closely. Wei Yan only hid in the valley for two hours, so it was too easy for him to avoid being exposed.

At this moment, he finally confirmed that the main force of his army had begun to fight Cao's army with all their strength and turned to strategic counterattack. Wei Yan no longer hesitated, appeared from the depths of the Broken Head Valley, and quickly led his army to attack.

"Cao thief! You've fallen into the trap! Wei Yan from Nanyang is here!" Wei Yan's army suddenly appeared from the flank of Cao's army, and soon crashed into the Sancha Valley intersection, cutting off Cao's army's formation for a time.

The Cao army, which originally only had to fight a war of attrition against the enemy head-on, suddenly found that a second battlefield had been opened up on the flank and rear, and immediately fell into local panic.

The part of Cao's army that was cut off was attacked from both sides and had to fight on its own.

Xu Huang was stuck by Zhang Fei, and the battle was fierce on the front battlefield. So Cao's army could only let Le Jin, who was in the reserve, quickly withdraw troops to deal with Wei Yan.

Unfortunately, Zhang Fei, who was in the front, was unwilling to miss this good opportunity. He heard the noise and chaos behind Cao's army and knew that his own ambush troops had started, so he led the charge and personally led the charge.

The hammers flew wildly, breaking countless spear barrels. With Zhang Fei's great strength, even if the opponent blocked his weapon with a spear barrel, it would inevitably be broken or knocked out of his hand.

Seeing how brave Zhang Fei was, the other soldiers of Liu Bei's army became even more motivated, and they rushed forward with all their might, as powerful as tigers.

Gan Ning, who was originally on rotation as a member of the reserve team, saw that Zhang Fei had already exerted his full strength, so he no longer held back and also shouted for a fierce fight. He brought some soldiers from Ba County who were good at climbing, detoured along the high north slope, and also joined the front-line fighting.

"Men of Ba County, let's show Cao Cao how powerful we are!"

Gan Ning's troops bypassed the flat land at the bottom of the valley and fought their way out from the gaps in the forest at the edge. In such terrain, due to the obstruction of trees, long spears and other weapons were not easy to use. Short weapons were faster and would not be blocked by branches.

Gan Ning's two iron halberds flew, and he attacked Xu Huang's flank fiercely, killing dozens of Cao's soldiers along the way, and also killed two Cao's Quchang. Soon, Xu Huang's flank became more and more unstable, and the front army finally began to collapse.

"Don't panic, Wenchang! Hold on a little longer! We are here to help you! Xu Huang and Le Jin can't hold on any longer!"

(End of this chapter)