Destroy Jin and conquer Song, and carry the Northern Expedition through to the end

Chapter 970 Ten Years of Military Service in the Dark Capital

The Song army's ambush was both difficult and simple in some ways.

The strategy was simply to lure the Jin army into the narrow strip between the Qinling Mountains and the Wei River by using the routed troops, then launch an ambush, attacking from the front and rear to break through the middle and defeat the Jin army in one fell swoop.

However, everything is easier said than done. It should be noted that among Lu You's troops, only Zhang Zhen's six thousand soldiers were truly advancing triumphantly and winning battle after battle. The rest of the army consisted of remnants of soldiers who had retreated from Guanzhong last year.

Lu You described the Jin army as a disunited coalition, but wasn't the Song army at that time also a motley crew?

Wanyan Liang needed prestige to reorganize his troops, and so did Lu You.
Lu You was uncertain about relying on such a Song army to fight a surprise attack where each side acted independently.

However, as I said before: a military operation involving tens of thousands of people will not be leisurely; it will inevitably be a chaotic and arduous process.

The Song army was like this, and so was the Jin army.

Everyone was forced into this situation, rolling and frolicking in the snow. Now it's a matter of who can roll the best in this muddy snow.

The first person in the Jin army to sense that something was wrong was Wanyan Wangxiang, who was in the center of the army.

He experienced it physically.

"Is this explosive?"

Hearing the rumbling sound coming from the northern foothills of the Qinling Mountains, Wanyan Wangxiang immediately turned his head to look for it, and then reflexively turned his head, wanting to discuss it with his deputy general Lou Xue.

However, as soon as he turned his head, he saw Lou Xue, who was riding a horse, fly off in all directions as if he had exploded.

Wanyan Wangxiang's face and body were smashed with chunks of flesh and blood, and his face was stinging from the impact.

Three breaths after the incident, the battle-hardened general was as if possessed, completely stunned and even forgot to breathe.

The world seemed to be quiet, except for Lou Xue's warhorse, which jumped and neighed as if it were frightened.

Three breaths later, the chest tightness caused by lack of oxygen finally made Wanyan Wangxiang remember how to breathe. But after taking a few deep breaths, he was choked by the bloody smell that filled his mouth and nose and started coughing repeatedly.

The surrounding scenery and sounds instantly came back to life, and the cacophony of screams and shouts of battle reached Wanyan Wangxiang's ears, leaving him momentarily disoriented.

"This...what is this!"

"A celestial stone! A celestial stone has crashed down from the mountain!"

"Legs! Ahhh!!! My legs!!!"

"Cannons! Cannons!" Wanyan Wangxiang murmured, his face pale. "The Han army, it's Flying Tigers..."

If the Han army were to attack with the momentum of a great victory, how could the Western Jin, with its current strength, possibly stop them?

"boom……"

"what!!!"

After several more iron balls blasted a bloody path through the Jin army, Wanyan Wangxiang suddenly realized: "No, it's not the Han army. The Han army couldn't possibly be in Guanzhong. It's the Song army... The Song army has cannons now!"

Since it's the Song army, things are easier to handle.

The Song army feared hand-to-hand combat. As long as they could cross the artillery line and rush to the front, they could not only easily defeat the Song army, but also seize the cannons that the Western Jin could not develop.

"Abuhan!" Wanyan Wangxiang wiped the blood from his face and shouted to another deputy general, "Charge towards the Qinling Mountains! Charge south! Listen to the voice, charge south!"

Abuhan, who had just recovered from his panic, raised his spear upon hearing this and shouted, "My men, charge with me!"

He didn't actually find where the cannons that the Song army had placed in advance were, but out of his war instincts, he made a decision immediately.

Wanyan Wangxiang's troops were all elite Jin soldiers. They didn't know what cannons were, but they instinctively followed their generals and rushed into the mountains.

This is absolutely correct, but only a minority of people can make the right choice.

If Pusan ​​Zhongyi's troops were here, they would certainly have made a more effective choice. This is not to say that Pusan ​​Zhongyi was particularly skilled in training troops, but rather that his soldiers had endured the relentless bombardment of the Han army's artillery and had always been able to learn from their experience.

However, the Jin army stationed in Chang'an, whether Jurchens, Han Chinese, or Tanguts from Guanzhong, had never experienced the devastation of cannons. Even though Pusan ​​Zhongyi had reported the power of the Han army's cannons in his documents, and the generals trusted his judgment, imagination alone could not bring about a transformation without firsthand experience. In other words, cannons were a truly new weapon for the Jin army in Guanzhong.

Of course, the same applies to the Song army.

Lu You gathered skilled craftsmen and spent a year casting only four cannons. Moreover, these four cannons were not the lightest five-pound cannons, but rather the very heavy twenty-pound cannons. In this kind of weather and terrain, it was pure wishful thinking to attempt rapid maneuverability.

Moreover, due to the extreme time constraints, these four cannons were deployed to the front lines by the newly formed artillery unit without even undergoing many test firings, and it was uncertain whether they would explode.

For this reason, when Lu You deployed these four cannons, he did not follow the Han army in having the artillerymen move with the main force. Instead, he found four small hills on the northern slope of the Qinling Mountains and placed the four cannons separately. Even if one of the cannons exploded, it would not cause a large-scale secondary explosion.

The Song army artillerymen, with a death wish, fired iron bullets one by one towards the designated positions according to the previous plan.

Even if you're afraid of both sides when fighting a wolf, a cannon is still a cannon. The Song army gunners were naturally uneasy, but the Jin soldiers who were hit by the cannon were screaming and howling.

To be honest, although these four cannons fired 20-pound iron balls, the damage they caused was negligible to the entire Jin army.

Even though in some places the Jin army had huddled together in a tight mass, and a single cannon shot could rot a patch of flesh and blood, it still couldn't be considered a major casualty.

However, this situation of being able to only be attacked but not fight back caused the morale of the Jin army to plummet at an alarming rate.

The Tangut people, in particular, still maintain certain tribal customs. They were hit by two cannonballs and treated the shells as if they were stones thrown down by the gods, giving them a sense of worship at the slightest provocation.

That wasn't all; along with the cannons came countless Song soldiers.

Some Song soldiers hid behind small hills in the foothills of the Qinling Mountains, while others huddled on paths between mountain peaks. Still others simply hid in snowdrifts, forming small groups of dozens or hundreds of men, and attacked the flanks of the Jin army.

The Jin army never expected that so many Song soldiers were lying in ambush around them. In their panic, they were unable to organize their troops to fight back and fell into great chaos.

Liang Yuanfu, standing at the forefront of the Jin army, looked back at this scene with a chill in his heart, feeling as if the blood in his body was about to freeze.

Ahua asked anxiously, "General! The Song army's armored cavalry have returned! We're caught in the middle! We have to think of a way out, or all our men will die here!"

Liang Yuanfu was completely distraught, only muttering, "I... how could I be so stupid, so stupid..."

Ahua didn't react for a moment: "What?"

Liang Yuanfu pointed to the Song army that had charged out of the mountains: "I was so focused on chasing down the Song army that I didn't expect that sending troops to scout the mountains would lead to such a disaster..."

"General!" Ah Hua finally lost his patience and roared, "The Song army came prepared and outmaneuvered us! No matter how stupid the horsemen are, they couldn't possibly miss the marching tracks in the snow. The Song army must have ambushed us in the mountains while the snow was still falling! There are so many ravines and valleys in the Qinling Mountains, where do we even begin to search?! And how are we supposed to search?!"

"Manager, the crucial question now is what to do!" Finally, Ahua grabbed Liang Yuanfu's shoulders and shook him violently: "You have to make the decision!"

Liang Yuanfu smiled bitterly: "What decision is there left? The army is already in chaos. In this terrain, if the Song army is in chaos, they are doomed. If our army is in chaos, we are also doomed. I see that at least 20,000 soldiers have entered Fufeng Pass. This is a trap! A trap set by the Song traitors! We have all fallen into their trap! There is no way to escape, no way to escape."

Ahua dejectedly loosened his grip, looking at the Song cavalry, now arrayed in neat formation and slowly approaching. Overwhelmed with sorrow, he cried out, "General, we brought our men out here to achieve great deeds! Why must we end up like this?!"

The generals are the courage of the army. After the two commanders were demoralized, the thousands of Tangut cavalrymen were even more at a loss. Some wanted to return the way they came, some wanted to form a defensive formation, and some even fled north and south, trying to hide in the Qinling Mountains or cross the Wei River by horse.

"Western bandits! Hahaha, your grandpa is back!" Wu Ting laughed loudly as he stepped out of the mountain path, only to be met by hundreds of panicked Tangut light cavalry.

In open terrain, light cavalry can use flanking maneuvers to deal with heavily armored infantry. However, on narrow official roads, the Tangut light cavalry can only engage in a head-on battle with the Song army. In just one encounter, dozens of Tangut light cavalrymen were stabbed off their horses by the Song army with spears and killed on the spot.

Wu Ting walked slowly forward, taking advantage of his two layers of armor, and moved through the Tangut light cavalry formation as if it were empty. Before long, he actually managed to cut the Tangut light cavalry formation in two with his infantryman body and broke through.

The Tangut light cavalry dared not flee into the Qinling Mountains and retreated in other directions.

When Cao Dache led the Song army's armored cavalry to attack from the west, several thousand Tangut light cavalry, who were serving as the vanguard, finally could not hold on and collapsed from the middle, being driven and crushed by Cao Dache into the Jin army's infantry.

The Jin infantry, already hampered by the difficulty of marching and poor command, were bombarded by cannons for a short while and then attacked from the flank by the Song army, leaving them exhausted.

The collapse of the Tangut light cavalry became the last straw that broke the camel's back. Countless elite troops were crammed together in the narrow road, unable to advance or retreat, and could only be slaughtered by the Song army.

At the same time, Jin troops entered Fufengkou, making the already congested road even more congested.

With incomplete military orders, the hidden dangers of various units vying for credit completely erupted within the Jin army.

(End of this chapter)