Qin Official

Wang Gua is from Anlu County and is short in appearance, while Dong Kui, who is similar in appearance to him, is tall and thin. Since setting off from the camp, although the leggings promoted by the commander in the army have alleviated the soreness of their calves, the two of them still suffered from the extremely poor quality of the cloth shoes along the way. Their feet were full of blisters and their bodies were thick. The thick winter clothes also made them sweat profusely under the bright sun and consumed a lot of energy.

Fortunately, the leader loved his soldiers as much as his sons, so he not only gave them his summer clothes to wear, but also gave them a pair of new cloth shoes. Although the summer clothes are a bit too wide and the cloth shoes don't fit my feet, they can still be worn with a piece of cloth on the ground. A humble soldier is marching outside and it's fine if he doesn't go barefoot. How can he be so picky?

After the Nanjun soldiers left Linyang, they arrived at Qiu Qiu first. The Fengjun of Qiu Qiu had already run away. Commander Heifu also ordered the local Chu people to hand over 300 summer clothes and 300 pairs of shoes of different sizes. The two finally found them. The local Chu people secretly resented the lack of shoes that fit their feet, but the soldiers were grateful to Commander Heifu.

As the vanguard and follow-up troops, they did not stay long at each location and hurriedly set off on the road the next day. After two days of marching more than a hundred miles, they arrived at Hucheng and Ruyangyang)...

These are two cities, but they are only two miles apart from each other. They are quite similar to Jiangling and Ying counties. Hucheng is high and deep, and is used to garrison troops to defend against enemies. Ruyin is a place where shops and households are concentrated. The cities are at odds with each other.

However, Doushi, the feudal lord of Hu City, was captured in the last war. His family head was young and there were not many soldiers in the city. When the Qin army arrived, they gave Hu City away and instead concentrated the troops and people in Ruyin. In the city.

The Qin army was relieved and quickly occupied Hu City. The military commander Zhang Han commanded everyone to use the city as a base and sent people to fetch water to make food before dark and prepare for the attack on Ruyin tomorrow.

Wang Gua and Dong Kui, led by the village chief and Shi Chang Yuan Bai, escorted two hundred people to fetch water from the river. Yingshui is a big river, nearly a hundred paces wide. Buckets were thrown in one after another, breaking the calmness of the sparkling water. The two of them squatted by the river and washed their faces. The cold river water refreshed them and they were about to pick up the water. I took a sip of the clear water, but was knocked over by someone flying up and kicking me!

Wang Gua was kicked to the ground and water was sprayed all over his body. He was furious. When he looked up again, he saw Ji Ying, the messenger next to the leader...

"Ji Jun!"

Wang Gua quickly stood up and nodded, and Yuan Bai also came up with a smile on his face. Although Ji Ying was only a junior minister with a shabby title, he was the most trusted person around the commander. He had ten men riding horses, Pass military information orders between villages.

"You can't drink this water!"

Ji Ying loudly delivered the commander's order, and at the same time pointed at the upper reaches of Yingshui River and cursed: "You are so blind that you didn't see what is floating there?"

Wang Gua and Dong Kui took a closer look and couldn't help but take a breath of cold air. It turned out that there were some things floating in the middle of the river. From a distance, they thought they were driftwood. But when they got closer, they saw that they were floating wood. Only then did they discover that they were several corpses that had been swollen and whitened by soaking!

Looking up further, there are more densely packed floating corpses than fish! Among them were Qin soldiers with black armor, and even more Chu soldiers with red armor!

Seeing this situation, Wang Gua and others were frightened for a while. The people who had just drank the water in a hurry also hurriedly grabbed their throats and spit out the water. They only felt that the whole river was full of fishy smell, how could it still be as clear as before?

Yuan Bai asked people to empty the buckets one by one, then smiled and said to Ji Ying, "Ji Jun, why are there so many floating corpses?"

"Do you know where Yingshui flows?"

Ji Ying, who had seen the map in Heifu's military tent, began to show off his geographical knowledge and said proudly: "It's Xiangcheng! I heard that the Chinese army of old general Wang Jian caught up with the Chu army in Xiangcheng the day before yesterday. The two sides fought. Chu The Qin army retreated without defeat. Tens of thousands of corpses of the Qin army fell into the Yingshui River. They were washed here by the current. The water in this river may not be drinkable within a month! The commander ordered you to go to the surrounding areas of the city. Look for a ready-made water well in the village! By the way, let’s see if we can find food!”

Everyone took the order and dispersed with the village chief and chief commander.

Wang Gua and his fellow villagers were walking cautiously on the road by the river with weapons in hand. However, they saw that in the fields beside the road, the green seedlings in the paddy fields were just beginning to emerge. The water had dried up, but no one came to take care of it.

Along the way, they passed two villages, but they were all deserted. Not even a chicken or dog was left. They finally caught someone, but it was an old man who couldn't walk and was waiting to die at home.

The Qin army killed prisoners, but did not kill the old, weak, sick and disabled, because killing them would be useless. So everyone closed the door silently, and Wang Gua, who was kind-hearted, left a small bag of fried rice in his arms. The old man thanked him weakly, and his voice was almost the same as that of Nanjun. Yuan Bai scoffed that Wang Gua could not save himself. Concerned about the foolish actions of mortal men.

Later, in the next village, they caught three rogue rangers wandering around the village looking for belongings. After capturing him, they replied that as early as yesterday, when they heard that the Qin army was coming, a gentleman in Ruyin City organized people from outside the city to enter the city.

"Everyone says that the Qin people are ferocious. If they stay where they are, they will definitely become prisoners, and the Qin soldiers will cut off the heads of men when they see them..."

These bold rangers showed their yellowed teeth and said with a smile, "That's not it, is it?"

Yuan Bai, Wang Gua, Dong Kui and others looked at each other with meaningful smiles.

When they left this village, three bloody heads with wide-eyed eyes were hanging on their waists...

"As long as the heads are not women, children, or old people, it will be fine if you chop them off. Especially, these young knights may be the craftsmen left outside the city by the Chu people! Killing them will also count as credit!" Yuan Bai said plausibly, and everyone also started talking. nod.

Although they harvested a few heads, they did not find any food or water sources, because the well water was either blocked by stones, or when they opened the manhole cover, they found a dead dog inside and flies flying around. The well was polluted. …

…

At nightfall, after the people who scattered to the surrounding villages in search of water and food reported back, Heifu also reported the matter to Li You.

"Captain, although there is no water source in Yingshui and the surrounding villages, the military commander can organize civilians to dig wells outside the city. Water can be obtained from Cihe, Liuhe, and Runhe rivers that are twenty to fifty miles away from here. , we can send the convoy there tomorrow morning, and we can go back and forth in half a day..."

Moreover, the water in the Ying River is still drinkable as long as it is boiled. It depends on whether the soldiers can endure the nausea and eat it.

But Lieutenant Li frowned, feeling that things were not that simple.

"The people of Chu discovered that my army had arrived only the day before yesterday. Yesterday they hurriedly entered the city, but they were still able to organize everyone to fortify the walls and clear the fields, take away all the food, and block all the well water and pollute it..."

"good."

Qin Mo Cheng Shang who was following Zhang Han also said: "In addition, according to my observation, all the walls outside Ruyin City and within the range of the arrows have been knocked down, and all the trees, large and small, within one mile have been cut down. This was to avoid being used by our army as fortifications for advancement and to facilitate the manufacture of equipment nearby. Some wood and wooden houses that could not be transported into the city in time were burned to prevent them from falling into our hands. At the hands of the army. Even the livestock were either transported away or slaughtered, and those that could not be eaten were thrown into the well..."

After finishing speaking, Cheng Shang said: "There is someone in the city who is proficient in the method of defending the city!"

Hei Fu also said: "Cheng Jun is right, but General Meng Wu's military order says that Ruyin must be captured within three days!"

Since leaving the barrier camp, although the 10,000 Nanjun soldiers served as the vanguard of the Southern Army and followed the route Li Xin took during his last attack on Chu, they captured cities and territories in the Yingnan area. However, the journey went relatively smoothly without any encounters. What a tough fight.

This is because the main force of the Chu army was mostly concentrated in the area north of Yingshui River and was held up by Wang Jian's main force. The two sides fought several major battles in Chenying and Xiangcheng within a few days because of the Qin army's superiority in numbers and morale. , the Chu army was defeated, the dead were everywhere, and the Ying River almost stopped flowing...

At present, Xiang Yan's main force of 100,000 people has all retreated to the east of the chasm, organizing a second line of defense between Kuxian and Xinyang, leaving only 10,000 people in Huaiyang (Chen Ying) to guard.

As for Wang Jian's army, only 10,000 Qin troops and tens of thousands of civilians were left to besiege Huaiyang. The main force of more than 100,000 troops was increasingly pressing eastward. The Huaibei plain was unsafe to defend. The Chu army had been in decline for a long time, and I am afraid it would not be able to hold it back for long. .

Wang Jian did not intend to let the Chu army retreat all the time. He hoped to fight a beautiful annihilation battle and wipe out the main force of the Chu army in one fell swoop. So the 80,000 Southern troops led by Meng Wu took on the task of strategic outflanking. They wanted to penetrate Yingnan. , then forcefully cross the Yingshui River, appear behind the Chu army, and complete the encirclement!

As the heel army, the task of the Nanjun soldiers was to cooperate with the rising army and capture Ruyin City guarding the Yingshui Ferry.

"If we can get this city, we can go north to cooperate with the Chinese army to encircle the Chu army, and go south to seize Yingkou, drink Mahuai water, and directly threaten the capital of Chu..." Li You's eyes were shining, this was his achievement. good chance.

The State of Chu seemed to be aware of this, so they scraped together and prepared thousands of troops in Ruyin City, waiting for the Qin people to arrive.

It's useless to talk more. The knife of the military order is hanging above his head. Even if there are people in the city who are good at guarding the emperor, Li You must bite the bullet and fight this battle. So he asked Army Sikong Zhanghan to organize civilians to cut down trees, and asked Qin Mo Chengshang to help make siege equipment. The attack on the city will begin tomorrow!

After dusk, in the dead of night, most of the Qin army went to bed. Only the patrolling soldiers walked around Hucheng and the camp.

Suddenly, in Ruyin City, two miles away, a violent drumbeat was heard! Immediately, soldiers and civilians all over the city let out loud shouts!

Thousands of people shouted, and the sound shook the rubble. The Qin army inside and outside Hu City couldn't help being startled, and they got up and left the camp one after another. Heifu initially thought that the enemy wanted to attack at night. He held a sword in his hand and looked in the direction of Ruyin. After asking Li Xian who was ordered to patrol, he learned that there were only shouts in the city and no soldiers left the city.

"Is this intentional to tire us out?"

"No, it's to suppress the Qin army's arrogance and make the soldiers and people in the city unite."

Qin Mo Cheng Shang, who was wearing a single coat on the side, murmured: "This is also a common method used by the Mohists to defend the city written in the "Mo Jing". If my prediction is correct, there may be Mohists in the city assisting the Chu army!"

Sure enough, in the early morning of the next day, Li Youzheng convened a pre-battle meeting with military commanders, military officials, leaders and others. A military prince came from outside to report that a man had fallen while sitting on a bamboo basket at the top of Ruyin City, saying that it was an envoy from the city. , want to see Li You!

"Bring him in!"

The military lord hesitated and said: "But this man's clothes are rough and he does not look like a doctor's envoy. We suspect that he is an assassin sent from the city!"

Li You frowned slightly, but still let the incoming soldiers search him several times before taking him into the tent.

After the man was brought into the tent, Hei Fu, who was sitting under Li You, saw that he was a young man wearing a coarse fur coat and brown clothes, with a face as tan as his own, and a pair of straw sandals on his feet. .

Is this the messenger in the city? He must be an artisan farmer...

All the leaders thought he was here to amuse themselves, and looked angry. Meng Jia, who had argued with Hei Fu about Wang Jian's use of troops, even protested and wanted the soldiers to capture this man and blast him away.

At this time, Qin Mo Cheng Shang was a little excited. He stood up and spoke: "The brown fur is used as clothing, and the squatting is used as clothes... Are you the Mo of the South?"

"Yes."

The young man, who was about the same age as Hei Fu, raised his hands to everyone present: "The Southern Mo Xiangli Ge, I have seen you all!"