At the foot of Shaoshi Mountain in Songshan, the wind in February is still cold and chilly in early spring. Who made the altitude here high? The snow has not yet melted.

And the wind blew even colder on Hua Xiong who was forced to take the initiative to fight.

In this battle, Dong Zhuo's army actually did not have an advantage in terms of total number of troops, because the troops under Dong Zhuo's command had moved westward to the point of defense for the three auxiliary places, and those who stayed on the southeast line were not the absolute main force.

If the part of Liang County was not annihilated, Dong Zhuo's total strength on the front line was estimated to be 30,000. Liang County lost 2,000 people, and at most it would be only 28,000 left.

Although Guan Yu and Zhao Yun on the opposite side only had 8,000 troops, Sun Jian's troops were really large.

Last year, when Sun Jian set out from Changsha, he had "nearly 10,000" troops. Later, he expanded his troops all the way north. With Yuan Shu's support, "compared to Nanyang, there were tens of thousands of people", but in fact there were about 30,000 people. This was still a combat force. If the auxiliary troops were included in the grain transport, the total number might be close to 50,000.

However, Sun Jian faced more and stronger enemies last year. After retreating in the Battle of Liangdong last fall, he lost a small half of his troops. After returning to Nanyang to replenish the troops, he still sent nearly 30,000 troops again. He lost a little bit of it to conquer Liang County, but with Guan Yu and Zhao Yun, the total strength of the coalition forces in the coalition forces of Dong had at least 35,000.

35,000 to 28,000, the number of soldiers who fought against Dong had an advantage. However, the quality of Sun Jian's troops was slightly worse.

There are only 5,000 soldiers here, who were the veterans of the hundred battles who followed Sun Jian for at least five years and followed him from Changsha County to attack Quxing. There are still 5,000 soldiers, who were recruited last year and were recruited only in a small amount of practical experience. The last more than 10,000 people were recruited after the autumn harvest last year. On average, they were in the army for less than three months and had not fought a single battle.

In comparison, Dong Zhuo's army's 28,000 people were at least soldiers of the Xiliang Army and the Bingzhou Army.

With such a strength comparison, if there is no need to consider political pressure, Hua Xiong was originally very confident to find the enemy's flaws? He won with another blow. But to show the court's power and victory quickly, it would be very difficult.

After being forced by military order for a day or two, Hua Xiong finally came up with a relatively feasible solution? He discussed the specific strategy with Hu Zhen, Lu Bu, and Fan Chou.

On the military discussion this day? Hua Xiong suggested:

"General Hu, I will take 8,000 troops from the headquarters? I will walk dozens of miles upstream tonight and cross the uppermost reaches of Yingchuan overnight? I will set up camp on the south bank before dawn? I will form a junction with you.

In this way, we can complete the military order required by the Prime Minister to cross the river within three days, and will not be attacked by the frontal enemy halfway. In order to cooperate with me to cross the river, please continue to set up flags and smoke in my old camp? And put on the stance of crossing the river directly? To attract Sun Jian and Guan Yu's troops."

Hu Zhen is the most related to him among the generals. After listening to this suggestion, he thought for a while and confirmed: "We should act in a strong position to attract the enemy? This is no problem. But after you cross the river, you cannot respond to our army? What else are you talking about the 'stringing force'?

Are you not afraid of being annihilated by Sun Jian and Guan Yu concentrating their troops first? Why not wait until you set up a camp and wait for us to cross the river? The whole army heads to the south bank and then fights decisively with Sun Jian."

Hua Xiong obviously thought it through a long time ago: "I am just afraid that the camp will not be stable? I can't hold on to the enemy's full attack for too long? I dare not directly respond to you - if the 20,000 rear troops have to cross the river from where I cross the river? There are still a large number of infantry in the army, and they are very slow to travel. Maybe they have to set up a raft, and it may not be possible to complete a half-day. Instead, I am entangled.

It’s better for you to cross the river slowly, and I only bring cavalry across the river. Although the Sun Guan Alliance Army has more than 30,000, there are only thousands of cavalry. They come to attack my newly established camp, and I abandon the camp and retreat. The main force of the enemy infantry cannot catch up with me, and a few thousand cavalry will be annihilated by me again after the pursuit. Isn’t that a foolproof thing?”

Even the main forces of the Xiliang Army and the Bingzhou Army could not have been cavalrymen, and there were not so many war horses. Therefore, the total number of cavalry in the Dong Zhuo Army was only half, about 12,000 to 13,000.

Hua Xiong had eight thousand people and less than five thousand cavalrymen. Speaking of this, Hu Zhen knew that Hua Xiong asked him about borrowing cavalry, hoping to temporarily replace Hu Zhen's cavalry with his infantry, and concentrate the cavalry as a partial division to smuggle upstream.

Hu Zhen still wanted to help this, but he couldn't help but look at Lu Bu. There were three thousand elite Bingzhou cavalry under Lu Bu's command. Unfortunately, Lu Bu was not as harmonious as the generals of Liangzhou Army like in the Romance. He pretended not to see him at all, and Hu Zhen had no choice.

After the last discussion, Hu Zhen replaced the three thousand cavalry under his command to Hua Xiong's temporary commander, and then persuaded him to get a thousand people from Li Meng, and finally got Hua Xiong's full cavalry.

However, Li Meng had the conditions to help him. He expressed that he would personally take his thousand cavalry to cross the river to supervise the battle against Hua Xiong.

The reason why Hu Zhen didn't look for Fan Chou was because he knew that Fan Chou had a bad temper and protected his shortcomings - otherwise Fan Chou would not be disliked and excluded by Li Jue and Guo Si.

"Come and we drink three bowls of wine together tonight, General Hua's journey across the river tonight!" Hu Zhen always smoothed out his affairs, letting the five generals present drink a few bowls together, which was a smile to eliminate grudges and not care about internal factional conflicts for the time being.

That night, Hua Xiong took 8,000 people and circled a small road from the western foot of Shaoshi Mountain and successfully crossed Yingchuan.

Who made the Yingchuan River originate from Shaoshi Mountain in Songshan, so the water flow in the first few dozen miles close to the source is not large. You can find a place where you can ride a horse and you don’t have to worry about washing away.

Huaxiong and Hu Zhen have been stationed in several surrounding counties for a year, and the geography has long been understood.

...

It is not a big deal that the generals Sun, Guan, Zhao and others were negligent and did not seize the opportunity to attack Hua Xiong halfway. The main reason was that they did not expect Dong Zhuo to settle the political accounts and forced Hua Xiong to cross the river and seek war.

Sun Jian and Guan Yu settled according to military accounts, and took it for granted that the enemy would defend across the river, so they have been thinking about how to actively cross Yingchuan and go to the north bank to attack Dong Zhuo's army.

Early the next morning, the scout who had sent Zhao Yun found the traces of Huaxiong's troops and immediately returned the horse.

"Report! Hua Xiong had crossed the river twenty miles upstream last night, looking for a shallow water and slowly flowing. Nearly 10,000 soldiers, almost all of them were cavalry!"

After hearing the news, Sun Jian suddenly became angry: "Huaxiong took the initiative to cross the river? Why did he see that the camp on the other side of the river were still brightly lit, with flags standing on the other side of the river, and there was a lot of smoke at dinner and cooking."

Guan Yu stroked his beard and pondered: "The smoke and flags of cooking fires are all fake. Since we have come to the south bank, we are obviously ready to attack. Our army can gather soldiers first, and roars on the front, and send out all powerful crossbows. Don't be stingy with crossbows. You can shoot several rounds of arrows at the enemy camp on the other side of the river to see the enemy's reaction.

In this way, we can find out how many soldiers and horses there are in the enemy camp, whether Hu Zhen, Lu Bu and others are still in the camp. If they are still there, it means that the enemy does not intend for tens of thousands of troops to cross the river, only Hua Xiong is here."

When Sun Jian thought about it, he immediately ordered the troops to beat drums and trumpets, and acted as if he wanted to attack the entire army to cross the river.

Sun Jian's elite troops were also well equipped, and he could at least take out a thousand pieces of them - all of them were given by Yuan Shu, because when Yuan Shu, a later general, was driven out of the capital by Dong Zhuo, in order to make Yuan Shu go out quickly, Dong Zhuo also acquiesced to him to loot some of the capital's arsenals.

Therefore, the number and quality of the elite troops of the Luoyang Northern Army brought out by Yuan Shu were similar to those of Li Su, Wu Kuang and Gao Shun when they left Beijing. Now Sun Jian is going to be the main attacker, and Yuan Shu also generously borrowed some of him, but the "ownership" still belonged to Yuan Shu. Sun Jian was a general of Yuan Shu and had to pay it back after the war.

Guan Yu's army also had thousands of powerful crossbows, which were also plundered by Li Su. The two armies joined forces and the two thousand crossbows were shot together, which immediately made the North Bank camp a little panic. The river surface upstream of Yingchuan was less than 100 steps wide, and it was no problem to shoot the two hundred steps of crossbows to the outer periphery of the camp in front of the opposite side.

Seeing the panic dispatch on the other side, Guan Yu climbed up to observe carefully, and soon it was estimated that Hu Zhen and Lu Bu's main forces had not moved yet.

After wasting more than 10,000 crossbow arrows, although only dozens of enemies were killed and less than 100 people were injured, it is still very cost-effective to be able to find out the enemy's virtual and real information.

"Since Huaxiong is the only one who crosses the river, it is better for us to advance westward with all our might and concentrate our forces to annihilate Huaxiong first." Sun Jian naturally suggested.

He and Guan Yu immediately gathered the main force and moved upstream along Yingchuan. However, Sun Jian also knew that someone must stay in the camp to avoid Hu Zhen and Lu Bu on the front of him from discovering that they were empty and suddenly crossed the river and attacked.

So he left Huang Gai and Han Dang and gathered in a main camp to defend. He ordered Lu Bu to give up the right deputy camp and defend the most solid main camp, with the purpose of preventing Lu Bu from completely breaking the camp and surrounding the back of the army.

Guan Yu also made a similar arrangement before leaving: "Youping, you leave a thousand soldiers, move the troops to join the two commanders Huang and Han, and form a junction to watch. Gongming, you lead the main force of our army's 4,000 infantrymen and General Sun. Xingba, you and I follow Zilong's cavalry first.

Hua Xiong's military strength is far inferior to our army. If we see tens of thousands of main forces of our army arrive together, we might use the quick and fast advantage of the cavalry to escape. Only by letting Zilong lead the cavalry to advance first can we lure the enemy to fight to the decisive battle with us."

Zhou Tai, Gan Ning, and Xu Huang all obeyed the orders, without any objection, but Zhao Yun was a little unwilling to accept it and suggested: "The lord has always handed it over to me for the matter of luring the enemy to defeat, so why bother to fight? Yun Changgui is the main general and leads troops to attack fiercely when counterattacking. Wouldn't it be nice?"

Guan Yu smiled proudly: "I personally supervised the battle and acted according to the opportunity. Although our cavalry only has 3,000, there may not be no chance to take advantage of Hua Xiong's carelessness, despise him, and fight with him. If it is really a rare opportunity, there is no need to be defeated - did Zilong think I am not good at fighting horses?"

Zhao Yun smiled and said, "How dare you?"

When he led a large cavalry force to fight, Zhao Yun thought that he was much better than Guan Yu's tactical command, but if he wanted to supervise the army and fight in person, he would not dare to be arrogant.

So he decided that Guan Yu, Zhao Yun and Gan Ning took three thousand cavalry to separate from the main infantry force, went forward to catch up with the enemy first, luring Hua Xiong underestimating the enemy to fight.

...

Twenty miles away didn't take long, and about a quarter of an hour later, Hua Xiong got the enemy situation.

"The captain, Guan Yu, Zhao Yun, led three thousand cavalrymen on the opposite side, and had rushed to several miles away!" The scout reported this situation to Hua Xiong.

Hua Xiong was immediately raising his sword: "Only three thousand cavalry? How far is the enemy's main infantry?"

Scout: "I have not found out clearly, but at least seven or eight miles away from the former cavalry."

Hua Xiong slapped his horse's neck: "This is a God-given opportunity! Just take advantage of the enemy's vanguard and the main force to get out of touch with the main force, and first kill Guan Yu and Zhao Yun and defeat these three thousand cavalry. The Southern Army has few cavalry. As long as the enemy cavalry is destroyed, Sun Jian will not want to catch up with our army again! The entire army lined up to attack!"
Chapter completed!