In order to deal with the war elephants and vine armored soldiers that appeared in the intelligence, Li Su had to postpone his final attack on Yuyu County, but spent nearly ten days to make the final preparations, so that the final date of the final battle was postponed to late February.

The Ailaoyi camp is not without suspicion about the delay of the Han army.

But the intelligence of the barbarians was only at this level. In addition, during the preparation period, Li Su had been deliberately leaking some of his weak-showing information, so he snatched the appetites of all the Ailaoyi tribes well.

To be honest, the "weakness-information" leaked by Li Su are all true, mainly including negative news such as "because the southern expedition was postponed, a group of soldiers had to be relied on the grain and cargo fleet to transport a group of soldiers, and to transport some sick soldiers away to reduce the scale of troops stationed in Nanzhong."

These news is not easy to understand at first glance, but combined with the original southern expedition plan and the weather conditions in Nanzhong, it is easy to understand: when we first set off after the autumn harvest last year, Li Su and Liu Bei agreed to withdraw their troops before the spring plowing in February and avoid the "peach blossom miasma" in Yongchang, Jianning and other places in spring.

Now, because it took more than two months to win over Kunmingyi, help Kunmingyi farm, rectify the road, improve the logistics to Yongchang, and make progress, Li Su has already overspent in time.

If we don’t take advantage of the fact that the weather in February has not yet fully warmed up and the spring flowers are blooming, and some of the troops in the central central region are reduced, it means that we cannot withdraw from mid-spring to midsummer.

Because the climate in the central southern region is the warmest and pleasant, and there is no miasma, the areas suitable for the Han people in the north are the only two refreshing areas, namely the Dianchi Basin and the Erhai Basin.

On the contrary, along the waterway from the Dianchi Lake Basin to the north, the miasma is countless times more poisonous than the Dianchi Lake Basin. After the window period for withdrawal in the spring, it has to be blocked in these two areas with pleasant climate until the end of the autumn harvest.

Who made the Han army's biggest enemy in the South Central? It was always weather and tropical diseases?

Based on this consideration, after discussing with Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, Li Su decided to reduce the scale of Han soldiers in the Nanzhong region from 12,000 at the beginning to 8,000 (in fact, due to the war loss, the 12,000 at the beginning was also dissatisfied with the 12,000 at the beginning)

As a result, the logistics pressure of the Han army in Nanzhong has been relieved a lot, and at least one-third of the food needed to be eaten is reduced. It is very important for the Kunming Yi tribes such as Meng family to not be able to afford to save food, because Guan Yu cannot eat at the cordon of the autumn harvest. He also has to save some extra grain to use to attack the Yueli barbarian king Gao Yi from behind after this year's autumn harvest. If all of them are eaten, it will delay the autumn offensive.

Zhang Fei took these thousands of people to retreat and returned to Jiangyang, Jianwei County, to continue training troops, cooperate with local construction, and guard the local area. Zhou Tai, under Zhang Fei's command, stayed in Dianchi County, Huang Quan's guarding Wei County, and Wang Ping was familiar with mountain warfare, stayed on the front line to follow Guan Yu's training and provided some mountain war advisers.

In addition, Zhang Fei can also cooperate with Guan Yu in the road. If Guan Yu really attacked Yueli from the southern line along the Yalong River in autumn this year, Zhang Fei would first bluff along the Dadu River along the northern line and pretend to attack, attracting Gao Yi's main force to prevent the Han army from going from Shu County and crossing the Dadu River to attack Yueli.

For all this, the Han army also made some sacrifices in the front-line combat power: the number of front-line generals was reduced to only Guan Yu, Gao Shun and Wang Ping, who were responsible for the decisive battle with the upcoming barbarian kings of Ailaoyi tribes. There were only three generals on both sides, which was very fair.

Moreover, Wang Ping is still a young man who is not as good as the champion. He is half a line to attract experience. The situation of the general is very beneficial to the Ailaoyi camp. (Dian Wei does not count, Dian Wei is Li Su's personal bodyguard and the guard commander)

...

On February 24, the cave owner was brought to the lord who was a little anxiously in Qingyu County, and finally received a report that the Han army once again crossed Wuliang Mountain on a large scale and launched a full-line attack on Qingyu County.

The master of the cave was overjoyed when he heard the news and quickly informed the situation to the other two barbarian kings.

King Mulu was still a little worried when he heard this: "Since our army first set up a formation to fight, the Han army had to patrol and fight for more than ten days under the risk of Wuliang Mountain. Now he is suddenly willing to attack again. There will be no conspiracy, right?

Could it be that we are thinking about the vicious plan to crack our army's military situation? In order to prevent fraud, we might as well change the field battle into a cage city, guard the city of Yuyu County for a while, and slam the enemy's spirit."

King Wugo was still so confident: "Our vine armored soldiers and your war elephants have been passed down for many generations. Can we come up with a cracking method in ten days? If we can crack it, the Ailao King "Leizhu" ninety years ago was used. Why can't the Han generals crack it now?"

The master of the cave waved his hand, stopped the suspicion of the two of them and comforted him, "Don't guess it all. I know why the Han army delayed my detailed work. It was because the weather was getting warmer in the spring. The Han army was all from the northerners, not familiar with the heat, and there were many epidemics.

Moreover, before the Han army went to the expedition, they agreed to have a six-year expedition in the south. Now it was time for their generals in the western expedition to refuse to let the soldiers return north, so there was a tendency to mutiny. The Han army had rotated a considerable number of soldiers, and I sent a fine work to Muma County, Jianning County, and saw with my own eyes that dozens of ships were carrying people back and forth every day, rotating new recruits.

Now Guan Yu has only seven or eight thousand soldiers left, and he cannot all be sent to the front line. The front line has up to 5,000 soldiers. Another powerful general of the Han army, Zhang Fei, was also transferred. So, don’t mention the battle of defending the enemy to the death. The best way to defeat the enemy’s spirit is to wipe out one go! If you miss this opportunity, when the Han army figured it out and asked the Kunming thieves to increase their enlistment, this battle would be difficult to fight.

Have you forgotten that the Ailao king Lelao ninety years ago was not defeated by the Han generals, so that our Ailao Kingdom was destroyed and fled to the west of Nujiang and changed its name to Shan Kingdom. He was defeated by the Kunming thieves who kept following the Han army as dogs! We must use their underestimation to destroy the direct Han army before the Kunming thieves were further dispatched! It also let the Kunming clan know from then on that our Ailao tribe is the largest clan in the South Central!"

The last reason is very critical. King Mulu and King Wugo have completely unified their understanding and decided to ignore the negative news that "the Han army has war elephants and vine armored soldiers after hearing that the Ailao coalition had war elephants and vine armored soldiers, and was ready to come back to fight for more than ten days."

After the unity of thought, it will be natural to follow up.

The Han army's road was only one hundred miles away from Yanyu County, and it took three days to marche through the mountains. On the evening of February 26, the Han army set up camp carefully in the dangerous places in Wuliang Mountains for the last time to prevent the enemy from robbing the camp at night. The Ailao coalition forces did not take any action. The next day, the Han army was placed in the Erhai Basin.

On the morning of the 27th, more than 30,000 Ailao coalition troops left the city and assembled more than 200 battle elephants. They opened the southern gate of Yanyu County, left the city south, walked more than 20 miles, and then collided with the Han army on the narrow plain south of the west coast of Erhai Lake.

The two sides immediately launched military formations on the spot. The location here is basically near the Dali Ancient City Scenic Area of ​​later generations, facing Erhai Lake in the east and Cangshan in the west.

Cangshan and Erhai Lake all run north and south. From the mountains to the lake, there is a narrow plain twelve miles wide, so the terrain is enough to spread tens of thousands of troops.

The Ailao coalition forces had 30,000 people, and the front was five or six miles wide, with about thirty rows in front and back, each with nearly a thousand people. There was a large number of war elephants in the middle.

The front width of the Han-Kunming coalition was much narrower, only two miles wide, and the depth was slightly thinner.

The 5,000 Kunming Yi led by Meng Xin was on the left. Because these troops were all mountain soldiers, they lined up on the hillside of Cangshan and used the rugged terrain to prevent the charge by the war elephants. Guan Yu asked Wang Ping to lead hundreds of personal soldiers as Meng Xin's military supervisor.

Guan Yu was in the middle to coordinate the Han army with Kunming Yi, and asked Gao Shun to lead two thousand iron armored soldiers to the right. Gao Shun's wings and behind him were two thousand light infantry/crossband soldiers with only leather armor, and one thousand Han cavalry.

Li Su himself also brought Dian Wei and hundreds of escort cavalry to the battlefield to supervise the formation, or when encountering an emergency that Guan Yu had never seen before, it is easy to mention it. Although, before the war, Li Su had already explained all his weapons arrangements to deal with the vine armored soldiers and war elephants, but Guan Yu had never tried it, and he was still a little skeptical.

"Driving the Han army and the Kunming thieves out of Yuze! Kill the men!"

Yuyuze is the ancient name of Erhai Lake. After simply boosting morale, the master of the cave told the war elephants to launch a cluster charge first, while the infantry would drag the war elephants back and then launch a charge. Moreover, the vine armored soldiers first rushed to the top of the shield to resist the Han army's crossbow formation.

As mentioned earlier, the biggest disadvantage of the Southwest Yi in positional warfare is the lack of strong bows and hard crossbows. They have almost no crossbows, and their bows are light bows and soft arrows, which rely entirely on poison to ensure lethality. In mountain warfare, complex terrain can also be used to catch the enemy at close range and exert the power of poison. However, no matter how strong the poison arrow is in field battles, it will suffer a lot. You have to approach the huge casualties caused by the crossbow formation to within fifty steps before you can start shooting.

Therefore, the battle elephant and vine armored soldiers attract firepower and crack the two aces of the Han army's crossbow formation. Otherwise, relying solely on 30,000 barbarians to form formations and charge on the plains, they would not be able to withstand the Han army's continuous crossbow shooting. The reputation of "one Han to top the five barbarians" in positions is not in vain.

Two hundred steps, one hundred and fifty steps, as the surging war elephants were approaching the effective range of killing of Han army's crossbow, many light infantry crossbowmen were already scared by this formation and their legs were trembling, and they almost pulled the trigger in advance to shoot arrows.

Fortunately, they use crossbows, and it doesn't take extra effort to maintain the tension of the crossbow string, so the possibility of accidentally triggering is lower. If they are archers, they will pull the bow and do not shoot the arrow, and within a few seconds the arm strength will be exhausted and their hands will be shaking out.

Li Su personally took Dian Wei to patrol the crossbow formation. He also realized the nervousness of the crossbowman and quickly asked the messenger and the military judge to repeatedly warn:

"Don't panic! Don't shoot arrows in advance! Believe that the weapons in your hands will run away if you shoot them out! But because the cartridges are tied to the crossbow arrows and they are not shot far, you must keep them steady! And you must shoot arrows in batches and continue to be frightened, otherwise you will stop after a wave of scaring and then all your efforts will be wasted!"

Under repeated bounces, these crossbow soldiers deserved to have fought with Liu Bei for several years and gained psychological quality in the two-year battle in Yizhou, and they all survived.
Chapter completed!