On the morning of July 26, in the fields between Juci County and Guzang County, thousands of Ma Chao's cavalry protected two thousand infantry combat soldiers, several logistics auxiliary soldiers and local people, and were harvesting the last large piece of golden wheat.

Several gurgling inward streams flow southwest and northeastward toward this place, providing the nearby fields with the irrigation needed to plant wheat.

There are many such landforms in the central part of Wuwei County. Because this area does not connect to Langshui in the south, the Yellow River and the north, it does not connect to weak water, so it can only flow inward rivers every few dozen miles, and settlements are formed by the river.

Later generations Xuanzang went west to seek Buddhist scriptures, from Lanzhou to Guazhou, there were five hundred miles and five outposts halfway. This is the oasis that snow mountains melt water every 100 miles away. Where there is no river, the Gobi desert.

For example, Wuci County is built by a small river flowing from the Qilian Mountains. It is raising a place by the river water. The river disappears as it flows. At least it can accumulate into an inward lake in summer and autumn. In winter and early spring, it almost dry up and turns into a swamp, as small as rivers and swamps on the map.

The inland river in Guzang County is larger and is called "Gushui". The lake that was injected into the end will not completely dry up into a swamp in winter, so it is qualified to leave its name on the map of the Han Dynasty, called "Duyeze".

Ma Chao's troops harvested crops in this strange environment of dozens of miles of wheat fields, dozens of miles of Gobi, and dozens of miles of wheat fields. As they were harvesting and scattering out the alert scouts, they saw a large cloud of dark clouds hitting the city and were about to destroy the enemy.

Ma Chao himself is still in the county town at this moment, and the one who monitors the wheat field outside the city is his younger brother Ma Dai. Fortunately, they have been mentally prepared these days and have a full understanding of the probability of Guo Si taking the initiative to launch a field battle, so they respond very quickly.

Ma Dai immediately sent scouts to report the news, and at the same time, a large pile of straw bonfires were lit in the wheat fields. The thick smoke of polluted air rose into the air, allowing Ma Chao in the county to see it immediately, and sent the main cavalry force to reinforce.

Ma Dai himself was surrounded by Ma Chao's troops in the battle between Ma Teng and Guo Si, and then joined Liu. However, Ma Dai was still very young at that time, only sixteen years old, so he did not have any official position, but just stayed with Ma Chao as a doctor of a personal guard.

Now two years have passed, Ma Dai is one of seventeen years old. He has also fought for two years and has gained some experience. So Ma Chao gave him a job as a military Sima.

Guo Si's army could not advance very quickly, because Guo Si's idea before the battle was to consume his own infantry, preserve his own cavalry, and at the same time consume Ma Chao's cavalry.

So in today's decisive battle, Guo Si made up his mind to bring a large number of infantry to join the battle, so it would not be possible to quickly. Since there is no possibility of a sneak attack, there is no need to run wildly. It is better to keep enough energy for the decisive battle.

At about three o'clock, the two armies finally formed a formation in the agricultural reclamation area between Wuci County and Guzang County and the Gobi desert edge to form a confrontation. In order to prevent early reception of the enemy, Ma Dai also retracted the troops to ensure that they merged with Ma Chao.

In contrast, Ma Chao's reinforcements were a little breathless, and his physical strength was consumed even more than Guo Si's army. Who made Ma Chao hurry? He only left some unknown generals to defend the county town, brought Pang De, and concentrated almost all the main forces of the cavalry to fight.

...

When the two battles were round, Ma Chao quickly noticed the scale of the enemy troops opposite, which surprised him slightly:

On Ma Chao's side, there were about 18,000 cavalry troops, led by Ma Chao and Pang De respectively. There was also a 6,000 infantry phalanx, led by Ma Dai.

The total number of front-line troops on the opposite side seems to be less than that of Ma Chao. Moreover, the front-line troops are all infantry troops, and there are a small number of Qiang cavalry, with a total of less than 20,000.

However, according to the scout's return, he found a high slope and looked out for Ma Chao himself, and found that there was a large cavalry army far behind the enemy formation. It seemed that it was more than ten miles away and could be used as a strategic reserve team to press on at any time. The total force of Guo Si's army should be dispatched, and there were also thousands of reinforcements from Qiang barbarian kings.

Ma Chao, the two Qiang tribes, lived in Xiliang for a long time, and knew them. They were the He tribe and the Moth Chaser tribe. They were both large tribes with tens of thousands of households. They lived in the Qilian valley at the source of the water and the water in the valley for generations, each occupying a mountainous river. Therefore, when sending troops, each unit could send more than 5,000 or even nearly 10,000 people. It was not surprising that they could all be as old as they could ride horses.

This is also the norm for the Hu and Han people living in Xiliang: after the river flows out of the Qilian Mountains and enters the plains and Gobi, Han people built county towns here, and in the rugged mountainous areas upstream of the river, the Han people did not want to go there and it was difficult to farm, so Qiang tribes lived in it.

These tribes basically revolt against whoever represents the Han rulers, so when Ma Teng wanted to rule these Qiang people, they opposed Ma Teng, and when Guo Si first came, they also opposed Guo Si. But now I heard that Liu Bei and Li Su had a more ruthless desire to control the Hu tribe than Guo Si, so they temporarily joined forces with Guo Si to protect their own interests, but in fact they were here to play balance.

To put it bluntly, in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", until later in the Zhuge Liang and Jiang Wei era, there was a Qiang general named "Yohe Shaoge", who was portrayed as loyal to the Han Dynasty and led his own tribe to fight with the Wei army. These characters also have historical prototypes written by Robben, but in fact, "Yehe" and "Shaoge" are not the same name, but the names of two tribes.

So even though it was thirty or forty years ahead of Zhuge Liang and Jiang Wei's Northern Expedition, these tribes should be named or named, not those generals who became young and traveled through time.

The reason why Li Su did not remind Ma Chao to win over some of the tribes, but asked Ma Chao to sever the office on his own was because Li Su recognized the characteristics of these Qiang tribes: in fact, none of these people were loyal to the Han people, and they just opposed whoever ruled the local area, hoping to win a greater living space with the help of the civil war between the Han people.

However, in history, Cao Wei ruled here thirty or forty years later, so some of them joined forces with Ji Han, and some of them had enemies with these tribes, and they joined forces with Cao Wei. This is all random. There is no tribe born with a good character.

Now that Ma Chao has fought, he will establish order for Liu Bei's camp here in the future, then these tribes at both ends of the stubborn and rat will definitely be beaten and divided.

Not only is this the case with "Russian He Shaoge", but also the previous Di king Yang Qianwan of Hehuang. Yang Qianwan also had a record of fighting against Xiahou Yuan in history, so before the Battle of Hanzhong, he had common interests with Liu Bei's camp.

But Li Su would never be rude to Yang Qianwan just because he blindly believed in "Romance of the Romance". Since he is following Han Sui now, he will be polite to kill him if he should.

Li Su always had a principle in his mind: national justice, the battle between Hu and Han is higher than internal struggle in the camp and factional struggle between Han warlords. Regardless of whether the Hu people are used in the civil war, after all, the interests of the Han people must be maximized.

Of course, if it is a win-win "Western Development", this can be done. But it cannot be cedeed from the inherent interests of the Han people because of this use.

If the Qiang people were willing to surrender in the future, their interests and welfare would only be to fight against the sky and the earth. By transforming nature, Li Su taught them advanced production methods, such as growing cotton and making big cakes, everyone would have food and clothing, and they would never tolerate snatching the original Han people's things.

He believed that if history could assume that Zhuge Liang's Northern Expedition was successful, and with Zhuge Liang's national integrity, he would not have been able to win over Yang Qianwan, Yu He Shaoge and others by selling the interests of the Han people for a long time.

...

"Guo Si obviously has so many troops than us, so why do we have to divide the troops and set up front and back formations to respond to the enemy? Isn't this a good opportunity for our army to defeat each other? Could it be that the old thief Jia Xu had an unfathomable conspiracy that we couldn't understand?"

When Ma Chao saw that his 24,000 people were dealing with the two fronts of 20,000 and 20,000 people on the other side, he couldn't help but wonder. Before ordering the entire army to charge, he couldn't help asking clearly to see if Pang Demadai had any ideas.

Pang De is four or five years older than Ma Chao. Although he doesn't understand military tactics very much, he still has rich experience in the battlefield. After evaluating, he said:

"Guo Si should not be afraid that the front and back formations will be defeated by our army. His infantry is in the front formation, Qiang and Hu soldiers are on the two wings of the front formation, and the main force of the cavalry is more than ten miles away from the battlefield. Even if we defeat Guo Si's infantry, it is impossible for his cavalry to be dispersed together.

Maybe Jia Xu wanted us to pursue and then have another conspiracy? Is it because he was sure to "suppose defeat and lure the enemy, and then turn around and cover up the killing on three sides"? However, only the left wing is close to the Qilian Mountains, the terrain is undulating, and the desert Gobi on the right is impossible to ambush the troops at all.

At most, the reinforcements from the moth blocked territory have not all been revealed, and the rear troops will wait for our army to pursue them and rush out of the water or valley valleys?"

Pound's analysis is entirely from the perspective of battlefield elements, and he cannot have any other vision.

Ma Dai waited for Pang De to finish his words humbly before thinking, "Our army has also sent a lot of baggage trucks to transport newly harvested wheat today, and by the way it is an infantry to break the cavalry. Jia Xu asked Guo Si to do this. Could it be that he did not want to use the cavalry to resist the infantry chariot formation, so after the deception, it lured our infantry and cavalry out of touch. He would concentrate his troops to fight our cavalry?"

Ma Dai helped Ma Chao in charge of infantry, baggage troops and chariot formations. He thought about this, so he could only analyze the problem from this perspective.

He didn't know that his speculation was actually more unexpected than Pang De. Jia Xu advised Guo Si to "concentrate on consuming Ma Chao's cavalry troops to have vitality, and not to fight against Ma Chao's infantry and chariot formations and crossbow soldiers."

When cavalry fight against powerful crossbowmen with chariot formations, they can’t get any advantage in positional battles, so it’s best to fly kites with distances.

Ma Chao thought about it and everything Pang De and Ma Dai made some sense. If the Right General could be present today, that would be great, and he would definitely see through Jia Xu's conspiracy.

But there is no way for the right general to be away. Who made Ma Chao and Guan Yu fight on two fronts? Before Li Su stabilized the rear, he did not dare to leave Jincheng rashly. There is no regulation in this world that Ma Chao would not fight if he left the command of the right general.

If Jia Xu really designed this way, the cost would be too great. Guo Si's front-line infantry would suffer heavy losses in the first battle unless Guo Si did not regard his infantry cannon fodder as a human being, and he would not feel sorry for no matter how many deaths were.

"Since Guo Si is so polite, we don't have to mercy. We don't have to worry about the disconnection of the infantry and cavalry. Brother, please keep the car formation well and see if you are brother and Ling Ming first defeat Guo Si's infantry!"
Chapter completed!