Although Huang Quan felt that Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang's suggestions were very reasonable, as the envoy sent by Liu Bei to urge Guan Yu to take the initiative to seek war, Huang Quan still had to fully fulfill his responsibilities before he could consider going back and reporting.

Guan Yu emphasized that it was not that he did not want to go out to fight, but that in the past ten days after the beginning of spring, Ju Su on the opposite side had a good defense, relying on the city, long trenches and corridors, it was difficult to break through.

Huang Quan had to see with his own eyes how difficult it was to break through. Even the Han army had invested so many new siege weapons and the full popularization of leveraged trench sieges could not solve this problem.

After clarifying the causes and consequences, it was more convincing to persuade Liu Bei when he returned to Chang'an.

Fortunately, Guan Yu was preparing for a tentative attack every now and then, but he didn't let Huang Quan wait too long.

Just two days after Huang Quan arrived at the front line, on the third day of March, a tentative offensive began in the area of ​​Shanyang County.

As for why Guan Yu chose the offensive point in Shanyang County, it was not unreasonable. It was because after a winter of careful consideration, and before Huang Quan came, the two sides had already spent a bloody price to fight and verify it, and finally got a tacit understanding:

The enemy-to-we-confrontation situation in this area was mainly composed of Guan Yu occupying the Yewang and Qinshui in the southwest, while Yuan Shao's army occupied Huai County in the east, and Gaodu County in Shangdang County in the north.

However, Ju Su’s defense line on the north side was not based on Gaodu County, but was suddenly arranged and deployed the defense line at the junction of Taihang Mountain and the Hanoi Plain. Relying on the main ridge of the branch ridge on the edge of Taihang Mountain, simple fortifications and beacon towers were built.

Therefore, even if the temporary rammed earth wall is not high and the trenches are not deep, the defense effect is still considerable, which is equivalent to directly spending a large amount of money to build a small section of the Great Wall that is dozens of miles long.

The main purpose of this rammed earth wall is no longer to prevent the enemy from climbing, but is like the Great Wall, so that the defenders can move their main movements. When Guan Yu attacks any point, Ju Su can quickly allow soldiers to gather quickly along the rammed earth corridor to the attacked position.

In this way, the advantage of speed of the internal combat force gathering that Zhuge Liang temporarily won for Guan Yu last winter was reversed.

Now Guan Yu is the main attacker and Ju Su is the main defense. Ju Su gathers and invests his strength in a short period of time at each individual point along the Taihang Mountains, so that even if Guan Yu has the advantages of military quality and equipment, it is difficult for him to open a gap.

It has to be admitted that Ju Su is indeed a high-end talent who is good at strategic defense coordination. In history, he was able to help Yuan Shao develop a comprehensive strategy and gradually force Gongsun Zan to death. Later, although Yuan Shao was defeated by Guandu, he often did not listen to Ju Su's opinions. Internal counselors had serious differences in their opinions, so Ju Su's talent was naturally underestimated in history.

Of course, Ju Su's deployment of this defense was not at all cost. At least, in order to repair the defense line on the edge of the Taihang Mountains south of Gao County this winter, Bingzhou civilians who were said to have fallen and died in engineering accidents reached the scale of thousands of people, which has not yet been considered other indirect losses. There is no way to use and exploit people's power.

It can be said that although Ju Su can defend himself, the price he paid is no less than that of the famous general Lian Po who had built a hundred miles of defense line hundreds of years ago.

Hundreds of years ago, Lian Po's idea of ​​the Baili Stone Defense Line also followed the Zhao people's usual idea of ​​building the Great Wall. He did not ask how high the defense power of the earth wall on the ridge of Taihang Mountain, but only wanted the attached corridors to facilitate the defenders to maneuver in place at a faster speed than the attacking party.

In fact, the Great Wall of Zhao built during the Warring States Period is to put it bluntly a series of communication and military mobilization facilities between the valleys of the Taihang Mountains, and it also plays a role in delaying the attacking side. In the years when Zhao State was still an independent country, the importance of this "Great Wall" on the edge of all directions of the Taihang Mountains was comparable.

However, after being unified by Qin, the "Zhao Great Wall" on the edge of the Taihang Mountains between Qin and Zhao lost its military use, so it was gradually abandoned by Qin. Qin only took Zhao to the northernmost part of the Taihang Mountains, bordering the Huns and Zhongshan, and merged it into the Great Wall connected to Qin.

Ju Su's defensive thought on the north side of Guan Yu was just to pick up the ruins of Zhao people that had been abandoned for hundreds of years and repair them. On the main ridges of some mountains on the edge of the Taihang Mountains, there are actually rammed earth relics that have not collapsed can be used directly, which reduces the workload to a certain extent and kills less migrant workers.

(Note: The Qin people did not deliberately demolish the useless part of the Zhao Great Wall, but just put it there for it to destroy it on its own. So it is normal for the remnants of more than 400 years later. Just like the sections of the Ming Great Wall that have no value for repair, it is still there in the contemporary world more than 400 years later, similar to the Ming Dynasty Great Wall that hikers have climbed now)

The offensive towards Taihang Mountain on the north side was obviously not cost-effective and the difficulty was the most. After Guan Yu was slightly frustrated a few days ago, he gave up the main attack direction and no longer persisted.

After all, the defense line is so long, and any decisive strategic breakthrough is considered a victory and can force the enemy to fight to the decisive battle. Of course, you have to pick a soft persimmon.

Under such a guiding ideology, Guan Yu can only choose a few offensive key points. The concerns in this regard, long before another tentative attack today, Zhuge Liang had already analyzed with Huang Quan during the map operation stage, so Huang Quan had no doubts at all:

The first direction is to attack the junction of Huai County and Gaodu Taihang Defense Line and the surrounding areas of Shanyang County.

Shanyang County is the later Jiaozuo, Henan, and is a weak link between Taihang Mountains and Huai County (now Wuzhi County, Jiaozuo City).

Ju Su’s long fortifications in this section are rare without the Taihang Mountain terrain. It is the easiest to attack on the alluvial plains of the Yellow River. Ju Su’s entire defense line is just a plain defense area of ​​more than 30 miles, and other mountains are included.

To put it bluntly, there was originally a county in Yanzhou called Shanyang, which was Changyi, and Shanyang in Henoi was just a county. However, when Cao Pi became emperor in history, he directly demarcated Shanyang County from Henoi and set it as a principality, which was the same as the county. As the fief of "Shanyang Duke", the abdicated Emperor Xian of Han.

The reason is that Cao Pi liked that Henoi belonged to Sili, which was on the other side of Luoyang and was very close to the center of the court, so it was convenient for monitoring the abdicated Liu Xie and not giving others the opportunity to borrow Liu Xie from causing trouble.

The second direction that Guan Yu can choose is to attack the tough and directly attack Huai County. As the capital of Hanoi County, Huai County is of course much more solid than the plain corridor between Shanyang and Huai County.

The third direction is to attack directly along the Yellow River, break through to the rear of Huai County, and then carry out a strategic overturn to make dumplings from the entire Jushu Corps.

But the biggest problem with this move is that although Guan Yu now has ships in Dongyuan, Yewang and other places, these ships are just the products of Zhuge Liang and Huang Yueying's improved "Ship Schooner 2.0" after launching the water. In terms of size and tonnage, it is actually not as good as the traditional water battle.

Although Yuan Shao's army was not strong in naval forces, the lower reaches of the Yellow River were always Yuan Shao's home ground. The Yellow River in the north was shallow, so it was not as good as the Yangtze River. However, the battleships and trafficking were enough.

Zhuge Liang did not understand the "pole-suspended thunder" tactic invented by Li Sugang, and this kind of thing cannot be used on a large scale to "change ships and ships to fight the ships". After all, there are not so many dead soldiers and cannot be popularized. Therefore, Yuan Shao will definitely be the dominant battle in the Yellow River within at least one year.

After all, option three is not feasible, option two is not as difficult as option one, so focus on option one.

In fact, Ju Su on the other side also knew all this. He actually discounted the defensive resources in the two and three directions, and used the good steel on the blade. The purpose is to predict the position of Guan Yu, and then concentrate resources to guard the most difficult defense zone.

...

Early in the morning of the third year of the Chinese New Year, Huang Quan brought the three thousand reinforcements he brought from Chang'an and followed Guan Yu to the front line of Shanyang County. This city in history would have become the fief of the abdicated emperor Shanyang Gong after the fall of the Han Dynasty.

For the sake of today's battle, Guan Yu also prepared 50,000 combat troops, but not all of them were brought to the front line, mainly because there were too many troops and was not suitable for development. Therefore, 30,000 people stayed in the camp in the northwest corner of the Yewang and the northwest corner of the Danshui River mouth of Qinshui, and only 20,000 people were brought forward to fight.

Then 30,000 will wait until there is a breakthrough ahead and then invest as a reserve team. At present, we will first accumulate energy and maintain physical strength.

After a long confrontation on the front line, the offensive and defensive facilities of both sides were complete.

Because Guan Yu's enemy's defense line is very long, he does not necessarily choose the same point to break through each time, so he did not make the leveraged catapult into a fixed one. Instead, he would rather spend more materials to increase the difficulty of the structure and sacrifice a little range to make a movable "catalog car".

This is actually quite unusual, because since Li Su first invented the leverage trencher seven years ago, most of the weapons on the Chinese battlefield are fixed. This thing is heavier and cannot be transported as a whole. The siege position does not require any movement, so it is easier to make a fixed one.

Players who have played "Age of Empires" know that lever trenchers are not as good as torque. Torque is the type of hitch in "Age of Empires" that can be pushed and driven slowly, while lever trenchers are the "packers" in the game and must be disassembled before they can be moved.

This time, in order to attack maneuver and not be trapped by an attack point, Guan Yu specifically emphasized that all siege equipment must be mobility. For this reason, Zhuge Liang and Huang Yueying also optimized the line of the line and adjusted the structure slightly to ensure that the packaging speed of the "packing machine" is more convenient and quicker.

After the troops were maneuvered, the catapult was quickly deployed, and the trench bridge chariot and pointed wooden donkey were also pushed up. Because it was an attack on the corridor defense line formed by the long chasing earth wall, rather than siege the city, there was no city gate to attack, so there was no need to deploy door hammers and rushing vehicles.

Huang Quan had never seen such offensive and defensive battles in the battlefield environment, and he was still confused, but as the battle began, he temporarily threw these questions behind his mind and paid attention to the progress and dynamics with concern.

The barrage of the catapult flew through the air. Guan Yu concentrated thirty packers today, and the firepower was dense. The wall on the opposite corridor was just one and a half feet high, and the thickness of the wall was not even enough to allow three soldiers to stand in parallel on the wall.

It is just because the rammed earth for the wall is dug out from the flat ground in front of the wall, so when the wall is built, a wide soil pit of six or seven feet deep is naturally formed at the front edge of the wall. The total height difference of the wall is barely more than two feet or two feet.

As long as the counterweight catapult stone bomb is sufficient to completely destroy all the strong city walls in the world except for the Luoyang Meiwu in Chang'an. What is this defense?

So after just over an hour of firepower preparation, several completely collapsed gaps were smashed open to the wall of the corridor. The collapsed earth even collapsed directly into the long grave pit in front of the wall. The pit was filled a little, and it seemed that the attacker was more likely to rush up.
Chapter completed!