Cao's army could not conquer the front for a long time, and his morale declined and he became disconnected. Finally, he ushered in a cross-border and division counterattack from Ma Chao and Huang Zhong.

At this moment, Cao Cao's pupils widened, and then became numb and relieved.

Seeing his attacking soldiers being frantically cut and surrounded and annihilated, Cao Cao had only one thought left in his mind:

"Will Liu Bei think he won today? Will he feel that our army is weak, even though there are many people, they are not enough to be afraid, and chase out of the defense line? If Liu Bei chases out, there will be a chance!

You can't fight offensive battles with the enemy troops with a large number of divine arm crossbows in preset positions! Let Liu Bei attack my front and back troops be disconnected! The strong crossbows cannot support the front troops in time!"

With this idea, Cao Cao personally pulled out his sword, shouted and ordered the soldiers around him to set up a gun array, and asked the left and right wings to change the formation as soon as possible, preparing to welcome Huang Zhong and Ma Chao to encircle and annihilate the Cao army's front and rear, and expand to retaliate against the Cao army's rear formation.

Unfortunately, it was because Cao's army was too many and the proportion of new recruits was too high, and the troops reacted very slowly. Cao Cao repeatedly asked each formation to move from attack to defense, and arranged a long spearman hedgehog formation to fight the impact, but there were still several ten thousand people-level formations that had not had time to change.

On the front battlefield of more than 100,000 people, some square formations are changing, while some square formations are still moving forward and their steps are messy.

After Ma Chao on the opposite side attacked and annihilated several Cao troops on the line of defense, he was full of confidence and rushed towards the Cao army's gun formation that was in a dilemma with the rising morale after the big victory.

Liu Bei in the central army was actually quite calm. The key was that Lu Su and other civil officials who were watching the battle with him were relatively calm. They once eager to persuade Liu Bei to order the impulsive Ma Chao to hold back.

But who made Liu Bei's army also have problems such as too large a military formation, too many people, and slow command and command command. More than 200,000 people were crowded on the battlefield for dozens of miles, how could they use their fingers like an arm?

Therefore, even if Mingjin stops chasing, Mingjin's voice relay will take two cups of tea.

Within at least a quarter of an hour, Ma Chao could not pull him back and could only let the generals in front play freely. If the war is so hot, it is impossible to get a micro-work.

Fortunately, some of the Cao army on the opposite side really seemed to have an opportunity to take advantage of it. Ma Chao took the opportunity to kill him, but he actually destroyed the two or three snarl formations of Cao's army in more than half a minute.

These square formations were in chaos in command. Friends on both wings were retreating or marching in an array. They were still moving forward, or some people were moving forward, some people wanted to marching in an inconsistent pace.

This led to Ma Chao's killing in front of him. Only when the first row of spearmen was rushing to line up their neatly stances to the outside, but the one behind did not stabilize at all. After Ma Chao found the gap and broke down the front row, he completely collapsed.

Fortunately, the gap between the Cao army's formations was still large enough, and there was also a corridor. After losing several military formations slightly, using the time they had acquired, the other formations were ready.

Ma Chao continued to rush forward with passion, and then he realized that he was trapped in a quagmire. Moreover, the main force of Liu Bei behind him had not chased out of the defense line. The officers around him also brought sufficient information to Ma Chao at this time. His Majesty asked for moderate pursuit and could not go deeper.

Ma Chao finally calmed down a little, fought to the death, and killed the enemy troops that were at least three to five times the loss on his own, and successfully escaped from the battle. The cautious tiger and leopard cavalry of Cao's army had no time to assemble, so he could not and dared not chase Ma Chao, and watched him kill and retreat.

Of course, Ma Chao paid a lot of money for this impulse. At least two thousand elite cavalry of the Han army, light and heavy cavalry, were killed and injured and trapped in the Cao army formation.

Because the Han army did not squeeze out the entire army and forced the Cao army to retreat, the Cao army temporarily controlled the battlefield on the east side. Therefore, even hundreds of Han army's iron-armored cavalry were killed by horses and were not fatally injured, they could not escape. They were surrounded by dozens of times the spearmen of Cao army and stabbed them all in the formation.

In other words, if Liu Bei had attacked and seized control of the battlefield in order to rescue Ma Chao at that time, he would have saved at least more than a thousand more lives of the injured Han cavalry, so that they would not be killed after falling off the horse and losing their power.

But Liu Bei knew very well that in order to minimize the overall losses of hundreds of thousands of people, he could not be impulsive. Their purpose was very clear, that is, Cao Cao would really flee, and they would chase him. As long as Cao Cao still maintained his combat power, morale and system, it would be a stalemate!

Even if Liu Bei was not clear, Lu Su and Fa Zheng could persuade Liu Bei to make it clear.

The Han army can dig simple trenches and low walls fortifications on the plains in one day, and never fight a real-life battle with the Cao army! Why don’t you use the benefits of engineers?

What's more, the time was with Liu Bei. In the past ten days, Liu Bei could get 90,000 more reinforcements and surround Cao Cao from the north and south.

Now if the Cao army is severely damaged and consumed, the rear will become weaker and weaker, the Han army's reinforcements will also be faster, and the resistance and delays along the way will be even smaller. Liu Bei will just drag it!

Those who are eager to fight should always be Cao Cao’s side!

Cao Cao wanted to anger Liu Bei, so when the battlefield calmed down a little, he even asked to stop the army formations in front and slaughter the Han cavalry left by Ma Chao after retreating, or just stabbed him seriously and caused the enemy to lose his resistance.

Afterwards, Cao Cao ordered to collect seven or eight hundred enemy soldiers' bodies, some of which were even dead long ago, but their bodies were still intact. Some were seriously injured and unable to move.

Then, Cao Cao asked someone to pull these wounded soldiers and dead bodies of the Han army to the front of the formation, and beheaded one by one to the first row to show the Han army, trying to anger and tease the Han army to rescue their comrades and avenge them.

Unfortunately, the battlefield has always maintained a gradually stern and indifferent state. With the collapse of Cao's troops on the offensive and defensive line, they retreated and regained their contracts, the Han army was always so cold that the Han army's infantry did not chase out of the defense line.

"I don't chase this? I can't bear it? Liu Bei actually asked his soldiers to take the opportunity to clean the battlefield and move away the bodies of our army piled up in the first trench? Our army has lost for a while, but Liu Bei doesn't think he can fight me in a dignified manner?"

When Cao Cao saw the scene in front of him, he almost filled his chest with anger, and was extremely sad and angry.

Obviously, the Han army moved away the enemy corpses piled up in the frozen trench, which was clearly telling Cao army: In the next wave, you will rush up again. When you want to recapture the defense line of the trench low wall, you need to pile up the bottom of the trench with the corpses to ensure anti-slip!

This persistence has been very determined, completely offsetting the morale blow from Cao Cao's provocative act of beheading the enemy's wounded cavalry in front of the formation and robbing horses and stripping iron armor.

The battlefield was in a repressive stalemate. The two sides were left with only strong crossbows and still firing symbolically, but no one charged again. It was already noon, and the sky was getting darker and colder, but both sides could not break the deadlock, and there were only some sporadic tentative attacks in the future.

The difficulty of camping and stalemate has also begun to gradually emerge.

The Han army stayed there for a day and a half before, so it was easy to set up some tents to camp.

But in general, it was not enough for all soldiers to sleep, because the Han army was mainly digging defense lines, and the camp was enough to have one-third of the people rest. Everyone worked in three shifts. Now that the war time has stopped, some people have to switch to reserve teams and return to Wuping County to spend the night.

On the Cao army, some troops could go to Luyi County to rest, or simply withdraw too many soldiers to Qiao County. The number of counties and construction scale controlled by Cao army on the battlefield was dominant.

But the Cao army who had to stay in the wild camping would only have more difficulties than the Han army. After all, they were the attacking side today and took the initiative to rush to this battlefield that had just been scorched in the ground a few days ago, and there was no camp at all before.

Therefore, the conditions for the protracted war of Cao's army were very poor, almost like the Jin army during the later battle of Yehuling in Mongolian and later generations. Many people had to "stand in the snow with armor and slap in the snow", and their energy and spirit would be continuously consumed. This also destined that Cao Cao could not continue to consume.

However, there is no place to retreat, and there is no meaning.

Even if he could use the help of Ye Se to retreat to prevent Liu Bei from pursuing, Cao Cao had to worry about the issue of "there is nothing but the truth".

After all, Cao's army had just fallen into a disadvantage, and retreated on the first night. It was easy to guess by Liu Bei, and then chased by a large group of cavalrymen.

There was no need to fight for two or three days, and never let the other party see the abnormality. Even after repelling some enemy attempts to retreat without warning, in order to achieve the most unawareness.

At least, with Cao Cao's suspicion, he felt that this was necessary.

The first night, I spent the same while the enemy was still. The next morning, Cao Cao received a lot of bad news, saying that because the camp was built too slowly, thousands of new recruits froze to death in one night!

The number of people who have lost their combat effectiveness due to frostbite is even greater. Some soldiers are clearly alive, but their fingers or ears are frozen.

Hundreds of thousands of people were piled up in a small plain in the western part of Qiao County. All the dead plants and branches nearby were cut down, and so many people were not enough to make fires to keep warm. There were not enough tents, so it was not surprising that people would freeze to death in one night.

There must be people on the Han army who were frozen to death, but they were definitely much less than the Cao army. At least they set up camp more than a day in advance, with enough tents for one-third of the soldiers to sleep.

At worst, you can squeeze together to sit in a tent to keep warm and can't lie down. At most, it will be a little uncomfortable, but there will be very few deaths. Moreover, Liu Bei's jurisdiction has popularized cotton planting many years earlier than Cao Cao, and the popularity of cotton jackets is much higher.

Under Cao Cao's rule, only some areas of Shandong (now Zhao area) have cotton weaving cotton. All cotton production is used to weave cloth to improve people's livelihood and military supplies, and it is not enough to fill cotton jackets at all.

Moreover, Cao's army was so anxious to recruit men. More than 300,000 men could not have cotton jackets or leather windbreakers.

In addition to the troops being frantically consumed by adverse weather and geography, Cao Cao also received another bad news one after another late that morning.

It was sent by Li Dian, who was in charge of the right wing on the south side, because Li Dian's troops intercepted a messenger from his own side who came along the vortex water early in the morning. After Li Dian confirmed his identity, he immediately took the messenger to be received by Cao Cao himself.

Cao Cao learned about a news from the messenger that just two days ago, under the leadership of Li Su, the Han army in Huainan had already taken a waterway to break through Dangtu County, where the Huaihe River and Wohu River converge.

(Note: Dangtu County in the Han Dynasty is not the same as the modern ones. The modern ones are in Ma'anshan, which are already south of the Yangtze River. Dangtu in the Han Dynasty is on the bank of the Huai River, which is equivalent to Bengbu City, Anhui today.)

Moreover, the messenger walked on the road for a day and a half, and rushed up the vortex stream for nearly four hundred miles to deliver the letter.

Cao Cao could completely speculate that Li Su must have not been idle for this day and a half. Maybe he had entered Wo Water from Dangtu County, attacked against the current, and took down Longkang County, Qiao County, which was some of the upstream of Wo Water.
Chapter completed!