Wu Ji smiled and waved his hand, his movements were somewhat similar to those of King Zhao Run of Wei.

"General, why are you here?"

After giving the salute, Xu Jiong asked in surprise.

Because in the strategic deployment of Shen Yu, the governor of Shangshui County, Wu Ji, the number one general in his Shangshui Army, was responsible for Shangshui County. After all, Shangshui County was an important part of the entire Shangshui defense line. If this place is captured by the Chu army, the Chu army can go north along the Cai River and attack Daliang.

Such an important strategic place naturally needs strong generals to guard it, and the most courageous general in the Shang Shui Army is undoubtedly Wu Ji.

"I just came to take a look...how is the battle going?"

Wu Ji explained with a smile.

Hearing this, Xu Jiong pointed to the other side of the river in the distance and said with a bit of ridicule: "Even after twenty years, the Chu people still haven't made any progress. They foolishly think that they can defeat me just based on their numerical superiority." military."

"..."

Wu Ji squinted his eyes and observed the other side of the river, looking at the tragedy on the other side of the river where corpses were strewn across the river, as well as the soldiers who had been forced by the supervising team to launch a desperate charge.

He could understand the irony in Xu Jiong's words.

Because both of them were born in Chu, before defecting to Wei, they were accustomed to Chu's fighting method of purely using human lives to build victory.

In fact, Wu Ji was demoted back then and was promoted to a Thousand-Man General in charge of food and army recruitment - to put it nicely, he was a Thousand-Man General, but to put it worse, he was just cannon fodder with the title of Thousand-Man General.

When the Wei State annexed the two countries Zheng and Liang, it absorbed the culture of the two countries and emphasized that "it is a crime to punish those who do not teach". Therefore, even the most ordinary soldiers will undergo rigorous training before setting foot on the battlefield. Unless it is facing the danger of the country's collapse, the Wei State will never use militia - even if the militia is recruited during the war, it will only be responsible for escorting grain and grass, etc., and will not be used directly on the battlefield.

The reason is that Wei State initially had a small population, so it paid special attention to this aspect.

The same goes for South Korea at this point - South Korea has been invaded by many foreign races and its national population has never been able to grow rapidly, so it also attaches great importance to this area.

But Chu State is just the opposite. Chu State’s territory is too broad. Even today’s Wei State may not be able to catch up with Chu State in terms of land area. Unfortunately, although Chu State has a wide territory, there are many swamps in it. , dense forests, coupled with the underdeveloped agriculture of Chu State, this resulted in the excessive population becoming a burden.

Precisely because of the burden, the Chu State was very indifferent to human life. In addition, the local kings were reluctant to spend money on their armies and tried to use numbers to make up for the low combat effectiveness of the army. These various reasons contributed to Chu's China’s method of war in which human lives are purely used to build victory.

Wu Ji had never thought of this before, but over the years, he followed the king of Wei Zhao Run to fight in the north and south, and gradually saw the war methods of various countries. Only then did he realize that in the entire Central Plains, maybe only Chu State was so careless about human life - besides this

, even the Qin State in the west only used the "military merit system" to stimulate the desire of the irregular army soldiers for war, and did not use the supervising troops to force the friendly troops in front to attack the enemy like the Chu State.

military.

"Chu's concept of war is distorted." Such a sentence suddenly came out of Wu Ji's mouth, which made Xu Jiong open his eyes in surprise.

"What are you looking at?" Wu Ji rolled his eyes and said angrily: "Although I have only been to the Daliang Military School for a few days, he has also read books written by Xu Yin, Baili Ba, and Zhu Hai.

Please read..."

Hearing this, Xu Jiong grinned and said: "General, your force alone is enough to deter other countries. Why are you reading military books? Isn't this a waste of time?"

"Hmm."

Seeing that Xu Jiong seemed to be praising him, Wu Ji smiled somewhat complacently, but when he thought about it carefully, he suddenly felt that Xu Jiong's words might not be good words.

Yes, General Wu Ji's force alone is enough. This is not a good thing at all.

"You're so brave."

Wu Ji glared at Xu Jiong angrily.

Seeing that Wu Ji had a fierce look in his eyes, Xu Jiong quickly apologized and quickly changed the subject: "General, Pingyu Lord Xiong Hu, most likely intends to consume our army's crossbow arrows first. In this moment, my subordinates

The soldiers fired nearly 20,000 crossbow bolts, which consumes too much..."

Seeing Xu Jiong mentioning business, Wu Ji also put away his playful anger and frowned as he looked at the Chu army on the other side of the river.

To be fair, at the cost of nearly 20,000 crossbow bolts, the Chu army on the opposite side suffered at least 8,000 casualties. Logically speaking, this should be a complete victory for the Wei army, but in fact, the Wei army did not actually take advantage of it.

How much cheaper.

"No need to worry."

Wu Ji said in a deep voice: "Lord Shen Yu has ordered the workshops in Shangshui City to speed up the production of crossbow arrows. He has also notified Anling and other places, asking them to work together to make crossbow arrows..."

That's what he said, but in fact Wu Ji himself couldn't guarantee whether the production of the crossbow arrows could keep up with the consumption speed. After all, Xu Jiong's consumption speed was too exaggerated, and it was consumed in less than two hours.

There are nearly 20,000 crossbow arrows. Even if those crossbow arrows are made of wooden materials, their production cannot keep up with the consumption rate.

"How many crossbow bolts do you still have in your camp?" Wu Ji asked with a frown.

"There are only more than 10,000." Xu Jiong explained: "When the general led his army to leave the city, he only received 30,000 crossbow bolts from the munitions office. I'm afraid there won't be many left after today's shooting..." At this point

, he glanced at the Chu army on the other side of the river, shook his head and said: "The general never thought before that the Chu army's... offensive would be so... crazy."

What he actually wanted to say was that he did not expect that the Chu army's death-defeating tactics would be carried out so crazily and thoroughly, and that they did not take the lives of the soldiers recruited seriously at all.

"Well——"

Wu Ji pondered for a moment and said: "In this case, you can ask the camp behind to transport the crossbow bolts to you. If it is still not enough, it is not a bad idea to retreat temporarily..."

The "Chen Shu" he refers to is Chen Shu, the general of the Shang Shui army stationed in the next Wei camp.

Upon hearing this, Xu Jiong's face tightened and he quickly said: "General, even if the crossbow bolts are exhausted, my camp will never let the Chu army cross this river..."

"It's not necessary." Wu Ji interrupted Xu Jiong's words and said seriously: "Don't forget your Majesty's past teachings. If you can use "dead objects" like crossbow arrows to exchange for the casualties of "living objects" of the enemy, there is no need.

Tell the soldiers to risk their lives, they can't break through my Shangshui. Don't forget, there are Youma troops in the plains outside the city... Remember, as a general, you must not care about the gains and losses of one city or one place..."

At this point, he saw Xu Jiong tilting his head and looking at him, so he added angrily: "This is what I also read in the book. Is there any problem?"

"Don't dare." Xu Jiong quickly apologized with a smile.

Everyone in the Shangshui Army knows that their general Wu Ji is the best in the world in terms of personal force. But unfortunately, this general's mind is not quick. Even though he has read countless art of war over the years, when commanding a war,

, at best, it can only be mediocre, without any outstanding features, and at best, it can only make no mistakes.

General Wu Ji was not good at it, like Zhai Huang and Sun Shuke, who suddenly had an idea when commanding and came up with clever plans to lure the enemy into making mistakes.

Not to mention compared to their monarch Zhao Run of Wei.

Of course, for General Wu Ji, force alone is enough.

Xu Jiong had no doubt that even at this time, as long as he helped the general beside him attract the Chu army's attention, and the general led a cavalry to suddenly join the battlefield, he might be able to defeat the Chu army's commander-in-chief.

Jun Xionghu was captured alive or beheaded.

Of course, the premise is that Pingyu Lord Xiong Hu is on the battlefield at this moment.

But it is a pity that Xu Jiong looked here for most of the day and did not see the flag of Pingyu Lord Xiong Hu, let alone the figure of the person.

Thinking about it, the king of Chu State probably learned the lesson when he was surrounded and captured alive by Zhao Run, the king of Wei State, and hid far behind.

On that day, Chu general Xue Le, under the command of Lord Pingyu Xiong Hu, led an army to launch a four-hour attack on the camp of Xu Jiong's army. Unfortunately, it still failed to shake the Wei army's defense line. Instead, it cost nearly 15,000 soldiers.

human casualties.

On the other hand, the Wei army suffered only a few hundred casualties, mainly from the Chu army's crossbowmen.

It has to be said that the ratio of casualties between the two armies is really very different.

But having said that, despite paying such heavy casualties, Chu general Xue Le also achieved his goal, which was to effectively consume the Wei army's crossbow arrow reserves.

In the next few days, the Chu army refused to give up. Even though the morale of the grain soldiers was so low that deserters frequently appeared, Pingyu Lord Xiong Hu still ordered all armies to send grain soldiers to continue attacking the Wei camp in front of them. Later, even

So there was one in the morning and one in the afternoon, giving Wei Jun no chance to breathe at all.

Faced with Chu's rogue human sea offensive, the soldiers under Xu Jiong, the general of the Shang Shui Army, were greatly depleted in energy. In order to avoid unnecessary losses, they had no choice but to abandon the camp and retreat backwards.

On the second day of March in the first year of Wei Zhaowu, the army of Pingyu Lord Xiong Hu broke through the first Wei camp on the outermost plain south of Shangshui City.
Chapter completed!