Flying Clouds in Another World

Chapter 332: Battle against Qin Jiu outside Hanchuan City

Qin Jiu's childhood dream was to become a great general and martial arts master like his father Qin Cheng! He often thinks now:

If the Earl's eldest daughter Liu Qianqian was not a girl but the eldest son, then perhaps he would become the eldest son's absolute confidant!

Like his father, he will grow up with the master since childhood and become the absolute pillar of the Liu family!

It’s a pity that all this is just if!

What's more, his talent in martial arts is indeed not as good as that freak Liu Shihu, and even compared to his father, it is far inferior.

Fortunately, I am very talented in the military, especially in the use of cavalry.

Coupled with his father's teaching and personal example, and the Earl's focused training, he considers himself to be the leader of the younger generation in both military theory and practical experience.

It’s a pity that Anping is too small and there is no place for me to use my talents!

But no one expected that the young master, who had originally planned to focus on literature after entering the capital, was actually drafted by the emperor into the army, and that he would also form a student camp to follow the army in the northern expedition.

As a result, he and Tuo Dajun were sent to the young master's side and entered the student camp, and were directly arranged by the young master to be his deputies!

It can be said that in the student camp, the young master is ranked first, and he is the second in command! Moreover, the young master only takes charge of major matters but rarely manages trivial matters. He still lets himself be in charge of various specific affairs in the camp.

Although those young masters from the military academy and the old veterans in the army looked down on him at first, even Tuo Dajun and his group of barbarians were unwilling to accept him.

But the battles after the Northern Expedition allowed him to gain a firm foothold in the student camp.

As the student camp continued to expand and upgrade, it eventually became the Wasteland Suppression Army, and his position as the second-in-command in the army became increasingly secure.

But at the same time, the once young and frivolous heart has become more and more stable, and the style of doing things has become more and more cautious.

At this time, Qin Jiu felt both relieved and helpless, and at the same time, he was also slightly worried.

Fortunately, he managed to eliminate 70 to 80 percent of the nearly 10,000 Qiang cavalry.

Unfortunately, he had no other options for dealing with the 200,000 or so barefoot infantry except harassment and intimidation.

What worries him is that his current military strength is too small, only about five or six thousand people at most.

Apart from guarding the Qiang captives, patrolling and conducting reconnaissance, and taking care of casualties, he can currently only mobilize three to four thousand people to block the main infantry force of the barefoot army.

Although the barefoot soldiers under Hanchuan City were not even a mob in Qin Jiu's opinion, the total number was there.

Two or three hundred thousand people, that's nearly a hundred times the number of combat troops he has available. Even if only one-tenth of them can barely be considered combat troops, that's still tens of thousands of people!

He had to prevent the barefoot soldiers from escaping as much as possible, while also being careful not to expose the fact that his own forces were small.

Fortunately, these barefoot soldiers are now leaderless, and the so-called generals do not have much experience in high-level military combat. They were deceived by my own intimidation and deception, and are temporarily trapped under the city of Hanchuan.

As the subsequent reinforcements continued to arrive, Qin Jiu's uneasy heart finally calmed down:

If you want to herd the sheep, you still need enough sheepdogs!

When the generals of the Barefoot Army realized that it was difficult to fight on their own and find a way to break out, they finally elected a new leader as the commander-in-chief of the entire army to unify the command of the operations.

But at this time, they discovered that the government troops besieging them were no longer just the Zhenhuang Army cavalry.

In just two or three days, the Zhenhuang Army had gathered more than 20,000 people, and there were also more than 20,000 local troops such as militiamen and county brigades drawn from other counties.

These local troops may be timid and work less hard when fighting against adverse circumstances, but they immediately become more powerful when fighting against favorable circumstances.

Although the barefoot army was large in number, only about 70,000 or 80,000 of them had any fighting power, less than 30% of the total number. As for the armored soldiers, there were even fewer, only about 30,000 or 40,000.

After the new commander of the barefoot army came out, he immediately organized a breakout.

He divided the entire army into three routes to break out simultaneously. Nearly 10,000 armored soldiers and more than 40,000 unarmored soldiers formed one route, 30,000 armored soldiers formed one route, and the remaining more than 100,000 mobs formed another route.

Qin Jiu only divided his troops into two groups to stop the enemy.

He personally led more than 20,000 Zhenhuang troops to fight against 30,000 barefoot soldiers, and let the local troops fight against a mob of more than 100,000.

As for the nearly ten thousand armored soldiers and tens of thousands of unarmored soldiers, he could only send out more than a thousand cavalrymen to follow them, and at the same time sent pigeons to send letters to Hanchuan City, asking the defenders in the city to cooperate.

A large-scale field battle began.

Among the three breakout groups of the barefoot army, the first to be defeated were the 30,000 soldiers led by the new commander himself.

These 30,000 armored soldiers were certainly elite troops in the barefoot army, but in Qin Jiu's opinion, they were really not that good, and were just at the level of the Anping County folk militia.

With 20,000 cavalrymen who had fought on the northern wilderness prairie, against 30,000 infantrymen who had only been formed for less than a month or two, if Qin Jiu still could not win, he might as well buy a piece of tofu and kill himself out of shame.

With the new commander killed in battle and more than half of the soldiers injured or killed, only a thousand of the 30,000 soldiers succeeded in breaking through, and the rest were wiped out.

After leaving behind a brigade of soldiers to guard the prisoners of war, Qin Jiu immediately led his troops to attack the mob.

A mob is a mob. After suffering only 20,000 to 30,000 casualties, they retreated back to the city of Hanchuan.

Seeing that the situation was settled, Qin Jiu abandoned the mob and went after the tens of thousands of unarmored soldiers.

However, what he did not expect was that the barefoot army did not rush to escape, but after marching only thirty miles, they sent nearly ten thousand soldiers to set up an ambush in a small valley, waiting for the opportunity to ambush the Zhenhuang Army.

After fighting continuously for nearly a day, thousands of Qin Jiu's vanguard brigade were ambushed and caught off guard, losing nearly half of their men in one fell swoop.

This ambush made Qin Jiu, who had been somewhat complacent with his consecutive victories, suddenly wake up. He had to reorganize his troops and stop.

The successive battles had actually exhausted the Zhenhuang army and they were now at the end of their strength.

Even if Qin Jiu was unwilling to give up, he could only wait until the horse's physical strength recovered before considering continuing the battle. But if it really came to that, I'm afraid it would be dark.

In the end, Qin Jiu had no choice but to retreat back to Hanchuan City.

Looking at the Zhenhuang Army retreating, a barefoot army general also wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Fortunately! Fortunately! The government troops did not charge forward, otherwise, it would be lucky if half of the nearly 10,000 soldiers could escape! Even I, Xiang Tai, might die here!"

After confirming that Qin Jiu was slowly retreating back to Hanchuan City, Xiang Tai led the six or seven thousand armored soldiers to retreat overnight to chase the tens of thousands of unarmored soldiers.