In the third month of Wu Zhenxing's first year, the Southwest Campaign, which had lasted for four months, entered the strategic counter-offensive phase of the Huaxia Army, with the Battle of Wangyuan Bridge as the turning point. Search: \(¨End¨Book¨God¨Station¨) to read high-quality literature for free.

The struggle and fighting for roads unfolded simultaneously with "peace talks" for exchanging prisoners. Although it was an exchange of hundreds of prisoners, the Jin side still put in a lot of effort in screening the list. On the third day after the start of the negotiations, the Huaxia Army arranged four routes of troops to extend towards Huangming County and Yushui Creek, opening up the road for pursuit.

The Jurchen's troop deployment was equally swift. As the Huaxia Army advanced, the Jin army raised white flags, brought out all their weapons, and presented a posture of a full-scale attack, a do-or-die desperate struggle. In the initial days, this posture was extremely resolute. In several key local areas, the Jurchen troops launched fierce offensives, their attacks intense and fragmented, intertwined like dogs' teeth.

Looking back from the future, this sophisticated feint once misled many people—of course, it cannot be purely said to be a feint. If the Jin people were really desperate and insisted on breaking into the Chengdu Plain regardless of everything, then in the long run, the Jin people would certainly have no way to return home, but at least in the short term, they could still create a lot of trouble for the Huaxia Army. Because of such tactics, the Huaxia Army's actions in the first few days of March were relatively cautious. Also, because the Jin army's attitude seemed so realistic, the defection work of Han generals such as Li Rulai was actually delayed.

Such a situation could not last too long. On the sixth day of March, as several special operations teams of the Huaxia Army resolutely and steadily advanced, the Jurchens could no longer maintain their position on the front line. On this day, as Ba Lisu led the front-line troops to launch a general attack, the main force of the Jin army began to retreat. At the moment when the true intention was revealed, the mountain battlefield spanning dozens of miles instantly boiled over.

From Shiling to Xiukou, the attacking troops encountered intensive artillery fire. Half of the remaining rockets were approved for use. Tens of thousands of Han troops were blocked in front of the battlefield, and the defection of the Han troops became a key part of the battlefield at this time.

The outcome of the great battle that took place at Wangyuan Bridge a few days earlier, even though a large number of ordinary soldiers in the Jin army did not understand its significance, and the Han army was even more strictly blocked from the news, senior generals such as Li Rulai were clear about the whole story. If they were initially skeptical about the rumors that the Jurchens were about to retreat, then by the sixth day of March, the true intentions of the Jurchens began to become clear.

The large-scale offensive on the front line was carried out with great fanfare, and Wanyan Saba kept a close eye on Li Rulai and others. However, under the operation of the Huaxia Army's spies, the necessary information was still delivered to the eyes of several key generals.

The conditions given by the Huaxia Army for this defection were actually not lenient. Once they defected, the Han army units had to immediately join the battlefield, responsible for completing the counter-attack, encirclement, and annihilation of the Jin army's advancing troops—in various details, this was a version of the Liangshan initiation certificate, requiring life in exchange for whitewashing. Because they all realized that the war had entered a critical stage, Li Rulai and others once wanted to ask for a higher price, but the Huaxia Army's negotiation did not compromise.

The Huaxia Army officer in charge of defecting Li Rulai was Xu Shaoyuan, who once worked with Ning Yi in the secretariat. He had previously successfully contacted Li Rulai twice. On the sixth day of March, due to the Jurchens' strict surveillance, he originally planned to issue a final ultimatum to Li Rulai by letter, but the other party was so resourceful that he actually exchanged identities with Xu Shaoyuan's guards under the noses of the Jurchens, so that the two sides could meet directly.

After conveying the Huaxia Army's demands, Li Rulai's face darkened and he began to complain, such as "the combat strength of the brothers under his command is not strong," "the Jin dogs are watching very closely, it is difficult to inform everyone to take action," and "going against Ba Lisu is tantamount to sending them to their deaths," and later, there was also the threat that "if we don't surrender, tens of thousands of people blocking the road will also cause you a lot of trouble." Xu Shaoyuan just shook his head indifferently.

"The headquarters and the General Staff have made a decision. If you don't defect before midnight tonight, we will launch an attack and kill through you. If you pretend to defect and block the road by doing the work without putting in the effort, we will kill through you as well. This is Plan No. 2, and the plan has already been prepared." Xu Shaoyuan said, "Mr. Ning also asked me to bring you a few words."

"…Speak."

"Mr. Ning said that for a long time, you have been generals of the Wu Dynasty. You should have defended your country and died in battle, but you didn't. Of course, you have your own reasons. You can say that for more than ten years, no one has fought a beautiful victory in front of the Jurchens. But this victory is here today."

"The Huaxia Army has risked their lives to find a way out. If you want to take it, risk your lives, pick up the dignity and personality you have lost for more than ten years, and fulfill the obligations of a soldier. Of course, if the facts prove that you can't pick it up and think you can cause trouble for others, then it only shows that you have no value in living... Over the years, the Huaxia Army has never been afraid of trouble."

These merciless words brought by Xu Shaoyuan made the other party's expression somewhat unnatural. Li Rulai was silent for a long time and asked someone to send Xu Shaoyuan out, but when Xu Shaoyuan left, he also added a sentence: "You also go back and ask Mr. Ning... If he handles things like this, when the wall collapses in the future, isn't he afraid that everyone will push it down?"

After dark that day, a large-scale defection uprising broke out in the Han army camp.

About a quarter of the troops took the initiative to attack the Jin army at the first time, another quarter followed suit, and more troops fell into great chaos.

Wanyan Saba, who was in charge of guarding the Han army, led his personal guards to clash with Li Rulai's rebellious troops, and then fought his way out of the heavy encirclement arranged by Li Rulai.

In the vast mountains, fierce battles unfolded. During this period, most members of the First Division and Second Division shouldered the task of blocking Ba Lisu head-on at Shiling and Xiukou. The most capable force in field battles and fortifications in the Fourth Division and Fifth Division, together with the thousands of people led by Ning Yi, successively invested in the blocking, fortification, and annihilation operations against the Jin army's retreating mountain roads.

On the sixth day of March, about 7,000 people launched attacks on six nodes on the retreating mountain roads at the first time. By the eighth day, this scale expanded to 13,000. On the tenth day, the troops successively attacking forward reached 20,000, and the forward edge of the attack directly extended to the complex terrain of Yushui Creek.

From Wangyuan Bridge to Jiange, the distance is less than a hundred miles in total, and the speed of forced march only takes one day to reach, but nearly 100,000 Jin troops were thus intercepted on the winding mountain road.

In fact, in response to the retreat, the Jin army and generals who knew that there was no hope of surrender also put up a tragic and tenacious resistance. Although the Huaxia Army had taken out the era-crossing firearms at this time, the power of firearms was ultimately reduced to a minimum in the rugged mountain roads. The pursuing Huaxia Army troops walked along paths more rugged than the roads, and could not carry many weapons and supplies. Their only advantage was that occupying a certain point could block a large army, but in the local part of the battle, the Jin army's numerical advantage returned again, and they did not even need to fear the Huaxia Army's firearms too much.

Because of this understanding, in this retreat, Wanyan Zonghan's approach was not to escape in a hurry, but to systematically divide and mobilize the various troops in the Jin army. He made the task clear to every chiliarch. Once encountering the Huaxia Army's blockade, they would stop to gather the local superior forces and swallow this part of the Huaxia Army.

From the perspective of military strategy, it must be admitted that this response was very correct, and it also precisely reflected Wanyan Zonghan's veteran and difficult nature throughout his life. But what he had not considered, or even if he had considered, he could not do anything about, was that from the moment the army retreated, the invincible military spirit of the Jurchen army, which had been honed by Wanyan Aguda, Wanyan Zonghan, and other generations for thirty years, finally began to disintegrate.

The difficulties encountered on the way to invade the southwest before could still be said to have encountered an evenly matched enemy—after all, the Jin army had also fought difficult battles before, and the strength of the enemy even made them feel blood boiling—but at this moment, the large army that occupied the number turned to retreat, which invisibly explained many problems.

Some "enlightened people" among the generals were still maintaining and encouraging morale. In the local mountain battlefield, the fighting was still violent and fierce. The Jurchen troops hysterically rushed towards the Huaxia Army blocking the road. The generals took the lead, wanting to open up a road for the retreating army, and wanting to use their superior forces to cooperate with this spreading mountain road to swallow the Huaxia Army piece by piece.

But the situation was undergoing subtle changes. Even in the mutual slashing of cold weapons, the Jin people were defeated again and again in their original good at combat. The fearless Jurchen warriors were chopped down in pools of blood, and some soldiers who had begun to cherish their lives chose to collapse and flee.

This change was also fed back to the Huaxia Army's forward command. Although the Jurchen's response was still extremely veteran, and the strategizing of some generals even appeared more proactive than before, and the fighting was still fierce, in large-scale operations and cooperation, there often began to be recklessness and/or rapid collapse. They were gradually losing their composure and resilience in mutual cooperation.

"...When the Jurchens who are accustomed to savage warfare begin to pay attention to numerical advantages, it shows that the downhill they are taking has begun to become obvious."

On the tenth day of March, Ning Yi's orders and conclusions spread throughout the army, and also reached the Jin army soon after: "What we have to do next is to peel off their dignity little by little on the hundred-mile mountain road, so that everyone in them can clearly recognize that the so-called 'ten thousand are invincible' is an outdated old joke!"

The quality of the Jurchens as the peak army of this era is disintegrating, but for ordinary armies, it is still a nightmare. On the eleventh day of March, the Ba Lisu and Saba troops blocking the front began to retreat and break through after paying huge losses, and the Han army troops who were constantly making trouble in the rear became lambs before trapped beasts.

Although they were subjected to the oppression of both sides, Li Rulai and others, who did not dare to retreat, resisted stubbornly, but after a day of fighting, Ba Lisu and Saba still led their troops to kill through Li Rulai's camp, and the various Han army units suffered heavy casualties.

For Li Rulai and the various Han army units, it was not a bad thing. Even many years later, he once sighed: "Those who survived can finally give an account to the Huaxia Army."

After the news of his brother Yin Shuke's death came, Ba Lisu wore a white towel on his forehead and fought fiercely. However, judging from his method of deploying troops, this Jurchen veteran still maintained great sobriety and rationality. He encouraged military morale with a sad army posture, cooperated with Wanyan Saba to guard the rear, and stubbornly resisted the pursuit of the First and Second Divisions of the Huaxia Fifth Army.

The situation in the mountains ahead gradually became difficult in the fierce battle.

For the Jurchen people, the scouting operations continued in the complex mountains. Occasionally, spreading mountain fires could be seen in sunny days, and smoke rose. If the mountain roads were slippery on rainy days, it was even more difficult to travel. The roads were often dug off by the Huaxia Army that had been killed, or landmines were buried, or a certain key point was occupied by the Huaxia Army. The offensive was in progress in the front, and the follow-up troops were blocked on the road in the mountains and valleys. In this case, there would occasionally be cold shots flying out of the forest, hitting a certain general or headman, and it became difficult to even avoid them when the crowd was crowded.

Yu Yu still led scouts and elite Jurchen soldiers to run in the mountains, blocking the pursuit of the Huaxia Army soldiers, and also caused trouble for the pursuing Huaxia Army troops within a certain period of time. On the fourteenth day of March, the scout troops led by Yu Yu encountered the First Regiment of the Second Brigade of the Fourth Division of the Huaxia Army, which was an elite regiment in the Huaxia Army, later known as the "Victory Gorge Hero Regiment"—in the "Swallowing Fire" operation that defeated the Erlili unit in Yushui Creek last year, this regiment, led by Regiment Commander Shen Changye, blocked the enemy's retreating main force in Victory Gorge, suffered more than half of the casualties, and did not retreat an inch.

The then Regiment Commander Shen Changye sacrificed on the mountain battlefield one month after the Victory Gorge operation. Now the Regiment Commander who took over his position was the original Second Battalion Commander Qiu Yunsheng. After encountering Yu Yu and others, he commanded the troops to launch an operation relying on the terrain, while he himself, relying on the advantages of the early reconnaissance, led a company around the most dangerous and slippery mountain road to outflank Yu Yu's rear.

After the battle, people picked out Yu Yu's body from the pile of dead people.

The good news spread throughout the battlefield. For the Jin army, of course, it could only be regarded as bad news.

This will not be the only bad news in March.

On the sixteenth day of March, Dalai died in a personally led operation.

During the four months of the entire Southwest Campaign, this manic Jurchen general was thinking about avenging Qu Zhengyan for the hatred in the Northwest. The Huaxia Army had also made several targeted plans because of this. But until the end, such a thing never happened. The two sides never展開a direct confrontation on the battlefield from beginning to end.

On the sixteenth day of March, Dalai led his soldiers to attack a small high ground called Yuling on the way back, trying to surround and drive away the Huaxia Army that was nailed to this mountain and threatening the mountain road. The Huaxia Army defended based on the geographical advantage. The battle lasted for most of the day, and tens of thousands of troops in the rear were blocked and stopped. Dalai personally organized three assaults.

In the attack that was about to advance to the top of the mountain, a seriously injured Huaxia Army soldier lying in a pool of blood suddenly launched an attack. At that time, there were still eight Jurchen warriors guarding Dalai, but on that extremely fierce front line, no one could react. The two sides exchanged a knife. Dalai's long knife pierced the chest of the Huaxia Army soldier who rushed down, but the Huaxia Army soldier's knife chopped down on his face. The helmet was split with a gap, and half of his head was split open on the spot.

The fighting did not stop because of this. By the night of this day, the Huaxia Army that occupied the top of the mountain left under the bombardment of the artillery that the Jurchens finally dragged over, and the road one mile away in front was subsequently occupied by the Huaxia Army soldiers. They dug up the road and buried landmines.

Hundreds of thousands of people crowded on the spreading mountain road, like a giant snake with too large a body wanting to钻over a too narrow culvert, and every attack of the Huaxia Army was like setting nails on the snake's body. Due to the influence of the terrain, the scale of each battle was not very large, but each of these battles had to stop the almost entire of this large snake.

Both sides were suffering huge losses, but as time went by, what lingered around the Jurchen troops was an increasing impatience. At this moment, from the generals to the soldiers, they had already realized that the original hunter had completely become the prey. The large and bloated Jin army began to be eager to escape, and the Huaxia Army, although small in number, had pounced up like tarsal maggots, wanting to tear this prey into a skeleton piece by piece.

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