The setting sun was like blood, and all the grass and trees on the hillside were red, dyed with the blood of the Tartars.

Dong Fox was like a gambler who had lost all his money. He always thought that all the soldiers he collected would have died in vain, so he kept increasing his bets!

In order to regroup, he transferred Changtu from the center and ordered him to lead his troops to continue the fierce attack on the right!

"Charge, kill! Charge to the border wall and you'll be rewarded with a cow and a Han woman!" The bald man took off his outer robe, bare his upper body, brandished a scimitar, and screamed strangely. He led the Uriankhai warriors over the ground full of wounded soldiers and launched the umpteenth attack towards the border wall littered with corpses.

This time, there was no "swarm" of arrows. The sporadic arrows and stones of the Ming army could not stop the pace of the Wuliangha elite. Except for the shirtless bald men, they all wore leather armor, leather helmets, and held leather shields in their hands. They could well resist ordinary bows and arrows and even lead bullets from muskets.

Subahai and Chaohua, whose troops suffered heavy casualties, could not help but curse inwardly, "Dong Huli, this old fox, is deliberately consuming our strength and then picking the peaches!"

But this is not the time to be fussy, the most important thing is to quickly capture the side wall!

So they gave loud orders, calling on their men to shoot at the top of the wall, suppressing the Ming army with dense rain of arrows.

The Ming troops on the side wall were pinned down under the battlements and could not even raise their heads. For some reason, the enemy towers on both sides suddenly stopped firing at the same time...

Chang Tu led the way, rushing to the top of the hill without caring for his life, exerting force with his legs, and leaping onto the wall!

The Ming soldiers behind the arrow stack were startled. Before they could even swing their three-barreled guns, he swung his double swords and killed several of them in a row like chopping melons and vegetables.

The morale of the Uriankhai warriors was greatly boosted, as if they were injected with chicken blood. They jumped onto the wall one after another and started hacking and killing the Ming army.

The Ming army collapsed at the first blow, and they all jumped off the wall to escape...

In a blink of an eye, this section of the border wall was already filled with Uriankhai warriors!

They held a scimitar in one hand and a leather shield in the other, cheering and celebrating their victory...

"A bunch of idiots, you haven't won yet!" Dong Fox scolded, but his eyes were full of doting. He was so brave and unmatched, he really deserved to be his younger brother.

This time he really said it, it's indeed not over yet...

Dong Huli suddenly saw two fire dragons spewing out from the enemy towers on both sides almost at the same time, covering the entire side wall in a blink of an eye.

The celebrating Wuliangha people suddenly turned into fire men and fell off the wall screaming.

~~

The swarm in the enemy tower had indeed run out of fuel, but there was still a fierce fire oil tank...

This was restored by Qi Jiguang based on the "Wu Jing Zong Yao", and also borrowed from Zhang Jian's invention of the Drain King, so that the fire snake can spray seven or eight meters away. It can be said to be a more powerful version of the fierce fire oil tank.

It uses the "tar kerosene" produced in Gaonu County, Shanxi Province as fuel. It uses a copper cabinet with four legs at the bottom and a horizontal pump with a pressure rod on the top, which is connected to the oil tank. Each time it is pressed, about three pounds of kerosene can be extracted and sprayed out!

When the kerosene met the fire, it ignited and the flames that spewed out were like a fire dragon. Because the enemy building was more than ten feet higher than the side wall, the fire dragon was two or three meters longer than the one sprayed on the ground. The two sides fired at the same time, just covering the twenty-meter-long side wall...

Seeing the warriors who were so proud just now suddenly turned into burning men and fell down, the Wuliangha people under the wall rushed forward to rescue them. They took off their robes and beat them, and took off their water bags to pour water on the burning men, but not only could they not put out the fire, but the fire burned more and more, and even the rescuers were burned.

When the Mongols from other tribes on the periphery saw this, they dropped their weapons and knelt down devoutly.

"Are you surrendering?" Tong Ziji was stunned at the fortress.

"No." Qi Jiguang smiled faintly and said, "They believe in Shamanism, which worships nature. The first thing they worship in this religion is fire. They believe that fire comes from heaven and is a part of the sun and the moon. It is the most sacred and pure, and can wash away all filth and drive away demons. So they can't be enemies with fire, otherwise they will offend the god of fire and won't be able to light a fire in the future."

"No wonder the Marshal went to so much trouble to get kerosene from Shaanxi." Tong Zigong suddenly realized, "So he knew that they were most afraid of this. The Marshal really knows everything!"

"A general should know both himself and the enemy, and have a basic understanding of astronomy and geography." Qi Jiguang smiled and said, "We should stop here today."

The sun had already set, with only the afterglow illuminating the sky. Dong Fox had no intention of continuing the fight and soon blew the horn to call back his troops.

In the twilight, he stood on the hillside with cold hands and feet, staring blankly at the defeated remnants of his army.

Dong Huli knew very well that although his main force was still there, the Mongols were no longer the invincible army that swept across the world during the time of Genghis Khan. It would be more appropriate to say that they were a group of bandits now. With one-tenth of their troops lost today, their morale had dropped to the lowest point, and the leaders of the various tribes no longer came to him, obviously very dissatisfied with him and had the intention of passive disobedience.

On the other hand, the Ming army suffered few casualties today and their morale is high. They will definitely reload those swarms of missiles overnight, and there are also some firearms... Our side has lost its fighting spirit, and even if we muster up the courage to fight again tomorrow, I am afraid that we will not gain anything except casualties.

But if they just withdrew, how would they survive the winter? The tribes accepted him as their leader because he could lead them to make a living. If he couldn't feed them, they would go east to join Altan or go west to Qinghai to join the Oirat people. They would never stay and wait to die.

His great-grandfather had finally annexed the Wengniute and Uqiyet tribes, and his grandfather had unified the Khorchin grasslands. Was his huge family business going to fail in his own hands? Dong Huli simply could not accept this outcome.

"Second uncle, my third uncle is still alive!" His eldest nephew Chang Ang found Chang Tu from the defeated soldiers.

Dong Huli came to his senses and hurried down the hillside, and saw a stretcher made from a car panel behind Chang Ang, with a half-cooked bald head on it.

All the hair on his body was burnt off, and he looked completely black and red. Only his chest was rising and falling slightly, showing that he was still alive.

"Second brother, second brother?" Dong Huli called him a few times, but the bald man didn't respond, so he had to wave his hands and have someone carry him away to ask the Mongolian doctor to treat him.

"Uncle, what should we do? Will we attack again tomorrow?" Chang Ang asked timidly. His father died at the foot of the Great Wall four years ago, and now his uncle has basically explained everything. This made him feel genuinely afraid of this wall and the Ming army guarding it.

"Attack for another day!" Dong Huli gritted his teeth. Although the possibility of breaking through the border wall was very slim, he had to try... Of course, more importantly, he had to consume more troops from the Wengniute and Wuqiyet tribes. In this way, even if he returned in defeat, they would not dare to have second thoughts.

So with his insistence, the Mongols regrouped and launched another attack on the border wall the next day.

But Subahai and Chaohua were not stupid. Seeing that the Wuliangha main force did not move and only let their two forces attack the city, the two knew that Dong Huli had bad intentions. They instructed their subordinates to work without exerting themselves. When Dong Huli sent people to urge them, they said that their troops were too tired. After many days of continuous travel and changing the place to attack the city, they were finally exhausted after a day of fighting...

As the saying goes, the law does not hold everyone responsible. Seeing these guys forming an offensive and defensive alliance, Dong Huli could do nothing.

As a result, the intensity of the battle was completely incomparable to yesterday. After fighting for most of the day, only a few hundred people died on the attacking side...

The Ming army defending the city didn't even break a sweat, and the swarm of bees and the fierce fire oil tanks they had prepared were of no use.

Dong Huli couldn't stand this monkey show any more, and the sun was still high in the sky, so he hastily ordered his troops to withdraw.

Then he asked people to call Subahai, Chaohua and others to his tent. After a secret discussion, they decided to withdraw the troops tomorrow. They would go back to attack the Han people in Liaodong. If all else fails, there are still the Jurchens. Although they are poorer, even a mosquito leg is still meat.

In short, now that Jizhen has Qi Jiguang, the situation is too tough and we can no longer confront him head-on.

So at dawn the next day, they abandoned their siege equipment, emptied out the wagons to load the wounded, and retreated north along the same route.

The Mongols did not withdraw their troops overnight this time. They were not afraid of the Ming army's pursuit at all. They even hoped that the pursuers would come out of the fortress so that they could eat them up in one bite and vent their hatred.

Because the last time they lost to the Ming army in a field battle was more than a hundred years ago.

The Mongols of this generation had a deep-rooted belief that the Ming army would only stay in the castle and fire weapons, and would not dare to go out of the city to fight them. Some Ming army generals who did not believe in evil insisted on fighting them in the field, but without exception, their entire army was annihilated.

So they retreated in a swagger, as if to tell the Ming army in the fortress to chase them out, come on, have fun. …

Being treated with such contempt by the Tartars, Tong Ziji's face turned pale, and the joy of the victory in defense disappeared completely. Because he really didn't dare to chase them out, and if the border troops under his command went out, they would be sent to die.

Qi Jiguang patted his shoulder and comforted Tong Ziji, who was gritting his teeth, saying: "You have completed the task beautifully. The rest depends on Lao Hu and Ji Mei."

"Yes." Tong Ziji nodded, and the frustration in his heart was slightly relieved.

~~

Seeing that the Ming army had no intention of pursuing them, Dong Huli led his troops to retreat more than ten miles northward.

At noon, the team arrived at the Changhe Valley, where he planned to join the troops that were feinting to attack Xifengkou, Dongjiakou and Qingshankou, and retreat along the Changhe River to Kuancheng. There was an abandoned guard post of the Ming army, which he occupied and rebuilt into a warehouse city to temporarily store the food and supplies looted from the Ming Dynasty.

This way you can make more trips to rob, instead of being like a blind bear picking corn, busying yourself for a while and not bringing back much.

So he left a few subordinates and supplies in Kuancheng. Now that he failed to rob, he could take a rest and then make other plans.

"Alas, there are too few leaders like me who are thoughtful on the grassland..." Dong Huli first praised himself, and then secretly complained about the unfairness of God. Why leave such a good place as Hetao to that idiot Altan?

Just as I was daydreaming, I suddenly heard a burst of hurried horse hooves coming from afar.

"Report to Taiji, it's bad!" A scout who was exploring the way ahead reported anxiously on his horse: "Our way has been blocked by the Ming army!"

"What?" Dong Huli was surprised: "How do they do it?"

Then he asked, "How many troops are there? Where are they blocking you?"

"Right at the mouth of the valley, there are people everywhere, probably tens of thousands of them..." The scout's voice was trembling.

ps. I have to get up early tomorrow morning, so I'll stop here tonight. I'll write more tomorrow...