As dusk fell, Lu Jianxing and his group soon disappeared into the night.
After riding his horse westward for a while, Liu Wei was surprised to see groups of cavalrymen dismounting and pushing carts of grain and fodder.
As they saw Liu Wei approaching, they were about to be on guard when a burly, bronze-skinned man stopped them.
The burly man, accompanied by a man who had just been bandaged, came over to greet them.
"Master, we've been waiting for you here for a long time!"
"You're right, there really is grain hidden here."
Zhang Yan was overjoyed.
Liu Wei told him that there were 30,000 shi of grain in the valley, and he was initially skeptical.
Unexpectedly, after arriving at breakneck speed, they indeed found piles of bags of millet in the valley.
Thirty thousand bushels of grain is enough to feed thirty thousand people for a month!
"Then the troops besieging Wuji should withdraw! Let's head to Zhen Ding."
Liu Wei said calmly.
"Your Excellency, are you going to Zhen Ding now?" Zhang Yan asked hurriedly.
"That's right, I promised to take you to Youzhou to make a name for yourselves, so let's get moving!"
"If we arrive late, and the Wuhuan and Xianbei people are driven away by the imperial army first, what merit will we have then?"
Liu Wei said calmly, "Now we need to integrate our troops, select and reorganize able-bodied men into the army, and let the old, weak, sick and disabled go to the battlefield instead."
"The focus should be on quality, not quantity, of soldiers; the Black Mountain Army must improve its combat capabilities."
Zhang Yan deeply agreed.
At the same time, he was also worried about the 30,000 people who had surrounded Zhen Ding.
Of the 32,000 men in his Black Mountain Army, only 2,000 cavalry were combat troops.
It was precisely because he had these two thousand cavalrymen that he was able to be regarded as the leader of the alliance in the Taihang Mountains and command the leaders of the thirty-six mountain strongholds in the Taihang Mountains, numbering in the millions.
Although those 30,000 people seemed numerous, their weapons were rudimentary, and they were mostly accompanied by children. It would be good if only 10,000 of them were actually capable of fighting.
They besieged the city of Zhen Ding, which was defended by Gao Lan, a famous general from Hebei, and had 5,000 soldiers.
At first, the Black Mountain Army could be seen as having a large number of soldiers and could be used to bluff, but after a few contact and a little probing, their true strength could be revealed.
Once they discover that they are all show and no substance, the city's garrison will surely launch an attack.
At that time, these 30,000 troops will only be able to take a beating.
When Zhang Yan heard that Liu Wei wanted to consolidate his troops and improve his combat strength, she immediately agreed.
So he sent scouts to Wuji County to call back his other thousand cavalrymen to rejoin the ranks.
Liu Wei, Zhang Yan, and their thousand cavalrymen needed to first rendezvous with the cavalry that Wuji had withdrawn from, and then set up camp near the Nine Gates, the border between Zhongshan and Changshan, before nightfall.
We will cross the river early tomorrow morning and head to the outskirts of Zhen Ding City.
It was only about 30 li away from Zhengding, and on the north bank of the Hutuo River, just an hour or two's march away.
Just as the thousand cavalrymen were pushing carts carrying 30,000 shi of grain and fodder to the outskirts of Wuji County, they heard a great shout of battle, as if hundreds or thousands of warhorses were galloping towards them!
Zhang Yan immediately said, "Master, these are the thousand cavalrymen from my unit who were besieging Wuji. They have now returned to join us."
"Something's not right. It looks like they're being chased."
Despite his injuries, Zhang Baiqi noticed something amiss.
"Nonsense. There are only a hundred county soldiers in Wuji City. They are not the regular army of the Han government at all. It is good enough that they can defend the city. How could they dare to go out of the city to fight?"
Zhang Yan was completely bewildered.
He was clear about Wuji's troop strength. They had powerful bows and crossbows, and they occupied the city wall, using their high ground to repel Zhang Yan's attacking troops and even cause Zhang Yan to lose a hundred men!
Zhang Yan would naturally not say such a shameful thing in front of the leader of the Mohist school.
A thought flashed through Liu Wei's mind: Could they be Wang Fangyi and the Seventeen Riders of Yanyun?
Lu Jianxing's intelligence report mentioned that they were waiting for Liu Wei to join them in the city when they were besieged by the Black Mountain Army. The county magistrate wanted to open the gates and surrender, but Wang Fangyi and Yan Da detained him, took over the city's defenses, and repelled the Black Mountain Army.
In that case, it's estimated that Wang Fangyi and Yan Da have wiped out a significant portion of Zhang Yan's troops.
If they weren't stopped in time, Zhang Yan's thousand cavalrymen would all be killed!
"Let's go take a look!"
Liu Wei said something and went up, with Zhang Yan and Zhang Baiqi quickly following.
As expected, the approaching cavalrymen were all terrified, their armor disheveled, and some even had arrows stuck in their bodies.
"What happened to you? Who attacked you?"
Zhang Yan was heartbroken at the sight and hurriedly stepped forward to stop one of the leaders and ask him.
"General, more than a hundred riders came out of Wuji City. We went to intercept them and fight, but we were no match for them. They chased us all the way and many of our brothers died!"
"You said you were defeated by a hundred riders, and you lost many brothers? How many?"
Zhang Yan stood on tiptoe to take a look and saw that the area behind the leader seemed to be much thinner.
When he led his troops to attack Wuji County, he lost more than a hundred men. When Zhang Baiqi went to Zhenjiazhuang, he lost more than twenty men.
He then went to Zhenjiazhuang and killed those assassins, losing more than a hundred more.
Of the original two thousand people, less than eighteen thousand remain.
It seems that we have lost another hundred people.
"Commander... half of our brothers have been killed by them!"
What!
Half of the troops, that means another four or five hundred men have been lost.
So, of Zhang Yan's two thousand men, there are thirteen hundred left!
"Useless! Did I hear that right? You nearly a thousand cavalrymen fought against an enemy with a little over a hundred cavalrymen, and not only did you not win, you lost half your men!"
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