SFS Chapter 356 Pan Zhang's Doomsday (Part 1)
Chapter 356 Pan Zhang's Doomsday (Part 1)
Guan Xing was more than 30 li away from Pan Zhang. It was nighttime and he was carrying a lot of hastily made equipment, so his speed was not fast at all. It took him three whole hours to reach Pan Zhang's camp at the end of the Yin hour.
Upon arriving at the camp, they observed that Wu's army camp was brightly lit that night, and all the soldiers were on high alert, ready to attack Guan Xing.
This is easy to understand. The movement of tens of thousands of troops would create a huge commotion. If Pan Zhang couldn't even notice this and was still sleeping soundly in his camp, then all his years as a general would have been for nothing.
Guan Xing stared at the enemy camp for a moment, then raised his hand to summon Deng Hong and said, "It's almost time to prepare for the attack. Annihilating Pan Zhang is the most crucial battle against Lu Xun. It will affect the whole situation. Whether we can defeat Lu Xun and achieve final victory depends on tonight, so you need to be careful."
“Yes…” Deng Hong nodded emphatically, turned and left to begin preparations.
Under Deng Hong's organization, thousands of Xuanjia soldiers quickly assembled the parts they had brought in advance. They soon used mortise and tenon joints to assemble three arched houses, with wheels installed underneath, forming a heavily protected cart frame. Then, they lifted three tree trunks as thick as buckets into the cart and connected them to the houses using pre-drilled holes. Finally, eight soldiers entered the cart, grabbed the handles, and prepared to push it.
This was naturally Guan Xing's masterpiece. He perfectly combined the chariot frame and the battering ram to design a battering ram that could also be used for defense, intending to forcefully break through the antler fence between the chariot and the Wu army camp.
War requires the use of violence.
In addition to the three special battering rams, Guan Xing also prepared many bamboo rafts and planks to deal with the horse traps set by the Wu army. Although neither the Han nor the Wu army had cavalry, horse traps could still be used against people. It is obvious that the Wu army must have set up many horse traps or dense traps about a foot square in front of and behind the deer antlers. Li Tong's pledge of loyalty also explained this point, so how could Guan Xing not have prepared them?
Deng Hong spent nearly half an hour preparing before running over and bowing, saying, "General, we're ready. We can move out now."
Without saying a word, Guan Xing turned around, picked up the drumsticks, and smashed them hard against the cowhide drum that had already been set up.
"Boom..."
The dull drumbeats instantly carried for miles, and along with them, Deng Hong brandished his long sword and roared, "Brothers, the time to make our mark has come! Charge with me..."
Upon hearing the order, the Han soldiers, carrying all sorts of haphazardly designed weapons by Guan Xing, roared and charged toward the Wu army camp.
At the same time, Pan Zhang was also observing the Han army from the arrow tower. When he saw the Han army rushing over, he sneered and said, "Guan Xing, Guan Xing, you dare to attack the camp of my eight thousand troops with only four or five thousand men? Who gave you the courage?"
After Zhuge Jin left, he began to prepare for a desperate defense of the camp. Now the camp has been built like an impregnable fortress, and he does not believe that Guan Xing can easily break through it.
To put it bluntly, he was never afraid of fighting Guan Xing head-on; what he feared was Guan Xing's guerrilla tactics and the various means he used to weaken him. Now that Guan Xing had taken the initiative to attack, he was naturally fearless.
He had a good idea, but...
Deng Hong did not charge blindly, but ordered the sword and shield soldiers to form a shield formation and advance slowly while guarding against the Wu army's arrow rain.
Wu Jun quickly launched a counterattack, raising his bow and arrow and firing wildly. A rain of arrows swept over the Han army. In addition to arrows, there were also dozens of hastily built catapults, which threw stones that knocked the Han soldiers to the ground.
The Han army's shields were fine against arrows, but they struggled against boulders, and it was normal for several to be knocked over.
The Han army was prepared for this and ignored the boulder, continuing to advance. They quickly reached within 30 meters of the Wu army's deer antlers.
Upon arriving here, Deng Hong did not advance any further. Instead, he took out his spear and thrust it into the ground with all his might. The spear tip easily pierced the ground and even made Deng Hong stagger.
Deng Hong sneered, "There really is a horse trap here. Bring the bamboo raft over."
In his pledge of allegiance, Li Tong mentioned that Pan Zhang had a habit of digging horse traps 30 meters away from the deer antlers when setting up camp. The traps were 3 meters deep and about 10 feet wide, and filled with javelins. If you accidentally fell in, you would be skewered like a string of candied hawthorns.
Now that he knew, there was no reason to ignore it. On the battlefield, every second counted, and Guan Xing had no intention of filling in the horse traps while braving the Wu army's attacks. So he built many bamboo rafts to use as bridges.
Upon hearing Deng Hong's order, the soldiers carrying the rafts quickly stepped forward and laid the bamboo rafts on both sides of the horse trap, allowing the army to pass through smoothly.
After walking eight meters, they encountered another horse trap, so they continued to pave and charge forward.
On the watchtower inside the camp, watching the Han army easily find and level the horse trap with bamboo rafts, Pan Zhang couldn't help but frown and mutter to himself, "How could the Han army find the location of the horse trap so accurately? Could it be that Ma Zhong leaked our army's intelligence?"
He suspected there was a traitor among his men, but he didn't suspect Li Tong. Instead, he immediately thought of Ma Zhong, the deputy general who had been captured by Guan Xing for several days, since Ma Zhong was far more suspicious than Li Tong.
Pan Zhang gritted his teeth and cursed, "Damn Ma Zhong, you just wait!"
When Pan Zhang suspected Ma Zhong of betrayal, the Han army was advancing with difficulty under the attack of arrows and catapults. After paying a heavy price, they finally reached the front of the deer antlers, but there was a horse trap below the deer antlers and Wu army spearmen standing behind the deer antlers.
These spearmen, wielding spears exceeding five meters in length, could easily leap over the horse-trapping pits and strike the Han soldiers. The spearmen didn't need to do anything else; they simply stood behind the deer antlers, gripping their spears and repeatedly thrusting, retracting, and thrusting again. But...
Since the Han army came prepared, they naturally had ways to deal with the spearmen. They first used shields to block the spear thrusts, and then swung their swords to cut down the Wu soldiers when they withdrew their spears.
This type of spear is made of iron only at the tip; the rest is made of wood and is not very thick. This is because there isn't enough steel to make iron spear shafts, and also because soldiers couldn't lift a spear made entirely of steel—try lifting a five-meter-long steel bar.
Wu Jun's spear shafts were crudely made, while Han Jun's steel swords were forged in a steel mill. They were incredibly fast at cutting spear shafts, almost able to sever them and deflect the spearheads in just two strikes.
Without the spearhead, the spear was no longer a threat. After cutting off the spearhead, Deng Hong immediately ordered the raft-carrying soldiers to rush up and prepare to set up bamboo rafts over the horse trap, but this time he miscalculated.
The opposite edge of the trap was level with the deer antlers, meaning that the bamboo raft had no foothold on the other side of the trap. After being lowered, the side closer to the deer antlers fell directly into the trap, thwarting Deng Hong's plan to build a bridge.
Deng Hong was not worried about this and decisively changed his strategy, ordering his soldiers to bring in specially made wooden planks to prepare for the attack. The so-called specially made wooden planks were made by adding a two-foot-long short plank in front of the four-meter-long plank, forming an angle of more than 100 degrees with the long plank. At the top of the short plank, a small plank of about half a foot was added, perpendicular to the short plank.
After the Han army carried the planks over, they placed them directly on the Wu army's deer antlers. The vertical part connecting the short plank and the small plank naturally became a buckle that fastened to the top of the deer antlers. In this way, a slope was formed between the Han army and the deer antlers, and the buckle prevented the Wu army from easily overturning or pushing it over.
The Han army quickly laid a 20-meter-long sloping passage on the antlers. Seeing this, Deng Hong no longer hesitated and charged up the slope first, holding his shield.
Seeing the ramp erected by the Han army, Pan Zhang was furious and shouted, "What the hell is Guan Xing doing? Spearmen back down, swordsmen and shieldmen forward, you must stop them!"
In his plan, the horse traps in front of the deer antlers should have caused at least several hundred casualties to the Han army. In particular, the last horse trap, which was right next to the deer antlers, would be like a chasm between the Han and Wu armies and become an insurmountable barrier for the Han army, causing far more casualties than the first two horse traps. Once the casualties reached a certain level, the Han army would collapse and retreat on its own without even having to attack.
But the damned Han army seemed to know his deployment. Not only did they prepare bamboo rafts to lay horse traps in advance, but they also prepared special tools with buckles, as if they were specially made for horse traps and deer antlers. This greatly reduced their own casualties and dealt a heavy blow to Pan Zhang's confidence, forcing Pan Zhang to quickly adjust his formation and order his swordsmen and shieldmen to charge ahead.
No sooner had he finished speaking than his personal guard beside him said, "General, look at the camp gate! What's that?"