Chapter 29: The Stormy Weather of Yu Guan (8)

  Now Yu Guan has nearly two hundred soldiers and a hundred young civilians, as long as the gate is built, in terms of military strength alone, the small Yu Guan can be safe. But Li Chengzhong knew that this was only superficial safety, what kind of moral character these new recruits had, he was very clear. If the Khitan people really attacked the city with all their might, they wouldn't need those complex siege engines, just using wooden ladders to climb up would not be something that these refugees who had been broken by the Khitan could withstand.

  The city gate is almost complete, and Li Chengzhong doesn't plan to take the risk of deploying troops outside the city again. Therefore, he plans to seize the time to train these new recruits to defend the city.

  Li Chengzhong first gathered the three team officers, Jiang Miao, Zhang Xingchong and Zhou Zhandao, to discuss his plan for defending the city. He wanted to disband the A and B teams and reorganize them in order to better implement his strategy. Although he had the authority as the highest military officer at Yu Guan appointed by Zhou Zhiyuan, he didn't want to cause any discord among his comrades who had followed him from Wei State and were now stationed at Yu Guan.

  What made Li Chengzhong feel relieved was that the three team officers were very supportive of his suggestion, and they all expressed their willingness to listen to the arrangement. Li Chengzhong's suggestion was to divide the 180 soldiers from the current Adu and Baidu into five teams, with two teams as gunners, one team as a knife shield soldier, one team as an archer, and one team as a reserve team.

  Zhang Xingzhong and Jiang Miao each led a team of gunners, with fifty men under their command, defending the front gate during battle. Zhou Kan led thirty shield-bearing soldiers on the city wall, waiting for orders; wherever the defense was breached or the Khitan army broke through, Zhou Kan would lead his troops to fill in the gaps and reinforce the defenses.

  Li Chengzhong again drew out twenty new soldiers who could open bows and arrows to form an archery team, led by Meng Xuxing and Jiao Chengqiao, and boarded the fortress on the mountain slope. The fortress was much higher than the Guan wall, and it was very difficult for the enemy to attack from below. Because the position of the mountain slope is slightly prominent, the fortress can overlook the entire Guancheng, and arranging archers here can control the entire defensive frontage. The remaining thirty soldiers were handed over to Wang Dalang, Li Chengzhong planned to stay by his side as a strategic reserve, waiting for the critical moment of the war to be put in again.

  After the division of troops was completed, Li Chengzhong began to drill his soldiers. He had very detailed and mechanical requirements for drilling.

  He required the gunners to be divided into small groups of two, defending a gate wall opening. One person was the commander, standing in front of the gate, and the other was a member, standing on the side of the gate. When they saw the enemy climb up the city wall, the commander gave an order, and the two men stood up together to strike with their guns. He further decomposed this step, requiring that the commander must wait until the enemy exposed his body above the thigh before giving the order. After the commander gave the order, the two men had to strike at the same time. The commander stabbed the enemy's chest, and the member stabbed the root of the enemy's leg. Because the enemy might be holding a shield, the commander striking the enemy's chest was a feint, and the member striking the root of the enemy's leg was the real killer. For each gunner's action of advancing and stabbing, Li Chengzhong also demonstrated the bayonet action he had learned from the previous army, and then required the two men to start repeating training.

  For the knife shield close combat soldiers led by Zhou Kan Dao, Li Cheng Zhong did not have much to say. In terms of using the knife shield, he thought he was inferior to Zhou Kan Dao. He only emphasized to Zhou Kan Dao that the knife shield soldiers should be divided into groups of three, and when the time comes, they must act quickly, either swiftly killing the enemy who has climbed up the city wall or pushing them down the city wall.

  Zhou Daojian winked and smiled, saying: "Don't worry, Li Lang, quickly beheading him might not be possible, but pushing him off the city wall... I have a plan."

  Li Chengzhong didn't ask him what method he had, he believed that Zhou Duan's bravery should be no problem. Along the way from Wei State to the north, he had already seen it. What he was concerned about next was the archery team led by Meng Xu Xing and Jiao Cheng Qiao. The Khitan people were famous for their good shooting, and competing with the enemy in archery skills was a typical case of using one's weakness to attack the enemy's strength. Therefore, Li Chengzhong planned to train these archers according to the artillery coverage method he had learned from the vanguard before crossing over.

  He brought Meng Xuzi and Jiao Chengqiao to the city wall outside Yuanguan, found many small stones and nailed them into the ground. These stones divided the ground under the gate wall from one step to one hundred steps into nine intervals. Li Chengzhong made marks in order. He explained to Meng Xuzi and Jiao Chengqiao: "When shooting, don't shoot indiscriminately. You each lead ten people to start practicing. When you shoot together, the two of you will give orders. Require ten arrows to be shot out at the same time, covering one interval."

  Seeing that the two seemed to be somewhat puzzled, he hesitated for a moment and said: "To put it in an analogy, when Commander Meng sees an enemy in Zone One, he gives the order to have ten of your archers shoot arrows at Zone One simultaneously. As long as each shot hits one enemy, this round of shooting is considered successful."

  The two of them lit up, and excitedly returned to organize their troops and start training. This method of shooting arrows did not require the archers to be accurate in their aim, and for these new recruits, it was easy to master with just a little practice.

  Then, a large-scale military exercise began inside the Yu Guan. These new recruits started repetitive mechanical exercises according to their assigned duties, and the sound of shouting and killing filled the air inside the Yu Guan.

  The exercise movements of the riflemen were relatively simple, just taking a step forward and thrusting the gun in a straight line. However, these new recruits had never done such movements before, so their aim was very poor, often deviating to one side by as much as half a body length after firing a shot. But this wasn't an insurmountable problem; with more practice, their aim would naturally adjust slowly. The hardest part lay in overcoming nervousness.

  When facing the enemy, tension is unavoidable for anyone, but being so tense that one cannot thrust out the wooden spear in hand at the critical moment can be fatal. For this reason, Li Chengzhong divided these spearmen into two groups, with one group playing the role of the imagined enemy, namely the Khitans. He had the soldiers build some platforms about one person high using earth piles on the ground to simulate the crenels of a city wall, and had two soldiers stand on one side of each platform, while the soldiers playing the role of the Khitans held up their shields and jumped onto the platforms, imitating the Khitans scaling the walls.

  The more they practiced, the soldiers gradually adapted to this kind of stabbing and were no longer so tense that they couldn't get their wooden guns out. However, another problem arose soon after - as soon as the soldiers saw their comrades playing the role of Khitan people exposing their heads, they would involuntarily stab out with their wooden guns without waiting for the enemy to fully expose themselves. Li Chengzhong's solution to this problem was to take severe disciplinary measures, requiring any group that failed to achieve the desired effect to do thirty push-ups.

  The training of the shield-bearing soldiers was not interfered with by Li Chengzhong, who curiously saw Zhou Fangdang go to the civilian camp to make ten large wooden shields. These wooden shields were big enough to cover half of a person's body and required both hands to lift them up. Then he saw these shield-bearing soldiers playing a game of mutual ramming, and after pondering for a moment, he suddenly understood Zhou Fangdang's thinking and couldn't help but laugh.

  The training of the archers mainly focused on the issue of opening the bow and exerting force, as for accuracy, it was not a big deal. Meng Xuxing and Jiao Chengqiao found some wooden stakes and placed them ten steps away, requiring the new soldiers to shoot arrows that must be stuck in the wood. Fortunately, these twenty soldiers were selected from the best of the outer suburbs, and most of them had shot arrows before, so they quickly passed this test. Then, the two men gathered them at the fortress and began to practice shooting arrows by region. Because each area's target was very large, the accuracy problem did not need to be worried about too much, and after these new soldiers found their feeling, they were all able to shoot into the specified area, forming a slightly sparse arrow curtain, believing that with time, the effect would be better.

  In the past few days when the army was having a large-scale exercise inside Yu Guan, the Khitan people sent out scouts to reconnoiter every day. These scouts appeared twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, about 300 or 400 paces away from Yu Guan, observing for a moment before turning back.

  Meng Xuxing and Jiao Chengqiao one day went to Li Chengzhong for orders, mounted the horses that had been unloaded from the carts at the Minfu camp, and charged out of the city to challenge. These two were originally wandering knights from outside the pass, self-satisfied with their martial bravery, skilled in both riding and archery, wanting to capture a few live enemies to bring back. But the Khitan people did not engage in battle, seeing the two ride out of the city, they simply kept a distance. The horses ridden by the two were cart-hauling horses, no match for the Khitan people's proper warhorses, so they could not catch up at all. After twice charging out of the city to challenge without success, they became disheartened and stopped asking Li Chengzhong for orders to go out of the pass, instead intensifying their training of their subordinates.

  After the gate was finally fixed at the gate, after the official closure of the gate, the Khitan cavalry never appeared again. Two days later, Li Chengzhong sent Wang Dalang and Meng Xuxing, Jiao Chengqiao to investigate, but found that the Khitan army camp ten miles away had disappeared.

  Did the Khitan retreat? Li Chengzhong was somewhat disbelieving, and he called over Jiang Miao, Zhang Xingchong, Zhou KanDao and other officers to discuss it. Everyone was completely baffled, so he went to ask Feng Dao again.

  Feng Dao thought for a moment and told Li Chengzhong that the Khitan's main base should not have moved yet, it is likely still in its original place, perhaps brewing an even bigger move.

  "If they still have follow-up actions, why haven't there been any patrols around here in these few days?" Li Chengzhong was somewhat puzzled.

  "The Khitan have not yet truly clashed with us, and withdrawing at this point would seem unjustifiable." Feng Dao explained, "Furthermore, in these days, not a single commoner has escaped from outside the pass, indicating that the Khitan army is still blocking the external routes."

  As for Feng Dao's vision and judgment, Li Chengzhong had become more and more convinced, so he demanded stricter training, and when speaking with several subordinates, he often mentioned the Khitan people are coming, reminding everyone to be doubly vigilant and never slack off. At the same time, he let Wang Dalang start exploring further outwards.

  Just as Li Chengzhong was intensifying his preparations, the Khitan people had already broken camp and left Yu Pass. They followed the lower reaches of the Xuan Water, fording the shallow tributaries, and marched north for thirty miles to arrive at a new campsite. This campsite was located by the water's edge, with large and small leather tents numbering over a thousand, covering the entire grassland. In the center of the campsite stood a gigantic tent, whose exterior extended outwards with magnificent fine woolen carpets, while its top was adorned with precious eagle feathers, all exuding an air of luxurious splendor, displaying the honored status of the tent's owner.

  Under the city of Yuanguan, and after a brief standoff with Li Chengzhong, the Khitan Big Beard led his men to arrive at the campsite, hastily setting up tents, then rushed himself to outside the main tent, requesting entry.