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Chapter 2713 Fierce Battle!

Under normal circumstances, Lü Meng's 30,000 troops could have easily swept through Nan Commandery, since Guan Yu had taken a large number of his men to Fancheng, leaving only 5,000 in Jiangling.

In addition, the public security department also only retained 5,000 people.

If these people are united and hold Jiangling City, it might be very difficult to attack them, but if we separate them, it will be much simpler.

For example, if Lü Meng led 30,000 men to launch a direct assault on Jiangling City, which only had 5,000 people, he would suffer heavy losses, but he could still take it directly.

After all, with such a large city wall, there aren't many people that can be assigned to a single wall.

Therefore, the key is time; the connection between the two sides must be cut off before Fu Shiren leads his army back to Jiangling.

To Lü Meng's bewilderment, just after he led his army around the Xia River, his scouts reported, "General, there's a camp blocking our way. Should we take a detour?"

Lu Meng was stunned when he heard this. Three months ago, when there was a lot of rain, he had personally led a team to scout out the surrounding terrain, just in case.

It's already November, long past the flood season. With 30,000 troops, this place will be no problem at all.

Moreover, the swampy area that leads to Jiangling City is sparsely populated. When would a village get angry?
Lu Meng felt that his entire plan had been outmaneuvered, so he immediately asked, "How large is this operation? How many people are there?"

The scout immediately reported, "General, the village is situated between the Jiang River and the Xia River, but we didn't see many people there. Most of them were laborers. Although there were some soldiers, their armor looked like it was made of wood."

Lu Meng immediately realized that this was the place where the supplies had been blocked and transported earlier. However, he felt that these people could not stop his army at all, so he led his army to launch a strong attack.

Unfortunately, the village looked ordinary from a distance, but upon closer inspection, it was discovered that the mud in front of the village was filled with sharp wooden stakes. Moreover, it seemed that the area around these stakes had been specially prepared, and the water was already above knee-deep!

The army could only advance slowly; it couldn't move fast at all.

Seeing this situation, Lü Meng realized the advantage of this camp. As long as someone attacked, they could only pass through slowly. At that time, arrows would be fired from all sides inside, which would definitely make the attackers suffer.

However, this is based on the premise that there are enough defenders. Without enough defenders, this 20-mile-long defensive line can be easily breached, let alone the fact that they have 30,000 men.

So, having grasped the essence of defense, Lü Meng launched an attack. Although the stronghold reacted quickly, only two or three thousand men arrived, which was far from enough to defend the entire line.

Therefore, the delaying line of the wooden stakes was easily breached, and the defenders hastily retreated.

Seeing this, Lü Meng was extremely excited and immediately gave chase. He wanted to wipe out these two soldiers and then march on Jiangling City in one fell swoop.

What Lü Meng didn't expect was that when they chased the soldiers all the way to the central stronghold and watched them flee inside, they discovered that this massive stronghold actually housed at least four or five thousand men, blocking the secret passage he knew about. Lü Meng didn't care whether it was two or three thousand or four or five thousand; he launched an attack without hesitation.

From Lü Meng's perspective, it's quite clear: the presence of 5000 soldiers here indicates that the forces from Jiangling or Gong'an are likely also here. If they can eliminate these 5,000 of Guan Yu's troops here, they will face either the undefended Gong'an or Jiangling.

This was a good thing for the attacking side, which is why Lü Meng chose to attack without hesitation.

This is simply a matter of information asymmetry.

Because the able-bodied soldiers of Guan Yinping's bandit-suppressing command were not usually in this area, no matter who came to investigate, they would only see some old, weak, women and children farming in this area.

Therefore, you simply cannot imagine that nearly ten thousand soldiers were hidden in the swampy land of the ancient Yunmengze.

Although these soldiers had not received unified war training, they were all former bandits, and they were very good at using the terrain to protect themselves and launch counterattacks.

The village that Wang Yue chose, although it was about 20 miles long, had many wooden stakes and fences, as well as some mud pits that had not been cleared and some deliberately raised platforms.

This place is like a Five Elements and Eight Trigrams formation, making it impossible for Lü Meng to unleash the full power of his 30,000 troops.

Lu Meng's 3 men couldn't spread out in this strange terrain and could only fight a hard defensive battle. In addition, Mi Fang had brought 2000 men from Jiangling City, and he borrowed another 2000 from Fu Shiren to protect Guan Yinping.

With 4000 veteran soldiers holding the line, Lu Meng's advance was completely blocked, and the central stronghold was used for defense to launch a counterattack. The more than 1 soldiers, newly converted from bandits, were only helping from the rear, occasionally killing any stragglers, which was more than enough.

Moreover, with the bloody battle fought by 4000 veterans, the more than 10,000 bandits gradually adapted to the battlefield, no longer feeling the fear and apprehension they had before, and their lethality increased.

Lu Meng originally thought that although his soldiers were at a disadvantage due to their unfamiliarity with the environment, they could easily take over such a simple mountain stronghold. However, he did not expect that there were more than 10,000 able-bodied men behind these 5000 men.

In addition, although Mi Fang rarely led troops into battle, he had seen many battles during his years of fleeing with Liu Bei, and had even personally taken to the battlefield. Therefore, it was not very hopeful for Mi Fang to rely on these soldiers to counterattack Lü Meng, but it was also impossible for Lü Meng to break through.

After a full hour of fighting, Lü Meng still hadn't broken through Mi Fang's central stronghold, and had suffered six or seven thousand casualties, yet he still couldn't breach the defenses of this strange stronghold.

Of course, Mi Fang, as the defender, was also in dire straits. He suffered over a thousand casualties among his veterans, and the bandits who were helping him also lost over a thousand. This was even after the central stronghold was set up with some towers, or rather, arrow towers, which allowed the bandits with better shooting speed to fire down from their vantage points, thus helping Mi Fang hold the line.

Although Guan Yinping had fought bandits for several months, this was the first time she had witnessed normal bloodshed. This made her understand why her father hadn't let her go to Xiangfan; the difference between that and bandit suppression was simply too great.

(End of this chapter)