Daming: At the start of the showdown, Lao Zhu was stunned

Chapter 977 Weapon Advantage
Azarshili was desperate to win.

He thought that he could gain the power he deserved by defecting to the Oirat Mongols; he thought that he could obtain the right to bargain with the Ming court by capturing Zhu Xiongying. However, an inexplicable defeat made him lose his foundation: he lost his accumulated wealth, and his herdsmen betrayed him. In a hurry, he could only flee north with thousands of cavalrymen, without caring about anything else.

Once back to before liberation.

If that was all, it would be fine. At least, the Tatar "Khan" Bayanchur re-conferred his title of King of Liao. He went from being a governor of the Ming Dynasty to the King of Liao of the "Great Yuan Dynasty". However, Bayanchur gave him only this. The title of "King of Yan" that Bayanchur had promised him before was not mentioned at all. Not only that, he thought that once he arrived, Bayanchur and Arutai would definitely treat him as a guest of honor, and there was even a possibility that he would become a powerful official and sideline Bayanchur.

But now his strength has been greatly weakened and he can only rely on others. Ben Ya Shi Li does not seem to think highly of him.

After conquering the city, the Quanning Guards were unwilling to share the spoils with him.

Eating shit can't catch up with eating hot food.

This made Azashiri extremely angry.

He was now living under someone else's roof, and he knew that only by working together with Ben Ya Shi Li could he have a future, so he was reluctant to vent his dissatisfaction with Ben Ya Shi Li. However, he had no place to vent his anger and resentment, so he poured it all out on the Ming army.

Only by completely defeating the Ming army, and preferably capturing the Crown Prince Zhu Xiongying... can he vent the hatred in his heart.

"It's probably not a good idea to attack this stronghold by force," Alutai said. "This strong defense is almost as strong as a city. I'm afraid we need at least ten times as many soldiers to take it down."

"We have to attack," Azashili said. "The Ming army camped here, obviously to block our way, so that they can wait for other Ming troops to come and kill us all."

"If we fail to defeat this reinforcement, Liaodong and the Xu family will also lead troops to come, wouldn't the situation be even more disadvantageous to us?"

Alutai felt that what Azashili said made some sense. After thinking for a while, he said, "Chang Mao has a hot temper, and Zhu Xiongying is young and energetic."

"Perhaps, we can try to cut off their food supply, and then lure them out and annihilate them."

Azashiri nodded and agreed to Aluta's plan.

So on the second day, Mongolian soldiers came to the Ming army's camp and challenged them to a fight in order to attract the Ming army's attention. The Ming army naturally hung up a sign of no fight and acted as if they would not pay any attention to them.

Azashiri led his elite cavalry to bypass the Ming army camp and tried to find the Ming army's food supply route.

The grain route was soon discovered by Azhashili. Unlike the looting Tatars, the Ming army could not fight to support the war in their own territory. When the front army camped at the front, there must be a rear army in the back to supervise the transportation of grain and grass. In order to ensure the safety of the grain route, the rear army sometimes had to be as strong as the front army, which was why the front army had only 10,000 soldiers. Because most of the other soldiers were responsible for supervising the transportation of military grain in the rear.

There were also thousands of these grain transport soldiers, but compared to the fortress-like camp, the Ming army transporting grain on the road was obviously much easier to deal with. So Azashili gritted his teeth and launched a night attack on the Ming army transporting grain.

This wave of attack was a feint. Azashili waited until the grain transport team approached the Ming army camp before launching the attack, hoping to draw the Ming army's vanguard out of the camp to rescue them. However, as soon as his cavalry approached the Ming army's grain team, the Ming army suddenly shouted and several grain carts quickly surrounded the city into a temporary cart city.

Then the curtain in the vehicle was lifted, and many Ming army musketeers appeared on the vehicle, followed by a continuous volley of musket fire.

This was not a grain transport team at all, but an ambush of the Ming army. Azashiri was terrified and hurriedly led his men to escape. However, another group of men suddenly appeared from the side. It turned out that the Ming army in the front-line camp had reached here at some point. Azashiri left behind hundreds of men and fled in a panic.

Although he suffered a temporary defeat, he did not give up. One night later, he discovered the trace of the Ming army's grain transport team again. Azhashiri attacked again, thinking that the Ming army had to transport grain anyway, so it couldn't be an ambush as it was before, right?
Unexpectedly, although the grain carts were real this time, the Ming army in the rear camp was like a leech, and once again suddenly appeared behind the scenes. Azashili was defeated again and left hundreds of troops behind.

At the front, Aluta was not idle either. In addition to challenging the enemy from time to time, he also tried to feint an attack on the Ming army camp and set up ambushes in advance, hoping to lure out the Ming army and eat them.

However, the Ming army at the front line failed to lure them out, but the ambushes behind were often discovered by the Ming army and eaten up completely. When he took precautions and mobilized troops to counterattack the Ming army, the Ming army often retreated and disappeared without a trace.

After several rounds of this, the Tatar and Tainingwei rebels lost thousands of troops, causing Azashili and Aluta to be very worried.

They were so elusive, as if their arrangements were all in the hands of the Ming army, which left Aluta and Azhashiri completely confused.

"Hehe, I've never fought a battle with such ease!" After returning from another counter-attack on Alutai, Chang Mao jumped off his horse with a big laugh and handed the long sword in his hand to his followers. "Fighting like this is like playing with these thieves like monkeys."

"How wonderful! How wonderful it is indeed!"

Zhu Xiongying, as the military supervisor, was standing at the camp gate, waiting for Chang Mao and the soldiers to return and boost their morale. Hearing Chang Mao's words, he smiled and said, "Uncle Wu once said that technology is the strongest weapon for civilization to deal with barbarism."

"Our tactics are completely different from before, but the thieves are still sticking to the old ways."

"Of course they can't be our opponents... I'm afraid they never dreamed that their movements would be known to us at all times."

Yes, in order to defend the camp, in addition to trenches and luxurious swords and guns, they also adopted some other novel tactics, such as hot air balloons for reconnaissance.

There were four teams around the camp, using hot air balloons to detect the enemy's movements every day. Hot air balloons were also raised inside the camp to observe the enemy's situation. Most of these hot air balloons were painted the same color as the sky. When they flew high in the sky, they were very difficult to detect unless you were looking for them intentionally.

With these reconnaissance equipment, the Ming army knew the deployment of the troops of these grassland tribes very well. It would be extremely difficult for Alutai to set an ambush on them like he did when he attacked Quanningwei.

The various weapons of the Ming army were already superior to the ordinary armies of that era. It was easy to achieve a tactical victory. However, they were not seeking a victory of a few hundred or a thousand people.

Instead, these unstable factors on the grasslands should be completely eradicated.

(End of this chapter)