Nine dragons fight for the throne, I don't want to sit on this throne

As the night light dyed the Chu army tent blood-red, Ran Ming sat naked on the wooden couch in the medical tent, the white cloth wrapped around his left shoulder stained with yellow-brown medicine.

"This little injury is nothing!"

He swung his intact right arm and smashed it on the table, causing the copper medicine pot to fall to the ground.

"Back then, I killed the enemy on the battlefield and made them lose all their armor..."

"okay!"

The tent curtain was opened, and Chu Ning stepped in. He took a look at Ran Ming's injuries, then turned to look at the military camp nearby and asked:

"How is General Ran Ming's injury?"

The military camp hurriedly bowed and saluted: "The injury is not serious, but it is best not to use force within seven days."

Chu Ning's face darkened.

No fighting is allowed for seven days, which means Ran Ming can only lie in bed for the next few days.

After so many years of fighting, this was the biggest injury Ran Ming had ever suffered.

He took two steps forward, stared at them and said in a deep voice: "You can't go anywhere in these seven days. This is my order. Do you understand?"

Ran Ming's Adam's apple rolled twice, but he didn't say anything else.

When Chu Ning turned around, his eyes swept over the injury record presented by the military doctor - the laceration caused by the steel whip was so deep that the bone was visible.

At three quarters past the hour of Xu, thirty-six sheep-horn lanterns were lit in the central tent of the Chu army.

Chu Ning summoned all the generals to discuss the matter.

The twelve generals looked at the small flags inserted on the sand table. Those were the Tang army's deployment marked by the scouts: an ice cellar in the northwest corner, a group of watchtowers in the southeast, and a drum cart for telling time in the center.

Chu Ning took off the gold-inlaid dagger from his waist and nailed it to the edge of the sand table with a "click".

"Three quarters past three in the morning, here."

Chu Ning pointed to the grain and grass area in the rear camp of the Tang army and said: "The 10,000 soldiers will be divided into three teams: the first team will hold phosphorus fire bottles to burn the ice cellar, the second team will use grappling hooks to destroy the drum carts, and the third team will spread the puppets."

The dagger slowly slashed towards the northeast corner: "The sword and shield soldiers sneaked along the dry riverbed, throwing wormwood smoke balls every hundred steps to drive away the snakes. The archers occupied the commanding heights of the sand dunes, and fired volleys of fire arrows when they saw the red flame arrows."

The military commander suddenly said, "Your Highness, if Yuchi Gong goes into battle with an injury..."

"Then give him a big gift."

Chu Ning clapped his hands three times, and his personal soldiers carried in ten sandalwood boxes.

When the lid of the box was opened, everyone gasped - the three hundred crossbows were glowing with a faint blue light, and the mechanisms were inlaid with crescent-shaped blades.

"This is an armor-piercing crossbow made of meteorite iron, specially designed to defeat the Tang army's Ming Guang armor."

Chu Ning pulled out a crossbow and flicked it. The arrowhead vibrated like a buzzing sound. "Three hundred people will rotate every hour. I want to keep the Tang army awake at night."

At midnight, 10,000 vanguard troops began to sprinkle insect repellent powder mixed with sulfur on their bodies.

The leather bags around their waists were filled with kerosene, and the hooks on their backs were woven from yak tendons.

When the first gust of night wind carrying fine sand blew the tent curtains, the soldiers held willow wood mouthpieces in their mouths and put silencer leather covers on the camel's hooves.

At 2:00 a.m., the observer noticed a strange yellowish hue in the sky.

Chu Ning looked up at the hourglass beside him, and a cold light flashed in his eyes.

"Send the order, move two quarters of an hour earlier."

He grabbed a handful of gravel and threw it into the air, and the fine quartz particles were immediately blown away by the northeast wind.

"The night wind is coming!"

At this moment, on the Tang army's watchtower, the sentry was wiping the sunshine mirror in his hand, not daring to be careless in the slightest.

Suddenly, a few flickering green lights appeared on the mirror, and when he was about to sound the alarm, his throat was pierced by a poisoned dart.

Wang Qian, the captain of the Chu army's vanguard, swung his wrist crossbow, and the phosphorescent marks on the sand formed a winding poisonous snake, pointing directly at the running time-telling drum cart.

At the beginning of the Yin hour, a slight "rustling" sound was heard from under the dry riverbed.

Sword and shield soldier Zhang Wulang suddenly held down his companion - there were several mounds of earth rising from the sand in front of them, which turned out to be early warning pottery jars set up by the Tang army.

He took out a wormwood smoke pill and rolled it gently over. The heated pill immediately emitted green smoke, and the rattlesnake that was guarding the jar swam out.

When the first red flaming arrow tore through the night sky, seven fires rose simultaneously in the Tang army's rear camp.

The grain carts ignited by phosphorous fire spun wildly in the sandstorm, and sparks flew towards the cowhide tents along the strong wind.

A loud sound of wood breaking was heard from the direction of the drum cart. Twelve cowhide war drums rolled onto the sand and were licked by the flames into curled charred shells.

When Yuchi Gong rushed out of the tent with his upper body naked, the wound on his right rib burst again.

He watched the painted puppets dancing in the sea of fire, while the new Tang army recruits shot arrows at the human-shaped targets in fear.

"No chaos!"

He whipped the two deserters, but could not stop the spread of the camp roar.

Suddenly, a familiar sound of a steel whip breaking through the air was heard from the southwest corner, and the warrior suddenly showed a hideous grin - the real fight had just begun.

Yuchi Gong pulled off the blood-stained bandage under his ribs and sneered, "Chu Ning is here as expected."

With a grim smile, he inserted three black flags at the location of the fake granary on the sand table. Blood oozing from the wounds dripped onto the Chu army's planned attack route.

When the Chu army reached the outskirts of the Tang army's "granary", the leader Wang Qian smelled a hint of sulfur.

The veteran, who had participated in seven night raids, was about to sound the alarm when the ground beneath his feet suddenly collapsed.

Thirty pioneers fell into a three-meter-deep pit, and the poisoned bamboo sticks standing at the bottom instantly penetrated their leather armor.

More than a hundred bronze mirrors suddenly stood up on the sand dunes on both sides, focusing the moonlight on the dry haystacks, and the sky-high flames suddenly illuminated the night sky.

"We've been tricked! Disperse!"

Wang Qian roared and swung out the grappling hook, but saw the Tang army engineers coming out of the underground tunnel, sweeping across with modified fierce fire oil tanks in their hands.

The phosphorus powder marks that the Chu army relied on to identify the way turned out to be death warrants. The blue-green flames spread rapidly along the marks, burning the five hundred ghost-faced soldiers into fireballs rolling on the ground.

The Guche battlefield in the southeast is also full of danger.

Just as the Chu army's grappling hookmen climbed up the wooden fence, a dense sound of mechanisms suddenly rang out in the darkness.

Yuchi Gong had long ago transformed the time-telling drum cart into a crossbow nest, with three hundred long-range crossbows hidden behind the twelve drum skins.

The poisoned armor-piercing arrows pierced through the Chu army's shields, and the grappling hook man fell from the fence like a puppet with its strings cut.

What was even more deadly was that the lime bags placed in the drum cart were pierced by the sharp arrows and formed a white mist all over the sky. The flaming arrows of the Chu army archers instead burned their own vanguards.

The night wind arrived as expected, but it did not attack the Tang camp as the Chu army had wished.

Yuchi Gong personally led 200 engineers to dig a star-shaped wind channel, which guided the strong wind into a rotating airflow.

The flaming arrows originally shot at the center army were swept back by the wind wall, setting the Chu army's own horses on fire.

The frightened animals dragged the burning baggage and rushed around the camp, and the puppet formation that Chu Ning had painstakingly prepared was trampled into pieces.

"Release the jackal!" Yuchi Gong pointed his steel whip towards the southwest corner.

Three hundred hungry jackals from the Western Regions broke out of their cages. These beasts were trained to bite the Chu soldiers who had their legs bound with cloth.

Amid screams, the Chu army's right wing formation completely collapsed.

Chu Ning was watching on the sand dune with bloodshot eyes. The seven-pronged attack he had carefully planned turned into a farce of fratricide.

As soon as the 3,000 most elite sword and shield soldiers broke into the dry riverbed, they encountered the underground water attack prepared by the Tang army.

Yuchi Gong had his men dig up the hidden dam on the tributary of Lake Aidin, and the muddy torrent swept the Chu army in the riverbed towards the salt marsh.

The soldier who could swim was about to float up when his hands and feet were entangled by the fishing net set up at the bottom of the water.

Chu Ning's eyes were gloomy and he said coldly: "Withdraw!"

He knew that there were top strategists in the Tang army camp who had predicted his actions in advance!

He is in trouble!