Chapter 238 Brawl
After the troops gathered, the few camps closest to the ancient city of Nandun were quickly defeated by the Jianghuai Army.

The Yan army further away was still in a panic gathering. Among them, Chen Cai's troops, several miles away from the old city of Nandun, were the elite troops of Jingzhou Zhenrong Army, with a total of more than 10,000 infantry and cavalry.

Chen Cai was Murong Deyu's trusted confidant, and he was extremely brave. After putting on his armor, he led the assembled 3,000 cavalry to the ancient city of Nandun.

It just happened to collide with the Yueqi Battalion led by Wang Tong, which was responsible for blocking the enemy.

The Yue Cavalry Battalion under Wang Tong's command was also composed of the elite troops of the central army, supplemented by carefully selected strong men from the Huai River who were good at riding and shooting, and they were all extremely brave and sharp.

The two armies faced each other on the road and immediately stood in a group.

A cavalry battle is different from an infantry battle. Both sides are entangled together, forming a millstone in the center of the road, which completely disrupts and crushes thousands of elite soldiers and excellent horses. In the end, you are in me and I am in you, and the two sides fight each other.

Although Wang Tong's troops were smaller in number, due to visibility and terrain restrictions, it was difficult to distinguish them even with torches, and at the end of the fight it was often impossible to tell who was who.

This is the horror of night fighting.

The 6,000 central troops in charge of the guard had completely lost their organizational ability at the hands of Chang Yanheng's Huaiyuan Battalion. Ma Deyi's troops set fire with all their might, striving to burn as much of the Yan army's food and fodder as possible, because these food were the most important strategic materials of the Yan army.

As long as half of it is burned, the Yan army will be unable to attack Jianghuai with all its strength for a period of time.

Both sides are racing against time.

Chen Cai demonstrated his bravery. Holding a long spear in hand, he chopped left and right, and led dozens of personal guards to directly break through a formation of the Jianghuai light cavalry team.

However, most of the Yan army was disrupted by the cavalry under Wang Tong and was unable to successfully break away from the battle group.

After seeing this, Chen Cai could only turn around and charge into the battle group with dozens of his personal guards who had broken through the siege, because even if these dozens of people reached the ancient city of Nandun, they would not be able to change the situation of the battle.

It would take at least several hundred riders to create some trouble.

Li Yuanhui looked at the lights in the Yan army camps and the number of torches to determine the assembly situation in each place, and was ready to support and block at any time.

In the ancient city of Nandun, Chang Yanheng divided out several cavalry teams to charge into the grain storage area and join the team that burned the grain.

Wang Wenliang, the commander of the Yan army stationed in the ancient city of Nandun, was promoted to General Huben and was a famous general in the central army, belonging to the Right Huben Army.

Wang Wenliang was originally very relaxed because of the New Year. In addition, Xiang County was hundreds of miles away from Huainan, so he drank a lot of wine. After being called up by his personal guards, he hurriedly put on his armor and went into battle.

He then led his personal guards and began to assemble troops, preparing to regroup and drive out the enemy forces that had entered the ancient city of Nandun.

As the commander, Wang Wenliang still had some prestige. When he shouted loudly, many Yan army soldiers who were panicking and running away gathered around him. In a flash, a team of five or six hundred people gathered together.

This situation was naturally noticed by Chang Yanheng, who then rushed over here with dozens of elite soldiers.

Although the soldiers gathered together, some of them even lost their weapons in the panic. However, they were unable to stop the cavalry, even the charge of the light cavalry team.

In order to gather his subordinates, Wang Wenliang even asked his personal guards to light torches so that the fleeing soldiers could recognize him and gather around him.

This also made it convenient for Chang Yanheng.

Wang Wenliang's armor was illuminated by the torches of his personal guards. Looking back at Wang Wenliang and the concentration of soldiers around him, Chang Yanheng immediately guessed Wang Wenliang's identity. He must be a general of the Yan army.

So Chang Yanheng, holding a spear, rode his horse forward and went straight for Wang Wenliang in the crowd. After dispersing and killing dozens of people in succession, he rode directly in front of Wang Wenliang, and then, in front of Wang Wenliang's astonished eyes, he shook the spear and hit him on the head, causing his brain to burst and he died immediately.

Afterwards, Chang Yanheng swept his spear across the battlefield again, killing several people in a row, and then turned his horse back and left in style. After Wang Wenliang was killed by Chang Yanheng, the soldiers who had originally gathered together once again panicked and fled in all directions, and completely lost the opportunity to organize themselves.

The guards were in continued chaos. Ma Deyi, who was in charge of lighting the fire, was using tinder to burn the granaries one by one. Hundreds of thousands of stones of grain could not be piled up together, so they might have to be divided into warehouses and stacks to avoid fire that would ignite the granaries.

Therefore, if you want to burn them all, it will take a long time. Even if you have made preparations early, it will still take a lot of time.

Finally, after more than an hour of continuous setting fire, most of the grain rudders in the granary were set on fire, and the time was almost the morning.

When Li Yuanhui saw the situation on the battlefield and the gradually brightening sky, he immediately ordered his messengers to go to various battlefields and blow the horns.

This was the retreat signal that had been agreed upon long ago.

At this time, Wang Tong's troops had fallen into a disadvantage because of the numerical disadvantage in the fight between the two sides. As the sky gradually brightened, the more than 1,500 cavalry were divided into several groups. Although they were obviously at a disadvantage facing an enemy force twice their size, Chen Cai's more than 3,000 cavalry were still in a tough fight and could not easily escape.

Seeing this, Li Yuanhui decided to charge towards the southwest of Chen Cai's troops, and immediately led more than 500 cavalrymen from Luo Shixiang's troop as a reserve, and more than 100 of his own guards to join the battlefield. More than 600 elite cavalrymen were enough to change the outcome of the war.

Luo Shixiang took the lead, his body as the spearhead, slashing, stabbing and smashing with the big spear in his hand, like a killer, killing dozens of people in a row. The Yan army avoided them one after another, and no one dared to stop him.

The more than 500 Qingzhou cavalrymen behind him were all elite and brave. They followed Luo Shixiang and charged forward.

The addition of this fresh force immediately caused Chen Cai's troops to be divided and put at a disadvantage. Most of Wang Tong's cavalry, which were surrounded in the middle, saw that friendly forces had come to rescue them, and their morale was greatly boosted, and they were eager to fight.

Chen Cai's cavalry was quickly defeated by Jiang Huai's cavalry from both inside and outside, and was divided into two.

Under the escort of Han Quan and other guards, Li Yuanhui quickly passed through the passage opened by Luo Shixiang's troops.

This was probably the biggest gamble he had ever taken since he became a general, but fortunately the outcome had been decided.

After hearing the horn, Chang Yanheng, Liu Ju and Ma Deyi quickly withdrew from the battle and began to retreat southward according to the plan.

Galloping southward on this vast plain, the second cavalry of the Yan army, more than 600 cavalrymen of the Wagang Army under Qin Bogui, also joined the battlefield. After quickly arriving at the granary, they realized that it was impossible for them to save the ancient city of Nandun, but they could now pursue the enemy.

So Qin Bogui immediately led his troops in pursuit.

The Jianghuai Army's rear guard was led by Chang Yanheng, a tough guy who had always been a pioneer and a rear guard. This time, he asked his deputy general Wang Bi to lead the army, and he led dozens of cavalry to the rear. Whenever the enemy cavalry approached, Chang Yanheng would turn around and shoot them off their horses with an arrow.

Those who followed behind him were all brave and good archers. Even if their archery skills were not as good as Chang Yanheng's, who could shoot an arrow through a willow leaf from a hundred paces away, they could still hit the target seven or eight times out of ten. Therefore, the Yan army's pursuit was very restrained, and the elite Wagang cavalry under Qin Bogui did not dare to pursue too closely, always keeping a distance of one arrow away.

The various troops rushed out of the Yan army camp one after another, but they were pursued by tens of thousands of cavalrymen.

In addition to sending a large number of soldiers to the ancient city of Nandun to put out the fire and rescue food, Murong Deyu was furious about being suddenly attacked in the early morning of the second day of the Lunar New Year.

Although the court in Luoyang decided to use military force against Jianghuai, no action was taken after all. The court was only gathering troops and transporting food and fodder.

But the Jianghuai Army actually dared to take the lead in attacking the Chinese and foreign armies in spite of the world's disapproval. This was undoubtedly an act of rebellion!
In the eyes of Murong Deyu, a clan general of the Murong family, the Li family had already rebelled!
Therefore, Murong Deyu dispatched most of the cavalry he could mobilize, and was determined to wipe out the Jianghuai cavalry.

So on the Yuzhou plain, tens of thousands of Yan cavalry launched a pursuit of the Jianghuai cavalry, which numbered less than 6,000.

Li Yuanhui, who had basically achieved his strategic goal, was in a bit of a mess at the moment, because the famous general of Dayan, the Right Tiger General Pu Gusu, who was famous for being able to defeat ten thousand enemies, was leading his five thousand cavalrymen to chase him relentlessly more than ten miles behind him.

　Happy New Year, everyone!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)