Wind Gully Valley was only 30 miles away from the county. If one traveled at full speed from Rou Yuan County, they would be able to reach Wind Gully Valley in less than half a day.
Du Qi and his men slowed down on purpose so that they would spend more time. However, Zhou Ziqing, who was hiding in Wind Gully Valley, had enough patience. No matter how fast Du Qi was, as long as Du Qi headed in the direction of Wind Gully Valley, there would be no problem.
Zhou Ziqing and his men had been waiting quietly on the two sides of Wind Gully Valley.
On the hillside, the sun was scorching hot.
It was very uncomfortable to be under the scorching hot sun. In this kind of hot weather, if they were under the shade of a tree, they wouldn't feel so hot. However, the terrain of Wind Gully Valley was different. The rocks on the two sides had been weathered and there were no trees.
Therefore, it was very uncomfortable to be under the sun.
Even so, Zhou Ziqing and his men were still waiting.
At the place where Zhou Ziqing was waiting, the soldiers around him were sweating like rain. Large beads of sweat appeared on their foreheads and slid down their faces. There were even layers of skin falling off from many of the soldiers' faces. Because they had been hiding in Wind Gully Valley for the past few days, the environment was really bad.
"Report!"
At this moment, a soldier quickly ran over.
The soldier came to Zhou Ziqing's side and reported, "General, we have the latest news. Du Qi and his men are less than 10 miles away from Wind Gully Valley. They are about to reach Wind Gully Valley. The chance that we have been waiting for is here. "
"Good, good, good!"
Zhou Ziqing's face was filled with excitement.
If he could kill Du Qi or capture Du Qi alive, he, Zhou Ziqing, would become famous. To the Tang dynasty, he would have made a great contribution. Such a contribution would be enough for him to be promoted a few times.
Zhou Ziqing ordered, "Pass down the order. Everyone is to be on guard. Once Du Qi and his men arrive, we will attack. This time, we will use our advantage in numbers to quickly take down Du Qi. "
"Yes!"
The messenger immediately passed down the order.
The rest of the soldiers who had come with Zhou Ziqing also became excited. Among the thousand soldiers, most of them had experienced the battle with Du Qi. Many of them had witnessed Du Qi's strength and hated Du Qi even more. Now that they had a chance to take revenge, many people were looking forward to it.
Time passed little by little, and the sun gradually moved to the west because it was already past the afternoon. Fortunately, the sun was not as hot as it was at noon. The Tang soldiers were slightly relieved.
"General Zhou, they're here."
While Zhou Ziqing was waiting with rapt attention, a soldier beside him suddenly reminded him in a low voice.
Zhou Ziqing said, "I understand."
His gaze had already landed on the official road below Wind Gully Valley. More than a hundred cavalrymen surrounded and protected the carriage that Du Qi was in as the group slowly advanced. However, there was another carriage behind Du Qi's carriage. Zhou Ziqing believed that it belonged to Shangguan Yi and the others, which made sense.
Rumble! Rumble!
The carriages continued to move forward slowly.
When the group arrived at the foot of the mountain and was less than thirty steps away from Zhou Ziqing's position, Zhou Ziqing suddenly stood up and shouted, "Archers, shoot!"
At his command, the archers immediately released arrows from the hillside. At the same time, two large stone balls rolled down. Each stone ball was more than ten feet in diameter. They rolled down from the left and right side of the mountain toward Du Qi's group.
The first to be shot were the arrows. Fortunately, the imperial soldiers under Du Qi were already prepared. They directly took out shields from the backs of their horses and blocked in front of them. Only the sound of collision was heard as the arrows fell one by one. Even so, a few soldiers were shot by the arrows and fell to the ground, dying on the spot.
Fortunately, the soldiers under Mordor's command were well-trained and had already received orders. Now that they were attacked, they quickly rushed forward and got rid of the arrows. Soon after, more stone balls rolled down, but the enemy had already run away. Thus, the falling stone balls only caused a great commotion, but they did not cause any casualties.
The group accelerated, the warhorses pulling the carriages forward, and they quickly escaped the range of the arrows. Although there were casualties in this process, they had at least left the range of the arrows. Even if there were still some arrows, they were useless.
"Kill!"
Zhou Ziqing immediately ordered the attack.
With this order, horns blared from the mountain, and the soldiers lying in ambush on both sides charged out. Zhou Ziqing had brought one thousand soldiers with him for this ambush, and each of them was an extremely formidable elite on the battlefield. After all, Hou Junji wanted to succeed in this battle, so he had sent his strongest soldiers.
These soldiers dared to fight and kill.
These soldiers were powerful fighters.
All of them charged out and quickly entered the battlefield, charging at Du Qi's Imperial Army soldiers. At this moment, Mordor ordered the retreat to stop. Since there were no more ballista arrows, he was no longer afraid. Mordor's hundred-some Imperial Army guards had suffered ten-some casualties in the first wave of ballista arrows, and only eighty-some remained.
Even so, the combat power of this group of people was not weak.
Mordor's men stopped their retreat and began to form a defensive formation.
In this battle, Mordor's orders were to stall for time and wait for the ambush to arrive. Thus, all of them had gathered around the carriage and pretended to be on the defensive.
A few moments later, Zhou Ziqing's group was struck dumb.
One side was attacking while the other was defending.
Zhou Ziqing's side was attacking with ferocity. On the other hand, the defending side was also impenetrable, not falling into a disadvantage at all.
Time slowly passed, and when Mordor's estimation of the time was up, he stopped surrounding the carriage and began to focus on delaying the enemy so that his soldiers could be saved.
Time continued to pass, and the area around the carriage was gradually emptied. When Zhou Ziqing saw this, he immediately became excited and shouted, "Charge, charge around the carriage and take down Du Qi first."
The soldiers under his command quickly rushed over.
One by one, they charged towards the carriage. However, when the first person reached the carriage and slashed at it with his saber, he found that the carriage was empty. He was stunned because Du Qi was not there.
"Du Qi is not there!"
"Du Qi is not in the carriage. This is a pretense. We've fallen into a trap, we've fallen into a trap. "
The first person who rushed to the carriage shouted.
The news quickly spread and reached Zhou Ziqing's ears. Zhou Ziqing's heart skipped a beat. Their operation was extremely secretive, and after entering Rouyuan County, they had scattered and finally decided to ambush in Wind Gully Valley.
No one had spread the news.
No one should have discovered it.
They had not encountered Du Qi, so it was obvious that Du Qi had already known about it. Moreover, Du Qi had already set up an ambush, so they had fallen into a trap.
"Retreat, we'll retreat immediately!"
Zhou Ziqing was not an indecisive person and immediately gave the order to retreat.
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