#450 - War Plan - I am the villain in the book

Wei Changtian had arrived in Guanghan County with Chu Xianping this morning.

Xu Suisui and Shen Ran had come with them.

Now, Ning Yongnian was opening granaries and releasing food nationwide, attempting to lower grain prices by using a large amount of the imperial court's reserves.

Wei Changtian certainly couldn't let him succeed so easily, so Yingfengsheng was secretly buying up all this grain again.

As a result, Xu Qingwan and Lu Jingyao were naturally extremely busy, so they both stayed in Shuzhou City.

Of course, even if they weren't busy, Wei Changtian definitely wouldn't bring them to such a dangerous place.

Actually, he hadn't wanted to bring Xu Suisui either.

But the former threatened him with "revolutionary friendship", saying that "comrades" should advance and retreat together, and in the end, Wei Changtian had no choice but to reluctantly agree to her.

As for Shen Ran...

"Since the teacher is going to Guanghan, the student should follow."

These were his exact words.

Wei Changtian didn't know why Shen Ran had become completely convinced by Xu Suisui in just a few short days, but he was too lazy to care about it. As soon as he arrived in Guanghan, he, Chu Xianping, and Liang Zhen went into the council hall and began military exercises, which had been going on for a full four hours now.

The so-called military exercise, whose full name was "military chess deduction", was a war process simulation conducted on a sandbox, combining the military strength of both sides of the battle and various objective conditions.

In his previous life, due to the development of technology, military exercises were mostly completed by computers.

Although there were no computers now, there were also no strategic weapons that required complex calculations, such as airplanes, aircraft carriers, or cruise missiles.

Therefore, constantly improving one's own combat strategy based on the results of military exercises was still a necessary task before a battle.

What's more, Wei Changtian now possessed the complete combat plan of the enemy, so the results deduced from it were even more valuable for reference.

Of course, with his "military literacy", he was certainly not qualified to personally participate in the military exercise.

The second round of military exercises was already halfway through, but the situation was not as clear as in the first round, and the balance of victory was even faintly tilting towards the "Da Ning side".

The reason for this was that Chu Xianping was not deploying his troops according to the "established strategy" leaked by Han Zhao.

"..."

"Brother Chu, do you think it's possible that Ning Yongnian might take over midway?"

Frowning, Wei Changtian called a halt to the military exercise, deciding to clarify this matter first.

Their previous combat plan was completely based on the imperial court's army's combat plan.

This meant that as long as Han Zhao strictly followed the plan to "act", then he would definitely be able to win.

But now that Chu Xianping was not conducting the military exercise according to the plan, it meant that he felt that the development of the battle situation might deviate from the track.

In Wei Changtian's view, if this really happened, then there would only be one possibility—

That was that Ning Yongnian personally entered the arena and took over the command of the army from Han Zhao.

That's why he asked this question.

However, Chu Xianping was obviously considering more.

"Young Master, Ning Yongnian taking over midway is only one possibility."

Shaking his head, Chu Xianping slowly put down a small red flag in his hand: "Although General Han should not betray the Young Master, the battlefield situation is ever-changing, and there are several deputy generals in the imperial court's army. Sometimes, General Han may be unable to help himself."

"Therefore, we cannot rely too much on General Han, and we need to be prepared to adapt to changing circumstances in advance."

"Adapt to changing circumstances..."

Staring at the green flag on the sandbox that was already faintly surrounded by red flags, Wei Changtian was silent for a long time.

According to the previous plan, this war could originally be divided into nine major steps to complete.

1. The imperial court's army, which wanted a quick victory, would launch a fierce attack on Guanghan County as soon as they arrived in Shuzhou, and the Shu army would "lose" after five days and break through the weak link intentionally left by Han Zhao, retreating towards Shuzhou City.

2. The imperial court's army, which had captured Guanghan City, would definitely not leave too many people to garrison it, and most of the army would "take advantage of the victory" and follow the Shu army straight to Shuzhou City.

3. The Tiangou Army, hidden in the Shiwan Mountains, would appear and recapture the weakly defended Guanghan City in one fell swoop, cutting off the imperial court's army's supply line instead.

4. The sudden appearance of the "human-demon hybrid army" would inevitably shock the imperial court's army. At this time, although they were in a situation of being attacked from both sides, they still had an absolute advantage in numbers, so Han Zhao would very "reasonably" decide to continue to attack forward and directly attack Shuzhou City.

5. Then they would enter Niutou Mountain, the only natural danger in Shuzhou, and fall into the huge "trap" that Wei Changtian had already set up, and would be fiercely blocked by the Shu army that suddenly turned back.

6. After this battle, it was conservatively estimated that the imperial court's army would lose at least one-third of its people, and the accompanying supplies would be basically used up. Although the number of people still had an advantage, the morale would definitely be low, and they would be faced with a dilemma—

Either continue to advance, catch up with the equally severely damaged Shu army before the supplies ran out, and then capture Shuzhou City, which had few defenders.

Or retreat, recapture Guanghan, which had a weaker defense force, reopen the logistics supply line, and make long-term plans.

7. After some weighing, Han Zhao would choose the latter, but on the way back, 100,000 demon beasts would kill out from the west in the form of a beast tide, giving them a fatal blow.

8. At this time, the imperial court's army would have at most 20% to 30% of its troops left, and would be faced with a situation where there was the Shu army behind them, the Tiangou Army in front of them, demon beasts on the side, and no supplies at all.

9. The war is over.

"..."

Although it sounded like the whole plan was very simple and crude, the complete version was much more precise.

Almost every step of the way, Wei Changtian and the three of them had made complete preparations, and would "force" Han Zhao to make every key node choice seem very "reasonable".

Moreover, now that there were an additional 100,000 Dali reinforcements, the fault tolerance of this plan had been greatly improved.

Therefore, in Wei Changtian's view, this battle might be very tragic, but the suspense of victory or defeat was not great.

Um...

The premise was that Chu Xianping's crow's mouth would not be accurate.

Rubbing his forehead, Wei Changtian helplessly looked at the intricate small flags in the sandbox, and really didn't know how to "adapt to changing circumstances" if something unexpected happened.

The battlefield where hundreds of thousands of people gathered was really too complicated, and it had obviously far exceeded his ability.

But fortunately, Liang Zhen was still maintaining a clear head.

"Young Master Chu."

He suddenly looked up and asked Chu Xianping: "Where do you think is most likely to have an accident?"

"Here, Niutou Mountain."

Chu Xianping unhesitatingly pointed to a mountainous area on the sandbox.

"The Battle of Niutou Mountain is the most important battle, and it is also the battle with the most variables."

"The trap set by the Young Master is indeed very powerful, but no one knows whether it will achieve the expected effect."

"And if we fail to severely damage the enemy here by then..."

"..."

Chu Xianping looked at Liang Zhen and Wei Changtian with a serious expression, and stretched out his hand to swipe backwards on the sandbox.

With a "哗啦啦" sound, all the green flags along the way fell to the side.