Start of the Battle for Xiapi

The next day arrived and Yun was looking through his binoculars seeing the enemy around the city when he stops and says, "We will have to train Xiahou Dun's men in the use of simple tactics formation."

"Which formation?" asks Pang Tong curious since they only have an infantry army.

"The Horse Piercing Formation. I have noticed that all of the men were carrying spears while a sword is strapped to their belts. We should use the spears and bait the cavalry out," says Yun to Pang Tong when Xu Shu interrupts.

"How are we going to bait the cavalry out?" asks Xu Shu curious making Yun think hard about it when Pang Tong only smiles at them viciously.

"We deceive them using this," says Pang Tong pointing at Yun's shield confusing both Yun and Xu Shu when Pang Tong continues, "And this."

He points at a nearby tree and Yun and Xu Shu got the same idea from what Pang Tong was pointing at and Xu Shu says, "So we are going to make shields using the trees around us."

"Exactly, they will think that they will be facing our first and second line as always, but before they reach the line we can throw the shields away and get into the Horse Piercing Formation and neutralize Lu Bu's cavalry if everything goes right," says Pang Tong having a confidential tone.

"But we need to fell the trees on the other side of the hill. They will be suspicious if we chop down the tree on this site they will know that something is off," says Xu Shu making Pang Tong agree with him before they begin to work.

The night approached and Gan Ning returned to the camp finding only half of the army in the camp. He searched for Yun who was painting a wooden shield with recently burned wood.

"What is going on here?" asks Gan Ning seeing that as he jumped from his horse.

"We are preparing for the war," says Yun as Gan Ning hands over Lu Bu's answer.

"How are the Princess and her mother?" asks Yun taking the message from Gan Ning.

"She is a beautiful woman that will be worthy to marry the Young Master. Her mother on the other hand will be expecting a child at the beginning of the next year," says Gan Ning surprising Yun who looked at Gan Ning in complete disbelief.

Yun knew that Lu Bu only had a daughter from everything he learned over the Three Kingdoms Period making this new revelation a big surprise for him.

'It seems with all the changes that happened so far changed some of the future events like Lu Bu having another descendant,' thinks Yun as he opened the letter.

He read it and began to laugh heavily because of its intel when he says, "That Bastard, he really thinks that I would become his underling."

"Is he trying to recruit you?" asks Gan Ning confused from seeing Yun's reaction after reading the message Lu Bu sent.

"You could say so," says Yun with a smile on his face before standing up and throwing the letter into the fire.

"There is also another message from Madam Wei," says Gan Ning seriously as Yun looked at him a bit concerned.

"Which is?" asks Yun concerned since it must be quite serious if Wei Mei didn't just write a letter like her husband.

"She asked to find it within you to safe her stubborn husband for her and her daughter's sake," says Gan Ning to Yun who only looks into Xiapi's direction.

"That is not my decision to make. It all lays in Lu Bu's hands. You told her, didn't you?" says Yun to Gan Ning who just nods.

"I have but she still asked me to rely on this message to you," says Gan Ning before Yun continued to work on the wooden shield.

"She knows that I will try my best to keep him alive but I can't promise anything," says Yun while he finished with the shield before standing up again.

He places the shield against one of the trees before picking up another wooden shield when he throws it at Gan Ning who catches it.

"Help me and the others by painting the shield black so it looks like the shield the first and second line usually use," says Yun to Gan Ning who sees that Yun wasn't the only one painting the shields.

A quarter of the army was painting, another quarter was carrying the shields to the camp, another quarter was making the shields and the last quarter was chopping down the woods.

Gan Ning joined Yun as they began to paint the shields black with the soldiers that were happy to see their General do the same work as they were doing.

This standstill between Yun and Lu Bu stretched out for a month as they were eyeing every movement the other side did to be able to respond. Soon Shadow arrived with news from Tang Shi that he and the army have taken the position to block the rivers.

"The plan is unfolding as suggested by Guo Jia," says Yun as he and Lu Bu seemed to follow the plan suggested by their strategists.

Both had the same plan to hold their position and wait for the enemy to make a mistake to swing the war in their favor.

The only problem was that Yun was winning this standstill against Lu Bu since the longer he stood still the more time he was buying for Cao Cao to block Yuan Shu and Zang Ba from joining Lu Bu.

Chen Gong was looking at the hill and always saw more campfires being lit over the night making him think that his strategy would win this war since the enemy was forming itself in plain sight for them.

What Chen Gong didn't know was that Yun was ordering the men to ignite more campfires with every week that passed to make the enemy believe that they were gathering on that hill when it was only him and Liu Bei that were resting on the hill.

Yun also trained the men in the Horse Piercing Formation using Thunder and himself as the enemy cavalry. The soldiers learned from this experience but Yun knew that in the worst-case scenario half of the men he was leading would die in this war.

He wanted to improve this number by making them train the Horse Piercing Formation every day as he smashed with Thunder into them before giving them advice on how to improve their stance and where to aim their spears to get the best out of the one-shot they have in taking the horse or the rider out of combat.

Another two weeks pass and Yun tells the men that only they will be going to face Lu Bu and his army while Guan Yu would be securing their camp by igniting the campfires as Yun did before.

Yun could trust Guan Yu the most out of the three brothers making him the only option of telling him what to do while he and the others were away to fight Lu Bu.

Yun and his men marched for the next five days and reached the border of the forest which was providing them cover so far. Yun wanted the men to retreat from the border to not alert the enemy as he wanted them at full strength for tomorrow.

They didn't ignite any campfires today so the enemy would be surprised by their appearance in the morning. Yun himself was patrolling in the night with one of the soldiers as he didn't want the enemy to find out that they are this close to the enemy.

Chen Gong and Lu Bu were watching the campfires across from them on the hill and Chen Gong says, "The army is getting bigger and bigger with each passing week."

"It will make it only more interesting," says Lu Bu confident in himself to be able to change the tide of the war.

Chen Gong was having confidence because of Lu Bu as was everyone else on Lu Bu's side since Lu Bu could defeat anyone in the world. They all knew that they would crush Cao Cao's army everyone except for two people.

The First One is Lu Bu's wife, Wei Mei, and the Second One is his Right-hand, Zhang Liao they both weren't confident enough in winning this war both because of different reasons but the same man was in the middle of all of it.

Both were thinking of Yun. Zhang Liao couldn't shake the feeling from their last battle of his body while Wei Mei was thinking about what Gan Ning told her while he was staying in Xiapi.

The next morning Yun and the Infantry ate their breakfast which was dried meat and rice balls. Then they waited for another hour before they slowly stepped out of the forest.

They were in plain view of the enemy who sounded the bell alarming everyone that the enemy had arrived. Yun and his men weren't shaken by the sound of the bell as they get into formation with the first and second line holding the wooden shields that looked like shields made out of iron thanks to the painting.

In Lu Bu's eyes, as well as in everyone else's eyes, it looked authentic as if the real first and second line were standing before them holding their heavy black iron shields.

Lu Bu left the wall as he got his horse while his army got in formation. He and the cavalry joined the forces stationed outside the city.

Lu Bu didn't charge in but looked at the forest feeling cautious because Yun's cavalry and archer division weren't in plain view making Lu Bu believe that the enemy was trying to bait a response from him.

But Lu Bu didn't do the first move. It is Yun who did the first move by commanding to advance slowly making it believable that it was really Yun's army that was attacking Xiapi and not another army.

Lu Bu could see Dian Wei beside Yun, as well as Gan Ning, Pang Tong, and another man he didn't know the name of, while looking around searching for Huang Zhong and his son, Huang Xu, since they are the Infantry Generals normally making Lu Bu doubt that Yun was attacking with all of his infantry.

Yun stopped the army on Pang Tong's order as they were getting too far away from the forest. Lu Bu was seeing this development and didn't know what to do since he didn't want to run into a trap that Yun laid out before them.