Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a historical novel in which the author processes historical materials based on historical events during the Three Kingdoms period through artistic techniques. However, although artistic processing can be carried out, since it is a historical novel, the main aspects of history must be written according to historical truth. In the historical records, Xu Huang did repel Guan Yu in the Battle of Xiangfan, so the author's description cannot be too far from the historical facts.
In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the depiction of Xu Huang is not disparaged. As soon as Xu Huang appeared, he fought with Xu Chu for more than fifty rounds, regardless of victory or defeat. Xu Huang's martial arts proficiency has already been demonstrated here. Therefore, in the later confrontation with Yan Liang, after Yan Liang had easily killed the original Lü Bu's generals Song Xian and Wei Xu, Xu Huang came out of the horse to fight with Yan Liang. After twenty rounds of fighting, Xu Huang was defeated and returned to the home team. This made the generals of Cao Ying feel uneasy, and no one fought again.
Here, it also shows the recognition of Xu Huang's martial arts by the generals in Cao Ying. Xu Huang was still defeated, so his martial arts could not guarantee that he could defeat Yan Liang. As a result, no one went to war and risked it.
After Guan Yu arrived, after observing the army of Hebei soldiers and horses, he directly rushed into Yan Liang's army and slashed Yan Liang in the army. Cao Cao then covered up and won the Battle of The White Horse.
Here, Guan Yu was able to behead Yan Liang, mainly for several reasons. First, there is a problem with Yan Liang's deployment. After Guan Yu arrived, with his keen observation, he immediately saw the shortcomings of Yan Liang's array, so he told Cao Cao that Yan Liang's army was like a turkey tile dog. That is to say, Yan Liang's deployment only looks good, but the mobility flexibility is poor, and it is a formation with unclear offensive and defensive characteristics.
This also represents the uncertain mentality in Yan's conscience. The attack was not certain, so it had to put up a defensive formation, but it was the task of attacking, which caused the formation to break and provided an opportunity for Guan Yu to surprise attack.
The second is Guan Yu's martial arts are strong. In the case that other generals did not dare to fight With Yan Liang, Guan Yu dared to single-handedly behead Yan Liang, indicating that Guan Yu already knew Yan Liang's martial arts. Then, Guan Yu had not fought with Yan Liang, and he was not present when the other generals fought, so how did Guan Yu understand Yan Liang's martial arts? We will explain this question later.
The third is Guan Yu's red rabbit horse fast. We can see that when Guan Yu cut off his face, the book also directly mentioned this problem. The book reads, "Yan Liang was under the cover, and when he saw Guan Gong rushing to ask, Guan Gong was fast and had already run to the front; Yan Liang was caught off guard, and was stabbed by Yun Chang with a knife and stabbed under the horse." Suddenly he dismounted, cut Yan Liang's head, tied him under the horse's neck, flew onto the horse, and raised his knife out of the battle, as if entering no man's land. ”
We can see that Guan Yu's red rabbit horse has brought Guan Yu a great advantage. So much so that Guan Yu entered and exited the enemy position, and the enemy did not have time to stop it. Killing Yan Liang, Yan Liang didn't have time to react. That's the advantage of speed.
When it came to the Battle of Xiangfan, Xu Huang personally came to rescue Xiangfan, and Guan Yu had to personally confront Xu Huang. At that time, guan ping was blocking Guan Yu's right arm injury because it was not healed, and he said a sentence, "Xu Huang and I have an old relationship and know their ability; if he does not retreat, I will cut him off first, so as to warn Wei General." As a result, at the sight of the battle, Xu Huang not only did not retreat, but also marched into the siege of Xie Xiangfan and rewarded Guan Yu's first rank. Guan Yu was furious and fought with Xu Huang for more than eighty rounds, regardless of victory or defeat, and finally retreated under the enemy's front and back attacks.
We can see that Xu Huang and Yan Liang were defeated after twenty rounds of battle, while Guan Yu killed Yan Liang with only one knife. It can be seen that Guan Yu's martial arts are above Xu Huang. But at this point, Xu Huang actually fought with Guan Yu for more than eighty rounds without winning or losing, what happened in the middle?
One is because of Guan Yu's own physical reasons. When writing about the confrontation between Guan Yu and Xu Huang in the book, it is pointed out that although Guan Yu is extremely skilled in martial arts, he is ultimately less powerful in his right arm. This was because Guan Yu had just been wounded by an arrow, and the arrow was poisonous. Although Hua Tuo scraped the bone to cure the poison, it had not yet healed by this time. This greatly reduced Guan Yu's martial arts.
The second reason was that Guan Yu was not fully prepared to fight Xu Huang. After passing through the flooded Seventh Army, Guan Yu believed that the overall situation had been decided and was not mentally prepared to deal with being attacked by Cao Cao and Eastern Wu. He thought that as soon as he got out of the horse, Xu Huang would be afraid, and might even miss the old feelings and take the initiative to retreat. However, he did not expect Xu Huang to be so desperate, and in this case, he was furious. In terms of ideological preparation, Guan Yu had already fallen behind.
The third is that Guan Yu is a light enemy. Although Guan Yu told Guan Ping that he and Xu Huang had an old relationship, they knew their ability very well. However, in his heart, he despised Xu Huang's level. He said later that if Xu Huang did not retreat, he would behead him to warn the other Cao generals.
However, Xu Huang was no longer the Xu Huang who had fought in the past. Xu Huang was defeated in twenty rounds of battle against Yan Liang, and it was indeed a martial art. However, thanks to Guan Yu, Xu Huang's martial arts had advanced by leaps and bounds.
Guan Yu was in cao camp, and there were only two confidants, one was Zhang Liao and the other was Xu Huang. If the martial arts of these two people were too low, how could Guan Yu possibly look up to them. However, when they fought against Yan Liangwen ugly, they all suffered a big loss due to insufficient martial arts. Thanks to Guan Yu for breaking the siege for them. However, after this, Zhang Liao and Xu Huang's martial arts have made great progress.
This is because they have benefited a lot from their interactions with Guan Yu. Guan Yu taught by example that they had made progress in all aspects. This was the reason why Guan Yu and Yan Liang did not look at each other before, and he was able to deeply understand the false reality of Yan Liang's martial arts. It was Xu Huang and Zhang Liao who first told Guan Yu of Yan Liang's martial arts characteristics, so that Guan Yu was prepared for it.
In the same way, if you throw a peach in return, Guan Yu will not be favored in vain. He not only saved Zhang Liao xu huang on the battlefield, but also taught them his skills. Later, Zhang Liao single-handedly slashed At the White Wolf Mountain, which was a copy of Guan Yu's slashing of Yan Liang. Xu Huang also said to Guan Yu, "Reminiscing about the old days and following each other, Domon taught", which is also the reason why Guan Yu said that he had an old relationship with Xu Huang and knew his ability well.
However, this was no longer the time for Guan Yu to guide Xu Huang. Watching Xu Huang use the martial arts he instructed to fight against himself, how could Guan Yu not be angry?! But time has passed, and there is nothing to do.
It is precisely because of the above reasons, due to Guan Yu's physical injuries, lack of preparation, coupled with light enemies, resulting in Guan Yu's martial arts can not be played normally. Under this and that, Xu Huang was able to play against Guan Yu for more than eighty rounds without winning or losing. Under normal circumstances, Xu Huang would probably have been killed, as Guan Yu had said.