Wangzhuang is located on the north bank of the middle reaches of the Xichuan River at the junction of three counties.
As Liu Chengzong and his party walked along the west side of the river, all the villages along the way were in ruins. Dilapidated cave dwellings and collapsed walls could be seen everywhere, as well as traces of being burned by arson.
In just ten miles, he met two groups of refugees fighting over the pottery in the ruins.
I also saw a few beggars, kowtowing along the road.
He also heard the woman's faint cry for help in the ruins, but when he drove over, the dying nursing mother had already passed away, leaving only the baby in her arms still alive, and her face was blue from hunger in her swaddling clothes.
Several people couldn't see this, so they instinctively mounted their horses and left.
After walking more than thirty steps, Liu Chengzong covered his face and cursed: "I am really your father!"
The four men all started to move. They ran back to the ruins. Liu Chengzong picked up the baby, Cao Yao kicked the broken door panel, and Liu Chengzu started a fire.
Cai Zhongpan ran out and exchanged a piece of cake for pots and bowls, and then used a musket to scare away the greedy refugees.
Only half of the cookie was cooked.
Alive.
They continued on their way amidst loud cries, only to realize that the Xichuan River had not stopped flowing.
There is an earthen dam across the river. Green trees grow beside the dam. A human trunk is hung from the tree. The human trunk's head is on the tree and its intestines are on the ground. There are a bunch of skulls on the ground with fat insects crawling on their heads. There is a monument on the edge.
, two characters are written in cinnabar on the stele.
Wang Tian.
It looks particularly blood-red on the loess soil.
Along both sides of the river, the golden land can be seen as far as the eye can see. Instead of planting millet, they plant wheat, which grows very well.
For some reason, Liu Chengzong didn't recognize any of those skulls, but he stubbornly felt that he should know them.
A few days ago they should have been called bandits, together with those who broke into Black Dragon Mountain, but a few months to two years ago, they had another name.
Common people.
The boss of Wangzhuang didn't need to use his head to repay his merits, so he left them here to scare the refugees.
The four of them stood in front of the stone monument for a long time.
Liu Chengzong didn't know what others were thinking. He just wanted to see more of this mature wheat field.
I haven’t seen such a joyful scenery in a long time.
He believed that even his father, who had been upright all his life, would want to kill all the palace officials inside when he saw such a beautiful scenery.
Until Liu Chengzu said: "This dam is good. There is no one downstream. Even if we use gunpowder to blow up the east side, no one will report it to the officials."
Cao Yao sighed with emotion: "There's a lot of gunpowder. We have to dig it down. It won't be enough in one night. Let's go up the mountain. Don't go in. This baby keeps crying. We'll call in people later."
Liu Chengzu laughed and said: "Why are you digging a hole? Are you attacking the city? There is no one to defend the city. If you can't open it by blowing off the latch at the back from the main entrance, I don't believe he can destroy Wangzhuang and use an iron gate."
The four of them walked from the north bank to the south bank, then led their horses around the undulating hillside, and finally saw the fortress that Song Shouzhen said was difficult to attack.
Liu Chengzong had only one idea: It's great to have money. This can no longer be called a siege, it should be called a fortress.
The earthen fort is built against the cliff in the north, with three high walls, a gate in the south, and four thickened turrets, like a small town with a hundred steps on each side.
Outside the fort, there are fruit trees to the west, a drying ground to the east, and an open space outside the south gate, surrounded by ditches on three sides. Fortunately, even if the Xichuan River was dammed, it did not store much water, and the lead to the ditch was also blocked by the dam. p>
The fort wall is more than two feet high, so the idea of climbing it is basically out of the question, and it is also covered with bricks. Even if a tunnel is dug to blow up the city, the amount of gunpowder required is prohibitive.
It looks extremely scary from the outside.
But looking at the entire fortress from the mountain, the walls are not as thick as they look, about one foot wide at the base and five feet wide at the top.
The actual height of the fortress is only about one foot, two or three feet. The other eight feet of walls are extremely thin and are wooden walls used to defend against arrows. There are shooting holes on them every two or three steps.
Cao Yao looked troubled: "It's not easy to fight. Cheng Zu is right. This fort can only blow up the door, but there are two doors inside. Let's blow it up again?"
The castle is divided into two courtyards, front and rear. There is a large courtyard with a well and a pond for collecting rainwater in the front yard. There are more than a dozen servants' houses and pig pens and stables on the left and right. The hanging flower gate facing the gate in the middle has a very high wall and the gate is equally thick. p>
And it looks brand new, either it has just been painted, or it was newly replaced after the seed management team besieged the fortress and frightened the Wangzhuang steward.
The granary should be under that mountain. To avoid rot, it was probably a mountain cellar or even a cellar structure.
Liu Chengzu pointed to the cliff opposite the fortress and said, "Can it be hung down?"
"The mountain is not too high, but it can be hung." Cao Yao shook his head and said: "But it looks like it is seven or eight feet long. If there is a guard on the wall, hanging down will be a living target."
After that, Cao Yao said: "Lion, what are you doing? Just go up the mountain and call out... What are you drawing?"
Only then did he realize that Liu Chengzong had taken out a pen and paper from behind and was drawing the composition of the fortress. He stepped forward and took a look: "Hey, the drawing is quite handsome!"
In fact, the painting is not very good, but with the help of another memory, the painting is quite smooth.
He said without raising his head: "Earlier, I thought that ten people would be enough to enter a wall. Now it seems that ten people are not enough, so we have to allocate people to control the villages outside."
"What's the point of controlling the fire?" Cao Yao said easily: "It's too late for them to put out the fire themselves, and they can't take care of us."
Liu Chengzong raised his head, put his pen aside, glanced at the surrounding villages, and said seriously: "We are all poor people. Don't make things difficult for others. The house has already been burned down once."
There are indeed signs of burning in the villages outside the fort, most likely because the last time the control team surrounded the fort and set fire to it.
But this fortress is indeed too difficult for those in the seed management team to defeat.
There are so many of them that they are bound to be discovered as they approach, and they don’t have heavy firepower. It would be tantamount to dreaming to capture this fortress with just two to three hundred armed hungry people.
That dam undoubtedly exceeded Liu Chengzu's imagination. Liu Chengzong could feel that after seeing that scenery, his brother's attitude changed significantly.
Just like now, Liu Chengzu was squatting on the edge of the cliff, looking at the fortress on the other side of the river, racking his brains, and suddenly said: "How about attacking in the east and attacking in the west? We have military uniforms and are familiar with the orders. We pretended to ask the Yan'an Guards to spread the news of the thief, and another team hung from the cliff.
Fall."
He turned his head, very happy with this idea, and said: "Or you can quietly go over and blow up the gate. The guards will be moved to the front, and the people behind will go straight to the main house and take the steward." Liu Chengzong answered: "The people in front are blocked and no one can get out. Disarm them and the fort will be taken."
This kind of imagination makes people happy, but it requires too much coincidence and is not practical.
After all, you still have to make the most difficult plan.
Liu Chengzong had almost finished the drawing and said to the three of them: "I'll draw the place and let's take a look. If there's nothing else that needs attention, we can take a look on the way back and look for a few places to hide food. We'll definitely have it in one day."
It can’t be shipped back.”
At this moment, Cai Zhongpan, who had never interrupted, said: "Hey, have you seen that there are a few people on the mountain opposite. Why do I think they want to do the same thing as us?"
After hearing the words, the three people looked around, and after searching for a long time, they saw a few people acting strangely in the woods in the mountains, and they quickly disappeared in the mountains.
They are not the only ones interested in this Wangzhuang.
