At the second watch, a crescent moon has reached the zenith.
In the south of Daming Prefecture, Xinghua Temple, a century-old temple, was deserted. Even the young novice monks sitting in front of the Buddha and keeping vigil were dozing off. Only the clay statue of Bodhisattva in the temple was open.
In the backyard of the temple, a large cart was parked there. The horses were naturally gone, and only a flat cart frame was left there. There were also some paper money, tributes and other items piled on top of the cart.
This large cart is the one that brought Liu Qi's body in. Because it had transported dead people, it was a bit taboo, so it was abandoned here. The paper money tribute on it is used to set up a mourning hall for Liu Qi tomorrow.
At this moment, the big car under the moonlight seemed to have become a spirit and started to move on its own. It could not be considered as moving, but it was trembling slightly. A word from later generations can best describe it: car shaking.
Under the flatbed truck, three black figures slowly emerged. After looking around, they slowly crawled out. The three of them hid in the shadows beside the truck, breathing heavily.
These three people were the ones Zhang Yanling used Liu Qi's body to cover up and sneaked into the city this time. Zhang Yanling called it the Trojan Plan.
The key to this plan is how to sneak people in with the coffin. The initial idea was to build a coffin with plywood and hide the person in the coffin's mezzanine.
But Zhang Yanling quickly rejected this proposal. The coffin can naturally be made very large, but the larger the coffin, the more suspicious it is. The mezzanine can be heard by knocking, and it is easy to find the mezzanine. And once the coffin is transported into the city
There must be someone guarding the center at all times. It is impossible for people inside to come out.
In view of this, Zhang Yanling played a trick of making the imaginary the real and the real the imaginary. He deliberately made a large and high-quality red sandalwood coffin. The sandalwood wood is dense and extremely heavy. The red sandalwood is even heavier.
When the coffin was transported over, the people sent to pick up the body would definitely not be able to carry it. So they naturally brought the coffin into the city together with the carriage. The hidden person was just under the carriage's platform.
among the layers.
The genius of this plan lies in two things.
First, the other party will focus all their attention on that coffin. The coffin is too eye-catching, and everyone will immediately suspect that there is something wrong with the coffin. They will carefully check whether there is anything fishy with such a large coffin, so that they can clearly understand the coffin.
Naturally, there will be no doubt about the flatbed truck.
This is like a wealthy family's young lady throwing hydrangea. They often send a maid dressed in gold, silver, and makeup to throw the hydrangea, while the real lady pretends to be a maid in blue and observes secretly. The real master is often not dazzling and attractive.
Attention. Attracting attention is just a pretense.
The second point is that they most likely asked for the carriage to pass by themselves, and the coachman played by Zhang Yin deliberately refused to give it, which greatly eliminated the suspicion that the carriage was fishy.
Unless something unexpected happens, that is, the other party will come out and carry the coffin back to the city without a carriage. In that case, Zhang Yin will have to give the other party a message. He will say that it is better to use a carriage to transport it back to the city, which saves the lifting time.
Hard work. A carriage is nothing like that.
If the other party continues to refuse, Zhang Yin will use some strange and confusing words to coax the other party. For example, once the coffin is shipped, it cannot be changed halfway, and it must arrive at the place before it can land, otherwise it will be ominous.
In short, there is a high probability that this carriage can enter the city without being suspected. This is exactly what Zhang Yanling wants. And this also solves the problem of how the people hiding inside can get out.
Because after the coffin is transported into the city, it must be carried on a cart. Those people are staring at the coffin, but no one is staring at the cart. No matter where the cart ends up, it will not be split and burned. Finally, in the dead of night,
It just stops somewhere and the people inside can see the light of day.
The difficult problem was how to hide three living people under the carriage in a mezzanine that was only half a foot wide. Moreover, these three people had to be able to do important things and not be useless. This required careful selection.
Fortunately, there are a lot of talents in the regiment camp, and there are still many capable people who emerged from the training. There are still many people who meet the requirements. In the end, Zhang Yin and Meng Liang, who know the soldiers well, unanimously agreed and selected three people.
These three people are not tall and look thin and dry, but after taking off their clothes and standing in front of Zhang Yanling, the muscles on their bodies stood out one by one. Although their physiques are not strong in the traditional sense, these three guys are undeniably capable.
Doubtful.
These three people were all soldiers who had won the skills competition in the Zhenwei Battalion competition. Despite their short stature, they were unambiguous in their movements. Their bodies were as flexible as monkeys. The soldiers in the army regarded them as three people behind their backs.
The monkey spirit got used to the barking, and even called Big Monkey, Second Monkey and Three Monkey in person, even though they were no longer called by their real names. However, the three of them accepted these nicknames happily.
The big monkey is called Li Decai, the second monkey is called Ma Zhanpeng, and the third monkey is called Duan Xiaoqi.
Zhang Yanling closed the door and conducted an inspection on the three of them. He specifically asked about some emergencies to see how they responded. Then he decided that the three of him would sneak into the Daming Mansion to work.
What he has to do is very simple. Daming Mansion is full of soldiers and horses, and 70,000 to 80,000 troops are huddled in the city, fighting against trapped beasts. Zhang Yanling naturally needs to understand some specific situations in the city, and know some of the layout and defense of the city.
, in order to make better decisions. On the other hand, three people are needed to do some major things in the city to cope with the siege.
At this moment, the city is like an iron wall, and everyone in the city is trapped in this battle. Liu Liu and others have already purged the city. Anyone who is unwilling to help the rebels, or does not support their actions, will be killed.
He was arrested to prevent chaos in the city.
And these three people are going to stab their hearts and cut off their lives in this famous mansion.
The three monkeys crawled out from the secret compartment under the car and rested for a moment. Seeing no one around, they got up and left. Soon, three more patrolling teams carrying swords and torches appeared in the city. There were now soldiers and horses in the city.
There was a lot of noise, and no one noticed the identity of these three people. After all, the number of rebel soldiers has increased rapidly recently, and few of them knew each other. Once the three monkeys entered the city and pretended to be rebel soldiers, they would
It's hard to detect.
…
At noon the next day, the loud sound of the trumpet resounded throughout the battlefield in the north city of Daming Prefecture.
Under the watchful eye of the rebels at the city's head, a large group of officers and soldiers set off from the camp and lined up in an open area outside the city. Dozens of large vehicles arrived outside Lixu one after another, at a flat site within the sandbag fortifications that the officers and soldiers had built massively in the past few days.
Inside. Then, the cannons were unloaded one by one, and teams of soldiers shouted slogans and dragged them to the artillery fortifications, and began to install and adjust them.
The engineer battalion began to repeat the same tactics two hundred steps away from the city, building a circular shooting fortification to build fortifications for the gunners' shooting.
This move angered the rebels at the top of the city. There were dozens of cannons and crossbows at the top of the city. These people thought that places beyond the reach of bows and arrows were safe, so how could they be tolerated?
Yang Hu immediately ordered the artillery fire to bombard the group of officers and soldiers carrying sandbags. In one moment, more than 20 Zhankou general cannons and more than a dozen crossbows bombarded the group of engineers under the city, sending their flesh and blood flying everywhere.
During the battle against Shunde Prefecture, the rebel army recruited a group of imperial troops. They were gunners. Qi Yanming specifically ordered this group of people to be kept alive in order to allow them to control the Zhankou General Cannon. This group of people
He did have some experience. General Zhankou's artillery bombardment was very accurate, which caused huge trouble for the engineers to build fortifications.
Hundreds of soldiers were killed by crossbows and cannonballs. Jiang Bin, who was injured in the buttocks, almost received an iron cannonball. The cannonball flew past his body and hit the ground, creating a crater. He was so frightened that he almost died.
Passed out.
However, the shooting fortifications were still built despite the bombardment of artillery shells and crossbows. As before, once several layers of sandbags were built, the Zhankou General Cannon could only fire iron lumps to hit people, but it could not fire explosive shells.
The thing I can only look at and sigh with excitement. When the iron ball hits the sandbag and mud bag, it is just a pit.
Not to mention the bed crossbow, which is not as powerful as a general cannon. They can only attack the soldiers and horses carrying sandbags and mudbags back and forth, but this kind of attack is like trying their luck. Although they can continuously shoot and kill officers and soldiers,
But it would take several iron bullets and several crossbow bolts to hit those people who were spread out and still moving, so the gain would outweigh the loss.
So, Zheng Hu stopped the shooting himself, because other materials were easy to get, and there were not many iron cannonballs for the cannon and crossbow arrows for the bed crossbow. Killing one person with one shot would be a loss. Since it can't be stopped, then
He could only watch helplessly as the other party widened and raised the sandbag fortifications before his eyes, and slowly extended them.
But what Yang Hu didn't know was that the position of every general cannon on the city head and the position of the bed crossbow had been marked. Unless they changed places immediately, these would be the first targets to be bombed after the war started.
There were many rebel soldiers on the city wall who were very frightened. They were soldiers under Zhao Sui who had experienced the bombing of Baoding Prefecture.
Seeing everything prepared by the opponent outside the city, which was exactly the same as the battle in Baoding Prefecture that day, the nightmare of that day came back to my mind. Someone quickly found Liu Chong, Yang Hu and others and described the situation that day. They also warned,
On that day, Zhao Sui was almost killed by the soldiers under the city with firearms.
Liu Chong, Yang Hu and others also heard about the situation that day. At first, they thought it was a bit exaggerated, but seeing these people's nervous expressions and swearing with certainty, they did not dare to neglect it.
Immediately, Liu Chong, Yang Hu, Qi Yanming and others discussed countermeasures and decided not to show their heads to give the opponent a chance to snipe. In addition, they stepped up efforts to build sandbag fortifications at the top of the city, and also built fortifications on the inside of the city wall to allow the defenders to evade at any time.
It was late afternoon, and the long preparation period for the officers and soldiers outside the city finally came to an end. Two tall and thick fortifications outside the city had been completed. The opponent's troops and horses were also in position.
As a fireworks bomb exploded in the air, almost in an instant, more than 30 heavy and light artillery pieces from the siege team, including 25 Zhankou general cannons, began to roar. The shells rained down on the top of the city, and the city exploded.
.The big iron ball hit the ground in the city with a whining sound in the air. Explosive bombs exploded at more than a dozen scale points on the city wall.
For a time, the top of the city wall and inside the city were filled with smoke and dust, and flesh and blood flew everywhere.
Liu Chong and others huddled under the crenellations of the solid city wall, staring at all this in stunned disbelief, completely unable to believe that all this was happening before their eyes.
At this moment, Liu Chong suddenly understood why Zhao Sui did not dare to defend the city anymore. Because there was no way to defend the city. How could Zhang Yanling defend the city if Zhang Yanling had such vicious firearms in his hands?
But fortunately, we had made such estimates and preparations before. There were indeed some casualties, but although the opponent was very aggressive and wanted to attack, I was afraid it was just talk.
They have many artillery shells, so let them smash them. They can't knock down the city wall anyway. As long as they dare to climb up, they will encounter a fierce counterattack.
The bombardment lasted for an hour. The barrels of the Zhankou General Cannon were all red and could no longer be fired. The Tiger Howling Cannon and the Folan Cannon also fired dozens of rounds. The cart transporting the artillery shells was empty of more than 40 rounds.
A wooden box containing artillery shells fired nearly a thousand rounds.
The top of the city was bombarded into a mess, and corpses were everywhere. The city was also attacked indiscriminately. A large area in the northern city was bombarded by two to three hundred artillery shells. Many civilians and rebels were killed and injured.
.
The bursting bombs also caused several fires, sending smoke and dust billowing into the air.
The common people and rebels who witnessed all this were at a loss, with confusion and horror in their eyes. Before the war, they drank blood wine, swore poisonous oaths, motivated themselves, shouted slogans, and made their blood boil, as if they were not afraid of anything.
But at this moment, this firearm roared like thunder, knocking them back to their original shape instantly.