Chapter 701 What can cure cruelty is only more cruel
The Luodian Mountains may have never experienced so many people marching, at least not in the past few hundred years.
There are thick bushes on the road, and the jungle is full of poisonous insects and ferocious beasts. If soldiers from the Central Plains came here, they would probably jump before fighting.
Fortunately, the soldiers and horses from the thirty-six tribes of Wuman came, and everyone was able to do it with ease, and a few even caught some game along the way.
They were even more familiar with the wild fruits along the way and would not touch the poisonous ones. Qiandi and Dali were not far apart, and the vegetation was quite similar.
Moreover, they had never worn such comfortable boots before. They could walk barefoot in the past, let alone now.
The Seven Buddhas above the horse's back were holding a piece of yellow dry cheese. They looked at it for a long time, but they couldn't figure out how it solidified the meat.
After looking around and seeing that no one was paying attention, he gently picked it up and sniffed it at the end of his nose. A special fragrance made him swallow.
‘It smells so good!’ Fang Qifu thought secretly in his mind.
"Fang Shuai?" Deputy General Liu Bao tilted his head and asked, "Fang Shuai, what do you think is wrong with this cheese?"
Fang Qifu blushed, lowered his head and said, "Prepare more cheese and dried meat, we may have to march in a hurry."
Guizhou is a vast and sparsely populated country. An average prefecture or county can have a few thousand people, which is already a very impressive "densely populated" city.
It often takes a long time to find a tribe or village.
After sunset, the army still kept going. In the distance, Luo Shi's earthen fort lay deep in the darkness, with the shadows of the steep mountains behind it making it intimidating to look at.
On the mountain path climbing up the mountain, hundreds of figures were quietly climbing up.
This is the Song army responsible for the surprise attack. They are all Bai warriors. Their heads are wrapped with black ribbons, short blades hang from their waists, and ropes hang from their chests, allowing these skinny Bai warriors to climb the dangerous walls with ease.
The bright moon hung high in the night, and I could barely distinguish the faces of the people around me, and the paths on the mountain were also illuminated quite clearly.
Several Bai soldiers were hesitant. At this time, even if the defenders on the fort didn't need to raise fire, they could still see the hundreds of men and horses approaching if they got closer.
Although there was no fire at all on the fort, who knew they didn't do it on purpose. When they got closer, the fire was all bright, and then the crossbows and lime bottles were smashed down with all their strength. By then, none of the hundred or ten people would survive.
The Song army was pressing down on the country. Didn't these people know that?
They guessed correctly. The roads in central Guizhou were too blocked. Now Tian Yougong thought it was the same as Zhao Ji, let alone the little toast below.
Roche didn't have the slightest defense.
The leader of the Song Army gritted his teeth and continued climbing. The soldiers behind him took a look and climbed up too.
Soon, we arrived at Luo's village wall. There were few people here, and even a mid-level chieftain like Luo's chieftain didn't have many decent city defenses.
These people were crouching in the grass and looking from a distance, the entire village was pitch black, without even a hint of fire.
"No matter what, hiding here is not an option. Throw down the rope and pull people up!"
At the fourth watch, a vanguard battalion of two thousand people had already come up.
Outside Luo's Village, except for the occasional nightingale, it was so quiet that it made people feel nervous.
The infantrymen all had their heads turned and rolled their eyes. They felt their throats were a little sore. They spat and said, "Whether there is an ambush or not, we will fight sooner or later. What's the use of just wandering around here? When we reach the front of the village,
Kill them by surprise."
There are only a few hundred thousand people in central Guizhou, and the Luo family in Guanling only has a few thousand people.
There seemed to be hundreds of small and medium-sized toasts like this. Huang Kedi knew that even if there was an ambush, it wouldn't be a big deal. With a bloody courage, he bit a branch and touched it.
Arriving under the wall of the village, he finally saw a few guards sleeping soundly. Huang Kedi laughed angrily: "I was frightened by these birdmen for no reason!"
He waved his hand, and several Bai warriors threw away the rope buckles in their hands and climbed up.
A torch was thrown in, and the shouts of killing were loud. The people on the city wall finally woke up and began to scream.
The remaining people slashed at the village door with knives, sawdust flying everywhere, and broke in after a while.
Huang Kedi led his troops and set fires everywhere. The flames were blazing, and the village was illuminated like daylight.
The native soldiers had no time to assemble, so they had to fight independently. They originally worked for the chieftain in their spare time, and fought for each other during the war.
This battalion of Song soldiers killed everyone on sight, set fire to every house, and smoke billowed. When Luo Tianxiong, the chieftain of the Luo family, came out with a spear, the Song soldiers had already killed him in front of his chieftain's house.
Seeing his 500-year-old foundation turned into a sea of fire, Luo Tianxiong's eyes were about to burst.
"I'll fight with you!"
He brandished his spear and prepared to come out to meet the enemy. The Song Army squad below was delighted to see him.
This man looked tall and mighty under the firelight. He was wearing armor, and he was very different from the skinny natives who were barely clothed.
Dozens of crossbow arrows were shot together, and Luo Tianxiong's face and neck were pierced as densely as chopstick tubes.
"General Huang, what should we do if there are still women and children who haven't come out?"
"Ignore them, the Chieftain of the Luo family has been destroyed. Surround the Chieftain's Mansion. Kill all the people named Luo, and then go to join Fang Shuai!"——
In the north of Guanling Mountain, the mountains and plains are filled with camps of the Song Dynasty. Every night, there are bonfires like a sea, which is really frightening.
The Song army's troops were so concentrated that a small-scale sneak attack was almost a suicide.
Distributed in this way in central Guizhou, the little chieftains who originally followed Tian's orders did not dare to act rashly.
Tian's army also withdrew from the prefectures and counties it occupied. Fang Qifu's face gradually turned ugly as he listened to his men's report about the massacre of Yangzhou.
"If we can't decide in one battle and reverse the situation, what's the point of this battle? It's just expelling one Tian family and supporting another Tian family."
Fang Qifu sighed and asked his subordinates to write a letter and send it to Bianliang.
The secretary of the army took up his pen angrily and wrote: "It is Yangzhou at that time, and the killings are brutal: after Tian's order, not even one out of ten people survived.
There are those who bind someone’s husband and father, rape their wives and daughters, and then kill them;
There are those who drive a father to rape his daughter and then kill her;
There is a naked pregnant woman who has a divination of the gender of her unborn child and performs an autopsy as a show;
There are those who take a large pot of boiling oil, throw a baby in it, and watch it jump for fun;
Some tied people to the ground, cut their bellies and fed them to the sheep with rice and beans, and cooked porridge with human blood and rice to feed the donkeys and horses.
The Han people in Yangzhou were hunted down and slaughtered, and their blood flowed like water from a stream.
It is difficult to convert barbarians with etiquette, why should I ask the common people? If you do not enter the mountains with integrity, your rule will be useless! The Seven Buddhas of my ministers asked for orders to kill all the chieftains in central Guizhou and return them to their native lands. This is a grand plan for central Guizhou for a thousand years, and it will save millions of lives.
The gospel.”
Although the request had just been sent out, Fang Qifu had already given the order to kill all the chieftains every time a chieftain's village was breached.
The deputy general questioned, and Fang Qifo said calmly: "Brother Liu, don't worry, the court will definitely agree."