The sunlight shone in through the window lattice, and the old man lying on the chuáng bunk moved and let out a groan. The few people who were sitting or standing next to the chuáng all stood up at once.

The nv, who was lying on the edge of the chuáng, raised his head violently and held the old man on the chuáng. The old man's eyes were in a trance, and he didn't seem to know where he was for a while.

"It's ...... Where ......"

"In the inn." NV Zi hurriedly said, "The Luo family let us go." ”

"Oh," the old man closed his eyes, as if relieved, "this is ...... Other people's turf ...... They insisted on horses...... Just give them to them...... If we make a fuss, we outsiders will definitely suffer......"

"Dad, don't worry. Master Luo didn't ask for a horse, so he sent us to the inn again. ”

"Oh," the old man breathed a sigh of relief, and suddenly his eyes opened again, and he gave an anxious look, "He didn't ask you to go ......"

"No-" Nv's eyes were blurred with tears as he spoke, "Master Luo didn't say anything, so he asked people to send us back." ”

"Oh." As he spoke, the old man seemed relieved, and fell asleep again.

A middle-aged man in his forties next to him said, "The old man still doesn't look good, do you want to leave immediately?" ”

"How can he get on the road with his bones? You have to die on the road. The middle-aged nv in the room said---he looked quite right, but his face was haggard. Like the young NV, she also wears a short kù jacket, and she is a sell-out NV.

"I'm afraid that I won't go and dream a lot at night." The only young man inside said, "What if the people of the Luo family are not well-intentioned? Master Na Luo had crooked thoughts about his senior sister. ”

"The Luo family is the overlord here, isn't it what to do? If you want to move your senior sister's crooked thoughts, you can move just now - catching him in the house is not at his mercy, and there is no need to let us out and make it bad. The middle-aged man said.

"Who knows what bad water he has. This gang of rich people doesn't have a good thing. The young Xiǎo guy had a scar on his face, and he had been beaten by a lot of Xiang Yong's fists and kicks just now, and said indignantly, "Looking at his dog, you can know that this old man is not a good person. ”

The middle-aged NV looked out the window nervously: "Good guys, bad guys, don't do our business." It's better to let the old man recuperate for a few days, and leave when he can get on the road. It's just that we have no money on us, so we have to hire a bigger boat with us to go. I have to go to the show these days. ”

This time, he contracted the epidemic in Sanliang City, and the whole class fell ill in turn, so he couldn't sell his art, so he asked the doctor to catch yào and save all the little savings he had saved on weekdays - if it weren't for this, he wouldn't have fallen into the usury trap of the money shop in the first place.

"This Sanliang City is a good plate, there are many people to see, and it costs a lot of money to play once. But now it's happening. It's not safe to do business. The middle-aged man sighed.

The young man opened his mouth and said, "I don't think Senior Sister can go out to sell anymore!" It's hard to guarantee that something will happen again. ”

Everyone in the room was silent. The words of the Xiǎo guy are reasonable, but the live signboard of their group is this young NV - Xia'er, the stage name of the rivers and lakes is Sai Qingxia. She is a family heirloom of selling kung fu, not only equestrian mastery, shè arrows, dancing swords, and even top bowls and ropes. Although other people also have their own real kung fu, there are NV people, especially a good-looking big girl who runs horses and sells solutions, and when she comes down from a field, she will earn five or six percent more money.

Now, if there is no Sai Qingxia to appear, I don't know how long it will take to get together the travel expenses and leave. What's more, the old man's condition can hardly be said to have improved, and it doesn't cost money to live in a hotel and eat yào.

Qingxia raised her head and said, "I'm still going to perform!" We now know more or less about the affairs of this town - the Luo family is a tiger, and since the tiger did not eat us and released us from the tiger's mouth, other hungry wolves and dogs may not come to provoke us. ”

"Senior sister!" The xiǎo guy said anxiously, "......"

"Xiǎo chain, you don't need to persuade it." Qingxia made up her mind, "I'm the signboard in this team, I don't sell solutions, the money comes slowly, and we won't be able to get out." ”

Jiang Suo muttered a few times, and wanted to object, but the other people in the room opened their eyebrows, they came out to go out to the rivers and lakes to perform in order to beg for food, it is rare that this place has a good deal, if the pillars do not appear, how can they and a few xiǎo children support the scene?

The next day, the gang continued to run horses on the threshing floor. Although there have been several natural disasters in this place in Guangdong since Wanli, and the sāoluàn bandits of the great xiǎoxiǎo have come and gone, but on the whole it is much better than the Central Plains in the north, and the life of the people is still good, there are few entertainment activities in the countryside, there are big girls running horses and selling solutions, not only the townspeople, but also the villagers in the neighboring villages, and they also come to see the excitement when they have free time. Business was good on the first day. And no one came to sāo to disturb him.

To such a number on the market, everyone is full of performance. In order to make more money, Qingxia decided to take out the archery industry that she usually doesn't perform. This is the ability of her family from generation to generation, although Qingxia is an NV son, she can't open a hard bow that is too strong, but the general step bow shè can be called a hundred shots, especially she has the ability to shè money immediately, which is the ancestral skill of her family.

As soon as this skill was revealed, it immediately caused a great sensation. More and more people from the four towns came to watch. Several township leaders in the town also secretly praised it when they saw it: saying that this is real kung fu, not huājiashi.

The money was a lot, but the old man's illness became more and more serious. Several doctors in the town have been invited, and they have eaten a lot of miscellaneous yào, but there is still no sè. The crowd grew anxious - they had been here for almost three months. It's been almost a month since the horse was sold, and now it's just a few hands to pull the field temporarily. In this way, it is difficult to make ends meet.

While he was in a state of helplessness, a terrible news spread in the town: the thief had arrived.

Chen Haiyang, who was stationed in Hu Mén to recuperate, had already received a report that the officers and men had fortified Wuchong at a key point, and had not only overhauled the forts but also gathered heavy troops, so he instructed the detachment commander not to enter the provincial river for the time being, that is, not to pass through Wuyong. He was ready to fight another one-pot battle after the enemy's forces had almost been assembled, and completely destroy Canton's determination to resist.

Prior to this, he ordered the patrol detachment to attack from all sides to further weaken the morale of the gentry of the Cantonese scholars.

The cruising detachments are in alphabetical order. Each detachment acted independently, although the detachment commander was authorized to independently carry out operations, including military offensives. However, Chen Haiyang still strictly forbade any detachment to exterminate villages and massacre en massacres without permission. Grace and power are his guiding principles. In order to ensure that the detachment's image was not affected by defeat, each detachment was required to use as much as possible peaceful means to achieve its goals, rather than purely military operations.

Deji volunteered to lead a detachment along the Pearl River -- although Chen Haiyang expressed concern for his safety, Mr. Wen was very brave enough to say that this danger was nothing.

"Afraid of death and not revolution, in our career, we can't just sit in the office and read documents and give instructions, we must go and work with the old shili with real knives and guns!" Mr. Wen said proudly to Chen Haiyang and others on the temporary dock of Hu Mén. With that, he strode towards his own boat.

The D detachment led by him pulled up the sails and slowly swam away under the impetus of the sails and the oars.

Detachment D consisted of ten sampans and five dragons. More than 200 sailors and sailors, as well as a dozen civilian personnel. He brought with him a piece of artillery and some engineering equipment. The long dragon is relatively large, and can store supplies and carry artillery. Of course, it can also be used for people to sleep comfortably. Wen Desi's "flagship" is located on a long line, and the small cabin has been decorated with jīng heart, and the safety index and comfort are quite high.

The task force formed a total of six detachments, and they went to the townships and towns in Dongguan, Xin'an, Shunde, Xiangshan, Nanhai, and Panyu counties to post notices everywhere to extort "reasonable burdens." For a time, the whole province of Guangzhou shook.

Xu Tingfa's passive avoidance of the battle made the detachments almost uninhabited in the Pearl River Inland River. The detachments, guided by old pirate men who were familiar with the waterways, split up and went deep into the various rivers. The old pirate personnel knew the surrounding situation and terrain well, and knew where the villages and towns were rich and where the fortifications were tight, and the brave and fierce towns were "hard ground", and where the strength was lonely was "soft land".

The target of Detachment D was Shunde. The detachment sailed along the river, issued proclamations to the villages and towns, and established a system of "reasonable burdens" everywhere, which took little effort, and most of the villages and towns did not dare to resist the detachment under the prestige of the Australians, but could only accept the proclamations and "reasonable burdens".

In all villages and towns that did not resist, not only did the detachment not harass and extort, but also paid all the cash for all the materials and manpower, and the amount of reasonable burden was also very reasonable, and did not exceed the scope of the village's bearing. Some of them are quite light.

The first resistance of Detachment D took place at the three doors. After the request was denied, Buntokuji ordered an attack on the village of Sanfan. A mén 12-pounder howitzer erected on the long dragon soon opened a gap of more than ten meters wide on the bamboo fence built by the villagers, and the villagers behind the bamboo fence gathered together and sent their bows and arrows like raindrops towards the gap, trying to prevent the soldiers from breaking through, during which several mén earthen cannons were fired one after another, but because the distance was still far away, they did not hit anyone, and the soldiers bombarded the breakthrough from a distance with Mini rifles and 12-pound mountain grenades, and soon the villagers who gathered behind the bamboo fence and were ready to fight were crushed. A corpse was left behind. The soldiers then quickly built a passage through the ditch with a light bridge for sappers carried by the boat and entered the village.

Sanfan Village was already a húnluàn, and the old and young people were rushing to escape, and the ground was full of discarded shoes, baggage, and various belongings, but the ditches and bamboo fences that had protected the village prevented them from escaping. Detachment D set up blockades at several entrances and exits, blocking all the men, women, and children in the village.

Subsequently, a village meeting was held in the village threshing floor, and the villagers were driven to the threshing floor to wait for the fate. The black press was crowded. The sailors and sailors around them were carrying rifles with bayonets or machetes in their hands.

In the middle of the threshing floor was a new thing that the villagers had never seen before, a wide wooden frame with rope loops hanging from it.

One by one, the captured captives knelt to the side, languishing. Among them, there are many leading figures in the village, and those who can organize group training are all characters with some net worth. Most of them have a fame, at least they are also rich and landed.

According to Wen Desi's consistent thinking, the resistance should be dealt with severely, but this entry into the Pearl River is not to establish a long-term base area, and it is easy to provoke the will of the local people to resist if it is handled too strictly. The resistance to the local shili was carried out in three ways: "moderate punishment, division of the masses, and crackdown on the powerful".

As a retaliation to resist the Australians, the regimental commanders, training heads, and village brave teachers who led the village warriors in the battle, except for those who had been killed and whose whereabouts were unknown, all those who were captured were hanged in front of the villagers, and all their property was confiscated. As for the common people: the common people and the brave men - the civil propagandists announced that everyone was used and coerced by the rich and wealthy people, so they did not care about the seizure of weapons this time, and if there were any more attacks on the Australian and Song people in the future, and those who refused to accept the reasonable burden would be subjected to "more severe retaliation".

Even now the retribution is severe, the death penalty can be avoided, and the living crime must still be endured. After some bargaining, all the villagers of Sanfan Village paid the equivalent of 1,000 taels of silver for gold, silver, cloth, rice, and other goods. Of course, the reasonable burden on them is also calculated on the basis of three times.

Detachment D, after staying at Sanfan for one night, continued its advance along the river. Having occupied Mazhou, Sanshan and Pingzhou, the villagers in these places knew the fate of Sanfan, and none of them dared to resist Detachment D. The reasonable burden system was easily established. The ship was quickly filled with harvested tribute. Then, Detachment D arrived at the bay, which was a favorable terrain for the defenders, surrounded by water, densely wooded, and the local villagers also built embankments along the shore and buried many bamboo sticks.

Detachment D anchored in front of Shawan for the night, and early the next morning, Wen Desi found that a large number of villagers had gathered densely along the shores of Shawan, which could be described as a forest of knives and guns, and all kinds of strange flags fluttering on the riverbank.

As soon as the ships of the detachment moved, the villagers of Shawan lined up their cannons, and more than a dozen mén earth cannons opened fire together. Smoke enveloped the entire riverbank, but most of the cannons that came out were iron nails, iron sheets, porcelain shards, and xiǎo stones. They fell into the river after flying less than ten meters, and they had no lethal effect at all.

The artillery and Mini rifles on the long dragon opened fire at the same time, and the defensive positions on the river bank were cleared in an instant, and then, with the support of artillery fire, the sampans carried the sailors to the river bank, and the villagers on the bank shouted loudly, and Hu Luàn opened fire, but they were soon dispersed by the accurate shè fire of the Mini rifles. When the villagers realized that the thieves could shoot them from a great distance, and that they could not reach the enemy even with their cannons, the terrible reality immediately shook their morale. Then a mén earthen cannon suddenly exploded, and more than a dozen people were killed and wounded. The accident of the artillery explosion caused the general collapse of Shawan Xiangyong. Although the commander of the local regiment, Liang Kefa, who led the village bravery, and his own men tried to resist, he and his men were quickly stabbed by the bayonets of the sailors. Subsequently, more than a dozen regiment commanders, deputy regiment commanders, Lian Tou, and township teachers from various villages and towns were killed and captured. These key personnel stood in the front in order to boost morale, and most of them did not run away when they were defeated.

It took Detachment D an hour and a half in the morning to defeat more than 1,000 villagers sent by the six nearby villages and towns, and after killing and capturing a third of them, Shawan and nearby villages and towns then sent men to show their submission, not only ransom the captives at the price of one tael of silver per captive, but also pay a "compensation" of several thousand taels of silver. According to the old practice of the three fans, Wen Deji ordered the execution of a group of captured local gentlemen who served as the head of the regiment and the head of the training, and confiscated their floating wealth. He was not to blame for the common people, and the troops strictly observed discipline during the battle, did not loot, did not set fires, and were strictly disciplined. This combination of leniency and severity and differential treatment greatly reduced the interest of the common people in resisting the ambush army. The gentry were even more frightened, and did not dare to fight the idea of armed resistance.

While Deji led the detachment to rampage in the waterways of Shunde, Detachment E led by Shi Zhiqi was rampant on the main channel of the Pearl River, as if entering a no-man's land. After successively capturing the two islands of Daojiao and Dafen, which were trying to resist the Fu Bō army, Shi Zhiqi led his troops to capture a fort under construction in a county south of Xiangshan, dispersed hundreds of villagers guarding the fort, and then demolished the fort, and then marched to the city of Xiangshan. Although Shi Zhiqi had less than 200 men and more than a dozen boats, the Xiangshan County Commander, who was shocked by his invincibility all the way, was forced to helpless, and because the county was opposed by the gentry who were frightened, he finally gave up his intention to resist with arms. Several gentry were sent to his camp to discuss the terms, and Zuihou exchanged a ransom fee of 5,000 taels of silver from Xiangshan County for Shi Zhiqi's withdrawal from the city. This experience gave the senators a new understanding that magistrates were often willing to look for ways to compromise their ways.

The actions of the detachments along the Pearl River were smooth, and even a small number of combat casualties were minor. The detachment commanders adhered to the instructions: never fight far from the river - as long as they are close to the river, they can be effectively supported by the artillery mounted on the long line; Instead of staying overnight in a local village, preferring to camp or stay on a boat - the latter is a lesson learned from the team's experience in Danzhou.

Shi Zhiqi returned to Tiger Mén - unloading the trophies, prisoners, and very few wounded he had obtained on this cruise. With the reloading of supplies and the replacement of part of the personnel, he led the detachment to Dongguan County. This time, his target is Mirashi City.