"Your Excellency Major, there's the Void Fortress ahead."

The Japanese guide who led the tour woke me up from my hazy sleepiness. I barely opened my eyes and looked at the fortress wall that appeared at the end of the mountain road.

I looked back at the troops behind me, and hundreds of soldiers on pack horses were resting on the rocky dirt road in the morning dew. Instead of being ridden, the horses were carrying dozens of large black crates covered with a thick stack of thin green cloth.

I shook my head, swept the exhaustion of last night's late meeting out of my mind, and jumped off my horse.

Well, it's not actually jumping off. The Japanese horse under my crotch was about the size of a donkey, and I was uncomfortable riding on it, and if I turned over a little, my boots would kick the stones on the road.

Following Fang Hai beside me, I took the horse in front of him, and I simply straightened my clothes, and then walked to the garrison of the fortress that went out of the city to greet me.

In order to threaten the right flank of the shogunate army, the central line command deployed two full battalions here composed entirely of Australian and Song people. At the same time, there was also a battalion of the Saga Domain, which was commanded by an officer of the Song Dynasty.

After hearing the news that I was coming to inspect, Lieutenant Xu Xiaochen, the commander of the Void Fortress, waited on the mountain road in advance. After seeing me, he stepped forward to salute and said loudly: "Commander of the first company of the third battalion of the second regiment, Lieutenant Xu Xiaochen, salute you!" ”

After I returned the salute, I walked with him into the fortress.

This fortress in the southeastern part of the Void Tibetan Mountains is made of rammed earth. An additional turret was built in the direction of the shogunate's offensive path to increase firepower and angles of fire.

When entering the city, Xu Xiaochen patted the city wall and introduced to me: "This wall is facing the direction of the East Pestle, and the shogunate army did not dare to attack in this direction, so the engineer did not strengthen it additionally. The wall facing Yunoda was reinforced with a layer of cement, which could resist a pound of iron cannons of the shogunate army. ”

I smiled and pressed the wall with my hand and asked him, "What about the defense in this direction?" ”

Xu Xiaochen didn't know what I meant, so he could only reply cautiously: "Theoretically, it can defend against 90 mm caliber field artillery within 300 meters, but we haven't done relevant experiments yet, so I don't know how." ”

I nodded and didn't say anything more. When I didn't come to Japan before, I saw the name "Void Fortress" written on the map that revealed the breath of the next thousand years, and I thought that what I was going to see was an interstellar fortress with flickering lights and dozens of missile positions and laser batteries. What a disappointment!

The troops in the city were mobilized, and not many officers came to meet us. Standing in the square at the south gate of the fortress, soldiers in gray army uniforms hurriedly passed by from time to time without coming to salute.

In fact, in order to cope with the situation in the middle line of total contraction, the Void Fortress had entered a wartime state the day before yesterday, and all soldiers had ended their vacations and were fully armed according to the drill rules.

Obviously, Xu Xiaochen also knew that his fortress was likely to become the first target of the shogunate army.

In addition to the necessary guards, I was followed by a company of sappers. After entering the city, I handed over a document to Xu Xiaochen: "Comrade lieutenant, this is the official text of the order, you can read it, and sign it if there is no problem." ”

Xu Xiaochen nodded. After taking the file bag, he didn't shy away from anything, so he untied the string from the bag in front of me, took out the document and read it.

I waited patiently for him to finish reading it, signed my name at the end with a pen, and then saluted him again.

"Comrade Major, the fortress will be handed over to you." Xu Xiaochen looked a little relieved, and there was a little relaxed look on his face, "In the past few days, the spies of the shogunate army have been getting deeper and deeper, and they may soon launch an attack, please be careful." ”

I smiled and nodded, "Don't worry, this will be a cemetery for the Japanese." ”

It will indeed become a cemetery for the Japanese. This "Japanese" is not just the Japanese of the Tokugawa family.

Of course, Xu Xiaochen didn't hear what I was saying. Perhaps he thinks I'm just using this wording to emphasize our determination to defend the Void Fortress.

"By the way, Major, why are you here in person? This fortress only needs a commander of the rank of lieutenant. After handing over the command of the fortress, Xu Xiaochen asked with some curiosity.

I shrugged my shoulders and spread out my hands to say that I had nothing to say, and Xu Xiaochen also closed his mouth in amusement, avoiding asking for information with a classified level.

After taking over the fortress, the sappers who arrived at the fortress with dozens of horses the size of donkeys immediately got busy. They erected bamboo scaffolds outside the southern wall, hung a green curtain to block the view, and then selected a company of Japanese soldiers from the city to serve as coolies, wielding hoes and chisels to destroy the solid walls.

It's a job that requires strength and patience, and there's hardly any trickery. Hundreds of diminutive Japanese soldiers laid down their arquebuses and instead crushed the walls with tools about as tall as their own.

The iron chisel struck the walls, but it shattered a piece of mud the size of a ping-pong ball. Even if you work non-stop for an hour, the dirt you drop may not be as big as a watermelon.

Shiratori stood on the construction site with a hoe in a sweat, laboriously raising his hand to wipe the dust off his face. Sweat ran down the wrinkles of his face, washing out a trace of the yellow mud that covered his head.

He nodded sharply, throwing the sweat that was about to dry on his face to the ground, splashing a little bit of dust.

It was already morning, and the sun was beginning to show its might, pouring heat on his swarthy back without mercy.

The former peasant, who had just been drafted into the army for a month, looked at the hoe with some pity, and felt sad in his heart at the loss of this precious hoe. He didn't feel that he had any grievances about being asked to dig up the wall. As a pariah who doesn't even have a surname, he works as a coolie everywhere he goes, and he comes to work for the old men of the Ao Song Dynasty, so that he will not be caught by the samurai master to test the knife because he does not do well.

It's just such a precious iron hoe... He stretched out his rough palm and stroked the damaged farm implement, thinking that he would never have had a chance to use such a hoe before.

"Hey, that guy, don't be lazy! Keep up the work! ”

An Australian Song sapper who was in charge of supervising them shouted. He strode over, snatched the hoe from Shiratori's hand, threw it on the ground after a glance, and scolded Shiratori: "If the tool is broken, go change it, don't take the opportunity to be lazy!" ”

Shiratori bowed his head in resignation, turned and walked towards the hut where the hoes were stacked.

The sapper in charge of the hayloft looked at him, did not bother to say a word, and nodded his chin to signal him to pick out a new hoe himself.

Shiratori also silently picked up a brand new farm tool from the ground, and turned back to the city wall.

"Such a precious iron hoe is thrown on the ground like a straw that no one wants, and the broken hoe is thrown away without repair." While mechanically digging the city wall, Shiratori thought to himself, "I used to look at a hoe that was more precious than my life, but it is worthless here in the Ao Song people." ”

Du Zhi'an, who was passing by him, didn't notice what the Japanese next to him, who had just put on a new hoe, was thinking. He held a plan of the city wall in his hand, looked up from time to time at the wall that had been dug into a crater like the surface of the moon, and drew a few strokes on the drawing with a pencil.

"Du Gong, how's it going?" A young man wearing the rank of engineer second lieutenant trotted over and asked Du Zhi'an very politely.

Du Zhian shook the drawings in his hand with a smile and said, "It's okay, almost all the points have been drawn." He handed the drawings to the engineer lieutenant, waved his hand, and said, "I'll leave it to you, bring the young man with me, and you can get to work." ”

The second lieutenant agreed, blowing the whistle hanging on his chest.

Immediately, a sharp whistle made all the Japanese soldiers who were still trying to dig the wall to put down their work. The long-term and rigorous training helped them develop a good reflex, and in order to avoid being whipped by the Australian and Song instructors, these submissive former farmers quickly learned to obey the whistle's commands.

"All the soldiers of the Japanese vassal army, all assemble!" The second lieutenant puffed up every inch of his chest and yelled, "Line up according to the original formation!" Don't forget to grab your own tools! ”

The cacophony soon sounded among the Japanese soldiers. The soldiers of the vassal army, who lacked sufficient discipline, hurriedly trotted and assembled, lined up squad by squad, trying to open their little eyes that were covered with sweat and mud and looked at the commander in front of them.

The engineer lieutenant nodded to the second lieutenant in charge of the company, and led the sweaty soldiers to trot away and rest on the way down the hill from the south.

After all the Japanese vassals had left, the second lieutenant led the men to completely cover the walls with a curtain, and then carefully removed the boxes from the pack horses with his subordinates and transported them to the curtain.

"Be careful, if you break it, it's 'boom'." The second lieutenant kept commanding his subordinates, while shouting with some nervousness, "I'll say it again!" This time is different from the previous excavation of civil engineering, if anyone dares to do things while smoking, Lao Tzu pulled out his dick and let him smoke! ”

The surrounding sappers let out a laugh that all men understand, and one of them quipped, "Sir, why didn't you give him your second child?" ”

The second lieutenant turned his head and scolded: "Lao Tzu has a girlfriend, what else do you want him to do?" ”

Du Zhi'an listened to the yellow jokes of the soldiers with a smile, reached out and twisted some black particles from the box, put them under his nose and smelled them. "Okay, so much gunpowder, it's guaranteed to blow the wall down."