Zheng Lianhuan is an officer of one hundred households in the official army of Annan stationed in Zhiling. This time it is said that the Southern Dynasty sent troops to attack, and a small force has already landed in Haiphong, and the imperial court ordered Zheng Lianhuan's Qianhu to send troops to cooperate with the main force from Haiyang to attack Haiphong.

Zheng Lianhuan's Qianhu Office is a fierce army, specially used to guard the north gate of Hanoi in the royal city. Three days ago, I set off from Zhiling, boarded the boat after traveling 20 miles south, and went down the east along the Yangtze River, and the team was very vigorous.

Zheng Lianhuan and his subordinates, divided into four boats, were the rearguard troops, and there were about a dozen ships behind them, and hundreds of people were all rearguards. When the cannon sounded, their ships had not yet turned the bay.

When the first cannon sounded, Zheng Lianhuan secretly screamed that it was not good, because they themselves did not have artillery, and the front team must have encountered the enemy's shelling.

And listening to the sound of artillery so intensively, Zheng Lianhuan was puzzled, since the confrontation between the north and the south of Annan, the north and the south have been fighting intermittently for decades, and they have always seen the difference between swords and guns, and even bows and arrows are considered high-end weapons, and they are very few equipped, and the firearms with fewer equipment are even more special for drills, and they are basically not on the field battlefield.

When did the Southern Korean army be equipped with so much artillery?

And let the unpleasant war?

As the muskets rang out in front, Zheng Lianhuan hurriedly ordered the captain to turn, and his boat took the lead to sail to the north shore, and the warships behind turned their rudders and fled to the north shore when they saw the situation.

Just as Zheng Lianhuan was about to dock, a row of gunfire rang out in a row on the south bank, and the soldiers on the boat were shot and planted in the river. One of the personal soldiers next to Zheng Lianhuan was shot in the neck, and a stream of bloody arrows flew out, which just splashed his face, Zheng Lianhuan was terrified, and fell into the river with a howl, relying on the shield of the troop carrier, avoiding the rain of bullets and swimming to the river.

I just straightened up and stepped on the ankle-length river to run towards the river beach, but I saw that the soldiers around me were still shot and fell to the ground, and the blood stained a large area of the river beach. Zheng Lianhuan crawled and hid behind a river heart stone, shrunk his body into a ball, motionless, trying to make himself look like a corpse.

Zheng Lianhuan was lucky, because when the barrage poured over, he was lucky to find a Jiangxin Stone that was almost half a meter high, which blocked the bullet for him and allowed him to escape.

Just less than ten steps away from Zheng Lianhuan, there were two subordinates lying down, one of them was hit in the right chest, and the blood foam that kept overflowing from his mouth, Zheng Lianhuan knew that this person was definitely finished, if he could be sent to the rear for treatment in time, it might be possible to pick up a life, but now, he could only lie here and wait for death.

"Help me, save me......" The subordinate struggled, stretched out his right hand to Zheng Lianhuan, and pleaded. He saw the scene of Zheng Lianhuan lying down and pretending to be dead just now, and he knew that Zheng Lianhuan was not dead, so he asked him for help. Because now, only this chief can save him, and it is possible to carry him back.

Zheng Lianhuan didn't dare to move, and let the subordinate mourn and plead. After the subordinate screamed a few more times, his head tilted and there was no sound, and the hanging right arm was still pointing straight at Zheng Lianhuan.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Zheng Lianhuan muttered in a trembling voice, tears sliding from the corners of his eyes.

It's not that Zheng Lianhuan doesn't want to save people, but that is an old subordinate who has followed him for many years. But he really couldn't save it, because the Jiangxin Stone where he was hiding was at least dozens of meters away from the river embankment, and at such a distance, it was very unlikely that he would climb back with a person on his back and not be discovered.

Zheng Lianhuan could only pray silently, praying that the rain of bullets on the other side would stop soon. Zheng Lianhuan secretly swore that if he could escape from here alive today, he would definitely retire and go home immediately and no longer be a soldier. There are wives and children at home, there are several acres of fertile land, the wife is not beautiful but very virtuous, the farm work and housework at home are all done by her, Zheng Lianhuan wakes up every day, only needs to smoke dry tobacco and the men in the village brag and burp, even cooking and laundry never have to touch their hands, every day the wife will be on time to bring the fragrant meals to the table......

In less than an hour, the battle was over. All that remained on the river were dozens of troop carriers billowing in smoke, as well as pieces of wood and canopies that some of the troop carriers had scattered over.

Occasionally, a few screams were still heard in the smoke, but hundreds of officers and soldiers who struggled to swim to the north shore escaped, and the soldiers of the old port battalion did not chase them, and let them escape.

After the smoke cleared, the sailors began to clean up the battlefield in river boats, found more than a dozen troop carriers that were basically intact as trophies, and rescued nearly 100 lightly wounded officers and soldiers by the way.

The infantry on the south bank also withdrew from their positions, helped carry the wounded, cleaned up the battlefield, and before leaving, Ding Shuai asked all the soldiers to collect the bullet casings, and all the remaining ones should be brought back and handed in.

Zheng Lianhuan, who was distraught, finally escaped his life, curled motionless behind Jiang Xinshi and pretended to be dead, and only after a long time did he secretly climb the river embankment, stumbling to the northwest, encountering several routs along the way, struggling to flee together.

……

More than an hour later, the mountain pass less than 20 miles southwest of Haiphong Town.

A dirt road winds east to the town of Hai Phong. Sandwiched between a tributary of the Taiping River and a hill, the road is the main road to Haiphong in the southwest, and on the other side of the hill, there are large rice fields mixed with barren small plateaus, and there is no formed road.

At the foot of the mountain, not far from the dirt road, there is a dense grove. The treetops swayed, and the sparkling sunlight shimmered into the trees, and although the sun was bright, it could not shine through the dense treetops.

The forest is on a gentle southwest-facing hillside that forms a bell mouth with a tributary of the Taiping River. The mountain, which is not very high, suddenly sinks down here, so the wind pours down from above, and it is very cool.

Lin Xiao and his five teams sat quietly in this forest, looking at the heat rolling on the dirt road outside.

Although it is still June, in this part of the northern part of Vietnam, May is the beginning of summer, as long as it does not rain, the temperature during the hottest day can often be close to 40 degrees, and the air humidity is very high, although the sun is already westward, three or four o'clock in the afternoon is the hot and humid time.

Lin Xiao was closing his eyes and meditating, and the last group of scouts came back, and the officers and soldiers arrived in a blink of an eye.

Lin Xiao waved his hand, Xu Tianshi and Duan Zhenghong led two teams to immediately rush out of the forest, blocking the dirt road at the bottom of the horn mouth one kilometer behind the forest, the mountain pass is not wide, less than 200 meters away from the river, and the large army of the official army cannot be deployed at all.

Duan Zhenghong and Xu Tianshi prepared to pretend to be pigs and eat tigers to show the enemy weakness. They divided the 100 soldiers into two rows, the first row of 50 soldiers lined up, which was enough to block the mountain pass, and the second row of 50 soldiers was about ten meters behind them, pried open the ammunition box, and skillfully pressed the bullets into the spare magazines, although each soldier had 5 magazines inserted in his tactical backpack, but there were too many enemy troops coming, Xu Tianshi ordered to press more magazines, be prepared.