"In the Pingzhou area, at least hundreds of people die every day." Deng Sihai touched the wine jug on his waist and took a big sip, with obvious anger in his eyes: "It is said that the emperor of Great Wei is the official family of the people, has he ever really taken the people to heart?" ”

Deng Wenjun also exhaled a depressed breath, and continued: "The shoulders of the people are about to wear out, and the officials still keep whipping the cane, because they are afraid that they will miss the deadline and be severely punished by the imperial court. The last time I went to Pingzhou, about a group of the Xiang army almost mutinied, and then the forbidden army was transferred to suppress it, and I told Li Shu at the time that if it was severely punished, I was afraid that the people of the Xiang army would be even more dissatisfied...... For no other reason, many of the Xiang soldiers do the same work as the people, and they are still in arrears of military salaries, so it is strange that the Xiang army must be convinced. ”

"The forbidden army has three roads on the left, the center and the right, and Li Jianbu on the left is the most relaxed, except for stationing in Jinzhou and Pingzhou, there is nothing else to do, only to take on a role in battle, waiting to share the credit."

"A tough battle has to be fought by Yue Zhi, Li Youde and they fight, Li Enmao has no ability, he is not upright, he boasts of being romantic, he drinks and enjoys drinking in the big tent and his staff every day, and he doesn't care about military affairs at all."

The more the two pirate leaders talked, the more angry they became, the Great Wei Wentian had been martial arts for a long time, and the people who were in it, or in the high places of the temple, may not be able to have a deep understanding, the common people and gentry, they saw more, and there were few who dared to criticize unscrupulously, just half of an outsider's Wang Zhi's subordinates, who were in it, and wandered away, but saw more faults, and the resentment was deeper.

Wang Zhi had to stop the words of the two subordinates, and when it was quiet behind him, the former pirate king walked out of the cabin with his hands behind his back, they had been on the sea ship for several days, the sea in front of him was blue and vast, and the sea was quite calm, for the pirate king who was accustomed to seeing the southern seas, this sea area was his ideal retirement place, beautiful and quiet, but together with the Northern Expedition, Wang Zhi felt that the previous tranquility was an illusion.

Not far away, on the dark and dreary land that can be seen, a battle to determine the fate of China is about to begin.

More than 2 million men will be mobilized on both sides, hundreds of thousands of soldiers will be directly engaged in battle, blood will soak the earth, bones will accumulate in the wilderness, and countless fathers, sons, and husbands will bury their bodies here, or their violent corpses will be buried here.

Horses and brave men would roar together and rush towards the enemy, spears and blood gushing out.

Countless people and horses will wail, be wounded, and die.

With their spears and sturdy shields and armor, humans have done everything they can to create weapons that can hurt and kill their own kind, and they hope to protect themselves.

Every man in the prime of life will have a strong sense of confidence that he will survive the brutal war, and he may be armed with a long armour, heavily armoured, full of strength, surrounded by equally strong companions.

But everyone could die, even the generals who were in charge of the army, including the commanders and taiji of the Donghu people.

The dark and dreary land is as vast as the sea, and Wang Zhi, who is not familiar with the plains, feels that the earth is more worthy of awe. The tide makers on the sea don't like the continent too wide, which makes them a little confused.

Wang Zhi grew up in Mingzhou, and grew up in the port, Mingzhou is mountainous, near the sea, and the Liaohai side in front of him is obviously a broader, deep and boundless continent.

This is a vast, wide, deep, and cruel continent.

In winter, Wang Zhi used to quietly ride his horse on the shore, near the Great Wei Gate, the Donghu people would not appear in winter, most of them lived in Jiuyingzhou, in the Liaoyang area is their heartland.

Wang Zhi ran north for two or three days, dozens of guards rode horses to follow him, and for several days and nights, they had been running on land, feeling the cruelty and horror of winter on this continent.

There were hills everywhere, frozen rivers, endless black soil turned a blinding white in winter, everywhere was white, knee-deep snow, there was no sign of life, a few houses had long since become ruins, there were no roads, the trees were bare, and there was not a trace of green in sight on the mountains.

Wang Zhi lives in the south all year round, even if there is at most a light snow in winter, he doesn't need to care at all, and when he is in the Nanyang area, the winter is as hot as the summer of Dawei, there are no four seasons at all, only one season in summer.

When they arrived here, Wang Zhi and the others felt the vastness of the world and saw a different kind of scenery.

Later, Wang Zhi and others inquired, only to know that the land outside the gate was the Liaoxi Corridor, a narrow plain, to the north, walked for two months in a row to reach the border of the Donghu people, and then to the north at least half a year on horseback, through countless rivers, woodlands, plains, hills, before you can see the frozen sea in the far north.

It was wider, full of frozen earth, boundless, endless.

Imagine how the people who lived there lived, the long winter, everywhere was white, there was no trace of life, everywhere was frozen land, and it took a lot of effort to chisel the land. The rivers are frozen, the trees are hung with ice, there are no birds and beasts, no green can be seen, and under this vast world, there is an average temperature of about minus 30 degrees Celsius and an endless dead silence.

Living in such a place, hunting, fishing in spring and summer, shooting in autumn and winter, men doing these things, women sewing fish skins and animal skins for robes, picking wild fruits, the harvest tribe can give birth to babies to raise adults, and in famine years, it is impossible to raise a child for many years.

This is an incomparably cruel land, and how tenacious character, terrible will, and strong body will the people who live here develop?

The Jurchens who rose here broke the Khitan army of 500,000 with 20,000 people, and they were overwhelming and had no opponents.

Later, the rise of the Northern Captives, the integration of the Jurchen and Khitan and other tribes, more than 200 years gradually formed the current Donghu, with the best warriors in this land.

Their horsemanship was not inferior to that of the Northerners, and their warriors were trained in more rigorous tactical formations, and they were stronger, more tenacious, and more brave than the Northerners.

Their heavy cavalry is not inferior to the Xiqiang, the armor is slightly inferior, the Xiqiang people can obtain armor casting technology from the Western Regions, Central Asia, and West Asia, or ready-made good armor strong soldiers, while the Donghu people are forging their own, and their fine iron weapons are not inferior to the weapons held by the forbidden soldiers of the Great Wei.

They are not as rich as the Great Wei, but the number of soldiers who can be mobilized is also 300,000, most of these people are pure soldiers, and there are also supplementary soldiers from the young army, because they are pure cavalry, and they can take advantage of mobility every time to mobilize the Wei army and the forbidden army is exhausted and difficult to defend.

Their ability to mobilize, the upper and lower systems, was basically designed for war, and as soon as the Khan ordered and the conch horn sounded, countless warriors in armor and horseback rushed out from the villages of the various centurions, with their own long swords, scimitars, straight knives, straight swords, long knives, giant axes, iron spears, and their own bows and arrows, generally double bows, long foot bows and light and short riding bows plus two or three quivers, heavy arrows filled with flat arrows and light arrows with triangular arrows.

They gathered at the head of their respective villages, and then were led by the commander to the commander of the ten thousand, generally under the military banner of the noble Taiji, there was a large wing commander above the commander, generally when fighting with the Great Wei, the Great Khan of Donghu would divide the army into three wings, left, center, and right, each with several tens of thousands of households, and there was a large wing commander belt.

Before that, Wang Zhi didn't feel how terrible Donghu was, but it was strange that the Great Wei Forbidden Army had been entangled with the enemy for decades.

As he stepped onto the frozen ground and walked knee-deep in the snow, a terrifying image suddenly appeared in front of him.

Countless black military flags were black armor and iron horses, they appeared on the snow-white horizon, at first they were small dots, like pepper noodles scattered on the ground, and then they became bigger and bigger, like the rising water at high tide on the horizon, the sea and the sky, with an incomparably strong, irresistible momentum, surging in.

Those cavalry, this piece of white mountains and black waters, are all amazing, fearful, and afraid.

Resisting such a strong enemy, it is no wonder that the Great Wei has exhausted all its resources, has been bleeding, defeated, and fought many times to win once.

The entire northern land, full of broken battlefields, everywhere are bones, broken weapons, lodging war horses, a village, it is normal to look at it from a distance, but when you get closer, it is a completely abandoned deserted village, there are many white bones everywhere, some people are killed in the front, some people are lying on their stomachs, and the bones in the back are stuck with the heavy arrows of the Donghu people.

Some people were hacked to death on the road, some people were killed like hunting in the fields, by the wells, by the houses, in the courtyards, there were people who were killed, there were a large number of obvious children's bones, and it was simply horrific to see such small skeletons.

The Donghu cavalry who entered the Kou were completely a group of humanoid beasts.

After arriving in the northern islands, Wang Zhi, who was born in the south and has been developing in the South Seas, knew that he was shallow before.

Such enemies are the same as the land in front of them, vast and wide, seemingly calm, but they contain incomparably powerful power, they are wild and untamed, and they are good at learning, because they must be so, otherwise they will not be able to survive in this land of white mountains and black waters. Everything they do is for killing and conquering, and once conquered by them, the Great Wei will sink for hundreds of years, not only the overthrow of the dynasty, but the severance of civilization.

For a big pirate leader who has traveled all over the world, experienced dozens of countries, and watched countless massacres and annihilations, Wang Zhi really doesn't want to see the Great Wei have that day.

"The Son of Heaven is incompetent." Wang Zhi finally said to the two henchmen: "In terms of Mingda, the punishment of the two mansions is correct, King Zhao is incapable and unpopular, and he is the identity of the biological father of the Son of Heaven." Give the Fujian Road to Mingda, and even the southeast to him as the town, so that the two governments don't have to worry about piracy anymore, how worry-free and effort-saving. Mingda is a clan, and there is no precedent for a clan rebellion in this dynasty, to be honest, if the Son of Heaven is really magnificent, what if it is granted to Kaifu? Originally, the throne was vacant, and Mingda's qualifications were completely qualified! The Son of Heaven wants ZTE all day long, and there is really a chance for ZTE, but he also let it go lightly, which is a pity. ”

Previously, it had been announced that he would be crowned the prince, the defense of the Eastern Domain, the head of the water division, the general of the whole road, the general of Wei, and the deputy governor, all of which were related to the identity of the prince.

When Wang Zhi and others heard the news, they were naturally overjoyed, and while they were happy for Xu Zixian, they also felt that the Great Wei Imperial Court finally had a happy event.

Xu Zixian is a clan of the near branch, and his achievement is the glory of the imperial family, but it is a pity that the Son of Heaven is obsessed, and not only forcibly suppresses the activities that the two governments want to lead, but also suppresses all kinds of celebration activities.

Wang Zhi sighed with emotion, smiled bitterly, and said: "Our things have been almost done, we have been busy for two or three months, and the order will go down, we will not do the next thing, the ships will go back to the islands to rest, and the merchant ships will go to the sea to make money as usual." ”

The personnel and materials transported are indeed about the same, some coastal officials hope that Wang Zhi's fleet can continue to be on standby, and use it when needed in the future, Wang Zhi was still hesitating, and this matter can be regarded as expressing his dissatisfaction, as for whether the two provinces and the Son of Heaven can feel it, it is theirs.

"Dashuai," Deng Qi leaned against the window and knocked on the window and shouted, "There are quite a few cavalry pouring out of the gate." ”

Wang Zhi's flagship is moored on the seashore, a few miles away from the gate, this Xiongguan was ordered to be built by Taizu, and personally named Shanhaiguan.

The apt name is that Guanmen is connected to the Great Wall in the north, from Jiayuguan to Shanhaiguan, and is the most important military defense facility in the northwest and north of the Great Wei Dynasty.

This pass leans on the mountain and the sea, there are many facilities, the defense is strict, the city is 14 meters high, seven meters thick, four city gates, there are many arrow towers, Jingbian building, pastoral camp building, urn city, there are still heavy passes outside the city, before this pass, it is completely impossible to use force to attack, 20,000 or 30,000 people guard the gate, even if Donghu 300,000 horsemen attack day and night, do not want to conquer this pass by force.

Because of this pass, Donghu could only make a detour from the northwest of Liaoning into the grassland, and then break through the defense line from the north into the inner territory of the Great Wei.

Wang Zhi and the others came out of the hatch, and a group of pirates, all wearing Great Wei official robes, stood on the side of the ship, silently watching the scene of a large number of military horses coming out of the gate.

"About a hundred miles ahead, Li Youde has already set up a camp there and built a fortress." A young military attache pointed to a large group of soldiers and horses and said: "It seems that there are a lot of troops now, but judging from the banner, most of them are still under the command of Li Youde's subordinates, and the rest of the troops in charge of the army have fewer soldiers and horses. ”

Wang Zhi and Deng Wenjun, Lu Sihai all stood on the side of the boat to watch, a while ago the sentinel cavalry battle was launched in the seaside near the gate, dozens of Donghu cavalry, running up is not small, forming a cloud of smoke and dust, they roared, whistling away, on the horse with light arrows and crossbow-wielding Wei cavalry to shoot, both sides of the casualties are not serious, but the momentum is amazing.

Sometimes they also beat their horses to hedge, two groups of cavalry each hundreds, in the flat plain place confrontation, and then the drums and shouts sounded, both sides were heavily armoured, the war horses were dressed in cowhides, under the leadership of the knights to rush to each other, such a scene is creepy, or the whole body is boiling blood, the pirates even if they are light life and death men, dare to jump into the other party's guns from the forest when jumping gangs, but when watching the cavalry hedge, hear those shouts, hear the rolling thunderous sound of those war horses running, I saw the spear piercing the body of the cavalry on the opposite side, saw the man being picked up in the air, saw the war horse rushing into the war horse on the opposite side, the knights and the war horse on both sides rolled together, heard the sound of bones cracking, and heard the sound of sore teeth when the weapons were staggered...... All pirates felt that their previous pride was a joke.

They are also strong, strong, and brave, but they gather a few thousand men, and they are not worthy of the frontal rush of any cavalry of several hundred men, and in a turn, the cavalry can crush them, and then chase them all the way, reaping their lives and heads.

Now the pirates stopped laughing at the cavalry battles, they knew that dozens of people fell off their horses at every charge, and once they did, there was a chance of surviving.

At this time, almost all the cavalry who poured out of the gate were cavalry, and the cavalry of the brigade swarmed out of the gate, their helmets were decorated with white tail feathers, and their bodies were armor and red cloaks, in the barren black land, these brilliant colors made the cavalry out of the gate feel incomparably magnificent and incomparably powerful.

"The Donghu cavalry is ten times more than the Great Wei cavalry." Some pirates praised the cavalry in front of them, and the young military attache who spoke appropriately said to everyone, as if to himself: "If you want to defeat a strong enemy, I don't know how many good men have to bury their bones here." ”

"Zizhang, come here." Wang Zhi called Xu Xingwei's name and said with a smile: "Come to my side to speak." ”

Xu Xingwei's face was calm and resolute, he hugged his fist to the people around him, and strode in front of Wang Zhi.

This military attache who was born as a martial artist was very popular with pirates, generous, straightforward, and self-disciplined, and many martial virtues that were not found in military attachés could be vividly reflected in this young military attaché.

In addition, he is familiar with the scriptures and history, knows astronomy, knows the history, knows geography, Wang Zhi and others, and it is only in Xu Xingwei that he can see the quality that the Great Wei military attache should have.

This is the Wujinshi, a clear symbol of the dynasty's equal emphasis on civil and military.

Xu Xingwei is now a lieutenant of Zhenwu and a lieutenant of Xun Fei, and his post is to recruit the camp to bear, and he is specifically responsible for conveying to Wang Zhi's department the intention of the two governments and Li Guorui, the head of the camp, in fact, it is not good for the imperial court to directly order Wang Zhi's subordinates and send a special candidate to communicate with him.

Xu Xingwei's errand was done very well, and at the beginning of his appointment, some officials were worried that Xu Xingwei was too orthodox and behaved in a proper manner, and he was afraid that he would not be able to integrate into the pirate group.

And it turns out that pirates don't necessarily like villains who are full of evil spirits, and a character like Xu Xingwei is actually quite popular, which makes many officials feel surprised, but it is actually reasonable.

Wang Zhi looked at Xu Xingwei with a smile, he couldn't see through Xu Zixian, Xu Zixian also had a martial arts atmosphere, but the temperament on his body was quite mixed, there was the calm grandeur and decisiveness of the superiors, there was also the nobility of the nobles, the martial arts of the martial arts, and the shrewdness of the businessman, and the literati's literary atmosphere was not lacking.

Xu Xingwei is different, the Xu Xingwei in front of him is a pool of clear water, which can make people see the bottom at a glance, and he has no intention of hiding, but if you despise him and easily go to his territory to play, the shallow pool water can also become a turbid evil wave, which will destroy and drown this generation.

Wang Zhi likes Xu Xingwei very much, and the appreciation in his eyes is undisguised.