In the dense woods, Yue Xiang and the other three slowly moved forward along the steep hillside.

This kind of mountain road can't stump a person with strong martial arts like Yue Xiang in normal times, but just after a series of vicious battles, the strength is exhausted, and the speed is naturally not up. Looking back, I saw that I had left the cottage some distance, but there was still thick smoke billowing in that direction, and it was clear that the fire had not been extinguished, and it seemed to spread along the woods.

Yue Xiang was anxious, now he was really gambling with his life. If the fire really comes, it will be burned to death in the mountains. And the broken temple on the opposite side is not the destination I want to find, I really don't dare to guarantee the ticket, in case I make a mistake and lose my life, then I really went home unjustly.

I was in a hurry, but it was also true that the mountain road in front of me was rugged and difficult to walk. This hillside is extremely steep, and the slope in some places can be almost sixty or seventy degrees, and the place where you can put your feet is very limited, and you have to pedal to cross it. Fortunately, there are many trees on this hillside, and there is no lack of places to borrow strength, otherwise they would not have been able to go so far. Yue Xiang was just looking for a way to the other side by feeling, he thought that since there was a temple built in front of him, there would naturally be a road leading there, otherwise how did the people who built those temples pass in the first place?

Theoretically, however, it is true, but after all these years, it may have been that the road was flooded with grass and vegetation. It's hard to find it now. Yue Xiang and the others didn't know how many turns they had gone, Xiao Wan and Wang Yining were so tired that they were panting.

"Let's take a break." Yue Xiang saw that these two people really couldn't walk, so he had no choice but to find a place to rest. In fact, he himself was tired enough, and after walking for such a long time, the distance was far enough, and there should be no pursuers coming over for the time being. He also wanted to seize this opportunity to recover his vitality, otherwise he would not be able to cope with any unexpected situation in this state later.

"I didn't expect you to be quite valuable, Nurhachi came to you in such a big battle, it looks like he must get you and then soon." Finding a relatively flat place, Wang Yining leaned against a tree and glanced at Yue Xiang with slanted eyes.

"What are you doing with this guy?" Yue Xiang also glanced at him with his eyes.

"I'm thinking that I just arrested you guy and sent it to Nurhachi to ask for a reward, I heard that Li Yongfang, the chief general of Fushun, surrendered to the Jurchens, and Nurhachi made him a deputy general, still glorious and rich, and married one of his granddaughters to him. If I send you there, Nurhachi will have to make me a general soldier or something, maybe there will be beautiful women to serve, how happy you would be if you could live this life. Wang Yining looked at Yue Xiang with a teasing look on the corner of his mouth.

"That's okay, you can go if you want, I don't know if there is a general soldier for you, but I heard that the beauties of those Jurchen tribes are all very tough, nine feet tall, with a tiger's back and a bear's waist, copper bells in the eyes, and a wide mouth and cheeks, and they usually like to catch men like you and go back to serve them."

Yue Xiang replied with a smile: "Looking at your firewood stick figure, it is estimated that it will take less than ten days and a half months to suck up the essence blood of others, and return to the west with one life." When the time comes, I will engrave a few words on your tombstone, and I will write a peony flower to die, and it will be a ghost and a romance. No, which of those women are peony flowers? It's just a cabbage flower, it's simply written as a cabbage pile to die, and a ghost will also collapse......"

"Hehe, it's better to die in a cabbage heap than to die under a tartar's knife. Nurhachi: Is that easy to mess with? He didn't get what he wanted so far. If you hide like this, you can hide from the first year of junior high school, but you can't hide from the fifteenth. Wherever you go, he chases you. Back then, for the sake of an old Yehe daughter, Dongge, he did not hesitate to raze the entire Haixi Jurchen Four Divisions to the ground. Unless you hide in the gate. ”

"It's useless to hide in the pass......" Yue Xiang answered casually, Wang Yining was stunned, and didn't understand what he meant. Yue Xiang realized that he had lost his mouth, and quickly changed the topic and said, "It's strange, I can't figure it out." Why did Nurhachi look for Gao Huai Tibetan Gold? They Jurchens want money and directly send troops to rob it, and the property they plundered in the first battle of Fushun is more than one million, and if they really want to rob it now, which city in Liaodong can withstand their attack? Why bother with an ethereal legend. If you're really interested in gold and silver, grab a few more times, and you'll have everything. ”

"Not necessarily, some madmen can't think with common sense, especially bloodthirsty war maniacs like Nurhachi. If I think he has every reason to find this wealth, if he can prove that this legend is true, he will naturally rob it to enrich his strength, and at the very least, he must prevent this money from falling into the hands of the imperial court. ”

Wang Yining frowned, paused and said, "I think this person has long had the ambition to annex Liaodong. Now that he is openly bloodbathed, he has already torn his face. This money is an emergency straw for the imperial court, and the requisition of the army depends on money to operate, if the imperial court gets this huge amount of money, it will definitely be used against him, and his life will definitely be sad, so naturally he has to try desperately to stop it. ”

"How would he know that the court is short of money?" Yue Xiang was a little puzzled.

"We can all think of this kind of thing, and naturally there are other talented people who can also think of it. Moreover, there are high-ranking officers like Li Yongfang who know the inside story and surrender, how can Nurhachi not know that the current Ming Dynasty is just a strong man from the outside. I really don't know if the imperial court will fight or fu this time, now that the soldiers and horses of Jianzhou have become the climate, to destroy them, unless more than 100,000 elite soldiers are mobilized, such a large army out of the fortress, since the civil fort in the year of Yingzong, there has been no more. ”

Speaking of Tumubao, Yue Xiang and Wang Yining sighed at the same time, it was a scar in the heart of the Ming Empire that would never be able to heal. Think about how strong the Ming Empire was before this war, Emperor Taizu opened the country in Nanjing, eradicated the heroes at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, annexed Jiangnan, and then waved his army north, driving the Mongols out of the Central Plains in one fell swoop, becoming the only successful example of the Northern Expedition in Chinese history.

Later, Xu Da, Lan Yu and other fierce generals led the army out of the fortress, stepped on the Mongolian steppe, and almost reproduced the majestic military might of the Han and Tang dynasties in the past. Zhu Di, the king of Yan, seized the throne and ascended the throne, but also drove the expedition in person, led the army north to sweep the desert five times, the Han family iron cavalry dominated the East Asian continent, thousands of miles outside the Saiwai, at that time the Ming Dynasty was like the sky, what a powerful earthquake all over the world.

It's a pity that after the First World War of Tumubao, hundreds of thousands of horses and horses of the three battalions of the most elite Beijing army in the country were wiped out outside the fortress, and the elite of the whole country was almost wiped out in the first battle. Although he later tried his best to drive him out of the Great Wall first, he was regarded as a forbidden place of death by the Ming army since then, and he has not taken the initiative to attack for nearly a hundred years. Now, if the imperial court really made up its mind to levy a large army to fight at the customs, it would be a feat that had never been seen in a hundred years.

"I'm afraid that I will end up with the same fate as Tumu Fort, look at our Ming generals now, all of them are all virtuous, and their combat effectiveness is not as good as the green forest people who occupy the mountains as the king like Yang Shan. There are a few who can fight, but they are arrogant soldiers and fierce generals who are lawless, incapable of defending the country and harming the people. I heard that the commander of the Jingluo selected this time is Yang Hao, the squire of the military department, is there no one in the court? The generals are incompetent and tired of the three armies, doesn't anyone in the court understand this truth? ”

There was a sigh in Yue Xiang's tone that could not be concealed, he knew that the ending of the Sahuxu War was really the same as that of Tumubao, but unfortunately now he didn't know how to change this ending, and even he was precarious about himself, who would listen to what he said?

The longer he came to this era, the more he understood the real situation of the Ming Dynasty, the more powerless he felt. Maybe it's really God's own arrangement in the dark, maybe the Ming Dynasty's qi has really come to an end. But if that's the case, why is he here?

"yes, I don't think so, right? Some things can't be taken at face value. Although the military system of this dynasty may seem lazy, it may not really be as unbearable as you describe. Not all of the three major expeditions were won, Ningxia Bobai, Banzhou Yang Yinglong, and the Korean widows, which one was not fierce at the beginning, as if it was going to turn against the sky, and in the end they were all drawn. I heard that most of the famous generals who have participated in the three major expeditions this time are transferred, and I don't think this battle will necessarily lose if it really starts. ”

"What year is the old emperor's calendar for the three major expeditions, wouldn't it be better if you simply talked about it when our Ming Dynasty opened the Northern Expedition. Liu Ling, Juniper is indeed a battle-hardened general, but it's a pity that there is a Yang Ho above them. I don't understand, is there really no one else to choose? Why isn't Xiong Ting......"

When Yue Xiang said this, he noticed that Xiao Wan's face changed for a moment, and then he remembered that this Lord Xiong had hunted her down back then, and he must have remembered it a little unpleasantly, so he stopped talking, rested again, reached out to untie the water bladder from his waist, and tilted his neck to take a sip. After drinking, he reached out to hand it to Xiao Wan.

Xiao Wan reached out to take it, but her hand was too short to reach. So Yue Xiang naturally leaned forward, but at the same time as his body just leaned forward, the sound of branches and grass blades suddenly sounded in his ears, and at the same time, there was a bowstring sound. He barely had time to react, and a cold arrow snapped into the trunk of the tree at the height of his neck just now, and the entire cluster of arrows sank into the trunk, and the shaft of the arrow kept buzzing and trembling, showing the power of this arrow.

"I rely on !!" Yue Xiang broke out in a cold sweat, shook his hand and threw the water bladder, and threw Xiao Wan to the side and immediately rolled to the side and hid behind a tree. Although Wang Yining is a literati, he is a man after all, and he reacts quickly, holding his head and shrinking to the side. Then a flurry of arrows fired, nailing several nearby trees. Immediately afterwards, the shouts of the Jurchens were heard.

Pursuers! Yue Xiang's mind seemed to explode. I didn't expect the pursuers to chase after me so quickly! And when he chased him to his neighborhood, he even realized that he realized that his body was really tired to a certain extent, otherwise his sense of alertness would not have dropped so quickly. It was really dangerous just now, these pursuers' archery skills were very powerful, and they only picked up a life by chance.

The figures surrounded from all sides in a fan shape, Yue Xiang could see clearly, pig iron cowhide helmets, iron thread cotton armor, Jurchen with armor and banners, and they all held bows and arrows in their hands, and they were attacking alternately under the cover of trees, and they couldn't see how many people there were for a while.

It's bad now, if it was put on the front line, these people would really not be afraid of them. But now his strength has not even recovered thirty percent, and there are still two soft-footed shrimp around him to protect, but the opponent is outnumbered, holding a strong bow and excellent archery. He had already learned the archery techniques of the Eight Banners Army, and in front of this kind of bow and arrow, even when he was in good condition, he didn't dare to say that he was unscathed, let alone now.

Yue Xiang was really anxious and didn't have a good way, seeing that the other party was getting closer and closer, he gritted his teeth and said, "You two run quickly, I'll stop them for a while!" As he spoke, he took off his coat, held it in his hand, pushed Xiaowan back to signal her to run, and jerked her clothes out. Several powerful arrows screamed and shot up from different angles, and Yue Xiang rolled out on the spot, rushing straight towards the person closest to him.

Just as the tip of his knife stabbed into the man's stomach, four strong bows were aimed at Yue Xiang at the same time. The person who was stabbed was also really brave, blood gushed out in his abdomen, and he threw the guy away, and firmly grasped the blade of the knife with both hands, and forced Yue Xiang to pull out the knife. Yue Xiang was in a hurry, and with a twist of the knife, he broke his ten fingers, turned around and pushed the person's body over. All four arrows were shot at the corpse's back.

This group of pursuers was the group sent by Lang Ge, and when the leader saw that Yue Xiang was so brave, his eyes immediately turned red, he howled, and pulled out his waist knife to besiege. However, at this moment, two black shadows suddenly fell from the trees on both sides, and were falling in the formation of the Jurchen bannermen, and the two simple knives slashed left and right, and the Jurchens were caught off guard, and were knocked down by three or four people in a row, and they were suddenly in chaos.