May 20, 11th year of the Great Zhou Jianxing.

Li Kui sat on the ridge, holding a piece of wheat cake, and gnawed happily.

Before and after him, he was a villager from Bentun, and like him, because of his strong body, he was selected as a soldier by the lord of the fort, and left his hometown in this busy farming season and ran to this place more than 100 miles away to suppress bandits.

Because he was out fighting, he only needed to prepare three days' rations, and at other times, two meals of wheat bread a day were provided by the castle owner.

There are wheat cakes to eat every day, which makes Li Kui, who couldn't fill his stomach with gruel before, feel very comfortable, so much so that he now likes this kind of day of fighting outside.

Li Kui stretched out his hand to pull out a wheat seedling from the wheat field next to him, put it in his mouth and chewed it, savoring the sweet taste.

That's nice.......

Li Kui looked at the wheat fields on both sides, the wheat seedlings were lush and green, giving the anti-bandit troops, all of whom were from peasant families, a sense of comfort from the heart.

It is a pity that although all the soldiers carefully avoided the wheat fields, preferring to rest on the narrow and cramped ridges rather than trample on the wheat seedlings, the owners of this field were already doomed to not see a good harvest this year.

Rumble!

There was a loud bang ahead, and Li Kui and his neighbors immediately craned their necks and looked at the battlefield not far ahead.

This is a typical northern dock fort, the rammed earth wall is square, there are watchtowers for shooting at the four corners, and the earthen wall is nearly ten meters high, providing good security for the owner of the dock fort and all the soldiers and civilians inside.

However, this defensive system does not make much sense in front of the current attackers.

The main attack of the Xujiawu fort soldiers pushed the improvised shield cart, approached within thirty paces with the defender's soft bow, and then used a solid bullet to solve the heavy wooden gate and latch.

Usually at this time, after experiencing a loud bang, the gate of the dock fort is gone, the defenders have basically collapsed, and there are many people who kneel directly to beg for mercy with a single shot.

It's just that the dock fort today is a little more determined than the ones encountered a few days ago, and there are people shooting in vain with soft bows on the towers at the head of the wall and at the four corners.

Li Kui even saw the figures of women shouting loudly to carry some rocks and baskets full of dirt into the doorway, trying to block the door that had already been opened.

Li Kui shook his head helplessly, he knew that there was no point in doing this.

Sure enough, the second cannon fired, and with a loud bang, countless gravel rushed out of the smoke and swept through the doorway, and almost twenty castle dwellers with stones and dirt on their backs fell to the ground screaming.

Most of them did not die immediately, but none of them were destined to survive.

This was followed by a crackling burst of muskets.

Since the defenders' shoddy bows and arrows posed little threat to the improvised shield carts, the new musketeers were able to reload their shots calmly, so this time, even the musketeers had three shots.

Shooting an object the size of an earthen wall at 30 paces will hardly miss anyone, and of course, don't expect the musket to really cause much damage.

Instead, the arquebuses showed their power, the 15mm lead bullets dusted the walls, and the occasional heart-rending screams, and the wooden hangers, which were mainly used to fend off the soft arrows of the same class, did not do the defenders any good, and even the splinters splashed by the bullets could bring terrifying damage.

Several people had already been struck by the sharp splinters of wood on the earthen wall, and one of them covered his face and howled miserably, rolling on the earthen wall, and the people around him did not dare to help him, nor could they shut him up, and one by one they trembled and listened to the terrible cry, waiting for the next round of enemy attacks.

……

"It's almost time for us!" Li Kui's dock fort lord ran over and ordered the 10 strong men in Bentun: "When you enter the fort later, your hands and feet are sharp, don't care about the others first, and rush towards the private residence of the castle lord inside!" ”

Rumble!

At this moment, a wooden cannon opened fire on the wall, and two people fell under the wall like broken sacks.

The walls were dusty, and the defenders couldn't help but let out a cry of despair.

As expected, after the third fire from the wooden cannons, the defenders above had already begun to break out.

"It's our time! Hurry up! ”

There was a shrill horn sound from the front, and the lord of the dock fort immediately shouted loudly for Li Kui and his neighbors to rush towards the open dock fort gate.

This was the case each time, the Xu family army was responsible for suppressing the wall and blasting open the gate, and then the coalition of other dock forts swarmed in and directly attacked the private residence or ancestral hall of the dock castle owner, once these two buildings were conquered, the battle in the dock fort was over.

These days, there are more than a dozen stockpiles or dock forts that have been captured by this three-plate axe, and everyone has begun to become familiar with this process.

Li Kui pulled out two long-handled logging axes from his waist, roared angrily, and rushed to the front of the entire team.

He is not tall, but he is strong, and he seems to have been born with a few strengths, and when he used to collect firewood in Wubao, he could always cut several times more firewood than others at the same time.

Moreover, Li Kui was born with dark skin and ran shirtless, and people who didn't know thought he was a black blind man, which looked strange and scary.

Few people dared to confront such an angry strong man head-on, and because of this, Li Kui's castle lord arranged him in the first battle every time, and the effect was really good, and the already panicked defenders scattered in panic, and no one stood up to make the last resistance.

...... half an hour later.

The sound of crackling wooden sticks sounded in the barn of Wubao, Li Kui gritted his teeth and lay on the ground, and there were more than 20 Ding Zhuang from Benbao and other forts, each of them had a half-grown teenager behind him, holding a thick wooden stick and beating hard, and the scene was full of miserable screams.

Xu Shiyang rode on a tall horse, staring coldly at the beaten soldiers, not saying a word, and silently counting in his heart.

Next to him, several of his subordinates were beating the castle lord Xu Shiliu, who was smiling, and begged for something in a low voice, but the latter was still smiling, but he was always shaking his head again and again.

"Fort Master Zhang, you said that this fort is a bandit, we believe it, so I brought you to fight him." Xu Shiliu said in an unkind tone: "But before the war, let's say that no one is allowed to insult and plunder, what crimes are there in this fort, and then the trial, you do this, but it violates military discipline, if you strictly say it, these people will lose their heads." ”

The relationship between the different families was not always very harmonious, and it was not uncommon for them to attack each other because of the water source, the division of the fields, or any other reason.

However, most of the dock forts in this era have done dirty things such as robbing past merchants or robbing each other of livestock, and it is not a lie to say that they are bandits.

It's just that everyone, including the Xu family, has done it, and if everyone is identified as bandits because of this, it is really unreasonable to give the same treatment to bandits.