The sun at three o'clock in the afternoon was no longer so harsh. Shao Yuanyi sat up from a rattan chair gracefully, he had just finished his afternoon nap and was still a little confused. Although it was the height of summer at this time, he slept at the back door, and as soon as the front and back doors opened, the wind passed through the hall, so it was not too cool. The family clock struck "Dangdang Dang" three times, and in two hours, several of his apprentices would come to learn from him. This is also the task assigned to him by his superiors, that is, to spread the knowledge he has mastered as much as possible, so that more people can benefit, which is something that the state has been advocating.

Taking advantage of the fact that there was still some time, he decided to go to the side of his own slope in the mountains to have a look, and after saying hello to his wife who was still feeding in the pigsty, Shao Yuanyi put his hands behind his back, and Shi Shiran went to the north of the mountain.

The village is less than 300 meters from the mountains, and there is a gravel road leading to it. When the settlements were built and the fields were allocated, it was already stipulated that each person had three acres of flat land and five acres of sloping land, and the flat land was concentrated in front of the village, while the sloping land was in the mountains. Due to the large-scale rearing of livestock, every time the harvesters of the villagers' mutual aid groups start to harvest the grass on a large scale, each family will take the cattle out of the livestock pens, then put them on carts and drive them to the mountains to pull back their harvested pasture.

These two days are the forage harvest season, and from time to time on the road, some villagers with ox carts and full of pasture come back from the mountains, and Shao Yuanyi greets them softly. These people are all residents in the east of the village, and the horse-drawn forage harvester in the village also starts from their fields and harvests them in turn, and it will probably not be harvested until tomorrow to the slope fields of Shao Yuanyi's family.

The sloping fields of Pasture Ridge are extremely large. There are about 1,000 acres, all of which are located in the mountains to the north. The hilly terrain here is not very undulating, and the slopes are relatively gentle, which makes mechanical harvesting possible. Shao Yuanyi stood on the hillside, and the sight was full of lush alfalfa slope fields, which were growing quite well. The land here is not as fertile as the hills, but it is suitable for growing alfalfa, which is often more profitable when harvested and returned to livestock. However, if it was in Daming, such slopes would have been replanted with wheat or corn early on. It doesn't matter if it's suitable for growing food. Anyway, let's plant it first. You must know that not everyone in the Ming Dynasty had livestock to raise, especially at the end of the Ming Dynasty, when the social order gradually collapsed, everyone preferred to grow dryland crops such as wheat and corn.

"Adapt to local conditions. It's only possible on the East Coast. Shao Yuanyi sighed slightly. Then he walked towards his own field. There are some fruit trees planted along the side of the field path leading to the field. The fruit tree seedlings were initially purchased at the expense of the village committee and then distributed to the villagers, who took them back for their own planting. Some of them were planted in their own yards. Some people planted it in the fields, anyway, every household has this thing, even if the passers-by pick a few fruits to eat, no one cares, the atmosphere in the countryside is still quite simple. In the past two days, the agricultural technology station in the township has sent some fertilizer made of whalebone powder to everyone, so that everyone can dip it at the root of the tree, which is said to be very conducive to the growth of fruit trees, and many people have taken it back for a trial, but I am afraid it will take a while to see the results.

Shao Yuanyi walked to his own field, walked around, and then chatted with several villagers who were harvesting pasture, and was about to return when he suddenly heard a crisp sound from the mountain not far away. It's gunshots! Shao Yuanyi reacted immediately. Damn it! Could it be that the Guarani attackers are coming again?

The patrolman stationed in the village, who was supervising the alfalfa harvesting, was so shocked that he pulled out a flintlock pistol from his waist, then kicked open a wooden box in the ground, took out a rifle from it and distributed it to the villagers who had gathered after hearing the news, and then opened another box and distributed the ammunition and bayonets of the fixed paper shells carefully stacked inside. Many of the villagers have received extremely complete military training, but to put it mildly, the regular armies of many European countries are not as trained as they are and the number of live firing is not as good as theirs, and they are only a militia on the east coast - a reserve within a reserve. Not to mention that some of these people are even retired veterans of the regular army, who have fought on the battlefield for many years, and naturally they will not be bad in all aspects.

Shao Yuanyi also quickly jumped to the gathering place of the crowd, took a 32-C flintlock rifle from the patrol officer, and skillfully began to charge and reload. Although he is a doctor, it does not mean that he does not know how to operate firearms, in fact, every adult man on the East Coast has to learn how to use firearms and undergo regular military training, which has created an extremely large reserve army in the East Coast Republic. Based on the total population of about 83,000 as of the beginning of this year, the number of registered militia is as high as 25,000, which is already more than the standing army of many countries on the European continent.

Gunfire came from the edge of the forest to the north. At this time, a dozen or so men dressed in animal skins, leaves, and other things, armed with spears, bows and arrows, and some with arquebuses on their shoulders, gradually appeared.

"Sure enough, it's these things! I've reported to the top a few times, but those bastards in the township always shirk the tension of the troops, and can't draw manpower, so I will come back after the autumn harvest to apply for manpower, grass! Patrolman Niu Dacheng spat on the ground, then stared fiercely at the group of Guarani people at the edge of the forest not far away, and said, "The number is still increasing, it seems that they have recently united one or two small tribes nearby. It must have been the Spanish missionaries who had made the match, otherwise it would not have been so easy for these grandsons to unite. ”

It is not for nothing that Niu Dacheng said this. In fact, since the first day of the East Coast people's castle was built here last year, it has caused a huge stir among the nearby indigenous tribes. These primitive tribes are extremely barbaric and backward, that is, in recent decades, they have been influenced by the Jesuit missionaries who have worked tirelessly to spread the gospel of the Lord, they have learned to raise livestock, the technology of deep cultivation of the land, etc., and the level of civilization has been improved to a certain extent, but in general they are still ignorant and barbaric.

In particular, after the people of the East Coast appointed Catholic Archbishop Pedro on the East Coast, relations with the Holy See fell to a freezing point, which led to the hatred of many orthodox Jesuit missionaries. They regard the people of the East Coast as heretics, heretics more hateful than the infidels, heretics that will soon be destroyed! In order to exterminate the East Coasters, these barbarians were the best cannon fodder at the missionaries' disposal.

More than a year ago, the government of the Republic of the East Bank began to launch a comprehensive strategy for the development of the western region, pushing westward and gradually expelling, exterminating, and exiling the indigenous tribes along the route, which once again deeply violated the fundamental interests of the Jesuits, St. Franciscans, and other missionary groups. For example, this conflict is not the first time that everyone has experienced it, so they quickly reacted and distributed weapons to everyone to defend themselves. They had no way back, less than 300 meters behind them was the village where everyone's families lived, and they couldn't let these robbers rush into the village!

After sending one person back to the village to report to the militia chief, the patrol officer Niu Dacheng took his pistol, looked at the twenty or so villagers around him who had temporarily turned into musketeers, smiled, and then said: "Pull all the ox carts over and gather them together, everyone gather together, and see what these wild people do to us." Hurry up, don't rub it off, it's not the first time I've experienced this, I'm afraid of a bird! Hurry up, they're going down. ”

At the urging of Niu Dacheng, everyone worked together to pull several ox carts and a horse-drawn forage harvester over and roughly encircle them into a circle. Then, holding a musket with good ammunition, he quietly waited for the arrival of the enemy.

The enemy on the hillside was somewhat hesitant, and they waited for a long time, until the men were almost gathered before they began to slowly descend the hillside. Before descending, they first threw down a corpse in black uniform from the hillside. The corpse was covered in blood and had its weapons removed, and it appeared to be an East Coast Patrol officer who had been killed suddenly during a patrol. However, the local people did not do their job after all, and the sudden attack still gave the patrol officer a chance to shoot, so that the villagers under the hillside were alerted, which was enough to fail. Perhaps they had lost so many good men in the previous clean-up operations that they could now only come up with some unseemly goods to attack the East Coasters.

Niu Dacheng pressed the militiamen not to shoot in advance, and he was ready to give them a hard blow after the enemy rushed closer. There were about seventy or eighty Guarani men rushing in, and this was already the majority of the forces that a small tribe could muster, most of them with spears, a few with bows and arrows, and only the last dozen or so with slow-burning arquebuses wrapped around their wrists and a heavy arquebus in their hands. This was probably brought from La Plata by the Spanish missionaries, just as they had armed the Guaraní tribes against the São Paulo banner.

The Guarani also knew how powerful the muskets of the East Coasters were, so they were very scattered and quite fast.

"Bang! Bang! Six muskets fired in one direction, and two Guarani men with spears screaming were shot in the chest. The body, which had suddenly lost momentum during the high-speed run, still jumped forward a few steps by inertia, and then fell to the ground, and the wooden cross on his chest was immediately stained with bright red blood.

Gunfire rang out one after another, and basically three or five guns fired a salvo at one place, and after the shots were completed, they were quickly charged and reloaded. And those Guarani people are naturally not stupid enough to stand still and let you fight, they also shouted, suddenly increased the speed of the march, and threw some short spears as they ran, which made the East Coast people who were loading a little scrambling. (To be continued......)