At this time, it was getting late, so everyone rested in the grass house for a night, which happened to give Zhuge Liang time to pack up and prepare.

Although the grass house is simple, after all, it is also a place where I have lived for many years, full of feelings and memories.

The next day, just after dawn, Zhuge Liang took his wife Huang Yueying, his younger brother Zhuge Jun and the only little donkey in the family to follow Lu Bu's team on the road.

There were six carriages in the procession, two carriages for Zhuge Liang's family, Shi Tao and Meng Jian, and the rest of the carriages were carrying important goods.

Lu Bu, Wang Quan, Ma Tie, Li Su and others all accompanied them on horseback, and Lu Bu did not come on a red rabbit this time, which would be too eye-catching.

They rode ordinary steppe horses, which was also in line with their identity as merchants in the Northland, the two teams were combined into one, and there were as many as one hundred and sixty guards, and I don't know how many shadows there were!

The caravan left Longzhong less than twenty miles, and a large group of cavalry suddenly appeared from the northeast, with a thousand people, looking at the clothing, but it was the Jingzhou army.

However, this cavalry did not come at them, but rushed to Longzhongshan.

Only a few scouts ran to the caravan, looked at and interrogated a few words, found nothing unusual, and quickly left.

Lu Bu's eyesight is very good, and he vaguely saw that the other party's banner seemed to be Liu Zi.

After a little calculation in his heart, he secretly shouted that it was not good, and ordered the team to speed up and return north as soon as possible.

Everyone was puzzled, but seeing that Lu Bu didn't explain, they didn't dare to ask more.

Wang Quan and Ma Tie secretly ordered to go down, strengthen their vigilance, and prepare for battle.

Sure enough, when the caravan had gone twenty or thirty miles, there was a rumbling sound of horses' hooves behind it, and the dust was flying, but it was the cavalry that caught up.

Lu Bu looked around, there was a mound on the side of the road, and ordered the team to retreat to the mound.

Gather the six wagons in a circle, lower the windows, take out the wooden crates in the wagons, and begin to distribute secret weapons and prepare for battle.

Fortunately, these carriages are specially made, and they are secretly protected by steel plates, so they are not afraid of arrows.

Lu Bu asked Zhuge Liang, Shi Tao and others to take refuge in the car, and sent these people who were looking for death by themselves.

Zhuge Liang resolutely refused, saying that he was already Lu Bu's subordinate, how could there be a reason for the lord to face the battle, and the courtiers would hide instead.

Zhuge Liang's statement made Shi Tao and Meng Qi embarrassed to hide in the carriage.

Lu Bu didn't argue with them, but just ordered someone to take out the armor, put it on for them to prevent stray arrows, and sent someone to guard them.

At this time, the wooden boxes had been opened, but inside were tightly packed strips of oiled paper, and the gaps in the wooden boxes were filled with sawdust, and these long strips were six feet long.

The officers and soldiers of the special operations division stepped forward one after another, opened the oil paper, and what was revealed made Lu Bu not embarrassed.

He took one from his men's hands, checked it, and found nothing abnormal, and began to reload his ammunition.

Yes, these secret weapons are muskets, front-loading smoothbore flintlock pistols that use paper-shelled bullets.

Lü Bu skipped the arquebus and started the development of the flintlock pistol, which was not affected by the weather.

The first generation of test subjects were these six-foot-long, half-inch caliber, front-loading smoothbore flintlock pistols with wrought iron barrels, and they were full of weight.

The more advanced paper-shell bullets greatly improved their rate of fire and accuracy, and the handguard could fit the human face.

They wore cartridge boxes and bayonets on the outside of their armor, then lined up in front of the carriage and began to reload ammunition.

The musket-wielding soldiers were arranged in four rows, divided into two waves, each of which was a volley of kneeling in the front row and standing in the back row, then retreating to the back to reload, changing to the other two rows, and reciprocating.

Li Su also fired two red signal flares, and in a short period of time, there were more than thirty shadow team members, gathering from all directions, and they had been hiding around the caravan before.

The shadow team members, like Ma Tie's men, all picked up the repeater crossbows, and they were divided into two teams.

Everyone, including Xu Shu, had never seen a flintlock pistol, and they were all full of curiosity when they looked at these soldiers, filling them with ammunition, and then aiming them with the door and the crosshair, and closing one eye.

Zhuge Liang was the most curious, he watched intently, Lu Bu also raised a "Han 200 style" front-loading smoothbore gun to aim, and Wang Quan stood beside Lu Bu with a few loaded flintlock pistols, responsible for replacing Lu Bu.

At the time of training, they had already learned Lu Bu's marksmanship, which was as brilliant as his archery skills, with ten rings of guns and guns, they couldn't imagine how Lu Bu practiced it, didn't this flintlock pistol just invented?

They all end up chalking it up to a miracle, the god of war, and they don't need a reason!

What's even better is that Lu Bu's ten rings are all shot at the maximum range of the musket, and the flintlock pistol now has a range of only 100 zhang, and the effective range is 80 zhang, which is the same as the repeater.

Because it is a front-loading smoothbore gun, there is no rifling, and it is also shot with lead, so the rate of fire is low, the firing range is short, and the accuracy is poor.

It may not be as powerful as a crossbow, but the cost and manufacturing time of a musket are much lower than that of a crossbow, and the ease of use is much simpler than that of a crossbow, so it is easier to equip and train on a large scale.

The enemy who rushed up, as Lu Bu expected, was Liu Bei from Xinye.

This is the second time Liu Bei has come to visit Zhuge Liang in Longzhong Maolu, and asked Zhuge Liang to come out of the mountain to help him.

The reason why he brought so many soldiers and horses was because Chen Gong and Liu Bei had discussed, if Zhuge Liang still refused, he would snatch Zhuge Liang back to Xinye, because a talent like Zhuge Liang could not say anything to others in the hands of others.

As a result, when Liu Bei climbed up the mountain, he found that the house was already empty, and the traces had just happened not long ago.

Liu Bei immediately thought of a possibility, Zhuge Liang was invited away by other princes, thinking of the recent information, saying that two northern caravans had entered Jingzhou before and after, and both came to the vicinity of Xiangyang.

Liu Bei immediately realized that it was someone from Chang'an, and I am afraid that only someone from Chang'an can invite Zhuge Liang.

Chen Gong even asserted that Lu Bu must have gone out in person, and this Lu Fengxian liked to engage in this kind of trick of running thousands of miles and going deep behind enemy lines.

Liu Bei felt that Chen Gong was right, Zhuge Liang avoided himself and Liu Biao, and I was afraid that only Lu Bu could invite him to the door in person.

And they immediately thought that the caravan of more than 100 people they found before, with a few carriages in it, must be Zhuge Liang and them.

Thinking that Lu Bu was very likely to be in that caravan of more than a hundred people, Liu Bei was excited, this was a godsend, in the hinterland of Jingzhou, he let himself meet this mortal enemy.

Liu Bei hated Lu Bu more than Cao Cao, from Youzhou to Qingzhou to Xuzhou, there was Lu Bu's shadow behind every failure.

If it weren't for Lu Bu's suppression, when he suppressed the Yellow Turban Uprising, wouldn't his credit be so small?

Qingzhou Yizhi, he also knew, it turned out that the Qingzhou Army and Lu Bu were in the same group, this Qingzhou Army did not harm him lightly, and they were the culprits who lost Xuzhou, and betrayed Liu Bei at a critical moment.

Now that there is a chance to physically eliminate Lu Bu here, what is there to hesitate about?

He ordered Guan Yu to return to Xinye immediately and mobilize the whole army to eliminate Lu Bu, while he took Zhang Fei and Chen Gong to chase after him first.

A thousand elite cavalry is more than enough to deal with a caravan of more than a hundred people, and Guan Yu's reinforcements are just an insurance.

(End of chapter)