When it comes to life and death, every moment is the boundary between life and death.

The people on the Jincheng Walled City argued about whether to rescue the watchtower, and Shi Yunxiao didn't have time to think about it. As soon as the smoke and flames were gone, he immediately gave the order to wet the mask with water from the gourd and put it on his mouth and nose.

"The smoke is up!"

In an instant, the soldiers watched in horror as black smoke rose from the staircase and the cracks in the wooden floor. The instinct to survive makes the soldiers desperately flee to high places. In the blink of an eye, the narrow pilltop was full of people, and even the two people who were injured in the previous sortie escaped to the top floor wrapped in bandages.

"The platoon commander and the second squad haven't come up yet!" There were soldiers shouting.

"Remember to drench yourself in water! Wear extra masks too! Shi Yunxiao yelled to remind the soldiers. Then he picked up the soldiers who were running in his way, and ran down the wooden ladder to the second floor.

The second floor was already full of smoke, so smoke that Shi Yunxiao couldn't open his eyes. He wiped his face with his sleeve and shouted a few times about the weekly standard, but received no response. His heart sank, and he scurried around in the black smoke, and finally touched the handrail of the stairs.

The situation on the ground floor is on the verge of spiraling out of control.

In the thick black smoke, the red flames are devouring the wooden door of the watchtower. The flames grew louder and louder, and soon they would lick the wooden floor overhead. Once the wooden floor catches fire, the slender watchtower becomes a burning chimney.

Zhou Biao and the soldiers of the second squad were obviously aware of the danger, and one by one the black shadows swayed, and in vain they used the padded jackets in their hands to extinguish the fire on the wooden door.

Shi Yunxiao rushed over and stopped the long row of stripped naked, "Zhou Biao!" Remove the sandbags on the third floor and seal the watchdoor! ”

Zhou Biao disagreed with the deputy company commander's disposition: "Then we will be trapped in the watchtower!" ”

"Damn, let's survive first!" Shi Yunxiao roared angrily, "Execute the order!" ”

"Yes!"

……

The heavy sandbags were full of dirt, weighing at least more than 100 pounds. The deputy company commander gave the order, and took the lead with his thin and short body, which finally calmed down the panicked soldiers.

The soldiers worked together, first building a thick firewall with sandbags, and then poking open a few extra bags and pasting the gaps in the smoke leakage with wet mud.

The fire was blocked, the crisis of the gate was temporarily lifted, and the eyes of the second, third, and fourth floors became a problem again. Thick smoke poured in from the eyes of the gun with a higher and higher temperature, and smoked the whole body of several soldiers who had taken off their padded jackets to block them. The padded jacket that blocked the mouth of the gun was also slowly scorched and burned under the high temperature of the exterior wall. The soldiers had no choice but to poke off the burning padded jackets with short spears and cover them with the mud from the bricks stored in the second floor, and finally stopped the intrusion of black smoke.

On the open-air platform on the top floor of the watchtower, seven or eight wet quilts were spread on the wooden floor, forming a ring, and the part left in the middle was the three-layer grain bag platform built by Shi Yunxiao for his command. The wooden railings on all sides have been charred and may burst into flames at any moment. The two layers of straw mats hanging from the wooden railing are long gone, and they may have fallen into the fire downstairs and turned into a handful of grass ashes.

Shi Yunxiao and Zhou Biao lay side by side on the quilt, breathing in the hard-won fresh air through the mask. All they had left was a pair of Protector shorts, but the shorts, like their skin, had turned smoky gray. Sweat seeped out of the skin and dripped down the floor, washing the smoky gray on the skin into fine lines. The hot air with black smoke rose from the bottom of the building, blocked by the outer wall of the watchtower, and then converged above the watchtower, tearing the gloomy blue sky above their heads to constantly distort and deform.

"Survived for the time being!" Shi Yunxiao excitedly hammered the floor.

"I didn't expect the thug to use this hand!" Zhou Biao said frustratedly, "Now we're done." If the thugs continue to add firewood, we will be smoked into bacon sooner or later! ”

"! Fight back! I'm going to pull a few pads to die!" Shi Yunxiao turned over and spat out a mouthful of pitch-black saliva towards the empty world outside the tower. Fifty paces away, more than 200 local thugs were forming a circle, excitedly admiring the watchtowers hidden by the fireworks. It was this strangely shaped watchtower that cost them nearly 100 lives in the past few days.

"Raise the gun and prepare, load!" Seeing that the fire was getting smaller, Shi Yunxiao bounced naked and jumped on his special command platform, "Target: Soil Riot!" The rest of the people rolled downstairs, held all the battle positions, and didn't block the guns as targets! Zhou Biao, you still lead a class to guard the first and second floors! ”

……

The red fire and black smoke engulfed the watchtower, and many soldiers on the gate of Jincheng Nanzhai cried. There are their relatives, friends, neighbors, classmates, and comrades-in-arms who have shared their lives and deaths.

Two lines of tears flowed silently down Deng Wenxing's face. He thought of his mother and sister, who had died in the flames, and of the many familiar faces who had died in the city of starvation and disease. He hated his powerlessness, and even more hated God who had born him in this troubled world.

Sheng Ying noticed Deng Wenxing's pain, and he generously admitted his recklessness: "Mr. Deng, I'm sorry! Then it's our turn! ”

"Let the local tyrant be proud for a few more days!" Deng Wenxing's face was distorted with extreme hatred, "Wait for our reinforcements to come up, and we will leave no one behind this gang of local thugs!" ”

"Good! I'll just wait for you to say this......" Sheng Ying didn't finish speaking, and there were two bangs from the bottom of the mountain.

"Deputy company commander, they're not dead! They're still fighting! The soldiers shouted. They cheered, raising their hats and helmets and swords and spears in their hands to greet the warriors below.

There was a commotion in the city. At this time, a middle-aged woman led a middle-aged officer wearing a mandarin duck robe to the city quickly. She tiptoed through the crowd and saw Deng Wenxing standing at the city gate, and hurriedly squeezed over.

"Master, Xu Qianhu wants to see you." When the woman saw the figure beside Deng Wenxing, she generously greeted Sheng Ying, "Captain Sheng, you are also here." ”

"Hello sister-in-law!" Sheng Ying hurriedly handed over to Deng Wenxing's wife, Deng Li. Deng Li was the only woman left in Jincheng Walled City, and it is said that she was a young lady of a gentry family in Pengzhou before she got married. Now, she not only has to take care of the wounded soldiers evacuated by the more than 400 Jia battalions, but also has to take time to wash the clothes for the soldiers, without the slightest bit of the lady's style, so she is deeply respected by the soldiers, and the young soldiers call her "Sister Deng".

When the middle-aged officer saw Deng Wenxing, he immediately took a few steps forward, knelt down on one knee and hugged his fists, and said, "We have been treated by the National Protector Army, and Mrs. Deng treats the brothers like brothers." Great kindness, it is difficult to repay the powder! The brothers did not want to sit back and watch Captain Shi and the others fight alone, and when they heard that the troops in the attack were insufficient, they publicly recommended me to come to see Mr. Deng. We are willing to join the Protector Army and fight for the Son! ”

"Okay!" Sheng Ying almost shouted, "I'm worried about the lack of troops to attack!" ”

"But......" Deng Wenxing hesitated and shook his head, "But Xu Qianhu has not recovered from his war injuries, how can he fight?" ”

"It's almost too good already!" Qianhu, whose surname was Xu, tore open the mandarin duck robe, revealing a wound on his right chest. The wound was covered with a clean bandage, which must have been changed this morning. Xu Qianhu showed Deng Wenxing the wound, and waved his right hand a few times to prove that he could swing a knife into battle.

"However, you General Jia are allies of our Protector Army. You have joined the National Protector Army, will General Jia misunderstand? No," Deng Wenxing shook his head in Sheng Ying's expectant eyes, "This must not happen!" ”

"Mr. Deng is too worried!" Xu Qianhu laughed heartily, "When the Protector Army hits the Copper Walled City, our General Jia will also become the Protector Army!" ”

……

The thug who was full of joy stood outside the watchtower to watch the big show, and coldly took two more guns. Fifty paces was the best effective range for raising a gun, and immediately several thugs fell to the ground and howled. Seeing that the raging fire had not burned those tenacious royal soldiers, the local rioters had to scatter and collect firewood and grass again. After paying the price of more than ten lives, the flames that had weakened under the watchtower re-emerged.

The two groups of soldiers took turns firing the door, and the soldiers downstairs continued to block the gate and the mouth of the gun, preventing black smoke from penetrating through the cracks in the soil that had dried and shrunk. However, after a long period of baking, the outer wall of the building has become too hot to touch, and the wood built in the wall exudes a stench of burning. If the watchtower is burned like this, the floor collapses, or even burns, and it is a matter of time.

"If you want to fight back, you must stop the fire first, otherwise you won't be able to go out at all!"

Nearly naked, Shi Yunxiao stood on a high pile of grain bags and scolded Fang Xuan. The hot air around him almost dried his skin and tore it apart.

"Stop the fire, we can't go head-to-head with more than 200 local thugs, we must ask for reinforcements!"

Thinking of asking for help, Shi Yunxiao hesitated again. He felt that he had been careless at that time, and if he had dug a trench around the watchtower, it would not have caused today's passivity. As the commander of the guard, he has an unshirkable responsibility.

"Shi Tou, it's so hot downstairs that you can't stand up!" A charred head poked out from the top of the stairs, and even the two rows of teeth were black, "Please!" ”

"Good!" The naked nodded seriously, and after speaking, he crossed his waist and laughed.

"It's going to be baked bacon, you still have the heart to laugh!" Zhou Biao grunted dissatisfiedly.

"Zhou Biao, in the most difficult situation, we still have to talk about a struggle strategy!" Shi Yunxiao jumped on the floor with a bang, and said to the charred head at his feet: "You are so ......"

The thugs were happy and worried.

Happily, the fire under the watchtower is booming again. The leader said that as long as you keep adding firewood and baking it slowly, the people in the watchtower will turn into jerky sooner or later; The worry is that a spear shaft is inserted on the top of the watchtower, and a red flag is sleeved on the spear shaft. It doesn't take a smart brain to guess that the royal soldiers in the watchtower must be sending signals to Jincheng Walled, and most of them are asking for help. So the leader of the tyrants did not hesitate, leaving a hundred people to continue to collect firewood and make fires, and the rest followed him to the earthen fortress to defend the reinforcements.

No one spoke, and the top of the watchtower was suddenly much cleaner. Except for the two guns that continued to be pretended, the rest of the soldiers were on standby at the edge of the pilltop. Their eyes were fixed on Shi Yunxiao on the grain bag, but they were holding all kinds of jars and jars tightly in their hands.

Shi Yunxiao stared at the local rioter brigade that was flying away. In the direction of Jincheng Walled City, according to the agreed plan, a big drum was returned to the comrades in Hexagonal Tower, and the local thug ran faster.

"The ploy worked!" Shi Yunxiao's happy voice erupted, but his pitch-black head made it impossible to see his expression clearly.

Seeing the last local thug disappear into the earthen ramparts, Shi Yunxiao lost no time in giving the order.

"Throw!"