Dozens of powder canisters, large and small, were thrown down, and soon began to play a climax in the fire. The loud roaring sound continued, not only stunned the local thugs who were busy collecting firewood and adding fire, but also shocked the twenty or thirty pitch-black naked bodies on the top of the watchtower.

"The fire is small! Blown up! The soldiers cheered.

"! What are you waiting for? Don't go downstairs to carry sandbags! The tallest naked man on the sack stomped his feet and shouted.

The soldiers swarmed into the stairs. They will be led by Zhou Biao to fight back. Because of his thin stature, Shi Yunxiao stayed with two groups of spearmen to continue to hold on.

"If the counterattack fails, stick to a fart!"

Shi Yunxiao sat down. There was one last powder jar beside him, which he insisted on keeping for himself.

"The red flag on the Golden City Walled City is waving!" A musketeer reminds their heads between flares, "Shall we take the flag?" ”

Shi Yunxiao jumped up without saying a word. He pulled out the flagpole attached to the grain bag, held it high above his head, and shook it desperately.

At this moment, among the vast mountains, he is the tallest, and he is the most conspicuous.

The resolute counterattack of the hexagonal tower was completely unexpected by the local tyrants. To their surprise, the defenders used a large amount of gunpowder to open the way, blowing up and blowing out the burning firewood and grass piled up under the block, thus gaining the necessary passage out of the block.

In a hurry, the local rioters who surrounded the blockade failed to assemble, and they scattered around to collect firewood and cut grass. When more than thirty naked warriors in pitch black rushed out wildly wielding short spears, the local thugs in the siege immediately broke down.

The soldiers of the Protector Army are like mandrill devils who have escaped from hell, their bodies are frighteningly black, and their eyes are even brighter. The Tyrants were chased by a much smaller number of black warriors, most of whom fled, and a few of whom became ghosts under the spear. When the leader of the local rioters realized that the situation was wrong and was ready to order troops to come to the rescue, the attack on the Jincheng Walled City suddenly began.

Condescending, overwhelming. The attack of the Golden City Walled City almost instantly reached the front of the earthen fortress. Frightened, the thugs instinctively resorted to shrinking tactics and withdrew to the fortifications.

The situation was suddenly reversed, and nearly 300 local rioters were surrounded by the attack troops of Jincheng Walled City and Hexagonal Towers in a simple earthen fortress.

"Let's gather firewood and let the thugs see it! If they don't surrender, they just wait to be burned! The high-spirited Shi Yunxiao poured water into his stomach while waving his arms to command the soldiers.

"Staff Officer Shi, you guys are playing well!" Deng Wenxing, who came forward, opened his eyes wide and probed Shi Yongxiao's body, and then habitually called Shi Yunxiao's old official title, "We are shocked to see it in the city!" ”

"Xiao Shi, let's change it." Sheng Ying walked over, "You come to the squadron leader, I'll be the deputy!" ”

"Shi Yingying, please accept the last general!" An officer and army general bowed to the pitch-black naked, "You are the black face in the Three Kingdoms!" ”

Shi Yunxiao smiled to himself: "The pocket Zhang Yide of the Ming Dynasty!" ”

"Hahaha!"

"Reinforcements are coming!" The soldiers suddenly shouted, carrying the good news. At the foot of the Golden Walled Mountain and on the head of the city, laughter and cheers resounded through the calm valley.

……

On the afternoon of the 29th day of the first month of the 15th year of Chongzhen, the 2nd Company of the 10th Battalion of the vanguard of the task force and the 2nd Squadron and the 4th Squadron and the Guard Battalion of the Southern County Brigade sent by Xinzheng Dam drove to Jinchengzhai with the support of Dong Bu's 3rd Cavalry Battalion and were warmly welcomed by the soldiers and civilians of Jinchengzhai.

The commander of the task force, Feng Rubao, decided to rest for a day in Jincheng Walled City to resupply the troops, while also waiting for the follow-up troops to arrive. The three companies behind the task force were no more than a day's walk away from the 2nd Company of the 10th Forward Battalion because they had adjusted their marching route in time.

On this day, in Luodu, on the south canal river side of Guang'an City, Tan Sigui commanded the fourth, fifth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth infantry battalions of the Protector Army with the regimental headquarters of the Third Regiment, a total of more than 7,000 people, as well as artillery, engineering, and baggage troops.

After arriving at Jinchengzhai, the four battalions of the main force of the department, under the continued command of Tan Sigui, followed Feng Rubao's advance detachment to attack and advance to the Tongchengzhai area to relieve the siege of Jia Deng's joint headquarters. After completing this task, they will continue to advance towards Enyang and Bazhou, and join up with Xiangbu, the king of Bazhou.

After arriving at Jincheng Walled, the 5th Battalion went straight to Qianfochang, southwest of Yuxichang. It is expected that they will join the 18th Battalion of Wang Xingwu and the adjutant general Liu Zhenfan in the attack on Yuxichang as the rear troops of the 5th Regiment of He Qiukou.

The tasks and goals of He Qiukou and Liu Zhenfan are similar to Tan Sigui's. They had to first relieve the siege of Ma Gan and Zhang Zhuokai in Yuxichang, and then use them as another tooth of iron tongs to join forces with Tan Sigui to attack the bandits in Enyang and Bazhou.

On this day, Dai Dongbi, the new commander of the 3rd Battalion, the platoon commander of the 1st Company and 1st Platoon of the 3rd Battalion, who had been shot blind in the left eye in Changping Mountain, led the 3rd Battalion to leave the camp by the Qujiang River and take a shortcut to Jiangkou Town, which belongs to Bazhou, an important junction in Bashan, where the Datongjiang and Xiaotong rivers and the Ba River converge. In front of and on either side of their marching formation, the line of scouts spread out by the 2nd Cavalry Battalion; After that, there were three squadrons and some auxiliary units of Sun Deren's Pengzhou Huzhuang Brigade.

The goal of this operation was to take the town of Jiangkou, expel Yuan Tao, the tyrant who was said to be entrenched there, and lay a nail in the depths of Bashan. Because of the slow speed of information transmission, they did not know that Jiangkou Town had been identified as the newly established county seat of Pyeongchang County by the prince Zhu Pingjin. In the future, Pyeongchang County, together with Ba Zhou, will become the two major military bases that control the banks of the Ba River.

The newly formed unit, the 17th Battalion, which was reorganized from the Zagu Battalion, finally replaced the original 8th Battalion and assumed the task of guarding the edge of the Ba River and Ba Shan because of its insistence on going to the front. The 8th Battalion, after handing over the defense to the Quxian Huzhuang Brigade, went out to Sanhui Town.

On this day, the Chu army's Zhang Zuokai and Jia Deng's joint divisions, which were guarding Yuxichang and Tongcheng, continued to fight fiercely against the steady stream of local tyrants. On the same day, both Zhang and Jia sent dead soldiers to the rear to ask for help. Among them, the letter of request for help sent from Yuxichang was written in blood by Ma Gan, deputy envoy of the Sichuan military garrison, and contained the phrase "I am looking forward to reinforcements, and I am as anxious as a spark."

On this day, Ding Xianjue, the deputy general who set out from Dazhou to pursue Huang Harrier Jing Keqin in the north, finally exchanged hands with Jing Keqin.

In a small town by the Houhe River, a tributary of the Beizhou River in Dongxiang County, the desperate Yellow Harrier took the initiative to set up an ambush to attack, while Ding Xianjue, who was in ambush, fought to the death. The two sides fought from noon until dark, and did not withdraw their troops until dark. Ding Xianjue occupied the battlefield, so he was qualified to claim himself the victor.

However, Ding Xianjue didn't know at the time that his real victory came from the injury of the bandit leader Jing Keqin himself, and even more from the vitality of Jing Keqin's gang.

A few months later, the truth was revealed, during the battle that day, Jing Keqin was shot in the lower abdomen by a stray arrow, although there was a cotton armor to block it, and the injury was not serious, but then the wound infection occurred, and he died in the barren mountains and mountains on the Sichuan-Shaanxi border a month later. After Jing Keqin's death, his generals attacked and killed each other, and the result was several defeats, and since then this local tyrant has fallen apart and never appeared on the battlefield again under the name of Yellow Harrier.

Ding Xianjue's death battle did not retreat, and it also made the officers and troops under his command pay a heavy price. About 1,000 recruits in Chongqing, Linshui, and Dazhou were repeatedly scattered in fierce battles, and were repeatedly re-caught up on the battlefield by his veterans. After the battle, almost everyone, both new and veteran, was wounded. Ding Xianjue, who was unable to fight again, had to retreat to Dongxiang, and there were less than 800 people who could walk back to Dongxiang County by himself.

……

Zhu Pingjin naturally did not know anything about the battle situation on the northern Sichuan front on the 29th day of the first lunar month, but he and Liao Daheng judged from the information they had already obtained that the situation of Zhang Zuokai and Jia Deng's joint division was extremely grim. Compared with the two parts, the situation is more difficult for the Zhang department. Factors such as the fact that the number of troops of Zhang Bu was slightly less than that of Jia Bu, the distance from the rear base, and the unfavorable terrain of the fishing creek field where he was located were only secondary reasons; The main reason is that the local tyrants against Zhang Zuokai's department are higher in strength and quality than those of the Jaden joint department.

The Military Intelligence Bureau judged that the local tyrants who besieged Ma Gan and Zhang Zuokai included the four local tyrants of the Earthquake King Bai Jiaolong, Xing 100,000 Hu Jiusi, Wang Youjin, the king of food, and Zhang Xian, the king of neatness; The local tyrants who besieged the Jia Deng joint department included Shunhu, Chaotianxing, Liang Shizheng and Ma Chao; The local tyrants who besieged Wang Xiang in Bazhou had several groups such as the unnamed Raider King, and the two places of Nanjiang and Tongjiang were the peripheral bandits of Zhang Xian, the king of the tidy and the king of the heavens, Yuan Tao.

Liu Weiming added information that the total strength of the four local tyrants besieging Ma Gan and Zhang Zuokai was at least 40,000, of which Ding Zhuang was no less than 10,000. Obviously, the main direction of attack of the soil rioter is Zhang Zuokai in the middle lane.

Except for Yuan Tao, the strong and strong king of the heavens, and Chen Linbu, who was in the joint operation, the movements of the joint operation were unknown, and the famous local tyrants in Bashan were all dispatched. Obviously, Wang Chaoyang's mutiny was like a beacon in the wilderness on a summer night, leading out all kinds of ghosts and ghosts. The battle of Bashan in the spring of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen has evolved into a decisive battle between the Protector Army and the Bashan Native Tyrants!

The situation on the battlefield was precarious, and the anxious Liao tycoon secretly made a suggestion to Zhu Pingjin. He calculated the time required for the rescue, and believed that it would take at least four days for Wang Xingwu's department to travel from Cangxi County to the Yuxi Farm where Zhang Zuokai's department was located. If you are sniped by a thug, the time is difficult to calculate. Therefore, he suggested changing the plan, first concentrating his forces to rescue Jia Denglian, and then transferring his troops to advance to Zhangbu.

However, Zhu did not hesitate to reject Liao's suggestion. There are two reasons for this: First, the plan of dividing troops into two ways for rescue is in the process of being implemented, and it is impossible to change it now, but it will cause confusion in the deployment of troops on the front line. The second is that the main force to rescue Zhang Zhuokai at present is not Wang Xingwu's department, but Liu Zhenfan's strange barracks. This unit, which has been retrained for a long period of time and has been replenished with personnel and ordnance, should be given full confidence in its combat effectiveness.

Zhu Pingjian's composure made the restless Liao tycoon calm down suddenly. He suddenly understood the real reason why Zhu Pingjin vetoed his proposal:

If Zhang Zuokai's ministry is destroyed, the military disaster will still be secondary, and the political impact will be too great. Zhang Zuokai was originally a general, and he was somewhat famous in Sichuan, Guizhou, and Chu provinces. Also accompanying the army to supervise the war were Ma Gan, the deputy envoy of the Sichuan military garrison, and Yang Mingshi, the supervisor and discipline. In addition to the veterans brought back from Guizhou, most of the soldiers under his command were the guards of Lizhou Wei, Xunan Wei, Qiongzhou Qianhu and Baoning Qianhu, plus some local recruits from Baoning. If all these people were lost, they would be understood by the people of Sichuan and even the imperial court as a military defeat. The prestige that Zhu Pingjin has just established among the officials and gods of Sichuan will be greatly reduced, and some people in the imperial court will also take the opportunity to make a move. Therefore, Zhang Zuokai's department must be rescued, even if there are only a few people left, they must fight!

The two-way rescue plan cannot be shaken, and neither Zhang Zuokai nor Jia Denglian can be missing, so the only hope is for the two-way reinforcements to arrive as soon as possible.

Feng Rubao on the right will gather 1,500 infantry and cavalry artillery troops on the 30th, and then begin to attack the copper walled city. Although this new force does not have many troops, it is quite sure that it will complete the task of rescuing the Jaden joint force with the victory of Xinzheng Dam and the high morale of the city, and the full supply of the two bases of Xinzheng Dam and Jinchengzhai.

But things are not going well in the middle. At present, the only reinforcements in the offensive position are Wang Xingwu's 18th Battalion. The 18th Battalion had just crossed the Jialing River, and it was still 90 miles away from the Thousand Buddha Field. And the main force in Zhu Pingjin's mouth, the army of Liu Zhenfan, the deputy general of northern Sichuan, has no shadow at this time. Tao Yongzuo, He Qiukou, and Wang Xingwu of Cangxi County all reported not seeing Liu Zhen's troops moving south.

……

The morning was still gloomy, but at noon, it suddenly cleared up and warmed, as if it had entered a warm spring in an instant. However, experience has taught Zhu that such good weather will not last long. The cold air from the north will continue to move south, so that people who are eager to strip and bask in the sun will experience the severity of the spring cold.

In the shadow of spring, Zhu Pingjin changed his clothes under the waiting of the eunuchs and prepared to go out to meet guests. His guests were Zhan Tianyan, the prefect of Long'an, Deng Ruoyu, the general of Long'an, Zhu Hualong, the deputy general of Songpan, and Long Fuhuang, the deputy general of Baishuiguan (Note 1).

A familiar sound of footsteps came into the courtyard, Zhu Pingjin shook his sleeves, stood up straight, and turned to stare at the door: Sure enough, it was Governor Liao Daheng again.

"Liao Gong is here, is there an urgent matter?" Zhu tried to keep smiling.

Liao Daheng had a bad idea last night, but it was rejected by Shizi. He himself knew that Shizi's behavior might be laughing at him.

But at this time, where can Liao Daheng care about dealing with Zhu Pingjin? He wiped his forehead with his sleeve robe and said, "Liu Zhenfan has arrived!" I'm looking to see you outside the carrier! ”

Note 1: Baishuiguan is the only way from Sichuan to Longnan, on the bank of the Bailongjiang River in Wuliya, Yingpan Township, Qingchuan County. The ruins still exist, and now tourists see them as a reconstructed attraction, and the original site is already under the reservoir.