Santos lay in ambush on the side of the road until noon, but no one passed by the road. www.biquge.info This is very unusual, usually this road is not busy, but there are always some people passing by here every day, but today it is very strange. Santos glanced in the direction of the village again, and then he noticed a strange thing, that is, it was time for lunch, but there was no smoke rising from the village.

"Is there something going on over there?" Santos couldn't help but think. Santos waited with the men for a while, and then he decided not to wait any longer, but to go straight to the village to see what was going on.

After walking for more than half an hour—Santos and his tribe were closer to the Spaniards, and his master was a baptized Catholic, so they were used to using European units in terms of timing—Santos approached the village with the natives. Santos waved his hand, causing the natives to stop. It would be very dangerous to approach a village occupied by the Chinese, even if it was originally their village.

The natives crouched down, carefully hiding themselves in the shadows of the trees, looking out into the distance over a village in a paddy field. The gate of the village was open, but there was no movement inside, not to mention people, not even dogs barking, and the whole village was as quiet as a big tomb. Santos' heart was pounding, and he had a guess, but Santos still didn't dare to come closer, they just waited there silently, from noon to dusk, there was still no movement in the village, and no smoke for cooking dinner was raised.

"You guys, go over and have a look. Quietly enter the village and do not shoot. Santos said to the natives who followed him. By this time, the sun had already set, and it was already dark.

Several natives with muskets and scimitars cautiously approached the gate of the village, which was not closed, but it was pitch black inside, like a large open mouth.

Santos watched a few natives cautiously touch in, and after a while, there was still no movement in the village, Santos continued to wait, and waited for a while before he saw the natives coming out of the village.

"What's going on?" Santos asked, lowering his voice.

"Inside, inside, no one!" One of the natives gasped.

……

There was really no one left in the village, those Chinese abandoned the villages and retreated, Santos they took back their villages. Santos had dreamed of this situation more than once, so much so that when it became a reality, he was a little afraid that it was another dream. It's just that he didn't dare to reach out and pinch his thigh or something, because in the previous dream, as long as he doubted whether it was a dream, as soon as he reached out and pinched his thigh, that rare dream would be shattered in an instant.

But Santos quickly determined that this was not a dream. Although he didn't pinch his thigh, his stomach was hungry. Even in a dream, such hunger was enough to wake him up.

The Chinese withdrew, Santos returned to his village, and in his opinion, all the bad things were over, and he and his other tribesmen could live a peaceful life again. However, this is not the case. Initially, it was his master, Ruiz, encouraged by the success of retaking the village, who ordered the counterattack to continue against the other captured villages. Santos naturally also had to participate in such a battle, but after the Chinese took the initiative to abandon these villages, the number of troops that could be used for mobility increased greatly, so their counterattack was naturally kicked on the iron plate, and one guy, just Santos's men, lost dozens of people.

Then Santos discovered a new problem, that is, although the Chinese abandoned the village, it did not mean that they did not come. After occupying these villages for a period of time, the Chinese are almost as familiar with the terrain as Santos. After the downsizing, their original shortage of manpower no longer exists. The overall mobility has been greatly enhanced. So they can now continue to attack the indigenous villages around them.

Moreover, these Chinese now attack their villages in a very different way than before. In the past, the Chinese attacked for the purpose of occupying the village, and for this reason, when they came, they always brought a lot of people and dragged cannons. In this way, their speed will naturally not be too fast, and if they feel that they cannot resist, the natives will at least have time to send the women and children away.

But now the situation has changed, and when the Chinese attack the natives, their goal is no longer to seize land, but to plunder the population. This makes them no longer need to use large groups of men and horses, they don't need to drag cannons, they only need to come on horseback, or even small detachments to come secretly, and after they succeed, they can just send a signal for the cavalry to answer. In this way, the Chinese naturally have a better chance of catching more natives.

Still, the clever Santos quickly figured it out. He had a very high lookout erected in the village, and as soon as the lookout noticed someone approaching, he immediately erected a red flag on the watchtower. This approach is effective, but it brings another problem, which is the frequent false alarms. Their village is not too far from the village still controlled by the Chinese, especially not far from the road, so many times, the normal activities of the Chinese will also cause panic at the lookout post.

Frequent false alarms have brought about a lot of consequences. One of them is the difficulty of production. Halfway through planting, suddenly the red flag of the lookout tree was watched, everyone quickly ran, and after running, after a long time, carefully touched it back and saw that the Chinese had not come at all. As a result, for a whole day, the fields were not taken care of, nothing was done, and they were all running around. It's okay once or twice, but it's like this for three days, and you can't plant crops anymore? As a result, the lookout who raised the alarm was blamed by everyone. The second result of frequent false alarms is the decline of vigilance, and at the same time, in order to avoid being scolded by everyone for issuing false alarms, lookouts are increasingly afraid to issue alarms, and even sometimes when they see people, they dare not easily issue alarms, and the result is naturally that the Chinese killed, but they failed to sound the alarm in time, and then, many people who ran slowly were arrested. Later, Santos, as the village head, had to take charge of the alarm himself. However, even so, false alarms or slow alarms still exist.

That morning, Santos stayed under the watchtower as he had done before — he was a bit afraid of heights, and he normally wouldn't go up to it. At this time, the lookout above suddenly shouted: "Village chief, someone, someone is coming." ”

Santos was taken aback, he endured his fear of heights, grabbed the ladder, and climbed up tremblingly. The lookout post above held him up.

The watchtower is made of wood, and in order to allow the eye to look over the surrounding woods, the watchtower is built very high, and when the wind blows, it is a little shaky.

"Where?" Santos asked, trembling. He gripped the lookout's arm tightly with one hand, and with the other he clung to a section of the railing of the lookout, so hard that his fingernails were white. "Over there, village chief, you see, over there." The lookout post held Santos in one hand and pointed into the distance with the other.

Santos looked that way, which was not the direction of the Chinese village, and there was no main road, only a forest path that people and animals stepped on together. The path is winding and many places are obscured by the dense canopy of the rainforest, so you can't see anything even from the heights. So there's nothing to see over there at this point.

"What do you see?" Santos asked.

"There were a lot of people walking on the road just now. Now they went down to the bottom of the tree. The lookout post replied.

"Is it Chinese?" Santos asked again.

"I can't see clearly, I don't look like clothes. Do you want to raise the flag? The lookout asked again.

"Don't rush just yet." Santos shook his head.

At this moment the men at the lookout came out from under the trees, and the path was a little bit past a sloping area with no trees, and they were all revealed. Santos didn't have anything as advanced as a telescope, he could only see with his own eyesight. He noticed that few of them didn't seem to have muskets, and most of them were naked, and their swarthy skin was very different from that of the Chinese.

"It should be our own people. Don't be nervous. Santos said.