When Lang Lu woke up, it was already moonlit and starry. The first thing that came into his consciousness was the sharp pain that came from all over his body. He exerted himself hard in his waist and abdomen, but his body did not move. After trying a few meaningless movements, he finally gave up on the idea of sitting up directly, and instead allowed himself to roll his body to the right a few times, and then used his arms to try to prop up his upper body with his arms.

But while his arm was exerting force, the sharp pain caused by the slash on his left arm by the captive rider made fine beads of sweat appear on his forehead. Lu Yi, who tried several times but still failed, had to try repeatedly. After a long time, he finally used his right hand to support half of his body.

Struck by a military horse, stabbed by a blade, pierced through the skin by the wooden thorns of a shrub...... These pains intermingle to stimulate the nerves of the landing one. He frowned, almost crushing his teeth, before slowly bracing himself on his knees.

I don't know how long it took me, maybe half an hour, maybe more than that. Lu Yi, who finally barely stood up, moved to a tree, leaned against the trunk and gasped. The rest of his life after the catastrophe brought him no happiness. He was so tired that he almost lost his strength, looking at the tired bones that were faintly visible in a hundred steps below the moonlight, and his heart swelled with infinite sorrow and resentment.

Somehow, even though Lu Yi was leaning on the trunk of the tree at this time, the heavy sleepiness kept coming. It's just that the pain all over his body is constantly stimulating his nerves. He was tormented in this state of sometimes sober and sometimes chaotic.

The craftsmen and relatives who went north with him seem to have suffered most of the accidents. It's just that before witnessing the tragic death of his family, Lu Yi always had a trace of luck in his heart. After resting for another half a moment, Lu Yi finally broke half of the dead branch, and then used it as a crutch, supporting it step by step to move towards the tragic battlefield dozens of steps away.

The horsemen who guarded their craftsmen and their dependents, the corpses of men and horses were stacked, and they fell horizontally and vertically in the forest thirty or forty paces wide. Lu Yi carefully pressed his cane on the ground, struggling to step over one corpse after another. After walking only a dozen steps, the panting Lu Yi could only stop and rest for a while, and then continued to move forward. He walked and stopped, and when he reached the first body of the craftsman he could see, he did not know how much time had passed.

The corpse lay prone with its head tilted in horror. Behind him was a huge bloody hole. Apparently on the way to escape, he was rushed by enemy cavalry from the rear and stabbed through the body with a single shot. Lu Yi leaned down to take a closer look, but this person was Wang Shan, a former colleague in the workshop.

The personal relationship between the two is not bad. Seeing that his former colleagues and friends had become lifeless corpses lying in a pool of blood at this time, Lu Yi's heart was even more painful. He frowned, endured the pain from all over his body, and continued to walk towards the scattered corpses of his colleagues and family members.

As Lu Yi moved forward, that tragic scene came into his eyes. The strong smell of blood in the air made Lu Yi nauseous. He resisted the churning discomfort in his stomach. Wandering around this tragic battlefield, he leaned down from time to time to examine the corpses lying on the ground.

Lu Yi had never seen so many dead people. Fortunately, the night was dark at this time, but those hideous corpses still made him feel shocked. The tragic deaths of his colleagues and relatives in the past made his heart even more wrenching. In front of a pile of corpses stacked horizontally and vertically, Lu Yi leaned down again, and by the moonlight, what he saw was the corpses of Zheng Cheng and his wife in the workshop.

Zheng Cheng was lying on his back on the ground, his right arm had been cut off, and a deep stab on his neck revealed the cause of his death. His wife, on the other hand, was seven or eight paces away, disheveled, with several shocking cuts on her abdomen, the flesh rolled up around the cuts, her round eyes, and her hideous and frightened expression, all of which showed what kind of pain she had experienced before she died.

The crutches in Lu Yi's hand had fallen to the side unconsciously. He grabbed his hair and fell to his knees, feelings of guilt and self-blame surging into his heart in an instant. Turning his gaze to the side again, several children's corpses came into his eyes.

Think of the evening before all of this, the children were still laughing and playing in the camp where they had prepared their temporary camp. And now that they have fallen to the ground, Lu Yi can no longer suppress the impulse and anger that swells up in his heart.

"Ahh

Lu Yi moved a few steps, picked up his crutches, and continued to patrol among the corpses. I don't know how long later, he finally saw the corpses of his relatives at the edge of the mountain.

His mother was almost cut in two. The soil around the body has changed color due to the infiltration of blood. She was lying on her stomach, her face down, and Lu Yi couldn't see her face. But the coarse cloth jacket she was wearing, it was impossible for Lu Yi not to recognize it. Witnessing the tragic death of his mother, Lu Yi looked up in horror, but a few steps away, he saw the body of his wife again.

The woman was also like Fang Cai Zheng Cheng's wife. I don't know what kind of pain I went through before I died. Her clothes were disheveled, and her snow-white flesh stung Lu Yi's eyes under the moonlight. Those Hu Qi were obviously not satisfied with simply venting their ** on these women. After this, Lu Yi's wife is likely to be hacked to death by Hu Qi, who insulted her. Lu Yi walked over tremblingly, gently uncovered the corpse's clothes, and the dense knife wounds on his wife's body were shocking.

The flesh around the knife edge rolled outwards without exception. The soil around her fall was strewn with her paw prints, and it was evident that these insults and the excruciating pain she had suffered before her death had led the usually gentle and obedient woman to the point of madness.

Lu Yi fell to the ground, and the death of his mother and wife became the last straw that crushed him. He cried hoarsely, calling their names over and over again, expecting them to sit up suddenly, and then telling himself that it was just a nightmare. Yet with almost all the strength he exerted, there was no other response except for the echo of his cries from the valley.

Lu Yi closed his eyes, and he actually had the idea of looking for death. He struggled to his feet, picked up the crutches beside him, and tried to find a knife next to the dead soldiers to kill himself. He walked for a long time before he reached the fallen soldiers. He looked at the corpse one by one. In the end, only a half-cut knife was found next to a dead soldier. He reluctantly searched for a few more laps, but he could not find a complete knife, which had obviously been taken away by Hu Qi.

Lu Yi struggled to the edge of a tree, leaned his upper body against the tree, and then raised his knife to kill himself. It's just that when the cold blade touched his neck, he felt a sense of regret in his heart. In a moment's hesitation, the half-cut knife had fallen to the ground. The crisp sound of the blade falling to the ground and colliding with the gravel made him listen to it, but it was more sober.

The flames of vengeance rose in his heart. He turned his head again and glanced at the corpses of his old mother and his wife, an old man and a young man, who had died tragically on the side of the mountain, and his eyes suddenly became firm. He stopped hesitating, crouched down with his cane, picked up the half-cut knife from the ground, and then looked at the side of the mountain, knelt on the ground and slammed his head three times.

"Mother, Qing'er. It's my unfilial piety that can't let you settle in the ground. Today, I will go far away with this sword, and I will cut off twenty horsemen to pay for your two lives! If I am in misfortune, I can meet you under the Yellow Spring. ”

After Lu Yi finished speaking, he picked up the half-cut knife on the side, got up and walked along the south step by step with his cane......

*************

"The four gates are closed, and the whole city is closed!" Li Yanzhi's face was pale, and he slapped his palm on the several cases in front of him.

Shortly after nightfall, the county government treasury caught fire. When the scribe on duty in the treasury went to fight the fire with a wooden bucket and fetched water, he was killed in the backyard of the treasury for no apparent reason.

Although the fire was quickly extinguished by the combined efforts of the four defenders who rushed to hear the news, and the treasury was now empty, there was no great loss. However, at this time, the enemy is at present, and Li Yanzhi knows very well what it means for a fire to appear in such a critical place as the treasury. Originally, at this critical juncture, the possibility of a natural fire in a place like the treasury was very small, and the unnatural death of the clerk guarding the treasury showed the generals in the city a fact: the city is now mixed with spies.

With the forced relocation of the residents of the city, there are almost only the soldiers guarding the city and the officials and clerks of the county government in the county seat today. Naturally, the rest of the people can't be mixed up in it. In addition, now that all the soldiers have taken turns to guard the city, the chance for the thieves to escape from the city after setting off this fire is basically non-existent.

However, the spies of these thieves are obviously also amateurs in spying and sabotage. Unexpectedly, I didn't know that the grain, grass, ordnance, and materials in the county town had already been transferred to the county barracks. ran to burn a treasury that had been emptied, but it was exposed early that there were still spies in the city, but in Li Yanzhi's opinion, it was unwise.

Despite this, Li Yanzhi still put on a posture of a lion and a tiger fighting a rabbit, and ordered the rest of the people except for the four guards on duty to be searched and arrested. This small county town, which has been gradually deserted, suddenly became full of people and lively. The soldiers worked in teams and under the leadership of their own teams to strictly search the houses in the county. Li Yanzhi strictly ordered everyone to search carefully. Compartments, secret passages, cellars, etc. cannot be missed.

While the spare soldiers were all over the city, the soldiers who were guarding the four city walls in shifts were also making the final preparations before the battle. They carried barrels of soybean oil to the city walls, and set up cauldrons on the walls, ready to wait for the thieves to come, and then use this sharp weapon, which had been practiced in the eleventh year of the Battle of Jincheng, to give the thieves a blow to the city. In addition, the rolling wood, stones, bows, crossbows and arrows and other ordnance prepared in the city were also carried to the city with the efforts of the soldiers.

Due to the signs of the activities of the thieves and spies in the city, the guards around Li Yanzhi were also increased to a whole tenth. The one who led this man was now Qin Dayong, who was led by the Zhanfeng battalion. In the bloody battle in Henan before, Qin Dayong won the third level in the battle of capturing the thieves and covering the retreat of the defeated soldiers, and it happened that the original team led the battle and died, and Li Yanzhi made Qin Dayong take the position of the leader of this team.

As a few people who had been following Li Yanzhi in the stable of the Guangwu Army earlier, now that Qin Dayong is no longer there, the rest of the people have basically stepped up to the rank of chief. Liu Jiwu, Cao Jian, etc. have their own characteristics, and their martial arts and on-the-spot command are impeccable. Therefore, with the rise of Li Yanzhi's position, the tide is naturally rising, and the rest of the people have no complaints in their hearts. After all, these two people are brave and wise, and they can be said to be the best in the whole army. They are all convinced.

Among the rest, Cui Yang was appointed by Li Yanzhi because of his ordinary appearance, calm in trouble, and both rigid and soft temperament, and was responsible for liaison with Di Dao's spy Zhu Jie and other matters. Although the position is still long, in terms of importance and treatment, etc., it is no less than the rank of a hundred generals. Due to the need for confidentiality, Cui Yang's identity is not known to anyone except him and Li Yanzhi. However, Cui Yang himself is quite grateful for this.

Zhang Xing, Wang Qiang, Liao Rulong and others are still serving as chiefs. However, it is worth mentioning that Han Wencan, when he fought with the thief pioneer Taniguchi in the bloody battle before, he led the auxiliary soldiers to fight, cut two levels, and now he is also promoted to the auxiliary team rate.

All in all, Li Yanzhi's prestige in the army and his own power are extremely limited. Even these old brothers who have been following him have not been able to be promoted for various reasons, so they can only be relegated to the front line for the time being. However, they are working on the front line, and the benefits and benefits brought to Li Yanzhi are also obvious.

First of all, the existence of these old brothers enabled Li Yanzhi to grasp the first-hand information of the generals at the grassroots level. These people are in the position of the commander of the team, and they can also make Li Yanzhi command the grassroots generals like an arm. This is precisely the reason why to control an army, it is only necessary to arrange the majority of obedient middle and low-level officers.

Li Yanzhi climbed the city tower to inspect the state of war readiness. Seeing that the city was already lined up in an orderly manner, all the weapons and equipment needed to defend the city were still quite solemn in his heart. Tomorrow, perhaps, war will befall this peaceful and peaceful city. He only hoped that he and these 3,000 soldiers would firmly drag this incoming Zhao army under the city, so that it could recreate the scene it had been eleven years ago.

He was disturbed by the fact that many of the cavalrymen who had been sent to the counties to report for help had not yet been replied to. If all the counties and counties are on the sidelines, under the attack of the Zhao army, which is much larger than their own number, the final outcome of Lingju will still not be defended.

Li Yanzhi did not have the consciousness to carry out such a meaningless sacrifice as cannon fodder. It's just that now the arrow has to be sent, even if he abandons the city and flees, under the pursuit of a huge number of Hun cavalry, he can't go away with these 3,000 soldiers. Even if the withdrawal is successful and the key places are lost, Li Yanzhi, as the military commander, will face the end of being held accountable. He is not a scholar, and if such a thing happens, there is no other way to let the superior calm the army's heart except to lose his head. Therefore, after repeated trade-offs, he had to go to the forefront of this war.

The grassroots generals who had previously searched for enemy spies had returned one after another. The results of the search they brought were basically not found in any abnormality. Until the last team returned, Li Yanzhi did not hear any useful news from these team leaders. He couldn't help but wonder in his heart, could it be that the enemy spies really grew wings and flew out?

However, in the current situation, since no enemy spies have been found, he can only set up additional guards in key places in the city to prevent trouble. After arranging all this, Li Yanzhi left the camp and walked to the county government. Before the thieves attacked the city, there was one more thing that he needed to deal with personally......