The dense fog of the winter morning shrouded both sides of Zhangnu Water. The same water flows through both banks, but the two sides of the strait are not a world at all.

The West Bank was singing and laughing, and several tiger guards were singing to each other, and the song resounded in the sky.

The east coast was smoky and miasma, and Jian Yu was so troubled that he couldn't sleep well last night, and he was listless one by one, and he didn't know what to do.

Drawing water from the river in a big way, Meng Fang began to boil water for himself. Each gang has a cook, who prepares breakfast for everyone, but the boiling water needs to be taken care of by the people. According to Huwei's regulations, he can wash his face with cold water, but he is absolutely not allowed to drink raw water, and he remembers every detail of these regulations clearly.

Otherwise, it wouldn't have been able to become the battalion of the artillery battalion.

"Brother Meng, are you familiar with this area?"

With him was Wang Rui, a boy who had no interest in reading, and who joined Huwei at the age of fifteen - at the same time as Shi Tai, and was eighteen years old this year. A faint fluff grew on his lips, and he was a "Brother Meng", but in fact, he was already a cannon commander in the artillery battalion, equivalent to the position of the tent commander of the rest of the Tiger Guard.

This kid had a headache when he was learning mathematics in school, but when he went to the artillery camp to calculate the parabola of the cannonball, he was outstanding, and he could even use no tools, just by the angle comparison between his thumb and little finger, to roughly estimate the distance between the target and himself, and the error within a kilometer was no more than 20 meters!

"I'm not familiar, when I was an officer and soldier in the imperial court, I was crushed to death by the officials on my head, where can I come here?" Meng Fang said: "Do you think that every place is like our Xinxiang, and everyone can still practice around?" ”

Wang Rui sighed twice: "Then you were really pitiful." ”

"yes, poor." Meng Fang nodded vigorously, and his mind returned to the past with these words.

At that time, I couldn't even eat enough, one meal or two, and it was rare to see a fishy smell once a month, so what to talk about!

It was precisely because of that tragic experience that Meng Fang would be very active in improving himself after being incorporated into the Tiger Guard. And Yu Guozhen did not discriminate against him because he was once an officer and soldier and had been a prisoner of Jianjian -- as long as he did not bring those soldiers and ruffians who had accumulated over the years to the Tiger Guard, Yu Guozhen was quite tolerant of them.

Thinking of Yu Guozhen's help, Meng Fang couldn't help but look ahead. Yu Guozhen, like him, fetches water in the river to wash and then heat the water.

Today's Yu Guozhen is twenty-three years old, but his face still looks a little baby-faced, according to those who know how to face in Xinxiang, this is the appearance of great wealth and nobility. Meng Fang couldn't tell whether he was rich or not, but he could see Yu Guozhen's concentration, even when he was washing, his attention was extremely concentrated.

Firm and consistent.

"Lord, do you want to put a few more cannons?" Mao Yuanyi's eyes were a little red, he didn't sleep well at night, but unlike Yue Tuo, he was so excited that he couldn't sleep.

"Let's wait a while, Yue Tuo is a smart person, if you think about it, he will take a detour, such a big fog happens to be cheap for him." Yu Guozhen responded with a smile.

The number of tiger guards who came to block the attack was not large, and Yu Guozhen did not expect a decisive battle with Yue Tuo now, the morale of Jianyu had not yet sunk to the end at this time, and their supplies were sufficient, so the decisive battle would be unfavorable to the tiger guards.

"Yue Tuo will go upstream, which means he will have to turn south." Mao Yuanyi said with a smile: "If you come and go, it will be an extra twenty miles, so that Jianyu will stay for at least one more day - the things along the way have also been arranged, the lord can only rest assured!" ”

As the two of them had speculated, Yue Tuo got up and began to ponder how to break the current impasse.

Zhang Nu water is not wide or deep, that is compared with the big river, the river surface is always dozens of steps, for the Jianyu who does not have enough boats, this is the moat. Originally, to cross such a river, as long as the soldiers built a pontoon bridge, it would take a little more than half a day at most, and they could all be crossed, but the tiger guards on the other side of the river would definitely not let him build a pontoon bridge.

The only way to do this is to find another place to cross the river.

"After pulling out the camp, ...... If you meet the village of the Ming people, you will take away all the livestock, grain, and clothes. Yue Tuo felt a headache while commanding, and he didn't know if it was because he didn't have a good rest last night, or because he really couldn't think of a better way to deal with it.

When the team went south, there were always people shouting and neighing. They could hear Zhang Nu on the other side of the river, and like them, it was also the sound of a large group of people pulling out. Obviously, the Ming army on the opposite bank will not give them the opportunity to cross the river easily!

It wasn't until almost noon that the fog cleared, and Yue Tuo looked towards the west bank and saw a group of Ming cavalry of about 100 horsemen, moving along the river bank, maintaining the same advancing speed as them. In the distance, there should be more than 2,000 new soldiers, their distinctive green uniforms, which are really eye-catching in a withered winter.

Yue Tuo's heart moved, if there was only such a Ming army, he could consider forcibly crossing the river!

"Stop, get ready to build a bridge!" He ordered loudly.

When he was busy here, Yue Tuo observed the opposite bank through a telescope, and the Ming army on the other side really stopped, and then the infantry team farther away was also busy, Yue Tuo frowned suddenly, what was the other party busy with?

It only took him a few minutes to know what he was up to.

Twenty eight-pound short cannons roared in unison, stirring up four or five waves in the Zhangnu water, but two more shots hit the construction team on the riverbank to build a pontoon bridge.

"Ahh

The stump and severed arm flew up in a bitter howl, and Jianyu's eyes became a mess, and on the river beach, several huge trenches appeared, and there were still sparse corpses in the trenches.

"Damn...... It's only been how long their artillery ...... How agile is it? ”

Yue Tuo almost stood up from his horse, this attack made him understand why the other party would dare to follow their army with only more than 2,000 people, because the other party could use this artillery to destroy the strategy he chose to break through!

"Spread out, build more, build me twenty bridges at the same time!" Yue Tuo said sharply.

If possible, he would not choose to take a detour too far, he knew that they did not carry many supplies, and the more detours he went, the more food he had to consume!

The wailing wounded soldiers were dragged down, and then the Jianyu began to build more pontoon bridges, and twenty teams marched in unison, and soon there were bridgeheads on the river beach.

When the captives dispersed to build the bridge, all but a few of the Tiger Guard cavalry on the other side of the river dismounted. They smiled and pointed at the riverbank, looking very relaxed, while the Tigerguard's cannon roared behind them. The artillery of the Tiger Guard became more and more accurate, and from time to time, a few shells fell into the Jianyu formation, which not only set off a wave of flesh and blood, but also dealt a heavy blow to the morale of the Jianyu.

No matter how valiant a soldier is, it is difficult to build a pontoon bridge at any time in the face of artillery that may fall overhead. Therefore, the speed of Jianyu's work became slower and slower, and Yue Tuo looked anxious, but he finally did not reprimand—slow is slower, after all, it is still extending into the river.

One, two, three...... Six, seven!

Seeing that the twenty pontoon bridges had reached the middle of the river, and the other party's tiger guards had not made any moves, Yue Tuo not only did not feel relieved, but became even more nervous.

He didn't believe that the other party would let them fix the pontoon bridge, and if that was the case, the other party should evacuate at this time.

At this moment, the sound of horses' hooves was heard on the other side of the river, and I saw more than a thousand horsemen coming along the river.

In Tamna Island, Yu Guozhen now has more than 10,000 horses, and it is not a big deal to transfer two or three thousand horses. Jiang'an came to Qingdao before, so he deliberately brought horses, and Xiteku and others originally went to Shandong's east to see horses.

"Jianyu is quite capable." Mao Yuanyi saw that the bridge had reached the center of the river, and said to Yu Guozhen with a smile: "Lord, it seems that Yue Tuo is not dead yet. ”

"Then let him die!" Yu Guozhen said.

He personally held a Huwei C musket, got off, and strode to the river, about thirty meters from the river, and about twenty meters from the pontoon bridge in the river. This distance is already the range of the Jianyu marksman, Yu Guozhen picked up the musket, made an aiming motion, and behind him, hundreds of muskets were raised at the same time.

"Damn it!"

It was impossible for Yue Tuo to let his marksman go on an adventure on the pontoon bridge that was only half built, and if he was hit by artillery, he would die in vain, so when he saw this scene, he was shocked: No wonder the new soldiers had no other action than to use artillery bombardment to prevent their project from progressing too fast!

They clearly deliberately let themselves build the pontoon bridge in half, and after consuming a lot of manpower, materials and time, they gave themselves a head-on attack!

This was a very simple matter, but it was only because Yue Tuo had a fluke mentality in his heart that he fell into the trap!

In the blink of an eye, the hundreds of muskets had already gone off.

With the salvo of hundreds of muskets, there was not a single person standing on the half-finished pontoon bridge that was being targeted. Not to mention that more than a dozen corpses fell into the water, causing Zhang Nu to float in the water.

After cleaning up the pontoon bridge, Yu Guozhen turned back to Mao Yuanyi with a smile: "When Mr. Mao was in Guanning, he thought that he had personally fought with Jianyu, but do you want to try the feeling of shooting Jianyu again?" ”

Mao Yuanyi originally wanted to persuade him not to take such a risk again, but when he heard his words, his heart moved, he laughed and dismounted, and then borrowed a musket from a tiger guard and walked to the opposite side of the second pontoon bridge.

"Bang!"

There was another deafening burst of muskets, and the second pontoon bridge was also swept away.

Without waiting for the tiger guard to turn to the third pontoon bridge, the clothed auxiliaries who built the bridge cried and shouted backwards, even if the sharp soldiers and the team killed several people in a row, they could not stop them from escaping. This is different from artillery bombardment, there is still a possibility of survival under artillery bombardment, and when you are in the middle of the water, you are shot by hundreds of muskets, and there is no chance of survival!

Yue Tuo almost vomited blood again, he gritted his teeth and said, "Retreat, retreat!" ”

"Banner master, half of the ...... have been built"

"That's what the Ming people deliberately let us build half, that is, to make this bridge a bait, so that we can keep sending people to death!" Yue Tuo hissed and inhaled, like a wounded snake: "What a poisonous heart!" ”

(To be continued)