"Good brother, it's really a tiger!" Cao Cao patted Li Guo on the shoulder excitedly, and said with a bold smile: "A total of more than 20 people died, and seven boats were snatched back, and we are thousands of people thanks to you!" ”

"It's all the big bosses who command it properly!" Li Guo said with a smile: "I just asked the boatman, there is a ferry three miles downstream, the river is much slower, each boat can carry thirty or forty people, one trip can pull more than two hundred people over, at most one day and a half can be all crossed!" ”

"Well, without further ado!" Cao Cao nodded: "Brother Li, your people will cross the river immediately!" ”

"No, it should be the big boss who leads you first!" Li Guo shook his head: "I have few people, stay and break the last, you have a lot of people, if you are intercepted on both sides of the river, I'm afraid something will happen!" ”

"That's good!" Cao Cao was also not humble: "Your wounded will cross over first, and I will inherit the favor of Brother Li, Cao Cao!" ”

Soon, the first wave of peasant troops boarded the boats, including Cao Cao himself, and Li Guo commanded his men to dismount and rest on the banks of the river, while carrying the baggage from the cattle to the shore to be loaded onto the boats. After six or seven trips in this way, most of Cao Ying's and Li Guo's wounded had already reached the east bank of the Yellow River, and Li Guo's heart hanging in the air was almost gone. He found a place to sit down, closed his eyes and prepared to recuperate, but he heard a drum beat on the river, and hurriedly stood up again to look at the river, only to see several long boats coming downstream, with sails and oars, although they were going upstream, but still far faster than the empty ferries that were rowing back.

"Whose ships are these?" Li Guo asked sharply to a boatman next to him.

"It's over, it's a long dragon, a long dragon of the official army!" The boatman let out a scream. Although Li Guo didn't understand what he meant by "long dragon", he heard that it was the ships of the official army and knew that it was not good for his side. He hurried to the river and shouted to his ferry, "Hurry up, you will be safe on the shore!" ”

The people on the ferries had obviously seen the arrival of these uninvited guests, and the leaders of the peasant army on several boats shouted loudly, and some simply grabbed the wooden oars and rowed hard, and the speed of the ferries suddenly increased. Li Guo saw that the ferry had already known that the enemy was coming. Hurriedly ordered the archers to rush to the shore and prepare to cover their ships, and now there were more than a thousand horses on the west side of the river, and these ferries were their lifesavers.

On the river, Bai Wang looked contemptuously at the ferries that were struggling to escape to the riverbank, and his face was full of sneers. More than half an hour ago, he was cruising on the river with three clippers, and he happened to see the signal from the beacon tower, so he hurriedly led the way. These days, his Clippers have become the undisputed hegemon of this stretch of river, although there are still thousands of thieves on both sides of the river. But in his eyes, these ferries were just bait in his mouth.

"Give the order to go down, get off the sails, and sink all these bird boats for me!"

With a few rhythmic horns, the clippers lowered their sails, broke out in formation, and each chose the side of a ferry to crash over. As the two sides approached, the people on the ferry finally realized the enemy's intentions and desperately tried to turn the boat around to avoid impact. But it's too late. The rhythm of the drums on the clipper boat became faster and faster, and the pace of the oarsmen on both sides became faster and faster, when suddenly the drumming stopped, and the oarsmen in the lower cabin suddenly retracted the long oars out of the water. Keep it at an angle parallel to the hull.

With a loud bang, Bai Wang felt a huge vibration under his feet, almost bouncing him off the ground. The first to come into contact with the enemy ship was the angle of attack under the water, the hard bronze angle of attack tearing open the weak side panels of the ferry. Then there is the keel, and finally the side of the ship on the other side. The ferry, which could carry more than 30 people, was broken like a paper toy, and the wooden planks and keel made a tooth-aching cracking sound. The desperate crew jumped into the water. The rest were impaled by the sharp ends of the broken planks and let out inhuman screams.

"Backwards, backwards, exits!" Bai Wang skillfully sounded the order, and the drummer at the stern turned his command into a rhythmic drum beat, so that the oarsmen in the bilge could hear it clearly in the fierce battle. As the oarsmen paddled hard, the longboat began to move slowly backwards, separating itself from the wreckage of the wrecked ferry, which had been intact a few minutes before, sank into the river like a gnawed antelope skeleton, and Bai Wang's boat turned a corner, turning its direction and pounced on the second prey.

Li Guo stood on the shore and watched in amazement at everything that happened on the river, it was more of a hunt than a battle. Driven by well-trained oarsmen, drummers, and commanders, these three longboats were like three well-trained sharks, tearing twice their number of prey to pieces in the blink of an eye, and the only thing Li Guo could be thankful about was that the ferry was on the return journey, and there were no soldiers on it, otherwise the losses would have been much greater.

"Quick, quick, row hard, the riverbank is not far away!" The Boss of the Boat on the sole survivor gasped and shouted at his men as he looked back at the enemies that were getting closer and closer behind him. Li Guo on the shore also hurriedly asked the archers to rush to the shore, pulled out his waist knife and aimed it at one of the clippers and shouted: "Release the arrow, release the arrow!" ”

With the whooshing sound of the feathered arrows slashing through the breath, a flurry of arrows flew over the head of the last ferry boat and fell on the trailing clipper, but most of the arrows landed in the river behind the tail of the clipper, causing a splash. Bai Wang, who was at the bow of the boat, saw that the ferry was already only more than twenty zhang away from the river bank, and he was afraid that he would not be able to catch up, so he ordered loudly: "Turn to the right, cross over, and prepare for fire!" ”

As the rhythm of the drums changes, the oarsmen on the left side of the longboat begin to row backwards, while the helmsman at the tail adjusts the rudder, and the longboat begins to turn forward and right, turning its narrow side towards the shore, and the other two longboats follow the same example as the flagship. The peasant sergeants on the shore thought that the enemy had been repelled by their own archers, and they let out excited cheers as they fired their arrows more vigorously. At this time, the ferry had rowed only four or five feet away from the shore, and the sailors on the boat could not wait to get close to the case, so they jumped into the icy water, and fled to the shore with rolling and crawling. The captain shouted loudly: "Get out of the way, the longship is about to be released!" “

As soon as the words fell, a burst of fire erupted from the side of the longship on the water, and then there was a scream from the shore, and the archers of the peasant army, who had been in high spirits just a moment ago, fell to the ground, and then the other two longboats also released a row of birds, and the lead that swept by at a rapid speed was like a huge sickle, cutting down a piece of the crowd.

Li Guo, who had already seen the power of the bird's gun, hurriedly threw himself to the ground. He hurriedly climbed over to a big stone next to him, hid behind the stone and sat up, his vest felt the hard boulder, Li Guo felt the smell of blood in his mouth, and when he touched it with his hand, he found that Fang Cai had bitten a piece of his lip in a hurry, and his mouth was full of his own blood.

Li looked left and right, and there were people running around everywhere, knives, shields, horned bows, flags, and arrows were thrown everywhere, and from time to time people fell to the ground. I don't know if I was hit by a buckshot or if I fell on my own. Li Guo saw a big flag on the ground not far away, and he was thinking about whether to rush out and grab the big flag and try to reorganize the army, when he suddenly felt that there was an extra person behind him, Li Guo looked back, but it was the boss of the ship. The ship's boss turned pale, and when he saw Li Guo staring back at him, a trace of an embarrassed smile appeared on his face.

"Where did these boats come from? How do you know they're going to let go? Li Guo asked viciously, at this time he had a kind of malice towards anyone who aroused his slightest suspicion.

"Don't. Other! The boat boss hurriedly raised his hands and made a harmless gesture: "Those boats are the patrol boats of the Ming army of Chaoyi, I have seen them twice when they were fighting water thieves on the river, and each time they crossed the boat like this." It's time to let go. “

Li Guo looked at the appearance of the boat boss, and he already believed five or six points in his heart, but he still had a fierce look on his face: "Nonsense, Chaoyi is hundreds of miles away from here, to say the least." How could a patrol ship go so far there? “

"What the villain said is true!" Seeing this, the boat boss hurriedly cried out: "In the past, there were only a few official boats coming and going on the Yellow River, and there were no such patrol boats. At the beginning of this year, a staff member named Liu Cheng built a pontoon bridge at Pujinkouzi. Then a number of beacons were built along the banks of the river, and all ships along the river were ordered to dock at the pier next to the beacons, and such long boats were lined up to patrol the river. As long as it was a cargo ship between the two sides of the river, it rushed back, only saying that it was a thief, and asked it to cross the river from the Pujin Bridge downstream. Since there was this longboat, the brothers who begged for food in the water on both sides of the river were miserable, many of them had their heads cut off, and their bodies hung on the trees by the river. At this, the boss of the boat couldn't help but shake his head.

"Humph!" Li Guo snorted coldly, he already believed in the ship boss seven or eight points, he paid attention to this Ming army general after suffering a loss under Liu Cheng that time, and he has collected a lot of information in the past six months or so, knowing that this person has acted quite unexpectedly, and others are okay, it is not surprising that he did this.

Just as Li Guo was thinking about his thoughts, there was a sudden loud noise on the river, and he hurriedly poked his head out to look at the river, just in time to bump into a fire on the bow of a long boat, and then a column of water splashed next to the unmanned ferry not far away.

"What are they doing?" Li Guo asked in surprise.

"Oh my God, my ship!" When the captain saw it, he cried and cried, and patted his head with both hands. Li Guo grabbed the other party and asked, only to know that the officers and soldiers were sinking the boat with artillery, and this ferry boat was the only property left by the boat boss, so it was no wonder that he was like this.

"There are still cannons on this ship? It's amazing! It seems that unless it is frozen, this Yellow River will not be able to pass! Li Guo saw that the three long boats fired a few shots at the ferry, and the ferry slowly sank, and couldn't help but be speechless. He bent over and ran for some distance, feeling that he was about out of range of the officer's firearms, and then straightened up.

It took Li Guo a lot of effort, and it was only around the end of the afternoon that he collected a remnant army, and excluding those who were killed and scattered on the riverbank, there were only more than 200 people left. Unfortunately, most of the cattle and baggage had already been transported to the east bank of the Yellow River, and most of the rest had been thrown away by the river.

"Uncle Nine!" A small leader still calls Li Guo according to the kinship between the two according to his usual habits: "According to my meaning, the most important thing now is to find a village to break it quickly, we are short of everything now, clothes, food, livestock, salt, mother, even a pot for boiling water." Otherwise, it will have to fall apart! ”

"Hmm!" Li Guo nodded, he stood up, looked at his subordinates with panicked expressions around him, and said in a deep voice: "You pick two brothers with good riding skills, and look around to see if there are any villages nearby, whether you find them or not, you must come back before dark!" ”

"Yes!" The little leader answered, turned around and called the names of a few people, and rode away, Li Guo walked up to everyone and said loudly: "Don't panic, everyone, kill two animals first, everyone eat a full meal first, and we will definitely be able to sleep under the roof tonight." ”

"Oh!" There was a fierce light in everyone's eyes.

Li Guo was lucky, and after about an hour, one of the scouts sent out came back, panting and telling him that there was a stockade twenty or thirty miles southwest of the country, which seemed to have a lot of money and grain. Li Guo waved his hand excitedly, turned around and shouted to everyone: "Come with me, everyone will take down this stockade, and you will have the food in your mouth, the clothes on your body, and the horse under your crotch!" ”

By the time we arrived at our destination, it was already past the unitary hour. The night is like a huge curtain that covers the whole earth, and only a few stars appear even colder. Li Guo walked through the crowd and walked towards the ridge. When he climbed the ridge and there were a few fires in the darkness, that is, the village that we wanted to attack, Li Guo looked at it for a while and said in a low voice: "This is it?" After a while, he asked himself again: "Yes, this is it." ”

"Give out the rest of the food, and everyone go to the leeward place to rest, and don't light the fire! Let's start with it! Li Guo's voice was not loud, but it seemed a little harsh in the silence of the night. Li Guo's gaze swept over everyone, his face was blazing, and a hot current suddenly surged in his chest, and he said in a deep voice: "Sit down and listen to my orders!" “

Li Guo wrapped his cloak tightly to reduce the loss of body temperature as much as possible, but every once in a while, he still had to stand up and move his hands and feet so as not to freeze, at this time he raised his head and used the method that Li Zicheng taught him when he was young to confirm the time through the stars in the sky. But time seemed to freeze, and the north wind in the night cut his face like a blunt knife, and soon Li Guo's face had lost sensation, and he had to stretch out his hands and rub his face vigorously to avoid frostbite. (To be continued.) )