Ever since joining the Black Flag Army, Iwao Konno has been in a state of fatigue.

But for his love of travel and adventure, none of this is much now.

Carrying only a small amount of dry food on his back, Iwao Konno braved the bitter cold to cross Hokkaido, entered Siberia alone and went through many hardships, and then transferred from Siberia to Mongolia and out of India to Posia. He was infected with an epidemic in Persia and almost died, but fortunately he was rescued by the king of Persia and escaped death, and then returned to Japan with the support of the king of Persia.

This time he came to the southwestern border of Qianguo, entered Vietnam again, joined Liu Renyi's Black Flag Army, and participated in many battles with the French army and Vietnamese mercenaries.

As for the purpose of joining the Black Flag Army, only he himself knows.

This time, the reason why he went so far was to reconnoiter the situation of the French army and prepare for a major military operation of the Black Flag Army against the French army.

He had now reconnoitred that the French troops stationed in Hanoi were not numbered, only more than 500 people, but their combat effectiveness was far from being comparable to that of the Black Flag Army, and there was also a Vietnamese mercenary force of more than 1,000 people to support them, guarding in a strong fortress, and with the poor offensive ability of the Black Flag Army, it was impossible to capture the French defensive positions.

Iwao Konno has been in the Black Flag Army for a long time, and he has already seen through the reality of this armed force composed entirely of Qianguo people living in Vietnam.

But in order to achieve the true purpose of his visit, he must help the Black Flag Army defeat the French army in Hanoi!

"Where are you from?" Iwao Konno asked.

"Not far away, there is a village, and our people have a fort there." As he spoke, the man pointed his hand along the road, which was the direction Iwao Konno was going.

"You're not lying to me, are you? Will there be a fortress so far from Hanoi? What to do if you are attacked by the Vietnamese? Iwao Konno asked.

The man was stunned, he obviously heard that this little yellow man who could speak French was not simple. He had only heard some French officers say this sentence just now.

"You forget, the fortress was built on the river, and we have gunboats." The man replied, "This is an outpost, once it is attacked." Gunboats will rush to support at once, and our artillery will tear the enemy to shreds. When he said the last sentence, he deliberately glanced at Iwao Konno, wanting to see a look of fear in Iwao Konno's eyes, but Iwao Konno still had a grim look.

"You lead the way."

Iwao Konno picks up a torch and throws it off the cliff. The missionary stood there and watched as the light of the torches diminished and sank into the darkness.

"Is this still the Dongguan River?" Iwao Konno asked.

"That's what the people here call it." The pastor replied.

They walked forward. Iwao Konno holds a gun in one hand and a horse in the other. The rope is a thick piece of hemp rope with several inches of wire wrapped around the end to prevent it from breaking. When he grabbed the rope. Accidentally got a punctured thumb and bled out. Iwao Konno sucked his broken thumb with his mouth as he walked, thinking to himself that if he hadn't happened to bump into himself, the girl would have turned into a patch of white floating in the black river, her skirt unfurled around her body like a bell, and the priest stood on the cliff and said, "Sink down, sink down." Iwao Konno speculated that it would be a different story entirely.

The road soon began to rise. Cross a ridge and weave your way through low hills. The river has been left behind. The moon had risen and shone out a vast expanse of land, and vast swaths of woods had been burned in preparation for farming, but no laborious work was left to light a fire. As a result, all that appeared in front of Iwao was a scorched earth with rows of black tree trunks. It stretched out to the horizon, and the river washed out of the ravine. The trunks of the trees, which had been charred, shimmered in the moonlight. Iwao Konno looked around and thought to himself, this is a different planet compared to my hometown.

Orion has completely risen from the eastern horizon. Iwao Konno judged that it was already past midnight. The mighty hunter and warrior stands in the air, like a denunciation from the sky, pointing out your incompetence. The hunter's belt was tightened, his weapon raised, and he was preparing to attack. If you can tell the character from the posture, he must have a lot of confidence. Every night it marched west at a fast pace without suffocation.

One of the things that made Iwao Konno feel relieved was that he was able to name the country of Dry for the brightest star in the constellation Orion. One night, a Black Flag Army soldier spoke to him. At that time, they were sitting on the edge of the ditch behind the stone wall, and the red rays burning in the sky had dissipated, and the stars were shining. The night was unusually dry and cold, and they wrapped their heads and shoulders in blankets. There was no wind, and the exhaled wisps of haze hung in front of him, like a ghost about to leave.

"It's so cold, if you lick the barrel of the gun, your tongue will stick." The lad said.

He held his Enfield-style rifle in front of him, exhaled into the barrel, and scraped the frost with his fingernails. He looked at Iwao Konno again, then stretched out his finger to show Iwao Konno. Iwao Konno said he saw it. The young man spat between his feet and leaned down to see if it would freeze, but the bottom of the ditch was too dark to see the result.

In front of them, the sloping battlefield stretched down to the villages and rivers in the distance. The miserable scene was like a nightmare, as if the land had been recast in a terrible mold, and the corpses were strewn and devastated by the bombardment of artillery. One simply called it the new hell. That night, in order to take his attention away from the terrible battlefield, the young man looked at the constellation Orion and said the name he knew to Iwao Konno.

The next day, however, he was killed.

Iwao and Konno walked in silence for a while, and finally the priest asked him, "What are you going to do with me?" ”

"I'm wondering," said Iwao Konno, "how did you get to this field?" ”

"How so? This woman was from Algeria, and her husband was a second lieutenant, but he had a physical problem that could not satisfy her, and later fell ill and died. As a chaplain, I have a responsibility to comfort lonely souls. The priest laughed, "We rejoiced in every hidden place we could find, until we heard the birds chirping before dawn." All summer, we spent the evenings drilling around for trysts. ”

"That's how you did your job."

"Well, yes. That's it. ”

"How did you hook up with her?"

"It's normal. A look, a slight change in tone, a gentle hand contact as the bread and meat were handed over. We sat down on the ground and ate together after the Sunday service. ”

"It's a long way from going to bed and taking off your pants."

"Yes."

"It's even farther away from throwing her into the ditch like a plagued pig."

"Well, yes. But it's not as simple as you think. Take my identity, if I find out, I will be expelled from the army and the church. Our church rules are very strict. Some faculty members have been disciplined for minor negligence. Believe me, I've been suffering from this for many nights. ”

"I'm sure you've been in pain, but when you lay on top of her, you forgot about it."

The priest walked forward.

"There's an easier way to remedy it." Iwao Konno said.

"Oh? What is it? I didn't find out. ”

"Marrying her is one way to go."

"You're trying to keep things simple again. I'm already engaged. ”

"Oh."

"I now believe it was a mistake to be a pastor in the first place."

"Yes, in my opinion, you're not fit for this either."

They had walked another mile before the river at the bottom of the valley came into view. On the banks of the river is a small village.

"Do you have a handkerchief?"

"Yes."

"Crumple it into a ball, stuff it in your mouth, and lie on the ground." Iwao Konno said. The priest did as he was told, and Iwao Konno untied the wire at the end of the maso and walked over to the priest. Kneeling on one knee on his back, he made five or six turns of wire around his head and tightened it.

"If you call and lure everyone over, you'll push everything on me, and then I'll be speechless." Iwao Konno said.

They walked into the village and came to a small grove. There is a small grass house in the woods. There is only one room. When the priest saw the room, a terror flashed in his eyes.

"Go lean into that little tree." Iwao Konno said. He untied the soso from the horse's neck, tied him around the priest's neck to a tree, and wrapped the other end around his shoulders and tied his hands behind his back.

"Just stand here, and we'll all be able to save our lives." Iwao Konno said.

He lifted the girl off the horse, and shifted his arm slightly. One hand was on her waist, and the other arm was lifting her supple legs. Her head rested on Iwao Konno's shoulder, and as she walked forward, her hair brushing over his arm, as soft as a burst of breath. She let out a low thud. Like a person who occasionally has a brief dream in his sleep. She was so helpless, lying there, not even aware of the assault, exposed to all dangers, and the only thing that could protect her was a little kindness that was rare in this impermanent world.

I should still kill that bastard priest, Konno Iwao thought.

He walked to the front of the room with the girl in his arms and placed her in a meadow beside the steps, when the girl opened her eyes and turned her head to stare at Iwao Konno. In the moonlight, her face was pale and her hair was scattered. She seemed frightened and confused, and opened her mouth as if she was about to scream, but she didn't make a sound. Iwao Konno leaned forward and reached out to caress her forehead, pulling the messy hair from her forehead back.

"What's your name?" He asked in French.

"Fanna." The horror in the woman's eyes disappeared when she heard him speak French.

"Listen to me, Fanna," Iwao Konno said, "that priest is not God's spokesman. Nobody. Now go back to sleep, and wake up in the morning to find that I am nothing more than a big dream for you, a dream urging you to get rid of him. The pastor has bad intentions towards you. You have to remember. ”

He stretched out two fingers and closed the girl's eyes with the tips of his fingertips, as if he were closing the eyelids of the dead, lest they see the evil image, as Iwao Konno had seen before. The girl slackened at his touch and fell asleep again.

Iwao Konno leaves the girl and goes outside. The priest was still tied to the tree, and Iwao Konno walked over, and at this point, he really wanted to take out a knife and chop the man, but in the end he just reached into his backpack and rummaged around, and took out a pen and paper, and ink. He found a place in the poplar tree where there was moonlight, and by the blue light, he wrote down roughly what had happened. He didn't use his brains to think about the words, but just briefly described an attempted murder that he knew of in a paragraph. After writing in French and Vietnamese, he pinned the paper to the height of a branch. Just out of reach of the pastor.

The priest looked at Iwao Konno, and when he understood Iwao's purpose, he immediately became nervous and tried his best to twist his body, but he was unable to break free from the strangulation of his neck. He stretched out his foot and kicked Iwao Konno. I've already guessed what Iwao Konno wrote.

His mouth was gagged with a handkerchief, bound with wire, and with all his might, he could only make a squeaking sound.

"Do you want to repent?" Iwao Konno asked.

"Woo......"

Iwao Konno put his rifle against the priest's ear. He moved the hammer to the back and flicked the lever down so that the ram was aimed at the lower barrel.

"Just say one word out loud, and I promise you'll have no head." Iwao Konno said. He untied the wire, and the priest spat out the handkerchief.

"You ruined my life."

"Don't rely on me, I don't want to be nosy. But I don't want to hang my heart all day, and I don't know if in a night or two you'll put her on horseback and take her back to the river. Iwao Konno said with a sneer.

"Then shoot. Kill me now and hang me up a tree. ”

"Your proposal is attractive. But I'm not going to do that, the guns will bring the army. ”

"I'm going to hell if you hurt me so much!"

Iwao Konno picked up the wet handkerchief from the ground, shoved it back into the priest's mouth, tied it back with wire, and strode on the road. There was a humming and chirping sound from behind. Weaker and weaker. That's curses and curses in the mouth.

For the rest of the night, Iwao Konno tried to pick up his pace. I want to get away from the place I don't know the name as soon as possible. When the morning light finally lit up behind him like a bubble of yellow pus, he had already walked into an undulating hilly area. He was so exhausted that he had no idea where he was, and he had no way of knowing that it had only been 12 miles after a night's travel, because it felt like a hundred miles.

He stopped his progress and walked into the woods. Pile up a bunk out of dead branches and leaves, then sit down with your back to a large tree and start eating dry food. He lay on the ground and fell asleep for a while.

Iwao Konno woke up and looked through the pine branches at the blue sky overhead. He took out his pistol. Wipe and inspect the ammunition with a cloth and hold it in your hand as a companion. What Iwao Konno owned was a revolver made in Qianguo, an early French imitation, and its barrel was marked with the mark of "Fuzhou Shipyard". It was given to him by Huang Shouzhong, a fierce general under Liu Renyi. Since then, Iwao Konno has been carrying this gun with him. Despite its strange appearance, its oversized size, and its unevenly proportioned parts, this gun is the most feared sidearm of all time. Its rotating magazine was as large as a fist and contained nine rounds of 10 mm caliber bullets. Despite its size, this revolver was quite handy, and the body of the gun was sturdy and unified, like a large piece of iron. Holding a gun in your hand and thinking about what it can do for you creates a sense of solidity and calmness.

Iwao Konno stroked the chamber and barrel of his gun, thinking back to his fight with the three French Zuaf soldiers in the village, crossing the river, and the rotten priest he met later, wondering if he could have done everything differently. He wants to get into less trouble and not get involved in other people's bad things. He wanted to hide in the woods, away from any road. Like an owl, or a lone wolf, it only moves in the dark. At the same time, there was another impulse: to hang the pistol on the buttocks, to raise the black flag, to raise the rifle with the bayonet, to rush in broad daylight with unforgivable ferocity, to treat all who did not come to provoke him, to fight him to the end if he wanted to find trouble, and to let anger be the guide to repel all obstacles.

He wondered how Li Weiye would react when he found out about the pastor.

In order to provoke Li Weiye to come out of the strong fortress and fight, the Black Flag Army thought of various methods, including posting notices everywhere in and outside the city of Hanoi to scold Li Weiye, and doing everything they could to insult and abuse, but Li Weiye just refused to be fooled.

Iwao Konno already knows very well that compared with An Ye, who was killed by the Black Flag Army before, Li Weiye, who was born in Paris and also graduated from the Brest Naval Academy, and is now a colonel only one step away from the general, has rich experience in serving in foreign fleets, and his business ability is far above An Ye. He was also an influential writer and dramatist in the French Navy and even in French society at that time, published poetry collections, novels, and acted in plays, which can be described as versatile.

At this time, Li Weiye faced the elite of the Black Flag Army with more than 4,000 people, and it was the wisest choice to choose not to hold on, after learning that the Black Flag Army was attacking Hanoi on a large scale, the Cochinchina Governor's Office gathered 2,000 French reinforcements, and was rushing to Hanoi day and night for reinforcements.

How can they help the Black Flag Army capture Hanoi before the French reinforcements arrive?

Iwao Konno thought of the damn priest again.

He could be sure that it was a Frenchman.

If he had killed the priest and dismembered him and left him there, Li Weiye of Hanoi would have considered launching a retaliatory attack, right? (To be continued.) )

PS: The Year of the Monkey is here, good luck, troubles leaning aside, I wish you all to go out and meet nobles, and listen to the good news at home! Every year there is this time, and every year there is a present day! Happy Chinese New Year!

In the new year, please continue to support this book! This year, this book will speed up the progress and dedicate the wonderful plot to everyone!

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