Lao Wu took a military crossbow given by Xiao Ye, and quickly left, less than four days, he once again stood at the foot of Shiguantun Mountain, still blocked by the sergeant on the sentry, and could not go up the mountain for half a step.

After the inspection of the old craftsman of the Huang family in the town, the crossbow he took back, the steel on it has exceeded 100 steel, and it is the real Persian Uzi steel, maybe even better.

Although the Huang family has a wide variety of businesses, they are also quite skilled in sensitive materials such as weapons, and this kind of crossbow with a range of only thirty steps is weak to attack, but self-protection is a sharp means, comparable to the sharp weapon of the rich family.

So, the Huang Steward, who was praised by his hometown in Shanxi, urgently set off from the toon building in Suzhou, with a large number of materials, passed through the gravel fort and rushed directly to the direction of Shiguan.

Jiang Jie, who got the news, was slightly surprised, but he didn't have much emotion, because his son Jiang Qinggui was about to get married.

"Go and report to your 100 households, Steward Huang will bring the materials tomorrow morning and trade with 100 households at the bottom of the mountain, of course, it depends on whether your 100 households dare to let Steward Huang rest at the bottom of the mountain," with a thick sarcasm on his lips, after explaining clearly, Lao Wu raised his horsewhip and galloped away.

After receiving the report from the mountain, Xiao Ye made some arrangements, took out two crossbows from the stone mill at night, and talked and laughed in the courtyard with his younger siblings and Mei'er, and everyone rested.

Early the next morning, under the guidance of the scouts, the Huang Steward led a team of fifty carriages to the foot of Shiguan Mountain.

On the road from the Gravel Fort to Shiguan, Xiao Ye had already sent someone to clean up the dense poisonous vine grass, after all, his people also had to go to the fort city often, and the horse-drawn carriages and ox carts could not walk at all.

However, such continuous cleaning has actually cultivated a professional team, which Xiao Ye did not expect.

With a strict secrecy military order, Xiao Ye accompanied him very easily, and he believed that those Huang family guards couldn't ask anything.

When he went up to the mountain, Huang Steward was very surprised by the land temple where the incense was strong, and he respectfully went in to put on a stick of incense and checked it by the way. As for the three big trees, of course he swept them away.

Sitting in the small courtyard of Xiao Ye's house, Steward Huang admired Xiao Baihu for settling so many artisan families and military households in such a short period of time.

"Xiao Baihu's ancestor is afraid that he is also from a Zhuang family, and there is still a stone mill, but it is a little bigger," patting the blue-gray stone mill, Huang Guan joked.

"Yes, when my father was alive, I warned Xiao Ye not to forget the roots, Xiao Ye must be diligent and self-motivated," Xiao Ye said with a dark face without connecting with Huang Steward.

If it weren't for this stone mill, the bones of him and his family would have been thrown into the mass grave.

It seems that the Persian merchants were indeed not here, and the yellow steward trusted his eyes.

Huang Guanshi, who didn't see anything unusual on the mountain and was disappointed, watched a group of sergeants with knives drive the carriages up the mountain, and then return to the bottom of the mountain with the empty cars, so he also left the stone mountain with the goods after delivery.

This stone mountain, which is not very high, has the front and rear guidance of the scout team, even if it is the quarry in the west and the training ground in the distance, there are also guards who have gone to see it; The creek behind the mountain, forget it.

Huang Guan was very angry, Xiao Ye used nine copper-patterned glass mirrors and twenty consecutive crossbows in exchange for 500 catties of lead, 6,000 catties of saltpeter, and 10,000 catties of sulfur; In addition, a hundred stones of rice and a few local dogs in Suzhou made Xiao Ye feel a lot more good about him.

Compared with Han Baocai, Xiao Ye is also willing to deal with big businessmen, and he is a childish man who buckles the rope, and he doesn't feel good when he sees it.

In the next fifteen days, the sergeants with five small flags under his command were pulled to the training ground by Xiao Ye, and became familiar with this new type of firearm as soon as possible, naturally, the use of military crossbows is the most basic.

The two scout teams, each with a Shiguan fire gun, thirty rounds of projectiles, and excess projectiles from the cowhide box, were kept by Uncle Kun in a dry side room.

The reason why they are called scouts, rather than not collecting at night, is because everyone has night blindness at night, and according to Li Langzhong, it will take a while. Meat, scouts need meat, blood clots.

Of the remaining five firearms, Xiao Ye kept one and handed over four to Wang Dali, although his five small flags were logistics small flags, Xiao Ye still gave them the opportunity to practice firearms.

The autumn wind is bleak, a white dew is down, the late autumn season has arrived, and in the canyon outside Shiguan, there is the rumbling sound of horses' hooves.

In the autumn of 1510, in the annoyance of Saiyin Arakjinong asking for supplies from the Ming border army to no avail, the order was transmitted to the grassland, and the south threshed grass Tartar, and the brigade of men and horses flocked to Qingfeng Valley, where the wide terrain was suitable for the brigade of horses to pass through safely.

The vast area of flat land east of the Silong River and west of the Bushan Mountains was not only suitable for cultivating crops, but also suitable for the Tartars to flock to plunder.

And after passing through the Shiguan Gorge and entering the boundary of Suzhou, it was the two small tribes in the Tartars, gathered together to form a team of 300 people, trying to sneak into the Xilong River area to grab a handful, and then go east to join the Tartars of the brigade.

The Uchita, the son of the leader of the Tartar tribe, with his head combed with short pigtails and a shiny forehead, was riding on a blue and white war horse, leading two hundred warriors of his tribe, unhurriedly on the canyon and mountain path.

On the side of the saddle, a long horned bow hung diagonally beside his legs, and the quiver was filled with sharp maces, and a six-foot-long mace was carried in the thick hand of the Uchita.

Like him, the many warriors in the team also had a variety of weapons, most of them were heavy and hard, long-handled spikes, and some were only poor people with scimitars and horned bows.

Behind, a hundred Tartars of another tribe, led by the Uncle Gushan of the Uchita, followed closely behind the horse's hooves, and the province was slow to eat the dust.

Thirty years ago, in 1480, Dayan Khan had enthroned the throne of the Khwu Mengke (the second "little prince" known to the Ming people), and with his "brilliant wisdom" and bravery, in less than ten years, he defeated the Warats, leveled the rebellion and rebellion of the separatist forces, and unified the Tatar tribes into 60,000 households.

Dayan Khan was in charge of 30,000 households on the left wing of Chahar, Khalkha and Ulianghai, and 30,000 households on the right wing of Ordos, Tumut and Yongshebu were sealed with the third son Balsborot, and the name was Saiyin Alak Jinong (Jinong, translated as Ji Neng by the Ming people, which is the transliteration of the Chinese "King of Jin"), and the power of the Khan was greatly strengthened, ending the dictatorship of the ministers and the disputes between the tribes.

And the tribe of the Uchita is the inconspicuous one of the dozens of tribes attached to the Baalsborough Jinong tent, and it is also the smaller one.

The breeding season of cattle and horses on the grassland has passed, and in this leisure time, Wu Chita's father is seriously ill, and he receives a call order from Jinong, and half of the warriors go south to threh grass; In order to get to the area of Qingfeng Valley as soon as possible, Wu Chita and his distant uncle Gushan clan head of another tribe decided to take a shortcut to Shiguan to Qingfeng Valley after discussion.

Although they will encounter more fire piers along the way, which will reveal their whereabouts, but in terms of safety, as long as they do not encounter a large number of regular border troops, they are still quite confident.

If you can't beat it, you can't run, what Daming lacks is a war horse, and they can have two horses or even three horses. Passing through the city and looting the villages is the specialty of their small tribe.

Therefore, what they thought in their hearts was that those low-defense border villages, if they could catch a handful first, then this winter, they would be able to nest in a warm cowhide tent on a snowy day and enjoy the wine and beauty.

In the tent of the head of the Gushan clan, there is a Han woman who was robbed a few years ago, and the Wuchi Pagoda only looked at it a few times, and he was eager to try the rich Daming, and the rough and humble woman on the grassland and the white-skinned Daming woman cannot be compared at all.

At the age of nineteen, Wu Chita, who was already familiar with personnel, began to have a strong interest in the self-contained Ming Dynasty under the words and deeds of his father.

When the tiger transforms into a sheep and gathers around to make up his mind, it will not be a hungry wolf, but more wild dogs.

This time, it was the first time he had led his team south, but half of the warriors in the tribe who had experience in threshing grass were enough to provide him with a wealth of experience.

Only the Gushan clan, who was very afraid of the Ming border army, wandered outside the canyon and sent several waves of spies to detect the safety of the road before agreeing to the horse team to set off; Although she was brave, she listened to her advice and approved of her uncle's advice.

Now, today, the rushing Wuchi Tower, with a large group of men and horses, rushed through this narrow canyon, opposite the canyon only mottled and barren grass hills and mountains, less than a day forward, you can see the Xilong River.

The three hundred heavily armed Tartar horse teams, with their fierce smoke and dust, were soon discovered by the scouts of the hundred households in Shiguantun, who had been on guard for a long time.

On the stone mountain southwest of Shiguan, with the hoarse shouts of the scouts, the sharp whistles and suona sounds in Shiguan Tunli sounded one after another, and the panicked craftsmen and soldiers retreated into the solid wall, and under the command of Wang Dali, picked up the weapons such as sticks and shovels.

The elderly and children have retreated into their respective homes.

The small flag behind the land temple also used a big rope to hang the men who carried water under the stone wall one after another. The dozen or so free-range cattle and ploughing cattle were also driven back to the stone wall on the top of the mountain.

Xiao Ye, who had never experienced the hard work in the fields and had the idea of eating beef every once in a while, would have slaughtered the cattle if it weren't for Wang Dali's persuasion, and these cattle were really of little use in Shiguan.

"Report, Lord Baihu, in the canyon outside Shiguan, there is a large army of horses, without a banner," a scout on horseback quickly reported, turned on his horse, and galloped down the mountain.

Since the mighty caravan of the Yellow Steward walked out of the stone pass from the canyon, Xiao Ye knew that there would be no more peace here, and the scouts who were sent to constantly reconnoiter the canyon also changed from a group of two people a day to two groups a day.

Standing in front of the Land Temple, Xiao Ye carried five small flags that had been fully equipped, twenty of them were holding Shiguan fire guns, and the cowhide box on his waist was full of sixty rounds of fixed-loading projectiles; The remaining thirty men, with long knives at their waists, held brand-new crossbows in their hands, and another arrow box in their arms, also filled with ten short arrows.

In order to cope with the arrival of the Tartar this time, he has already taken out all his net worth.

Xiao Ye led the team down the mountain, and Wang Dali put the four Shiguan fire guns in his hand, two of which were arranged to guard the cliff behind the land temple, and two were placed at the exit of the wall; The rest of the young men with crossbows in their hands entered the large and small dark forts, while the others began to carry stones and fill the ten-pace-wide exit of the wall.

In the courtyard next to the hundred households, Yang Tianshou crossed his hands, looked up at the refreshing sky, and could not see a trace of clouds.

"Mei'er, the Tartars are coming, and they will soon be down the mountain, are you afraid?" Looking at his worried daughter beside him, Yang Tianshou asked in a low voice.

Due to the etiquette system, Mei'er, who couldn't have too much contact with Xiao Ye, traveled around the corners and corners of the place with Hanjuan, and also liked the peaceful life here, the only thing that made her dissatisfied was the fire that sounded all day long, which was much louder than the firecrackers in the New Year's Festival.

Looking up at her father, Yang Mei'er smiled, "Don't be afraid, with my father and Brother Xiao here, as well as Zuo Shi and Hanjuan, Mei'er is not worried at all,"

"Yes, don't be afraid, in such a sunny weather, it's going to be windy," although he stayed in the private school to teach children to read and write, Yang Tianshou was not a pedantic master, Xiao Ye went down the mountain to meet the enemy, and at the end, it was time to make his own decision.

The sound of footsteps outside the courtyard came, and Zuo Shi and Uncle Kun, who were holding military crossbows, walked into the small courtyard with Han Juan with a panicked face; "Sir, my brother asked us to come," Zuo Shizui's usual clumsiness was observed.