Chapter 4: Gancheng (Part 4I)
It was Li Shimin and his Flying Tigers who intercepted and killed Shibi Khan in the territory of Mayi County. Ten days ago, they were the same ones who attacked the Turkic tribes under Baishan Mountain in the guise of horse thieves. As for how to strengthen themselves by attacking the Turkic tribes, Hou Junji and the eldest grandson Wuji are very proficient. With this cavalry trained in Lingwu last year, they robbed the unsuspecting Turkic tribes between the White Wolf Fortress and Yunnei and made a fortune. When they set out, they rode one horse, and when they returned to the vicinity of the Inner Great Wall, they had at least three horses by their side.
The clever Hou Junji hid the team in a small abandoned village between Xiawu Mountain and Sangganshui. The surrounding people had already been killed by the Turks more than a month ago, so Hou Junji didn't have to worry about the team's whereabouts being discovered at all. He sent the scout to contact Li Shimin on a fast horse, and then ushered in the latest mission of his own commander and handed over to the Flying Tiger Army.
You don't need to mobilize to fight the Turks. Although everyone was exhausted, the thatched houses that no one lived in had already burned the eyes of the soldiers. The living habits of the people in Mayi County and Lingwu County are similar, and they all have strong traces of the Hu people in the Han tradition. Just from the way they dress and how they look, it's hard to even tell whether they are the sons of the Han family or the children of the Hu family. The people of Mayi County and Lingwu County suffered a similar fate in the end, their belongings were all looted by the Turks who went south, and almost all the men, women, and children who had no time to escape were also killed. There is only a well, and the village's large ancestral halls, temples and shops that have been burned down are testaments to the prosperity and tranquility of the place.
Enraged, the Flying Tigers launched a surprise attack while the Turks were resting on the riverside, and they suddenly struck out of the woods and thundered into the riverbank. They chopped with horizontal knives and trampled with horses' hooves, hacking to death the robbers who had no time to get up and flee, trampling them over, pushing them like garbage into the icy Sangan River.
The Turkic wolf, who had just breathed a sigh of relief, was caught off guard, unable to organize effective resistance, and did not have the strength to let go. In a panic, they had no choice but to flee for their lives, and many of them even forgot the riding skills they had learned since childhood, climbed into the saddle crookedly, fled crookedly, and then jumped off the horse crookedly, and were trampled into meat sauce by their companions who rushed behind them.
There were also Turkic warriors who simply abandoned their horses, and they ran on foot in all directions where there was no sound of trumpets. Some of them sent their heads directly to the horizontal knives of the Flying Tiger Army, while others jumped into the river without paying attention. The water of the Sangan River was bitterly cold before the autumn tide set, and the shepherd who grew up on horseback could not swim nine times out of ten, and could only plop on the surface of the river a few times, and then was pulled to the bottom by his heavy armor and combat boots.
"Why me?" At the moment when their mouths and noses were flooded by the river, many people reached out their hands high into the air. They were not reconciled, because they believed that they were not the ones who killed the most and should not be punished by the Immortal Heaven. At this moment, they forgot that before tonight, who was still thanking the Immortal Heaven for giving them the opportunity to rob their homes!
Hou Junji couldn't understand the Turks' distress gestures, and in fact he didn't care. As a pure military general, he pays more attention to how to achieve the greatest victory at the minimum cost. In order to increase the efficiency of killing, he divided his brothers into two teams, alternately approaching the riverbank in a wedge-shaped array. Each time it comes into contact with the Turkic wolf rider, dealing massive damage. Then quickly disengage and hand over the opponent to another wave of companions.
This tactic of alternating strikes quickly spread the terrifying effect to the maximum, and the tribal warriors, who had become frightened birds, could not tell how many enemies rushed in all directions. Seeing their companions either being shot by feathered arrows or slashed down with horizontal knives, many souls flew into the sky. In order not to fall prey to the next blow, they tried everything to escape. Regardless of whether it was an enemy or one of their own who was in the way, those who had mounts to ride on them would use their horses' hooves to step over the opponent's heads. And those who lost their horses stretched out their scimitars to the horses that jumped over.
Every horse was stained with blood, both from its owner and from its snatcher. Almost every dead horse had two or three corpses lying next to them, some from cold arrows flying from the flanks, and many more from being slashed by their own people. On this autumn night when the moon rises, the robbers are driven completely crazy by the fear in their hearts, and they either kill or be killed, and there is almost no third way to choose.
Kill, kill, as long as you can raise your knife and hack to death the person who stands in your way. Whether it's your own people, or your enemies. If you want to return to the grassland alive and see your felt bag and the women and children in it, you must fight your way out.
Corpses were piled up on both sides of the bloody road. The starlight is not bright, but it can clearly illuminate the red on the ground, and on the surface it seems to carry a layer of demonic flames, rolling along the river beach towards the autumn water. Soon, the river near the shore also turned dark red, and the thin water waves rolled silently and alternately into the distance like cold ghost fires.
The river originally had a sound, but it was almost absolutely silent next to the world of blood and fire on the shore. The Flying Tiger soldiers shouted at the top of their voices, slaughtered from the darkness, and shot their retaliatory feathered arrows at the indiscriminate slashing of the enemy. The moment the distance between the two sides was closer to within twenty paces, they put away their bows as they had done with their usual training, and removed their swords from behind their saddles. Separated from each other by a certain distance, the horizontal knife is leveled at the side of the body.
Alternately illuminated by the light of fire and starlight, the rows of horizontal knives looked like fangs in the mouths of ghosts and gods. The Turkic warriors, who had been repeatedly ravaged by the Flying Tiger Army in this way, did not have any courage or think of any countermeasures, and those who could not dodge immediately turned into flesh and blood on the tips of the "fangs". The horizontal knives of the soldiers of the Flying Tiger Army unceremoniously swung down, raised, raised, swung down, opened and closed, and drank blood.
"Kill! Avenge the people of the Jam! Hou Junji rushed to the front of the team with a short handle, a long blade, and a big knife that needed both hands to wield. The feeling of revenge was so luscious that it lifted every pore in his body. In the firelight, he saw his burned home, his relatives who had been killed, and his brothers and sisters who had been taken into slavery.
"Kill, for the sake of my father and fellow villagers!" The long knife poured a wave of blood in front of the war horse, blocking all invincible.
Someone put down his weapon in front of his horse and raised his hands and wept. Hou Junji did not hesitate to swing his knife and slash down, cutting the opponent into two pieces with one sword. The soldiers of the Flying Tiger Army who followed him learned the appearance of the main general, wielding their swords like the wind. The Turkic warriors cried and begged for mercy, cut down like reeds, trampled by horses' hooves, and knocked into the river by inertia.
It was a one-sided slaughter, in which the defeated had no resistance and the victors knew no mercy. "Spare your life!" The warriors of the tribe, who had lost their fighting spirit, fell to their knees, and they were answered by a snowy horizontal sword. "Surrender!" Some people shouted as they ran, and the Flying Tigers rode up and broke their backbones with the front hooves of the beasts.
They don't think they're killing innocents, and in fact, there aren't any innocent people among the robbers on the beach. Of the forty-one cities in Yanmen County, nine out of thirty were attacked by the Turks. Those thirty-nine cities can no longer be called cities. Even after the Turks retreated, it would not be able to regain its vitality for twenty years. No family is immortal, no one is intact, and some women's bodies still bear traces of being insulted. When they went south, the Turkic warriors did not treat any Central Plains people as their own kind, and in their eyes, whether they were resistors or obedient recipients, they were all beasts to be slaughtered. At this moment, the two sides are in a transposition, and the Flying Tigers cannot find a reason to be tolerant.
After several times in and out of the enemy group, Hou Junji found that he had handed in good luck. In the dim starlight, a group of brightly clad Turks fled in confusion. Almost all the fugitives were protecting a nobleman, and even in the process of escaping, that nobleman did not forget to dictate the people around him.
Then, Hou Junji saw another group of men led by Li Shimin approaching the enemy army, shooting and cutting down a large number of Turkic warriors. But the brethren were hampered in their approach to the Turkic nobleman, and after peeling off a layer of enemies, they had to quickly distance themselves from each other.
"There are too few people around the second son!" Hou Junji explained to Wu Shi Tong, and turned his horse to chase after the enemy chieftain. The opportunity to make a contribution came, that person must be Shibi Khan, who helped the second prince kill him, and this battle was perfect. But unexpectedly, after Li Shimin gave Shi Bi a cold arrow, he issued an order diametrically opposed to Hou Junji's wishes.
"Junji, let him go!" The next moment, the heavenly sounds in Shibi Khan's ears were like thunder in Hou Junji's heart. He didn't dare to disobey Li Shimin's order, so he had to kill the guards around Shi Bi to vent his anger. Having struck down four or five of the enemy in succession, he turned his horse's head and leaned head-on towards his lord.
"Why let him go!" Staring at his blood-red eyes, Hou Junji yelled at Li Shimin.
"Junji, how can you talk to the second son like this!" The eldest grandson, Wuji, let go of the bowstring and shot a tribal warrior who had escaped from his horse, scolding Li Shimin before he could reply.
Hou Junji has been burned by hatred and lost his mind, and even the second son dares to question. In the eyes of the eldest grandson Wuji, it was almost a disobedient behavior, but it did not cause any disgust from Li Shimin. Calmly retracting his bow and drawing his sword, the young Li Shimin replied with a smile. "Let him go back, Ashina Bone Tuolu won't be able to become the Great Khan of the Turks!"
"Isn't Bone Toru our ally?" Hou Junji's anger was suppressed by Li Shimin's calm expression, and his mentality quickly recovered and calmed down, but his eyes showed a little confusion.
"Whether it's Gu Tulu or Shibi, as long as he sits in that position, he is the Great Khan of the Turks!" Li Shimin swung his sword, rode his horse, and led the team into another group of enemy troops, like a tiger out of the mountains.
Alcoholic's note: The torch passed through Canberra safely, and there were basically no troubles among the wicked people. But after that, the Australian media slandered the Chinese who went to watch the torch. There were no photographs, no witnesses, and several violent incidents were fabricated out of thin air. Their reporters don't need to be on-site and are suitable to write about the Internet.
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