May 17 of the Nine Kingdoms calendar, cloudy.

Ten black beasts drank water by a stream, and a one-armed old man with a knife at his waist bent down to pick mushrooms under a pine tree.

Before he could finish picking the mushrooms under the trees, a group of rebels in gray military uniforms rushed out of the bushes in front of them. The one-armed old man was very decisive, and when he saw the comer, he directly threw down the ten black beasts, turned around and burrowed into the dense forest.

The old man was very athletic, and after the rebels chased him for a while, he lost it, and could only block the ten black beasts.

"The old thing is running so fast!"

"I've heard before, we have a Heavenly Lord here, hum! Without waiting for us to look for him, he actually ran under the noses of the masters to graze, what a boldness! ”

"Yes, it just so happens that I have been fine lately, so why don't I take someone to touch the location today, and then notify the general."

"Where to inform the general, our thousand-man team is enough, and you don't know what the hell the Lord of the Heavenly Favor looks like, and he has no ability to resist at all."

"That's right."

"Assemble the army, go!"

……

Jiaolong Village Iron Ore Area.

Due to the poor roads, it takes time to mine stones, so there is no way to return on the same day, there is no manpower to build the road, and there are no extra troops to garrison. Therefore, Zhang Sheng can only temporarily build this place into a simple transit station, and build a guard tower and several wooden houses according to the mountain, not only iron ore, but also tung fruit will be temporarily stored here for unified transfer.

In order to guard against jackals, tigers and leopards in the mountains, fifty white-pole soldiers were stationed in the iron ore area, led by the veteran general Xue Zhong. If you can keep it, if you can't keep it, it's best to protect the miners to run away.

But today is different......

Ten rebels came up arrogantly, but before they could open their mouths, they were killed by the white pole soldiers stationed there, and only one escaped.

"It looks like it's done!" Zhang Sheng, who was standing on the watchtower, breathed a sigh of relief when he saw this scene.

Waiting for the rebels to wait, Zhang Sheng, who was about to be choked by the mouth, could only ask Xue Zhong to seduce with ten black beasts, but he didn't expect the other party to be so unresolute, so he came to the door on the same day. Fortunately, he prepared in advance, first eating the opponent's vanguard, and then making follow-up plans.

"My lord, the trap has been laid."

"Then prepare, try to catch it alive."

In less than half a day, the person who had "escaped" before came over with a large army, in an orderly manner, and was definitely not a rabble. An arrow flew towards the guard tower where Zhang Sheng was, which was regarded as a greeting, and the rebels stopped there, and did not press in directly.

"The people inside listened, put down their weapons and came out to surrender, otherwise when the grandfathers entered, they would all be reduced to slaves and never have a day to go out." A broken gong shouted loudly.

It has been exposed before, since the other party did not withdraw at the first time, there must be a trap in it, not to mention that this is obviously only a mining area, not a territory. As a rebel, if you don't have a brain, you would have become the feats of the expeditionary force a long time ago, and the rebels also have the problem of difficult to replenish the population.

After all, if the rebels want to survive, they need enough troops to support them, and if they want to live comfortably, they need a large number of slaves, where do these populations come from? Only the lords who could plunder the military and political autonomy, the rebels annexed each other, and there were very few who dared to directly grab the expeditionary force.

Against this background, there was even an absurd situation in which the rebels "raised" the lords.

It's a pity that he responded to three bombs, originally thought it was just a stone bullet thrown by a trebuchet, this thing is worrying, and the lethality is limited, so just avoid it. Unexpectedly, when the three slow bombs fell to the ground, they suddenly exploded, filling the air with a cloud of green smoke.

Three more after three......

"It's not good, it's poisonous smoke!"

"Stand back, spread out!"

Although the rebels were panicked, under the command of the commander, they were in chaos and orderly, and under the shroud of poisonous smoke, some of them were dragged out by their own robes.

Obviously, this is a rebel army is not the same class configuration, there are high and low, even after inhaling the poison smoke, the high will not lose its combat effectiveness in a short time, as long as it does not continue to inhale, it can rely on its own resistance to survive. But the low one is not good, just a small amount of inhalation of poisonous smoke will make the hands and feet sore, and it is too late to hold your breath to fight.

The white pole soldiers who had been ambushed around in advance suddenly killed under the leadership of Qin Liangyu, and pushed some of the unlucky rebels back into the poisonous smoke range at the first time.

This rebel army had no means to disperse the poisonous smoke, and its individual strength was crushed by the white pole soldiers with Qin Liangyu's attribute bonus, and the situation fell into a desperate situation in an instant. The archers hidden behind the cover did not rush to attack, and there was no suspense in this battle, and under the chaos, the rebels would only be cut off continuously.

Zhang Sheng stood on the sentry tower, personally acting as a sentry, observing the surrounding mountains and forests, making sure that there were no follow-up rebels, and the traps that had been painstakingly arranged in the past two days were useless.

The ambush ended in less than an hour, and there were no casualties on the Jiaolong Village side, and only about 20 people were killed, but due to the shortage of troops, it was inevitable that the rebels escaped by hundreds of people.

"Do you say it yourself, or do you wait until after the sentence?"

The commander of the rebel army was tied into a zongzi by Qin Liangyu's own hands, and there was no turning back when he opened the bow, and Zhang Sheng needed to further determine the information of the rebels.

"I said, what the adults want to know, the little ones say."

"Good!"

In fact, even if the commander is iron-clad, so many prisoners, there will always be an opening, the difference is only in certain details and secrets, and the officer always knows more than the big soldier.

Moreover, the rebels have little loyalty to speak of, most of them are coerced people, the soldiers bully the weak and fear the hard, and the people are mostly slaves.

Sure enough, the commander explained in detail, and before Zhang Sheng could ask many questions, he confided in them endlessly.

The camp he found before was just one of Lu Qing's stations, and it would only be transferred here from March to May every year, and it was not difficult to understand, after all, the rebels were not lords, they lived in the cracks of the high-level power struggle of the expeditionary force, and they couldn't be too arrogant.

Lu Qing's strength can only be regarded as the bottom group among the rebels, with about 8,000 troops, about 12,000 slaves, and a total population of less than 25,000. The imbalance in the ratio of military and civilians, as well as the way of doing business in various places for a year, made it impossible to self-sufficiency in basic materials, mainly reflected in clothing and food, which could only be purchased from the expeditionary force through secret channels, and the price was exaggerated to ten times that of the lord of the expeditionary force!

Each thousand-person team is a mix of sixth-order and fourth-order troops, and Lu Qing, who was born in the expeditionary force, naturally has the template for a higher-level army, but it is in vain if he can't afford to raise everything.

As I said before, the quality of the food of the soldiers every day cannot be lower than their own combat power rating, the difficulty lies in maintaining it for a long time, unless a rebel like Lu Qing can have a sect-level master chef under his command, or the relationship within the expeditionary force is strong enough, he will not be able to raise high-level soldiers at all. The same is true of the current Jiaolong Village, the sixth order is the limit.

Every soldier who has been in the army for a year can own a slave, which is the greatest benefit of the rebels, but the extreme oppression makes the people's hearts almost zero.

And the reason why Lu Qing would go here for three or four months every year was because there was a small spirit stone mine below the camp, and if it weren't for the fact that every transaction required a certain amount of rare resources above the mountain snow line, he would definitely stay here for a long time.