As soon as the morning dawned, Huang Dagen took people to Huojing City, first sent some valuable mountain goods to the officials of the salt supervision in the city, and after successfully changing the official document for buying salt, he went to the designated firm to buy 200 catties of official salt. The official of the Huojing Salt Prison was a cunning and shrewd man, and he knew that the salt buyers had to buy some private salt in addition to the official salt, and they were usually half official and half private, so he was accustomed to accepting bribes from salt buyers and private salt dealers, and he would not take care of the illegal salt trade outside the city. It's just that he doesn't know that Ouyang Xuan's purchase of private salt this time is huge, and if he is held responsible, this is enough for him to commit dereliction of duty and be implicated in killing his head and taking his home.

At this time, Zhu Zhuozi, who was outside the city, was leading people to rush to the salt boiling workshops to buy salt. Due to the extreme corruption of the officials, the salt supervisors in charge of supervision have long been fed by the smugglers. The salt officials in Huojing City did not come out to investigate, so they turned a blind eye and even colluded with private salt dealers. Before noon, in the makeshift camp of the trading team on the hillside outside the city, salt deliverers came in an endless stream of people, including smuggler salt dealers and bold salt boilers. The bustling trade did not stop until sunset, not because it was late, but because the money of the trading team had been exhausted, and the salt purchased at this time had reached more than 5,000 catties, plus 200 catties of official salt, totaling about 6,000 catties.

The amount of salt purchased this time was so large that not only made Dong Hu and other mountain people dance excitedly, but also made Ouyang Xuan full of joy, after all, this is a huge wealth. Being able to buy so much salt is inseparable from the careful calculation of Zhu Zhuozi and others, for example, the salt purchased this time is all crude salt and no refined salt, just because crude salt is a quarter cheaper. Of course, the more important reason is that after the war, the supply of salt in Qiongzhou far exceeded the sales volume, and the price fell instead. From a supply point of view, because of the severe economic damage, the Qiongzhou government has become more dependent on salt tax revenues, so it has increased the exploitation of the salt industry, so that the salt production of Qiongzhou has not decreased much under full protection. From the point of view of sales, due to the sharp decline in the population of western Sichuan, coupled with the blockage of trade routes caused by rampant banditry, the consumption and sales of salt were blocked, and the price of salt in Qiongzhou was high, ordinary people could not afford it at all, so that the sales volume dropped a lot. The price of official salt in Huojing dropped from 300 wen per catty before the Mongol invasion to about 100 wen, while the price of private salt was between one-third and one-half of the official salt price.

The day of the departure after packing the salt was the eighth day of coming out of the Liuliba. The mountain path from the fire well to Yokohara is sparsely populated, and the road surface is overgrown with weeds and has small potholes from time to time. In order to guard against enemy attacks, Huang Dagen, who had always been cautious, adopted a vigilant marching formation, and his advance speed was much slower than that of the usual march, and much slower than taking the official road. Although the merchant team consisted of only 100 people and more than 20 mules and horses, it pulled out a queue that was half a mile long on the narrow path. At the front of this queue, Dong Hu led twenty capable people, who were responsible for reconnaissance and clearing the road by the way; Wang Youfu took twenty people to the last of the queue, while Ouyang Xuan and Huang Dagen walked in the middle with the rest of the people and goods. Due to the large number of goods procured this time, in order to prevent the more than 20 mules and horses carrying the goods from being crushed, except for the vigilant people led by Wang Youfu and Dong Hu, the 60 people walking in the middle all carried dozens of catties of salt according to their physical strength, the most of them had 80 catties, and the few had 40 catties. Huang Dagen did not carry the goods because he had to command the battle. Ouyang Xuan carried thirty catties of salt, he originally planned to carry more, but Zhu Xuanzi, who distributed the goods, would agree. Ouyang Xuan tried the weight of the package assigned to him, and thought that he would have to walk more than a hundred miles, so he stopped talking.

The path is really not smooth. Soon after the trade team set off, Wang Youfu, who was in charge of the broken queen, found that an unidentified person was following from a distance behind, and Dong Hu, who was opening the way in front, also found someone hiding in the woods on the mountain beam to peep. After receiving the warning signal, Huang Dagen shouted in a low voice to make everyone pretend not to know, and while continuing to hurry, he secretly prepared for battle. After walking for another half a day, when they came to a small mountain basin surrounded by dense bamboo forests, the bandits made a move. This place is just located at the junction of Huojing and Dayi counties, through this small basin, and over a few hills, the trail will enter the plain area in front of Longmen Mountain, the road will become wider and smoother, and the view will be wider. It seems that the bandits chose this place to rob, but they made a careful plan.

A group of bandits armed with broadswords and spears came out of the dense forest on the hillside, and rushed towards the merchant and trade convoy with a loud shout, and the rough estimate was that there were at least three hundred people, and the momentum was a little terrifying. It's just that Ouyang Xuan is not panicked, in addition to trusting Huang Dagen's command ability, he also sees that this gang of bandits is inferior to the Wanjiapingshan bandits, although the momentum is large, the formation is chaotic, most of the weapons are knives and guns, there are not a few bows, not even many wooden shields, and a considerable number of bandits still hold wooden sticks.......

Under the command of Huang Dagen, the front team led by Dong Hu and the rear team led by Wang Youfu quickly moved closer to the middle, and the people walking in the middle also unloaded the goods on their backs, and quickly arranged a defensive formation - the whole team gathered in a circle, with folding shields in front and spears in the back, followed by grenadiers and a small number of crossbowmen, tightly surrounding mules and horses, pack workers and goods in the middle.

There were dozens of bandits who ran extremely fast, but when they rushed to the front of the formation, they couldn't help but be stunned when they saw this hedgehog formation suddenly erected, and their footsteps couldn't help but slow down, but they were pushed forward by a large group of bandits rushing from behind, and in an instant, more than a dozen people were pierced by spears and let out a scream. This is something that has never happened in the previous robbery, the previous caravans all dispersed when they saw this formation, even if there was resistance and killed the rest of the people who led the group and knelt on the ground and begged for mercy, where did they dare to resist?

The bandits who were stabbed on the ground by spears let out a terrible wail, which made the bandits who arrived behind tremble, and they couldn't help but retreat more than ten meters again and again, surrounding the merchant team in the middle from a distance. Just when the bandits were all cowering, there was a sharp-beaked monkey-cheeked man in the bandit group who jumped up and down and agitated: "Brothers, rush in, there are a lot of gold, silver and silk in addition to salt, I .....saw it with my own eyes when I sold salt", Ouyang Xuan fixed his eyes and vaguely remembered that this noisy bandit was one of the illegal salt dealers yesterday.

The bandits were agitated again. Just as the group of bandits, led by several fierce bandits, tried to rush forward, Huang Dagen decisively ordered the grenadiers to throw grenades. The bandits looked at these iron bumps falling from the sky, and only avoided a few steps to avoid being hit, most of them stood in place in a daze, and even a few stupid bandits wanted to go forward to pick them up in order to see what was going on, but unexpectedly, these iron bumps were like thunder on the ground, making a loud noise.

The grenadiers threw only more than 30 grenades in four directions, but they caused a large number of bandits to fall to the ground. After the bandits who were not bombed woke up from the darkness, they ran in all directions crying and howling, and in the blink of an eye, they fled cleanly. Huang Dagen did not give the order to chase, but when the smoke cleared, let people search for available materials on the battlefield. To say that these bandits are also very poor, they have not found anything valuable at all, and there are few good knives and spears.

After briefly cleaning up the battlefield, Ouyang Xuan ordered to hurry up. The dozens of wounded bandits who were screaming all over the ground, the trading team had no time or obligation to take care of them, as for whether the escaped bandits would turn back to help them, this was not a matter for Ouyang Xuan to consider.