Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Gao Liugeng's worries soon became reality. After learning that Lan Chun's team was frustrated, Mian En gave a death order with a sneer.

He asked Cheng Ce to gather all the troops and musketeers of the Eight Banners in Jingkou, and launch waves of charges from the direction of the vegetable garden. Two hundred men each time, attacking in turn, required that the outer garden, including Tianfeng Pavilion, must be captured within two hours. At the same time, he transferred another hundred people to Lan Chun, giving him half an hour to break into the gate of Suiyuan and enter the inner house.

Half an hour later, with the sound of intensive drums, the Qing army braved the heavy snow and launched another attack. The members of the action team felt a sudden increase in pressure. When Gao Liugeng, who was walking down the mountain, discovered this situation, he gave an order through the walkie-talkie for everyone to use full weapon fire.

The first to fire were the three team members hiding behind the rockery at the top of Qunyu Mountain. As soon as they opened fire, five or six of the attacking Qing troops were instantly knocked down. Some were shot and died, while others rolled around after being injured. Go back.

Because their weapons were equipped with silencers, the sound was very low, completely different from the sound of musket shooting imagined by the Qing army. This group of guys were immediately stunned. For a moment, they didn't know where the bullets came from. of.

Finally, a sharp-eyed Qing army discovered the black muzzle behind the rockery and reminded loudly: "Get down quickly, the thief is behind the rockery!"

Wu Ni, who was leading the team, was furious when he saw this. He personally led 30 gunmen forward, and under the cover of the shield car, they fired at the rockery in turns.

These musketry soldiers from the Supervisory Central Army are well-trained. They clear the barrel of the gun very quickly and have good accuracy. Under the continuous shooting, the Taihu Stone, which Yuan Mei regarded as a treasure, was hit with rubble flying. .

Just when the Qing officers and soldiers thought that the opponent's firepower had been suppressed, they began to scream and jump forward, and two grenades suddenly flew out from behind the rockery and fell towards the most densely populated position of the Qing army.

"boom!"

"boom!"

These two grenades were the same as the traps Lan Chun and the others encountered before. They had no delayed fuses and exploded when they touched the ground. After the explosion, seven or eight Qing soldiers immediately fell into a pool of blood. Immediately afterwards, a dense rain of bullets was fired at the Qing army from behind the rockery again.

"Boom, boom, boom."

Two AKS74Us equipped with silencers were spitting out tongues of fire. One of them was specifically shooting at the Qing army tank sixty meters away. Soon, the table covered with quilts and sand was reduced to a sieve. , several bird gunners hiding behind were also shot one after another.

Facing the hail of bullets fired from dozens of meters away, the surviving Qing soldiers had no choice but to lie on the ground to avoid them, and were unable to shoot back with arrows. Although the junior officers in the team yelled at them to continue the attack, no one dared to get up.

Seeing that the battle situation had reached a stalemate again, Wu Ni was anxious and didn't know what to do. Suddenly, he heard a loud "bang" a few hundred meters away to the east. After a moment, a magnolia as thick as a calf appeared next to the rockery. The tree snapped.

When the Qing officers and soldiers lying on the ground saw this scene, they were a little confused and didn't know what happened. The three action team members who were hiding behind the rockery and firing were also a little confused. Could it be that the fort on the top of the mountain behind Yongqing Temple had fired?

But the top of the mountain is several miles away from here! It makes no sense for the Qing army to fire like this.

"The direction of the firing seems to be east. Not good! They..."

Before the middle-aged man, the oldest of the three, could finish speaking, he heard thunderous rumbles in the distance again, four times in succession. Four iron bullets weighing more than three kilograms passed through the snow curtain and whizzed through the air. I don't know if it was a blind cat that killed a mouse or something. One of them actually hit the rockery, and the upper half of the huge Taihu stone collapsed.

The three action team members were unable to dodge and were disgraced by the flying rubble. One unlucky guy even had a piece of cake on his arm. Now they all understood, and before the gray dust mist dissipated, they hurriedly retreated to the rear.

At this time, Wu Ni, who was hiding behind the "earth tank", also understood what was going on, and his eyes lit up with excitement. Ignoring the dissuasion of his men, he stood up from behind the shield car, brandished his sword and shouted: "Brothers, the prince has brought up the cannon! Now the Northern Pirates are finished! Anyone who wants to get promoted and make a fortune, kill me!"

After hearing this, the Qing soldiers woke up and got up from the ground one after another. Each of them had a ferocious look on their face, shouted "kill" in their mouths, and rushed towards the rockery.

Hundreds of meters away on the edge of the vegetable fields to the east, Jingkou Deputy Governor Cheng Ce kept chanting "God bless the Qing Dynasty" after learning about the situation. He thought to himself that the prince was so good at predicting the situation that he brought in five cannons, otherwise he would have to sacrifice his life.

It turned out that after Mian En decided to launch a second attack, he felt that the firepower of a hundred gunmen might be insufficient, and the fort located in the mountain behind Yongqing Temple could not play a supporting role due to the heavy snow and poor visibility. So he used the imperial envoy's seal and wrote a warrant, asking his men to quickly go to Mancheng with guns and transfer five more mountain-splitting cannons from the armory.

Although General Qinglin of Jiangning had the intention to protect Yuan Mei's family and even let his son tip off the news, at this point, he was helpless. Therefore, after receiving Mian En's order, he could only obey it.

Now he hopes that Yuan Mei's family can escape smoothly, but he also doesn't want the Zhenjiang Eight Banners, who are also Manchus, to suffer heavy losses, and he is terribly entangled.

As mentioned before, the Qing army's mountain-splitting cannon was not particularly heavy, and the gun body weighing several hundred kilograms could be loaded on a carriage and transported away. In addition, Jiangning City was under martial law today and there was no traffic jam on the streets. Therefore, only half an hour passed from the time Qinglin received the warrant to the time five cannons were dispatched to the scene.

Knowing that the battle ahead was unfavorable, Cheng Ce saw the artillery arriving and didn't care too much. He hurriedly ordered the gunners to fire. The artillery association leader who led the team looked at the vast expanse of white in the distance and wondered where should I shoot?

"Just shoot over there!"

Cheng Ce made an estimate, raised his finger and pointed in the direction. What he thought was that regardless of whether the hit was successful or not, if he could make a noise, he could at least establish a prestige and boost morale.

The assistant leader had no choice but to know that behind Cheng Ce was Prince Ding. He did not dare to offend him, so he had to let his subordinates prepare. Because the Qing army's artillery carts were too short, the gunners were afraid of hitting their own people in front, so they hurriedly found a slope to set up the five cannons and fired in the direction of Qunyu Mountain.

On the other side, Gao Liugeng, who had just crossed the Duhe Bridge, was startled from the sound of the first cannon. He thought it was the fort on the mountain that fired. But the subsequent four cannon shots and his judgment of the sound's direction made him understand that the Qing army fired the cannon from the east.

Don't ask, the betrothed prince must have brought in a few more cannons.

After thinking about this, Gao Liugeng immediately used the walkie-talkie to notify the three team members who were ambushing in Suiyuan's "Nantai", asking them to delay the Qing army's offensive, and then asked the three retreating action team members to attack the "Echo Gate" retreat. When they were setting up the battlefield, they placed explosives at the gate of the Echo Gate and the "Shuixi Pavilion" on the west side. As long as the passages on the east and west sides are blown up, we can carry it until night.

After a while, gunfire rang out from the Nantai side, and several explosions were heard in the distance. Gao Liugeng picked up the walkie-talkie, pressed the call button and said, "I'm No. 1, what's going on over there? It's over."

"Hundreds of enemies are coming. We don't have many bullets, so we can't stop them! The trap at the gate of the inner house has been triggered! Over." "You retreat to Xiao Qixia immediately and meet up with Guoxiang and the others! Over."

"Understood! Over."

Gao Liugeng ran toward the echo gate while talking on the phone. As soon as he passed Yuanyang Pavilion, he saw three people on the embankment dozens of meters away, shooting back and retreating towards him.

He rushed to the half-man-high sandbag fortification on the west side of the echo gate. He picked up his gun and fired at the Qing troops who were approaching from dozens of meters away. In the blink of an eye, he knocked down five or six people, including two. After being shot, the guy rolled into the cold Hanlian Pond.

With his joining, the Qing troops who rushed over were beaten and fled. The narrow embankment gave them nowhere to hide. They retreated one after another and disappeared into the snow curtain in the blink of an eye.

Soon, the three withdrawn team members also entered the fortification. Gao Liugeng saw one of the men in his thirties with gauze tied on his arm and blood oozing out, so he asked while changing the magazine: "Brother Jiu, are you injured?"

"It's nothing, just scratched a little, it's not a problem. Hey, what do you mean by this? It's impossible to see people a hundred steps away in this weather, but these bastards were blinded from a few hundred steps away! "

The person who was talking to Gao Liugeng was named Tao Laojiu, who was also a disciple of Changjia Quan. He started earlier than Gao Liugeng and was also a well-known figure in the Huanghuai River Basin.

"Brother Ninth, what I'm most worried about now are the two cannons on the back mountain. If the snow lightens or stops, there will be trouble in Tianfeng Pavilion."

"Are you planning to touch up and knock off the two cannons?"

"That's the idea."

Tao Laojiu looked up at the gray sky, then looked at the bamboo forest behind the mountain, and then said: "The snow can't stop before dark, and it will be hard to predict in the middle of the night. If you want to take action, the sooner the better. Otherwise, wait until dark It will be difficult to pass through this bamboo forest if the sky is too cold."

"That's what I think too. Then I'll ask Brother Ninth to help keep an eye on it. If the Qing army comes over again, they will blow up the floodgates."

"Don't worry!" Tao Laojiu responded solemnly, and then said: "Let Xiaoyao go with you?"

Gao Liugeng shook his head and said, "No, the road there is not easy, I can go alone."

"Are there enough grenades? Do you want two of them for you?"

"Enough! Maybe we won't need it." Gao Liugeng said, turned around and left. Not long after, he had arrived in front of the bamboo sea.

It is said that bamboo can be divided into three categories according to the type of reproduction. Among them, the cluster type bamboo sprouts from the base of the mother bamboo to reproduce new bamboo. After several years of reproduction, such bamboo will form dozens of bamboos gathered together in clumps. There is no place to put your feet down.

The bamboos Yuan Mei planted at the southern foot of Xiaocang Mountain were cluster bamboos. Over the decades, this sea of ​​bamboo became like a huge airtight bamboo wall, strictly separating the southern foot of Xiaocang Mountain from Suiyuan.

Gao Liugeng walked so hard! In order to avoid being noticed by the Qing troops on the mountain, he walked cautiously, fearing that there would be too much movement and a large amount of snow would fall above his head. After walking for more than two hundred meters, his face and hands were pricked with branches and bamboo leaves and were covered in blood.

While he was trudging through the sea of ​​bamboo, the Qing army, which had taken a short rest, launched a second round of attack along the Peach Blossom Embankment towards the Echo Gate. Compared with facing the enemies pressing up in a line on the rockery, Taohuadi is relatively easier to defend.

The embankment that could only accommodate three people abreast made it impossible for the Qing army to move out of their formation. The mountain-splitting cannon had not yet been transported, so they could only hide behind two shield vehicles and advance slowly. Not surprisingly, the attack failed quickly. Wu Ni, who was leading the team, saw it and had no choice but to send someone to notify Cheng Ce and ask him to transport two mountain-splitting cannons. Without this, I really can’t win.

The Qing army retreated for a meal, but there was still no movement. Tao Laojiu and the others soon felt that something was wrong. Except for the occasional gunshots from across the lake, it was so quiet on Peach Blossom Embankment!

Although they can blow up the gate when they can't stand it anymore, that's only a last resort. Now their mission is to fight the Qing army. Every minute they can delay is a point. As long as the people from the special operations battalion arrive tomorrow morning, it will be a victory.

So, the honest-looking Tao Laojiu rolled his eyes and asked several team members to gather the remaining grenades on their bodies, and then redistributed the remaining 300 rounds of bullets, leaving one person guarding the fuse of the explosive. Then he took the other two people and walked back along the original path, planning to make a sneak attack.

Snowflakes were falling from the sky, and mist was rising on the lakes on both sides of Peach Blossom Embankment. Because the road on the embankment is narrow, Tao Laojiu and the others did not form any "three-three formation", just a simple column all the way. If they encounter an enemy, the two men walking behind will quickly disperse to the left and right, thus forming a crossfire to cover Tao Laojiu's rapid advance.

The air after the fierce battle was filled with blood, dull and turbid. The gunpowder smoke is wrapped in moisture and clings to the fallen lotus leaves on the lake, the embankment, and people's bodies, refusing to disperse for a long time.

When they were still more than fifty meters away from the east exit of Taohua Causeway, they suddenly heard someone shouting: "Who is that person!"

"Fire arrows!"

Several Qing soldiers shouted treacherously, and a few whooshing sounds were heard immediately. The sharp plum needle arrows cut through the snow and fog and landed on the path above the heads of the three people.

"What the hell!" Tao Laojiu thought. He was very sure that the Qing army did not notice the three of them.

When they continued to crawl forward for another twenty meters and could already see the Qing army, Tao Laojiu felt that it was time to launch an attack. He nodded to the other two people, so the three of them took out a grenade from the bag on their back waist, pulled the ring with force, chanted three times silently in their hearts, and then threw it out.

Violent explosions sounded continuously, and just a moment after the fire and black smoke rose, three loaded assault rifles were placed side by side on the embankment, pouring hot bullets towards the Qing army on the opposite side.