stubborn thief

Chapter 44 Graves
One of the fellow riders was a villager named Liu En. After confirming that Laomiaozhuang was not in danger, he rode back to Xingpingli to report.

Liu Chengzong, Cai Zhongpan, Cao Yao, and Lu Bin found a house in the ruins of the old village where ghosts and ghosts wandered. They moved the corpses of the two masters lying in the house to the courtyard. One night.

The experience of the three men who came from the Black Dragon Mountain can restrain the fear of death.

Lu Bin was the survivor of this village. He didn't have time to let them run back to Heilongshan to sleep at night, let alone run back the next day, so he made this decision.

Not to mention that the weather is still cold now, even if the spring breeze is warm, sleeping outside is not as comfortable as sleeping in a room.

For a few days later, Liu Chengzong stayed in the old temple village, carrying corpses and digging graves among the ruins.

Fortunately, the weather was still cold, so the work would not be too hard. However, due to the busy farming season, Heilongshan could only allocate twelve young men to help, and there were too many corpses, making their manpower seriously insufficient.

Fortunately, from the second day onwards, the smoke rising from the old temple village attracted the attention of the surrounding villages. The first people to come were the people who stayed at Dingjia Station. I didn't know what mentality they had to help, but they were driven by Lu Bin anyway. After leaving, the two sides quarreled and scolded, swearing that they would kill people in the future, and their mood was extremely violent, and was finally driven away by Cao Yaofang.

Later, several groups of people came to Songjiagou and Zhifang, which were farther away. At first, it was only the strong man who carried a bow and a knife to look from a distance. It was confirmed that the people in the ruins only dared to go forward to ask after carrying the corpse and digging the pit. .

In both villages, there are several survivors who escaped from the old temple village. They met Brother Lu Bin and cried for the rest of their lives after the disaster.

With their help, the victims of Laomiaozhuang were buried two days earlier.

470 Two barren graves were buried in the desolate farmland. There were no tombstones, which made the soil bag look terrible in the dark wind. There were only a dozen villagers in Laomiaozhuang lying on the soil bag and crying faintly.

The people who came to help only care about leaving the last dignity of the dead villagers buried in the ground, carrying them into the ground and burying them in the soil, even if they did the right thing.

The cry of the survivors is heartwarming, and who is not afraid of such a disaster befalling them.

"What's there to cry about, can they tell who is buried in the tomb bag? Why don't you plant some seeds while you're here?"

Cao Yao was riding a horse in the distance. For the past few days, he was too lazy to carry the corpse. He dug a few graves the day before. The next day he saw the villagers who came to help him. Be vigilant around in case the thief kills the carbine.

Liu Chengzong knew that the old thief Cao was just too unlucky to help others.

At this moment, Liu Chengzong said sarcastic words in his ears again: "You don't see any mats, and there are very few wrapping cloths. How fat."

Saying this nonsense is a bit unreasonable. Liu Chengzong just glanced at him and said, "Let's live until next year. There are a lot of thieves, mules and horses, and there are pack guns. If we come back, we won't be able to stop it."

Liu Chengzong speculated that the thief had guns. When he was carrying the corpse in the most sturdy compound in the village, he found that half of the wall had fist-sized holes and dense small bullet holes. The only weapons that fit this trace were guns.

Mixing big iron bullets and small iron bullets is the usual method of firing guns in the Ming army.

The cannon mark made the rogue thief extremely dangerous in his heart.

Swords, bows and crossbows, flesh-and-blood bodies and armor can barely block, but muskets can't escape even with heavy armor in the face, let alone artillery?

However, his discovery seemed to be expected by Cao Yao: "I know, two Frans machines run on a mule, and when these thieves came here, I wanted to find an opportunity to seize the cannon."

"There's really no chance." He pouted and shook his head. "In addition to the two big guns, the thief also has two flying guns."

Liu Chengzong originally thought that it would be good for the thieves to have one cannon, but how could he know that there were actually two French machines, and there was this new thing that he had never heard of, so he couldn't help asking: "Why do they have cannons, and four? "

"Flying cannon is not a cannon, it is similar to the three-eyed cannon, it is inserted on the pole, but the front is a foot-long iron gourd. The flowering bomb is shot, the range is not far but it is very powerful, and it can blow up a group of people, but sometimes it is dumb."

Something like... a mortar?

Cao Yao's introduction is very abstract.

Fortunately, Liu Chengzong has another memory, which is easy to understand. It is equivalent to a small mortar that shoots the blooming bullet with an arc ballistic trajectory. There are many advantages and only two disadvantages.

Short range, easy to hit duds.

But in Liu Chengzong's eyes, this is not a shortcoming at all. This thing can be used for [-] steps. As for the problem of duds, not to mention the problem of duds. As long as you shoot out ten rounds, one can explode, which is a psychological shock to the enemy. It is far more powerful than ten solid bullets.

If the formation is destroyed, who can still fight?

"As for the thieves having cannons, it's not surprising at all. It's not the Jiajing year. Even the Franc machine is an old object from 100 years ago. Now there are no more than a dozen cannons in any castle on the nine sides. These thieves have deserters everywhere. , the people in Yansui Town, Gansu Town, and especially Guyuan Town, rebelled out of seriousness."

Cao Yao said more and more vigorously, and also explained to Liu Chengzong: "The red barbarian cannons are popular in the imperial court now, I guess it is similar to Huang Laoye's cannons. The cannon is longer than the one you lay down, two to three thousand pounds, and you have to dig two pits to fire the cannon, run over and jump into the pit when it is burning, or you will be injured."

After he finished speaking, he still had nothing to say: "I've seen those cannons, so I'm not afraid of these little miscellaneous cannons."

"That's also scary."

Liu Chengzong is very serious, who can not be afraid of guns, Cao Lao Thief is bragging: "I'm afraid even if you set up a door for me."

Hearing this sentence, Cao Yao was thoughtful, and after a while, he looked at the undulating graves in the wasteland in the distance and said, "Lion, you said that I will take the lead to go to the surrounding villages, and let's get a Panlongchuan to protect ourselves. how?"

"Panlongchuan protects itself, how can I protect myself?"

"I looked at the fields along the river. If there is irrigation, there will be crops. From Zhifang in the north to Heilong Mountain in the south, the villages forty miles in the north and south are stationed with four or five people who ride us. They give out ten stones of grain every month. Brothers have someone to feed them, and even if thieves come, they can help each other and protect the village together.”

Listening to what he said, Liu Chengzong nodded and said, "Of course it would be best if it can happen, I'm just afraid that others won't..."

The experience of Laomiaozhuang has proved that independent villages are not enough to resist the invasion of thieves, and Zhang Qianhu has proved that the official army is unreliable. In fact, even if Zhang Qianhu leads soldiers and thieves to fight recklessly, he has nothing to do with the undead of Laomiaozhuang. Useful.

"You don't care about this, let me tell you, but don't be in a hurry."

Cao Yao rubbed his beard under his jaw, raised his finger to the surrounding land, and said, "These people want to eat, let's buy the land of the old temple village together."
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Note:
In the article, Huang Laopao refers to the Luzon big bronze cannon. Huang Kezuan, Minister of the Ministry of War and Prince Taifu, donated money to recruit 47 good Luzon cannon builders from Tong'an County, Fujian Province in the [-]th year of Wanli to Beijing to cast the cannon.

In the Ming Dynasty, there were four channels for Xu Guangqi’s first purchase and introduction of red barbarian artillery, Fujian’s reverse engineering of Haidilao’s Dutch artillery, Huang Kezhen’s imitation by craftsmen who were familiar with Spanish bronze cannons, and Xu Guangqi and others learning and disseminating the theoretical knowledge of Western and French artillery.

There is a step-by-step process, and the craftsmanship used to manufacture the artillery is always indigenous.

(End of this chapter)