stubborn thief

Chapter 53

"As far as the virtues of the Yan'an Guards are, whoever slays whom, I slapped those letter balls into stuffed skins!"

In front of the cave dwelling at the foot of Xingpingli, Cao Yao uttered nonsense.

Liu Chengzu leaned against the tree trunk and said angrily, "Let's eat your seeds. The grain is raised for the [-] mu of land in Changping. If the official army was beaten, not only the land was lost, but also Xingping."

This is not a matter of whether they can beat the official army. Hundreds of men, women and children have nowhere to flee, and even if there is a place to go, others may not be willing to follow.

It is clear that they are blood relatives. In order to make a clan split, they have left their hometown and their ancestral graves are gone. Who can afford this crime.

"I gave us [-] catties of scumbags, and the family is empty. He will find a way to borrow some from Xingping, but Liujiamao has to use food for the past few months to repair the fortress, and there is not much left in the village. , I guess you can borrow one or two thousand catties?"

Cao Yao slammed his head down and bit Sa Zi, and said vaguely: "My rice grain is ten stones, which is [-] catties."

"The borrowed grain has to be paid back years ago."

Liu Chengzu counted with his arms crossed, and asked, "Before June, you will have to get another [-] catties of rice to eat enough. Lion, can we collect flax beans in the old temple farm?"

Liu Chengzong shook his head.

Cao Yao picked up the dregs of sago from the cloth on the stone and put it into his mouth. He said angrily, "The ground has been harmed by thieves, and it is cleaner than the dry trench in Yuhe Fort."

The three stared at each other in silence.

Until the silence was interrupted by the beating of the drums.

There is a big drum in Xingping, just above Liujiamao.

Cao Yaoshang did not know why, but the Liu brothers had turned pale in shock and ran out.

Guo Zashi, who was limping along, was running into him.

The pig slaughterer had a sharp knife stuck in his waist, and held the long iron stab in his hand. He handed over the leather belt of the bow and quiver hanging on the knife, and said, "Master, someone has entered the mountains!"

In times of turmoil, Liu Chengzu's training played some role, making the village very orderly.

The woman hurriedly ran to the house with the doll, the strong man carried his weapons and walked out, and Mr. Liu and Yang Dingrui also walked towards the entrance of the village surrounded by their clansmen.

Liu Chengzong jumped up and climbed up the wall step by step, looking towards the valley, only then did he know what Guo Zashi meant by 'entering people in the mountains'.

The crowd of Wuyangyang came from nowhere, like a plague of locusts.

Spreading two miles from the mountain pass, hundreds of thousands rushed straight into the valley and spread out in the fields.

The old and weak women and children raised the bamboo basket and sickle as if they were robbing them. With a knife, they tied up the freshly drawn millet, and some people were so hungry that they grabbed the green shoots and filled them in their mouths.

The men did not do this, and each armed with sticks and sharp weapons approached the entrance of the village in groups of three or five, forcing the dozen or so young men who rushed out after hearing the news to come back.

There were five or six people standing on the slope of the field ridge and soil a hundred or ten paces away from the village entrance.

Some wear chain mail with half sleeves, some wear cotton-padded jackets and red lacquer helmets, and some wear yamen robes and Confucian robes.

These people surrounded the man wearing the blue cloth mask and the top [-] flag helmet, and said something to the two naked men.

Afterwards, the two men were clothed and walked towards the entrance of the village.

Those were two characters who didn't look very human.

They had no weapons, were skinny and barefoot, and were clothed in tattered clothes that they had picked up from nowhere, still unable to cover their bulging abdomens.

At this distance, Liu Chengzong could not see their faces and expressions, but could only see their bloated stomachs, which looked like starving ghosts in ancient paintings.

They held such belly and walked slowly forward.

The township soldiers in Xingpingli have already separated the road leading to the village with wooden fences, and people have taken bows and crossbows and everything that can be used as weapons, and are ready to fight.

The training time of the township soldiers is still short, and seeing the boundless number of thieves scattered in the fields, there is indeed fear in my heart.

The thieves and pawns did not expect that so many people with weapons would pour out of this village, and they were also a little flustered.

The two sides formed a confrontation at the entrance of the village at a distance of thirty or forty steps.

Walking and walking, one of them looked up at the sky, his body swayed, and he fell heavily on the ground with his head up, lifeless.

Only the bulging belly was left transparent by sunlight, revealing the green intestines inside.

The other man with a big belly didn't even look at it, he just walked forward with his head down, making the field road with the rising sun in the sky look like hell.

For a while, Guo Zashi had brought the armor from the inner room, and waited for Liu Chengzong to jump off the armor and lead the horse forward.

When he squeezed into the crowd, the pot-bellied man walked very slowly, only ten paces away from the wooden fence, and with all his strength, the shouting voice was still weak.

"The king of my family is the general manager of the planting team under the second brother of the king of white water. He quickly fetches food and presents cattle, donkeys, and horses to ensure safety, otherwise the chickens and dogs will not be left!"

When the ordinary people in Xingping heard this, they looked at each other and did not dare to make a sound. Those old people in the clan had no choice but to look at Liu Xiangyu.

Master Liu can take care of things, he took a step, raised his arms and said: "Go back and tell the thief, Master is the strong leader of the northern villagers of Yan'an Prefecture, I have pity on you being hungry, and leave the mountain within a moment, otherwise it's no wonder that swords and spears don't have long eyes. !"

The clay figurine still has a three-point fire. Whose fields are ruined and people are not angry?

But this half-human, half-ghost hungry thief came to shout, which also made people feel that they were indeed exhausted, and they showed some compassion for no reason.

Master Liu said hard words, but he didn't feel like he wanted to fight them after all.

Liu Chengzong stepped forward and said beside his father: "Da, this thief won't live to go back and spread the word, use the horse team to drive them away."

Yang Dingrui couldn't bear to look any more, and said, "These people are also the children of the imperial court. Drive them away, otherwise the crops will be damaged, and the autumn will not pass."

Hearing Liu Chengzong's words, Master Liu hesitated a bit.

Until he heard Yang Dingrui say that the crops were damaged, his eyes finally became firm and cold.

He can't let his own people become like this!
Liu Xiangyu looked around at the sons and nephews of the left and right clansmen, his eyes finally fixed on Liu Chengzu's face: "Chengzu, there are thousands of thieves, can you win?"

This sentence is tantamount to agreeing to go to war.

Liu Chengzong stepped forward with his helmet in his arms and said, "Da, the thief's head is there, I can kill him."

Liu Chengzu nodded in agreement with the plan, and said, "The village soldiers and the mechanic soldiers of the former team used bows and crossbows to shoot for a while, and then the lions led the frontier troops to attack the thief's head directly, and the thieves will disperse."

After all, he turned back and said hello.

On weekdays, Tian Shoujing, the chief of the township army who assisted in the training of the township soldiers, led the township soldiers to form a formation at the entrance of the village.

Liu Chengzong rigged the bow and arrow, and specially selected three feather arrows with armor-piercing cones, and moved them to the best position for the quiver.

Gao showed Liu Chengzu's instructions to "take good care of the lions", and led four cavalrymen to follow him with horses, check the weapons and armor, and make final preparations.

This time, it was Cao Yao's turn to be an idler, but he couldn't be idle either. Seeing that the fear of the first battle of the village soldiers was spreading, he mixed into the team and raised his three-eyed guns to mobilize before the war.

"Don't be let down and lose your life. These hairballs are desperate. If you don't want to die, you must kill us all. They don't dress like humans, don't eat like humans, and don't do human affairs. They're not humans! What are they?"

In the sound of the old Sarhu thief shouting out the word "Mao Tuan", the fire cannon of the Beixiang Army Corps sounded, and the first-time township soldiers threw their arrows at the hungry thieves outside the village through the smoke of gunpowder.

In the shouting, Liu Chengzong got on the horse tightly, and the five cavalry behind him followed suit.

The smoke of gunpowder gradually dissipated, and the village soldiers were shot three times to make way for them at the entrance of the village.

The mount paced out, Liu Chengzong took a deep breath, drew out the goose ling knife, raised his arms and pointed his fingers, leaned forward on the horse's back and stood up slightly.

Feeling the master's intention, Hongqi shook his head from side to side and spread out his hoofs.

　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)