As the Zhangzhou Dynasty, which was established from the ruins of two hundred years of war and had not yet been completely unified, naturally did not have the ability to build Ziwei Palace as big as it was during the Sui and Tang Dynasties.
During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Ziwei Palace was divided into four cities: Luo City, Xuanwu City, Yaoyi City, and Yuanbi City. Its area was more than double that of Daming Palace. It was said that it was a palace, and it was larger than ordinary cities.
Zhang Zhou's Ziwei Palace was actually the original Ziwei Palace imperial city, that is, Luocheng. It occupied less than one-third of the Ziwei Palace in the Sui and Tang Dynasties.
As for the other three cities, only the space is still preserved, and one-third of the original buildings are still barely usable. Zhang Gao is planning to renovate them when the world is under great rule.
Therefore, when Li Renshu carried Shi Chongmin and rushed into Ziwei Palace with the help of Neiying, he quickly arrived near Qianyang Hall, the first of the three main halls of Ziwei Palace.
According to the intelligence, Cao Guifei Cao Yannai and the eighth son of the emperor Zhang Xianzai lived in the palace on the left side of Qianyang Palace.
After all, Li Renshu has experienced hundreds of battles. Although it may not be a big battle, he, a tough gangster who walks on the edge of life and death, still has a very keen sense of danger.
Stepping into the square in front of the Qianyang Palace, Li Renshu immediately felt something was wrong. It was too empty here. If there were soldiers arrayed from all sides with bows and crossbows, there wouldn't be enough for him to shoot among the hundreds of people.
Besides, there was such a big commotion in Luoyang City, and a large number of palace guards and chamberlains went out to put out the fire. How could it be so quiet near the most important Qianyang Hall in the palace?
Therefore, when everyone was about to reach the middle of the Qianyang Palace Square, Li Renshu refused to leave. He rushed to Shi Chongmin's side, holding a horizontal knife and looking at the Uighur fiercely.
"It's a dog's fault. How dare you, a thief, betray a certain family?"
Shi Chongmin looked at Li Renshu inexplicably. Has this Huaibei thief lost his mind and gone crazy? There was no one around, so he was talking about betrayal.
Ah, no! Shi Chongmin was suddenly startled.
Yes, why is there no one there? It's too quiet. There's definitely something wrong with that. He suddenly looked at a group of soldiers in the distance on the left.
"Eishiro, are you fucking betraying a certain family?"
‘Boom!’
What responded to Shi Chongmin was not a human voice, but an arrow shot by Yinshiro.
Shi Chongmin screamed. This was an arrow fired from a short-handed crossbow. Although it could not penetrate his cotton armor, the huge impact still caused his eyes to go black.
"Damn it, the Hexi Fan thieves really can't be trusted!" Li Renshu was furious, drew out the hard bow on his back, and fired at the twenty or thirty soldiers in the distance who were supposed to be in charge.
Unexpectedly, the opponent was already prepared, with a large iron shield already raised, and there was a flurry of jingling sounds, which sounded lively, but there were few screams.
Yinshiro hid behind the big shield and laughed wildly. He lit a tube of fireworks in his hand.
"Shi Chongmin, you thief Hu really think you can buy it off with a thousand dollars?
What a dog, I am the grand-nephew of the Holy Emperor’s grandmother, the Empress Dowager Huide Zhaoxian, and a good son of the Wuwei Yin family, and I will make trouble with you Hu’er, hahaha!”
Boom, boom, this was the sound of the palace door falling. Shi Chongmin was so frightened that he almost fainted.
Yinshiro was the one they fought for, the highest-ranking internal agent in the Ziwei Palace, but he turned against them long ago... No! It should be said that he had never been in the same boat with them.
"Yu Lin! Yu Lin!" A familiar shout rang out, and dense footsteps came from all around. Torches were lit up. There were at least seven to eight hundred people in heavy armor, holding crossbows and approaching Shi Chongmin and Li Renshu.
Li Renshu gritted his teeth and saw that there were not many people on the other side. He was not very panic at the moment. He looked at his panicked companions behind him and shouted.
"Since these Hexi Tibetan thieves want to ambush us, their number cannot be too large. In my opinion, there are only a few hundred people. Don't panic, men. The outcome is uncertain. Follow me and form a formation to kill them.
"
Li Renshu's words are indeed very reasonable, because Ziwei Palace is so big that it cannot hide many soldiers, not to mention supplies, and it is destined to be impossible to keep secrets due to the large number of people and complicated eyes.
And he has three hundred fierce Huaibei bandits under his command. These are his brothers who have been through life and death, and they are equipped with armor and hard bows.
The remaining two hundred people were also thieves from all over the world and frustrated soldiers who were originally talented killers. There were also dozens of people who were proud soldiers from Hexi recruited by Shi Chongmin and others. They were not bad at all in a fight.
"I still have some courage, but it's a pity that I have gone astray."
Amidst the rumbling of war drums and footsteps, a general appeared who was wearing bright light armor and was extremely conspicuous under the light of torches.
"My sons, raise a certain family's banner and flag, and tell the thieves on the opposite side whose hands they will die."
A large flag with a Liu character on a silver-white background and gold rim was erected, and opposite it was a large banner with high teeth and silver-white gold tassels.
"Liu Zaisheng, why are you here?" Shi Chongmin's eyes almost bulged out. As he exclaimed, the Hexi soldiers who followed him in rebellion were also shocked.
It turned out that the person facing them was actually Tian Guogong Liu Zaisheng, a general from the Donggui faction who ranked second only to Yan Jin, Bai Congxin, Murong Nobunaga and a few other generals from Zhang Zhou.
It was also unlucky for these people. Liu Zaisheng had been recuperating at home due to stomach ailments in recent years and had disappeared from the "spotlight" for almost a year. Therefore, when Shi Chongmin and others calculated the generals from various places, Liu Zaisheng was not included at all.
But Queen Cao Yanxi didn't forget it! She had already transferred Liu Zaisheng to the sacred capital of Luoyang. The main force of the army that appeared here this time was also Liu Zaisheng's two hundred personal followers.
In the shadow of the famous tree, the appearance of a high-prestige general like Liu Zaisheng who is guarding one side is a shot in the arm for one's own side, and is like the king of hell urging the enemy to die.
"The biggest mistake of a saint is that you shouldn't have been given the surname Shi. You, the falcon, have tarnished the good surname of Cangjie!"
Liu Zaisheng looked at Shi Chongmin angrily, because Shi Chongmin, like him, came from Khotan and was a member of the Donggui Sect. The rebellion of this piece of shit made Liu Zaisheng feel his face getting hot.
"Bang the drum! Leave no one behind!"
Liu Zaisheng shouted loudly, the war drums beat, and hundreds of soldiers surrounded him from three sides. Under the flickering torches, the sound of bowstrings vibrating was like a swarm of bees leaving their nest.
Li Renshu threw away the stiff bow in his hand without hesitation, drew out his spear, and called on his comrades to rush towards the weakest point on the right.
There is no way, if you can bring hundreds of sets of armor into Luoyang, the divine capital, you have already used up the strength of nine oxen and two tigers. There is no way you can bring in hundreds of crossbows.
Now that the number of people on the opposite side is only slightly greater than theirs, but they dare to encircle them on three sides, then the number of people on each side will naturally be smaller than theirs. If they can muster up the courage to rush to one side, it is still possible to disperse these enemies.
However, it turned out that Li Renshu thought too much. He was a Huaibei thief, and he was very particular about hiding his tracks. Fighting on the real battlefield was not as easy as when he was in Huaibei.
Of the seven or eight hundred soldiers who appeared in Ziwei Palace today, there are only less than a hundred real Ziwei Palace guards.
The rest were a hundred people who Qiongre Duojin desperately squeezed out from the inner chamber of the three thousand Hanshan capital guarding the queen. The main force was Liu Zaisheng's two hundred confidants who fought from east to west.
Even these four hundred people are far more powerful than the hundreds of Huaibei thieves and the handful of mountain bandits and water bandits who only know how to fight bravely in front of ordinary people.
The crossbows and crossbows fired together, and blood mist flew up all over the sky. At a distance of seventy or eighty steps, the high-kinetic energy crossbow arrows fired by the crossbows could not be stopped by any armor. With only one shot, the Huaibei bandit who was rushing at the front fell.
Dozens of people.
They may have been very brave when fighting in the countryside, but in the face of such cold-blooded killing, they simply couldn't stand it and rushed twenty or thirty steps. Many of them were frightened.
Unfortunately, Shandu and Liu Zaisheng's troops were like emotionless machines. After firing a crossbow arrow, they fired two more arrows in an instant, and then walked in side by side, wearing iron armor and holding spears like a wall.
At this time, even Li Renshu didn't have the courage to continue charging. Instead, he was seduced by Cao Renzun and others' so-called glorious future. He knew that he had no way out. The rebel soldiers from Hexi were still brave, so they were the only ones who dared to fight.
The rest of the people scrambled to escape through the openings deliberately left for them.
But this is obviously a trap. If Liu Zaisheng cannot even do this well, he is not qualified to be called the first general of the Donggui Sect.
As soon as Li Renshu and others were sent out from this gap, they heard the sound of horse hooves. It turned out that outside the gap, a group of fifty armored cavalry had been waiting for them for a long time.
Although Li Ruotai has gotten older, his bravery is still the same as before. With only one fierce charge, the fifty-suit suit completely defeated the Huaibei thieves who were headless flies.
Li Renshu opened his mouth in horror and raised his spear in despair. Seeing that there was still someone who dared to resist, the armored knights around him rushed over from three directions in unison.
A member of the armored cavalry, whose tassels were painted silver, took out a meteor hammer from his waist more than twenty steps away, shook it twice, and threw it out instantly.
Li Renshu couldn't see clearly in the flickering light. By the time he heard the news, it was already too late. The sharp-edged bolas suddenly hit his face, instantly beating his mouth, nose, and eyes into pieces.
Rotten meat.
Before he screamed, or even before his body hit the ground, the armored cavalry from three directions had already arrived, and three horse spears attacked from three directions. Li Renshu suddenly turned into an irregular piece of meat.
As for Shi Chongmin, he sat blankly in a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. The soldiers coming and going turned a blind eye to him. Only two warriors like bears and tigers stared at him to prevent him from running away suddenly.
Liu Zaisheng walked forward slowly and leisurely. This level of fighting was too childish for him. He came forward for the sake of dignity, the dignity of the Donggui Sect.
"A lowly slave! I have waited two hundred years to not forget my homeland and follow the saint back east to re-establish a great dynasty. How glorious it is to have such a lowly slave like you."
Liu Zaisheng has not killed anyone with his own hands for a long time, but with Shi Chongmin's identity as the Eastern Return Sect and Earl of the Great Zhou Dynasty, it is destined that he can only end it.
Just as Shi Chongmin was about to raise his head and say something, a black iron hammer struck his head with a 'dong' sound.
Liu Zaisheng had a sullen face, hammering and hammering without stopping until Shi Chongmin was beaten into a puddle of flesh, then he stopped breathing heavily.
"The Holy Queen decrees that Shi Chongmin, a thief, has committed such a heinous crime that his body should be exposed in the wilderness without being collected. All the men in the family will be killed immediately, and his wife and daughter will be sent to the Jiaofang Bureau!"
Liu Zaisheng shouted loudly, and then he grabbed the captain of the imperial guards who was about to execute him.
"Please save some face and don't let his wife and daughter enter the Jiaofang Department."
Captain Jinyi was silent for a moment, and then nodded. Not letting his wife and daughter into the Jiaofang Division was of course not letting them go, but giving them a good time.
At the same time, the turmoil in Jingzhao Chang'an Mansion has basically subsided.
Different from Luoyang, the capital of the gods, Master Cixian in Jingzhao Chang'an Prefecture temporarily rebelled, and Luo Yu'er's selflessness regardless of the lives of her family was suppressed by more than 30 inspection departments all over Guanzhong.
That day, Murong Yanchao came to Baqiao for inspection. As soon as he completed the deployment of troops, Chen Wu and others sent by Luo Yu'er had already arrived.
Subsequently, all patrol officers from the inspection department around Chang'an were immediately mobilized. In Chang'an City, city foxes, high-gate guards, thugs from trading houses, and even ordinary people, under the leadership of village elders and village chiefs, carried out inspections of streets and neighborhoods one by one with sticks and knives.
The hundreds of desperadoes were not worth the mobilization of all Chang'an people. They were quickly rounded up, dragged to the streets like dead dogs and beaten into a pulp.
And a group of old Meng Shu generals went to incite Meng Shu to surrender, but it didn't have much effect.
These Shu troops have long been frightened. More importantly, the work of repairing Tongguan and dredging the canals is indeed difficult, but it will not cause large-scale casualties.
They have served for almost a year and will return home in two or three months. How many of them are willing to rebel?
As soon as the three guardsmen led by Luo Yu'er arrived, they didn't spend much energy and took out two to three hundred rebels who wanted to rebel. They all chopped them off at the edge of the canal.
Subsequently, after receiving Cao Yuanzhong's order, the Lantian Pass guard sealed off the road to the outside world. Thousands of troops went through the villages one by one and sneaked into the pass to steal the thieves. No one escaped.