Wanyan Xielie led the horse and walked slowly, looking back from time to time to see if the soldiers were following. Occasionally he would rush up to the high ground beside the road in three or two steps, waving his hand to urge the rear team to speed up.
In April in Huaidong, the weather has begun to get hot. The fields and mountains in Huainan are green and lush, with trees and bamboo forests. The warm wind blows the new green grass, making people feel relaxed and happy. Monkeys are jumping and shouting in the bamboo forest.
It can be heard clearly, and there is a gurgling stream behind it, attracting waterbirds to circle and shuttle.
However, things never look good on the battlefield. The monkeys quickly fled, and the waterfowl fluttered their wings. Not far behind Wanyan Xielie, a village in the bamboo forest in the mountain col had been doused with oil and set on fire.
Burn it.
The Song people who were defending the stockade and unwilling to surrender had just continued to climb the fence and tried to break out, but they were all shot to death by the dense bows and arrows of the Jin army. Their corpses were piled on the fence, and when the gradually spreading flames burned the corpses,
A strange smell and black smoke filled the air at the same time.
The few strong men who surrendered in front of the battle shed tears when they saw this scene. The prisoners taken from several other villages watched indifferently. Only the aroma of roasted human flesh and the smell of burnt lake were too strong, so they slowed down slightly.
Then the soldiers of Jin who were caught up whipped them wildly and ordered them to speed up their pace.
A strong man suddenly jumped up like crazy and wanted to run towards the fire.
But there was a rope around each of their necks, and dozens or twenty of them were connected to each other, so they could not move at will. So he took two steps and ran, and the rope strangled his neck, and he screamed,
Fell to the ground.
The rope was tightly tied, and the more he struggled, the tighter it became. Seeing that his face began to turn blue, the other strong men all stopped and leaned down or squatted down. The closest person tried to get closer and untie him slightly.
A little rope. But a Jin Army cavalry immediately rode over and used the momentum of the horse to swing his sword horizontally.
This knight's physical strength is extremely strong, and his sword skills are even more outstanding. The sharp blade cuts off the head against the rope loop. As the head flies up, the madman's body falls to the ground, and the rope loop around his neck swings loosely to the ground.
noodle.
Amidst the exclamations of all the prisoners, the knight wiped the long sword against his sleeve, wiped away the blood stains, and put the sword into its sheath.
"No delay, keep walking." The knight said calmly.
This calm attitude is more frightening than the violence. All the prisoners have no doubt that if necessary, this Jin Army general will kill everyone, just like their decisive burning and killing attitude all the way south.
It seems that this golden army doesn't care about anything, doesn't care about anything, and doesn't even regard people as human beings. All of them are complete killers!
The prisoners could barely suppress the hatred in their hearts, but they were unarmed and could do nothing but lower their heads to prevent the knight from seeing the anger in their eyes.
Monk Wanyan Chen moved his horse away from the group of prisoners and continued walking to the rear of the team. He casually issued short and powerful orders to urge the army to move forward.
This army has a total of 16,000 people. It is the easternmost of the four armies of the Western Jin Dynasty that suddenly attacked the Song Dynasty. Seven days ago, the captain of Anping and Marshal Xingshou Si's Mansion Wanyan Xielie sent people to secretly survey the Huaihe River.
, and at the same time drove the water thieves active on the Huai River to gather in Xiashi, claiming that they would cross the Huai River to plunder Shouchun.
The Song army in Huainan reacted quickly and immediately gathered in Shouchun to prepare for the attack. Just in case, they also gathered many local militiamen and gunmen from the surrounding areas as a precaution.
In fact, Shouchun City was the first-class fortress in Huaixi of the Song Dynasty. It was 13 miles around the city, two feet and five feet high, with a trench more than twenty feet wide outside. It had Feishui River in the north and West Lake in the west, making it easy to defend but difficult to attack.
Why did tens of thousands of people gather just for a few Huaishang water thieves?
At the same time that the Song army gathered, Wanyan Xilie led his troops across the river from Badietan, captured Yingkou, and went to Anfeng, Huoqiu and other places. Most of the Song army was shocked and collapsed, while the defenders of Shanshui Village in various places
The army was eager to return to rescue their fathers, but was intercepted and defeated by the Jin army one after another.
The Jin army immediately went south, and their troops penetrated directly into the heart of Huaixi and took Liu'an, breaking many cities along the way.
In recent years, the Song State's defense in the Huaihe and Huaihe areas generally followed the arrangements made by the famous minister Ye Shi in setting up envoys in the Jianghuai area, relying on numerous mountain villages, water villages, Wubao and tuntians. Huaidong has lots of water, so there is water.
There are more than 40 strongholds. Huaixi is very mountainous, so there are 94 strongholds.
The place that the Jin Army just conquered was located south of Shaopi and guarded the key point in the upper reaches of the Lishui River. Interestingly, this village was also an important transit point for the Song people to smuggle copper coins, tea, and medicine to the north.
He was regarded as a mountain bandit, so he was rich enough to build two wooden fences around the mountain and set up many defensive facilities.
Wanyan Xielie thought that since these people were willing to do business with Daijin, they must be able to understand the current affairs and obediently respond to the needs of the army and contribute food and supplies. But it turned out that he did not do so and spent half a day fighting a vicious battle.
.
After the war, an inventory showed that although hundreds of people had been killed and wounded, and enough food for the troops and horses had been plundered for five days, there were also a lot of casualties among our own soldiers. The army could not wait for them to recover slowly, so they had to send extra manpower to send them across Huaibei.
.
This decisive attitude of the Song people made Monk Wanyan Chen very wary. Therefore, he controlled the prisoners accompanying the army very strictly, and also displayed a particularly fierce energy to suppress any abnormal movements at any time.
But he had to admit that besides being alert, he was also a little bit scared.
The scene in Huainan is naturally very different from the vastness and loftiness in the north. But one thing is that Huainan, a region that has suffered many wars, is the same desolate population as Monan or Hebei. Monk Wanyan Chen went south for a few days and saw what he saw.
Most of it is desolate, with shrubs, bamboo forests, grassy fields, abandoned ditches, and dilapidated towns everywhere. It is as if nature has replaced people, and the countryside has turned into wilderness again.
The army walked on the official road, and the weeds on the roadside stretched into patches. In some places, the road was almost covered, leaving only the traces of old ruts. Occasionally, in some places, the soil was washed away by the rain, revealing the dense bones underneath.
According to Wanyan Xielie, such desolation should be the result of the war between Song and Jin during the Taihe period. At that time, the domestic finances of Dajin were tight, and food and grass were completely unavailable. After the Nine Route Army invaded the Song Dynasty, they could only
They lived by plundering, and they still could not recover after ten years wherever they went. Of course, as time went by, Dajin's soldiers and horses went south many times, and plundering and massacres were the norm.
This situation is very similar to the half of the Kingdom of Jin that was swept away by the Mongols. And the hatred in the eyes of those Song prisoners looking at Monk Wanyan Chen was also like being treated as a slave on the grassland.
The Jin people driven by slaves look like Mongols.
Monk Wanyan Chen was once such a prisoner full of anger. Then he and his brother protected their mother and fled south. They killed Mongolians along the way, even ordinary herders.
Now he has become the object of hatred, which makes him feel uncomfortable. So he told a disheveled Naiman knight beside him: "These Song people cannot stay. Before arriving in Liu'an, we must find an opportunity to kill them all."
Kill."
This Naiman was also a slave who escaped from the grasslands. He could not speak because his tongue was cut off in half by the Mongols. But he understood what Monk Wanyan Chen meant, so he grinned with his yellow teeth and made a slur.
