After a cloud of smoke and dust cleared, someone shouted, "There's another tomb here!"
Zhu Ci..
The County Records are unreliable; they didn't mention there were tombs nearby!
Zhu Ci was just about to have someone clear the area when he heard someone shout, "Who goes there!"
His ears twitched. This voice.. why did it sound so much like Li Cheng?
Amidst the chaos of war, the people below dug Li Cheng and his subordinates out of the grave, or rather, out of the earth.
Zhu Ci looked at Li Cheng's wretched appearance, his body still emitting a stench of decay, couldn't help but pinch his nose and say, "Go, go, go. Go wash yourself clean before you come back to speak."
As long as the person is found, there is no rush to know exactly what happened.
The only real pity was that Alna was not found among those corpses.
Although corroded by verdigris oil, the clothing, accessories, physique could still reveal the owner's identity.
This man truly is an undying cockroach; even this couldn't kill him.
But he wasn't doing much better; he had a total of over five hundred men under his command, but he had left over a hundred behind in Dingyuan County, this time he had left behind another hundred corpses.
He wondered if he would be demoted again once he returned.
Huh, it seems Niu Lu E Zhen is at the lowest rank among the commissioned military ranks of the Qing Army; any lower and he would just be an ordinary soldier, or a petty official like those in the Bashku who hold some power but have no official rank.
As Zhu Ci thought about these things, Li Cheng had already finished washing up in a hurry and returned.
When he arrived, he was still carrying a scent that was neither fragrant nor stinking.
Zhu Ci frowned. "What have you used?"
Li Cheng said cautiously, "I.. I have the stench of corpses on me, which is difficult to remove. Miss Jiang gave me some scented powder to cover it up."
It would have been better not to cover it at all!
Zhu Ci said decisively, "Let's go outside to talk!"
Even with the main entrance wide open, the ventilation inside the military tent was mediocre; it was better to go outside.
After going outside, Zhu Ci looked at the soldiers who were still busy in the distance and asked, "What happened? Why did you go inside?"
Li Cheng immediately said, "Reporting to Your Majesty, when I brought my troops here, we happened to encounter Alna leading men to loot graves."
Zhu Ci's expression darkened. In these chaotic times, many heroic figures made their fortunes by tomb robbing.
He asked, "How did Alna know there was an ancient tomb here?"
“It must have been a fluke," Li Cheng explained. "The place where he set up camp is right above an ancient tomb."
After Li Cheng arrived and saw him digging up a Han dynasty tomb, although he didn't know who was underneath, he was unwilling to let the Tartars take advantage, so he immediately led his troops and charged over.
Alna was digging up the ancient tomb, but at the same time, he was also thinking of using the tomb to set traps.
They were quite lucky; they found the tomb passage at that time, because the ancient tomb had no surface markers left, it had not been severely damaged.
After Li Cheng brought people over, Alna led his men directly into the tomb.
Beside it should also be the tomb of a prince or marquess, it was quite large in scale. Alna's men didn't know how long they had been digging, but they were already quite familiar with some of the terrain inside.
And Li Cheng.. how could Li Cheng understand this? He was still half-illiterate even now; at most, he could recognize a few characters, but he had no cultural literacy at all, let alone knowledge of history.
His subordinates were also refugees absorbed by Zhu Ci back then, not a single one of them knew anything, so they ended up getting lost in the tomb.
After Alna used the terrain within the tomb to trap them, he directly led his men out to seal the tomb passage and fill it with earth to bury it.
After hearing this, Zhu Ci glanced at Li Cheng, wanting to tell him not to be so impulsive next time, wanting him to read more books in the future, but in the end, a thousand words condensed into a single sentence: "Wait until you go offer some incense to the tomb owner."
If it weren't for the ancestors' protection, Li Cheng and his subordinates would likely have vanished from this world without anyone ever knowing where they went.
It might take several hundred years of protective excavation before a group of people like this is discovered in a tomb.
But on second thought, if it were truly like that, future archaeologists looking at this group of corpses—who looked neither like tomb robbers nor sacrificial victims—would likely be left scratching their heads, never imagining the true origins of Li Cheng and his companions, even if they were beaten to death.
It seemed that while Li Cheng and his companions were incredibly lucky, they had also saved the hair of future archaeologists and historians.
Zhu Ci turned and said, "Take people to organize all the tombs that have been disturbed here. Even if the funerary objects inside are broken, they must be carefully preserved. Then, send someone to Huaian to deliver them to.. to the Grand Secretary or the Prince of Ning. Tell them not to touch any of the funerary objects; they must all be kept safe."
If there is an opportunity in the future, once the world is at peace, he wants to open a museum!
Li Cheng immediately obeyed the command, while Zhu Ci took his men and returned to Huaian.
After many days of delay, it was time to make a move against Fengyang.
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Author's Note: Zhu Ci: Why is the male lead so hard to kill? An evil kitty digging with a knife. jpg
Next update at twelve noon~
Chapter 112
After returning from Dingyuan, Jiang Quan finally breathed a sigh of relief.
He hasn't been idle lately either, constantly sending troops to harass Fengyang.
Liu Liangzuo and Hu Maozhen were both veteran generals and were not easily deceived, especially after having not won a single engagement after sending out troops to fight.
Zhu Ci asked, "Have people been arranged near the city gates?"
People have already been sent to lie in ambush. Recently, Fengyang has become an isolated city; anyone who comes to reinforce it is driven back.
By now, Liu Zhaoji and He Gang had already advanced to Lingbi and Guzhen, making very gratifying progress.
Zhu Ci tossed the cloth he used to wipe his hands onto the table and said only two words: "Siege."
Sieging a city is not easy, but it is not particularly difficult either.
Especially since Zhu Ci had even recruited several people with loud voices, who shouted every day around Fengyang Prefecture that they would surrender without being killed, even shouted for the overthrow of warlords and the redistribution of land.
Overthrowing the wealthy to redistribute land would certainly not work; if one were to truly count, every single person from him to his subordinates would have to be counted among the wealthy.
Then I'll change it, rephrase it to better suit the current situation.
Directly state that it is a reshuffle.
A chaotic era is itself a process of a massive reshuffling of power; in this process, perhaps some people will want to gamble on whether they can also turn their fortunes around and become the new local gentry.
If all else fails, being able to prevent the local commoners from helping Liu Liangzuo and his men would also count as achieving the objective.
As for Liu Liangzuo's subordinates.. distributing land to soldiers, no forced conscription, those willing to serve would get to eat meat at least once a week—was that not enticing enough?
Zhu Ci only needed their morale to collapse; when he was defending Huaian, everyone from top to bottom had been united in purpose.
Can the current Liu Liangzuo and Hu Maozhen win such public support? Would the common people be willing to risk their lives defending the city for the Qing Army?
Even if there is high-pressure coercion, it is still different from doing it voluntarily.
Moreover, he offered a bounty of a thousand gold pieces to anyone who could present the heads of Liu Liangzuo and Hu Maozhen.
From the moment the siege began, Liu Liangzuo and Hu Maozhen had to keep one eye open even while sleeping.
Because Fengyang Prefecture held a special status as the birthplace of the dynasty, its city walls were built particularly sturdy.
At this time, Zhu Ci felt a bit of regret that he hadn't been able to capture any Red-coated Cannons from the Qing Army.
When such heavy weapons were in the hands of the enemy, one couldn't wait to destroy them immediately, but when attacking a city oneself, one hoped to have them in hand.
However, not having the Red-coated Cannon wasn't a major problem, as they had the Hundred Tigers Charging Rocket Car anyway.
Although the Hundred Tigers Charging Rocket Carriage was not particularly suitable for siege warfare, its advantage lay in the flexibility of the ammunition it could be loaded with.
Zhu Ci also did not have the subordinates load the most powerful rockets, but instead used poisonous smoke rockets.
This kind of rocket doesn't have much lethality, but it can effectively reduce the enemy's numbers while simultaneously striking their morale.
Of course, there are also disadvantages; that is, when using rockets, one's own people cannot approach either.
In this era, there are no gas masks, so this toxic smoke attacks indiscriminately.
When using this kind of □□, not only can one not approach, but one must even stay far away.
At first, Zhu Ci was relatively conservative, wanting to stop after having someone fire just one volley.
This toxic smoke is highly dependent on wind direction; even if they are far away, there is still some danger if the wind blows this way.
What he did not expect was that the toxic smoke drifted entirely toward the city walls with the wind; even though some rockets exploded mid-air, the toxic smoke was still blown right over them.
Liu Liangzuo and Hu Maozhen's subordinates were severely ravaged by the toxic smoke. By the time they finally managed to wait for the opposition to stop, they turned around only to find that eighty percent of their own archers were no longer able to man their posts.
Even those who were not heavily poisoned took the opportunity to feign exhaustion and collapsed onto the ground.
Liu Liangzuo and Hu Maozhen had originally been stationed within the city, but upon hearing this news, they truly could not sit still. They rushed out from the prefectural office and could see the yellowish-green poisonous smoke drifting above the city walls from a distance.
The commoners who were closest to the city walls were all running toward the interior of the city.
Liu Liangzuo said, "General Hu, let's deploy the Birdlock Guns."
Hu Maozhen said with narrowed eyes, "Have people first make masks out of cloth and cotton, then deploy the birdlock guns. Otherwise, the gunmen won't be able to withstand the toxic smoke, they'll be useless."
No one knew how the Ming army had suddenly acquired so many strange and peculiar firearms and equipment, every single one of them possessed considerable power and could adapt to different combat environments.
Originally, both Liu Liangzuo and Hu Maozhen felt that the mandate of the Great Ming had come to an end, the general trend of the world was on the side of the Qing Army.
Now, however, they were beginning to waver.
If all else fails.. what if they surrender too?
If they could surrender to the Qing Army, they could naturally surrender to the Ming Army as well. Especially now, when the Great Ming lacks both talent and manpower, they have no shortage of troops under their command; surely they could lead them to surrender?
Just as they were wavering, they heard of a bounty placed on their own heads.
A thousand taels of gold!
Even though both Liu Liangzuo and Hu Maozhen felt tempted, for a brief moment, they even wanted to kill one another and surrender with the other's head in their hands.
Fortunately, the two of them were still quite composed, the current situation had not yet deteriorated to an absurd degree; they would wait until they were certain that the Qing Army would not be able to send reinforcements.
But, maintaining a mindset of trusting no one, Liu Liangzuo and Hu Maozhen decided to guard the most dangerous city gates separately.
Hu Maozhen actually wanted to order Liu Liangzuo, but Liu Liangzuo came from a background of bandits and possessed a natural ruthlessness; Hu Maozhen feared that forcing him would lead to trouble, so he simply ignored him.
Liu Liangzuo had never been submissive to Hu Maozhen; he could not understand why, even though they had both surrendered, Hu Maozhen was the Fengyang General while he was merely tasked with assisting in the defense.