The rise of the prince

Chapter 486
There are hundreds of houses made of rammed earth walls all over the snow slope, and they are lined up on the hillside, covering a radius of several miles. Li Xingzhou lay in the snow and said to Wei Li next to him: "There are at least 2000 people here! "

Wei Li nodded: "We were also taken aback when we saw each other. If we do this, the prince, we should fight or not."

"You can't fight." Li Xingzhou shook his head. "This place is criss-crossed and open on all sides. If they can't be beaten, they can run. We want to clear the settlement and have to go deep. There are so many houses, it is a big trouble, and they will scare the snake."

Wei Yubai also nodded in agreement, and then said: "And this place is very strange. I have been looking at it for so long, but it is full of old people, children and women, and I haven't seen a single one of them."

"Really." Li Xingzhou looked carefully for a while, but he couldn't see clearly from too far away, so he should have gotten a telescope.

He looked carefully for a while, and it seemed that it was true that even the physical work was done by women with children.

Several people slowly retreated down the hill, Wei Yubai turned his head and said to him: "My lord, there are thousands of bandits in Heishan, and they should be gathered in one place from each village, so in order to grab Wei Teng, young and strong people from many gathering points gathered in one place Go, there is no young and strong in this place, so it makes sense."

Li Xingzhou nodded, and felt that Wei Yubai's words made sense.

"My lord, do you want to grab your tongue and ask?" Shen Lin said.

"Are you still scratching your tongue?" Li Xingzhou was curious.

"That's natural. Although we haven't fought any big battles, we have fought against the Black Mountain bandits not once or twice." Shen Lin said.

Li Xingzhou thought for a while: "Well, let's do it when it's dark, and try not to let people find out.

There is a barn at the entrance of the village. Someone should come to put the fodder in the evening. When you do it at that time, find some good ones, and nothing will happen. "

Shen Lin nodded and went down to get ready.

In rural areas, livestock are usually matted with hay or dry leaves at night, so that the animals can eat and sleep on the mat if they can’t finish eating, and secondly, it can absorb the thick manure of livestock and turn it into dry and easy-to-use fertilizer, which is also called manure.

Therefore, before going to bed, someone would come to add some hay to the animals. Once the person who added hay arrived at the entrance of the village, it would be convenient for him to grab his tongue.

The rest circled the village from behind the mountains to the east and camped five miles ahead.

Everyone ate dry food, did not light a fire, and waited quietly. Fortunately, it hadn't snowed much since entering the mountain, and the night was not as cold as imagined.

In the middle of the night, Shen Lin brought his men back, and brought back an old man who was almost lifeless with something stuffed in his mouth.

"You won't die, will you?" Wei Li asked.

"No." As Shen Lin said, he asked people to take out the stone stuffed in the old man's mouth, with a mouth full of blood, and grabbed a handful of snow to cover his face. hold down.

Shen Lin began to interrogate, the old man was obviously frightened, and he would answer whatever he asked.

Gradually everyone came to understand that this place is one of the largest bandits in the Black Bandits, the old den of the Black Leopard!

Wei Yubai also nodded: "It is indeed possible. Looking at those cave houses, they can accommodate two to 3000 people in a squeeze, and they can produce nearly a thousand young and strong people."

"Where's Black Leopard? Is he in the village?" Li Xingzhou continued to ask.

The old man shook his head: "No, on the twelfth of last month, Jade Fox called them away and never came back!"

"Jade-faced fox." Li Xingzhou said the name.

"In this way, the jade-faced fox is very likely to be the leader of the thieves who gathered everyone. Do you know where the jade-faced fox's village is?"

"I know, I know, it's just to the north, there's a fork in the road ahead, just walk along the North Avenue."

The old man was very cooperative and said whatever he asked.

Li Xingzhou asked the guards to bring the pen and ink he had prepared earlier, of course the pen was a quill, and then lit a candle, and wrote down the locations of the jade-faced fox village, the bear village, and other large and small villages that he had explained.

There are more than a dozen in total, but apart from Xiongzhai, Heibaozi Village, and Hushan City of the jade-faced fox, the others are all small villages, and according to his account, there are no more than fifty households.

This interrogation obtained a lot of useful information, and found out a large number of bandit dens entrenched in the Taihang Mountains in one fell swoop. Although it is not clear whether the information is accurate, it is also a great surprise.

But then there were differences of opinion on how to deal with the old man.

Wei Li felt that he was honest and cooperative in his confession, so he should be spared.

However, Wei Yubai and Shen Lin believed that this person could not stay. If he went back to report and attract other people, their already small troops might fall into the predicament of attacking from front to back, and they could not afford such a risk.

The old man seemed to understand what they said, knelt on the ground and kowtowed.

Faced with such a choice, Li Xingzhou was also in a dilemma at first.

But he is not an indecisive person. There are too many lessons like this. Cao Cao was with Bi Chen, Liu Bang of the Chu-Han Covenant, and even in modern times, there are special forces of the M Army who parachuted into Afghanistan. When they landed, they met an old man with his grandson herding sheep. The leading colonel was inexperienced, and because of his kindness, he only asked them to leave quickly. As a result, within half an hour, they were surrounded by the militiamen brought back by the old man. Almost all the troops were wiped out, and only one escaped by chance.

The human heart is so chaotic and unpredictable.

This is another layer of meaning of compassion.
A good general must bear the lives of thousands of his subordinates, so he must erase the unrealistic weakness and kindness in his heart, because he must be responsible for the lives of every soldier under him, instead of letting them die foolishly.

"You deal with it, and you can do it neatly." Li Xingzhou said to Shen Lin in a deep voice.

Shen Lin nodded, and the old man jumped up, wanting to cry, scold and resist, but was held down by Shen Lin and dragged behind the hillside.

"You don't have to blame yourself so much. The people in this mountain don't have many lives on their hands. You can see that there are scars on his neck and face. He must have done it." Wei Yubai comforted.

Li Xingzhou nodded, and then walked towards the back of the hillside.

"What are you doing?" Wei Yubai asked.

"Since I judged his death, at least I have to watch him die, so that I can have a clear conscience in the future." Li Xing smiled wryly, and then turned over the hillside. Wei Li and many soldiers watched him go. Wei Yubai smiled, smiling beautifully.

"Thank you, but I'm sorry." Li Xingzhou finally said to the old man. Shen Lin acted decisively and neatly. It was obviously not the first time he had done this kind of thing, and it was true after thinking about it. Although the Xiang army had never fought a war, they must have had a small-scale fight with the Black Mountain bandits. Not for the first time.

He suddenly understood what it means to "rather I blame others than others blame me".

When he came back stained with blood, the snowflakes reflected the moonlight, and the hillside was as bright as the moon. The soldiers were staring at him blankly, and then they grinned and showed their big white teeth.

Li Xingzhou waved his hand: "Smile, go to sleep, there is still a long way to go tomorrow. I don't dare to risk my life, so I will be the bad guy, and I rely on you to fight."

"Don't worry, my lord! We will never let you down." Wei Li said with clenched fists.

In the next few days, they followed the map carefully for four days. There were still no sentries along the way. On the fourth morning, the front scouts would report that a larger village was found in the valley, and there were a lot of people and fireworks. It is speculated that there were a lot of people. .

Li Xingzhou took out a simple map for comparison, "If it's correct, this is Fox Mountain City, put down the cannon and prepare for battle."

The artillerymen of the Shenji Battalion began to unload the artillery from the mules to assemble it, and the musketeers began to check the ammunition and then loaded it.

The scouts talked about the terrain of the mountain city. There was a section of the mountain road about 200 meters high. On the cliff, only five or six people could pass side by side, and there were bandit sentries guarding the passage.

After listening, everyone frowned.

(End of this chapter)