Tang Qi Tan

Chapter 596 Yunmeng
Endless reeds and swamps, pattering rain and rustling wind; occasionally there are waterfowl flying up by Pupu, and ducks and sparrows circling in the sky are screaming.And all of this was like the sound of a crane chirping the wind, stimulating more than a dozen figures who ran away desperately.

Then, people tripped and fell one after another, and some people fell into the puddle; they fell and passed out.In the end, there was only one person left. When he stopped and tried to take a few breaths, he only felt nauseated and uncomfortable, as if he wanted to spit out all his internal organs.

Before that, he was a member of the enviable Jingzhou navy, with his own exclusive warship and the official identity of the navy.But now he is just a fish that slipped through the net from the tragic battle of Mizusawa; the screams of those captured comrades and abandoned wounded are still in my ears.

It made him lose his mind, his liver and gallbladder were torn apart, and he regarded every slight movement behind him as those monsters that were chasing him.That's right, the monsters, roaming freely in the water, and attacking monsters and giant beasts day and night, became the biggest nightmare for these crusade soldiers.

The ships responsible for carrying the officials and soldiers from various states are often moored at night, or driving in narrow waterways, and the bottom of the ship is secretly smashed by the aliens in the water at some time, or the giant monster that suddenly appears Pig Polong (crocodile), overturned and smashed the ship.

Then, they fell into the water with the officers and soldiers on board, or were forced to jump into the mud of unknown depth; they were torn to pieces by the hidden aliens or dragged away screaming.Then more rebels came from all directions in small boats, and completely defeated the government troops who were fighting for each other.

Even the warships from the Jingzhou Navy are still unable to escape; the oversized hulls galloping in the rivers and lakes are easily intercepted by hidden obstacles in the water, and are temporarily separated; they can only watch helplessly. The clamor of being besieged by friendly troops in the distance continued.

And the bed crossbows and stone cannons fired on the ship also couldn't keep up with the monsters and giant beasts that came and went like the wind and disappeared in the reeds; they put down the boat and wanted to support, but were quickly overturned by the lurking aliens In the waterway, there is only a piece of turbulent mud and blood rolling.

At least this sailor was on his warship, fighting fiercely with the endless stream of aliens and thieves with knives, guns, bows and crossbows, and did not abandon the ship until the last moment.But he still couldn't figure out how things could have become so corrupt under the century-old peace and prosperity of the Great Tang Dynasty.

Yunmeng Daze in the contemporary traditional sense is a wetland that straddles Jingnan, Hunan, Jiangxi, and Huainan; it covers both sides of the river and the Jianghan Plain, including lakes, swamps, tidal flats, woodlands, mountains, and resident cultivated land. Large areas including dryland types.

Although there are many densely populated towns dotted across it, there are also cobweb-like waterways and swamps and reeds that become all kinds of lawbreakers, fugitive slaves, bankrupt and landless refugees, and even desperate people. The place where smugglers and hedgehogs gather.

In particular, the hundreds of miles of water marshes located between Jiangling, Gong'an, Shishou, Jianli, Mianyang, and Jingling have become places to shelter these alien people.Among them, the complex waterways and hidden river islands like a maze change with the rise and fall of the water every year.

Therefore, although the officers and soldiers of the past dynasties have raided from time to time and captured hundreds of thousands of heads; they have never been able to completely wipe them out. In the name of the Yunmeng thief, he is one of the seven great bandits in the world.

It even approached the city of Jingzhou during the Yuanping period; it also exposed the situation that the local government had been trying to keep secret.As a result, the rebel envoys sent by the imperial court were recruited, which also became the beginning of rebuilding the Jingzhou water army outside the Dajiang Patrol Water Battalion.In the end, several states joined forces to sweep the hole in Liting.

Breaking through water fortresses, settling dozens of houses, beheading tens of thousands, and capturing tens of thousands of people, made the Yunmeng bandit a legendary historical term in the following decades.However, with the passage of time, people spontaneously gathered again, and gradually filled the gaps in this great swamp.

It's just that they no longer take the practice of cutting off the waterway, robbing merchants, and even attacking villages and towns to openly provoke the authority and order of the government; Good location, wantonly smuggled and trafficked.

In the end, a considerable underground industry and illegal livelihood groups were formed in the surrounding areas; even the noble families and low-level officials in some places secretly participated.Therefore, when the government army in a certain place decides to attack, the Yunmeng bandits will abandon some strongholds and quickly move to other places.

After this long-term cat-and-mouse tug-of-war, the two sides even formed an inexhaustible tacit understanding.However, this tacit understanding lasted for decades, but it was suddenly broken in the past two years. For some reason, the Yunmeng thief, whose strength had greatly increased, took the initiative to attack and attack several counties.

Although these are just a few small cities that have been peaceful for a long time and the city defenses have been in disrepair for a long time; but for the officials of the nearby Jing, Fu, Yue, and Li prefectures, it is an unprecedented responsibility for losing their land.Therefore, before the court pursued and held them accountable, they organized several troops to suppress the officials.

Then, under the scramble to attack each other, they were defeated (each defeated) without any surprise.This incident also greatly shocked Jiangling City, which is close at hand, the capital of Jingnan Province; as the local Governor's Mansion of Jingnan, it ordered to dispatch the directly subordinate defenders and the state united troops to fight against the rebellion.

And this is the first time that Yunmeng put down chaos in the imperial palace newspaper.That's right, it is the suppression of chaos. In the local newspapers, it is still regarded as a civil uprising/riot in which bandits coerce the masses.As a result, the tens of thousands of crusading troops advancing by land and water all the way easily regained the two counties of Liyang and Anxiang.

Then, when approaching the station in Ouchi Town near Shishou, the Chinese army was attacked by night from the Yunmeng bandits Li Yingwaihe.The capture of the leading army caused Wan Shouyi and a dozen generals to die on the spot. The group of dragons without a leader collapsed in chaos, trampled on each other before seeing the enemy, and fled each other...

At this time, the special envoys sent by the imperial court had just arrived in Jiangling; a group of local generals who had fled before the battle were severely punished, and several officials who were not effective in defending the land were dismissed.Only then was it shocked for a while, and the four groups of people from Yuezhou, Lizhou, Fuzhou, and Jiangling Prefecture were assembled to jointly attack and suppress.

But what is unexpected is that this time it seems to be a four-way attack strategy that is steady and steady; But when he continued to go deep into Yunmeng Daze, he was severely frustrated.

First, the Jiangling army, which was reorganized nearby, encountered a sudden heavy fog and a strange attack that came with the fog; and after the fog of fighting and walking dissipated, it had already lost half of its strength and was temporarily unable to fight again.Immediately afterwards, the soldiers and horses of Yuezhou and Lizhou were ambushed and raided by the Yunmeng bandits.

The Lizhou Army, which was the weakest, was defeated first, and then attacked the Yuezhou Army that had just arrived nearby; as a result, the Yuezhou Army failed to send out a single arrow, and was wrapped up and walked away.Immediately afterwards, the Jiangling army who stayed in place was first attacked by the herd of beasts, and then defeated by the Yunmeng bandits.

The furthest Fuzhou army got lost in Yunmeng Ze, and failed to reach the meeting point in time until the other routes were defeated; finally, when they encountered a rout and heard about their defeat, they retreated relatively intact on the original route. up.This is all the news that Jiang Tian can get when he goes south.

But among the messy news, what caught his attention the most was the confession of a few soldiers who fled back, which were treated as sleepwalking: Yunmeng Daze seemed to be alive, with mud traps and obstacles everywhere, It didn't take long for the places I walked, and it seemed that I didn't know each other.

In addition, there are some aliens who escaped from Yunmeng Daze, claiming that the current Yunmeng thieves are no longer those people in the past, or that they are suspected of being occupied by birds; And the means of driving aliens, and a large number of people are used as blood and sacrifices.

So this statement also became an opportunity for Jiang Tian to temporarily put aside the affairs at hand and personally lead the team to go south to explore one or two.Thinking of this, he couldn't help looking out the window of the water wheeler and boat, and saw that Dalu was accompanying the marching team with bare hands and light clothes. They were reinforcements from Shannan Dongdao.

The 1000 government soldiers mobilized in Dengzhou, Shangzhou, Junzhou, and Fangzhou, and the [-]st Battalion of Zuo Lingjunwei ([-] members) stationed in Nanyang.It also includes the Fifth Battalion of Laymen under the Xijing Lixing Academy, which is attached to the territory of Shangluo County near Wuguan, as the two mobile teams of Jingnan and Shannan.

But for Jiang Tian, ​​the more reinforcements he sent south with him, the more the better.In other words, in the face of an unprecedented situation like Yunmeng Daze, an army that is unfamiliar with each other, lacks trust and may be inconvenient to command, is not as useful as the fifth battalion of laymen who knows everything.

With this in mind, Jiang Tian took a car and boat along the Danshui-Han River, all the way down the river, until he arrived at Xiangyang Mansion, the capital of Shannan Dongdao, before stopping and repairing.Because, here he has to wait for another route, rushing from Shannan West Road to the reinforcements who came to join.

Therefore, he declined most of the invitations from the local posts. Even the reception banquet held by the local Xiangyang Prefecture Shaoyin and the envoys and officials only showed his face symbolically and stayed behind closed doors; I put all my heart into studying the various news and reports collected from the south...

Until the third morning, the reinforcements from Shannan West Road arrived; Jiang Tian also saw a familiar face again. After the battle of Xingyuan Mansion and the assassination of Hanwangtai, the deputy general Pang Xun had not seen for more than a year.It's just that after surviving near death, he has now been appointed as the envoy of Nanzheng Shouzhuo.

(End of this chapter)