Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 721 Liu Deshan's Backyard
After Shi Zhiqi was hit by an arrow, the fighting stopped for a while, but soon resumed the attack. According to the order of command, the company commander of the 2nd Marine Company took over the command of the whole detachment.He observed the surrounding area. The watchtower was not surrounded by four sides, and there was a large open space around it. It was completely impossible to approach it in a concealed manner. The defenders seemed to have enough projectile weapons, and when the watchtower was built, in order to prevent people from using digging Hole tactics, the base of the watchtower is about one person high and is made of thick stones and strips, which is very strong, and a 12-pound mountain howitzer may not be able to make a hole in it.The only weakness is the gate of the watchtower - very thick, covered with iron sheets, inlaid with thick door nails.This door is the biggest weakness at the bottom of the watchtower - no matter how thick the target is, it can't withstand the solid shells fired by the 12-pound mountain grenade.

The two howitzers were dragged to the south of the watchtower, and the sailors used bayonets to wipe out the small number of braves and servants who were stubbornly resisting on the streets in this area, and dragged the cannons across the street.A gunner seconded from the Army climbed onto the roof, observed for a while, and decided to use the backyard of a house on the street as an artillery emplacement.

The owner of this dwelling was Liu Deshan, a tall and strong man according to the standards of the time, with beards.He has the temperament of a big northern man in appearance, but at this moment he is hiding in the depths of his inner house, listening to the sound of gunfire and shouting outside, and keeps chanting Buddha.Whether it is Kun thief or Xiang Yong, don't patronize his small but comfortable little house.This small house protects not only his life, but also the various Shandong native products he piled up in the wing room.This is what he worked so hard to transport from Shandong, and he plans to sell it here in Sanliang, and then sell all kinds of straw products and local products of Guangdong to Shandong locally with the money. This place is an important place in Dongguan County. Commodity distribution center, he has been doing business here for many years.Roughly half a year in Shandong and half a year in Guangdong, the business is doing well.He hated bandits and thieves the most in his life -- because he had lost goods to these people several times in his business career, and he almost hanged himself.

The Kun thief was coming to attack Sanliang City, and Liu Deshan originally wanted to run away with the goods.But the Kun bandits came very quickly, and all kinds of rumors spread everywhere. Some said where the Kun bandits had gone, and another said which villages and towns the Kun bandits had occupied.Liu Deshan didn't dare to do anything wrong, so he had to stay in the town.

"My mother." Liu Deshan hid in the back hall, with a few servants huddled around him, trembling together, "This plague-stricken thief, just sell your Australian goods--and become a bandit It's..."

One of the guys asked, "Is the gangster an Australian?"

"That's right. It's an Australian who makes Australian goods," Liu Deshan muttered to himself, "I don't know what evil has caused him to become a bandit..."

"I heard that the government forced the people to rebel...some bigwigs in the province and the capital have taken a fancy to their property."

"This group of officials are really black-hearted and only want to make money. In the end, it's us ordinary people who are unlucky..." Before Liu Deshan could finish his sentence, there was a loud boom outside, and the cannon probably fell on the roof. There was a crackling sound.Liu Deshan shivered again.Hearing the sounds of shouting, guns and running getting closer and closer, I knew that most of the battlefield was moving to this area. I thought that if the thieves rushed in, not only my property would be lost, but my life might also be lost. Suddenly, the whole body is like sifting chaff.

The servants around him were also trembling, and one of his assistants was crawling under the bench, holding his head and not moving, and he didn't care about his head.Liu Deshan scolded: "You all look like bears..."

As soon as he said this, there was a mess of people's voices and footsteps in the front yard, and then there was a "bang", and the door to the outside yard was also opened. Liu Deshan was frightened out of his wits, except for saying "" I'm a mother." Other than that, I couldn't say anything else.

The footsteps in the yard became denser, and then someone shouted to saw off the threshold of the yard.Liu Deshan wanted to rob and saw the threshold.Before he could turn the corner in his head, the door of the room was slammed open, and three or four figures in short blue cloth jackets with double breasts jumped in.

This is probably the thieves. Although Liu Deshan was frightened to death, he couldn't help secretly looking at this group of thieves who only knew their names but never saw them.I saw that they all had iron hats that looked like braziers on their heads, and Australian bird guns in their hands. They were all black and panting, but they looked very energetic.

The sailors didn't care to talk nonsense with them. After checking the surrounding environment a little, someone suddenly shouted: "Everything is normal!"

"Okay, everyone hurry to the backyard!" The thief who led the team was not tall, but his voice was very loud.Holding a pistol in his left hand and a strange saber in his right, he gave orders loudly.After saying this, he said to the group of people who were trembling like sifting chaff on the ground: "Don't be afraid, we will borrow a place to set off the cannon, and you should stay in the house and don't go out, so as not to accidentally injure yourself!"

After saying this, he hurried out with the knife in hand.Only then did Liu Deshan feel relieved.He saw that the door was open after someone went out, so he quickly crawled over and closed the door again.He lay down on the window where he could see the backyard and peeked.I saw that twenty or thirty thieves had already gathered in the backyard and were busy, even knocking down a section of the wall.The gaps in the wall were piled up with rubble and debris, and a few thieves were lying on their backs and firing bird guns at the watchtower outside the courtyard wall, the sound was loud and clear.Then someone shouted and pushed a two-wheeled artillery in until it reached the gap.

"My mother. This is to bombard the watchtowers..." Liu De Shangang just said something, and felt that he was pushed, and realized that the servants and servants who were trembling with him just now were looking at the diorama one by one. The same ones were all lying on the windows and poking their heads.

"You bastards!" Liu Deshan couldn't help cursing, "It's nothing to feed you..."

Suddenly his face became stiff.He saw a few thieves carrying bundles of straw mats and straw bales full of local products into the yard. It didn't look like they were going to rob, but they were piling them up to build a fort.

Liu Deshan screamed: "Damn me. My tangerine peel! My donkey skin glue! My straw mat..."

Before he finished listing the goods that he was about to be poisoned, the little bandit leader who rushed into the house just now with a knife stopped his men from carrying them.It seemed that after a few words of reprimand, the thieves moved back with these things.Liu Deshan breathed a sigh of relief, but after thinking about it, the leader of the bandit must be afraid that his subordinates would ruin things, so they are not allowed to use it as a fort. This will probably be moved out as spoils of war...

Liu Deshan's heart sank again. He thought that he still had 500 taels of silver hidden under the square brick under the bed in his bedroom. What if the thief forced him to take out the silver?Liu Deshan had heard of many cases of extortion and kidnapping by soldiers and bandits: some forced people to sit on the toilet by lighting candles, some hung them from trees and roasted their feet over a fire...the list goes on and on.I have so many goods in my store, I must have silver, if the thief thinks about this, he will have to press him...

Thinking of all these terrifying methods, Liu Deshan almost pissed out.Just as I was thinking about finding a place to hide, the cannons in the yard fired.

The 12-pound pomegranate sprayed out a cloud of thick smoke, shaking the ground, shaking the walls, windows and even the ground.Liu Deshan even felt that he couldn't breathe for a moment.In the red firelight, he vaguely saw a black iron ball flying out.The heavy-looking two-wheeled cannon jumped back more than two feet.

The shell missed the gate, but hit the overhang above the gate.Bricks and stones splashed, and the thick brick wall collapsed in pieces, and two unrecognizable and incomplete corpses fell from it. It seems that there was a stove in the hanging building itself, and the corpses caught fire.

In addition to the pungent smoke, there was also a strong stench in the air—it turned out that a large pot of feces was boiling in the hanging building. As long as people rushed to the gate and the people above pulled the pot, the boiled feces, boiling water or The hot oil would pour down along the brick path, scalding the attackers below until their flesh was rotten.

A hole was exposed above the gate, and some Xiangyong immediately tried to fill the gap with wooden buckets and soil bags, and some Xiangyong desperately leaned out of the gap and fired arrows and blunderbusses, and some people were shot and fell from above.

The little officer rolled up his sleeves and waved his knife: "One more shot! Hit it on time!"

The next shot hit the gate, and the solid gate was instantly smashed to pieces, and then another solid bullet shot straight in through the door opening, flying and rolling all the way, and the enemies gathered in the door opening were ready to fight to the death. Xiangyong knocked down a large area.

The charge sounded, and the sailors took advantage of the momentum to rush over and captured the first floor of the watchtower in an instant. The Xiangyong and servants refused to surrender, and continued to throw thousands of enemies and bricks and tiles down from the stairs. The ground floor was set on fire.Many firearms were originally stored in the watchtower: sulfur, gunpowder kits and ten thousand enemies.The sailors piled some inflammable materials from various places and set a fire on the ground floor.Thick smoke and fire quickly filled the bottom floor of the tower, the gunpowder continued to explode, white and black smoke rose straight up, and soon every window and tunnel in the whole tower was emitting smoke.

People in the watchtower lost the ability to resist and jumped down from the second floor one after another. Some broke their legs, some fell to their deaths, and most of them managed to escape with their lives and became prisoners.

After the watchtower was captured, the Kun bandits dragged the cannon out of the yard.A young Kun thief went to their house and talked:
"I'm sorry, sir, I demolished a section of the wall of your house."

"Hey, it's okay, I was able to tear it apart..." Liu Deshan said incoherently.

"And the tiles on your house, our comrades trampled a lot of them. I'm afraid it will leak."

"It's okay, the tiles... if it's broken, it's broken... It's better to leak rain."

"And the threshold—"

"I've been wanting to saw it off for a long time."

"Master, what you said is really interesting. Don't worry, I will help you fix it in a few days." The young man smiled and walked away with his gun on his back.After coming here for a while, there was no movement in the courtyard at all. Liu Deshan and others did not dare to go out. Worried about the safety of the goods, Liu Deshan kicked the guy's ass hard:

"Quick! Go and see Kun...is the Australian gone..."

The man went away with a sad face.After a while he came back to report that all the Australians were gone.Even the door was closed for them.

Liu Deshan hurried out to have a look, and sure enough, everyone was gone.Of the two wing rooms where goods were piled up, one door was locked intact, and the other door was broken open and temporarily sealed—the paste was still wet, Liu Deshan was startled, thinking that his goods had been seized, Look at the words "Private property, owned by the original owner, not to be opened without authorization" written on it, and quickly ask someone to open the seal.

Because a lot of the goods inside were moved out by the sea soldiers to build artillery fortifications, and later sent back under the order of the leader, they were a bit messy, but at a rough glance, there were basically no defects.Liu Deshan heaved a sigh of relief, and his whole body went limp as if he had lost all strength.Almost cried with joy.

I didn't expect that I was hit by fire but didn't lose a bit.This almost made Liu Deshan feel like he had narrowly escaped death.The fear and fear of the thieves suddenly turned into gratitude again. As for the demolished walls and trampled tiles, they were nothing to worry about.

"The Australian army can be regarded as a teacher of benevolence and righteousness, and it probably won't lose its reputation when doing business." Liu Deshan's businessman's mind immediately turned.

Liu Deshan quickly took care of the guys, first temporarily blocked the gap in the backyard wall with bricks and stones, and then fixed the sawed threshold with a wooden strip and nails—otherwise the door would not be closed tightly.Then he had someone boil water, and poured all the old tea leaves from the next year into it.

"Sir, send it to the Australians now?" asked a chap.

"Not for now." Liu Deshan rolled his eyes, thinking that he should not be the first bird in this matter.It is better to wait until the battle in Sanliang City is over and the situation is completely clear before going to "condolences".

After conquering the watchtowers, most of Sanliang Town's defenses had collapsed, and the temporary recruits had lost their fighting spirit, and many of them threw away their weapons and fled home, leaving only the Tuanlian Office.The other two watchtowers and the Luo family compound are still resisting.These places are guarded by Xiangyong and the servants of each family. Their fighting spirit is relatively tenacious, and the heads of each family are willing to promise a large reward at this moment, so the defense is very tenacious.

The detachment organized to clean up the battlefield and collect gunpowder—after fierce fighting, the detachment had little gunpowder left, and the shells of the mountain howitzers were almost used up.The acting detachment leader asked people to escort the wounded back to Shigang to transfer ammunition, and at the same time collected the gunpowder and firearms discarded by the townspeople.Prepare to clear the stubborn enemies everywhere one by one.

Jiang Suo and Qingxia on the watchtower were not caught, and Qingxia almost had no chance to show off her shooting skills during the battle.The Kun thief is very well concealed, and when she walks, she trots all the way with a low profile, and she will suddenly hide from time to time, which makes her lose her aim all at once.And the dense rain of bullets made her dare not show her head to take aim, and she didn't even dare to hide in the shooting holes behind the crenel for a long time to check - a Xiangyong had his head opened on the spot by the bullets passing through the shooting holes.She could only take a cold breath and aim at the target in the shooting hole and roughly shoot an arrow.It wasn't until Shi Zhiqi climbed up to the roof and waved the command knife that she seized the opportunity and shot him down with an arrow.

Originally thought that the Kun thief would suspend the attack after losing a general, or even die down. Unexpectedly, the Kun thief would continue to attack in an orderly manner, and it seemed that it had nothing to do with this person.Qingxia shot more than a dozen arrows indiscriminately, but she didn't know if she hit them or not.

When the gate was smashed open by a cannon, Qingxia knew that the watchtower could no longer be defended.Moment and Jiang Suo ran to the northeast corner.Jiang Suo had prepared a long time ago and hid a roll of rope. Now he got off the rope from the watchtower, slid down along the rope, and slipped out by taking advantage of the lax seal of the sea soldiers.

At this time, every house in Sanliang Town was closed, and there was no one to be seen on the street, but all kinds of weapons were littered here and there, and occasionally there were a few corpses lying on the road.

"Senior Sister! Where are we going now?"

"I'll go to the Luo family's ancestral hall and get dad out!" Qingxia said, "Hurry up and find the children and Uncle Zhou in the north! Let's meet at the inn."

"Okay!" Jiang Suo nodded, thrust the knife behind his back, and ran away quickly.

Qingxia ran wildly all the way, and she was about to reach the Luo Family Ancestral Hall. The street in front of her was already crowded with many bandit soldiers. The house is the main target of the thieves' attack.

Thinking of her father being trapped inside, with unknown life or death, Qingxia became extremely anxious.I saw the constant sound of guns and guns in front of me, and the killing sound shook the sky, and I knew that I would die if I insisted on breaking in--she had already seen the power of the thieves and guns just now.

She quickly backed away, made a detour, and passed through the street on the other side.

But all intersections are occupied by thieves.Qingxia didn't dare to stay on the street anymore, she was afraid that the thieves would find her and she couldn't explain it.She hurried back to the inn.

In the inn, the boss has disappeared.Jiang Suo's face was covered with dust, and he said in a panic that only Jiang Niang had returned—with injuries.According to her, they led Xiangyong into a scuffle when the Kun thief came in, and she managed to stand out, but Uncle Zhou's whereabouts were unknown.As for the other three and a half older children, they were trapped in the Tuan Lian Gong. Just now I heard that the Tuan Lian Gong has been captured. Many people inside were killed and injured, and the rest were captured and escorted to the threshing ground.

"I didn't dare to go up to look, the gangsters have already issued an order: kill anyone who sees someone on the street, they will shoot if they see someone, I almost got shot..." Jiang Suo was trembling when he spoke. , obviously shocked just now, seeing that Qingxia came to the inn alone, she asked, "Why, where is Master?"

"Father is also trapped in Luo Zhai!" Qingxia was already in tears as she spoke--Uncle Zhou was gone, the whereabouts of the three little apprentices were unknown, and Jiang Niang was also injured.For a while, the sky seemed to be falling down.Her eyes darkened, and she fainted immediately.

(End of this chapter)