The "Black-necked Toad" struggled to squeeze to the front of the crowd, but saw several naked men wielding sharp blades at high speed, rushing into the crowd as if they were risking their lives. Wherever they went, they would kill a few government soldiers, as if they were in an empty space.
This "Black-necked Toad" had seen the world after all, and knew that these people were barbarians born and raised in Lingnan. Although their martial arts skills were mediocre when fighting, they had their own unreasonable momentum and courage. Unless they were a well-trained and battle-hardened army, they would be frightened by their fighting methods as soon as they fought.
"Black-necked Toad" had originally only received an order to investigate the military situation at the front. After seeing this situation with his own eyes, he only needed to turn around and report everything to Qiu Yizi, and he would have completed his mission.
However, this "Black Neck Toad" was originally a bandit, and he was the kind of person who would stir up trouble without any reason. Seeing these barbarians being so arrogant and domineering, he had long been fed up with it. So he secretly moved to the gap between the attack ranges of the two barbarians, and with his right hand on the Japanese sword at his waist, he suddenly pulled out the sword and stabbed the barbarian through. "Black Neck Toad" succeeded in his attack, and was merciless. He saw the opportunity and chopped off the left foot of a barbarian on the other side with a backhanded sword, causing the barbarian to lose balance and fall to the ground, and was immediately chopped into minced meat by the soldiers surrounding him.
The government troops, who had been cowering in fear at the sight of this unknown man charging into the crowd, suddenly became energized when they saw this unknown man acting so decisively and bravely. The fear and terror they had just felt had long since disappeared. They shouted to encourage each other, and relying on their large numbers, they surrounded the barbarians one by one and hacked them to death with their swords in a blink of an eye.
The action of "Black-necked Toad" was just a spontaneous act. He did it and at most it was just to increase the topic for bragging in the future. He never expected that in the blink of an eye, it would save his own life, Qiu Yizi's life, his trusted brothers, and even the lives of tens of thousands of troops!
It turned out that the Lingnan King Zheng Gui, on the advice of Tianzun Sect Master Wen Honghui, adopted the method of blasting engineering, hoping to blast a gap in the Jinling city wall that was large enough for the army to deploy its formation and advance calmly. However, he did not expect that the Jinling city wall was built thick and solid. After several explosions, the city wall did not move at all, and only the Wuding Gate to the south was blown down.
Although Wuding Gate was not a narrow gate, it was not wide enough for tens of thousands of troops to attack. The blasting they had worked so hard on was about to be in vain. However, Lingnan King Zheng Gui was a veteran general. Seeing that the situation on the battlefield was not as smooth as he had imagined, he suddenly came up with a plan and immediately ordered the entire army to concentrate on attacking Wuding Gate.
As expected, facing the massive attack of the Lingnan Army, the government troops really gathered a large number of troops inside Wuding Gate. Although the individual combat effectiveness of the government troops was not as good as that of the Lingnan Army, they had the advantage of numbers and the city defense to rely on, and finally slowly squeezed out the Lingnan Army.
But all this was within the expectations of Lingnan King Zheng Gui. Seeing that the government troops had assembled so many troops in the narrow space inside Wuding Gate, he sent out fearless barbarian soldiers to carry twenty or thirty cans filled with explosives and detonate them among the crowd.
In such a violent explosion, these barbarians were naturally blown to pieces, but the thousands of nearby imperial troops were also blown to pieces - even Qiu Yizi, who was far away on a tall building, was blown dizzy.
Zheng Gui, King of Lingnan, who was far outside the city, heard the sound of explosions in the city from afar, and knew that the plan had succeeded and that many defenders would be killed or wounded, so he urged his army to attack Wuding Gate again.
However, Qiu Yizi in the city saw that the enemy was attacking Wuding Gate with all their strength, so he gave up guarding the city wall and ordered all the defenders on the city to go down to fight the Lingnan Army. He actually fought back the Lingnan Army that had entered the city.
King Zheng Gui of Lingnan was not in a hurry. He used the same old trick again and let those ignorant barbarians rush into the city. He wanted to detonate the explosives among the crowd and kill a large number of enemy troops.
However, they did not expect that at this critical moment, a bandit named "Black-necked Toad" suddenly appeared. Under his leadership and encouragement, the government troops killed all the barbarians who rushed into the crowd in a short period of time. The space that they had finally rushed out of was squeezed back in an instant, and there was no chance to detonate a large amount of gunpowder.
If a soldier was a little smarter, seeing this situation, he would definitely know that his mission could not be completed, and would immediately carry the jars filled with explosives back to the camp and wait for new orders from his superiors before taking action.
However, these barbarians who were transporting the explosives were stubborn and only transported two or three cans of explosives into Jinling City. They did not know how to adapt and still did as they were ordered before, they took out the fire starter and ignited and detonated the cans of explosives.
The explosives in these jars exploded almost at the same time. Although the quantity was insufficient, the power should not be underestimated. In addition to killing hundreds of defenders in the surrounding area, the impact force was so far-reaching that Qiu Yizi, who was nearly a hundred steps away from the detonation point, felt chest tightness and difficulty breathing, and almost fainted again.
However, the "Black-necked Toad" had to quickly return to Qiu Yizi to report the battle situation, so he turned his back to the place where the explosives exploded. The heavy armor behind him took the shock wave of the gunpowder explosion and actually threw the 150-60 kg man high up into the air, landing him right in front of Qiu Yizi's horse.
When Qiu Yizi saw the "Black-necked Toad" falling from the sky and heard the explosion just now, he knew that something must have happened again. He quickly dismounted and helped the "Black-necked Toad" up, asking, "What happened? Did the King of Lingnan use explosives again?"
Qiu Yizi's eighteen personal soldiers, including the "Black-necked Toad", knew how to attack the city with explosives, so there was no need to hide it in front of him.
The "Black-necked Toad" was puzzled when he heard this question. He was very straightforward and could not speculate or infer. He didn't see it with his own eyes, so he just ignored it and said, "Explosives? I only saw a group of barbarians rushing into the city, and I killed them all with just a few swords. Where did the explosives come from?"
Although the words of "Black-necked Toad" did not answer the point, Qiu Yizi was smart enough to know almost the whole thing. He had guessed that the King of Lingnan must cherish the military strength of the Lingnan Palace and was unwilling to let his capable soldiers become ashes of explosives, so he thought of using barbarians to transport and detonate the explosives.
These barbarians are brave and do not know death, and are indeed difficult to deal with.
Qiu Yi couldn't think of any way to respond for a moment. He looked at the resourceful "Ban Song Jushi" Lin Shuhan beside him with a pleading look, and turned to look at Liu Qing, the governor of Jiangnan Province. One of them was smart and the other was foolish, one was a civil official and the other was a military official. Both of them looked at him with blank eyes, but could not say anything else.
As the three of them were looking at each other, they suddenly heard another explosion from the direction of Wuding Gate, followed by the hysterical crying and screaming of the defending soldiers.
Qiu Yizi had already gotten used to the shock of such explosive explosions, and his brain had calmed down. He whispered to Lin Shuhan, "I wonder how much explosives the King of Lingnan has prepared? It's not a good idea to continue wasting them like this... I wonder if you have any good ideas?"
Lin Shuhan was a weak scholar. After several rounds of explosives explosions, his internal organs were already in turmoil. He managed to concentrate and listen to Qiu Yizi to the end. But once he started thinking, he felt a splitting headache. He only said a few words, "A wise man never suffers a loss in front of him," and could not say any more.
However, these words were exactly what Qiu Yizi wanted. If he could defend, he would defend. If he couldn't defend, he would retreat. This was exactly what he wanted in terms of flexibility. But if he abandoned Wuding Gate now, the King of Lingnan would break through the city defense from here, and Jinling City would be undefendable.
If you defend, you will die; if you retreat, you will be defeated.
This is really a difficult problem.
When Qiu Yizi faced this difficult problem—no, actually, she was forced by Lingnan King Zheng Gui to face the dilemma of this difficult problem—she finally understood the feelings of those people who had been forced into a dilemma by her before.
In his mind, faces of General Bai Wenbo, the father and son of Yin Chengliang, the governor of Jiangnan, Wen Honghui, the leader of Tianzun Sect, Zheng Yu, the second son of the King of Lingnan, and Zheng Yao, the former emperor, kept appearing before him. Each of them had a contemptuous expression, as if mocking him: "You have come to this day, kid?"
Qiu Yizi shook his head hard, trying to get rid of those faces from his mind, but after several close-range explosions, his entire brain was shaken and he was at a loss. After shaking it a few times, he felt his mind was even more confused and he still couldn't solve this life-and-death problem.
But Zheng Gui, the King of Lingnan who set the question, did not give him the chance to continue thinking. In a flash, he suddenly heard a series of huge explosions coming from the east and west directions.
Two fast horses were seen galloping from the direction of the explosion. Two messengers on horseback ran to Liu Qing and almost fell off their horses. They knelt on the ground and said in a panic, "Oh no! The thunder has destroyed the Sanshan Gate and Zhongshan Gate again! We are doomed!"
"Bullshit!" Qiu Yizi was in distress. When he heard the two messengers shouting such words that could shake the army's morale, he immediately became angry. "What is heavenly thunder? It's a magic! Didn't Mr. Lin tell you to prepare the dog blood? Why don't you transport it to the city and pour it down? The magic will be broken naturally!"
"Also, we just ordered the soldiers from all gates to come to Wuding Gate for reinforcement, and also told them to return immediately and hold their original positions. There is no need to come again. Do you understand?" Qiu Yizi ordered again.
The two messengers saw that the Jiedushi Liu Qing had not given any orders yet, and this civil official in the uniform of a seventh-rank county magistrate was actually giving orders here. They didn't know what Qiu Yizi's identity was. But seeing that the chief officer Liu Qing had no objection, they had to salute and mount their horses to pass on the order.
Qiu Yizi was still unyielding, and shouted at the two men's backs: "Pass the order down, don't spread rumors to confuse the people and shake the morale of the army, otherwise you will be punished by military law and beheaded without mercy!"
This is just the normal way to deal with difficult situations.
After hearing these orders, Liu Qing's panic did not ease at all. He whispered in Qiu Yizhi's ear: "Your Highness Yi, three of the four gates of Jinling have been breached. In fact, the entire Jinling City has been captured by the King of Lingnan. Why don't we retreat first?"
These were the words Liu Qing said with great courage - although he was a somewhat incompetent general, he was a native of Youyan Palace after all. The old Youyan army always advanced in battle and showed no fear even when facing the elite Turkic cavalry that came and went without a trace. It would be a great loss of face if he was forced to withdraw from Jinling City by a rebel king like Zheng Gui.
After hearing this, Qiu Yizi just sighed and said, "It's hard to run away now. There are the troops of the King of Lingnan on three sides, and there is the Yangtze River to the north. We are also blocked by the Japanese pirate ships brought by Yin Chengliang and Yin Tai. We don't have wings, so we can't fly away."