At this moment, Jiang Sanlang and his men were fighting with the bandits.
The battle took place in a bamboo forest, and he led a group of people fighting and retreating.
Because there were too many bandits, several times their number, and they were very brutal. They were so crazy that they even killed their own people without any regard.
Jiang Sanlang had never seen such a situation before, and his morale was immediately reduced to half.
Seeing that the situation was not good, some people from Jiangjia Village abandoned their comrades and ran away, disappearing into the woods in an instant.
Chen Zhu was furious, "Bah! What the hell! I risked my life to save them, but I ended up saving a bunch of ungrateful people!"
"Retreat first!" Jiang Sanlang waved his hand and said, "Run to the forest!"
Suddenly, more than ten of our people ran away, and the rest would be waiting to die if they didn't run away.
So Jiang Dalang, Jiang Erlang and Jiang Sanlang quickly fled into the forest with the villagers, and for a while they were unable to take care of the situation in the cave.
The bandits howled and chased all the way until night fell.
Next to the plank road, the bandits below seemed determined to fight with the people in the cave. Not only did the number of people stationed there not decrease, but it increased by one or two hundred.
Upon seeing this, Patriarch Chen and his companions frowned and walked around the cave with their hands behind their backs, looking very annoyed.
"What should we do?" Jiang Dahu, the village chief of Jiangjia Village, scratched his head.
Chief Chen sighed: "We can only take it one step at a time. First of all, we must guard the road entrance and prevent the bandits from coming up."
If we were attacked by bandits, we would be lambs to be slaughtered and no one would survive.
"Alas, this is the only way." Jiang Dahu sighed.
Yingbao counted the people in the cave and found that there were about 200 people, most of whom were the elderly, the weak, women and children.
Now these people are divided into two sides, Jiangjia Village on one side, and Chen Village and foreign refugees on the other side.
There were quite a large number of people from Jiangjia Village, about a hundred or so in total, occupying most of the cave. The chickens, geese, goats, etc. they brought with them ran around freely.
Yingbao leaned between the two gourds, observing the surroundings calmly, with a premonition in her heart.
If a few days pass, with no water or food, the people in the cave will be able to fight on their own without the need for bandits to attack.
Even now, some people from Jiangjia Village looked over here with unfriendly eyes.
In the eyes of some people, those bandits were attracted by refugees, but tracing back to the source, they were attracted by Jiang Sanlang's family.
Even if Jiang Sanlang led his men to save their entire village, some people in Jiangjia Village would only think it was their due.
"Bao'er, put these cakes away." Chunniang and her elder and younger sisters-in-law spent half a day making cakes and used up most of the flour.
If there was not much firewood in the cave, they would have wanted to cook all the flour and distribute it to their families for safekeeping.
Yingbao took the five pancakes, folded them up and put them in her small bag.
Each member of the Jiang family was given five bread cakes, which were their last dry food.
Jiang Jie and Jiang Wu gave all their cakes to their sister for safekeeping, saying that they could eat them when they were hungry.
Chunniang took a few more cakes and gave them to Xiao Zhenniang, but Xiao Zhenniang declined them politely, "I still have a lot of food here, you can leave the cakes for the children."
Xiao Zhenniang not only had food, but also a full water bag, which her servant Wen Fu had fetched early in the morning. It was more than enough for the four of them, master and servant, to eat and drink for a day or two.
As for the six servants of the Lin family, Xiao Zhenniang could not afford to take care of them, nor did she want to.
Seeing that Xiao Zhenniang really refused to accept it, Chunniang gave up and gave ten more cakes to Mrs. Lin, the third wife of Wen.
Lin was now obedient. She took the bread, said thank you, and gave three pieces to each of her two daughters. She kept two for herself and gave the remaining two to her two maids and the servant.
As night fell, Patriarch Chen and Jiang Dahu assigned people to keep watch to prevent surprise attacks by bandits.
But this night was peaceful, and the bandits did not make any moves.
The next morning, the villagers were surprised to find that more than half of the bandits had disappeared from the mountain.
But the joy didn't last long, when someone suddenly exclaimed, "They destroyed the plank road!"
I saw that the plank road leading down had been dismantled, leaving only the wooden hoe hit on the cliff.
"Oh my God! What should we do?" someone burst into tears.
Without the plank road, there were steep cliffs below and they couldn't get down at all.
Patriarch Chen and Jiang Cunzheng hurried over to check, only to find that more than half of the plank road had been pried open and even the wooden stakes nailed to the cliff wall had been burned.
The plank road was destroyed. Are these people really going to be trapped to death in the cave
With so many people hiding in the cave, not to mention other things, getting water is a big problem.
But it's not raining at the moment, so it's a luxury to catch some rain water.
Without water, these people would not survive more than five days, even if they brought food up with them.
Everyone was in a panic and immediately checked the things they brought.
It would be nice if there was a rope so they could climb down.
However, the ropes they found were not enough to help people get down the cliff.
"What should we do, clan leader?" The people of Jiang Village were the most frightened because they had run out of water.
Jiang Dahu walked up to Patriarch Chen with his hands behind his back and said, "Brother Chen, let's think of a solution together."
Chen Fu had no idea what to do and turned his gaze to Old Man Jiang.
Old Man Jiang and his wife were not panicked. He remembered that he seemed to have brought two large bundles of ropes with him, so he had to look for them now to see if they were there.
Yingbao saw her grandparents rummaging for ropes and silently pulled two bundles out of the blankets, "Here."
Jiang Liu was overjoyed, "Oh, how come Baoer hid the rope under the quilt?"
Sakura: …
What could she do but accept it.
When everyone saw that there were two large bundles of ropes in Old Man Jiang's house, they gradually calmed down.
With so many ropes, we can definitely get to the bottom of the cliff.
Now that we have the means to escape, let the plank road be destroyed.
This is good, no one needs to keep watch at night, and everyone can sleep well.
In the afternoon, another group of bandits left, and now only sixty or seventy people were left holding their ground.
Uncle Jiang spat and said angrily: "I am being mourned for your grandfather..."
As soon as he said this, he realized something was wrong, and he made two "Pooh" sounds, then walked back and forth in the cliff cave with his hands behind his back to relieve his depression.
In the corner of the cliff cave, Yingbao quietly fed water to Youyou with a broken pottery bowl.
An old goose clucked and squeezed in front of Yingbao, pecking at the ceramic bowl in her hand.
I pushed its head away, and it stretched it towards me again, over and over again, its little eyes full of pleading.
Yingbao had no choice but to secretly pour a little more water into the ceramic bowl and let the old goose drink it.
After a while, a goat came running with its lamb, bleating and butting Yingbao with its head, almost knocking her over.
Yingbao gritted her teeth and glared at it, then had to get some more water and feed it to the mother and baby goats.
Before the goat finished drinking, two more sheep came running over, circling around Yingbao, and when she ignored them they butted her with their heads.
Now the two little puppies were unhappy. They barked at the sheep and jumped around to drive them to the other side.
But the goats still kept looking in Yingbao's direction, bleating and eager to try.
Big Yellow and Little Black stood in front of Yingbao, baring their teeth at the goats and making low threats.
Yingbao touched their heads and stuffed a small piece of biscuit into their mouths.
Water is in short supply now. People have nothing to drink, so how can they give water to poultry and livestock? Only because she keeps pouring water into her own gourd, there is not a drop of water left.
But this matter cannot be taken too far. My aunt and my mother have already started paying attention to the gourd and are beginning to wonder why there is always water in their gourds.