***
Liujia Village, 20 miles south of Yuanzhou, is surrounded by mountains on three sides. It has a total of about a hundred households, and more than 90% of them are tenants of the landlord Liu Baoren.
A few days ago, Liu Baoren's family heard that Zhang Xianzhong's rebels were heading towards Yuanzhou, so they fled to Ji'an Prefecture. The remaining tenants who were penniless did not want to leave their hometown to escape, and most of them chose to stay, including Liu Er's family.
Liu Er's idea was very simple. His family was so poor that they couldn't even afford their next meal, and there was nothing for the rebels to rob. Rather than living a life where he might starve to death at any time, it would be better to wait for the rebels to come and join them. There were many people in the village who shared Liu Er's idea.
Now the rebels have really arrived, with a thousand men marching over in a mighty procession. The general leading the troops rides a tall horse with four strong legs and carries a goose-feather knife on his shoulder. He looks around with an unruly look.
The men who stayed in the village all went to the entrance of the village to welcome them. Liu Er's uncle Liu Tuo, on behalf of the group, went up to the leader of the rebels and said, "Thank God, the rebels are here. General, all of us in the village are planning to stay and join the rebels. We hope you will take us in. We hope you will take us in..."
The rebel general who led the army was called Yu Da Neng. He seemed very happy after hearing Liu Tuo's words. He shook his goose-feather sword and laughed loudly, "Good, very good. Since you are willing to submit to my king, you are my people. I have been driving these thousand brothers for a long time. You should quickly prepare some wine and food to entertain them. Go quickly."
"General, we have no more food left at home..."
Yu Da Neng was furious when he heard this: "What did you say? You have to give a letter of surrender to my king. You want to submit to my king, and I asked you to provide a meal, but you refused. This is simply unreasonable. Come on, search the village."
At Yu Daneng's command, a thousand rebels rushed into the village like bandits. Liu Tuo tried to dissuade them, but Yu Daneng suddenly swung his knife. With a "poof!" sound, the goose-feather knife flashed like lightning, and Liu Tuo's head was chopped off and rolled in front of the villagers. Hundreds of villagers screamed in fear. Some stood up and tried to escape, but were immediately shot to death by the rebels. The rest had to crawl on the ground and kowtowed for mercy.
The rebels searched the village for a while, and then someone came out to report to Yu Da Neng: "General, there are only some women and children hiding in the village, and a small amount of rice and bran. There is nothing good to eat."
Yu Daneng cursed loudly, rode his warhorse to the villagers kneeling on the ground, and shouted: "Tell me quickly, where did you hide the food? Who dares to lie? He is your role model." Yu Daneng looked like a bandit, pointed his bloody goose-feather knife at Liu Tuo's body, like a demon devouring people. Some of the villagers kneeling on the ground were so scared that they urinated. One by one, they kowtowed and begged for mercy.
"General, spare my life."
"General, please spare my life. I am willing to serve you at your side..."
Yu Daneng was indifferent to the villagers' pleas for mercy. He had experienced countless similar scenes. He liked the thrill of life and death. He pointed his sword again and shouted, "You, tell me, where is the food hidden?"
"Reply...Reply...General, we don't have enough to eat on weekdays, and we really don't have any food stored..."
Poof! The villager next to Liu Er was hacked to death before he could finish his words. Although his head was not chopped off, his neck was broken and his head tilted to one side, leaving only some flesh and skin attached to the body. Blood sprayed on Liu Er's face, and he was so scared that he buried his face in the dirt, trembling all over.
At this moment, a cry was heard. Liu Er looked up and saw that his wife, who had been hiding at home, had just rushed out of the door when she was held down by several rebels who had chased out from behind. The rebels tore off his wife's tattered clothes with lewd smiles. His wife kept crying and struggling, but how could she defeat the rebels and was soon stripped naked.
One of the rebels pulled up his trousers, lifted up his wife's two white thighs and pressed on her. Liu Er's five-year-old son ran out from home crying, "Let my mother go, let my mother go, mother..." Without even turning his head, the rebel chopped with his backhanded knife, splitting Liu Er's five-year-old son's head open, and instantly he was unrecognizable.
Liu Er felt as if the knife had struck him on the head. His brain buzzed as if it had exploded. "You sons of a bitch, I'm going to fight you, you beasts..."
Liu Er jumped up and rushed towards his wife, shouting. Yu Daneng laughed and the goose-feather knife flew out of his hand and pierced into Liu Er's back with a puff. Liu Er turned around unwillingly, his eyes wide open, and cursed with difficulty: "You beasts, you must... must not die a good death..."
Puff! Puff! More than ten powerful arrows shot into Liu Er's body. Liu Er fell to the ground like a hedgehog, and his blood dyed a large area of yellow earth red.
Yu Daneng rushed to retrieve his goose-feather knife, turned around and shouted to the villagers who were kneeling on the ground and trembling: "I will ask you one last question, where is the food hidden?"
No one answered. The villagers who stayed behind were all very poor. They could not even afford three meals a day, so where would they store the food? But they could not answer that they had no food, because if they did, they would die.
Yu Da Neng was furious, and sneered: "Okay, okay, you really won't cry until you see the coffin. Come on, chop up all these troublemakers, throw them into the pot and cook them. It will be lunch for the brothers. Don't forget to throw in some wild onions for seasoning."
Cannibalism, these two words are disgusting even in peaceful times, but they are common in chaotic times like the late Ming Dynasty.
In the Central Plains, which had suffered from more than ten years of war and had long been a barren land, not only did the rebels eat people, but even ordinary people often cannibalized their own children in order to survive.
The villagers of Liujia Village wanted to join the rebels, but because they could not afford a meal, they were massacred. The men were beheaded, dismembered, and thrown into a big pot to cook.
After the women hiding in their homes were searched out, they were stripped naked on the spot, pressed to the ground and raped by the rebels. Even old women in their fifties and sixties and girls of four or five years old were not spared.
Screams and cries echoed in Liujia Village, blood and tears flowed all over the ground, but not only did they not win any sympathy, but the reaction made the rebels feel more comfortable in killing and killing, and they became even more evil... ... ... .
***
Qin Mu led two thousand men to Yuanzhou. In order to save time and conceal his whereabouts, he took a shortcut and ran into Liujia Village. After receiving the tragic scene of Liujia Village from the scouts ahead, Qin Mu's face was filled with black lines, and the two thousand soldiers were also filled with anger.
Putting aside the empty righteousness of protecting the people, Qin Mu's team trained hard day and night in Huichang, getting wounded every day, and some of his comrades even died of serious injuries during training. After such arduous training, what was the purpose of shedding so much blood and sweat
Apart from the motivation of generous salaries, who doesn't want to prove his or her worth on the battlefield
Qin Mu did not hesitate at all. He stood up on his warhorse. With a clang, the Juque sword flew out of its sheath with a cold light. He pointed the sword forward and shouted, "Brothers, no matter how sharp a sword is, it will never show its edge if it is not unsheathed. In the past few months, you have trained hard and shed countless blood and sweat just to sharpen yourselves into an indestructible sword. Now, it's time for you to unsheath your swords. Are you ready?"
"We're ready." Two thousand soldiers roared in unison, their voices shaking the mountains.
"Okay! Now follow my battle flag. Charge forward and crush the enemies in front of you. Use the blood and flesh of the enemies to temper your edge! Let all enemies become corpses under your edge!"
Liujia Village is surrounded by mountains on three sides. Only the east side is relatively open, with ten miles of rice fields that have not yet sprouted, and a vast expanse of green. In the middle, a loess road that can accommodate three war horses leads directly to Liujia Village. A large Qin-character flag flutters in the wind, and under the flag, a black dragon swims along the loess road and rushes straight to Liujia Village.
The rebels in the village received the report from the sentry and hurried out of the village to form a battle line. Although their number was reduced by half, they were not afraid because since Nanchang, they had swept across Huguang with unstoppable force and were invincible. Wherever they passed, officers and soldiers either surrendered or fled, which had already made these rebels arrogant and domineering.
With a defiant look on his face, Yu Daneng spat out the human flesh in his mouth fiercely, pointed his goose-feather knife suddenly, and shouted arrogantly: "Brothers, I am too lazy to say any more nonsense, rush out and chop the hell out of them. After chopping these blind things, we can go back and eat big chunks of meat and drink big bowls of wine. Charge!"
The thousand rebels howled and howled. As Yu Da Neng rushed out, the two sides approached each other quickly along the loess road like two torrents.
Qin Mu was not surprised by the arrogant counterattack of the rebels. They had been rampant for thousands of miles without ever being defeated, so it was normal for them to be a little arrogant.
However, in Qin Mu's imagination, the rebels were all rioters, and Zhang Xianzhong advanced too quickly, so he certainly had no time to train his troops, so the rebels certainly had no rules to fight.
But what surprised him was that the formation of the rebels in front of him was very neat. On such a narrow loess road, there were six or seven people in each row, and they were still able to keep the formation in order while running. The front few rows were holding spears, and a little bit behind were archers, and those behind were unclear.
He didn't have time to think, as the two armies quickly approached each other. In such a narrow space, the archers could not spread out and form a powerful volley. After entering the shooting range, both sides fired a few arrows sparsely. Ultimately, a head-on collision would determine the winner.
"When two brave men meet in a narrow road, the brave one wins. Kill!" Qin Mu roared with his sword in hand.
As soon as he patted his warhorse, Meng Ke, Liu Meng and other brave generals rushed out silently, one holding a long sword and the other holding a mace, rushing out like two killing gods.
The arrogant Yu Da Neng was intimidated by the momentum of the two men and finally showed a look of fear, but it was too late. Meng Ke and Liu Meng rushed towards him on horseback at the same time. The loess road could only accommodate three horses running side by side at most, so there was no way to avoid them.
As soon as they met, Meng Ke swung his sword wildly. There was a sound of metal clashing, and Yu Da Neng's Yanling sword was knocked away.
Before he could react further, Liu Meng's huge mace had already been smashed down like a mountain, bang! Yu Daneng's huge head was smashed into pieces like a watermelon, and his brain and blood splattered like rain;
Qin Mu, who was chasing closely behind Liu Meng, was splashed all over and couldn't even open his eyes.
None of the thousands of rebels had expected that their leader's head would be smashed into a rotten watermelon after a confrontation. The scene of brains splattering was so shocking that every rebel who saw it felt their scalps tingling and screamed in shock. Their morale immediately plummeted. The rebels in the front rows were so scared that they kept retreating and collided with the rebels behind them.
It's no wonder they did so. Any army would be routed if its commander was beheaded in the first encounter. Besides, they were not elite soldiers who had fought in hundreds of battles. The reason they were invincible in Huguang was not because they were so powerful, but because the officers and soldiers were too incompetent. They abandoned the city and fled before the enemy arrived.
They were used to winning battles, and although they had become more unruly and arrogant, there was no qualitative change. Once their leading general died, they immediately became a group of scattered sand.
Meng Ke and Liu Meng were like two giant plows, plowing along the loess road. The shadows of their swords flew like rainbows, and their maces swept like the wind. The rebels on the road were like the soil under the plows, being plowed and rolling to both sides.
Liu Meng's giant mace seemed much more domineering. With his roar, every time he swept it out, he could knock down a group of rebels. What he liked most was to hit them in the head, as if only in this way could he vent the hatred in his heart. One by one, the rebels' heads exploded and their brains splattered. They died in extremely tragic ways. The rest were so scared that they cried for their parents and fled.
At first, Meng Ke and his companion had to hack and hack wildly with their weapons, but after they rushed a few feet, the frightened rebels fled into the paddy fields on both sides without waiting for them to kill them, and there was no one on the road where they were charging.
Qin Mu wiped the blood off his face and couldn't help but sigh in his heart. Using Meng Ke and Liu Meng to charge was like using a butcher knife to kill a pig. These two guys should fight desperately with the fierce Tartars instead of being used to deal with a group of mobs.
With them in the front, Qin Mu had no chance to kill anyone, and even Huo Sheng, Cui Feng and other brave generals didn't get a single chance to kill anyone. They were so angry that they jumped off their horses and rushed into the paddy fields. The two thousand brave soldiers behind them followed suit and immediately rushed into the paddy fields, chasing and killing the frightened rebels.
The rice in the paddy fields had not yet sprouted, but as soon as they stepped foot in the mud, it covered their feet. Some people lost their shoes, and some fell and were covered in mud, but they didn't care and continued to chase barefoot. Looking around, the paddy fields were full of human figures, knives, and mud splashing everywhere. The rice that was growing well suffered and was trampled into pieces.
Qin Mu's two thousand soldiers were filled with resentment. Qin Mu had repeatedly stressed that the first battle must be fought with great force and the enemy must be terrified. Now, a good first battle has turned out like this, chasing in a rice field full of mud;
Although the rebels were chopped into pieces like the rice in the fields, as the victorious side, they were covered in mud and looked equally miserable, which made the fruits of victory seem less glorious.
Because of the resentment in their hearts, the rebels could not escape the fate of being hunted down even if they tried their best to escape ten miles. No matter how fast they ran, there were always a few "mud men" following them. It was common for Qin Mu's army to run ten kilometers with loads, and in terms of speed, few could match them.
They don't intend to let a single rebel go. I let you rape and plunder, I let you cook and eat human flesh, I let you lose all conscience, and more importantly, I let you make me covered in mud. Kill! Leave no one alive... ... ... ...
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