In the middle of the night, there was a sudden burst of gunfire outside and the sound of shouting and killing shook the sky.
I heard that the fighting outside was extremely fierce.
It was obvious that it was a surprise attack by Ma Quanyou's troops. Apparently he had prepared everything. As long as he failed to contact Tuoba Lan, he would launch an attack that night.
At daybreak, the sporadic gunfire gradually subsided. Although Chen Xingchang had made preparations, he obviously did not expect Ma Quanyou to turn against him like this and to attack him in a large scale. Chen Xingchang's troops were scattered among three large tribes. Although they had the largest number of troops, they were eventually defeated. Chen Xingchang fled with a few guards.
Lu Ming and Tuoba Lan followed Chen Xingchang's fleeing team, all riding horses. Only Lu Ming and Tuoba Lan rode Xiao Hei. When running long distances, Xiao Hei's leg strength was not inferior to that of horses.
Lu Ming helped Datong and his acquaintance's family escape from the tribe during the chaos. They agreed to meet again at this oasis in half a month. Now they can seek refuge in a small tribe not far away.
In fact, Lu Ming could have taken Tuoba Lan and others to meet Ma Quanyou's soldiers.
Seeing that Ma Quanyou was powerful and Chen Xingchang was weak, Lu Ming adjusted his original plan.
A few days later, more than ten riders led by Chen Xingchang and two men and a cow led by Lu Ming arrived at a wooden village halfway up the mountain. It was a mountain settlement, but there were no adult men in the settlement. It was thought that the mountain people were too tough and unwilling to surrender, so Chen Xingchang killed all the young and strong men.
Chen Xingchang stationed several hundred soldiers here.
Although Chen Xingchang's troops immediately began to defend, people were in a panic. First of all, they had little ammunition left.
Weapons and ammunition, in this wild land, will only become less and less, and there is no replenishment at all.
The bandits in the White Sea have existed for hundreds of years, but they only have some homemade muskets, and use primitive methods to make gunpowder and bullets for firearms.
In the afternoon, Ma Quanyou's pursuers arrived. There were more than a hundred riders. They did not rush to attack, but naturally waited for Ma Quanyou's infantry battalion to arrive.
Seeing the miserable condition of the villagers in the mountain village, Lu Ming's plan gradually took shape.
Lu Ming didn't want to watch how the battle would go, so he took the opportunity to take Tuoba Lan and Xiao Hei out and escape from here.
…
A thatched hut of a small tribe.
Lu Ming and Da Tong were gesticulating and drawing, meaning that they wanted to contact all the tribes here, big and small, to unite and drive away these foreign and brutal rulers.
Da Tong's face was filled with fear, and he used a branch to draw the shape of a rifle or other firearm spraying on the sand.
Lu Ming gestured to tell him that sooner or later the terrible fire inside this thing would burn out, and in the end, it would just turn into hand-to-hand combat with bayonets.
Da Tong seemed not to understand and just shook his head.
The bronze-skinned woman standing next to Lu Ming suddenly started to yell angrily.
She is the woman rescued by Lu Ming, and now she has become Lu Ming's loyal fan. Lu Ming calls her Bronze Girl.
Obviously, Tongnu hated the brutal foreign invaders to her core.
Datong shook his head helplessly, but finally agreed to contact the various departments first.
Tongnu's anger turned into joy, and she followed Lu Ming's example, expressing her admiration for Datong by raising her thumbs.
Everyone "disbanded" and left the thatched hut together, each doing what they planned.
Tuoba Lan was standing blankly beside Xiao Hei outside the thatched hut.
This is a small tribe with more than a dozen households and a hundred people.
Originally a vassal of the big tribe where Tongnu lived, Tongnu's family had a certain status here.
It seemed that all the great leaders of the Bronze Girl Tribe were killed, and her family became one of the highest-ranking surviving families.
"You, you came here to deal with the Khan, right?" Seeing Lu Ming, Tuoba Lan suddenly asked, with extremely complicated eyes.
Lu Ming nodded: "Yes, but I have no ill will towards you."
Tuoba Lan sighed softly, turned her head and ignored him.
…
When it was time to go to bed, Tongnu enthusiastically took Lu Ming and Tuoba Lan to a thatched hut and gestured as if to mean that the three of them should sleep together.
There are only twenty or so thatched huts in this small tribe, and using a vacated hut for the three of them to live together is already considered the most honorable treatment.
The rest of Tongnu's family, including a dozen people, had to squeeze together in a thatched hut.
Tuoba Lan looked extremely sad and dejected, and he lay straight on the hardwood board covered with hay, like a corpse.
Maybe I just think it's dirty, so I don't care.
The water here is extremely precious, so people bathe with sand and only use a little water to wash their private parts at the end.
Lu Ming also experienced the hot sand bath today, and can only say that it was very sour and refreshing.
Tongnu came again to invite Lu Ming to sit on the hardwood bed of hay, but Lu Ming waved his hand, indicating that he was used to sleeping sitting down. After that, he sat down on the floor and went to busy himself with his own things outside. He knew that Tongnu came over to chat with him, but he ignored her. After a while, Tongnu felt bored and went to sleep.
…
The war that broke out between Ma Quanyou and Chen Xingchang was very brutal, and the two sides fought several fierce battles.
Chen Xingchang also launched a surprise attack on a tribe occupied by Ma Quanyou, where Ma Quanyou’s last ammunition depot was located.
Before they could move much ammunition, they set it on fire.
As the ammunition of both sides became less and less, the powerful Ma family army completely gained the upper hand, and the shining sabers became a nightmare for the remnants of Chen Xingchang.
Although in theory, the bayonet is more practical than the saber in hand-to-hand combat.
Chen Xingchang had an established infantry battalion of 500 men, which was also a fully staffed battalion reorganized after entering the desert. Because they had run out of bullets, they raised the white flag and surrendered, but in the end these hundreds of people were still brutally killed.
As a result, Chen Xingchang lost his last armed force and the rest of his men disappeared.
…
In the thatched hut, Lu Ming looked at a picture in his hand. It was a picture of extremely large dry grass leaves drawn with red rice soup.
There is no paper or pen here, and the tribesmen have no written language, but they use this method to make simple notes.
This is a map of the settlement distribution within the surrounding area of approximately 100,000 square kilometers.
The distances are marked in several days according to the gestures of Tongnu, Ertong, Santong, etc.
The location of the tribe must vary greatly, but it has a general shape.
If you randomly set the top of the map as north, you can see that, with the Tongnu tribe as the center, there are forty or fifty tribes of varying sizes within this area of more than 100,000 square kilometers.
There are seven large tribes, and now all of them are occupied by Ma Quanyou's tribe, which manages all the tribes.
The entry and exit of tribesmen are no longer affected. For example, the Tongnu tribe has already established contact with the inside.
After all, Ma Quanyou felt that the matter had been settled and he had become the sole ruler here. These slaves had to return to normal life so that they could collect resources to support him and his men.
Ma Quanyou stationed more than a hundred people in the Tongnu tribe. Among the seven tribes, six of them had more than a hundred people stationed there. In the tribe that he regarded as the Khan's headquarters, there were more than a thousand people.
Ma Quanyou was very cruel. Basically, he dealt with the soldiers who were seriously injured in the war with Chen Xingchang directly, including those who might become disabled. They were all executed to avoid having to support more useless people. As a result, there are probably less than two thousand survivors now.
I guess the ammunition is almost used up.
Lu Ming pointed to the oasis Bronze Women's Tribe not far from this small tribe and gestured. Now Da Tong could almost completely understand what he meant.
There were many young men with fighting spirit in their eyes standing nearby. When they heard Datong's gibberish as the translator, they raised their fists, beat their chests and howled.
He contacted and gathered three to four hundred strong warriors from various tribes. Tomorrow, Lu Ming would prepare to launch a night attack on Ma Quanyou’s garrison of the Tongnu tribe.
Before entering the desert, they had never thought that they could use the tribes here to wipe out the two rebel forces, and it was very likely that the war would turn into a cold weapon war. Think about it, when Ma Quanyou and others retreated here, they had never thought that there would be such an embarrassing day.