novelAbuy Chapter 220 Defeating the Thieves
Chapter 220 Defeating the Thieves
The rest period was long, and it wasn't until the sun was setting and the prefect Zhang Yang was about to lose his patience that Shao Shuyi finally led his men out. Fifty or sixty men, fully equipped, set out from Xia City, traversing the field ridges and dirt roads, and arrived at the foot of the mountain.
A rider came from behind the mountain, dismounted his mule, and quickly stepped forward, whispering something to Shao Shuyi.
Shao Shuyi waved his hand, and the man mounted the mule and headed back to the back of the mountain.
The sun was setting over the western hills, and a cool breeze swept by. Shao Shuyi looked around; they were situated on a patch of wasteland between two rice paddies. The fifty-six of them were arranged in a fairly neat square formation.
The twenty patrol archers were divided into two groups, ten men each, located on the east and west sides.
In front were four or five swordsmen or spearmen, with archers behind them, who were now fully armed.
The archers in the patrol office were the men brought by Shao Shuyi.
Li Fu and Gao Daqiang's two teams, totaling twenty-eight men, formed four columns, fully armed with swords and spears, ready for battle.
Between Li's and Gao's teams stood eight people, including Shao Shuyi.
This is all the force we have for today's battle. We outnumber the enemy by more than three times. If we are still overwhelmed, then forget about rebellion. We might as well find a good place and live a life of luxury.
The sun sank a little lower, and the wind seemed to pick up, making the tall spear, the tiger on Li Fu's back, and the crane flag flap loudly. Under Tie Niu's protection, Shao Shuyi took a step forward, the weapons at his waist clanging.
He quickly arrived at the front lines, nodded to Zeng Yi and Wei Dayong (former subordinates of Ji Wu) who were leading the battle, and then looked at Tie Niu. Tie Niu reluctantly handed the spear to Wei Dayong.
Wei Dayong snatched it, and walked alongside Zeng Yi, raising the spear high, cursing loudly as they went.
"Hey! You bunch of idiots, so arrogant! Do you even recognize your Grandpa Wei? Why aren't you coming down the mountain to be bound? If you utter even half a word of 'no,' I'll give you a hundred slaps on the neck!"
Zeng Yi listened from the side, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
He's ruthless when it comes to killing, but he's not so good at cursing; he's far inferior to Wei Dayong, the former ruffian from Jiangyin.
Wei Dayong was still cursing, shaking the human head on his spear as he did so, saying, "This scoundrel, with his three-pointed, two-edged appearance, dared to come to Jiangyin to cause trouble. Now look what's happened, his head is gone, and his donkey's heart and lungs have been ripped out. He deserved to learn a lesson."
Wei Dayong had a loud voice and used foul language. He shook his head as he cursed, his words full of sarcasm.
Zeng Yi was quite unconvinced and shouted with all his might, "You son of a bitch! What are you hiding for? If you've got the guts, come down the mountain and fight your grandpa for three hundred rounds!"
After saying this, Wei Dayong's lips twitched, but he quickly changed the subject, following Zeng Yi's lead, and said, "Fuck you! Are you all consumptive like this three-pointed double-edged sword? If so, you might as well find a latrine and drown yourselves, so you don't dirty my knife."
There was movement in the woods ahead.
"I'll fuck your mother!" A burly man emerged from the woods, furious and fuming.
Wei Dayong laughed heartily, getting even more into the mood, and shouted, "Tell your mother to wash herself clean quickly, I don't mind that she's old."
"Beasts!" More men emerged, brandishing sharp blades and shouting insults.
Looking closely from a distance, Shao Shuyi saw more than a dozen figures walking slowly down the mountain path.
Zeng Yi and Wei Dayong continued to provoke, carrying human heads, but they quietly retreated a distance, getting closer to the main force. The Huai bandits moved faster and faster, and soon they were down the mountain, only a hundred paces away from Shao Shuyi and the others.
They were all dressed in short black khakis, their trousers tucked into their boots, with leather belts around their waists, and each carried at least one knife.
The leader was a one-eyed man with a scar across his left eye that split his eyebrow in two. His steps were steady, each one seemingly rooted to the ground. Behind him followed a dozen or so men of varying heights and builds, but they all shared one thing in common: they walked with slightly hunched backs and bent knees. This was the way of those who had spent years licking blood from the edge of a knife, a way of walking that suggested they could strike at any moment and draw their swords at any time.
After seeing the formation of Shao Shuyi's group, they stopped.
The one-eyed man scrutinized him for a while, then suddenly laughed.
He turned to look at the person behind him and said, "Just a pretty face."
A burly man with a full beard, who was closest to him, chuckled and said, "I could crush ten of these archers with one hand." Upon hearing this, the others slowly suppressed their anger and looked at the people lined up down the mountain with cold eyes.
The one-eyed man pulled out a knife from behind his back.
It was a horse-slaying saber, its blade more than a foot longer than an ordinary ring-handled sword, with a thick back and a double-edged tip, gleaming blood-red in the setting sun. He held the sword horizontally in front of him, flicked the blade with his finger, producing a crisp sound, then raised it and pointed it in Shao Shuyi's direction. A dozen or so men moved simultaneously.
They didn't run, but walked briskly, their steps synchronized, like wolves closing in on their prey.
The one-eyed man walked at the front, followed by two people on each side, forming an inverted triangle; behind him, eight people were divided into two rows of four, with a gap of about ten feet in the middle.
Ninety steps, eighty steps...
Just then, loud shouts and battle cries rang out from the mountain.
Someone lit the firewood, and thick smoke billowed up into the sky.
Bian Yuanheng took the lead, holding a shield in his left hand and a knife in his right, and rushed towards the wooden house where the Huai bandits had previously been holding.
There are three people staying at the wooden house.
The person closest to him was filled with astonishment, but reacted extremely quickly. Upon seeing Bian Yuanheng, he advanced instead of retreating and swung his knife to slash.
As Bian Yuanheng raised his shield to parry, he flicked his wrist, instantly pinning the enemy's ring-blade beneath the shield. With a swift swing of his right hand, a cold light shot straight towards the thief's neck. The thief instinctively leaned back, dodging the horizontal slash of the ring-blade. Just as he was adjusting his stance, he felt a sharp pain in his lower abdomen and was sent flying backward.
After landing with a thud, it struggled for a couple of moments but was unable to get up.
More than ten "guys" rushed up, and three archers nocked their arrows and fired a barrage of shots at the wooden house.
Ten paces away, three arrows pierced the air, but two missed and one was blocked by a sword. There was nothing they could do; the Bian team had been formed too recently, and the three archers had only just learned to shoot arrows, so their accuracy was not very good.
However, their actions startled the two thieves, causing them to panic.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Bian Yuanheng rushed forward and, before the enemy could react, slashed the thief's shoulder and neck, leaving them a bloody mess.
Having succeeded, he didn't linger. He raised his shield to block the last bandit's spear thrust at him, then lunged forward and thrust his blade forward. The bandit immediately abandoned his spear, rolled on the ground, and dodged Bian Yuanheng's subsequent downward slash.
Just as he was about to draw his sword, another horizontal slash came, but he had no choice but to jump back, narrowly avoiding the blade that grazed his chest.
Unexpectedly, Bian Yuanheng moved with incredible speed, covering the distance of two steps in an instant. The gleaming blade grew larger and larger in his eyes until it slashed diagonally across his face. A blood-curdling scream rang out.
The last thief, after abandoning his gun, remained passive and never had a chance to draw his ring knife before dying a frustrating death at the hands of Bian Yuanheng.
"Advance with a great clamor, and attack the enemy from behind," Bian Yuanheng ordered, turning his head.
Having said that, he once again took the lead and charged down the mountain.
As early as when the Huai bandits came down the mountain, Liang Tai arrived at the front, level with the swordsmen and shieldmen, holding a bull horn in one hand.
Swordsman Wu Shangyuan gripped his sword hilt tightly, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Liang Tai, who stood there calmly, silently observing when he would blow the horn. The enemy was only fifty paces away.
A muffled horn blast broke the stillness.
"Release the arrows!" Li Fu and Gao Daqiang released the bowstrings.
Two teams of eight bows fired simultaneously.
The bowstring hummed, and the arrows drew arcs in the air, some high, some low, some to the left, some to the right, falling sparsely like a light rain.
The one-eyed man reacted the instant the arrow left the bowstring.
He suddenly dodged to the left, and an arrow grazed his right arm before embedding itself in the ground behind him.
At the same moment, the four men behind him raised the small round shields strapped to their left arms—they were made of willow branches and covered with cowhide, light yet sturdy—and deflected several arrows with a clang.
Of the eight men behind, two were hit by arrows; one was lodged in the shoulder, and the other, less fortunate, was struck squarely in the face, collapsing to the ground with a muffled groan. "Whoosh! Whoosh!" The archers from the patrol unit, positioned on the east and west sides, also fired.
Seven or eight arrows flew out crookedly, most of them missing their mark or being blocked. Only one arrow landed on the thigh of a thief, causing a muffled groan. It was the middle-aged archer who shot it.
After he finished shooting, he felt a little annoyed.
Normally, he would have been able to hit the target, but today his emotions were running high and he couldn't calm down. In addition, the southeast wind was very strong, and he misjudged the wind force, so he only wounded the enemy and failed to kill him on the spot.
After seeing that this round of shooting was ineffective, the archers of the patrol division turned pale. If it weren't for the effective pre-battle mobilization they had received earlier, they would have already run away like they had a few days ago.
Forty steps.
Zeng Yi and Wei Dayong had already retreated. The former used his sword and shield again, while the latter took a hook-and-sickle spear and stood behind the sword and shield bearers.
Suddenly, several men sprang out from the rear of the Huai bandits' ranks, nocked arrows, and fired repeatedly.
Shao Shuyi, whose face was firmly shielded by Tie Niu and the others, narrowed his eyes. They were actually shooting while on the move. These bandits were quite skilled. You see, most of the men he trained had taken turns learning archery, but they could only aim and shoot from a standing position. They couldn't shoot while moving. Static shooting and shooting while on the move are two completely different things.
These bandits were quite fierce. They first withstood a volley of arrows, then fired while moving after closing to within forty paces. Judging from the way they drew their bows, their arm strength was obviously not weak. The arrows were powerful and heavy. After piercing the air, one arrow slammed into the shield that Tie Niu was holding high, one landed on the shield in front of Liang Tai, one flew past the heads of the crowd, and the last one landed on the chest of the spearman Guo Xian, causing him to scream and fall to the ground.
Thirty steps.
The thirteen thieves became eleven, but the remaining men did not stop. They did not even lose their footing, but simply increased their speed, going from a brisk walk to a jog.
The bandit, wounded in the shoulder, gritted his teeth, snapped the arrow shaft in half, and continued charging forward.
The bearded man had already charged to the front, his round shield still stuck with two arrows, making it look like it had two horns.
These thieves were indeed fierce and desperate; no wonder the archers and militiamen of the patrol office were utterly defeated when they faced them.