He was furious when he saw Xu Mo being treated unfairly.
He was heartbroken when he discovered that the injustice done to Xu Mo was inflicted by the Fang family.
When Xu Mo joined forces with the aristocratic families to secure a second chance at the imperial examination, he stomped his feet in delight.
"Has the captain gone mad?" Jiang Er whispered to Jiang Yi.
"You don't understand," Jiang Yi said calmly. "A letter from home is worth a fortune; the words may be light, but the sentiment is profound."
“That’s true.” Jiang Er nodded. “The captain received two thick stacks of letters this time.”
As he spoke, Fang Heng had already finished reading the first letter and, with tears in his eyes, opened the second one.
Um?
Exactly the same?
Not a single detail missing?
Fang Heng thought he was seeing things. He flipped through the pages from beginning to end, but there was no difference. Then he looked at the recipient on the cover and realized, well, it was Zheng Ruqian.
"The letter meant for my second brother was sent to me, which means he didn't go back either." The clever ones had already begun to speculate, "Then isn't the cheating in the imperial examinations only being carried out by my eldest brother and younger siblings?"
It's hateful that he can't go back; he can only watch helplessly as the Fang family bullies his elder brother and his younger siblings.
Resentment made Fang Heng grip the long sword tightly, while anger gave him the urge to slash.
"Captain," Jiang Er stood up alertly, "Should we go practice some formations?"
After Fang Heng took command of the Fifth Squad, he not only gave special training to the new recruits in the squad, but also taught the veterans the Fang family's unique battle formation, which could limit the Tartar cavalry to the greatest extent.
They all liked formations because ten people working together could exert the power of twenty, which was truly amazing.
Unexpectedly, Fang Heng gritted his teeth and said fiercely, "Go to the grasslands."
The fifth squad was in an uproar.
I still remember that after the end of the year, Fang Heng learned from Wang Xiaosong and others' experience and actually sent Jiang Qi and Jiang Ba to act as cargo merchants.
At first, the two groups of Tartars merely observed, until they confirmed that the two children were indeed transporting goods, at which point more than a dozen men rushed out to rob and kill them.
In the blink of an eye, the others who had been lying in ambush inside the carriage rushed out and wiped them out, and the horse was also confiscated and added to the army.
Because no survivors were left, the Tartars only knew that their brothers in front were dead, but did not know how they died, and many more were sacrificed one after another.
In mid-April, a Tartar soldier managed to escape and revealed the ambush.
Since then, the nearby trade routes have become much safer.
The Tartars found it extremely difficult to tell whether the carriage contained goods or the Dayu army wielding sharp blades.
They couldn't understand how the people of Dayu could squeeze into a horse-drawn carriage to eat, drink, and relieve themselves all day long.
They couldn't send large forces to fight and kill, so they had to abandon their looting and let the merchants in this area go.
The fifth squad immediately lost interest.
Unfortunately, the weather got hot, and the Tartars retreated from the northern frontier to return to the grasslands to graze their cattle and sheep, leaving the team members feeling even more empty and lonely.
As the saying goes, "An army is raised for a thousand days to be used for one."
On days when there is no war, the soldiers, apart from training, might be lucky enough to be sent home to visit their families. The rest of them chop wood, feed horses, plant crops and water vegetables, and some even have to help the villagers rebuild their homes, building walls and laying tiles, and tending stoves.
If they are just people who want to live a life of idleness and waiting to die, it doesn't matter what they do.
Having just defeated the Tartars, they were full of fighting spirit and unwilling to waste time.
At this moment, Fang Heng's suggestion was exactly what everyone wanted to hear.
"We can't just let the Tartars kill and plunder us, robbing whenever they want and going back to herding cattle and sheep whenever they want!" Jiang Yi said firmly. "We didn't provoke them before because the national treasury was empty and we needed to cultivate the land to ensure next year's food supply. But now that the Second Young Master is sending us meat, we have a strong backing. We can take the initiative and rob the Tartars of their cattle and sheep!"
This was just something to boost morale.
In fact, the reason why the Dayu Dynasty was passively attacked for so many years was not only because the national treasury was empty, but also because there were too many defense lines and the troops were scattered and stationed in various corners.
The Tartars, however, were united in their efforts, striking with a whip here and a kick there, advancing as one retreated, chasing as the other fled.
They could kill, burn, loot, and still return in triumph.
In contrast, the Dayu Dynasty suffered countless casualties and could not cede territory, so it could only struggle to hold on.
For example, at the end of April, the Tartars suffered a loss at the Fifth Squad, and then turned around and killed hundreds of people at the Sixth Squad, including the captain of the Sixth Squad.
With their retreat finally achieved, the Dayu Dynasty breathed a sigh of relief and began to recuperate, strengthen its training, and prepare for the resistance in the coming year.
But on what grounds?
Why should we keep enduring the harassment of the Tartars and keep being passively attacked?
The horses of Dayu were not as fine as those of the Tartars, and the soldiers of Dayu were not as skilled in riding and archery as the Tartars, but Dayu had Sun Tzu's Art of War, good strategists, and countless agile and capable young men.
Fang Heng counted the members of the fifth squad: the agile ones charged forward, the average ones brought up the rear, and the less skilled ones stayed behind to continue training.
You don't know until you find out, and then you're shocked.
Other teams have at most two or three hundred people, and some have as few as a hundred.
The fifth squad had unknowingly grown to five or six hundred men. Excluding those who were not skilled, there were about three hundred men who could fight on horseback.
This is quite a bit of power, but it shouldn't be squandered or wasted.
Fang Heng repeatedly drew horizontal lines on the map, finally settling on a grassland relatively close to the northern frontier. "The Tartars are shrewd and fierce. The Dayu has also tried to counterattack in recent years. The people they left behind on the outer perimeter are all strong tribesmen."
But precisely because of this, once these people are gone, the Tartars will feel as if their flesh has been torn out.
“But Captain, they have five or six hundred men. We can’t possibly beat them,” Jiang Wu warned. “We have at most three hundred men, and only a little over a hundred of them are elite.”
Therefore, a direct attack is not advisable.
You must entice them.
Fang Heng's gaze darted back and forth between Jiang Wu and Jiang Ba, finally settling on Jiang Ba.
"Captain, you've already made me pretend to be a merchant, what else do you want me to pretend to be?" Jiang Ba felt a chill run down his spine, feeling desolate and helpless.
Fang Heng stared intently at him, uttering two words: "woman."
A delicate and frail woman from Chongqing who accidentally got lost.
In the past, the Oirat Mongols used hundreds of old, weak, sick and disabled people to lure our people out of the city, resulting in the death of the general and the complete defeat of the army (excerpt from the History of Ming). Now, Jiang Ba sacrificed himself to disguise himself as a woman and instead lured the Tartars to lower their guard.
Despite his own cries and shouts, "No, no, I am a son of the Great Yu, I am a soldier, I will charge into battle, I will not be a woman."
But her brothers still carried her into the tent, forcibly stripped her of her armor, and dressed her in the dress of a woman who had been waiting to be married.
Then Jiang Wu skillfully dressed her up.
Whoa, which delicate and innocent young girl has wandered into this grassland by mistake?
The Tartar lookout wasn't stupid either; he became wary and stepped forward, brandishing his sword.
But the girl's weeping was so pitiful that she didn't even dare to dodge the knife, which made them tease and play with her.
When they turned around, they saw the sharp blade raised high, and the frail, boneless woman was nowhere to be seen.
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