Chapter 572: Let's Fight! Let's Fight (Part 2) [Requesting Monthly Tickets]
As is well known, Zheng Qiao had massacred cities several times to vent his anger.
However, some massacres are not simply about killing people, because there is no profit to be made. What do soldiers fight for? Ultimately, it's just to make a living. Except for a very few bloodthirsty, perverted, and inhuman individuals, very few people treat killing as entertainment.
The city was locked down and besieged.
The ultimate goal was to plunder money. It was also a "reward" for the soldiers under their command. Because their regular pay was meager, they needed to "reward" their soldiers to ensure their loyalty and willingness to fight. They robbed money, food, and women; whoever got what they wanted kept it.
The wealthy families in the city were the first to be affected.
Every single one of them, no one can escape.
Secondly, there are the "middle class" in the city.
The lowest class are the common people, who constitute the largest group.
The common people in the city were willing to hand over their money to survive for a day, but none of them were stupid. How could the latter easily hand over their entire fortune? And how could the former believe that such a small amount was a family's life savings?
The more money the common people hid, the less the soldiers who came to plunder would gain; there was an irreconcilable "contradiction" between the two. Some soldiers might initially be moved by the common people's pleas, but doing so would only result in watching others get rich.
These soldiers needed to make a living; they had young children to feed and parents to care for. Supporting them required money and provisions. Only by getting rich could they live a good life. How to get rich? Naturally, by using every means to extract more money.
These soldiers began to "involve".
The methods of threats and coercion have gradually escalated.
Initially, intimidation and beatings were effective, but soon even physical violence failed to extract money from ordinary people. The methods escalated to injuring people with sharp weapons, cutting off limbs, and ultimately killing the poor as a warning to the rich. While squeezing every last drop of wealth from the common people, they gradually lost their way.
They no longer felt guilty about brutally killing defenseless commoners, and even experienced a secret and strange pleasure from it.
He ripped open the abdomen and severed the intestines, using the liquid to measure the corpse.
Corpses lay strewn across the fields, and blood flowed for miles.
For the besieged civilians of the city, death was a kind of relief. The horror of the massacre lay in the fact that it repeatedly offered hope, only to intensify despair time and again. They were squeezed dry, leaving only the last drop of their lives for the butcher to bring down the knife.
Huang Lie's wife and daughters were among them.
Once, while treating an elderly man from a poor family, the old man asked if he had a family. Upon learning he didn't, the old man offered him his granddaughter, whom he couldn't afford to raise, saying, "My granddaughter is very honest; why not let her be your wife? Just give her some food, enough to keep her from starving."
The woman then went with Huang Lie.
She was an ordinary-looking country woman. Her son was mediocre, and her daughter was plain-looking, timid and gentle. She quietly managed the household chores, accompanied Huang Lie to the mountains to collect herbs, plant crops in the fields, and took care of Huang Lie's younger brother and cousin.
Huang Lie also knew he owed her.
I saved up some money and rented a place.
The original intention was to provide a place for women and children to live in peace.
Who knew that Zheng Qiao would attack and then massacre the city.
Enemy soldiers broke in, finding only stale rice and bran left in the woman's house; after a quick search, there was nothing else left. The soldiers, naturally skeptical, threatened to kill their son. Seeing this had no effect, they finally believed the family was truly poor. With a resentful look, they stabbed the woman's son.
Right in the center of the heart.
The woman went mad instantly, wanting to fight the enemy soldiers to the death.
Enraged, the enemy soldiers took turns defiling her and her daughter, using them as a substitute for their son's corpse, before finally beheading them. The shadow of massacre loomed over the city for five days, leaving less than half its original population alive. By the time Huang Lie and his companions returned home from gathering herbs, the corpses had already begun to decompose.
This story evokes sighs of sympathy from those who hear it.
Jiang Sheng frowned: "This person has such a past? It's just a pity—what he did afterward was no more merciful than Zheng Qiao's."
Pathetic and despicable!
Liao Jia, on the other hand, was not particularly moved.
As the saying goes—in this world, who among those who struggle to survive doesn't have some wounds? The difference lies in whether those wounds have healed and scabbed over, or rotted and infested with maggots. He asked, "After that, Huang Lie used his years of reputation to rise to power?"
Xun Zhen shook his head: "No."
A mere itinerant doctor like myself can't possibly gain traction so easily.
"But he did indeed bury this grudge in his heart. Before, he practiced medicine only to save people, but after that, he practiced medicine to accumulate reputation and connections and look for opportunities. By the way, his benefactor master was indeed quite capable, and the unique skills he passed on to Huang Lie were a bit strange."
Jiang Sheng asked, "Where is the strangeness?"
Xun Zhen hadn't known Huang Lie for very long and only knew a little: "Huang Lie used his noble master's unique skills to train a group of heavy-shield warriors. It's likely that in the battle of Luxia County, our lord fought against these heavy-shield warriors..."
"You're saying those heavy shield warriors were trained by Huang Lie using evil methods?" Kang Shi's voice came from outside the door at this moment.
"It should be pretty close to 80 or 90 percent."
Kang Shi recalled the images of those heavy shield warriors. Although a long time had passed, he still remembered that these heavy shield warriors were very strange: "They were all second-class superior craftsmen, as strong as oxen, breathing in unison, striking in unison, and they knew nothing of pain."
Liao Jia said, "This doesn't sound like a living person."
“More like a puppet.” Kang Shi sat down and then added a detail, “Wu Hui’s [Submerging in Water and Fire] is ineffective.”
Xun Zhen secretly gasped.
He had cooperated with Chu Yao in the battle of Yonggu Pass and knew very well how powerful Chu Yao's signature incantation was. How could a mere second-class upper-level cultivator be immune to it? One or two people might be able to resist [Submerged in Water and Fire] through willpower, but for everyone to be immune...
The possibility is even slimmer than that of Qi Yuanliang turning over a new leaf.
Kang Shi also found the situation troublesome and pressed further, "Hanzhang, do you know how many of these heavy-shield warriors Huang Lie has under his command?"
Xun Zhen said with a solemn expression, "When I first joined Huang Lie's army, he only had 2,500 men. But I overheard Huang Lie say that in a certain amount of time, he could have 5,000. Now, I'm afraid the number of heavy shield warriors is—at least more..."
"It's ten thousand."
A voice joined in.
It is my lord.
Several people were about to get up to greet them.
Shen Tang waved his hand, indicating that they should dispense with the formalities.
She took her seat at the head of the table, with an opened letter in her hand, which was probably the main reason for the urgent summons.
"I just received a congratulatory letter from Yi Ruzhang."
"Zhang He? Zhang Yongqing?"
Everyone was astonished.
Longwu County was closest to Tianhai, followed by Shangnan, while Yiru's relationship was limited to previous cooperation during the epidemic and the trade of medicinal herbs. Aside from that, the two sides had almost no contact. Why did Zhang He suddenly do this? What did he write in his letter?
Shen Tang didn't keep them in suspense.
The letter was sent over.
The document was passed around among the members, and other colleagues arrived one after another, quickly filling the empty council hall with familiar faces. Zhang He's words were simple, listing only two things.
"Firstly, there are rumors that Huang Lie has 10,000 heavy shield warriors under his command. These people are related to the plague we discovered in Heyin and other places. Huang Lie's hands are not clean. Even if he did not do it, he is still inextricably linked to it."
"Secondly, Huang Lie has invited forces from Tianhai, Shangnan, Yiru, and other places, hoping to form a dragon-slaying scheme to overthrow Zheng Qiao's royal court in one fell swoop. What do you all think?"
(っ°Д°;)っ
As a pregnant woman, I've found myself surprisingly preferring to write action-packed plots lately. I get writer's block when I try to focus on farming and infrastructure development, but Tang Mei's faction is just too weak right now; I can't really get into any action-packed scenarios.
(End of this chapter)
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