Dark clouds rolled in, heavy rain poured down, and the sky and the earth were covered in a vast expanse of white.

The howling wind was like the sound of a devil filling the ears, the big trees were uprooted, and it seemed as if a group of demons were dancing wildly between heaven and earth.

The storm lasted all day long. People were shivering in their houses. Devotees burned incense and prayed to the Dragon King to calm down.

The wind died down a lot the next day, but the rain showed no sign of slowing down. The second typhoon in the second year of Longqing was much more severe than the previous one.

However, in such weather, there was a group of strong men, leading horses, trudging along the official road from Jiading County to Kunshan.

This was the dike-destroying special forces sent by Xu Bangning. There were a total of twenty people, all of whom were well-trained soldiers, all of whom were his father's personal soldiers in the Nanjing Garrison.

The young master came to Huating for a meeting and brought forty or fifty personal soldiers with him to bolster his strength. He sent out half of them at once.

If there are too many people, it will be too conspicuous.

These soldiers were all wearing rainproof oil jackets, leggings, and wooden clogs. They walked in the wind and rain and had great difficulty.

A sergeant complained to the leading officer in a low voice: "Captain, have we offended Manager Xu? Why did he send us to such a difficult task in such a horrible weather?"

"Stop making so much noise." The captain wiped the rain off his face and whispered, "This kind of weather is good for work."

"That's true." The soldier nodded. They didn't meet anyone along the way, and the footprints were quickly washed away by the rain.

"But boss, if we do such an immoral thing, aren't we afraid that the son we give birth to will be impotent?" asked another sergeant.

"You should get a wife first before you worry about this." The captain spat and said, "When it comes to being immoral, who can compare to our master? You have committed so many sins in the past few decades, and you two masters have never been able to poop."

The vulgar words made the soldiers laugh, but it also made them feel relieved.

"Yes, killing people and setting fires will earn you a golden belt, while building bridges and paving roads will leave no corpses. Let's go and tear up the dike, then go straight back to Nanjing to get the money, and live happily ever after, regardless of what Kunshan looks like."

"I've been craving Xiao Fengxi for a long time, and this time I must get into her bed!"

"Look at you, you're going to make her unable to get out of bed!"

"You're just bragging..."

Talking about this kind of topic, the soldiers suddenly no longer felt tired or cold, and they wished they could grow wings and fly to Kunshan to dig the damn dike!

After walking for a while, the captain suddenly raised his hand to signal everyone to be quiet.

The soldiers followed the direction he pointed and saw a long gray dragon stretching westward before their eyes and deep into the rain.

We have arrived in Kunshan.

~~

Everyone immediately stopped laughing and gathered in a group at the captain's request, leaving only two people to keep watch in the front and back.

Several soldiers took the raincoats and built a shelter to keep out the rain.

The deputy took out a map and spread it out in front of everyone.

The captain pointed to the winding Wusong River on the map and said, "The Wusong River is 62 miles long in Kunshan, and there are four important sections. Manager Xu ordered us to choose one or two places to attack."

He sneered as he said, "But I don't intend to listen to him. The newly built levee is being taken care of by the county, so those places must be guarded by people. Aren't we going there to die?"

The soldiers all agreed and nodded. No matter how high the reward offered by the young master is, you have to be alive to spend it.

"Then what shall we do?"

"We will take them by surprise and start at an unimportant place. As long as the section of the dike we dig is long enough, the effect will be the same, and no one will notice it." He said to everyone in a deep voice:

"But we have to keep our mouth shut and say that we couldn't do anything because they were watching too closely. Don't let me know."

"Don't worry, Captain. You are doing this for the good of our brothers." The soldiers quickly expressed their opinions.

"Yes." The captain was relieved and continued to give orders: "So I'm going to do it here."

Everyone looked at where the captain was pointing, which was a place called Beitabang, 20 miles away from the county.

"I visited the Wusong River by boat two days ago and found that this part of the river was turbulent but quite secluded. The militiamen who patrolled the dikes never came here."

"Besides, there is an earthen embankment between the stone embankment of Kunshan and the river surface. Every mile or so, there are vertical embankments dividing it into grids. It's like it was specially designed for us."

The centurion smiled complacently and said confidently:

"Once we get there, we will follow the drill and be able to retreat the same way in half an hour at most. If we get separated, we can go from Jiading to Taicang and then to Changshu, and then find a way back to Nanjing... Anyway, as long as we leave Kunshan County, they will be helpless."

"Yes!" the soldiers responded in unison.

The captain stood up straight, his deputy put away the map, and several soldiers took off their raincoats.

"What if, if I say what if, we fall into the hands of the Kunshan people," the captain looked at everyone sternly and said, "You are absolutely not allowed to betray the young master. Otherwise, if one person dies, the whole family will die. Remember that!"

"Understood!" The soldiers responded in horror, put the equipment on the horses' backs, led the horses to the woods beside the road and tied them up, then followed the centurion and sneaked into Kunshan County.

~~

When the typhoon hit, the laborers stopped working and the boats carrying stones returned to the city.

Mi Wa had an idle day and couldn't stay at home any longer, so today he took a friend who was two years younger than him and went out of town to look for mice.

One reason is that all the rats in the city have been caught, so they can only be found outside the city.

Secondly, in such weather, water enters the burrows, and the mice cannot stay there, so they have to crawl out and run around. If it rains, they are much easier to catch than usual.

Unfortunately, there were many people who had the same idea as them. The two of them came out a little late and were chased away wherever they went.

Mi Wa got angry and decided to go to the river bank to catch it. He didn't believe that there would be a fool who would run twenty miles to snatch a mouse from him during a typhoon.

The friends thought this was a great idea, so they followed Captain Mi and set off in high spirits.

But halfway through the journey, I regretted it so much, this road is too difficult to walk...

When the dike was being built before, tens of thousands of laborers pushed carts back and forth, and the road had already been crushed into pieces, and there was no time to repair it.

Now that it's been soaked by the heavy rain, it's turned into mud.

The two children were running and playing barefoot, and they accidentally fell down, and soon they were all covered in mud.

"Wow." The little friend couldn't stand it anymore and started crying while sitting in the mud pit. "Captain, I'm so tired, I want to go home."

"If you go back now, you still have to walk ten miles, which means you have walked twenty miles in vain." Miwa has been following his mother out on the boat every day these days, and he has made great progress. He shouted like a child king:

"If we go six or seven miles further, we'll reach the levee, which will save us more effort. If you can't even figure this out, how can you be my deputy captain?"

"He's the deputy captain, but he doesn't even have a team member." The deputy captain cried while rubbing his legs.

Seeing that people's morale was a little scattered and the team was hard to lead, Miwa had to use the bright prospects to persuade:

"How many rats are hiding in that earthen embankment? They all came out when the water rose. They can't escape after being blocked by the stone embankment. How many can each of us catch? The meat alone is enough to eat for several days."

"I want to eat meat..." The deputy captain immediately got excited and grabbed the captain's hand and stood up. The two of them lined up and marched towards the levee with one foot deep and one foot shallow.

ps. Chapter 2.