Wanyan Xielie led the horse and walked slowly, looking back from time to time to see if the soldiers were following. Occasionally, he would run up to the high ground beside the road in three or two steps, waving his hand to urge the rear team to speed up.
In April in Huaidong, the weather has started to get hot. The fields and mountains in Huainan are lush and green, with trees and bamboo forests. The warm breeze is blowing the new green grass, which makes people feel relaxed and happy. Monkeys are jumping around in the bamboo forest, and their cries can be heard clearly. There is a gurgling stream behind, attracting water birds to circle and shuttle.
However, it's never a good look on the battlefield. The monkeys quickly fled, and the waterfowl flapped their wings and flew high. Not far behind Wanyan Xielie, a village in the bamboo forest on the mountain had been doused with oil and set on fire.
The Song people who were defending the stockade and unwilling to surrender had just continued to climb the fence and tried to break out, but they were all shot to death by the dense bows and arrows of the Jin army. Their corpses were piled on the fence. When the gradually spreading flames burned the corpses, a strange smell and black smoke filled the air at the same time.
The few strong men who surrendered before the formation shed tears when they saw this scene. The prisoners taken from several other villages watched indifferently. Only the aroma of roasted human flesh and the smell of burnt lake were too strong, so they slowed down slightly. Then they were beaten by the Jin soldiers who caught up and ordered to speed up. pace.
A strong man suddenly jumped like crazy and wanted to run towards the fire.
But each of them has a rope around his neck, and dozens or twenty of them are connected to each other, so they cannot act arbitrarily. So he took two steps and ran, and then the rope strangled his neck. He screamed and fell to the ground.
The rope was tightly tied, and the more I struggled, the tighter it became. Seeing that his face began to turn blue, the other strong men all stopped and leaned down or squatted down. The closest person tried to get closer and untie him slightly. But a Jin Army cavalry immediately rode over and used the momentum of the horse to swing his sword horizontally.
This knight's physical strength is extremely strong, and his sword skills are even more outstanding. His sharp blade cuts off the head against the rope loop. At the same time as the head flew up, the madman's body fell to the ground, and the rope loop around his neck fell loosely to the ground.
Amidst the exclamations of all the prisoners, the knight wiped the long knife against his sleeve, wiped away the blood stains, and put the knife into its sheath.
"No delay, keep walking." The knight said calmly.
This calm attitude is more frightening than the violence. All the prisoners had no doubt that if necessary, this Jin Army general would kill everyone, just like their decisive burning and killing posture all the way south.
It seems that this golden army has no scruples, no cares about anything, and they don't even regard people as human beings. All of them are complete killers!
The prisoners could barely suppress the hatred in their hearts, but they were unarmed and could do nothing but lower their heads, lest the knight see the anger in their eyes.
Monk Wanyan Chen moved his horse away from the group of prisoners and continued walking to the rear of the team. He casually issued short and powerful orders to urge the army to move forward.
This army has a total of 16,000 people. It is the easternmost of the four armies of the Western Jin Dynasty that suddenly attacked the Song Dynasty. Seven days ago, Wanyan Xielie, the captain of Anping Commandery and Marshal Xingshousi, sent people to secretly survey the Huaihe River. At the same time, he ordered the water thieves active on the Huaihe River to gather in Xiashi, claiming that they would cross the Huaihe River to rob Shouchun.
The Huainan Song Army reacted quickly and immediately gathered Shouchun to prepare. Just in case, they also gathered many local militiamen and gunmen in the surrounding areas.
In fact, Shouchun City was the first-class fortress in Huaixi of the Song Dynasty. It was 13 miles around the city, two feet and five feet high, with a trench more than twenty feet wide outside. It had Feishui River in the north and West Lake in the west, making it easy to defend but difficult to attack. Why did tens of thousands of people gather just for a few Huaishang water thieves?
At the same time that the Song army was gathering, Wanyan Xilie led his troops across the river from Badietan, then captured Yingkou, and then went to Anfeng, Huoqiu and other places. Most of the Song army was shocked and collapsed, while the defenders in Shanshui villages in various places were eager to return to rescue their elders, and were intercepted and routed by the Jin army one after another.
The Jin army immediately went south, and its troops penetrated into the heart of Huaixi and took Lu'an, breaking many cities along the way.
In recent years, the Song Dynasty's defense in the Huaihe and Huaihe areas generally followed the arrangements made by the famous minister Ye Shi in setting up envoys in the Jianghuai River and relied on numerous mountain villages, water villages, Wubao and garrisons. Huaidong is full of water, so there are more than 40 water forts. Huaixi is mountainous, so there are 94 mountain forts.
The place that the Jin Army had just conquered was a key point located south of Shaopi and guarding the upper reaches of the Lishui River. Interestingly, this village was also an important transit point for Song people to smuggle copper coins, tea, and medicine to the north. It was a haven for bandits, so it was rich enough to build two wooden fences around the mountain and set up many defensive facilities. .
Wanyan Xielie originally thought that since these people were willing to do business with Daijin, they must be able to understand the current affairs and obediently respond to the needs of the army and contribute food and supplies. The result was not as expected, and he spent a long time fighting a vicious battle.
After the war, an inventory showed that although hundreds of soldiers had been killed and wounded and enough food to feed the troops for five days had been taken, the casualties among our own soldiers were also considerable. The army could not wait for them to recover slowly, so they had to send extra manpower to send them across Huaibei and return.
This decisive gesture of the Song Dynasty made Monk Wanyan Chen very wary. Therefore, he had extremely strict control over the prisoners who accompanied the army, and he also displayed a particularly fierce energy to suppress any abnormal movements at any time.
But he had to admit that besides being alert, he was still a little bit scared.
The scene in Huainan is naturally very different from the high, distant and vast scenery in the north. But there is one thing, that is, Huainan and Monan or Hebei, which are areas that have suffered frequent military disasters, are equally depopulated. Monk Wanyan Chen went south for a few days, and most of what he saw was desolate. There were shrubs, bamboo forests, grassy fields, abandoned ditches, and dilapidated towns everywhere. It is as if nature has replaced people and the countryside has turned into wilderness again.
The army walked on the official road, and the weeds on the roadside stretched into patches. In some places, the road was almost covered, leaving only traces of old ruts. Occasionally, in some places, the soil is washed away by rain, revealing the dense bones underneath.
According to Wanyan Xielie, such desolation should be the result of the war between Song and Jin during the Taihe period. At that time, Daikin's domestic finances were tight and food and grass were completely unavailable. After the Nine Route Army invaded the territory of the Song Dynasty, they could only survive by looting, and they were still unable to recover after ten years. Of course, as time went on, Dajin's troops went south many times, and looting and massacres were the norm.
This situation is very similar to half of the Great Jin Kingdom that was swept away by the Mongols. And the hatred in the eyes of those Song prisoners looking at Monk Wanyan Chen was just like the Jin people who were driven as slaves on the grassland looking at the Mongols.
Monk Wanyan Chen was once such a prisoner full of anger. Then he and his brother protected their mother and fled south. They killed Mongolians along the way, even ordinary herders.
Now he was the object of hatred, which made him feel uncomfortable. So he told a disheveled Naiman knight beside him: "These Song people can't stay. Before arriving in Liu'an, we must find an opportunity to kill them all."
This Naiman was also a slave who escaped from the grassland. He was unable to speak because his tongue was cut off in half by the Mongols. But he understood what Monk Wanyan Chen meant, so he grinned, showing his yellow teeth, and made a smacking motion.
