In order to successfully bring back Blacksmith Song's family, Sun Lili also wanted to go downstream to receive a batch of salt, cloth, iron and other materials that were scarce in the mountains purchased by the caravan, as well as purchase chickens and ducks along the way.
He specially sent his confidant Wang Xiazi, the leader of his personal soldiers, to lead twenty elite cavalry to Lushan County.
Luo Zhixue was quite familiar with Blind Wang. After all, the two of them were Sun Chengli's confidants, so they would inevitably have many interactions in daily life.
Luo Zhixue was relatively relieved that Wang Xiazi came to support him.
Despite his reputation as a blind man, Blind Wang is indeed blind in one eye, but he is extremely brave and flexible at the same time.
This man had been with Sun Chengli for some years. Before they mutinied, he was a cavalryman under Sun Chengli. When he was suppressing bandits in the early years, he was injured by the bandits and lost one eye while protecting Sun Chengcheng.
After the mutiny, he still followed Sun Chengli as a personal soldier.
After Sun Chengli succeeded in seizing the throne, Wang Xiazi naturally became the captain of Sun Chengli's personal soldiers.
This person is Sun Chengli's confidant.
Sun Chengli sent this person out to meet Song Tiejiang's family, which is enough to prove that Sun Chengli attached great importance to Song Tiejiang's family.
There is no reason why Sun Chengli did not pay attention to it.
Blacksmiths are a rare talent these days, and if you are a blacksmith who can make guns, you are an elite among the rare talents.
Most of these scarce talents are under the control of the government, and a few are among the large-scale rogue armies.
For example, Blacksmith Song was actually a craftsman under the government. He usually took his two sons and a group of laborers to build various types of ordnance for the officers and soldiers, not just ordinary swords and spears, but also more than half of the artillery closed by Lu Yang. They are all made by blacksmiths from the Song Dynasty.
Under normal circumstances, it would be impossible for a group of people like Sun Chengli to recruit such high-level talents.
Therefore, when the people sent by Sun Lili to inquire about the craftsmen learned about top talents like Song Tiejiang, they took the simplest and most direct approach.
They stormed into Blacksmith Song's house on a dark and windy night, armed with sharp knives, and threatened the lives of the young and old of the Song family. This forced the three father and son of the Song family to compromise and agree to follow them.
But even so, something went wrong when leaving the city, and the government officials at the city gate noticed something was wrong. If it weren't for the rebels who were working at the time, they would have been so decisive and led several carriages with the Song family on them to force the charge. Pass, and there are several other rebels outside the city who have prepared their war horses to respond.
They almost got trapped in Lushan County.
After breaking out of Lushan County, the six rebels gathered together and escorted the carriage of Song Blacksmith's family as they headed west.
However, due to the commotion in Lushan City before, and the fact that there were many thieves and officers and soldiers in this area of Ruzhou, it would be extremely risky for their group to hit the road rashly.
For the sake of safety, they chose to avoid the danger temporarily and hid in a remote place for the time being, and sent people back to find Sun Chengli to send people to respond.
So these days, Song Tiejiang and his family were forced to stay in a remote and abandoned village.
Blacksmith Song looked at the several rebel cavalry outside. After a while, he sighed and turned back to the house.
At this time, there were also members of his family in the house, including his wife Song Qianshi, his 21-year-old eldest son, his eldest daughter-in-law, eldest grandson, and eldest granddaughter. There are only seventeen-year-old second son and his newly married wife.
Except for his two married daughters, his whole family is here.
Seeing Blacksmith Song return to the house, Song Qian stepped forward, glanced outside before speaking, and then lowered his voice and said, "How is his father?"
Blacksmith Song shook his head: "They are watching very closely. We can't get out. And even if our family gets out of this door, we probably won't be able to go far."
Song Qian was slightly anxious after hearing this: "What should we do? Are we really following them to the mountains? Are we really rebels?"
Blacksmith Song glared at her: "Keep your voice down, don't let people outside hear you."
Having said that, Blacksmith Song sighed again: "What else can we do? Our whole family is here, and it's not like you haven't seen these people before. They tied us all up that night. These are all They are vicious gangsters, if we offend them, what will happen to our family?"
If there was a second choice, Blacksmith Song would not be willing to follow this rebel!
But they also choose!
He still clearly remembered that night, when these people broke into his house and held knives in front of his grandson and granddaughter. Back then, if he said a word "no", he would probably get blood splattered on the spot!
These rebel thieves are not ordinary gangsters. They are just rebelling. What kind of reasoning will they tell you? They are innocent or not. What they say is clear. What they want is for the three of them, father and son, to help them build weapons and guns.
If you are unwilling to follow them, your whole family will die.
And they don’t mind killing someone first as a deterrent!
Although Blacksmith Song was just a blacksmith in his life, he had lived for such a long time and had seen a lot of officers, soldiers and thieves. He knew very well that these rebels were not good people.
He still remembered that last year, a group of bandits came and tried to attack Lushan City. In order to make the officers and soldiers use rat weapons when they attacked Lushan City, the bandits directly captured hundreds of people from the surrounding suburbs and villages and forcibly expelled them. As they attacked the city, the bandits followed behind, and if they disobeyed, they would kill them directly.
The bandits are ruthless, but so are the officers and soldiers.
The bandits drove the people away to attack the city, and the officers and soldiers came back with several waves of arrows. During this period, the artillery on the city head fired a lot of fire, and they treated the people who were forcibly driven up as bandits.
The bandits were finally forced to retreat.
In the offensive and defensive battle of Lushan City, the officers, soldiers and thieves did not suffer many casualties, but the surrounding people were unlucky, with at least hundreds of casualties.
In this day and age, don't expect too much conscience or humanity from the officers and soldiers holding weapons, or from the thieves.
When you encounter them, the best way is to run away.
But Blacksmith Song and his family couldn't escape. The only way was to obey orders.
At this time, his eldest son Song Dalang also came up: "Dad, the reason why these thieves captured us is because they want us to help them make ordnance. In this case, we will just help them make ordnance. First, let's take care of the things in front of us." Now that we have passed this difficulty, we can look for ways to escape later."
"After all, we are craftsmen, they need us, and our lives can still be saved in the short term."
Blacksmith Song said: "This is the only way we can do it now."
With that said, Blacksmith Song glanced outside again, looking at the two thieves outside the yard who were looking bored and wiping their swords with rags, and finally sighed: "This world, alas..."
Although Blacksmith Song was unwilling to do so, he had no choice but to accept the status quo helplessly.
And after waiting for a few more days, when Blacksmith Song saw a group of rebel cavalry coming outside, he knew that his plan to escape with his family was completely unworkable.
What came was twenty elite cavalry led by Wang Xiazi, in addition to more than thirty young and strong civilian men temporarily recruited from Huangjiacun.
In fact, in the previous caravan, there were more than 20 civilians recruited and hired from nearby Funiu Mountain.
After all, so much goods always need help from manpower to transport them.
These cavalrymen are not actually responsible for transportation, but for escorting supplies.
After Wang Xiazi arrived with 20 elite cavalry, plus the several original elite cavalry here, more than 20 cavalry began to escort more than 50 people and more than 10 carriages transporting a large number of various materials and continued to move forward. .
With these more than 20 cavalry as a threat, although they occasionally encountered scattered bandits and the like on the way, they basically stayed away before they even got close.
Blind Wang and his group of cavalrymen all led tall horses and carried swords, bows and spears, and half of them also had armor.
A normal person would know at a glance that these people are not easy to mess with.
Not to mention the ordinary small-scale thieves of dozens or hundreds of people, even the thieves of hundreds of people had to get out of the way when they saw it.
After such a continuous journey, they successfully returned to the Funiu Mountain area. When they entered the mountain, Wang Xiazi and the others breathed a sigh of relief.
This time they went out to escort Song Blacksmith's family and a large amount of supplies. Their task was still very heavy, and they were afraid of attracting large-scale thieves or officers and soldiers along the way.
Fortunately, nothing happened along the way.
After arriving at the edge of the mountain, Blind Wang divided half of his men to continue escorting Blacksmith Song's family and the purchased supplies back to Sanshui Village, while he himself turned around with the remaining men.
He also had to purchase chickens, ducks, cattle, pigs and sheep for grazing as instructed.
Before setting off, Luo Zhixue came to him and told him the importance of this matter: "It depends on you, Brother Wang, whether you have eggs to eat and whether you have meat to eat from now on."
Therefore, he still had to get this done.
But this time, when doing business, it was not too smooth. He took people to several villages, and in order to conceal his traces, he always dressed up in disguise, and took the peasants disguised as a caravan to go shopping, and by the way, they traded some mountain goods. of.
But I didn't expect that this time he went too low-key...
He came forward with only a few armed guards, and he seemed to be very weak.
At the same time, he also brought a caravan with seven or eight carriages, which seemed to be quite fat.
Ever since, it attracted the attention of interested people.
Blind Wang and the others had just gone to a place called Lijiazhuang to purchase dozens of chickens and ducks. They had only been away for a quarter of an hour when they saw a group of people coming out of Lijiazhuang.
He recognized the leader, except for Mr. Li, who had been doing business with him for a quarter of an hour... Needless to say, the others were also his guards and servants.
And they are all holding swords now, and member Li is wearing a ferocious smile...
They look like this, and even a fool can see that they want to rob these businessmen from other places...
This makes Blind Wang very helpless...
Before setting off, Luo Zhixue had told him to keep a low profile when going out and not act recklessly.
Otherwise, it will be easy to kill the younger ones and attract the older ones, and kill the older ones to attract the older ones. If you don’t go on and on, you may even attract officers and soldiers in the end!
But now, Blind Wang could only murmur: "Mr. Luo, you can't blame me. I also want to keep a low profile, but the man named Li won't let me keep a low profile..."
After sighing, Blind Wang used his only remaining eye to look at the Li family nurses who had rushed up screaming, then picked up a horn and blew it.
The next moment, more than a dozen cavalrymen hiding in the nearby woodland rushed out on horseback...
