Chapter Thirteen: A Chance Encounter in Battle

  Learning that he is about to face his first challenge in this chaotic era after arriving at the Tang Dynasty, Tang's heart is both tense and excited for some unknown reason.

  As for the base's "perverse" defense capabilities, the Tang Dynasty was still relatively at ease, and the only thing that needed to be more cautious about was how to prevent the fortress from being breached from within.

  It is often said that people's hearts are separated by a thin layer of skin.

  The Tang Dynasty can rest assured about Mu Hailin, but it doesn't mean they are at ease with the hundreds of horse bandits from the Iron Cavalry Alliance. Even now, when the Mu family has moved into the Tang's fortress, the Tangs still harbor suspicions. In secret, Little Cat uses the base's surveillance system to keep a close eye on all members of the Mu family, including the elderly couple, 24 hours a day.

  The reason why the Tang Dynasty suggested that Mu Hai Lin station most of the Iron Rider Alliance's cavalry in Cang Long Ridge was mainly because the Tang Dynasty did not want to suddenly allow too many strangers with combat power to enter the Tang Family Fortress, in order to avoid any potential hidden dangers and internal chaos.

  Now listen to Irina saying that Mu Hailin has decided to move all the elite soldiers of Tieji Alliance to Tangjia Fortress, which concerns the safety of their own old nest. It's strange if Tang Dynasty is not worried and anxious.

  Following the Tang Dynasty to Tiantai, all the way, Irina didn't see a single figure of others until the Tang Dynasty took out a key and opened the heavy iron gate leading to the rooftop, stepping onto the rooftop, only to find that there were also guards dressed in black like those at "Xinhua Building".

  In the entire Tang family mansion, Irina can be considered as the first person to discover the mysterious black-clad guard, aside from the Tangs themselves.

  Last night, Irina had the idea of sneaking into the Xinhua Building at night. However, before she even approached the entrance, she was discovered by those unusually tall and intimidating black-clad guards. Before they could utter a warning, Irina hastily retreated and withdrew on her own initiative.

  Even now, the hoarse, ear-piercing voice from the black-clad guard's mouth, "Back! Cross the warning line, die!", still made Irina feel a chill in her heart.

  Undeterred, Irina left the Xinhua Building without returning to her room to rest, but instead thought of going to the rooftop to take a look at that supposedly incredible airship Mu Haitao had mentioned. As expected, she was disappointed and returned, unable to open the iron door.

  Early in the morning, Irina approached the Xinhua Building again. This time she got a clear look at how those mysterious black-clad guards were armed to the teeth. Although she couldn't identify the model of the MP5 guns held by the black-clad guards, from the barrel, trigger and that long curved magazine that might be a clip, it was certain that this was a deadly weapon.

  Irina didn't know if anyone else had the same idea as her, intending to explore the true strength of Tangjia Fort. Until Tang brought the leaders of the Iron Rider Alliance to visit the control room under the city wall and those automatic heavy machine gun bunkers that could fire without human operation, Irina dispelled the little thought in her heart, lest she be discovered by the boss and dissatisfied with her small movements.

  The rooftop isn't too big, with a total area of just over 500 square meters. The "Tang Family No. 1" airship is currently floating in the center of the rooftop, its huge envelope being blown about by strong winds, but it's firmly secured to the rooftop by four long steel cables tied to the four corners of the gondola.

  At each corner of the airship's railings stood a black-clad guard, with two more stationed at the entrance gangway.

  As soon as he set foot on the Tiantai, he rushed towards the flying boat in big strides and shouted loudly: "The alert is lifted, everyone board the boat."

  It seems that Tang Dynasty is shouting orders at these black-clad guards, but in fact, he is giving instructions to these humanoid killing machines through the control system on his wristwatch.

  Six black-clad guards stood at attention, saluted, then turned and marched in standard formation towards the flying boat's gangway.

  Although they were far apart, Irina still keenly discovered that the distance of every step taken by these black-clad guards was almost exactly the same. From this point alone, Irina knew that these mysterious black-clad guards were absolutely elite warriors who had undergone extremely rigorous training!

  It's clear that the Tang Dynasty doesn't want Irina to have any contact with these super warriors. This special guard team will proactively enter the escort cabin once they board the airship, and without the Tang Dynasty's instructions, they won't make any form of contact with anyone on the airship.

  When Irina first walked into the luxurious and comfortable airship cabin, her reaction was no different from that of Liu Zongzhou when he first entered the Grand View Garden.

  Touching east and west, looking left and right, everything seems incredibly novel.

  As the Tang Dynasty's airship took off and soared into the sky, standing by the porthole watching the scenery on the ground getting smaller and smaller, he was so excited that he couldn't help but exclaim in surprise.

  He turned his head and glanced at Irina with a mixture of surprise and annoyance, then smiled and shook his head.

  After all, a woman is a woman. Mu Hailin was calmer than Irina when she first boarded the airship.

  "Boss, where are we flying to?" Irina came up to Tang's side and asked curiously.

  "Canglong Ridge!" Tang Dynasty replied while steering the airship, "Old Mu and most of you are stuck in a misunderstanding. Everyone only sees the current prosperity of Tangjia Fortress, so they want to preserve this land at all costs. But he forgot that Canglong Ridge's geographical location may not be important for other places, but it is a crucial strategic location for Duanhun Gorge and Tangjia Fortress. Because Canglong Ridge controls the only passage leading out of Tangjia Fortress, once we abandon Canglong Ridge and hand it over to the enemy, it's like we're stabbing ourselves in the throat!"

  "Really! How come I didn't think of that? Boss, what do you mean?" Irina asked with a sudden realization.

  "Cavalry is for attacking, using elite cavalry for defensive battles is a crime!" Tang Dynasty cut the nail and answered: "Attack is the best defense! For all enemies who challenge my Tang family's authority, annihilate them all! Come as many as you can, I will destroy as many as you come!"

  "Boss, what if this is the official army?" Irina was shocked by Tang Dynasty's sudden burst of killing intent and cautiously asked a question that had been weighing on her mind.

  The boss is absolutely a ruthless killer with a smiling face! Irina muttered to herself.

  "Behind me is President Yuan, you think I would be afraid of the Xinjiang Governor's Office?" Tang Chao replied with a hint of a smile.

  The Tang Dynasty said that it was not just talking nonsense, because last night when the kitten helped him make a Beiyang lieutenant general uniform, he also forged a set of military officer certificates and authorization documents that were more real than the real ones, with Yuan Shikai's personal signature.

  It's not that I'm afraid of 10,000 things, but rather the one-in-ten-thousand chance. The Tang Dynasty now adheres to the principle of being cautious and making a boat for ten thousand years. In the future, if they really have to deal with Yang Zengxin, the new governor of Xinjiang, there will be a set of forged official documents. The Tang Dynasty believes that Yang Zengxin absolutely does not have the guts to ask Yuan Shikai for verification.

  Anyway, Yuan Shikai's emperor dream only lasted for 83 days. As long as we wait for Yuan Shikai to die, it will become a dead case with no evidence. The Tang family can openly use the Beiyang warlord flag and freely expand their power in Xinjiang, this vast northwest region that is basically disconnected from the central government.

  Even if he met with Duan Qirui, Cao Kun and other Beiyang dignitaries in the future, Tang Ming believed that as long as he took out the forged letter of Yuan Shikai, Duan Qirui, Cao Kun and others would only be left staring blankly.

  No one can guarantee whether President Yuan secretly appointed a "Mongolian and Tibetan Inspector" to secretly supervise the princes and high-ranking officials of Mongolia.

  Sometimes, thinking about it, Tang Dynasty also feels that being wronged is not entirely a bad thing. At least in the more than 80 days to come, putting on the tiger skin of Yuan Shikai, in Xinjiang this region with very serious imperial thoughts, it still has considerable deterrent power.

  Through the porthole of the airship, Irina saw that the mountain peaks and terrain below were very similar to those of Canglong Ridge. Subconsciously, she picked up the binoculars on the driving platform and took a closer look.

  "Boss, it seems like we're approaching Canglong Ridge down there." Irina couldn't help but remind him as she saw that Tang didn't intend to slow down the airship and descend.

  "No rush, anyway, we're just killing time, let's take a detour to the surrounding areas." Tang Dynasty kept the airship at an altitude of about two thousand meters while occasionally looking down at the sand dunes and oases on the ground.

  Yellow sand stretches for ten thousand miles, desert smoke flies.

  Flying southwest towards Canglong Ridge for about a hundred kilometers, two cavalry teams entered the Tang Dynasty's line of sight from afar.

  These two cavalry troops were clearly one side fleeing and the other pursuing.

  The fleeing party had only a little over ten riders, and despite the fact that they were riding strong horses at full gallop, they were unable to open up any distance between themselves and the pursuing troops, who numbered more than a hundred.

  The Tang Dynasty judged by observation that the group of people who escaped seemed to be fleeing in the direction of Canglong Ridge, looking a bit disheveled. However, this group of people obviously had excellent riding skills, and while escaping, they would occasionally turn back and shoot guns, causing the pursuing soldiers behind them, more than 200 meters away, to constantly fall off their horses after being shot.

  Irina also noticed the movement on the ground at this time, she held up her binoculars and constantly adjusted the focal length.

  "Boss, it's our people who are being hunted!" Irina suddenly exclaimed: "The one who was killed is Lang Ying, the captain of a vanguard squad under my command!"

  Tang dynasty calmly controlled the airship's rapid descent and asked solemnly: "Are you sure you didn't see it wrongly?"

  "Absolutely not!" Irina replied firmly: "The scouting team led by Lang Ying is the most elite and strongest combat force in the Iron Rider Alliance. Their mounts are all Don River horses that I bought at a high price from horse traders on the Kazakh side, and they are all 'Black Dragon Colts'! Boss, please save them!"

  "What kind of person is this pursuer? Can't you see?" Tang Chao said as he continued to pilot the airship downwards.

  "It's the Black Wind Fortress people! The underlings of our arch-nemesis, Ma Zhongqiang!" Irina raised her binoculars and observed while answering very affirmatively: "A whole bunch of despicable, inhumane bastards who will stop at nothing!"

  "Hold on to something!" Tang Dynasty pressed the flying boat's steering column down, and the flying boat suddenly dived at a 45-degree angle towards the ground with a high-pitched whine.

  A huge object suddenly appeared in mid-air, with the roar of a flying machine, thundering down from the sky, instantly startling two groups of people on horseback to hastily rein in their mounts.

  A fine steed prances with its forelegs high in the air, standing upright on its hind legs.

  A neighing sound echoes through the vast expanse of yellow sand desert.

  "Boom boom boom boom……"

  Four-caliber aircraft machine guns installed in the front cabin of the airship, spitting out tongues of fire, brought four soul-stirring and deadly whips, without a hint of mercy, fiercely sweeping towards the black wind stronghold like a broom sweeping a hole.

  In an instant, the pursuing soldiers who were originally proud and arrogant suddenly fell into disarray.

  The mournful cries of men, the sorrowful neighs of horses, intertwined into a dirge that seemed to come from the depths of hell.

  The bullet's head, the massive kinetic energy generated by high-speed shooting creates a metal storm, wherever it goes, whether it is human or horse, it will be splattered with blood and flesh, and limbs will be scattered everywhere.

  It seems that he doesn't know what mercy is, Tang Dynasty flew the airship in mid-air and turned around to face the Black Wind Fortress again, unleashing another round of aerial barrage.

  After two rounds of shooting, more than a hundred Black Wind Stronghold elite cavalrymen had at least half of them turned into bloody and mangled limbs. The remaining survivors were already scared out of their wits, crying for their fathers and mothers as they dismounted and surrendered, with many of them pissing in their pants.

  The Tang army shouted loudly through the loudspeaker, "People of Heifeng Village, listen! Throw away your weapons, dismount and surrender. If not, none will be spared. Those who attempt to escape will be killed without pardon!"

  The two Black Wind Gang horse thieves who had fallen behind the cavalry troop, harboring a glimmer of hope, turned their horses around and fled desperately in the direction they came from.

  "Damn, what I said was nonsense!" Tang Chao cursed loudly in the loudspeaker and handed the microphone to Irina. "Use this to contact Lang Ying and his men." After that, he controlled the airship to chase after the two Black Wind Bandit escapees.

  The horse that runs faster will definitely not escape the airship with a cruising speed of 240 kilometers per hour.

  The Tang Dynasty obviously treated this airship as an armed helicopter in excess.

  There is no doubt that these two fugitives were torn to pieces by bullets from an aircraft machine gun.

  At the same time as these two fugitives were shot down, Irina's voice also came from the loudspeaker of the airship:

  "Lang Ying, I am Irina. Bring your men and capture all the survivors of Hei Feng Zhai for me. Kill anyone who intends to resist!"

  The sudden change made the two groups of people who were originally chasing each other suddenly have a dreamlike feeling of going from hell to heaven and from heaven to hell.

  The airship hovered slowly above the remaining cavalry in Heifeng Village, and Lang Ying's Iron Rider Alliance scouting team was also unclear about what had happened, each of them stunned and still coming to their senses.

  "Lang Ying, you little stinker, what are you still standing there for! Didn't you hear my orders?!" Irina was obviously also getting into the game, shouting through the megaphone on the airship: "You bunch of rabbits from Black Wind Fortress, listen up! All of you, put your hands behind your heads and squat in place! Or else don't blame me for being ruthless. Lang Ying, you little scoundrel, can't you really hear my voice? Lang Cuo, He Zhe Er, Du Xiao Feng, Fei Zi Jie, have all of you become stupid geese?"

  "Irina-neesan, is that really you?" The black-clad knight, whom Irina had called Ryōga, looked up at the airship in the sky and shouted at the top of his lungs.

  "It's not me, who else? Haha, didn't expect I'd descend from the sky to save you bunch of stinky brats! " Irina said with a proud smile: "Haha, don't thank me yet, hurry up and get to work, tie up all these Black Wind Fortress rascals first."

  The twelve cavalry scouts suddenly shouted and cheered, turned their horses around, and surrounded the remaining less than fifty riders of the Black Wind Fort with a fierce momentum. Then they cleaned up the battlefield, tied up the prisoners, and counted the spoils.

  Thank you, everyone.