Volume 1 Chapter 10: Breaking Out of the Encirclement

  "Lao San! How did you come?" Qiao An Guo asked in surprise.

  "Big brother! Are you alright?" Qiao Anbang hastily dismounted his horse and turned over.

  On the halfway up the mountain, Qiao Anbang and his party rushed up the mountain with lightning speed and joined forces with Qiao Anguo and the escort team who had come to meet them.

  The two brothers faced each other, and Qiao Anguo was surprised and moved. He never thought that in his time of crisis, the one who would risk his life to save him would be his third brother, a good-for-nothing who spent his days idling away, disappointing his father and family, and earning the scorn of the villagers.

  Facing Qiao An's eager gaze, Qiao Anbang's heart trembled. As a second-generation person, he knew that his big brother had already been moved by him.

  "Big Young Master, Third Young Master, the situation is urgent, this isn't a place for conversation, let's think of a way to break through quickly!" Qiao Wu, who was keeping watch on the side, saw that some bandits were rapidly approaching and turned around to urge them.

  "Hmm! Old Three, this group of bandits is about to set fire to the mountain, let's go up first. This place is not suitable for defense." Qiao An Guo immediately said to Qiao An Bang with a serious expression.

  "Alright." Jo Ann nodded in response, and immediately turned to face Cao Er and Ya Li, saying: "Cao Er, you and Ya Li stay behind the hall, everyone else retreat to the top of the mountain! Quickly!"

  "Yes!" Cao Er and Ya Li responded in unison, while the other servants and security guards retreated slowly up the mountain.

  ……

  "Hurry, catch up with them and grab that pretty girl! Offer her to Big Brother and you'll be heavily rewarded!" Zhang Hu Zi yelled, waving a mirror case in his hand as he urged nearly a hundred bandits to chase after Qiao An Bang and the others from the northwest direction of the mountain.

  Originally, Zhang Huizi discovered Yalai among the group of people exchanging fire with Qiao Anbang earlier. Seeing that Qiao Anbang and his men were at the halfway point up the mountain, he conceived the idea of capturing Yalai to offer her to Wei Dexi in order to curry favor with him. He then led a large group of bandits in charging up the mountain.

  Great rewards must have brave men; after hearing Zhang Hu's promise, the bandits shouted and rushed towards the middle of the mountain.

  Behind a rock, Yalixie held a sniper rifle and hid behind the rock and surrounding vegetation. She looked at the slow-moving bandits below the mountain, her expression cold and stern as she raised the Mauser 98K sniper rifle in her hand. With the help of the 6x optical sight on the sniper rifle, some of the bandits' ferocious faces appeared in Yalixie's line of sight.

  Without hesitation, Yali decisively pulled the trigger, and a crisp gunshot rang out, a 7.92mm Mauser rifle bullet whizzed towards a small bandit leader who was shouting and charging at the front, nearly four hundred meters away.

  The bullet accurately hit the bandit leader's chest, causing him to fall to the ground. Although one of them had fallen, these bandits who were accustomed to seeing life and death did not become timid, but instead shouted louder to boost their morale and continued to charge forward.

  Yali remained calm in the face of danger, firing continuously until all the bullets in the magazine were gone. By then, five bandits at the forefront had fallen to the ground. After exhausting her ammunition, Yali quickly pulled back the bolt and loaded a new clip with five rounds, then turned to Cao Er who was standing there in a daze and said, "Let's go."

  "Oh, okay!" Cao Er, who had been stunned, quickly came to his senses and hastily retreated backwards. Yalai's performance just now had really shocked him. He didn't understand sniper rifles at all, and he couldn't figure out how this beautiful woman in front of him could be so good with a gun. The bandits earlier were all several hundred meters away, and she took down five bandits with five shots. This marksmanship was something that even the entire security team might not be able to find anyone to match.

  After Cao Er's withdrawal, Ya Li fired another shot and killed another bandit. She then crouched down and retreated up the mountain, using the terrain to her advantage as she fought and withdrew. Every time a gunshot rang out, a bandit would surely fall.

  Zhang Huizi led the men in pursuit for several hundred meters, and just as they were about to rush into the mountain top defense position of the security team, not even a single person was seen opening fire. In the end, they could only retreat back down the mountain with their tails between their legs, losing more than a dozen subordinates in vain.

  …….

  Mountain top, security team defensive position.

  "Captain, Third Master, Liu Yifei's marksmanship is truly impressive! Along the way, she killed over a dozen bandits, and they didn't even notice her presence." He couldn't help but exclaim excitedly as soon as he saw Qiao Anbang and Qiao Anguo.

  "Oh? Miss Liu still has such marksmanship?" Qiao Anguo was also greatly surprised, earlier, Qiao Anbang had introduced Yali's identity to him.

  Yali smiled slightly, not knowing how to respond. Next to her, Qiao Anbang hastily spoke up: "Big brother, it's like this, Yifei received military training and learned marksmanship while studying abroad, so she's very skilled with guns."

  "Oh, I see." Qiao An Guo nodded slightly upon hearing this. At the moment, he was anxious about how to break through and didn't question what Qiao An Bang said. After nodding, Qiao An Guo raised his binoculars and looked down at the mountain.

  "Wu Shu, Lao San, this group of bandits has started burning the mountain." Qiao An Guo said, holding up his binoculars and looking at Qiao Wu and Qiao An Bang.

  "It seems we have to think of a way quickly, the bandits are gone." Qiao Wu said with a worried face, looking at the mountain below where thick smoke was slowly rising.

  "Captain, Third Master, why don't we take advantage of the fire not having started yet and concentrate our strength to break out all at once? Just like how we rushed up the mountain earlier." Cao Er asked from the side.

  "It won't work, the reason you were able to break through the bandits' blockade and rush up the mountain just now is that it was a sudden attack, we suddenly appeared from behind them, which was something the bandits did not anticipate. Now if we charge down, making a frontal assault, the bandits will be prepared, I'm afraid it won't be that easy." Qiao Anguo said with deep concern.

  "Ah, Third Master is right. The mountain road is rugged and narrow, our people can't deploy, the bandits only need to set up machine guns at the exit of the mountain road, they can block us completely." Qiao nodded in agreement, after all, he was a soldier, Qiao still had some brains.

  "If only we had a few cannons, we could blast away their machine guns and open up a breach to break through." Qiao Anbang muttered to himself.

  At this time, Qiao An Guo turned around, put down the telescope in his hand, and patted Qiao An Bang's shoulder with a deep meaning, saying: "Old three, it seems that we brothers are going to fall together. You shouldn't have come here. You should take our father away from here, go to Yingzhou to call for help, and eliminate these bandits who do evil."

  "Big brother is in trouble, how can I stand by and do nothing? Even if I knew it was certain death, I would still come without hesitation. Not for anything else, but because you are my big brother, my family, my sibling!" Qiao Anbang looked at Qiao Anguo with a solemn expression.

  Qiao Ankou stared at Qiao Anbang for a long time, his eyes gradually becoming moist, his hands trembling slightly as he grasped Qiao Anbang's shoulders and said: "Good brother, you've finally grown up, worthy of being my brother!"

  "Big brother, don't be heartbroken. We brothers will fight side by side, we'll live together and die together!" Qiao Anbang also spoke out to comfort him.

  "Hmm! With a brother like you, I have no regrets in this life. The only regret is that we can't take care of our father until the end." Qiao An nodded with a choked tone.

  "Even if our brother is no longer here, isn't there still Second Brother at home?" Qiao Anbang said.

  "Right!" Qiao An Guo and Qiao An Bang exchanged a smile, then stretched out their left hands and said solemnly: "Even if we don't return this time, there's still the second child at home, no regrets."

  "Brothers, we can't let these bandits laugh at us. Pick up your weapons and fight them! At worst, it's just death. Those with families can rest assured, if the government doesn't provide compensation, my family will!" Jo Anbang shouted loudly.

  "With Third Master's words, brothers don't have anything to worry about anymore. Let's fight it out with them to the end!"

  "Right, fight to the end! Fight...!" The soldiers responded in unison.

  Qiao An Guo looked around at his subordinates, who were in high spirits and boiling with emotion. He nodded in satisfaction to Qiao An Bang, thinking that his younger brother had really changed a lot. Then he shouted loudly: "Check the ammunition, prepare for battle!"

  As soon as Qiao An's voice fell, the officers and soldiers began to bustle around, some checking their ammunition, others bidding farewell and encouraging each other.

  "Three dogs, two tigers, if I don't make it later and you two manage to escape, don't forget to tell my wife to go to the Qiao family to collect her compensation and then remarry. She can take the child with her, but she mustn't change our surname, it's still got to be Wang, we can't let the incense of the old Wang family die out..." A soldier surnamed Wang instructed his two comrades beside him.

  "Monitor, if I die, my mother's eyesight is not good, you help me get the condolence money and give it to my mother, let her take care of herself well. Just say that Erwa can't filial piety to her anymore..." A soldier said, tears streaming down his face.

  "Li Man Cang, you still owe me a dollar, and the money from last time we drank together. If I don't make it back, you have to give the money to my old lady, and help take care of her funeral expenses too. Otherwise, I won't forgive you, did you hear that?" A slightly older soldier was scolding and instructing another soldier next to him while hitting his head.

  Listening to the soldiers' farewell, Qiao Anbang only felt his mood suddenly becoming extremely heavy, and his brain quickly thinking about how to take them out of danger.

  After thinking for half a day, Qiao Anbang still couldn't think of any good solution. This time he finally understood that when the two sides were truly in a situation where their strengths were vastly different, even he, a transmigrator from a later generation, was powerless to do anything about it. Unlike what some novels wrote, where one could easily defeat the enemy and resolve the crisis with ease.

  After all, he didn't have superpowers. In the face of a real battlefield with live ammunition, relying on his passion and temporary excitement, he would also feel helpless and fearful.

  Without a decisive weapon and equipment, it is almost impossible to bring this group of security guards who are not much stronger than the bandits below the mountain to break through the siege.

  Just as Qiao Anbang felt extremely disappointed and depressed, Yalixi quietly walked over to him and said softly: "Master, come here for a moment, I have a way." It turned out that she had been reading the information on the side, seeing Qiao Anbang's worried face, and soon knew what he was thinking.

  "Oh?" Qiao Anbang looked up at Ya Li's stunning face, following her with a mixture of trust and doubt to one side, asking: "Ya Li, what's your good plan?"

  "Master, the mountain bandits have already clashed with them. Their equipment is not good, to be exact, it's very poor. Moreover, they are not well-trained regular troops, but only know how to charge forward recklessly with a burst of passion. If we can give them a fierce firepower strike, we can completely defeat them!" Yalixiao replied in a low voice.

  "But our equipment isn't necessarily good either, and most people's ammunition is not sufficient. How can we give them a powerful firepower strike?" Qiao Anbang asked in confusion. He didn't know that in Yalixie's eyes, the weapons and equipment currently used on Earth were simply rubbish.

  "If the master needs it, Arya can have the aircraft fly here and we can get the most advanced weapons in this world from the aircraft, such as machine guns, artillery and so on." Arya said with a calm face.

  "Yali, are you saying that you can still operate the aircraft here?" Qiao Anbang couldn't help but feel a surge of excitement in his heart. With an aircraft, he really didn't care about these few hundred bandits anymore. Although the security team didn't have artillery and no one knew how to use cannons, they could all use machine guns. Just think about it, if each member of the security team was equipped with a light machine gun and some grenade launchers, such firepower would be enough to sweep away not only these few hundred bandits but also the enemy's field infantry at this time.

  "Yes! As long as the aircraft has enough electricity, Yali can manipulate it at any time, without distance restrictions." Yalifeyi still nodded with a calm face.

  "That's great! Yali, get the aircraft here as soon as possible, hurry!" Qiao Anbang was excited and urged hastily.

  "Master, are you sure? The aircraft has arrived here and can provide us with equipment, but should we let them know the secret of the aircraft?" Yalixi asked with some concern, looking at Joanne and the security team not far away.

  PS: To all readers, just reading without voting is not moral, please cast a few recommendation votes to support Autumn Wind. I'm very grateful. The plot will unfold continuously and get more exciting, please trust me, the setup in the early stages is very important.^_^