Chapter 34: Fury Sets the Prairie Ablaze (9)

  At this time, half a mile away from the camp, the Jurchen general Pu Yu and his supervisor nodded in satisfaction: "Very good, it seems that we can take down the eastern gate of the camp soon. These Khitan people are doing a great job."

  The golden armor beside him said, "The enemy defending the gate is really too weak. It's strange that such a weak team can break through our army's elite camp."

  Another Jin soldier worriedly said, "It's possible that the strong soldiers have all entered the camp to participate in the siege of Meng Anbao, leaving only some weak and disabled soldiers to guard the gate. I didn't expect our army to return so quickly."

  Pu Zhen nodded and said: "Not bad, I thought so. So we must seize the time, no need to look back at the excitement, the whole army will press on!"

  Just as the Jin soldiers were drawing their bows and holding their swords, lining up their horses in formation, preparing to launch a hundred-horseback charge that would split the enemy's liver and gallbladder. A sharp-eyed Jin soldier suddenly shouted: "Look, what is that?"

  Under the gaze of hundreds of eyes, a lone and thin horse, carrying a man dressed in golden attire, lazily trotted over with a monotonous gait.

  Pu Zhen's eyes narrowed, and with a flick of his head, he signaled to the two Golden Guards beside him. Immediately, two Golden Guards rode forward, intercepting the golden-robed man.

  Before long, one of the Jin soldiers returned to report: "It's a tribesman who has been seriously injured and has both feet broken. It seems like... it seems like..."

  Pu Zhen impatiently said: "What is it? Speak quickly!"

  "Seems like he is the commander of the imperial guard beside M?ngke Khan, Mengü Temür."

  "Quickly, bring him over..."

  As two Jin soldiers pulled the reins, quickly bringing over the golden-haired man, Pu Zhen recognized him at a glance. This person with disheveled hair, covered in bloodstains, weak legs, hands tied behind his back to the horse's back, and a mouth stuffed with a bundle of rags was none other than Muqier Tiefu Almutai, the personal guard captain beside Meng Anbu!

  Pu Zhen's shock was no small matter. Amu Tai was the head of the guards beside Meng An Gu, and if he looked like this, then Meng An Bei...

  "What's going on? What happened?" Pu Zhen asked repeatedly, but Amu Tai just hummed and didn't respond. It wasn't until later that he reacted, realizing his mouth was still being covered.

  "Hurry up and untie me, take out the gag."

  As soon as the ball of cloth was taken out of Amu Tai's mouth, he immediately looked flustered and shouted: "Quickly, quickly look what's under the horse's belly!"

  Pu Zhen Zhang Er and the monk were at a loss, completely unable to understand what Ah Mu Tai meant by his words. However, looking at his flustered appearance, it seemed that something big was going on. He instructed one of the Jin soldiers to dismount and check if there was anything hidden under the belly of the thin horse that Ah Mu Tai had ridden in on.

  At this time, the Golden Soldiers who had already formed their ranks saw that the personal bodyguards of Meng An had all turned into this appearance, and they were worried about the property and women they had seized in the central military camp. They couldn't help but rush up to find out what was happening in the camp as soon as possible.

  At this time, the golden soldier reported: "Under the horse's belly is a large package, and there is a burning thin rope... Oh, and there is a wooden sign with several words written in blood."

  Najin soldier handed the wooden plaque to Pu Zhen, but Pu Zhen refused to take it, his face darkening as he said: "Who can recognize these southern barbarians' characters..."

  Najin Bing scratched his head, looked at the wooden sign again, and then glanced at Pu Zhen, saying carefully: "It seems not to be a Nanman script, but rather our own Jurchen large script."

  Pu Zhen snorted: "Fighting relies on bows and arrows, as well as bravery. What's the use of recognizing characters?" The implication being that he didn't recognize Jurchen script either.

  This phenomenon is actually very common in the Jin army. To know that more than a decade ago, the Jurchen people were still an illiterate nation, in a era of knotting records and oral transmission. It wasn't until several years after the founding of the Great Jin that Wanyan Xiyin, a talented scholar among the Jurchens, created the Jurchen script based on the scripts of Liao and Song.

  But among the high-ranking officials of the Jin army, many people lacked interest in learning. If they could solve problems with their staff, why would they still have to recognize characters one by one like a child? Therefore, many senior generals in the Jin army were illiterate, including the two deputy marshals who invaded the south this time: Zonghan and Zongwang.

  However, Amu Tai was an exception. His father was a servant of Wanyan Xiyin's family and knew some Jurchen characters. Amu Tai himself also roughly recognized some of them. He snatched the wooden board and saw five bloody big characters that pierced his eyes: "Pu Zhen died here!"

  What?! Curse me?! Pai Zhen's eyes widened in shock, his golden rat tail almost standing on end!

  At this time, Amu Tai seemed to remember something, his face turned pale: "Gift package? Burning rope? No good, quickly throw away that big bundle..."

  Before his words had fallen, a violent explosion sounded, and Amu Tai turned into pieces of scattered flesh emitting a burnt smell, splashing everywhere.

  Di Lie's last big gift package has finally come in handy. Everything is as he expected, the Golden Army will find Amu Tai and bring him over to understand the situation. Calculating the time it takes to cover this distance, leaving just the right length of fuse, they can achieve another central explosion harvest.

  Fortunately, neither Amutei nor the ordinary Jin soldiers had any knowledge of explosives. Even when Amutei saw Dili tie something under the horse's belly, he did not realize what a terrible thing it was. Otherwise, as soon as Amutei saw the Jin soldier, he would have struggled free. At the first opportunity after being untied, he would have driven away the horses tied with explosives, and if so, the harm caused by this gift to the Jin soldiers would be much less.

  Ah Mu Tai recalled his own painful experience at the last moment, and finally realized what kind of "big gift" that package was. Unfortunately, it was too late.

  Di Lie had exploded two such large bombs last night, but because it was in the dark of night, the visual effect was discounted, and there was only one audience. Now this last 10 kg package of explosives not only exploded at the moment when the sun jumped out of the horizon, fiercely like another twin sun, but also under the gaze of nearly a thousand people. The bloody and cruel scene shocked the soul, and shattered the liver and gallbladder.

  "How terrible!" Ye Die'er said afterwards, "One leg directly smashed onto a woman standing next to me, and that woman immediately fainted - not from being hit, but from being scared. Only later did I see clearly that it was a horse's leg..."

  "It's too terrifying!" Zuo said after a pause, "I've never seen such a frightening killing machine in my life. It was like the heavens unleashing their wrath with thunder and fire! It tore apart everyone within tens of meters, and then brought down a bloody rain. I've seen dead people since I was born, and in over 20 years, I've seen countless corpses, but I never vomited. But that day... I did..."

  "Too awesome!" Yang Zhe was dissatisfied with the small bombs he threw last night after witnessing this big explosion, and made up his mind to throw bigger ones next time.

  "That's the master's fireball magic!" Ah Su said later, after more of the Golden Soldiers were blown up, "The master comes from a mysterious place called Taiwan in the Eastern Sea, where it is the entrance and exit of the Dragon Palace. The master's palace was built on top of the entrance. The Dragon King made an exchange with the master using the incantation of fireball magic so that he could come and go freely."

  This statement full of mysterious and imaginative power by Ah Su later spread throughout the Song and Jin dynasties, becoming a notion deeply believed by everyone from emperors and court officials to ordinary people.

  After the explosion, the scene like a battlefield of Asura, frightened the Khitan soldiers who were attacking, completely bewildered. Many people thought it was the punishment of the heavens, regardless of being on the battlefield, they abandoned their bows and knelt down, looking up at the sky with clasped hands, muttering prayers.

  And those righteous people stood there stupidly, completely unaware of taking advantage of the situation to attack. What's even more absurd is that afterwards, a monk named Zhihe, with his hands clasped together, bowed to thank the gods in heaven, and a crowd of righteous people threw away their weapons, knelt down and kowtowed, thanking the heavens for sending down divine power to exterminate the Jin people.

  Yang Zhechong and Zuo Kai were caught off guard, scratching their ears and cheeks, unsure of what to do. Suddenly, a strong force struck from behind, sending both of them flying to one side with a kick each. Then, Di Lie's angry shout entered their ears: "We are not Arabs, we still have to pray during battles! Quickly throw out all the usable weapons in your hands!"

  Yang and Zuo didn't know what "Arabs" were, but they also knew that this wasn't the time to kowtow. In fact, deep down, they didn't think these righteous people were making a big fuss. If they hadn't witnessed Di Lie using bombs to kill enemies multiple times last night, they would have guessed that the huge explosion just now was just an ultra-large bomb, and they might have even thanked the heavens for bringing down the punishment of the thunder god like those righteous people did.

  Di Lie took out the remaining seven or eight thunderbolt bombs and distributed them to Yang Zhechong and Zuo Kai. Then, the three men each held a torch in one hand and a bomb in the other, and threw them all at once towards those " pseudo-Arabs".

  A string of explosions, a string of miserable cries. Perhaps the stimulation just now was too strong, and as soon as they heard this devastating explosion sound, even if it was much smaller, hundreds of Qidan soldiers immediately covered their heads and scattered in all directions. They didn't even bother to chase after the frightened war horses that had escaped, but instead fled with their tails between their legs, shouting loudly.

  But their misfortune did not end there, a group of soldiers suddenly rushed out from the nearby woods, holding bows and crossbows and shooting at the Khitan army in a chaotic manner, immediately knocking down a large number. The Khitan army had already lost its morale, after repeated attacks, it no longer had any will to fight, only fleeing with their heads covered, completely ignoring the continuous fall of their comrades around them.

  Di Lie and Yang, Zuo and others were amazed when a somewhat familiar rough voice came: "Great! Great! In the past, we were bullied by these Khitan dogs, and last night they killed so many of our brothers. I didn't expect to take revenge so quickly. Brothers, let's kill them fiercely for the thousands of Han soldiers who died unjustly!"

  Fang Dà Tóu? This man is actually Fang Dà Tóu! And the troops he led, undoubtedly are the remaining Han soldiers who survived the disaster.

  When the hundreds of soldiers, covered in blood, triumphantly held up the long strings made from the ears of Khitans, as they approached the center of the explosion, all the noise gradually subsided and slowly disappeared.

  What a scene unfolded before my eyes? A huge pit with a diameter of over 20 feet, surrounded by large pieces of human and horse corpses. Human blood flowed freely, while horse blood gushed out like a spring, mixing together with the human blood to flow into the pit, turning it into a pool of blood. In just a short moment, the surface of the blood pool, as well as the bodies of humans and horses, were densely covered with all sorts of flies. Occasionally, some of the wounded Golden soldiers or warhorses would twitch, startling large swarms of flies into flight, making one feel utterly disgusted.

  In the center of the explosion, within the range enveloped by the shockwave, four or five dozen Jin soldiers were killed on the spot, more than twenty were severely injured, and the rest were lightly injured or uninjured, with over thirty Jin soldiers at the outermost periphery.

  More than thirty Jurchen Golden Soldiers are a force not to be underestimated at any time. In the eastern and western routes of Hebei, such a force can even take down a county town. Moreover, they can gallop or provoke outside the prefectural city guarded by the strong troops of the Song Dynasty, while the Song army dare not come out of the city to respond.

  But at this time and place, the power that made the Song people fearful had vanished without a trace. The Xianjun saw only thirty or more faces of numbness, terror, and loss of soul. They were also making the same movements as the Khitan soldiers, constantly praying to heaven for forgiveness.

  Among them, several golden soldiers were devoutly praying when they suddenly and inexplicably spat out large mouthfuls of blood, even bleeding from all seven orifices, before immediately toppling over dead. This spectacle not only frightened the Jurchen people so that their souls were shaken loose, believing that the spirits were continuously punishing them, but also caused those soldiers to hastily kneel down in a large patch.

  The situation was only clear to Di Lie, those gold soldiers who died suddenly were previously affected by the strong shockwave generated by the explosion, their internal organs and head were severely damaged, resulting in bleeding and hematoma in the brain and abdominal cavity. It just took a while for the fatal injury to form, and there was no apparent abnormality on the surface. But with massive bleeding and hematoma compression, they eventually died of severe blood loss from all seven orifices.

  These medical reactions, falling into the eyes of both the enemy and our own people who did not understand them, became evil spirits hastening death or divine punishment.

  It is obvious that this was a great advantage to the Song forces, for even the most ferocious Jurchen troops had by now lost all will to fight and were surrendering in droves, like sheep waiting to be slaughtered.

  Di Lie stood on top of the stockade wall and shouted at the right moment: "Fang Da Tou, what are you waiting for? Are you even afraid to slaughter cows and sheep?"

  Fang Hong suddenly had an epiphany and shouted loudly: "Brothers, let's go kill!"

  Fang Hong finished drinking, and with the first arrow, he shot down a Jin soldier. The Xianbei soldiers behind him heard the order and reflexively raised their bows, crossbows, swords, and guns, shooting from afar and chopping up close. With just one strike, they annihilated this group of Jin soldiers.

  After slaughtering the Jin soldiers, Fang Hong led the hundreds of Xianbei soldiers who had just killed their former rulers, the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty and the Khitan people, with overflowing confidence and high morale, to arrive at the gate of the camp in an orderly manner.

  Just as the righteous people on the wall were anxious and didn't know what these big-headed soldiers wanted to do.

  At Fang Hong's one word of command, all the signed soldiers thundered to their knees, facing Di Lie and bowing their heads: "The leader's divine power, we are willing to follow the leader, proudly shouting in this chaotic world. In a sea of blades and a mountain of fire, as long as there is an order, we will not disobey. If we violate this oath, heaven will devour us, heaven will devour us!"

  The world is quiet, with no sound of wind passing by, and a red sun slowly rises.

  All the righteous people, including Yang Zhe's concubines, Left Kai, A Shu, Ye Die'er and others, as well as those who returned one after another, all knelt down without exception to see the cause of this earth-shaking loud noise, Song Feng.

  Only that tall and upright figure, which did not appear particularly high or majestic, reflected the morning sun's rays at this moment, shining as brightly as the sun itself.

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