When Wednesday stepped onto the block he had ordered to burn, the ground beneath his feet was still hot. Standing on a thick cloud of soot, he surveyed the black fire, a neighborhood where hundreds of wooden houses had burned to the ground.

Most of the people in this neighborhood are hired workers who work for the warehouses and warehouses in the north, and some of the houses can be built back to the time when Qi Jiguang was the chief military officer of Jizhou Town. In the beginning, there were only a few shacks here, but as time went on, and Zunhua became a transshipment center for the supply of military supplies to Jizhou Town, these warehouses and warehouses required more and more labor, and this place formed a spider-like block of wooden houses and shacks.

Even in normal years, the most worrying thing about such a random building block is a fire, and this block will catch fire once every 3-5 years, and every time it catches fire, it can burn down more than ten or dozens of houses, and this is still in the situation of unintentional fire.

Now, under his arrangement, many fire-starters have been placed in this neighborhood, and several fires have been lit, and the fire has become extremely rapid and ferocious. If the fire escape had not been set up a long time ago, it is estimated that this fire could have burned down half of the southwest city. But even so, about one-fifteenth of the open space in the area near the center of the city was burned.

In the area near the fire, the smell of barbecue is now permeaty. The smell reminded Wednesday that the fire had burned not only the house, but also the large number of people trapped in the neighborhood and not fleeing.

Wednesday was still expressionless, but the faces of the officers behind him were a little unbearable, and the civilians who were cleaning up the fire farther away were pale, and from time to time some people hid to the side and vomited.

Shortly after Wednesday and other officers arrived at the fire, Huang Guoxian, the commander in charge of defending the neighborhood, hurried over.

At this moment, Huang Guoxian not only had his clothes burned to tatters, but even his face was covered with soot. He looked like an ordinary refugee who had escaped from the fire, and if it weren't for the armor he was wearing and a weapon hanging from his waist, Wednesday would not have recognized this subordinate.

After Huang Guoxian saluted to Wednesday, he suppressed his excitement and reported: "This fire has burned at least 200 little Tartars, and there are 162 Tartar corpses that can be distinguished, and there are many other corpses that are difficult to identify..."

Wednesday quickly interrupted him, and said indignantly: "I don't care how many of my own people were killed by the Tartars, I just want to know how many Zunhua soldiers and civilians were killed by the Tartars." ”

Huang Guoxian opened his mouth, and finally reacted in time, and said in a mournful tone: "The fire set by the Tartars burned at least more than 300 young people who defended this place, and we also found that after the fire broke out, the Tartars in the west wanted to rescue their companions who were surrounded in the fire, so they forced a large number of prisoners to rush into the fire to fight the fire, and at least burned to death a small 100 prisoners. Therefore, the fire of the Tartars burned at least nearly 500 Zunhua soldiers and civilians. ”

Wednesday nodded and said, "After removing the body of the Tartar, let all the city defense areas outside the city send people to visit the fire site."

Tell them how vicious the Tartars are, not only set fire to the houses, but also force the captives who surrendered into the fire to be burned alive, and the Tartars want to slaughter the city.

The Tartars entered the customs this time, and there were only tens of thousands of soldiers and horses, and if they wanted to continue to enter the interior of the west, they had to ensure the safety of their back roads. My Zunhua army and civilians are as high as more than 100,000, how dare the Tartars put the back road in the hands of a group of descendants, so they are ready to slaughter after capturing this city to ensure the safety of the back road.

For this reason, the Tartars set fire to the houses of the city and drove the surrendered prisoners into the fire to burn them to death, all of which were premeditated and organized actions. The commanders of all defense zones should thoroughly propagate and educate the military and people in the defense areas, and demand that the soldiers and people in the defense areas give up the idea of surrender and fight to the death against the Tartars to the end.

Even if ten lives are exchanged for one Tartar's life, these Tartars must not be allowed to slaughter my Zunhua soldiers and civilians at no cost, let them think about their families in the city, if these Tartars really break through Zunhua City, what will happen to their families? ”

The right army led by Yue Tuo, although they tried their best after the fire started, only rescued one-third of the men and horses who were surrounded in the fire.

A fire on the south side of Ximen Avenue suddenly made the Houjin army who were attacking lose the will to continue fighting, and they involuntarily slowed down the speed of the attack, and carefully looked at the thick pillars of smoke that rushed into the sky from the south.

Looking at the way these pillars of smoke gradually converged, even if you didn't see the fire directly, you could estimate the scale of the fire.

The Houjin soldiers who went deep into the Chengxiang neighborhood couldn't help but worry about whether their back roads would also come to such a fire. At this time, they did not doubt that this fire would be set by their own people, after all, they were now victorious, and even the belongings in the house had not been selected by the air, how could they set fire to the house.

The army attacking after Jin hesitated at first, and it was not so resolute to break through the defense line set by the Ming people. The consequence of the slowdown in the offensive was that as long as the Houjin soldiers did not advance in front of these militias guarding the defensive line, they still had the courage to shoot at the Houjin soldiers with the firearms of the Ming army.

While the casualties of the Ming people continued to grow, so did the losses of the Later Jin soldiers. * The biggest difference between a weapon and a bow and arrow is that even an untrained woman can hurt a heavily armed soldier.

Therefore, the Akito, who had been retreating, finally began to slowly stabilize the defensive line, and launched a confrontation with the attacking forces of Houjin. And Yue Tuo and other generals in the rear, looking at the flag representing their own side suddenly stopped, and roughly knew that the fire set by the Ming people seemed to have shaken their military hearts.

After Arzin and Rausa, who were in command at the front, reported back the losses of the southern attack on Niulu, Yue Tuo finally ordered a temporary retreat, ending the day's attack.

This fire, combined with the losses paid during the attack, caused the right army to lose more than 4 Niulu, of which nearly 4 Niulu were lost in the fire alone, and even the corpses were not recovered.

The Right Route Army, not counting the Mongolian Left Battalion, is about more than 80 Niu Lu and more than 4,000 people. From the breakthrough of Da'ankou, the continuous defeat of all reinforcements of the Ming army, and the capture of five Ming cities, the loss of the right army was less than 2 Niu Lu.

However, after attacking under the city of Zunhua for two days, the city wall of Zunhua has not been touched, and the casualties paid by the right army have been more than 3 times the number of people killed since breaking through the pass and entering the Ming Dynasty.

The right route army has jurisdiction over the five banners of Zhenghuang, Zhenghong, inlaid red, inlaid blue and the Mongolian left battalion, but the two yellow flags are now led by Huang Taiji, plus a part of the troops of the two blue flags have also been incorporated into the middle route army, and the Mongolian left battalion is used to garrison Shimen Village, Baozi Village and other places. Therefore, all Yue Tuo can command now is two red flags and one blue flag.

Yue Tuo is the owner of the Red Flag Banner, with the support of Huang Taiji, and his control over the Red Flag is also deepening. But although Zhenghongqi obeyed him, he obeyed the orders of the banner owner Daishan.

Yue Tuo knew that Huang Taiji detained his father Daishan in the Middle Route Army and let him serve as the Right Wing Four Banners Gushan, just to allow him to take this opportunity to exert his influence in the Zhenghong Banner.

As Daishan's eldest son, Yue Tuo is also accompanied by his father's favored half-brother Saharan, and it is not a difficult task to establish his prestige within the Zhenghong Banner. It's just a matter of letting Zhenghongqi fight less hard battles and share more spoils in battle.

The banner owner of the blue flag, Amin, is still in Shenyang, and the troops of the blue flag are led by Amin's brother Zilharang. According to Huang Taiji's order, it was also one of his tasks to win over these blue-flaged soldiers and horses and Zilharang himself.

The people and horses used to test the attack yesterday were mainly Niu Lu with red flags, but most of the Niu Lu that officially attacked today were red flags and blue flags. Because after watching yesterday's battle, Yue Tuo and several generals of the Right Route Army all thought that they had a certain understanding of the defensive deployment of the Ming army.

They felt that they would not be able to react in time to the targeted attack tactics, so today's formal attack was unlikely to fail, and the property and people in the Chengxiang dwellings captured today would naturally belong to Niu Lu, who participated in the attack.

To put it simply, Yue Tuo and several Jurchen relatives of the Right Route Army all felt that today's attack was to carve up the looting area outside the city, and this was a meat-eating mission.

Yue Tuo was able to give up the quota for the attack, and did not let the red flag be swallowed alone, which was regarded as a gesture of goodwill to the red flag and the blue flag, and after Niu Lu heard the news, Niu Lu of the two flags did express his closeness to Yue Tuo.

But after this fire, there was some tension between the three banners of the originally harmonious Right Route Army. The reason was also that one of the Zhenghongbei who had escaped from the fire ran angrily to question the blue-flag armor in charge, Laezhen Arzin, and asked him why he set the fire.

Arzin naturally wouldn't admit that it was he who set the fire, and he insisted that it was Mingren's own fire. But the Jurchens who escaped from the fire all said that the Ming people who were fighting with them were also shouting in panic that the Tartars were setting fires, which shows that the Ming people did not know about the fire before.

And quite a few people saw that the fire was burning from behind them. Most of the people who entered the fire were Niu Lu with two red flags, but the blue flag was deliberately shrunk behind, and there was basically no loss, which can be seen to be premeditated.

There are already a lot of grievances between the two red flags and the blue flag, as Nurhaqi's subordinate, the blue flag has always been the target of Nurhachi's suppression, and Dai Shan was not less an accomplice at the beginning.

By the time of Nurhachi's death, Amin's views on the selection of the Later Jin Khan were at odds with each other, so there were many contradictions between the two red flags and the blue flags. Even in the past year, Amin's relationship with Dai Shan has eased, but the subordinates below have not given up their old grudges so quickly.

The imperial officer who was almost buried in the fire has always had no good impression of the blue flag, and he has some tendons, and after hearing the shouts of the Ming people around him, he immediately believed that this fire was set by his own people.

When he made such a fuss, he began to suspect the clansmen who originally believed in the Ming people's arson. They didn't believe that Arzin would deliberately set fire to his own people, but it was possible that he would accidentally set fire to his own people.

By the time Yue Tuo and others received the news that they had imprisoned the troublesome Beiyu and the soldiers, the entire Right Route Army had almost believed the story that Arzin set fire to the Ming people and only turned out to be surrounded by the two red banners.

The morale of the Houjin Right Army, which thought that it knew the truth of the matter, was even more demoralized, and Yue Tuo had to give up the afternoon attack and withdraw all the troops. And that night, Huang Taiji also sent someone to call Yue Tuo and other generals of the Right Route Army and reprimanded him greatly.