On the evening of the next day, that is, on the evening of the sixth day of the fifth month, Shizhu Xuanfu Si and Qin Gongming, together with Qin Gongming, led 3,000 Shizhu Baipole soldiers to arrive at Chen Ziqiang's camp on the hillside on the east bank of the Lengshui River.

When night fell, Lang Wu Zhiwang, the left attendant of the Nanjing Military Department, and Qin Liangyu, the female general of the Shizhu Native Army, led the rear army composed of more than 1,000 people mainly composed of Wang Jianguo, the general of the Nanjing Beijing Battalion, and successfully arrived at the official army camp on the east bank of the Lengshui River.

The reason why Wu Zhiwang and his party went so smoothly was, of course, due to the fact that the Baojing soldiers killed and robbed the Yimiao villages along the mountain road and burned them all before leaving.

When I first saw the tragic situation of the Yimiao villages on both sides of the road along the way, Lang Wu Zhiwang, the left attendant of the Nanjing Military Department, and Qin Liangyu, who had always emphasized military discipline, both had unkind faces.

But it wasn't until they met the messenger who came back to deliver the news halfway through that the two of them were able to resolve the backlog of barriers in their hearts.

The difference in military discipline between the Tusi armies of Guangxi and Southwest China is known to the whole world, and especially the native soldiers of Xiangxi and the wolf soldiers of Guangxi are the most brutal and bloodthirsty, and the military discipline is also the worst and worst.

Therefore, the Tusi army requisitioned in these two places is famous for synthesizing "wolf soil soldiers".

As the left squire of the Nanjing Military Department, Wu Zhiwang certainly knew that the imperial court's requisition and deployment of wolf soldiers to fight was itself a double-edged sword.

Whether it is the princes above the court, or the local feudal officials, they have a certain psychological preparation for the possible consequences of using the double-edged sword of wolf soil soldiers.

Knowing that these Yi Miao villages were willing to be the eagle dog minions of the Shuixi clan, the Baojing soldiers suffered losses of more than 200 people on the way to Shaxiba, and they encountered broken villages and mountain people's heads hanging high on the trees next to the mountain road along the way, and their hearts were no longer entangled.

"In troubled times, human life is like a mustard! It's better to be a peaceful dog, not to be a troubled world! ”

Qin Liangyu's sigh is quite in line with the mood of Wu Zhiwang on the way.

That night, Wu Zhiwang and Qin Liangyu led the rear team to the official camp on the bank of the Lengshui River, and met Chen Zizhuang and Peng Chaozhu, who came to greet them, and said nothing about the tragic situation they saw along the way, as if none of those things had happened.

After all, in the final analysis, the reason why they were able to reach the east bank of the Lengshui River, which is across the river from Shaxiba, was due to the actions of the Baojing soldiers.

On the morning of the second day after arriving at the official camp on the east bank of the Lengshui River, Wu Zhiwang immediately ordered Chen Zizhuang and Peng Chaozhu to lead the army to supervise the old and weak natives captured from the villages along the way, and cut down wood in the nearby mountains and forests to prepare for repairing the bridges on the Lengshui River.

Maybe it was because the Shaxi Dam Tusi on the other side of the Lengshui River acted in a hurry, or the boulder piers buried deep in the Lengshui River were too strong to be destroyed, or the bridge on the Lengshui River was too important for the Yi Miao mountain people who traveled between the two banks, etc., in short, no matter what the reason, they destroyed the bridge deck, but did not destroy the boulder piers that supported the bridge deck.

Thirty-six boulder piers still stand in the wide, gentle cold water river here.

Although the volume of Lengshui River in May is still not small, it is not the real flood season after all, and the deepest part is only more than one person deep.

The stone pillar toast and the Baojing toast soldiers, who have long been accustomed to the mountain environment, are even more handy, and it is not a problem to cross the river.

The problem lies in the large amount of grain and grass that is transported with the army.

In particular, Wu Zhiwang worked hard all the way, traveling 2,000 miles from Nanjing to Guiyang, and then traveling hundreds of miles from Guiyang to transport the batch of artillery here.

The batch of artillery pieces that Wu Zhiwang collected from the armament arsenal of the Nanjing Beijing Battalion were all two kinds of old-fashioned artillery that the Southern Beijing Battalion was about to be eliminated and not used, one was a large general cannon weighing five or six hundred catties each.

This kind of old-fashioned artillery, about four feet long and cast in pig iron during the Jiajing period, was already like a rag that was about to be completely eliminated in the eyes of the officials of the Beijing Division's Military Department and the Armament Academy.

But in the eyes of Wu Zhiwang, this kind of rags that are about to be eliminated is a rare thing on the battlefield of the southwest counterinsurgency, rather than staying in the arsenal of Nanjing Jingying to continue to rust and mold, it is better to transfer it to the Guiyang army, maybe it can exert some of its power.

This kind of general cannon that has been eliminated in the Beijing Division Armament Institute has hundreds of guns in the arsenal of Nanjing Jingying, but the maintenance of them is good, and there are not too many that can be used.

In addition to these 40 large general cannons weighing five or six hundred catties each, there are also a number of so-called small general cannons commonly known as tiger squat cannons.

This kind of tiger squat cannon weighing about 100 catties each is even more numerous.

And Wu Zhiwang and Chen Zizhuang can only carry and transport from Nanjing, and there are only 100 doors.

After it arrived, 20 general cannons were placed at the head of Guiyang City, in order to resolutely avoid the tragedy of Guiyang City being besieged again, so that Guiyang was the first to be invincible in the battle to pacify Shuixi.

The other twenty general cannons, according to Zhu Xieyuan's order, were taken by Wu Zhiwang to Zunyi, an important town at the junction of Sichuan and Guizhou, for the purpose of consolidating Zunyi's city defense.

However, this time, when Wu Zhiwang sent troops to Shuixi, he still insisted on his own opinion, and transported eight of the general's cannons and twelve tiger squat cannons with the army and into Shuixi.

Of course, Wu Zhiwang knew that the power of the Hongyi cannon was much more powerful than the so-called general cannon, but the red-clothed cannon at the head of Nanjing City was a city defense heavy cannon ordered by the emperor himself, and it was not something that Wu Zhiwang, a left servant of the Nanjing Military Department, dared to easily disassemble and transfer.

Besides, even if the Hongyi cannon was given to him and asked him to transport it to Guiyang, he didn't dare to ask for it.

Because each of the Hongyi cannons weighs about 3,000 catties, it is not said that it can be transported.

From Beijing to Nanjing, it is good to say that there are Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and the Yangtze River waterway all the way to go, and there is no problem in transporting the Hongyi cannon produced by the Wubei Institute from Beijing to Nanjing.

However, the road conditions from Nanjing to Guiyang could not transport each Hongyi cannon weighing more than 3,000 catties.

If you say that you can take the Yangtze River waterway, take Dongting Lake, and then take the Yuan River waterway, you can only go to Liping or Kaili in eastern Guizhou.

From Liping or Kaili to the west, all the way over the mountains and mountains, transporting each five or six hundred catties of general cannons, all of which made Wu Zhiwang and others embarrassed.

The journey was thrilling and extremely hard, not to mention transporting each Hongyi cannon weighing more than 3,000 catties.

The most important thing is that even if you really try your best to transport the Hongyi cannon to the front line in Guiyang, depending on the terrain conditions in the Shuixi region, the Hongyi cannon can only be placed at the head of Guiyang City, waiting for the army of the Shuixi clan to surround Guiyang again, otherwise it will not play much role.

Fortunately, now Wu Zhiwang asked Wang Jianguo's troops to transport the artillery with the army, which is only eight five or six hundred pound general cannons and twelve tiger squat cannons each weighing more than 100 catties.

Starting all the way from Zunyi, along the Wujiang River, after the land officers and troops took Huangshadu, the transport ship went ashore from Huangshadu, and then along the rugged and winding mountain road, all the way to here.

Now standing outside the official and military camp on the east bank of the Lengshui River, you can see the Tusi watchtower on the opposite side of the Lengshui River from a distance.

These tall stone watchtowers are the necessary fortifications used by the Tusi in the southwest to defend their own walls, and they are also a kind of strong fortifications that are very difficult to capture.

If there is no artillery, then it can only be broken with trebuchets.

But how can the power and convenience of trebuchets compare with artillery?

"Do you see those toast towers?"

Wu Zhiwang looked back at Chen Zizhuang, a member of the Nanjing Military Department who was standing beside him, and then smiled and said to his right-hand man:

"We have traveled all the way south before, and all the hardships on the road are worth it!"

Chen Zizhuang turned around and looked at the few general cannons parked in the camp at this time, and said at the moment: "My lord has seen Gao Zhuo, and the enemy is the first, and the subordinate admires it!" ”

Although Chen Zizhuang was born in the forty-seventh year of Wanli, and he likes to read military books and talk about military affairs, he has never been on the battlefield after all.

At this time, seeing several tall Tusi watchtowers on the other side of the Lengshui River, he realized that if there were no these big generals' cannons, he really didn't know how many soldiers would die under these towering watchtowers in the future.