Ming Dynasty: Summoning game players at the beginning

Chapter 138 My Turn Card Draw
In the first month of the twelfth year of Chongzhen's reign, various armies supporting the emperor were still responding to the commander-in-chief's call to assemble in western Shandong.

On the day when Lieutenant General Li of the Black Flag Battalion personally led more than 5,000 "auxiliary troops" northward, a player told the commander Lu Xiangsheng.

Lu Xiangsheng was a little puzzled. The mall where Lieutenant General Li was located was thousands of miles away from here. How could he have passed the message to the soldiers of the Black Flag Camp on the day of departure?

If Lieutenant General Li estimated the speed at which his injuries would heal and sent someone to western Shandong to inform him of his itinerary in advance, that would be understandable.

But the speed of communication between the Black Flag soldiers was also very fast. How could this be explained?

Often, before the horses reported back, the Black Flag Battalion soldiers stationed in the main camp would know the victories of the dispatched Black Flag Army, how many Tatars who were foraging for food were defeated, and how many heads were captured, almost to the minute.

It was as if every soldier in the Black Flag Battalion was in sync with each other, and were connected to some kind of "magic" for instant voice transmission.

The commander-in-chief also specially allocated hundreds of horses to the Black Flag Camp, allowing them to form small forces to gather information and encircle and suppress the small Tatar forces.

Efficient information transmission really helped the supervisor a lot.

The exchange of military intelligence, which used to take half a day to a whole day, was shortened to half a minute by the soldiers of the Black Flag Battalion. The combat efficiency of the corps of tens of thousands of people increased several times, and the coordination became more tacit.

One day, Lu Xiangsheng finally couldn't help but ask the Black Flag Battalion for the reason, but the other party's answer was ambiguous.

Or they may be raising a strange creature called "blood crow". After the blood crow eats human blood, it can find the person being fed hundreds of miles away.

It is also said that there are countless strange and magical creatures in the world, and there is a strange fish in a distant place that usually catches fish and shrimps by releasing lightning.

The blood crows and electric fish were becoming increasingly bizarre to Lu Xiangsheng, but the Black Flag Camp's other explanation was even more incomprehensible.

They spoke in a flurry of broken language. At first, they started with a serious topic, but then it became "You have such high-speed machinery entering China", "Everyone in the Huanglongjiang faction wears Bluetooth", "Huanglongjiang is that pseudonym in the underworld"...

It's totally wrong.

Lu Xiangsheng simply thought that "Swift Voice Transmission" was a skill passed down from generation to generation by the soldiers of the Black Flag Battalion and was not convenient to be passed on to others. He thought that they were deliberately talking nonsense to change the subject, so he did not ask any more questions.

Lu Xiangsheng thought to himself that after the Eastern Tartars withdrew, being able to recruit these talents into the royal family would be considered serving the country.

One morning, before Lu Xiangsheng fully woke up, he heard anxious shouts coming from the door.

Lu Xiangsheng did not dare to slack off in the slightest - the only ones who could come to deliver the message at this time and not be afraid of the commander's temper were the fearless and innocent Black Flag warriors.

It turned out that the soldiers on armed reconnaissance in the front suddenly encountered a large number of enemy Tangma, and the two sides clashed repeatedly in the southeast of Dezhou.

Tangma scouts are the eyes and ears of the troops. If a large number of Tangma appear in a certain place, it means that the main force of the enemy must be nearby.

If the judgment of the frontline soldiers is correct, the main force of the enemy troops is advancing in this direction.

Jinan Prefecture!
Lu Xiangsheng suddenly felt a cold sweat on his back. In Jinan, where the feudal lords were enfeoffed, there were only a few thousand people stationed in the Shandong Battalion.

If the vassal state is lost, he and his soldiers will be severely punished.

If the efficiency of military intelligence communication had been the same in the past, he would probably have had to wait until the emergency document from Jinan was delivered before he knew that the Tartars were going to besiege Jinan.

However, the current situation is not optimistic. Although the efficiency of military intelligence has improved, the army's advance speed is still slow.

The marching speed of the Ming army's large group dropped to forty to fifty miles a day, and it would take at least five or six days to reach Jinan.

There are now 50,000 officers and soldiers gathered around him, and another 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers are on the way from Zhili and southern Shandong. The commander of the Black Flag Camp is one of them.

Many of his battalion, Hu Dawei's soldiers, and Yang Guozhu's soldiers fled before the Battle of Julu and rejoined the team this time.

The generals and their troops who arrived at the assembly point were obviously a force consisting of a small number of retainers mixed with a large number of auxiliary troops.

The so-called 50,000-strong army, excluding the auxiliary troops, has more than 30,000 combat soldiers, which is already very good. Even so, the nine frontiers are fighting all year round, maintaining about 60% of the actual number of troops.

If it were the troops from other inland provinces, the actual number of soldiers would probably be only 30% to 40%—

Of the five thousand soldiers, two thousand were usable, and the remaining thousands were conscripted men who filled the numbers and would scatter in panic when fighting broke out.

The Tatars have a high proportion of cavalry and march very fast.

Lu Xiangsheng had no time to wait for the arrival of other reinforcements, so he could only bite the bullet and lead his troops to rescue Nan.

He mobilized 70% of the cavalry in the army and redistributed the horses to allow some elite infantry to ride war horses, making a total of more than 8,000 cavalrymen of mixed strength and weakness.

This cavalry team will serve as the vanguard and take the lead in blocking the Jiannu. The central army and rear team will arrive in the next few days.

The Black Flag Battalion, which was good at "delivering messages" and fearless of death, was divided into two parts.

A cavalry team of 800 players followed the vanguard to Jinan, and the rest followed the commander's main force to advance southeast.

……

The outskirts of Jinan fell into chaos due to the arrival of Qing troops, but after nightfall one day, a large number of Qing troops seemed to have disappeared, leaving only a small force surrounding the city of Jinan.

The people in hiding saw that there were not many Tartars and thought that the main force might be going to attack the surrounding counties, so they quietly moved with their families towards the Grand Canal.

The nearest county town is Changqing County, located west of Jinan, separated by a tributary of the Jishui River.

Who would have thought that just as the crowd of people formed a long line, hundreds of cavalrymen came charging in with strange roars, trampling the ground with their rapid hooves, scaring the fleeing team into a panic, and the coachman desperately whipped the horse with a long whip.

In addition, a cavalry unit was running towards them from the side. The distance was too far and it was difficult to tell who was the enemy or us. We only knew that this cavalry unit was holding up dozens of flags, none of which were the common flags of the government army.

Seeing two enemy lines approaching, the civilians, fleeing the war with their families, screamed and ran away. Thousands of people crowded and clamored on the stone bridge across the river, and the sounds of screams and cries were endless.

Some people looked back at the ferocious Qing soldiers who were getting closer and closer, and tried their best to pull out the bodies and heads of the people in front of them, wishing they could crawl out of the crowd. Others squeezed to the edge of the stone bridge and dived into the glacier.

A leading braid soldier rode up on horseback, holding a saber in his right hand slightly raised, and faced a fleeing civilian who was gradually closing the distance. It seemed that the innocent man was about to be killed with one blow.

Just as he swung his sword, there was a muffled sound and an arrow shot into his waist and abdomen. Two quick arrows hit his arm and shoulder respectively.

The Tartar fell off his horse and was crushed in the face by a horse running fast from behind.

"We are the vanguard troops under General Lu, and we have come to support Jinan!"

"We are the servants of General Yang, the commander-in-chief of Xuanfu. Don't be afraid, we are here to rescue you!"

"You Tartar dog, the Black Flag Battalion's boss is here!"

Seeing that they would be "attacked" from both sides by the Ming army and the civilians, the Tatar cavalry immediately shouted at their horses to stop and turn around, running to a position four hundred steps away and stopping.

The 600 cavalrymen who acted as the vanguard ran very fast and soon arrived at the stone bridge across the river.

I saw a group of officers and soldiers quickly dismounted, holding their weapons and moving forward a hundred steps. The flag bearers inserted various flags into the ground, as if building a wall of human flags.

The vanguard cavalry that arrived later galloped to the stone bridge, maintaining order across the bridge and river, while sending out new troops to roam around the Black Flag Camp.

The Ming army's vanguard cavalry was obviously larger than the Tatar cavalry.

Seeing that the Tartars were hesitant and seemed to be about to retreat to the camp, the captain of the Black Flag immediately used the infantry tactic to lure the enemy.

Two hundred and thirty dismounted players marched forward in formation, gradually shortening the distance between the enemy and us.

It was not until the Ming army's infantry and cavalry had advanced two or three hundred steps and were two hundred steps away from the Tartars that the Tartar cavalry became excited.

Two hundred Qing cavalrymen galloped on their horses, like a torrent of water bursting through a dam.

"Form a line!" The captain wearing a crested crown roared to the sky. His Qin-style armor made him look like a Terracotta Warrior.

"Zhang Xianzhong" saw a group of stop-motion animated pig-headed dolls riding horse dolls rushing towards him, and the weapons in the hands of the enemies looked like pieces of paper under the filter.

"Zhang Xianzhong" held a heavy matchlock gun mounted on a long axe, a sword slung across his waist, a bullet belt around his chest hung with paper shells wrapped in bullets and gunpowder, and a gunpowder bag hung behind his waist to add priming powder to the breech block of the gun.

The remaining soldiers of the Black Flag Battalion formed a square formation with shields and spears, and covered the front row of heavy musketeers behind the spears.

"Open fire!" The captain swung his sword fiercely.

Dozens of players holding heavy matchlock rifles skillfully pulled the triggers, and the heavy bullets in the guns sprayed out of the barrels and rushed towards the Tatar cavalry who were rushing over.

The warhorse fell over after being shot, and a ball of red wool burst out from the wound.

The pigtail soldier on horseback was thrown dozens of meters away, fell to the ground and broke his cervical vertebrae, like a rag doll with its head tilted.

Although Zhang Xianzhong did not have time to reload the second round before the Qing cavalry rushed over, the long axe in his hand was enough for him to kill the Tatars in self-defense.

An unlucky rider bumped into the tip of the spear, and a large amount of red wool gushed out of his wounds and nose and mouth. The red wool fell on his teammates' faces and flowed, looking like the mucus left by a crawling red snail.

Seeing that more than 200 infantrymen did not retreat when encountering cavalry and even had the courage to fight hard, the Tatars immediately realized that this was the famous Black Flag Army.

The Tartars couldn't help but curse the Black Flag Army inwardly. Why did they raise dozens of flags but not a single black flag for people to identify the unit's number?

If they had known in advance that these were the warriors of the Black Flag, they would never have dared to charge as they did not have the absolute advantage of cavalry.

"The Black Flag Battalion is here!"

The Qing soldiers who survived the disaster quickly turned their horses around and went back, but some of them were killed on the way to escape. The Tartars who fell off their horses were pulled onto their horses by friendly troops and rescued, and they ran towards Jinan without looking back.

The players held their heavy muskets in the direction of the Qing soldiers' escape and pulled the trigger to celebrate their victory. Thick white smoke spewed out of the barrels, "Oh oh oh oh! We won again!"

A small-scale encounter ended with single-digit casualties among the players, and the Qing army left behind forty-seven corpses and more than seventy dead or injured war horses.

Although the people who survived the disaster restored the order of crossing the bridge, their speed doubled.

"Zhang Xianzhong" followed his brothers as they walked through a pile of broken rags. The red wool wrapped around his feet gave people a tangled and chaotic feeling.

He walked quickly to a half-pig puppet that was wailing in pain and was still crawling on the ground with serious injuries.

He drew out his spare knife and held it against the puppet's neck.

Zhang Xianzhong gripped the knife handle tightly and pulled it sideways, accurately cutting the artery in the neck. A large amount of red wool gushed out, like the fireworks ribbons used in wedding ceremonies.

Zhang Xianzhong retracted his sword, clamped the blade with his elbow and pulled it hard to wipe off the messy hair on the blade. Then he saw the sound of horses' hooves trampling as a large number of friendly troops crossed the Jishui River.

Especially the cavalry of the Guanning Army, they ran very fast.

They rushed straight towards the pile of Tartar corpses, ignoring the Black Flag Camp members who were still searching for spoils, without any signs of slowing down.

"Form a formation to meet the enemy!" Captain Qin Jia roared, and the players who discovered the unusual behavior of their friendly forces quickly formed a square formation.

(End of this chapter)