Three Kingdoms: Jiangdong is no longer a rat

Chapter 46 Internal Response
It has been nineteen days since Si Qing left Wucheng.

Before leaving Wucheng, he did not conduct much training on the 400 Danyang soldiers who served as internal support.

Because most of these soldiers were villagers who had experience in fighting against bandits and were already familiar with fighting skills and military affairs.

In the limited preparation time, Si Qing used Baihu City as a model and formulated several plans for capturing the city. He had the soldiers conduct actual combat drills directly at the city gates and walls to enhance their understanding of the gate structure and their combat capabilities.

In addition, he also ate and lived with these soldiers, staying with them almost for twelve hours every day, and forced himself to memorize the name and appearance of each soldier.

At the same time, he took out the city defense maps of Yuncheng and Qian Gonglei, so that the soldiers could familiarize themselves with the structure and layout of the city and set the contact point.

Unexpected situations that may arise during the operation and how to deal with them were also simulated and arranged in advance.

Finally, before leaving, Yan Yi personally came forward and promised the soldiers a generous reward. The amount of reward was so generous that it left the soldiers dumbfounded.

After everything was ready, the four hundred soldiers changed into coarse clothes, dispersed and mixed in with the refugees, and began to act according to the plan.

In order to prevent Qian Tong's army from discovering his flaws, Si Qing strictly forbade his soldiers to travel in groups. Each soldier acted alone. Whether they could sneak into Qian Gonglei and Yuncheng really depended on fate.

However, things went quite smoothly.

In order to expand the population, the Qian Tong Army captured almost every refugee they saw, first looting all their money and goods, and then taking them abductor.

The four hundred Danyang soldiers were refugees who had just arrived in Wucheng. There was nothing suspicious about their accents or origins. They were hardly questioned and were taken to Qiangonglei and Yuncheng by Qian Tong's army like livestock.

For the looted civilians and refugees, the Qian Tong Army had already formed an unwritten rule, which was to distribute benefits according to the status of the dignitaries in the city.

The plight of the weak people was the most miserable. They would generally become the lowest field slaves, or be sold to wealthy families in the city, and sometimes be given as gifts to other powerful generals who were on good terms with Qian Tong.

Due to various reasons, these people would often die in large numbers after two or three years, and very few would survive.

Those with good looks and attractive appearances enjoyed a better living environment. They often became servants or maids for the city's prominent figures. Some of these beautiful women were the targets of the bandit leaders' scramble for possession.

As for those refugees who were physically strong, they were sent to build city walls, houses, as well as fortifications such as docks, deer horns, and trenches. When the army needed to replenish its troops, some of them would be recruited into the army.

Si Qing and the four hundred Danyang soldiers were all strong men, and most of them were sent to build city walls and various defensive fortifications.

Because there were too many Youquan captives in Qian Tong’s army before, Qian Gonglei could no longer accommodate them, so they were almost all concentrated in Yuncheng.

After Si Qing arrived in Yuncheng, he began to secretly contact the Danyang soldiers scattered throughout the city.

They were not prisoners; after completing their heavy physical labor each day, they were allowed a small amount of time to move around the city. However, they were not allowed to leave the city and had to return to their residences before the hour of Xu. If they failed to return by that time and were discovered elsewhere in the city, patrolling soldiers could execute them at will.

This half-hour of outdoor time every day became an opportunity for Si Qing to communicate with other soldiers.

After more than ten days, Si Qing had already contacted most of the soldiers and understood their current situation. Because Qian Tong did not have the same privileges as Yan Baihu, who could conscript the entire county's population for labor service, the repairs to Yuncheng had been progressing slowly and were still not completed.

This also meant that among the 400 Danyang soldiers, the largest number were engaged in the construction of the city walls and its ancillary fortifications, with approximately 270 people.

There are also seventy soldiers building private houses for the bandit leaders.

The remaining sixty or so soldiers are missing and have not been contacted to date.

After Si Qing got to know the situation of the internal troops, the first thing he did was to try to concentrate their residences in the same place so that they could assemble quickly during the action.

Because they are working in different areas, these internal support soldiers currently live in scattered places, roughly distributed in four villages in the east, west, south and north, close to the four city walls.

Si Qing lived in a village near the north city wall. The houses in the village were dilapidated and were only used by laborers who were building the city wall.

Si Qing first ordered the soldiers living in the houses in the north city to drive the refugees in the same house to other houses by means of exclusion, insults, and threats. Then he scraped together some money to bribe the supervisors and gradually concentrated the more than 90 soldiers here into more than 20 houses.

Then he began to think of ways to gather the soldiers from the other three villages.

In addition, he also needs to prepare some weapons.

Both of these things were beyond his ability.

Si Qing was at his wit's end and could only take the risk to ask for help from the spies of the Procuratorate hidden in Yuncheng.

Yan Baihu still took Qian Tong, a powerful enemy so close at hand, very seriously. Over the years, he sent thirty or forty spies to Yuncheng and Qiangonglei intermittently, and more than ten of them successfully infiltrated and established a foothold.

The one who did the best among them was named Zhou Bian, who had already been promoted to the position of thief official.

What’s funny is that Qian Tong himself was a bandit and had not occupied the city, but he had the audacity to set up a bandit under his command. He was truly the thief crying “stop thief”.

Si Qing had no contact with Zhou Bian, but before leaving Wucheng, Yan Yi gave him a token of the Procuratorate, which he carried with him. Although the power of this token was limited, it represented Yan Yi's personal will, and no one in the Procuratorate dared to underestimate it.

When Zhou Bian saw Si Qing, he almost dropped his jaw in shock. When he heard Si Qing asking him for a hundred ring-handled swords, fifty bows and crossbows, and to arrange more than a hundred "refugees" to live in the houses in the north city, Zhou Bian's face turned green.

What are you doing? Can you explain this clearly?
Zhou Bian's first reaction was to refuse, but with the talisman in front of him and Si Qing's tone that said if he didn't do it, he could go and explain to the young master himself, he had no choice but to compromise.

Two days later, he secretly sent the knife and crossbow to Si Qing in the name of inspecting the neighborhood, and gradually arranged the internal troops from other areas to the neighborhood in the north city.

However, Zhou Bian's energy was ultimately limited. Even though he had tried his best and taken great risks, he only brought fifty swords and thirty bows for Si Qing.

He only arranged for more than eighty soldiers to be sent from other areas as support troops.

(End of this chapter)