Reclaiming Wasteland: Carefree Mountain Farmer

Chapter 80 Reinforcements
Hutou Town is only about 20 li (approximately 10,000 meters) away from Beiyuan County.

When the group arrived at Zhoujia Village outside the county town on horseback, Beijiwu immediately shouted out.

"On Tuesday, go back and ask the villagers if anyone is willing to work with me. If they are, they can meet us outside the east gate. If they are not, that's fine too. As long as they don't cause trouble, I won't disturb the villagers."

Tuesday hurriedly replied, "Yes, Chief!"

Ögedei rode his horse closer to the Arctic Wu and suggested, "Chieftain, why don't we plunder this village?"

Beijiwu shook his head. "Our Shannong tribe is a righteous army. We only fight officials, not civilians. The villagers below are obedient and well-behaved. We shouldn't bother them."

"Let's go and kill those corrupt officials who run rampant in the countryside, extort money and taxes, and embezzle military pay and rations!"

As Beiji Wu was about to ride over, he didn't notice the extremely shocked expressions on the faces of everyone around him.

One of the Han Chinese who surrendered immediately asked, "Chief! What is the military pay?"

"It's just silver," Beiji Wu replied to the perfectly normal question without turning his head as he rode ahead on his horse.

The others were speechless, and it took them a long time before someone came to their senses.

Ögedei quickly asked, "Chief! Do soldiers get paid?"

"Of course, otherwise who would join the army?" Beijiwu said casually. "They get paid every month, don't you guys get paid?"

Ögedei quickly looked at the Han Chinese soldiers nearby.

The Han soldiers all looked completely bewildered.

Meng Hetong shouted, "Clan chief, we have never seen silver. We are soldiers, not serving. We are only given rice and grain!"

Beijiwu laughed and said, "Of course not. In addition to being provided with meals every day and rations every month to support their families, soldiers also receive a monthly allowance, usually more than one tael. If they didn't receive money, who would be willing to endure the hardships of military service!"

Ögedei gritted his teeth and cursed angrily, "I've been a soldier for five years and I haven't seen a single tael of silver!"

"Me too!" A Hu knight gripped his longsword tightly, filled with resentment.

The others also gripped their spears and bows tightly.

"I haven't seen it either!"

"Me too!"

"Dog officer!"

"Kill them!"

"Skin them alive! They've swindled so much of our money over the years, we absolutely cannot let them get away with this!"

Beiji Wu frowned, surprised that these people had not received their military pay.

Does this mean soldiers don't receive a salary?
This question was quickly put aside, as Beiji Wu and the others could already see the walls of Beiyuanwei.

At this time, the Beiyuan Guard had already lit beacon fires to request reinforcements.

Several commanders and generals stood on the city wall, watching the more than three hundred cavalry approaching from afar.

These people included not only the recently surrendered Northern Plains Army, but also more than ten men from the Mountain Farmers tribe, and more than twenty people who had secretly come from Changchengtun.

Before the Northern Warrior could even speak, Ögedei Khan immediately rode his horse to a point two hundred paces from the city gate.

"You corrupt official! All these years you've embezzled military pay! You've pocketed the one tael of silver the court gives us every month! Get down here and face your death!!!"

Ögedei Khan's angry shouts began by expressing his opinion on the most crucial issue.

Upon hearing this, Hong Enzhong cursed loudly, "You fickle, despicable dog! Men! Shoot him dead!"

Nearby archers aimed their bows at Ögedei and immediately fired dozens of arrows.

Ögedei quickly raised his shield to defend, and fortunately, most of the arrows couldn't reach him, so he managed to block two arrows.

"Brothers in the city! Besides our food rations, we also have military pay, one tael of silver a month, which these corrupt officials have embezzled! Are you still going to risk your lives for them?!"

Hong Enzhong cursed, "Nonsense! I am an upright and honest general. You bunch of barbarian dogs, it is already an act of imperial grace to give you food, and you still want money! You are greedy and insatiable! You deserve to die!"

Beiji Wu didn't want to listen to the argument, so he stood up and said, "Listen up, people in the city! I am Beiji Wu. Open the gates and surrender. I will not harm the people inside, nor will I do anything to the soldiers. From now on, you will receive one tael of silver as military pay every month!"

Upon hearing about the one or two taels of silver in military pay, the soldiers on the city wall and the mountain peasant soldiers behind the Arctic Warrior became tense.

Hong Enzhong immediately shouted, "Shoot him dead!!"

Nearby soldiers immediately fired arrows at the Arctic warrior, but most of them missed.

Beijiwu rested his three-meter-long spear behind his neck and shoulders, looking at the crooked bows and arrows with a bit of boredom.

“Your general doesn’t treat you like human beings. He not only embezzles your rations and pay, but also takes your wives and children into the city as food. If you defend the city with him, the people in the city will suffer first. Aren’t those people your relatives?”

Hong Enzhong doesn't have the same lung capacity as Bei Jiwu, who can shout loudly from over 200 meters away.

"Fire arrows! Shoot him dead!"

Arctic Warriors realized that the archer clearly didn't want to shoot him, rather than that he couldn't hit him.

“Listen up, people of the city! You all know how much money your commander-in-chief has embezzled. You certainly don’t know how much money is in the city, but now that we’ve caught this corrupt official and let him in, each of you will receive twelve taels of silver as pay! That is, twelve taels of silver!”

Hong Enzhong swiftly drew his longsword. "Keep shooting! Men! Come here immediately and curse this scoundrel! Go and capture this scoundrel's brother and behead him as a sacrifice to the heavens!!"

Beijiwu was actually quite indifferent and didn't have much affection for his older brother.

Just as they were about to watch the spectacle, a cavalryman came running up from behind.

"Chief! A group of about a thousand people is approaching from the rear on the official road, and they are less than a kilometer away from here!"

Upon hearing this, Beiji Wu laughed and said, "They couldn't possibly be here to help us, so they must be here to help Beiyuan Wei!"

Beijiwu walked back to his warhorse, mounted it, and held the three-and-a-half-meter-long lance in one hand.

"Go! Walk slowly for 500 meters, and once you see them, charge with me!"

The crowd replied in unison, "Yes, sir!"

This was Mu Chuanliang's first time on the battlefield, and as a soldier no longer a powerless slave or spoils of war. "Chieftain, what if we go out to engage in battle, but those behind us attack our rear?"

Beijiwu laughed and said, "Do they dare?"

The Arctic Warrior, like a god of war, quickly put the minds of the more than two hundred people who had just surrendered at ease.

The group of people completely ignored the military fortress behind them and walked slowly towards the official road with their backs to the others.

They had only walked a few minutes when they saw a troop of cavalry approaching.

When the two sides were 500 meters apart, Gao Liuwei had already received a report from his scouts and immediately formed ranks and charged towards Beijiwu.

"kill!!"

Gao Liuwei's 500-plus cavalry charged at a ragtag army of only 200-plus men, all of whom were concentrated on a single official road.

Beijiwu originally wanted the people behind him to shoot arrows, but the distance of 500 meters was not much under the charge of the warhorses.

So Beijiwu rode his horse forward.

"rush!"

The warhorse beneath him began to accelerate, and within a few breaths, he met the hundreds of cavalrymen in the distance.

The two sides were still three or four hundred meters apart, but Gao Liuwei's knights discovered that the other side was only one person charging towards them.

"This man must be Arctic Martial! Watch me kill him!! Prepare to die!!!"

A bearded general raised the same type of lance and charged ahead of Beijiwu!

Beiji Wu remained indifferent. As the two rapidly approached each other, Beiji Wu's spear collided with the opponent's spear.

The bearded man's spear was pinned beneath him. As the two horses clashed, Arctic Warrior's spear, accompanied by tremendous force, rose high and severed a helmeted head.

After killing the enemy commander in an instant, the Arctic general raised his long spear, the metal at both ends spinning as it cut deep gashes into the bodies of the closest cavalrymen.

The warhorse halted due to the obstruction, and after several knights nearby fell from their horses, Beijiwu quickly launched a fierce attack on the relentless waves of knights with his heavy long spear.

prick!
hack!
stamp!
挑！
It can be used as a spear, an axe, or a sword.

The cavalrymen entered a meat grinder, and any cavalrymen who approached the Arctic Warrior were quickly cut down.

Before long, all fifty-odd knights died at the hands of Arctic Warrior.

"drive!"

Ignoring the separated knights, Arctic Warrior charged directly at the infantry and archers who had just arrived.

"Kill!!" Ögedei Khan led the Hu and Han people in a charge, joining the sweep.

What should have been a favorable situation of 1,000 to 200-300 was quickly turned into a disadvantageous one.

"Kneel down and you'll be spared!!"

With a roar, Beijiwu charged into the crowd.

When facing infantry units that are shorter than themselves, the advantage of long-handled weapons becomes even more apparent.

Each attack takes away one or two people.

After the entire front line collapsed, the rear command quickly fled.

The defeat was swift and decisive. The Gaoliuwei reinforcements, who had fallen into the ambush, quickly lost more than two hundred men, and four or five hundred knelt down to surrender. The rest, seeing that the situation was dire, decisively fled.

Half an hour later, Beijiwu and his men arrived at Beiyuanwei again.

The team, which originally consisted of two or three hundred people, has now grown to six or seven hundred.

Although Beiyuanwei still has a numerical advantage, the entire county is in a state of panic.

"Hey, is Arctic Warrior dead?"

Arctic Martial asked a question out of curiosity.

When Hong Enzhong saw Beijiwu leading a large group of people, he knew that Gaoliuwei's men had probably encountered an ambush.

Hong Enzhong knew that Gao Liuwei's men would come to help, but he didn't know it was just now.

Actually, I could tell, but after hesitating for a moment, I realized there was no way out.

"Northern Martial! If you withdraw your troops now, I will release your brother! I will also report to the court and appoint you to a high-ranking official position!"

Beijiwu laughed and said, "Then why didn't you do what I asked you to do yesterday to transport grain in exchange for these brothers in the army?"

Hong Enzhong immediately said, "Withdraw your troops now, and I'll send you supplies!"

Tuoba Niu whispered a reminder: "Chieftain, I just remembered something. Tiger Mouth Fort in the southwest is currently undefended, and the commanders there are stationed at Beiyuan Guard. If we go there and feign surrender to open the city gates, we can enter the commanders' garrison."

Qianhusuo is not a town, but a military defense base, a hybrid of a military camp and a military reclamation community.

Typically, the perimeter is one or two kilometers, resembling a castle, containing government offices, military camps, granaries, etc., with military households living in the surrounding area.

"go!"

Beijiwu's men were all officers and soldiers, and many of them were originally military households from Hukoubao, so they didn't need to disguise themselves at all.

A large group of people quickly stopped caring about the Kitahara Guard.

It was already late when Beijiwu said, "I'll go into Tiger's Mouth Fortress with four other people. You can come over after an incense stick has burned!"

"Yes, sir!" Wokoji and the others solemnly replied.

At this time, Yang Xiangyun was unaware that his garrison was about to be robbed. He did not know whether Tuoba Niu and the others had shouted towards the city wall, as their voices could not reach there.

Hong Enzhong and the others thought that Beijiwu had retreated after dark, and they all breathed a sigh of relief.

(End of this chapter)