The Ming Dynasty: Starting with bandits, it swept across the land.

When Li Chengye stood in front of Xu Youlu's tent, Xu Youlu was engrossed in reading a book.

He had treasured this book since his time at Fengtai Rice Shop. During those years, he would rely on it to relieve his worries in the quiet of the night.

Book Title: Jin Ping Mei

Later, he switched allegiance to Wang Er, and the girls at Chunhua Tower were his to choose from.

He then threw the book into the pile of old papers.

But after a period of living a life of nightly revelry, he picked up the book again.

Once a normal person has a real-life idol, they won't treat the figurine like a treasure anymore.

But Xu Youlu was different.

Although the girls at Chunhua Tower were very attentive to him and went to great lengths to please him, he preferred Ping'er.

People in reality can't compare to those who reside in your heart.

Some girls look great from afar, but once you get to them, they lose all their charm and interest.

The characters in the book, whom you can never meet, will forever captivate your heart.

The siege is tomorrow, and each camp has a ton of things to do, so they should be incredibly busy. But Xu Youlu is surprisingly free.

His main responsibility as the rear battalion commander was to manage the grain, but now the grain was almost all gone, and the little left was taken directly to his own unit by Wang Er.

He then had nothing to do.

The various outposts that were originally assigned to the rear camp have now been expanded into squads, and each one has been separated from the rear camp. Tomorrow, they will all be sent to be the vanguard to attack Yijun City.

Now that there's nothing left in the entire rear camp except for the cooks, Xu Youlu is finally free.

Xu Youlu was quite surprised by Li Chengye's late-night visit.

When he asked for Xu Youlu's help, Xu Youlu thought for a while and agreed, but made one request.

"You can have the car; come and haul it yourself."

Li Chengye sought help from Xu Youlu to get rid of the empty carts that had run out of grain.

These empty cars are the key tools he'll use to fill in the moat tomorrow.

After seeing Li Chengye off, Xu Youlu returned to his tent.

Picking up *Jin Ping Mei*, intending to continue to the next chapter, I turned to the place where I had stopped reading, my gaze falling on the yellowed pages. There it was written:

"...This Pan Jinlian is different from Ping'er. She is arrogant and capricious, always taking advantage of the emperor's favor. Ping'er, on the other hand, is always honest and often speaks up for us in front of her father. No matter what is asked, she won't say a word even if someone sees her."

But I just couldn't bear to watch it anymore.

He considered himself to have been fairly considerate of Li Chengye.

Although I did take his money back then.

However, after the other party joined the rear camp, he shielded him from several ill-intentioned attempts to test him.

He originally hoped to help Li Chengye maintain order in the rear camp and prevent the looting of grain from happening again.

Li Chengye's performance did not disappoint him; the only problem was that he made it a little too conspicuous.

They would get up early every day before marching to form ranks, and after setting up camp, they would practice drills in formation. Such discipline had long been noticed by those who were observant.

What does he want to do?

It should be noted that even within the old camp, only Luo Dai, who came from the front-line army, was enthusiastic about implementing the discipline and organization of the front-line army within the rebel army.

But apart from his own team, what was actually implemented throughout the army was nothing more than superficial formalities like drums, gongs, and flags.

Everyone agreed that Luo Dai's approach would indeed improve combat effectiveness, but no one wanted to do it that way.

After all, the reason why the chief and these old brothers were so enraged back then was that they killed officials and rebelled.

Aside from the fact that Zhang Douyao, the magistrate of Chengcheng County, was utterly inhumane, attempting to collect the taxes owed for over a decade within a year and driving people to their deaths.

It's also because everyone is terrified of being poor.

The old buddies were quite satisfied with their life in Chengcheng, where they ate meat and drank wine to their hearts' content and slept with women without restraint.

No one is willing to endure any more hardship in training.

Even now, people are starving to death every moment on the edge of the camp, but inside Chief Wang's tent, lambs and chickens are still being cooked and chickens are being slaughtered, and fine wines and spirits are being served in abundance.

Why is this happening?

Xu Youlu also figured it out.

Although everyone rose up in rebellion, no one thought they could overthrow the Ming Dynasty.

The Ming Dynasty has existed for two hundred years. It existed before I was born, and it will exist after I die.

There have been rebellions in northern Shaanxi throughout history. The Liu brothers, Liu Liu and Liu Qi, caused a much bigger uproar than Wang Er is now, and they even captured Suide, but in the end, they were gone too.

Back when I left the city with Wang Er, I was hoping that he could really change everyone's way of life.

But after these days, he became somewhat disheartened.

During several pre-military meetings, he suggested that more food should be given to the refugees.

But Wang Er rejected them all, and the people around Zhong Huaidao loudly mocked him for being too kind-hearted.

They completely forgot that just a few months ago, they were the same kind of people as the starving corpses outside.

The group headed towards Yijun, and as they got closer, more and more people gathered, and they couldn't be driven away no matter what.

Each leader considered them a burden, so they all came under the jurisdiction of the rear camp.

Originally, it was just a large number of people, mostly starving corpses, not a cause for concern.

However, with the addition of Li Chengye and bandits like Black Scorpion, who already had their own small teams, the situation changed.

The strength of the rear camp increased dramatically.

During those days, Wang Er also became more polite to him.

Until the attack on Yijun City, under the pretext of using the various outposts of the rear camp as vanguards, all the original outpost leaders of the rear camp were promoted to captains.

This would allow them to naturally become equals to themselves.

As a result, eight or nine out of ten men in the rear camp were gone, and the remaining supplies were taken over by Wang Er.

Apart from a few dozen cooks and coachmen, Xu Youlu, the commander of the squad, was practically all alone.

But he no longer cared.

Now we'll see how the siege goes tomorrow.

If they can capture Yijun, the rebel army can hold out for a while. But if they fail to capture it within five days, they will run out of food and the rebel army will be wiped out.

Back at the third team's camp, Qin Ye and Wang Laoqi had already mounted the battering ram onto an oxcart.

The pointed end was also covered with iron, but the iron bars were U-shaped and looked quite familiar.

"These are horseshoes I've been saving for years, and now they'll all come in handy."

Qin Ye proudly pointed to the tip of the battering ram and introduced it.

Li Chengye nodded.

The craftsmanship of this ironwork is truly excellent; the horseshoes are layered like flower petals, completely covering the hammerhead.

After finishing their porridge, Yang Chongwang and Han Sanhu came over to watch Master Qin's cooking.

Master Qin was quite pleased with himself, but then Yang Chongwang made a suggestion:

A siege engine needs to have four wheels and a brake-like device.

After crossing the moat, the road from Yijun City to the corner of the wall is an uphill mountain path, about twenty steps long, with a drop of six or seven meters. If you don't brake, you could really slide down.

Just as Master Qin was racking his brains about how to add brakes, Li Chengye smiled.

"No need for that." His voice wasn't loud, but it drew everyone's attention. "Find two capable people, each carrying a thick piece of wood, to follow behind the cart. If the cart slides backward, just tuck the wood under the wheels."

Everyone's eyes lit up.

This method may be crude, but at this critical juncture, it's more practical than any ingenious mechanism.

Now we'll see how the battlefield unfolds tomorrow.

It's a battering ram, but the one Qin made is shorter than this one.