Chapter 357： siege city

Ying Bao and several others finished the noodles. I looked around again, but didn't see what I needed.

Then they came to the stonemason's shop, and Yingbao unexpectedly saw a huge stone statue standing in front of the shop.

This stone statue is a female statue with high bun, wide sleeves and silk belt. At her feet are patches of peonies, as if she is about to fly into the sky.

“Master, old uncle, are you selling this stone statue?” Ying Bao asked.

The stonemason waved his rough hands: "The stone statue was ordered by others and will not be sold."

Yingbao was curious: "Who made the decision? Is it someone from Zaoshu Village?"

The mason nodded and asked, "How do you know it was decided by Zaoshu Village?"

“To be honest, I am from Wuchang Taoist Temple in Zaoshu Village.” Yingbao said.

"Oh?" The mason looked at Yingbao and said, "No wonder. It turns out that the little lady is from a Taoist temple. I heard from people that the Wuchang Taoist Temple is very popular. There are already a dozen Taoist priests in the Taoist temple, and they are almost catching up with the Wuji Temple. "

ˆ Yingbao：······

Is the Taoist temple of Impermanence already so prosperous?

I don’t know where the Taoist priests in the temple come from. Could they be villagers from Zaoshu Village?

Seeing that the mason was carving non-stop, Yingbao couldn't help but continue to disturb him, so he and his younger brother Huzi walked to Zhang's Mansion.

Entering Zhang's Mansion, Yingbao asked her younger brother and Huzi to rest first while she went to talk to Mrs. Zhang.

I am just a ten-year-old child, not yet a local, and no one cares about what I want to do.

 Mrs. Zhang is different. As long as she comes forward, no one from the aristocratic family in the city dares to say anything.

"Let the people in the city take turns guarding the river?" Mrs. Zhang pondered after hearing Yingbao's plan.

Ying Bao: "Yes, if the barbarians sneak in at night, wouldn't it be dangerous if there is no one guarding the river?"

Mrs. Zhang hesitated for a while and finally nodded: "Okay, I will have people go to each house to notify them. Anyone who refuses to go on duty will be fined five taels of silver."

Yingbao breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that Mrs. Zhang was willing to come forward, said goodbye and went back to the house to rest.

In the middle of the night, the barbarians suddenly began to attack the city.

They carried the giant tree pillars and crashed into the city gate again and again.

Zhang Min and his eldest brother led the soldiers to throw stones and bricks down the city, and some even poured lit tung oil down.

There are also thieves sneaking in on the other side of the river.

As soon as dozens of barbarian bandits landed on the shore, they were surrounded by hundreds of people. They held poles, sticks, hoes, chisels, etc. in their hands, and they tried their best to hit the thieves.

In this battle, the barbarians suffered heavy casualties. In the end, they left thirty or forty corpses and jumped into the river to escape.

When Yingbao got up the next day, she heard Zhang Xuehua talking to her about what happened last night.

“Last night the barbarians attacked the city. Thanks to your idea, those bad guys who sneaked into the city failed to succeed.”

The girl took Ying Bao's hand, asked her to sit down in front of the mirror, and said with a smile: "I'll help you comb your hair. I'm asking you to come over and talk."

Yingbao sat obediently and let Zhang Xuehua comb her hair and braid it.

Looking at Pingting girl in the mirror, Yingbao suddenly asked: "Sister Zhang, if the city cannot be defended, will you and your mother-in-law leave with me?"

Zhang Xuehua was startled, and the hand holding the comb trembled. "Why can't you keep it?"

“Because there are more and more barbarians outside, they will gather many teams to attack Jingzhou.” Only by winning Jingzhou can the barbarians go all the way south.

If Jingzhou has no foreign aid and can only defend, the barbarians will never withdraw their troops. Even if it takes a month, two months, or even half a year, they will still not stop attacking the city.

But can Jingzhou really last this long?

The smile on Zhang Xuehua's face gradually disappeared.

Her father is a prefect, and she and her mother-in-law, including her eldest brother, sister-in-law, and two concubine sisters, will not leave Jingzhou before the people.

If the city is really destroyed, where will my family go?

Yingbao looked at Zhang Xuehua in the mirror and said, "I promised my second senior brother that if something unexpected happens, I will take you away." "No, no... I can't leave." Zhang Xuehua calmed himself down and slowly gave up. Yingbao combed her hair.

Yingbao touched her braid, turned to Zhang Xuehua and said, "Sister Zhang, don't be afraid, I'm just saying it."

She just wanted them to be mentally prepared.

Jingzhou has been completely surrounded, and those words of comfort are meaningless.

Who is willing to die if there is a little way to live?

But when Mrs. Zhang heard what Ying Bao analyzed for her, she was as shocked as her daughter.

She thought that as long as she held on to the city, the imperial court would soon send troops to rescue her.

But what if they don’t come?

Mrs. Zhang looked at Yingbao and said solemnly: "Yingbao, now we have a glimmer of hope and we must defend the city. As for the other things, don't mention it again in the future. We can't let the soldiers who defend the city lose their morale, and the people can't be in chaos."

"Well, I only analyzed it for you to know, and I haven't told anyone outside." Of course, Ying Bao knew that she couldn't talk nonsense to outsiders at this time.

Three days passed quickly.

The war is getting increasingly tense.

Barbarian bandits came to attack the city every day, but they returned without success.

In the end, they stopped knocking on the city gate. Instead, they went to the forest to chop a lot of wood and pile it up at the city gate, trying to burn it down.

At the same time, they also made rafts out of trees, hoping to enter the city by water.

Zhang Taishou and his two sons could not sleep at night, and each led a group of people to intercept the barbarians.

Gradually, the people in the city became frightened, and many people wanted to escape from the city through the waterway.

But the waterway at this time had been blocked by barbarians, and many rafts were blocked in the outer river channel.

A few families did not listen to the advice and secretly went out in small boats. As a result, they were caught by the barbarians.

The barbarians used these people as shields and came over on rafts, but were shot to death by the soldiers guarding the road.

Zhang Min led a team of dozens of people to guard a waterway, and there was also a guard team composed of more than a hundred people from the city. They stayed day and night, taking turns to guard the river.

On one occasion, the bandits held a reed in their mouths and tried to swim into the city by diving.

Just when they thought they were going to succeed, they were stopped by a fishing net.

When they used their daggers to cut through the fishing net, they alerted the guards guarding the area.

The result can be imagined, dozens of barbarians were all wiped out.

But this time it also completely angered the bandit commander Wanyan Hashi.

A few days later, Wanyan Hashi ordered a general attack, starting from two waterways and the city gate.

In the city, aristocratic families and people were also summoned by Mrs. Zhang to prepare to resist the enemy.

She listened to Ying Bao's suggestion and ordered people to build a long corridor on both sides of the inner city gate early, and built a gateless courtyard behind it.

The entire shape of the corridor is like a gourd with a long mouth. A deep trap is dug in the belly of the gourd, and rows of wooden thorns are placed in the trap.

The trap was covered with a layer of bamboo strips, and some twigs and loose soil were sprinkled on top.

Once the barbarians break through the city gate, they will inevitably follow the corridor into the belly of the gourd and eventually fall into a trap.

At that time, some soldiers will be arranged to shoot arrows or smash rocks on the walls on both sides to ensure that as many as they come in are killed.

In order to build this corridor, they carried all the stones from the masons’ houses and demolished the stone courtyard walls of many houses. As expected, the strength of the people was great. In just a few days, the project was successfully completed.

Today, Yingbao, Huzi and Jiang Wu followed Mrs. Zhang and Zhang Xuehua. They stood on the wall of the corridor behind the city gate and listened quietly to the killing cries and fierce collisions outside the city.