Chapter 357 Siege
Yingbao and several others finished the noodles. I looked around again, but didn't see what I needed.
Afterwards, they came to the mason's shop, and Ying Bao unexpectedly saw a huge stone statue standing in front of the shop.
This stone statue is a statue of a woman 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?" Yingbao 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 the 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 people say that the incense of Wuchang Taoist Temple is very strong. There are already a dozen Taoist priests in the Taoist temple, and they are almost catching up with Wuji Temple. "
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 of 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 house.
After entering Zhang's house, 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, so no one cares about what I want to do.
Mrs. Zhang is different. As long as she comes forward, no one in the city's aristocratic families 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."
Seeing that Mrs. Zhang was willing to come forward, Yingbao breathed a sigh of relief, 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 at 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 didn't 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."
Ying Bao sat obediently and let Zhang Xuehua comb and braid her hair.
Looking at Pingting girl in the mirror, Yingbao suddenly asked: "Sister Zhang, if the city cannot be defended, will you and your mother leave with me?"
Zhang Xuehua was startled, and the hand holding the comb not only shook. "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 concubines, will not leave Jingzhou before the common people.
If the city is really destroyed, where will my family go?
Ying Bao looked at Zhang Xuehua in the mirror and said, "I promised Second Senior Brother that if something unexpected happens, I will take you away."
"No, no... I can't leave." Zhang Xuehua forced himself to calm down and slowly braided Ying Bao's hair.
Ying Bao touched her braids, turned to Zhang Xuehua and said, "Sister Zhang, don't be afraid, I'm just talking."
She just wanted them to be mentally prepared first.
Jingzhou has been completely surrounded, and those comforting words 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 have to 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. 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 fighting became 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 and tried to enter the city by water.
Prefect Zhang and his two sons could not sleep at night, so they 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 at this time, the waterway 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, only to be caught by the barbarians.
The barbarians used these common 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 took turns guarding the river day and night.
On one occasion, the bandit held a reed in his mouth 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 place.
The result can be imagined, dozens of barbarian bandits 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 common people were also summoned by Mrs. Zhang to prepare to fight against 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, and built a gateless courtyard behind it.
The overall 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 stones on the walls on both sides to ensure that as many as they come in will be 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, there was great strength in numbers. In just a few days, the project was successfully completed.
Today, Ying Bao, Hu Zi and Jiang Wu followed Mrs. Zhang and Zhang Xuehua, standing on the wall of the corridor behind the city gate, listening quietly to the killing cries and fierce collisions outside the city.