Chapter 206: Risking Life (Part 2)
The Shandong sky in 1729 was much more transparent than that in 2019. Yang Mingde ran along the path and could see the mountains on the northern skyline. The Mongolian cavalry crossed the mountain road to enter the Jiaodong Plain.
It was October, and the wind was already cold. It felt almost like winter when it blew on my face. Yang Mingde had been running for quite a while, and the burning pain in his lungs and trachea had disappeared. Facing the cold wind, Yang Mingde ran as hard as he could, trying to run farther before his body reached its limit again.
Finally, after passing a small hill, the main road appeared in front of him. While he had enough strength, Yang Mingde ran to the middle of the road. Looking south along the road, he saw a group of cavalrymen rushing towards him.
Finally caught up! Finally caught up! Yang Mingde's heart was boiling with murderous encouragement, and he began to quickly check the rifle in his hand and the revolver on his waist.
When the cavalrymen saw a man standing in the middle of the road, the main group slowed down a little, while the three cavalrymen in front sped up and charged straight towards Yang Mingde.
Even though he was one against three, even though one of them had drawn his saber and the other two had drawn their bows and arrows, Yang Mingde was not afraid. He just loaded the bullets, raised his rifle and began to aim.
About thirty steps away from Yang Mingde, or about forty to fifty meters, three Mongolian cavalrymen suddenly reined in their horses. The cavalrymen holding sabers left the main road, slowed down, and walked on the rugged field to the back of Yang Mingde. Two archers began to shoot arrows at Yang Mingde.
Yang Mingde wanted to shoot, but after some hesitation he did not shoot. He just lowered the brim of his military cap to block out the sunlight, and focused on the direction where the Mongolian cavalry's arrows were flying.
As expected of a man who makes a living on horseback, he is very accurate in archery. Yang Mingde tried to avoid the arrows by slowly retreating, but the Mongolian cavalrymen's arrows flew towards Yang Mingde every time. When Yang Mingde retreated, the cavalrymen also urged their horses to slowly move forward.
The sound of horse hooves was heard, and the Mongolian cavalrymen holding sabers had already approached. When the two sides were only four meters apart, Yang Mingde raised his rifle.
The Mongolian cavalry suddenly disappeared from the horses' backs. They hid on the side of the horses and used the horses to conceal their bodies.
Yang Mingde didn't bother to look for it, and shot the horse with his rifle. The horse was in great pain and immediately stood up. The Mongolian cavalry had never expected that Yang Mingde would fire at the horse mercilessly, and they turned back to the horse in a panic. Although they were not thrown off, they had no way to hide their bodies.
At this time, Yang Mingde was so close to the Mongolian cavalry that he could even smell the foul smell coming from the cavalry. Pulling out the revolver from his waist, Yang Mingde fired two shots almost at the cavalry's waist with the muzzle of the gun.
The Mongolian cavalry fell off their horses with screams.
Yang Mingde originally wanted to go up and fire another shot, but after a year of training, his body was not controlled by this instinctive impulse. Instead, he began to reload the rifle according to the training.
When the two cavalrymen saw this situation, they turned their horses around and left without even fighting!
Yang Mingde raised his loaded rifle and pointed it at the struggling Mongolian cavalryman. This guy was short and tried desperately to get up and escape. Just looking at his current appearance, he was no different from the dying villagers killed by the Mongolian cavalry. How could he have imagined that this poor guy struggling to survive was actually a member of the Mongolian cavalryman who killed so many ordinary people!
Without a trace of sympathy in his heart, Yang Mingde shot the cavalryman in the back of the head, killing him directly.
After reloading the bullets, Yang Mingde looked at the Mongolian cavalry who were gathered in a group.
The cavalrymen were not as bold and reckless as they were when they were in an advantageous position to kill people. Even when they were facing only Yang Mingde, they still discussed the matter.
After a while, the cavalrymen divided into several teams, spread out, and surrounded Yang Mingde.
Haha! Yang Mingde sneered. It turns out that when dealing with a person, as long as that person has the ability to kill them, the Mongolian cavalry will immediately become timid.
After seeing the villagers in his village being killed or injured, Yang Mingde no longer cared about life or death!
Come on! Kill one and you'll make a profit, kill two and you'll make a profit! Yang Mingde was not afraid at all. He had already killed one this time, so any more he killed would be a profit!
The group of Mongolian cavalrymen who were charging on the road rushed forward, but unexpectedly, just like before, they stopped when they were a certain distance away from Yang Mingde, drew their bows and arrows and started shooting at Yang Mingde.
Yang Mingde knew that it would be difficult to wait for them to come over, so he simply aimed at the cavalry and fired. By the time he was reloading, the Mongolian cavalry had the courage to charge up, right?
After the gun was fired, three or four shots were heard. Then two Mongolian cavalrymen staggered and fell off their horses. Yang Mingde looked up and saw several figures appearing on the roadside mound where smoke was coming out. They turned out to be the comrades who were left behind by Yang Mingde when he rushed over to intercept the Mongolian cavalry.
Although squad leader Yang Mingde had run so fast that no one could catch up with him, the deputy squad leader took responsibility and commanded the soldiers to divide into three teams and start a three-stage attack on the Mongolian cavalry below.
Faced with death, the Mongolian cavalry ran like rabbits, not even rescuing their comrades who were not killed, and just fled in the direction where they could survive.
Yang Mingde immediately ran after him, and after running for a while, he was grabbed from behind. He turned around and saw that it was the deputy squad leader.
"Let go! Follow me!"
"Squad leader, we can't catch up!" shouted the deputy squad leader.
"How do you know you can't catch up if you don't chase?" Yang Mingde shouted.
"Squad leader, you are the only one in our class who has learned emergency treatment. Many people in the village are dying now, and you can still save them if you go back. Do you want to watch everyone die?"
This sentence was like a basin of cold water that made Yang Mingde sober up. He led the team back to his hometown because he was prepared for the village to be attacked. Unexpectedly, he was still too late. When he arrived, the massacre of the Mongolian cavalry had already begun. Yang Mingde could only interrupt the massacre and drive the Mongolian cavalry away.
Thinking of the villagers struggling in the pool of blood on the ground, Yang Mingde turned around and ran towards the village, just like he did before when he chased them out without stopping.
Not only Yang Mingde's squad, the Han army has begun to sink into the grassroots. The squads are responsible for guarding each village. A company has three platoons. They are responsible for the safety of seven villages. Two platoons are in six villages as squads.
The company headquarters will be stationed in the villages or towns that can respond to the six villages. The remaining platoon will become a mobile reserve, ready to support the village at any time.
The logistics troops transported the captured cold weapons, especially the long guns, to each village. The number of weapons left behind by the 100,000 Qing troops was really huge. Each village was stationed with people from the village or locals who defected to Huo Chong, and villagers who were close to the Han regime were selected to form a militia, give them weapons, and build observation towers to provide a basis for early warning.
Roadblocks were set up at the entrance of the village to try to stop the attacking Mongolian cavalry. Then the troops led the militia to resist.
The transportation lines have been prepared, and the couriers travel back and forth, delivering the latest news to the various mobile units and informing the villagers of the areas where the enemy has appeared.
Just as Gao Pang said, Huo Chong was not frightened by the Qing Dynasty's butcher knife. Instead, he made full use of this incident to bring the Han regime into the grassroots level and integrate it with the grassroots.
More than half a month later, the preliminary management system of Jiaodong region was laid out. In the headquarters in Linzi, people from all walks of life were so busy that they could hardly keep up.
"...Let the troops sing the "Three Major Disciplines and Eight Points for Attention" publicly, and teach the militiamen how to learn it!" Huo Chongming said.
The head of the Political Department asked, "Do you want to let everyone know how bad the Qing Dynasty is and how good we are?"
"No!" Huo Chong immediately denied this view, "It's to let everyone know what kind of discipline we have. In this way, if we fail to do it, everyone knows which one we failed to do!"
"Ah? You want everyone to monitor us?" The head of the political department was shocked.
Huo Chong was very unhappy. "How come what we want to do is being monitored by others? Can we do whatever we want if no one sees us?"
At this point, Huo Chong was even more unhappy. After thinking for a while, he ordered, "Let the comrades go to the army and tell the comrades and militiamen about the wrong thing we did before, which was to buy the things that people had to sell in order to survive at a low price!"
"Sir, we know we are wrong!" The comrades in the Political Department were even more shocked.
"We have done something wrong, so we need to tell the people what is right and what is wrong, what can be done and what cannot be done. If everyone does not know what is right and wrong, what is good and evil, then how can everyone know what our Han regime is like!"
After saying that, looking at the unhappy and unwilling faces of the comrades , Huo Chongming said: "Don't be afraid! A person with a clear conscience is not afraid of his own shadow. Besides, everyone has done wrong things. It's not a big deal to be wrong. The trouble with doing wrong things is how to end it. If everyone knows what is right and what is wrong, no matter how troublesome it is, it can be ended. As for being laughed at, we are laughed at anyway. Everyone has the urge to laugh at others. It's impossible not to be laughed at!"
After the arrangements were made, Gao Pang, who was listening nearby, took the time to ask, "Sir, is what you just said human nature?"
Huo Chong was a little tired, and barely suppressed his irritation before he said, "Have you read the Five Vermin I asked you to read?"
"I read it. It broadened my horizons." Gao Pang replied quickly.
"Those who live in the mountains and draw water from the valleys will give each other water when they have meat and meat; those who live in the marshes and the bitter water will buy food and break the drains. So in the spring of a famine year, younger brothers will not be fed; in the autumn of a good year, even strangers must be fed. It's not that they love strangers more than they love their relatives, but that the amount of reality is different. This passage is about the human nature that confused you before!"
Gao Pang had a very good memory, and he recalled this passage immediately after hearing it. This means that people who live in the mountains and have to go to the bottom of the valley to fetch water give each other water as gifts during festivals; people who live in low-lying areas and suffer from floods have to hire people to dig canals to drain water. So in a famine year, even his younger brother would not be given food; in a good year, even distant passers-by would always be entertained with food and drink. It is not that he intentionally alienates his own flesh and blood and favors passers-by, but because the actual situation of the amount of grain stored is different.
This is also completely consistent with what Huo Chong said: "People who talk about human nature without being realistic have no humanity."
"The so-called human nature, if viewed from a materialistic perspective, is the many reactions that our bodies have formed over billions of years of evolution. These reactions were originally instinctive reactions in order to survive when the human population was small and there was no ability to make tools. What are we like now? Not only can we make weapons such as swords and guns, but we also have firearms. Swords and guns can be said to be made of stones and sticks, imitating nature. Firearms are no longer something that exists in nature. In this case, copying something that came before is of course specious, and even inexplicable. We cannot look for the sword in a boat, and we cannot come up with a priori theory based on the same reason."
"...Indeed." Gao Pang nodded repeatedly.
"To propose human nature on the basis of a priori theory is like believing that water conservation is a virtue in places with water shortages. This is not wrong in itself. But if you just extract that saving water is a virtue and then popularize it everywhere, do you think this so-called virtue, this so-called necessary human nature, is human nature?"
Haha! Gao Pang couldn't help laughing. At this moment, Gao Pang felt that he was suddenly enlightened, and the confusion in his understanding of human nature was finally solved. Gao Pang believed that the so-called human nature problem would no longer bother him at this stage.
Without waiting for Gao Pang to speak, Huo Chongming said, "Since you understand, you can work with the comrades in the Political Department to do what I said before. Through propaganda, let everyone know where we are right and wrong. Also, don't issue orders, but communicate more with comrades and understand their ideas. As long as you don't have a priori theory and don't talk about human nature that ignores the actual situation, you can tolerate many opinions that you would never tolerate before. Go!"
Gao Pang accepted the order and left, while Huo Chong continued to arrange the work. Even from the non-political point of view of the industrial age, if an entity organization wants to run well, it is best to have personnel who are similar to the military and almost as standardized as genetic replication in production and various handovers.
This idea has been fully proven in the war. Huo Chong's army was not the kind of army with great strategies. However, this inexperienced group of people, simply by completing the knowledge that they could truly execute and master, were able to defeat the fast with the slow, and inflict heavy damage to the Qing army in a field battle where the Qing army thought they had an absolute advantage.
Huo Chong believed that the Han regime formed according to organizational discipline would surely achieve final victory.
While we were dealing with the tedious task of completing the organization's construction, the reception department sent us a message that the chief leader of the Hebei Tianli Sect had sent his deputy leader to pay us a visit.
This was the third time they sent people to contact Huo Chong. Huo Chong put aside his organizational work and received these "unexpected" visitors.
In Huo Chong's view, the Tianli Sect was also in a sense suffering from an unprovoked disaster. Huo Chong had been a member of the Tianli Sect for a short time, and he had no dealings with the Tianli Sect from beginning to end.
Moreover, Shandong Tianli Sect is not even the origin of Tianli Sect. According to the intelligence department's collection and collation, the core area of Tianli Sect is actually in the capital area of Zhili and Henan. It is formed by the fusion of secret churches such as Hongyang Sect and Kan Gua Sect in the capital area, and Zhen Gua Sect in Henan Bagua Sect.
Hongyang Sect was originally a branch of Kan Gua Sect in Bagua Sect. It was already popular among the people in Beijing and its surrounding areas during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, especially in Wanping and Daxing. Zhen Gua Sect in Henan Bagua Sect has its own tradition.
As for Shandong Tianli Sect, it was greatly influenced by the fighting schools such as Baji Sect, so Shandong Tianli Sect called itself Kanzi Sect.
Not only did Huo Chong never truly become a member of the Tianli Sect, he even had a conflict with Liu, the leader of the Tianli Sect's Kanzi Sect, and was declared expelled from the sect.
But the Qing Dynasty didn't care about that. They just knew that Huo Chong was a member of Tianlijiao and thought that Tianlijiao was the power behind Huo Chong. Since Huo Chong rebelled, Tianlijiao was also a sinner.
Fortunately, the Tianli Sect was originally a secret society, so the impact was not too great. In the previous two contacts, the Tianli Sect said that just when the Tianli Sect headquarters in Zhili and Gyeonggi thought they were doomed, the officers and soldiers who were searching for the Tianli Sect suddenly left. This incident became a situation with a good start but a bad end.
Huo Chong did not say anything at the time, because it would be too boastful if he said anything. In Huo Chong's view, the reason why the officers and soldiers suddenly gave up was not because they did not want to wipe out the Tianli Sect, but because the troops were short of manpower and all the troops were withdrawn to deal with Huo Chong.
Of course, he didn't want to exaggerate, so Huo Chong told the people at the Tianli Sect headquarters that this was God's will, and God wanted Tianli Sect to avoid this disaster. No one could stop it.
Huo Chong thought that the Tianli Sect would be satisfied with this situation, but he did not expect that the Tianli Sect would propose to unite with Huo Chong, attack the capital, and kill the emperor. The leader of the Tianli Sect would become the emperor, and Huo Chong would become the 8,000-year-old king.
Looking at the brothers who were brought into the house this time, Huo Chong couldn't help but recall the shock he felt when he first heard such a suggestion. Eight thousand years old, one word side by side with the king. This seems to be a line from a play.
The brothers of Tianli Sect spoke of such a trivial matter with utmost sincerity.
Fortunately, they did not use the Nine Thousand Years Old. If they wanted to ask Huo Chong to be the Nine Thousand Years Old, Huo Chong would probably turn hostile right away.
However, judging from the subsequent news, these brothers were really serious. According to many news reports from Huo Chong's intelligence network in Hebei, Tianli Sect really started to "sell officials". That is, believers were asked to pay money, and officials were given according to the amount of money paid.
After paying the money, the believers thought that there should be no problem with this matter. Not only did they invest manpower, they even used money to hire heroes and brothers in the underworld, preparing to really launch a surprise attack on the capital.
Huo Chong originally evaluated what he had learned from rebellion to manage, talk about science, learn science, and use science. So Huo Chong thought that rebellion was a very difficult thing.
With the Tianli Sect, Huo Chong had to admit that he was a person who only studied for a short time and did not understand the books thoroughly. It turned out that what was described in the history books was actually true.
At this time, Mr. Ding had already brought people to Linzi City to ask for an audience with Huo Chong.
Hearing that Huo Chong was busy at the moment and needed to make some arrangements before confirming a meeting time with Mr. Ding, Mr. Ding could only secretly say to the people who came with him: "I didn't expect Huo Chong to be so grand now."
The man exuded a sense of Qing Dynasty officialdom, trying to look indifferent, yet arrogant. After hearing what Mr. Ding said, he smiled with a condescending attitude in his bones: "Such a thing, haha, for someone like Huo Chong...isn't it the way it should be?"
Mr. Ding laughed dryly and felt that the sarcasm was just right.
