The rain was the worst during the Qingming Festival.
On the Beiliang posthouse road in the drizzle, large groups of Youzhou cavalry were constantly rushing to the Liangzhou Pass. In addition, the cavalry troops in Liangzhou who had come to reinforce Qingcang City had yet to return to their station, which meant that almost all the main forces of Beiliang, especially the cavalry, had surfaced and become the absolute main force in the next battle of Liang Mang. It would evolve from a siege battle to an unprecedented large-scale cavalry battle. In the fierce collision between the nomadic civilization in the north and the agricultural civilization in the Central Plains, one was active and the other was passive. The former relied on the advantage of the number of warhorses to invade the pass, while the latter relied on the crossbows in the city to defend. In history, countless cities outside the Great Wall and near the border had been submerged in the tide of cavalry. In the sound of horse hooves in the north, the words "isolated city" and "slaughtered city" followed closely. As a result, in the past twenty years, countless civil officials would secretly "daydream" in the imperial court, thinking that if the two elite cavalry troops of Liyang, hundreds of thousands of Beiliang cavalry troops and nearly 100,000 border cavalry troops of the two Liao provinces, could sincerely cooperate to fight against the enemy and compete with the Beimang barbarians on horseback, what a magnificent scene it would be.
In Yanzhi County, which bordered Youzhou and Liangzhou, on a muddy road, two horses stopped at a fork to make way for a caravan of merchants. The young man was wearing a green robe, with a cold saber hanging from his waist, and his mount was one of the few warhorses in the Youzhou Army. The woman in white was carrying a long cotton bag on her back and a saber hanging from her waist. The young man stopped his horse to make way for the caravan, and the woman of the same age next to him was as beautiful as a fairy. This made the head of the guards in the caravan, who was in charge of clearing the way, tremble in his heart. He hurriedly told his subordinates to pass a message to the arrogant guys in the caravan behind him, who were used to speaking dirty words, telling them not to be unscrupulous just because they had some connections with the Beiliang Frontier Army. A young man who dared to openly hang a new cold saber on himself was definitely not someone that the second or third-rate members of the Fish-dragon Gang could provoke. Perhaps it was because of the leader's warning that although the caravan guards' eyes were burning, none of them dared to flirt with the woman or whistled at her.
The caravan slowly moved forward. Suddenly, a rider turned around and galloped over. The handsome young knight stopped his horse a dozen steps away from the man and woman. With a bright smile, he cupped his fists and said to the woman in white, "I'm Chen Jianzhai from the Fish-dragon Gang. May I know your name, miss? Don't worry, Miss, I don't have any evil intentions. It's just that I couldn't stand the instigation of my friends. They made a bet with me that I definitely wouldn't be able to find out Miss's name. If they lost, they would have to treat me to Green Ant Wine for half a year. "
The handsome young man from The Fish Dragons grinned and said considerately, "Miss, if it's inconvenient for you to tell me your name, just name it."
Unfortunately, even though Chen Jianzhai took a step back, the woman was still indifferent. She looked at him calmly, without the shyness of an ordinary girl from the Central Plains facing a lecher, or the anger of a Beiliang girl facing a foreign playboy.
In the drizzle, Chen Jianzhai, whose hair was slightly wet, smiled brightly and had no intention of backing down.
The young man with a saber who was deliberately ignored by Chen Jianzhai said with a smile, "Her name is Jiang Cabbage, Cabbage as in Chinese cabbage."
The beautiful woman who was called Cabbage by her companion glared at him and said angrily, "You're Xu Zhizi, Persimmon as in rotten persimmon!"
Chen Jianzhai, who was now a little famous in the Fish-dragon Gang, was a little hurt. He thought to himself, "You two seem to be competing with each other, but in the eyes of a bachelor like me, it's more excessive than flirting."
The young man who was called a rotten persimmon asked with a smile, "I heard that your gang's leader, Liu Nerong, is going to give up her position to someone else?"
Chen Jianzhai's face suddenly became a little dignified. He finally faced the guy who dared to hang a saber without permission. The Fish-dragon Gang, the Fish-dragon Gang, the name was really far-sighted. It was more complicated than all the other nine sects and gangs in Liyang. It gathered nearly 20,000 people in the Jianghu, a behemoth in terms of numbers. Everyone in the Fish-dragon Gang was well aware of it. If the Fish-dragon Gang was not a puppet personally supported by a big shot in Beiliang, it would never have expanded to such an extent today. However, the elders of the Fish-dragon Gang who had followed the old leader to fight for the Jianghu had all retired, and the people in charge had changed. Therefore, there were all kinds of inside stories about the Fish-dragon Gang. Some said that the former Lingzhou Provincial Governor, Xu Beizhi, had promoted the originally unknown maid of the Fish-dragon Gang to be the Empress of Beiliang's Wulin. Some said that the former local emperor of Lingzhou, the former Huaihua General Zhong Hongwu, had tried to collude with the forces of the Jianghu, but the leader of the Fish-dragon Gang, Liu Nerong, had turned against him. She had climbed up Mount Qingliang and used the old general's head as a sign of her allegiance. Nowadays, there were even rumors that Liu Ni Rong was actually a private pet of Wutong Courtyard. The implication was that Liu Ni Rong did not have the qualifications to preside over the future of twenty thousand men and horses. A large faction could flirt with the government, but she absolutely could not marry into a high family and become a concubine. Therefore, the undercurrent was surging. It was under these circumstances that the news of Liu Ni Rong's resignation as the Gang Leader spread. Chen Jianzhai, as a rising star of the fourth batch to join the Fish-dragon Gang, had complicated feelings about this matter. Deep down, he admired the way Liu Nerong treated people, but he also didn't want the Fish-dragon Gang to have too much to do with the government and the border army. The Jianghu was the Jianghu, and the people of the Jianghu would do what the Jianghu did. Otherwise, in the second battle of Liang Mang, once the war outside the Great Pass was in an emergency, the more than 20,000 people of the Fish-dragon Gang would have to fight for their lives outside the Great Pass? Putting their lives on the line was something that small gangs would do when they had no territory and no money. Now, the Fish-dragon Gang was deeply rooted in Beiliang and vaguely had the momentum of a military town. Moreover, it was located in Lingzhou, which was far away from the border and had a relatively weak garrison. Chen Jianzhai believed that there would be many people who were active in the Fish-dragon Gang.
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