Gou was a member of the imperial family in the late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 1157 Tooth for Tooth
Zhu Mincheng started to fight desperately. He didn't know how many times he swung his sword, how many people he hit, and how many times he was hit by the enemy and how many injuries he suffered. The belief in his heart made the young man persevere with this breath, and his madness and the desperate protection of the guards around him also made Zhu Mincheng hold on to the end.

Soon, Xinjing discovered the commotion here, and the city’s commander Li Dingguo decisively summoned his men to go out of the city to rescue.

Li Dingguo led a dozen cavalrymen and went ahead, while the rest picked up their weapons and ran towards the battlefield on foot.

It's not that Li Dingguo didn't want to gather more cavalry, the problem was that he didn't have so many war horses. The fleet came all the way from Ming Dynasty, and the number of war horses was not small, more than 300. But the problem was that even the people on the ship were a bit exhausted after such a long ocean voyage, let alone these war horses?
Along the way, more than 300 war horses died of illness, and only less than one-tenth of the war horses were left when they finally arrived in the New World. In addition, ten war horses were left in the north, and the remaining less than 20 war horses were all with Zhu Mincheng. After landing, these war horses were half dead, and it took a lot of effort to recover. Until now, these war horses have not fully recovered to normal and can only be ridden with difficulty.

Therefore, although Zhu Mincheng's men had elite white-armored soldiers and eight-banner soldiers who were good at riding and shooting, they could not organize cavalry capable of being put into battle because of the lack of war horses. In addition, since they had just arrived here, the key for them was to survive, and the issue of war horses could be put aside for the time being. Therefore, this was the only number of cavalry that Li Dingguo could temporarily mobilize.

Although the cavalry was few in number, they were real cavalry after all. The cavalry under Li Dingguo's command were the elite white-armored Eight Banners that could not even match the Guanning Iron Cavalry! As Li Dingguo rushed over with these cavalry, Zhu Mincheng was finally saved. After dispersing the enemies surrounding Zhu Mincheng, Li Dingguo led the cavalry to charge continuously. Each charge would cause the enemy to suffer considerable casualties, which terrified the enemies.

After the infantry arrived, Zhu Mincheng took the initiative on the battlefield and started to counterattack the enemy. At this time, the enemy saw that something was wrong and began to retreat in a hurry. After leaving behind hundreds of corpses, these savages who came out of nowhere fled in all directions. Li Dingguo led his men to continue chasing and killing them for a while, and then returned with a great victory.

The battle was fought suddenly and in a confused manner. After the battle, Zhu Mincheng reported the losses. More than a dozen of his men were killed, and nearly a hundred were injured, both lightly and seriously. Even two of Zhu Mincheng's guards died in the battle to protect him, and the rest, including Zhu Mincheng himself, were all injured.

Looking at the mess on the ground and the farmland destroyed by the enemy, Zhu Mincheng was furious. He never thought that he would almost capsize in such a situation. If it weren't for his own skills and Li Dingguo's timely reinforcement, he might have lost his life here today.

With a gloomy face, he cleaned up the battlefield. In addition to the enemy who were killed on the spot and seriously injured and obviously incurable, they also captured several injured guys. Zhu Mincheng asked Li Dingguo to take over the following work, asking him to dig out the origins of these enemies from the wounded of the enemy as soon as possible, and to find out why they attacked him inexplicably.

For this reason, Li Dingguo severely tortured the captive, but unfortunately, because the two sides did not speak the same language, Li Dingguo and others did not understand what the other party was saying. They could only slightly understand the captive's surrender from his begging for mercy and screams.

Afterwards, through gestures and other means, Li Dingguo barely managed to dig out some information from the other side. He then learned that these enemies were an alliance of three tribes located a hundred miles northeast of the new capital. These tribes had discovered them and the newly built new capital more than two months ago.

For some reason, these tribes did not take the initiative to contact them, but hid in the distance and watched their actions. Until not long ago, the leaders of the three tribes jointly decided to send troops to Xinjing and use a surprise attack to eliminate the entire Xinjing and these outsiders in one battle. It was because of this that this war broke out.

Although the enemy was well prepared and chose the right time to launch the attack, if there were no accidents, it would not be a problem to kill the people outside the city first, including Zhu Mincheng, and then take advantage of the victory to directly enter Xinjing and massacre everyone in the city.

Unfortunately, they did not expect the gap in combat power between the two sides, and they did not expect Zhu Mincheng's army to be so capable and ferocious.

Just in the farmland outside the city, they failed to capture Zhu Mincheng and his guards in the shortest time, and because of this they lost the opportunity to quickly eliminate the people outside the city and then attack the city.

By the time Li Dingguo reacted and brought his army to reinforce, how could these native tribes withstand the impact of the world's most elite cavalry and infantry? In this way, the three coalition forces that had been put together with great difficulty were instantly defeated by Li Dingguo, and even the leader died under Li Dingguo's sword. The rest of the people were even more frightened and fled in embarrassment.

After learning about this, Zhu Mincheng was so angry that he gnashed his teeth. You know, when he built the city, he sent out scouts to explore the surrounding area and found some tribes near Xinjing. But considering the distance, and the fact that the other tribes were obviously wary and defensive of him, plus the language barrier, Zhu Mincheng did not take the initiative to contact them. In his opinion, as long as they did not cause trouble for him and everyone lived in peace, he would first focus on gaining a firm foothold, and after this year, when the farmland had harvested and the food problem was solved, he would gradually expand outward.

This plan seemed to be fine and could be said to be quite standard. Zhu Mincheng always remembered what his father had told him about the New World. He had learned that the natives of the New World were most likely descendants of the Chinese, just like the people of the Ming Dynasty. Thousands of years ago, these people fled to the north because of the war, and then migrated to the New World across the sea when the northern strait was frozen in winter, and then survived here and multiplied until today.

Because of this, Zhu Mincheng never thought of conquering these natives by force like the Western countries did. In his opinion, since they were all of Chinese blood, it was possible to fight for them. Now he had not established a firm foothold, and once he had established a firm foothold, he would gradually expand outward, and then slowly recover the surrounding tribes, use them for his own benefit, and then make his own kingdom continue to grow.

The idea was good, but the cruel reality hit Zhu Mincheng hard. After suffering a great loss and almost dying at the hands of the enemy, Zhu Mincheng returned to the city and was furious. At this time, how could he care about his Chinese bloodline? The enemy was about to kill him. If it weren't for his good fortune today and Li Dingguo's timely arrival, he, the King of Song, would have died and his country would have been destroyed. What else could he talk about?
Zhu Mincheng is not a pedantic scholar who has only read books mechanically. He was taught by the current emperor since childhood, and his master is the famous Sun Chengzong. In addition, Zhu Mincheng has received a comprehensive military education in the military academy. How could he give up under such circumstances?

Zhu Mincheng never had the concept of swallowing his anger when being bullied. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was the right choice. So after asking about the other party's background, Zhu Mincheng summoned Li Dingguo without hesitation and asked Li Dingguo to lead the troops to fight and completely solve this problem. No matter what means he used, he had to vent his anger.

Li Dingguo had been on the expedition for several days, so there should have been news. But until now, there has been no news from Li Dingguo, and we don't know whether Li Dingguo's men have found the enemy, and how the battle went.

Thinking of this, Zhu Mincheng felt irritated. He was so restless that he kept walking back and forth in the room subconsciously. Just as he was thinking about Li Dingguo's current situation, he suddenly heard the faint sound of horse hooves. Zhu Mincheng was stunned for a moment, and hurriedly walked towards the gate, stretched out his hand to push it open, and walked out of the palace.

Sure enough, when we got outside, the sound of horse hooves became clearer, and there was a faint smell of smoke rising in the east.

"Hurry! Go and see if General Li's men have returned?" Zhu Mincheng hurriedly said to the guards around him.

The guard responded and ran towards the city gate. Soon, the guard's voice could be heard from a distance: "Your Highness! They're back! The general's men are back!"

"Good! Good! Open the city gate quickly!" Zhu Mincheng immediately smiled and quickly asked someone to open the city gate to let the messenger in.

The new capital city is very simple. Apart from the temporary wall, it has only two city gates, one facing east and the other facing west. The east side faces inland, which is the gate through which the messenger has returned, while the west side leads to the dock. Conditions are limited now and we can only make do with it.

Besides, the New World is not the Ming Dynasty. There are no other Ming people here except for himself and Yongguo, thousands of miles away in the north, so there is no need to consider whether the messenger is a fake. As the heavy wooden city gate opened, a dusty rider ran in from outside the city. After entering the city, he turned over and dismounted. Seeing Zhu Mincheng not far away, the man hurriedly trotted forward, knelt on one knee, took the bamboo tube containing the military report from his shoulder, held it with both hands and said: "Your Highness, the commander Li Dingguo led the troops to defeat the enemy, beheaded 1,329 bandit leaders, captured more than 3,000 prisoners, and obtained countless gains!"

"Good! Good! Good!" Zhu Mincheng was overjoyed. He quickly took it, opened the bamboo tube, poured out the military newspaper inside and began to read it carefully.

The military report was written by Li Dingguo himself, describing the course of the battle. Li Dingguo arrived near the enemy's gathering place a few days ago. At this time, the enemy had just suffered a great defeat, and the three tribal leaders were holding a meeting. The camp was brightly lit, and it was unknown why the enemy did not run away but stayed there.

Seeing this, Li Dingguo, out of caution, sent out scouts to investigate the surroundings. After confirming that the enemy was indeed not prepared, he waited patiently until midnight. In the second half of the night when people were sleeping the deepest, Li Dingguo decisively ordered an attack. At this time, the enemy was still in a dream. Although the three tribes together had several thousand people, which was much more than the more than 800 people led by Li Dingguo, when Li Dingguo launched a night attack and killed directly into the camp, the enemy had not come to their senses at all. In their panic, they could not even stop him and could only flee in embarrassment.

After fighting for a whole night, Li Dingguo won a great victory at a very small cost, not only killing thousands of people, but also capturing most of the enemy. Many of them fled in a panic, but Li Dingguo did not stop fighting. After leaving two hundred people to guard the camp and the prisoners, he took the rest of the people to continue chasing and killing, trying to eliminate all the evil. Now Li Dingguo is still chasing and killing the fleeing enemies, and the final results are still unknown, but judging from the information reported back now, this great victory is beyond doubt. How can Zhu Mincheng not be happy?
(End of this chapter)