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

Chapter 537 Cellar
Half an hour ago, Li You had led his men to the vicinity of Zhangyuan Village. As agreed before, they were waiting outside Zhangyuan Village.

It quickly became dark. The moonlight today was not very good, but it was perfect for them.

Hiding in a place, he kept his eyes on the village, keeping an eye on the movements in the village. Time passed by, and just when he was getting impatient, he suddenly saw a firework rising from the village, lighting up the sky, and Li You's eyes lit up.

The fireworks were the agreed signal. As long as the fireworks lit up, it meant that the people who entered had already controlled the gate. Li You ordered the attack without hesitation. Everyone who had been waiting for a long time immediately followed Li You and rushed into the village in a battle formation. At this time, the villagers of Zhangyuan Village didn't know what was going on. They entered from the village entrance and went straight to the Fan family compound. They didn't encounter any obstructions along the way.

"Quick! Quick!"

As they ran, Li You urged everyone. There was still some distance from the village entrance to the Fan family compound, which was not short. Although they had a signal and could confirm that their people had controlled the gate, there were not many people in the compound. Including Zhu Qiuqi and Liu Bo, there were only fifteen people. Even if they had a mandarin duck formation team, it would still be a bit difficult to fight against the hundreds of Fan family guards who besieged them.

Li You must arrive in time and join forces with his brothers inside to completely control the situation.

Ten minutes later, they arrived near the Fan family compound, and heard the sounds of fighting and the screams of the dead and wounded. At this time, the villagers of Zhangyuan Village also came to their senses, especially some villagers who depended on the Fan family. When they heard the noise coming from the Fan family compound, they picked up various tools and rushed to help.

Seeing this, Li You did not hesitate and directly ordered a charge. He and his men quickly killed the nearby villagers and continued to move forward, and soon arrived at the gate.

"Eighteenth Master!"

"You're just in time! Brothers, charge in!" Zhu Qiuqi, who was in the yard, heard Li You's voice, and when he looked closely, he was overjoyed to see that his own people had arrived. He quickly called Li You into the yard.

In a blink of an eye, Li You led his men into the courtyard through the gate. At this time, Li Hu's men were fighting with the Fan family guards.

The Mandarin Duck Formation is the most suitable battle formation for complex terrain. Logically, Li Hu's men are much more powerful than the guards, so it is not a big problem to deal with them. However, because they have to guard the gate, the Mandarin Duck Formation cannot be used at full strength. Moreover, as time goes by, more and more guards and servants from the Fan family come, and Li Hu has a little difficulty in dealing with them.

However, with the arrival of Li You and his men, all this was no longer a problem. When Li You and his men entered the compound, the situation changed instantly, and they went directly from defense to counterattack.

As the twelve-man mandarin duck battle formations were deployed one after another, they cooperated well with each other, and in a blink of an eye, the Fan family could no longer resist. Although the Fan family's guards were all good at martial arts, and the new army was no match for them in a one-on-one fight, one must know that fighting on the battlefield and fighting alone are completely different things. Battle formations rely on coordination and team power, and although the Fan family's guards were brave, they did not cooperate with each other much, and they were no match for the war machine with their individual bravery.

After a few rounds, the Fan family guards were killed or injured in an instant. Li Hu and his sons led their men to charge forward, forcing the Fan family guards to retreat step by step in agony. Seeing that the opponent was so fierce and their martial arts were completely useless, the guards lost their breath immediately.

Although these guards worked hard for the Fan family, to put it bluntly, they were just outsiders hired by the Fan family. If the two sides were evenly matched, these guards would naturally be willing to fight for the money. But now the other side was so ferocious, and their fighting style was not like that of ordinary bandits at all. They looked more like a regular army. Seeing their familiar brothers falling in a pool of blood, screaming in pain, or even losing their breath, these guards were terrified.

No one knew who ran away first. With the first person running away, how could the other guards have any intention of continuing to fight? Soon the resistance formed by the guards began to collapse. In order to save their lives, everyone ran away. Some ran into the courtyard, some ran to the left and right, and a few smart people ran directly up the courtyard wall. Judging from the direction they ran, it seemed that they planned to leave this side and then climb over the wall from the other side to escape from the Fan family courtyard.

Not only the guards, but also the servants of the Fan family who came to help all ran away. Those servants were not bad at fighting on weekdays, and they were also good at following the guards to beat people with clubs, but facing what happened today, how could they have the courage? Especially when they saw the guards started to run away, these people were even more unbearable, and they only wished that their parents had not given them two more legs, and they used their hands and feet to run around like headless flies.

The outcome has been decided, and the Fan family is already in our pocket.

When Li You and Zhu Qiuqi joined forces, the Fan family had no power to fight back. Without the tall and solid walls, the guards and servants of the Fan family were no different from chickens waiting to be chopped off. After a while, the guards and servants near the gate were driven away, leaving dozens of corpses and wounded soldiers on the ground. Zhu Qiuqi asked a small team to stay here and guard the gate, while he and Li Hu and his son each led half of the men and continued to attack directly towards the inner courtyard.

The battle went very smoothly. From the fight at the gate to the end of the battle, it took only an hour and a half. This was because the Fan family compound was vast and had many houses. Otherwise, it would have been faster.

By the time of Hai, the entire Fan family compound was under control. Except for those who were killed or wounded in the battle and a few guards and servants who were quick-witted enough to climb over the courtyard wall and escape, no one else escaped.

The old and young of the Fan family, including the servants, maids and guards of the Fan family, were captured and driven into a courtyard to be guarded. At this time, the Jinyiwei spy who had been spying on the Fan family also revealed his identity and contacted Zhu Qiuqi and others. He originally thought that it would take a lot of effort to take down the Fan family, and he might even have to use him to cooperate with the Fan family, but he didn't expect that this time he didn't help at all. From the beginning to the end of the plan, he was always a bystander, and only came to his senses after it was over.

According to his confirmation, it can be proved that all the people of the Fan family are here. As for the servants and guards who escaped, they can't care so much for the time being. After all, Zhu Qiuqi didn't bring many people with him, and he caught the Fan family by surprise. It was impossible to seal off the entire Zhangyuan Village inside and out. At present, he was able to take over the Fan family compound in one fell swoop and control the entire situation. He has done a very good job.

After the battle, Zhu Qiuqi sent people to look for Fan Sanbo's whereabouts, and only then did he find out that Fan Sanbo was already dead. He was not killed by Liu Bo's dagger, but the dagger only seriously injured him. If he had been treated in time, Fan Sanbo could have saved his life, but who would have thought that the subsequent battle was in chaos, and the two guards who were originally responsible for taking care of Fan Sanbo saw that the situation was not good and simply abandoned him and ran away.

Fan Sanbo was seriously injured and unable to move. He lay on the ground dying, and was finally trampled to death by the fleeing crowd. When his body was found, Fan Sanbo had been trampled to pieces, with his eyes wide open, as if he was unwilling to die.

It doesn't matter whether Fan Sanbo is dead or alive at this point. Finding him is just to determine his fate.

Now the most important thing to do is to find the whereabouts of the Fan family's gold and silver. Although the Jinyiwei has spies in the Fan family, the spies certainly don't know where the Fan family's wealth is hidden, so this problem must be found from the Fan family.

Originally, Fan Sanbo was the best candidate, but unfortunately, Fan Sanbo was dead, so the candidate fell to the woman with the highest status and the most valuable position in the Fan family. This woman was Fan Yongdou's stepmother. Although she was young and had no real power in the Fan family, she had a different identity and status. As the stepmother of Fan Yongdou, the head of the Fan family, she knew much more about the situation of the Fan family than ordinary Fan family members.

It was not difficult to deal with a woman, especially an ordinary woman. She was frightened by the sudden scene and her face was pale. Her legs were shaking and she could only chant "Amitabha". Just when she was feeling uneasy, two fierce men suddenly grabbed her from the crowd. The woman was so scared that her eyes rolled back and she fainted instantly.

The next thing was very simple. It didn't take much effort to get the information Zhu Qiuqi needed from the woman. Soon Zhu Qiuqi led his men to a place in the inner courtyard of the Fan family. This place was on the left side of Fan Yongdou's house. The small courtyard looked inconspicuous and there didn't seem to be anyone living there. But after entering the east wing, Liu Bo walked around the room, first stepped on a few blue bricks on the ground, then knocked here and there with the scabbard, and found the mechanism in a moment.

After opening the mechanism, the cellar hidden in the main hall was revealed. The cellar was deep and large. Walking down the steps and entering the cellar, I found that the entire cellar area was several hundred square meters, which was much larger than the wing room. It seemed that the entire courtyard was empty.

Looking around with torches and lanterns, I found oil lamps on the walls of the cellar. After lighting them, the cellar became bright.

As the light came on, the interior of the cellar could be seen clearly. At first glance, there were wooden boxes placed in an east-facing area. Some of those wooden boxes were quite old and it was obvious that they had been there for a long time, while some were new and the paint on the outside was still bright.

He walked forward, opened the wooden box, and looked inside. He saw that it was filled with all kinds of treasures, including gold, silver, jewelry, antiques, calligraphy and paintings. In addition to these, there were also a lot of silks and satins, and even a few exquisitely made swords and knives.

After flipping through it casually, Zhu Qiuqi couldn't help but be secretly surprised. The treasures in this wooden box alone were worth a lot of money. He initially estimated that the things in the wooden box he was looking at were worth at least four or five thousand taels of silver, and there were more than thirty wooden boxes here. If the treasures in these wooden boxes were all like this, they would be worth more than hundreds of thousands of taels!

(End of this chapter)