Zhutian: Starting from the Space-Time Merchant

Chapter 178 Unfortunately, the rebel king wouldn't listen.
"Doctor, look at me here~"

"You yourself have no physical problems and are very healthy."

"But I've never had children."

"Have you considered whether your partner has a potential problem with infertility?"

"It's possible, but it's impossible for all of them to have this constitution, right?"

"~~~Them?!"

In the hospital parking lot, Lin Dao sat in his car, leaning back in his seat, closing his eyes and rubbing his eyebrows.

This is a well-known hospital, and the specialists I've booked are extremely busy.

Even though war was still raging in the Chongzhen era, Lin Dao still managed to find time to see the doctor despite his busy schedule.

Logically speaking, he hadn't stopped farming, but he still couldn't get any fruit.

Both the Yonghe and Chongzhen eras gradually experienced undercurrents due to this incident.

This is not an exaggeration, but a real problem.

The issue of succession remains extremely important, even in the modern world.

"Could it be because of time travel?"

"This is troublesome."

Just as Lin Dao was racking his brains over this matter, he spotted a female doctor in a white coat running towards the parking lot, wiping away tears.

Standing in front of a car, she wiped away tears and sobbed.

Not long after, another male doctor came chasing after them.

The two lingered in front of the luxury car, and finally, with the male doctor's comforting words, the female doctor stopped crying and smiled, giving Lin Dao a taste of their romance.

The male doctor was wearing a green robe, along with a hood and gloves, which looked rather strange.

"Are you planning to film a short drama?"

"A domineering doctor falls in love with me?"

Lin Dao picked up a bottle of Nongfu Spring water and smiled slightly. "Doctors are human too. Dating is perfectly normal."

Just as I was feeling a sense of warmth at the scene before me, a group of doctors and nurses came running over in a panic.

They shouted at the male doctor in the green robe.

"The patient in the operating room is still lying there! Time, oh time, the anesthesia time!"

'Pfft~~~'

Lin Dao spat out a mouthful of water.

No wonder I thought the male doctor's green coat was strange before.

They actually escaped from the operating room!

This...this...
What kind of short drama plot is this?!

Lin Dao hurriedly turned his head and looked through the car window at the hospital's tall sign. He quickly took out his phone and dialed a number: "Quickly, book an appointment with a specialist at another hospital for me~~~"

Perhaps it's not due to time travel; it's possible that the doctor simply couldn't see it!
The Chongzhen era, Tongguan.

Ci Hou Liu Fangliang's night raid failed, and more than a thousand veteran soldiers were wiped out.

The enemy's strength was unexpectedly formidable, which clearly affected the morale of the Shun army.

Some people habitually suggested retreating and circling, just like the fighting style they had used for many years before.

Li Zicheng refused.

They are no longer bandits, but the Great Shun Kingdom.

The family and relatives have accumulated a lot of wealth and valuables in Xi'an over the years, and they cannot afford to lose them.

Li Zicheng and others had a very clear premonition.

If they continue down the path of bandits, they will never have a chance to turn their lives around.

The general trend of the world is gradually becoming clear.

Li Zicheng was determined to fight to the end.

Upon returning from medical treatment, Lin Dao personally directed the operation.

The geographical environment of Tongguan, with its dense hills and narrow terrain, made it impossible to deploy a large army.

Lin Dao dispatched his elite troops to attack the Da Shun army arrayed in front of the mountain, but the total strength was no more than a thousand men.

They were all soldiers wearing full suits of lamellar armor.

Holding riot shields, they formed a line and pushed forward.

On the smaller hills behind, dozens of smoothbore cannons continuously bombarded the area, providing long-range fire support.

Shunjun deployed their veteran soldiers and lined up for a direct confrontation.

The two sides clashed, slashed, and collided.

The fighting was extremely fierce.

Li Zicheng personally oversaw the operation, directing his troops to launch continuous counterattacks and fights, determined to block the Lin Dao troops no matter what.

The elite troops of both armies were being rapidly depleted on this narrow battlefield.

"Attention!" Lin Dao, who was controlling the drone to monitor the battlefield, instructed his personal guards, "A cavalryman is taking a detour. Send musketeers to intercept him."

Li Zicheng also had cavalry, known as the "Three Walls".

Previously, Song Xianze suggested that the Lindao should be confronted in the Luoyang Basin, making full use of the strength of the three walls.

But Li Zicheng refused.

Having been a bandit for many years, he had suffered enough from the Guan Ning cavalry.

Cao Wenzhao, Cao Bianjiao, and others had all defeated him in open battle, leaving him with nowhere to run or hide.

At his worst, he was left with only eighteen riders after being beaten.

He's already developed psychological trauma from the beating.

Upon learning that the Guan Ning Army had surrendered to Lin Dao, he never considered engaging in open-field warfare.

They were simply afraid of the Guan Ning cavalry.

What he had no idea was that Lin Dao didn't even think much of the Guan Ning Army, which he feared like a tiger, and hadn't brought them with him at all.

Liu Zongmin personally led over a thousand elite cavalrymen, who had been carefully selected, and made their difficult appearance on the flank of the battlefield by taking a detour through the mountains.

They intended to ambush the attacking rebel army from both sides, but hundreds of musketeers appeared on their way.

"Hmph~~~"

Liu Zongmin had fought many Ming army musketeers and looked down on those mere show-offs from the bottom of his heart.

"It's just a bluff; it'll only make a sound once or twice at most."

"The number of people killed by gunfire is less than the number of their own people killed by the bomb."

"Charge! Kill them all!"

He displayed the bravery of a military general, personally leading the charge at the forefront.

When the enemy raised rows of muskets, he simply ducked under his horse to avoid them.

Having encountered too many Ming army firearms, Liu Zongmin already harbored prejudices against them.

"You don't even have spears or shields, you're worse than government soldiers, you're courting death!"

'Bang bang bang~~~' A burst of gunfire rang out.

"Driving this far, as expected."

His warhorse suddenly collapsed, throwing Liu Zongmin off and slamming him heavily to the ground.

Liu Zongmin, whose bones were broken, was about to cry out when he saw a huge horse hoof rushing towards him and trampling over him.

Unlike Huang Taiji, who was skilled at using spies, setting up intelligence points within the Great Wall, and even bribing court officials to steal intelligence, and whose intelligence information was even more accurate than that of Emperor Chongzhen.

Li Zicheng was a bandit leader who hadn't even had a base of operations for many years.

Their intelligence gathering capabilities are extremely poor.

They had no idea that the firearms used by Lin Dao's troops were on a completely different level from those used by the Ming army.

What they didn't know was that the forest road unit also had this amazing barbed wire.

The Shun army cavalry were wiped out in large numbers.

However, following the precedent set by previous battles against the Ming army, the cavalry believed that the musketeers had lost their chance to fire again, and desperately charged forward on horseback.

As a result, he crashed headfirst into a dozen or so rows of barbed wire.

That caused quite a commotion.

The musketeers, who had been firing continuously, ceased firing and remounted their muskets after the battlefield was filled with smoke.

The auxiliary soldiers stepped forward and spread cotton quilts on the barbed wire. Musketeers with muskets and swords crossed the layers of barbed wire and stabbed the trapped Shun army cavalry.

Most of the more than 1,000 elite cavalrymen of the Shun army were wiped out, with only a small number scattering and fleeing.

The failure of the cavalry flanking maneuver directly impacted the morale of the Shun army on the main battlefield.

Even with Li Zicheng personally overseeing the battle, they were still repeatedly defeated.

The Shun army fought tenaciously, but the gap in strength was too great.

The rebel heavy infantry, clad in full heavy armor, possessed astonishing defensive capabilities.

Their riot shields were even able to withstand the fire of Shun army muskets.

With artillery bombarding the Shun army's positions from the rear, the Shun army ultimately suffered a defeat.

"hateful!"

Inside Tongguan, Li Zicheng, his face grim, slammed his fist on the table in frustration.

"Lin Dao's soldiers are incredibly skilled!"

“Chuang Wang.” Niu Jinxing, who firmly supported the decisive battle at Tongguan, stepped forward and said, “The only way now is to rely on the natural defenses of Tongguan and hold it.”

"The bandit Lin's troops came from afar, and their supply lines are long."

"We only need to delay them until they run out of food and retreat, which will be the perfect opportunity to launch a counterattack."

The same tactic was used when dealing with Sun Chuanting.

By luring Sun Chuanting into a long and arduous expedition, and then implementing a scorched-earth policy along the way to cut off his supply lines, they successfully defeated the last pillar of the Ming Dynasty.

Having learned from their previous success, they wanted to replicate that victory with Lin Dao.

Li Zicheng nodded. "That's the only way."

"No!"

With an anxious expression, Song Xianze quickly issued a statement: "The Lin bandit's forces are extremely powerful, and I fear Tongguan will be difficult to defend."

"Now we should plan ahead and make arrangements for the old camps in Xi'an and other places to retreat to Hanzhong and Sichuan."

"The terrain there is difficult, and only through layers of ambushes can the forest bandits be slowed down."

These words made everyone's faces turn ugly.

We're still fighting, and you're already planning your escape route?
"Shut up!"

Niu Jinxing was furious and pointed at Song Xianze, saying, "How dare you disrupt the morale of the army here! Throw him out!"

It certainly disrupted morale.

If they learned that the rear had begun to retreat, the morale of the soldiers at the front would immediately plummet.

Because everyone knows that this is a preemptive evacuation of the rear if they can't win the battle.

"The Rebel King~~~"

Looking at the silent Li Zicheng, Song Xianze exclaimed, "If we delay too much, we may miss our chance!"

"Get out!" Niu Jinxing roared, ordering the crowd to throw Song Xianze out.

"The Rebel King~"

"The Rebel King~"

Song Xianze was so angry that he stomped his feet after being kicked out.

He hadn't yet mentioned that Lin Zexu's bandit forces in Shanxi to the north would inevitably move south, and a pincer attack from both sides would surely lead to defeat.

Unfortunately, the rebel leader did not listen.

"Oh~~~"

With a heart full of despair, Song Xianze looked up to the sky and sighed, then staggered away.

The Shun army dug deep trenches, erected strong walls, and built camps outside Tongguan City to fight to the death with the forest road.

However, these methods are not very effective.

The camps, fortified walls, and sheep and horse enclosures were all destroyed under the constant bombardment of artillery.

The Shun army launched counterattacks time and again, but they could not stop the rebel army's advance in the slightest.

When they approached the Tongguan city wall, Lin Dao took out his ultimate weapon.

He drove his Shantui SD90C5 heavy bulldozer over like a mountain pressing down, flattening one trench after another.

Then they switched to a super excavator, using its huge bucket to continuously dig at the city wall of Tongguan.

The trenches could be filled by manpower, and the Tongguan city wall could be blasted down by artillery.

Lin Dao simply didn't want to wait that long, so he decided to go himself.

In their panic, the Shun army also fought back desperately.

Various bows, crossbows, muskets, and tiger-squatting cannons clanged as they struck the steel plates mounted on the giant machinery.

But these counterattacks are meaningless.

Lin Dao breached the city wall of Tongguan, and a large number of armored soldiers surged in.

"Chuang Wang, disaster has struck!"

A flustered Niu Jinxing stepped forward with a news report: "The bandit Lin's forces in Shanxi have crossed the Yellow River from Baode Prefecture into northern Shaanxi, besieged Yulin, occupied Mizhi, and are heading straight for Xi'an!"

Attack from both sides!

Li Zicheng's expression was extremely ugly.

"retreat!"

"Chuang Wang!" Niu Jinxing stepped forward through gritted teeth. "Before I arrived, I saw Song Xianze hiding outside, secretly laughing!"

"They're probably laughing at him for guessing everything correctly, and at us for not listening to him. We deserved to be defeated!"

"Hmph! Go and deal with it!"

"Take orders."

(End of this chapter)