Distant Mountain Battle Song

Chapter 275 Greedy people are easily tricked

Cao Kun offered a very high reward: ten taels of gold for a head. Of course, the head had to be from the Tiger Warriors. When receiving the reward, the head would be split open to check for the steel needles inside. This immediately extinguished any thoughts of those who wanted to kill innocent people and claim credit for the reward.

Yun Ce knew that Cao Kun was wealthy, but he didn't expect him to be this wealthy. Six thousand Tiger Warriors would cost sixty thousand taels of gold, which was a huge sum.

This made Yun Ce want to make money from it.

Unfortunately, the Tiger Legion always acted in groups, which left the wandering knights who wanted the reward with nowhere to start.

In order to disperse the Tiger Legion and get them away from the camp, the southern part of the city has already been on fire three times. These are the major fires; there are countless smaller fires that have not caused any damage.

In those three great fires, the Tiger Army lost eleven men. A total of 168 people were killed by the Tiger Army, including knights, assassins, and even scholars like Yun Ce who often robbed and plundered.

Why did Yun Ce know so much? Because there were 186 corpses hanging at the entrance of the Tiger Legion's camp. It was said that they were not dead when they were first hung up, but they all died after two days. Now they were hanging stiffly on the ropes, swaying wildly in the west wind like a string of wind chimes.

The burned-down houses have now been rebuilt, but the construction is very rough. The logs were still covered with bark and piled up to form houses that are very close together, seemingly tempting people to continue burning them.

Yun Ce looked around and realized that in such an environment, coupled with the constant westerly winds of Liangcheng, it would be a disservice to the military camp not to set it on fire.

He thought this way, and naturally others thought the same way. Just as Yun Ce was pondering where to start a fire to cause the greatest damage to the military camp, he saw Chu Xiong, who was wearing a mask.

Chu Xiong, worthy of being called the Eagle General of the Han Dynasty, led a group of masked knights on horseback and broke through the gate of the Tiger Legion's camp with lightning speed. After entering the camp, they did not rush to fight the Tiger Legion soldiers who rushed out. Instead, they threw cans of oil from their arms onto the wooden houses. When they reached the camp wall, they poured oil on their warhorses and set them on fire. Under Chu Xiong's strong attack, they climbed the wall. Then, with the help of people outside the wall, they escaped one by one by scaling the wall.

Yun Ce calculated that from the start of the attack to the escape, Chu Xiong took less than five minutes. Moreover, he had a clear objective and a reasonable division of labor from the beginning. In particular, the last move of setting the warhorse on fire was the finishing touch.

The warhorses went berserk the moment they were set ablaze. They leaped and bounded about like mad tigers, and in a short time, they completely set the Tiger Legion camp ablaze.

Yun Ce was certain that some special substance must have been added to the kerosene, which was why the flames rose more than ten feet high as soon as the fire started, turning the Tiger Legion's camp into a living hell.

Yun Ce grabbed the last wandering swordsman, and before he could even ask the man's name, he snapped his neck, took off his arrogant white cloak and draped it over his own body. He then tied a handkerchief to his face and quickly caught up with the fleeing group, disappearing into the spiderweb-like alleyways.

When they entered a stuffy, smelly leather workshop with Chu Xiong, Chu Xiong stopped. He seemed to be in a hurry. He jumped onto a skinning table and said to the fifty-six people who had come with him, "The rat's nest has been set on fire. The rats are about to come out. The rest depends on the skills of you brothers and sisters."

"I must take my leave now."

Just as Chu Xiong was about to run away, someone below said, "General Chu Xiong, I still want to follow you."

As soon as the words "General Chu Xiong" were uttered, Chu Xiong immediately opened his eyes wide and looked in the direction of the voice. However, the person spoke quickly and clearly, and by the time he tried to pinpoint the source of the voice, the person had already stopped speaking.

Looking closely, the fifty-odd people below the skinning platform were also looking around in all directions, each putting on an innocent act as if it had nothing to do with them.

Chu Xiong, whose name had been exposed, calmed down and said, "We agreed beforehand that I would lead you to launch a surprise attack and set fire to the Tiger Army camp, forcing them to come out of the camp. The rest would depend on your individual abilities. Why did this brother call out my name so readily?"

Yun Ce naturally wouldn't step forward, and the others, though terrified upon learning Chu Xiong's name, also wouldn't speak up.

Chu Xiong glanced around at the crowd again and said coldly, "Farewell. Anyone who follows will be killed without mercy."

After uttering a cold and menacing remark, Chu Xiong left alone.

Yun Ce wanted to follow, but found that three people had already caught up with them. It seemed that they were not so concerned about capturing the Tiger Legion to exchange for gold.

Yun Ce jumped onto the high wall, and just as he was about to jump down, he heard someone behind him say, "Bai Chengfeng, don't think I won't recognize you just because you've covered your face."

Enraged, Yun Ce swung a short spear straight at the speaker's chest. The speaker swung his giant axe, splitting the spear in two. Just as he was about to speak, the man in the white cloak jumped off the high wall and chased after Chu Xiong.

Yun Ce followed the direction Gouzi had pointed out. He had barely rounded a bend when he saw three people lying on the ground. One glance was enough to tell they were beyond saving; they had been struck in the chest with a powerful punch, their hearts and lungs shattered. Yun Ce leaped onto the high wall and saw Chu Xiong sprinting towards the City Lord's Mansion. Yun Ce stopped and turned to run towards the military camp. He felt that Chu Xiong's hasty attack on the camp must have another reason. As for the City Lord's Mansion, since Gouzi had already set his sights on Chu Xiong, he couldn't escape.

Yun Ce never imagined that someone would use three tall carts loaded with firewood to block the camp gate in order to cut off the heads of the Tiger Legion soldiers for gold. The camp was also engulfed in flames, preventing the Tiger Legion soldiers from leaving.

Not only that, he also saw that the group had somehow acquired a makeshift catapult and was continuously throwing fireballs into the military camp.

Right around the catapult, hundreds of swordsmen wielding various weapons were eagerly waiting for the fire to burn the Tiger Army to a crisp so they could plunder the spoils.

Yun Ce sidled up to a swordsman and nudged him with his elbow, asking, "It's all burned up, how do we pay for it?"

The man turned around and looked at Yun Ce, who was wearing a mask, and said, "Bai Chengfeng, you're wearing a mask, how can I, Old Wu, not recognize you?"

Yun Ce exclaimed in shock, "I covered my face completely, how could you still recognize me?"

Old Wu sneered, "You haven't changed your white cloak."

By the firelight, Yun Ce looked at the white cloak he was wearing and finally realized that it seemed to be a good thing. The hide appeared to be that of a ferocious beast. Yun Ce had seen many ferocious beasts, including yellow, black, and yellow-black ones, but this was the first time he had seen a white ferocious beast.

Surprisingly, this thing, when made into a cape, is not only very light but also warm.

Yun Ce gave an awkward smile and continued, "Whose responsibility is it for those who burned to death?"

Old Wu laughed and said, "Old Bai, since you charged into the enemy lines just now, you should get a share of the credit. Even if you burn all the Tiger Legion inside, their skulls shouldn't be burned too badly. As long as the steel needles in their heads are still there, Young Master Cao will accept it."

Yun Ce chuckled and said nothing more, then focused intently on the raging flames engulfing the Tiger Legion's camp with Lao Wu.

Just when everyone thought the matter was settled, a roar that was not human suddenly came from the flames. Immediately afterwards, the carriage blocking the entrance of the military camp was split open by a huge horse-slaying sword. Flames surged to both sides, and a giant man wearing heavy armor and over two meters tall stepped out of the military camp, treading on the flames and slicing through the carriage blocking the way with a single blow.

With a few quick steps and another slash, the catapult, which was originally just a makeshift weapon to launch fireballs into the military camp, was cut in two.

Behind him, more heavily armored Tiger Warriors appeared. They were like mobile steel fortresses, emerging from the flames in a row. They wore the same horse-slaying swords and the same heavy armor, advancing like a forest. Wherever the horse-slaying swords passed, blood and flesh flew everywhere.

Yun Ce quickly looked back and saw that less than a hundred paces away from him, eleven heavily armored Tiger Warriors had also appeared. They were also holding horse-slaying sabers, ignoring the arrows and lances falling on them. They were also swinging their sabers in unison as they stepped forward, tearing apart men and horses wherever they went.

Old Wu was stunned, his lips trembling as he asked, "Aren't they afraid of being burned?"

Yun Ce patted Lao Wu on the shoulder and said, "I ran ahead first, and the others are coming too."

Old Wu looked back in horror and saw that a squad of heavily armored Tiger Warriors had emerged from the alley behind them and were doing the same thing as the other squads on either side.

Just as Lao Wu was about to tell Yun Ce to run together, he saw Yun Ce jump off the roof and run towards the raging flames of the military camp. He thought Bai Chengfeng was incredibly stupid, still courting death at this point. Just as he was about to escape along the roof, his legs gave way and the roof collapsed, section by section. Before the smoke and dust cleared, he saw rows of heavily armored Tiger Warriors rising up from the smoke and dust.

Seeing the surrounding heroes being cleaved in two by the advancing sabers, Old Wu was about to say that he was just watching the show when a saber severed his spear and cut his body in two.

Yun Ce dodged the saber, leaped onto the shoulder of the heavily armored Tiger Warrior like a monkey, kicked off the armored soldiers beneath him with his legs, and darted into the Tiger Warrior camp like an arrow.

Upon entering the military camp, Yun Ce immediately understood why the raging fire hadn't killed the Tiger Warriors. The log houses were uninhabited, and near the stockade walls, far from the wooden houses, numerous pits had appeared. The warriors must have crawled out of these pits, far from the fire.

No wonder Chu Xiong ran away; this guy wanted to gather all those who wanted to capture the Tiger Legion for money so that the Tiger Legion could wipe them out in one fell swoop.

After figuring out what was going on, Yun Ce took out the Shehuo (a type of firework), walked straight through the area of ​​flames, and ran towards the city lord's mansion.

(End of this chapter)