Chapter 405 - Total Defea (1/2)
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Zhu Junyang choked on his own saliva and coughed a few times, “How could those people compare to me? What type of relations.h.i.+p do we have? In the future, I’m the person who will be marrying you…”
“Don’t be so sure, you still haven’t pa.s.sed the tests yet! Who knows if another beautiful maiden will catch your eye and you’ll forget all about me ah!” Yu Xiaocao ruthlessly pushed aside the still bare chest that had come over to her. She was getting ready to leave the cave to eat lunch. From the previous evening until now, she only had a small piece of roe deer meat and it was only roasted plainly over a campfire. It couldn’t be considered to be very appetizing.
However, her arm was suddenly held captive by him. She raised her head to look at Zhu Junyang, who had a solemn and serious expression on his face. He reiterated, “I won’t be interested in anyone else, so stop hoping for anything else. Just wait obediently for me to marry you!” When he finished talking, he moodily put on the clothing that the servants sent over and flung his arms as he left.
Angry now? Yu Xiaocao shrugged her shoulders and followed behind him to leave the cave. Her whole family was waiting for her to eat lunch. The spread was quite splendous. There were bowls of glistening white grains of rice, a plate hand-shredded dried chicken, a plate of stir-fried common purslane, and tureen of egg drop soup. Zhuang Xiaomo had also been invited over for the meal, and Xiaolian had even somewhat shyly served him a chicken leg.
The rice that they had painstakingly stolen back yesterday night had already been divided to the other villagers. Regardless of whether they were men, women, elderly, or children, every person had been given five catties of rice and two catties of white flour. It was enough for everyone to eat for the next two days. The remaining surplus was stored in one of the outer caves. They had just divvied up grain rations to Zhuang Xiaomo and the others, so there was still enough left to use for another two days.
After they finished lunch, Zhu Junyang slept so heavily that it was almost impossible to wake him up that evening. Yu Xiaocao had used the medicines within her box and the mystic-stone water to simmer a pot of tisane that could replenish the blood and restore the body. She was planning on making sure he drank some every day for the next three days.
Who would have expected that he would disappear the next morning and even took a dozen bodyguards with him? The note he left behind said that the troops from the imperial prince’s residence had already arrived last night and that Head Steward Liu had come over to report this himself. When Head Steward Liu saw the scattered wounds all over his master’s body, he silently rebuked himself for not going along with the master. However, even if there were ten of him in that situation, he likely wouldn’t be of much help to his master. After all, his swimming abilities were too average. He was the type of person who was considered a hero on land and a useless n.o.body in the water.
Yu Xiaocao was quite relaxed about all of this. The young royal prince had told her that he had brought over half of the imperial prince’s troops along, which was around eight hundred soldiers. The Wokou pirates at Dongshan Village only had a hundred or so people on their side. The pirates would absolutely be slaughtered and captured with these well-trained troops fighting against them.
The pirates, who were having the time of their life at Dongshan Village, would have already left if Watanabe Hiros.h.i.+ had listened to the urgings of his advisors. Over a dozen of their comrades had somehow pa.s.sed away that night and even their s.h.i.+ps had been sunk. What did that mean? It meant that there was a highly skilled enemy around them! If this enemy wanted their lives, it would be easy for this mysterious person to kill them.
Unfortunately, Watanabe Hiros.h.i.+ was a very conceited individual who was very concerned with his image. They hadn’t completed their mission of sweeping away loot and even lost all of their s.h.i.+ps. In front of General Yamaguchi, did he still have any prestige left compared to his other rivals? Although he lost the loot, he needed to make up for his lost reputation. He was determined to enter the mountain forest to attack the villagers after resting for one day. He was aiming to do the same as the other pirates in the neighboring village: slaughter every single villager and be able to vent his temper!
Such a hubristic individual wasn’t willing to listen to any of his advisors, who urged him to meet up with the general at the docks. In fact, he even heavily slapped one of his most trusted advisors for insubordination. All of the people around him felt quite helpless. They were stuck with a leader who was blinded by arrogance, so they could only go down with him.
Before Watanabe Hiros.h.i.+ could gather all of his remaining men, the troops from the imperial prince’s estate descended like a bunch of avenging G.o.ds and gave them no chance to fight back. The Wokou pirates dropped their weapons in an attempt to flee in panic when they saw their opponent’s superior numbers and ma.s.sively better training. However, Dongshan Village had long been surrounded by the soldiers from the estate. No matter how the pirates tried to run, they couldn’t escape from the troops.
Before an hour had pa.s.sed, the battle had ended. The pirates in the village had either been killed on site or captured. Zhu Junyang remembered the grisly sight of the neighboring village. If his la.s.s hadn’t been playing in the ocean when she did and discovered the Wokou pirates approaching, then those people who were dead, hanging on the tree, might also…
Zhu Junyang didn’t dare to think further down that line. He had almost lost his little la.s.s. The more he thought, the more resolute he became to take an eye for an eye. No matter how the pirates begged for mercy, not a single one of them was left alive. All of them had been unceremoniously hung from the old elm tree at the mouth of the village!
The two bodyguards who came with him had already gotten a good understanding of the situation at the neighboring village. Once the battle at Dongshan Village ended, the imperial prince’s troops immediately headed out to the other village. The pirates, who had already gathered all of the loot they wanted, were now trapped by the soldiers on the beach and not a single one was able to flee. The pirates on the s.h.i.+ps could tell that things were not going well and were about to make a run for it. However, the archers in the troops shot fire arrows at the s.h.i.+ps. After the rain of arrows fell, all of the s.h.i.+ps burst into flames. Not a single s.h.i.+p out of the four in the water had a good outcome.
In the past three days, Yu Xiaocao’s G.o.dfather was unexpectedly unable to come by to check up on her. This meant that the situation at the docks wasn’t going too well. Zhu Junyang led the eight hundred soldiers under his command and rushed to the docks majestically.
The dozens of s.h.i.+ps worth of pirates under General Yamaguchi’s command were all warriors from his own clan who had undergone strict training. They were brave and not afraid of death. Furthermore, they had the advantage in numbers. The most important fact was that they were good at battles on the water and knew when to attack and retreat. If their opponents had a tight defense and the situation wasn’t optimistic, the pirates would just flee into the water! Consequently, the county’s soldiers and troops sent from the town and prefectural city weren't able to gain an advantage over the Wokou pirates. Thus, the whole situation had fallen into a stalemate.