SWDnovel Chapter 14 Rescuing the Besieged Village
Chapter 14 Rescuing the Besieged Village
"General, look! That's the village I mentioned before!"
Suddenly, a cavalryman excitedly pointed his sword into the distance and said.
Rock glanced over and saw the village over there, especially the walls and towers surrounding it, which looked very conspicuous, almost like a fortified village.
He was unaware that in this world, due to the zombie outbreak, villages had built walls and shooting towers to protect themselves from the zombie horde, and even ordinary farmers were better armed than before.
There was no other way; without these walls, they couldn't possibly stop the zombies. Without weapons, how could they ensure their survival in the crisis?
Are they hoping that the imperial army will wipe out the corpse plague?
Let's forget about it. The imperial army is only active when collecting taxes. Expecting them to clean up corpses on ordinary days is simply impossible.
Of course, a very important reason for this was that the imperial court did not treat the army well, and there was no incentive to clean up the corpses, so the Green Standard Army soldiers in various places basically only cared about their own affairs and were too lazy to care about places further away.
Interestingly, the military system of the Qing Dynasty's Green Standard Army was officially established, including the military pay, in the fifth year of the Shunzhi Emperor's reign.
From the fifth year of the Shunzhi reign until now, more than 200 years have passed, but the military pay of the Green Standard Army has remained unchanged. However, the value of silver has depreciated significantly. After all, the Qing Dynasty has always had a large inflow of silver, but apart from indemnities, there has been very little outflow of silver.
For this reason, although the Green Standard Army soldiers' pay was not much, it was enough to support their families.
But now, the Green Standard Army soldiers don't even have enough money to eat with their meager pay. Not to mention that from food to pay, the Green Standard Army soldiers are exploited at every level, and in the end, the pay they actually receive is less than 30% of what is stipulated.
With such a meager monthly salary, what kind of desperate effort can you expect them to put in?
It is said that the Green Standard Army in the late Qing Dynasty was utterly corrupt, but the root cause was that their pay was not enough to support themselves. Soldiers couldn't even afford the most basic thing of getting enough to eat, so it was more than just utterly corrupt.
In order to make money, they would even rent out the military camp's drill ground and military horses to haul goods, and they would also go out to work or set up stalls. They had no time or resources to train properly.
Under these circumstances, it would be completely impossible to rely on the imperial army to eradicate the corpse plague!
Rock shook his head, banishing the thoughts from his mind, and then looked carefully at the village in the distance.
It must be said that this village is quite resilient; they have managed to hold out until now despite being besieged by such a large number of zombies.
The group of undead were stacked on top of each other, almost forming a human ladder, and were about to climb over the wall, but strong men stood behind the wall, holding spears and clubs, constantly pushing the undead back down.
Meanwhile, villagers on the nearby tower were shooting with hunting bows, and some even took out homemade guns and fired at the zombies below from time to time, but these attacks were not very effective at killing the zombies.
If we categorize them, the best way to deal with zombies is by slashing and blunt force. Piercing and shooting are not good methods, at least not until you have a certain level of firepower.
As the cavalry approached the village, some of the undead seemed to notice the living creatures behind them, and staggered around, running towards the cavalry.
Seeing this, Rock quickly shouted to his cavalry:
"Brothers, run! Circle around these zombies and lure them away!"
"Let's walk them like we're walking dogs!"
The cavalry responded to Rock's words and quickly split into several groups, charging towards the group of zombies from different directions.
As the cavalry approached, more and more zombies abandoned the formidable wall in front of them, turned around and ran towards the cavalry, staggering and chasing after them.
However, the zombies were slower than even ordinary people. Apart from their endurance, they were almost useless at running. As a result, when the cavalry turned around, these zombies were quickly left behind by the cavalry.
To prevent the enemy from breaking free and rejoining the siege of the village, the cavalrymen acting as bait had to slow their horses down to avoid getting too far away from the enemy.
As they ran ahead, these cavalrymen would turn around and attack with their muskets. With a series of gunshots, lead bullets were constantly being fired into the bodies of the undead, and every now and then they would achieve one or two headshots.
Of course, this is not the main cause of the damage.
The truly lethal force came from the two Skaven Wind Grenadiers sitting behind the charioteer.
This was the first time these two rats had ever experienced riding a horse while throwing grenades. Although the two rats were very excited, their grenade-throwing skills did not decline as a result.
As several green dimensional stone bombs fell into the ranks of the undead, a violent explosion ensued, instantly killing a large number of undead.
Interestingly, although Rock had limited the radiation spread of the dimensional stones in the system, the dimensional stone fragments embedded in the bodies of the undead still seemed to have radiation and toxicity.
Many of the zombies were not killed instantly by the dimensional stone bombs. After being knocked to the ground, they were able to stagger back up and continue the pursuit.
But after running away for a short while, the zombies collapsed to the ground one by one, twitched a few times, and then stopped moving.
"No way, dimensional stones have such a magical effect against zombies?"
Rock marveled at the sight, suddenly realizing he had discovered a new use for the dimensional stone!
Unfortunately, there aren't many resources available right now, otherwise he really wanted to find a few more zombies to experiment on and see how these zombie-like monsters would behave after dimensional stones were embedded in their bodies.
Squads of cavalry repeatedly acted as bait, charging back and forth around the zombies. Before long, the zombies around the village were drawn away by the cavalry, revealing the wall in front, which had been almost completely torn down by the zombies, and some zombies piled up at the foot of the wall, completely dead.
The villagers standing behind the wall breathed a sigh of relief when they saw the cavalrymen moving back and forth in the distance and the large number of zombies attracted by the cavalrymen.
Wang Qiang, the village chief of Wangjiazhuang, who is now forty years old but still strong and vigorous, looked at the cavalrymen with a curious expression.
Although he was just a farmer who had never seen much of the world, he had seen quite a few bandits, and none of the bandit cavalry he had ever seen could compare to the skill of these cavalrymen.
In fact, before this, the bandits that Rock had killed would come to Wangjiazhuang from time to time to collect protection money, claiming that their security had been taken over by the bandits.
Of course, this was just a casual remark and shouldn't be taken seriously.
If that's the case, then why did Wangjiazhuang build a wall and prepare a large number of spears to defend against the zombies?
"Wow, that's really impressive! Where did these bastards come from? How come they're all so reckless?"
"Holy crap, they're charging straight into the zombies to lure them away! That's a desperate tactic!"
Wang Qiang knew very well that although these zombies were all skinny and swaying, when they gathered together, their destructive power was simply terrifying!
Even if the cavalry can move freely, if they are not careful and are surrounded or entangled, and if they are dragged off their horses by these monsters, they will surely die.
These monsters are fearless and will not retreat for any reason, which is already the most terrifying thing about them.
Even government troops would likely be routed on the spot when faced with a massive onslaught of undead, since everyone is afraid of these reckless monsters.
Just as Wang Qiang was still sighing, a pale-faced young man behind him suddenly said:
"Wait, village chief, I think I've seen these cavalrymen before!"
"Do you remember what I said before, that we encountered bandits on our way here? These cavalrymen are the ruthless bunch who suddenly appeared out of nowhere and wiped out all the bandits!"
Upon hearing this, Wang Qiang gasped.
In his mind, the bandits from the neighboring Black Mountain were already a very strong group. Not only were they all extremely fierce, but they also had sharp knives and firearms. They killed people without blinking an eye and were definitely top-notch ruthless people!
In this situation, the ones who can kill almost all those ruthless people in one go are naturally an even more ruthless group of ruthless people!
"Sam-soon, do you know which king's army that group belongs to? Where do they usually operate?"
Hearing the village chief ask him this, the young man widened his eyes slightly and asked in return:
"Village chief, how would I know where these ruthless people came from? I've only been here a short time!"
"I thought you'd seen these soldiers before and knew which king's troops they belonged to!"
The villagers looked at each other, asked in hushed tones, but they didn't know whose men the cavalrymen were.
Some people had seen foreigners and told the village chief that the cavalrymen's clothes looked very similar to those of foreign soldiers, so the village chief actually thought these guys were foreigners!
"Oh no, oh no! What are these foreigners doing here? Could it be they've got their eyes on our land?"
"That can't be right. Those foreigners only care about money; they don't farm at all. Maybe they just want to make a quick buck and run?"
The village chief looked worried, and couldn't help but think of some rumors he had heard before.
Although they were located in Liaodong, so the Russians couldn't reach them for the time being, they had heard that Russian bandits often appeared further north to burn, kill, and plunder.
But in any case, those cavalrymen had never been known to stay and farm after looting the money, so after thinking it over, he figured that the cavalrymen in front of him should be similar.
Just as he was thinking this, a cavalryman suddenly approached quickly.