Just a maidservant, what use could she possibly be?
He even felt great contempt for Zhu Ci's habit of keeping women by his side, even felt somewhat indignant; why should he lose to a man who indulged in women?
Zhu Ci looked at the incredulous expression on Alna's face and couldn't help but let out a cold sneer.
Do you really think Jiang Xueyan could stay by his side just because she has been following him all this time?
If he hadn't insisted on personally leading the imperial expedition, there would be countless people trying to push their people into his side by now. For a Jiang Xueyan with no background to remain standing, she naturally had her advantages.
Setting aside other things, even though this girl looks frail, she is naturally strong; one couldn't call it divine strength, but she is stronger than the average man.
Anyone who dared to look down on her would surely pay the price.
Jiang Xueyan and Yang Hongfei stood together in front of Alna, stubbornly preventing this Qing Army general, famous for his bravery, from breaking through the defensive line.
Zhu Ci wanted to rush out and hack people down with reckless abandon, but he was pulled back by his subordinates every single time, leaving him so furious that his face began to contort.
“Your Majesty, Your Majesty, please take care of your health!”
They were roughly equal in number to the opposition and held the high ground; the situation was in no way so dire that His Majesty the Emperor would need to personally take the field to hack people down.
Zhu Ci waved his hand. "Is it not enough that I lead from the front?"
Your Majesty, please reconsider!
Tsk.
Zhu Ci wanted to say something more, but suddenly felt that something was not quite right; the little black horse he was riding seemed a bit restless.
Oh, this horse was also scavenged from Fu.
Anyway, except for that Yanling Blade which he bought for himself at the very beginning, almost everything else on his person was scavenged from Fu.
This horse was actually a replacement; Fu had said that when he sent people to tail him back then, it had resulted in the loss of one horse, so he had to compensate him with an even better one.
This horse was very intelligent and had been on the battlefield; it could remain as steady as a mountain even when explosives detonated fifty meters ahead. Now that it was so restless, it made Zhu Ci feel somewhat uneasy.
He looked around, feeling that the ground beneath his feet was somewhat off, as if it weren't normal hills.
He raised his Yanling Blade and said, "Descend the mountain!"
Everyone was stunned, even Alna was stunned.
Given that they had already occupied the high ground, such an order was extremely fatal.
If they didn't leave, even Alna couldn't guarantee a victory in this battle, but if Zhu Ci and the others descended the mountain, their chances of winning would be much greater once they began their pursuit.
Something was very wrong. Alna instantly became alert and did not pursue.
Because he discovered that although the Ming Army was somewhat puzzled, almost no one had any intention of resisting the Emperor, they all followed him down the mountain.
Could the enemy have set a trap below?
This was the only possibility he could think of.
Alna did not pursue, but instead stood on the mountaintop watching the Ming Army, who had stopped again after descending the mountain, feeling that something was wrong no matter how he thought about it.
Zhu Ci's subordinates would, of course, be obedient; these were soldiers he had raised himself, having lived and eaten alongside them in the military camps back then.
The first lesson he gave these soldiers was obedience to orders; they could have their own thoughts, but in critical moments, they had to follow orders, everything else could be discussed once they were safe.
"Your Majesty, what has happened?" Jiang Xueyan wiped the blood from her face with her sleeve and looked at Zhu Ci with some confusion.
Zhu Ci held the reins, letting the horse slowly back up as he said, "I always feel like something is a bit off; Langying also seemed very uneasy when he was up there."
Sigh, he should have scouted the surrounding area before coming out.
Mainly because even though the terrain here had some undulations, it was all hills without any particularly steep or rugged landscapes, so he didn't pay much attention to it.
Yang Hongfei looked at the Qing Army occupying the high ground and said with some unwillingness, "Your Majesty, are we really going to retreat?"
Zhu Ci pondered for a long while before saying, "Let's go. We won't take the risk."
After he finished speaking, he made a gesture for them to retreat.
Alna was instantly filled with conflict; every move the opponent made was incomprehensible to him. This was not something a normal general could pull off.
The only thing he could think of was that the person opposite him was far too young, had no idea how to fight or understand any tactics.
No matter how precocious he was, he was only fifteen years old. Zhu Ci was called intelligent back then, but before this, almost no one knew who His Majesty the Emperor was.
Just as Alna made up his mind to pursue them, he suddenly felt a sudden jolt, immediately fell, horse and all.
Zhu Ci was originally leading his men in a slow retreat; they were retreating intentionally, not fleeing, so they could not panic and lose their way, leaving their backs completely exposed to the enemy.
Before they had even gone far, they heard a series of muffled thuds, when they looked up, they discovered that the mountain.. had actually collapsed!
Zhu Ci was completely stunned.
Wait, the mountain collapsed?
Does this make any sense?
There was no earthquake either.
Zhu Ci watched the yellow smoke filling the sky; at this moment, aside from the screams of the Qing Army, they could see nothing at all, as if the entire mountain had suddenly been demolished.
He watched for a moment before saying decisively, "Let's go!"
Forget what was going on with this mountain; run first, talk later.
Zhu Ci led his men far away, terrified that an earthquake might occur; he didn't even dare to sleep while camping.
It wasn't until the next morning that Zhu Ci looked through his eyeglasses and saw no issues, so he finally arranged for people to go and investigate.
Your Majesty, that mountain has collapsed into a pit. There is water underneath, along with some blue bricks that were dug up from the perimeter. We haven't dared to go inside yet.
Zhu Ci took a look; the scouts had brought back several blue bricks and coins.
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Author's Note: Zhu Ci: I knew this mountain looked suspicious! A cat with airplane ears fleeing frantically. jpg
Next update tomorrow morning at six o'clock~
Chapter 111
Blue bricks.. coins..
Zhu Ci immediately said, "Someone, arrange for people to go and fetch the Dingyuan County Records."
He only hoped now that the Dingyuan County Records would be of no use to the Qing Army and had not been destroyed.
After a short while, someone immediately brought the Dingyuan County Records. Zhu Ci sat in the camp and flipped through them for a long time before finding some records.
Dingyuan, known in ancient times as Yinling or Dongcheng, once had four Yinling Marquises during the Western Han Dynasty, eight generations of the Prince of Fuling during the Eastern Han Dynasty. Besides those, the Marquisate of the Marquis of Dongcheng was also located near here.
So theoretically speaking, there really are Han Dynasty tombs here, it might even be a burial complex.
So he wondered why that small hill had looked so strange before; it turned out it was the burial mound of some unknown prince or marquis.
So he had been dancing on someone's grave for a long time?
That would explain why it collapsed; there was a tomb beneath the mound, the middle was hollow.
They and the Qing Army were using explosives, a crowd of people was fighting on top; if there were water below, the tomb chamber, already fragile from being submerged in water all year round, would certainly not hold up.
Zhu Ci sighed and said, "Let's go, let's go see."
He wondered which lord or noble this was, whether a Fangshi had read his fortune back then, telling him that he would face a calamity one or two thousand years later.
When Zhu Ci arrived there, he looked at the scene from a distance and felt that this tomb owner's fate was simply too tragic.
He immediately had incense burners and offerings prepared to pay his respects to this unknown tomb owner from afar.
It wasn't that I was practicing feudal superstition; it was partly because I felt it was somewhat disrespectful to dance on someone's grave for so long, partly to show my gratitude to a senior.
It didn't collapse while he was up there; it only collapsed once the Tartars went up.
In a more metaphysical sense, it means that the Han ancestors are still protecting their descendants even a thousand years later.
Zhu Ci actually wanted to go and see who this ancestor was, but unfortunately, his subordinates felt the place was too dangerous and would not let him go.
Zhu Ci could only say, "If it can be buried back, then bury it back; stop digging."
They have already given them a hand; one couldn't possibly dig up all of their funerary objects as well. That would be quite improper.
As for those Qing Army soldiers inside, it would be best to take a look and confirm whether Alna is among them; if he can die here, that would naturally be for the best.
Zhu Ci originally wanted to go and see what that tomb looked like now.
Jiang Xueyan, who had just gone to take a look, said with a pale face, "Your Majesty, it is better not to look. It is a mess there; it seems the tomb has already been looted, the corpse inside is.. it is truly.."
Zhu Ci saw her face turn pale and knew that the corpse must be truly unsightly. Jiang Xueyan was not some sheltered young lady who never left her home; she had seen more dead bodies than many men.
He did not insist on seeing it, but simply asked, "Has anyone gone to examine it?"
Jiang Xueyan breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that His Majesty would not insist, said with a solemn expression, "It seems it was said that both the face and the body were destroyed by the alum oil."
Zhu Ci's mind raced for a moment after hearing this.
Green alum oil? What was green alum oil again?
It seems to be sulfuric acid.
Sigh, even the use of sulfuric acid by the ancestors couldn't stop the tomb robbers.
Zhu Ci felt a sense of lamentation. He had originally hoped to dig up something like an epitaph, but it turned out this tomb might have been looted many times before. There was basically nothing left inside; the coffin was shattered, the remains were incomplete, the epitaph's whereabouts were unknown. Only some fragments of the murals remained, scattered here and there.
He listened to the report from the people below and said with some melancholy, "Carefully remove those murals and preserve them."
Actually, he wasn't sure if they could still be preserved; current preservation methods were simply inadequate, he didn't know much about this field either.
I wonder if Fu has anyone under his command who is skilled at this.
In any case, the mural could not be left here anymore. With the world in such chaos, Zhu Ci had no way to specifically assign someone to guard it, leaving it in its original place, exposed to water and mud, wouldn't guarantee its preservation either.
To take down the mural, the entire tomb wall would have to be removed intact.
Zhu Ci truly couldn't sit still and stood up to take a look.
As a result, the ground beside the mural also collapsed while the mural was being removed.
Zhu Ci was startled. According to the previous records in the epitaph, there shouldn't be any other burial chambers behind the murals; theoretically, there shouldn't be any more collapses.