Chapter 532: Defeat the Thief

Inuugami Mita was on the Wuya ship, and with the advantage of being high above, he could clearly see everything on the shore.

The Tang army had only a thousand people, and among the thousand people, there were no more than 400 cavalry.

But the momentum of just a thousand people seemed to be able to destroy Mount Fugaku.

Inuugami Mita lingered in the prosperity of Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty, intoxicated by the prestige of those generals who could capture the chiefs and offer prisoners, and immersed in the pride of the foreigners who dared not get angry as slaves.

But at this moment, seeing the thousand red-clothed Tang soldiers burning like the fire of Buddhism towards the flying birds, this prairie fire made Inuugami Mita tremble, and he understood from the bottom of his heart why he wanted to enter the Tang nationality and regard Chang'an as his hometown.

The slight grudge in his heart seemed to be cut off by a knife, and it disappeared instantly and never appeared again.

In a hurry, Inujo Mita Kuwa didn't even have time to ask to get off the boat. He simply jumped over and jumped down directly, relying on his ability to swim. Liu Rengui, who was watching Li Shi𪟝leave on the shore , was surprised.

After sending someone to fish out the Japanese envoy, he heard the man shouting from a distance:

"General Liu, although I presented the flying bird map to the Duke, the map is not accurate after all."

"I will lead the way for the Duke! I know the noble Soga clan! I am willing to make a contribution!"

Inujo Mita Kuwa had no horse, so Li Shi𪟝 naturally couldn't hear these heartfelt words.

When he was on the boat, he had studied the flying bird with his personal soldiers based on the map presented by the Japanese.

Perhaps because they lived deep in the interior of the Japanese island, and had many geographical advantages, and the flat terrain of the Japanese island was extremely precious, there were no troublesome things such as city walls and forts here.

The Japanese king and the nobles lived according to the location of the land they occupied, and the refugees and slaves lived around the nobles. In the end, these settlements surrounded by the nobles' names together constituted the entire Asuka.

The flat fields connected together also provided the greatest convenience for the Tang army scouts to ride horses.

Without special instructions, the sergeant among the scouts had already led his light cavalry to search in the direction agreed in advance.

Li Shi𪟝 slowly drove the warhorse with the main camp, marching towards the south of Asuka without haste.

According to the information provided by the Japanese envoy, the Soga clan is now highly respected here. The land south of Asuka is the most fertile and flat, and there are two rivers for irrigation. It is extremely fertile and all of them are private fields of the Soga clan.

He saw a living creature that could hardly be called "human" in the Tang Dynasty, with some things hanging on their bodies that were not sure whether they were leaves or tied hay, as if to keep out the cold.

They were unkempt and short, and they were still trying their best to dig the soil in the fields with simple wood chips or hands in this December, as if they were trying to find something to eat.

When they saw the Tang army rolling over, they just stopped their work, looked up blankly, and stared at the advancing Tang army without saying a word.

Occasionally, there would be some Japanese who were different from these slaves on the way. When they saw the Tang army, they would either shout and block the way, or turn around and flee without saying a word.

Those who blocked the road were all shot and killed. Li Shi𪟝, who was running away, didn't care, but just ordered again:

"Wait a little longer."

Riding on a tall horse, Li Shi𪟝 took out a thousand-step mirror from his chest and looked far away to see more clearly.

He saw that those Japanese who looked like slaves turned around and fled into a magnificent manor in the distance, and then the manor began to boil, with people running in and out, all pointing and pointing at him.

Continuing forward, the scouts who had previously dispersed like young swallows in the forest returned to the team one by one like tired birds returning to their nests, and also completed the simple map in Li Shi's hand.

When the last group of scouts returned to the team, the private soldiers gathered by the Soga clan were also in sight.

At this time, Li Shi felt that the Japanese envoy did not seem to be exaggerating. After all, more than 10,000 people had gathered in front of him alone. According to the scouts' report, there were at least three such huge villages behind.

Even though they were not as tall as the Tang army, their weapons were not as good as the Tang army, and they had no armor, but more than 10,000 people gathered together, which was boundless, making the Japanese in it unprecedentedly confident.

A man who seemed to be the leader rode a short horse out of the line. Although he was short and the horse was short, his chattering words made him feel arrogant.

Li Shi� didn't understand, but he could clearly see that the people behind the Japanese general began to cheer one after another, like a raging wave, and there was a sense of horror.

But the Tang army didn't buy it at all. As veterans who had experienced the chaos at the end of the Sui Dynasty, and many soldiers had experienced the night attack on Dingxiang and the Turks, so they all showed undisguised contempt on their faces.

Fortunately, they finally waited for the order from their own general.

"Noisy!" Li Shi�'s face was like ice. The difference in language and the other party's attitude of not knowing whether to live or die made him completely lose interest in communicating with the other party, leaving only a nameless fire in his heart.

The warhorse stopped, and Li Shi� raised the long spear in his hand and pressed it down, sending a signal to attack.

However, the team of more than a thousand people did not need the generals to give orders. The Tang army warriors took the opportunity to use crossbows to inform the other party that the war had begun in the way they were most familiar with.

More than 600 infantrymen were divided into three rows, with their front ends slightly raised, and they pulled the trigger towards the endless crowd on the opposite side.

No one on the battlefield would be interested in seeing whether their crossbow arrows had done any good. After the first row of soldiers shot their crossbows, they squatted down and re-strung the strings so that the crossbowmen behind them could continue to spray arrows, then squatted down and re-strung the strings again so that the third row could shoot, and so on and so forth.

The crossbow arrows fired by more than 600 people immediately knocked down a small number of Japanese soldiers, but this was almost invisible to the team of more than 10,000 people. The Japanese generals at the front had already retreated when they saw the situation was not good. They also urged the order hidden in the formation, but it was not until the first row of Tang soldiers had loaded their crossbows for the fourth time that they saw the Japanese on the opposite side rushing over, and they were still shouting unknown words at the top of their lungs.

But these were completely useless to the Tang army. Even though the Japanese were only a hundred steps away from the first row, they still loaded the crossbows, stood up, and shot in an orderly manner.

Until the Japanese approached more than 40 steps, the military official in the first row who had been observing the battlefield coldly shouted a short order:

"Abandon the crossbow!"

"Abandon the crossbow!"

This order was passed on by the soldiers, and for a while it tore the minds of the Japanese at the front, causing them to stagnate for a short time.

The Japanese general on horseback who stood out from the crowd in the back could see clearly that the precious tools that had ruthlessly harvested his private slaves were thrown at their feet by these people. This immediately made him extremely distressed. He didn't care about shouting directly in Japanese on the battlefield:

"Pick up the sacred object and don't crush it!"

People who grew up here naturally have no concept of war. Hao Nu immediately passed on this order with scolding, which caused greater chaos in the front.

But the Tang army didn't care about this. Abandoning the crossbow was only half an order. In fact, all the Tang army reached out and grasped the handle of the sword that was inserted in front of them before the battle after abandoning the crossbow.

Until this time, the second half of the military order was passed on by his comrades:

"Horizontal sword!"

"Horizontal sword!"

The horizontal sword came out of the sheath, and six hundred snow silks bloomed on the land of Fei Niao Mansion, like a white bird flapping its wings and flying, and like white snow rising from the ground and blooming.

The bright sword light shone in the red Tangfu army formation, and for a moment, it had a charming and deadly beauty.

The Japanese general in the distance was stunned. He had never thought that the sharp blade could cut through the flesh and bones so smoothly. Almost instinctively, he continued to shout in Japanese:

"Bring a knife and offer it up!"

But what he didn't notice at all was that the morale of the Japanese soldiers in the front row pointed at by these horizontal swords had collapsed.

The gap in weapons, the difference in armor, the disadvantage of height, and the playful orders made the Japanese soldiers who were fighting with the Tang army only use their bodies to meet the sharp blades of this unknown enemy. Those who were lucky enough to survive could still fall forward two steps. Before falling, they used the sharpened wooden sticks in their hands to poke the Tang army vigorously, and then watched the wooden sticks being shattered by the armor in the last moment of their lives.

Those in front wanted to retreat, and those behind wanted to push forward.

Those who were scared and timid looked back in panic, and those who were obsessed with greed struggled forward.

The waves rolled back and hit each other in the rear, but this could not stop the Tang army, which was advancing like a wall with swords like a forest.

The sound of the iron horse hooves stepping on the ground was a bit dull, and occasionally there would be a pleasant sound of clashing when stepping on stones.

There was no need to arrange any tactics in detail. Seeing the infantry of both sides fighting together, Li Shi𪟝 also followed his instinct and lightly squeezed the horse's belly to start the cavalry.

Compared with the usual battles, the long spear had to be pressed down a little more at this time, which made Li Shi𪟝 very uncomfortable, and the speed of the warhorse also left him no time to adjust this discomfort.

The situation of the enemy's front army rolling back now fell into Li Shi𪟝's eyes as a tattered rear defense line, and he didn't even need to pick it up deliberately, the cavalry ran straight into one of the weak points behind the enemy .

Just a charge, the rear army of the Japanese also had the tendency to collapse and roll back.

After all, for them, let alone cavalry, even the concept of horses was very unfamiliar.

There were no horses in the Japanese land, and Baekje helped them.

Decades ago, after the Soga clan had established a connection with Baekje, they introduced dozens of ponies from Baekje at various costs. These mounts that had never been seen before quickly became the symbol of the Soga clan's self-proclaimed noble family.

And now the tall and big horses driven by these strange enemies have shattered the cognition that the Japanese people had previously established.

If the riders are respected, then these gods are not invaluable?

Especially when they saw with their own eyes that the giant horses ridden by these god leaders stood up and directly trampled the noble Soga clan to death with their front feet, the morale of the Japanese army fell directly to the bottom.

However, after the morale completely collapsed, these people did not run away, but knelt on the spot and exposed their necks, saying nothing and looking like they were waiting to be killed.

And this attitude quickly spread to the whole scene, causing the cavalry and infantry who had just gained some experience to look at each other in bewilderment.

Li Shi𪟝 felt the nameless anger in his heart grow stronger, and he spat fiercely. Li Shi𪟝 turned his head and ordered:

"Send out a squad, go back and find that dog, or that Japanese monk."

The personal soldiers received the order, turned their horses and led their subordinates to gallop back to the shore.

Li Shi𪟝, who had not yet dismounted, urged even more urgently:

"This is one, there are three bandits to the south, clean up the weapons and continue to move forward!"

The previously discarded crossbows had to be recovered, and the scabbards that were stuck on the ground were also put back into the horizontal swords and taken away. Then the Tang army did not even look at the enemy waiting to be killed, and they talked and laughed with each other and set off again to the south.

The cavalry running to the shore saw from a distance that two huge ships had left the shore and temporarily stopped in the middle of the inland sea, and they looked like they were going to intimidate the surroundings.

Fortunately, the Japanese envoy that the general was looking for was also on the shore, which saved a lot of trouble.

Faced with the call of the Tang army, Inuue Mita no Akita had no reluctance at all and climbed onto the horse with great joy.

Li Shi𪟝's personal army did not waste any words and returned along the way they came.

Under the deliberate inquiry of Inujo Mita Kuwa, the record of the Tang army just now was also told by several knights.

There was no surprise, and Inujo even felt that it was natural:

"The heroic soldiers of the upper country are all the bravest of the three armies."

These words were very useful to several knights.

Then a young knight expressed his worries:

"Sergeant, we have been going back and forth, the general will not wait for us, right?"

The sergeant immediately scolded:

"The chance of survival on the battlefield is just a matter of seconds, how can you say that?"

"Sergeant, don't laugh, on the battlefield, you can pick up the chance of victory just by bending down."

This statement attracted the other knights to agree loudly:

"That's right, I have never fought such an easy battle."

"I am embarrassed to go back and brag about my achievements."

In the end, the sergeant said perfunctorily: "The Japanese envoy is here, don't say these words in front of others."

Unexpectedly, it led to the disapproval of Inugami Mita Kuwa:

"General, if you offer your neck to be killed, you can win the favor of the country, and those Japanese are all meritorious people."

The sergeant raised his eyebrows and felt speechless, but urged the warhorse more urgently.

The group went south and saw huge manors that were broken one after another, and groups of slaves and private soldiers who knelt on the ground one after another.

It was not until he caught up with the third one that he saw Li Shiqi who was supervising the cleaning of the battlefield.

Inujo Mita Kuwa was tossed all the way and was about to think about some sincere and nice words to say to the Duke of Lai, but before he could catch his breath, he heard the Duke assign him a task:

"The scenery here is good, but fighting the bandits is tiring, and I don't want to move to another place."

"You go by yourself, or let the envoy send someone to tell the King of Wa that the Duke of our country has finished fighting the bandits, and wait for him to come here to thank you."

Li Shiqi spoke quite naturally to the words of the head of a country, and Inujo Mita Kuwa also felt that it was natural:

"The Duke's body is worth a million gold, and it is right for you to rest and calm your mind here."

"The King of Wa has always been sensible. I think if he knew that the Soga clan's private soldiers were eliminated, he would be overjoyed."

After giving the order, Li Shiqi stood with his hands behind his back and looked at the scenery he had never seen before, and looked at it with interest.

The southern part of Asuka Prefecture was swept this time, and the Soga clan was naturally not completely eliminated, but Li Shiqi did not care much.

After all, Liu Rengui made it clear that the goal of this trip was to eliminate the influence of Japan on the Korean Peninsula and completely lock it on the Japanese island so that the court could manage Liaodong.

Helping the Japanese king to clear the obstacles to power was never in their plan.

"Oh, by the way, remember to tell the Japanese king that the bandits fought bloody battles this time and suffered many injuries."

The implication was very clear, and Inugami Mita also turned a blind eye to the Tang army next to him who was talking and laughing loudly and boasting that they were unscathed, and bowed:

"It should be so."