In the next ten days, everything went on in an orderly manner.

Songshan City seemed to have turned into a large construction site, and all the teams in the city were busy with the tasks assigned by their respective superiors.

Jin Guofeng has been commanding Xia Chengde's and Lu Pinqi's troops, busy repairing the damaged walls and defense facilities in the west and south cities of Songshan.

At the same time, the few village warriors, merchants and civilians in the city were also mobilized to help the officers, soldiers and soldiers clean up the ruins of the West City and South City.

The east gate that Yang Zhen was responsible for was relatively intact and did not require extensive repairs. And because these people were not currently under Jin Guofeng's command, Jin Guofeng did not mobilize them.

Now, there are rumors in Songshan City that Yang Zhen may serve as the commander-in-chief of Ningyuan in the future. Once Yang Zhen leaves Songshan, the advance battalion will naturally follow suit.

Therefore, whether it was Jin Guofeng, Xia Chengde, or Lu Pinqi, they treated Yang Zhen and the members of the advance battalion as if they were guests, and did not arrange other work for the advance battalion.

In addition, after the siege of Songshan was lifted, Bijiashan Liangcheng, fifty or sixty miles southeast, has urgently replenished a large amount of grain and military supplies to Xingshan, Songshan, and Jinzhou.

Naturally, this includes those allocated to the advance battalion.

So in the past ten days, Yang Zhen had no worries about food or drink in Songshan City, no worries about the Tatars coming to kill him, and no one to arrange things for him, and he finally lived the comfortable life he had dreamed of.

It would be even better if there was a beautiful woman waiting for you.

Of course, Yang Zhen himself is relaxed, but it does not mean that the teams in the advance battalion can be relaxed like Yang Zhen.

According to Yang Zhen's previous instructions, Li Lu of the Grenadier Corps first took his troops to the Empress's Palace and looted everything in the Empress's Palace that could be used by the army.

This includes the curtains hanging in various halls, the bells and drums on the bell and drum towers, and even the copper and iron incense burners and candlesticks in the large and small halls.

Nothing that could be used was left behind.

It's not that Yang Zhen wants to be disrespectful to the Queen of Heaven, Mazu, but rather than leaving these things for use when the Tatars come again in the future, it's better to grab them first.

If it weren't for the fact that Yang Zhen has always had a thought in his heart, wanting to keep this empress palace and trick the Tatars at some point in the future, then in these days, he would probably have to accept the suggestions of other generals.

, directly demolished the Empress’ Palace so as not to leave it to the Tatars for use as a camp or palace.

Of course, he didn't do that.

First, the next step is to use boats and navy to demolish the temple of Queen Mazu, fearing that the sailors in the navy camp will offend.

Secondly, he also had a contingency plan, which was to use the only relatively well-preserved palace and temple building within ten miles outside Songshan City to trap the Tatars.

It doesn’t matter who you want to trick, as long as you can trick everyone to death, it’s better. If you can trick a bunch of Tatar relatives to death at once, that would be even better.

Therefore, in these days, Li Lu followed Yang Zhen's order and has been working hard outside with forty or fifty people from the grenadiers.

Not only did they plunder all the useful things in the Empress’ Palace, but they also buried five carefully crafted 10,000-person enemies in different locations in the main hall of the Empress’ Palace.

The ground in the main hall of the Empress' Palace is flat, and the ground is paved with a layer of large square tiles.

Some square tiles have become damaged due to disrepair over time.

Li Lu followed the pattern drawn by Yang Zhen and directed his men to open two rows of blue bricks, forming a T-shaped layout on the ground.

First, under the T-shaped "one horizontal", a hole was dug every few steps, five of them were dug in a row, and five pills with sufficient amounts of medicine were buried in the holes.

Then, dig a trench along the "hook" under the T-shape to the outside of the main hall and all the way to the outside of the wall of the Empress' Palace.

Finally, five special medicine twisters that could be defeated by thousands of people were twisted together, wrapped tightly in oilcloth, and buried in a trench.

After the main hall was buried, it was carefully paved with soil, and then laid with open green bricks, and the floating ash on the ground was swept up to restore the ground to its original state.

The outside of the main hall is easier to handle. Just use the dry soil to backfill, and then compact it lightly.

It took Li Lu three days to complete these relatively delicate tasks.

I thought I was done, but I excitedly reported to Yang Zhen, and was immediately assigned more work by Yang Zhen, and it was the same task.

Yang Zhen asked him, how do you judge when the Tatar generals are discussing matters, and how do you approach the walls of the Empress's Palace while they are discussing matters, and set fire to the tens of thousands of enemies.

Li Lu was speechless at that time.

Later, Yang Zhen told him that if a small group of Tatars settled in the Empress Palace in the future and there were no big shots, then the idea of ​​blowing them up with ten thousand enemies would be abandoned and it would be a waste.

If a Tatar prince or higher figures move in, the area around the Empress' Palace will be surrounded by tents and heavily guarded. Under such circumstances, how to approach the Empress' Palace and ignite tens of thousands of enemies will become a big problem.

If this problem of ignition and detonation cannot be solved, then it will be of no use no matter how many tens of thousands of enemies are buried in the main hall of the Empress' Palace.

So how to ignite those tens of thousands of enemies that have been laid in advance, and then blow up the high-ranking Tatar officials living in the main hall of the Queen's Palace to the sky?

It wasn't until he was stunned for a long time and couldn't think of a successful way that Yang Zhen told him that he still had to continue digging ditches, trenches, and even tunnels.

In this way, after Yang Zhen came up with this idea, Li Lu led his grenadiers, a total of 48 people, to dig trenches for five days.

Then it took another five days to put logs dismantled from the Tatar camp on top of the trench I dug, then spread a layer of reeds and hay, and then spread a thick layer of reeds from the trench.

Excavated sand and gravel soil.

In the end, in order to better camouflage and cover up traces, the trench that was originally dug two feet wide and three feet deep turned into a tunnel that could only accommodate one person crawling forward.

To say it is a tunnel is a bit exaggerated. The shallow ground from outside Songshan City to the Empress Palace is covered with sandy soil, making it impossible to dig a tunnel.

Because the soil on the surface is not deep enough, it will easily collapse if dug shallowly.

Once you dig deep, you will either hit the rock layer below the soil layer and be unable to dig down at all, or water will continue to seep out, turning the tunnel into a waterway and the trench into a ditch.

The topography of Songshan City is so complicated. In the area near the hill where Songshan City is located, the shallow underground soil is covered with solid rock formations. It is impossible to dig deep tunnels. The area near the Empress Palace, especially the coast, will seep water once dug.

Therefore, Yang Zhen could only ask Li Lu to lead the people to adapt to local conditions. Dig where it is suitable, dig on the ground where it is not suitable, dig tunnels where it is suitable, dig trenches where it is not suitable, and then set up logs and reeds.

Cover with sand and gravel.

Therefore, after the underground passage was completed, it was not continuous, but intermittent. However, the intermittent underground passages, added together, reached a total length of nearly three miles.

This is what Li Lu and his grenadiers did day and night in the past ten days.

After they completed the work, Yang Zhen took a look and saw that it had passed the inspection.

As for whether the work done by Li Lu and others will work, when it will work, and whether it can still be used when it is time to work, everything is unknown now.

Maybe in summer, a heavy rain will destroy it all.

Perhaps when the Tatars come again, the underground fortifications they dug may be discovered immediately.

This is not something that Yang Zhen in Songshan City and Li Lu, who is exhausted, can control.

Yang Zhen really wanted to mobilize all the soldiers of the advance battalion to dig a real tunnel outside the city, but the manpower under his command was really too small, and the soldiers of other teams also had their own tasks, so there was no way to spare manpower.

Zhang Degui's artillery team had the largest number of men on the left and right wings among Yang Zhen's old troops in the advance battalion, with only eighty.

During this period of time, they were busy working with several other groups to dismantle the Tatar camp outside the city and transport the mountains of logs to the city for storage.

Then, together with other detachments of the advance battalion, they went to and around Nancheng and West City to collect large iron bullets fired by Tatar heavy artillery. They were so busy every day that they hit the back of the head with their feet and did not even have time to eat.

Zhang Chen and Zhang Guogan of the Musketeers were not idle either.

Zhang Chen led the left-wing troops of the Musketeers and walked with Pan Wenmao through the streets and "eated dirt" in various nooks and crannies in front of and behind the houses in Songshan City.

And they especially look for the nooks and crannies of the earthy courtyard walls that can choke their noses and irritate their eyes to "eat earth" and "taste earth".

The soil they tasted was of course not ordinary soil, but nitrate soil called "ground frost".

Saltpeter has a taste. In addition to being irritating to the nose and spicy to the eyes, it can be divided into four flavors or qualities: sweet, sour, bitter and spicy.

Among the four qualities, that is, among the four tastes, spicy is the best, followed by bitter, then sweet and sour.

Zhang Chen and others followed Pan Wenmao and marked the locations with saltpeter in Songshan City one by one, drew pictures and recorded them for future use.

After the left-wing soldiers of Zhang Chen's musketeers learned from Pan Wenmao how to identify ground frost or saltpeter, they were sent outside Songshan City by Yang Zhen.

Outside Songshan City, the forts, enemy towers, military camps, civilian villages and villages that had been destroyed by the Tatar army seemed to be useless.

But Yang Zhen knew that those villages with only ruins, collapsed houses, dilapidated courtyards, and empty pigsties, cowsheds, and stables were still useful.
Chapter completed!