Chapter 667: The Spirit Ship is Attacked
Chapter 667: The Spirit Ship is Attacked
At dusk on the first day of the first lunar month, a large ship with a capacity of ten thousand tons was sailing upstream on the river. However, it was equipped with paddle wheels. Dozens of people on the ship stepped on the paddle wheels, which turned, causing white waves to roll and the ship rumbled westward.
This large ship was exactly Yang Lihua's coffin. Xiao Xia had originally planned that a few years later, he would personally escort Yang Lihua's coffin to Chang'an for burial. Before that, he would use ice to protect her body.
But after repeated requests from Yang Lihua's daughter Yuwen Eying, Xiao Xia finally agreed to send Yang Lihua's body to Tai Mausoleum for burial in advance. Yuwen Eying and her husband Li Min's family would escort the body. Xiao Xia sent 300 guards to transport it to Xiangyang by water, and then 3,000 cavalry guards to Guanzhong for burial.
This huge ship with a capacity of ten thousand stones was a temporarily modified funeral ship. There was an ice room in the center of the ship with a large amount of ice. The coffin was placed in it, and the entire ice room was tightly wrapped with quilts and blankets to prevent the ice from melting.
In addition to Li Min's family, there were more than thirty maids, twenty monks and a hundred guards on the ten thousand stone ship. There were also three three thousand stone escort ships, each with more than sixty warrior guards.
On the 20th day of the twelfth lunar month, the spirit ship set off. After about ten days of sailing, on the evening of the first day of the first lunar month, the ship arrived at the Jiangxia waters and began to enter the Han River.
At this time, the leader of the guards, Zhang Shan, came to Li Min quickly and whispered, "Sir, our soldiers have discovered that several small boats have been following us."
Li Min was stunned, "What do you mean by following us all the time?"
"We found them in Pengze County, Jiujiang Prefecture, and they have been following us."
"How do you know he is following us?" Li Min asked again.
"We anchored last night, and they anchored too. We entered the Han River, and they entered the Han River too. It's obvious!"
Li Min also became nervous, "Did we encounter pirates?"
"They should be Jiang bandits. We don't know their details yet. How many people are there? It's getting dark. I suggest that we turn around and take shelter in Jiangxia County. There are thousands of troops stationed there."
"Does Jiangxia County have any navy?" Li Min asked anxiously.
"We had some before, but now most of them have been transferred to Xiangyang. Only a few small boats are left. There are only three to four thousand troops stationed in Jiangxia County. We can take shelter in Jiangxia temporarily, and then notify the Xiangyang navy to come to support us!"
It would take at least three days to get to Xiangyang, but only half a day to get to Jiangxia. Li Min immediately decided, "Turn around and go to Jiangxia County!"
The big ship began to turn around, and just after going a few miles, dozens of speedboats suddenly appeared on the water, each with twenty to thirty people on board. In the cover of night, the speedboats sped towards the big ship.
"Dang! Dang! Dang! Dang"
The alarm bell sounded on the ship, and more than a hundred warriors rushed onto the deck, armed with spears and bows and arrows. Three escort ships also rushed up and tried their best to protect the ship.
A fierce battle finally broke out. Hundreds of pirates were divided into two groups. One group climbed onto the escort ship and fought fiercely with the escort warriors on the ship, while the other group used flying claws to hook the Wanshi ship, and the pirates climbed up desperately.
The samurai on the ship cut the flying claw rope, causing the pirates to fall into the water one after another, but some of the pirates climbed onto the paddle wheel shell and climbed onto the ship with the help of the paddle wheel.
The big ship was also anxious, hoisted the sails, and with the help of the strong north wind, accelerated to Jiangxia, more than ten miles away. At this time, Wei Zongran, the commander of the Jiangxia County garrison, received the news that an official ship was attacked. Wei Zongran was shocked and immediately brought dozens of patrol boats full of soldiers to rescue.
More than a hundred pirates have climbed onto the ship and are fighting fiercely with Li Min and the warriors. Yuwen Eying is trembling with fear in the cabin holding her daughter Li Jingxun. A dozen pirates try to rush into the cabin, but are blocked by Li Min and his five guards.
A guard shouted, "The family of His Royal Highness Prince Jin is in the cabin. Do you want to exterminate all nine clans?"
The dozen or so Jiang bandits were already blood-thirsty and were not willing to listen.
Seeing that Li Min and his men could no longer hold on, at this critical moment, a horn suddenly sounded from the river: "Woo-woo-woo!"
This was the pirates' signal, indicating that reinforcements had arrived and they had to retreat immediately. The leading pirate stared at the mother and daughter in the cabin with reluctance, and could only say angrily: "Retreat!"
The pirates retreated one after another. Their retreat was simple. They just jumped into the river to escape, taking their injured accomplices with them and leaving behind more than a hundred corpses.
The spirit ship also suffered heavy losses. Half of the more than one hundred warriors were killed. Eleven of the seventeen warriors guarding Li Min's family died. Li Min was stabbed in the leg and back, but fortunately they were only flesh wounds.
The coffin chamber was protected by three gates. The pirates only broke open the outermost gate and failed to break through the two inner gates. However, half of the twenty monks died.
The three escort ships also suffered heavy losses, with two ships completely destroyed. All the funerary objects they carried were looted, mainly copper coins, porcelain, lacquerware, bronzeware, etc. The burial treasures were in the coffins and could not be snatched by the pirates.
However, the luggage hold of the main ship was knocked open and hundreds of packages were stolen. Fortunately, more than 30 maids were hiding in the compartment of the luggage hold and were not discovered by the pirates.
The spirit ship was escorted to Jiangxia for temporary shelter. At dawn the next day, Wei Zongran sent a letter to Jiangdu using a carrier pigeon.
Early in the morning on the third day of the first lunar month, Xiao Xia received an urgent report that Yang Lihua's spirit ship was attacked by hundreds of pirates in the waters of Jiangxia. The spirit ship urgently entered the Jiangxia Port to take shelter. Although the spirit chamber was not attacked and Li Min's family survived, the three escort ships and the main ship protecting the spirit ship were all severely damaged by the pirates, with more than 120 warriors killed or missing.
Xiao Xia was furious and immediately summoned the chief of the inner guards Li Luming and the deputy commander of the navy Lai Yuan. He ordered the inner guards, the navy and the Ministry of Justice to work together to completely eliminate the pirates on the Yangtze River and not let any of the pirates who attacked the spirit ship go.
Fifteen thousand naval troops and three thousand internal guards were dispatched and divided into three sections to clear out the pirates on the Yangtze River, but the pirates who attacked the spirit ship disappeared without a trace.
There are two types of river bandits. One is called group bandits, which are bandits who gather together to rebel, and the other is called scattered bandits, who are usually farmers and become bandits when they gather together. Group bandits are easier to defeat, but scattered bandits come and go without a trace and are scattered all over the place. They are usually honest farmers, fishermen or boatmen, and you can't tell that they are bandits at all, so it is difficult to catch scattered bandits.
In the lobby of the inner guard, Li Luming said to a dozen of the inner guard commanders: "The pigeon letter sent by the Jiangxia garrison said that this was a rare pirate attack in the past few years. According to the interrogation results of several prisoners they captured, the pirates who attacked the spirit ship were temporarily formed by several groups of pirates. There were both grouped pirates and scattered pirates, and they did not know each other.
His Royal Highness the Prince of Jin has issued a strict order that all the bandits, whether they are scattered or gathered, will be killed in the main stream and tributaries of the Yangtze River, leaving no one alive, and their families will all be exiled to Lingnan."
Everyone was in awe. His Highness was determined to take ruthless action to eradicate the pirates. Li Luming immediately made arrangements. She was responsible for encircling and suppressing the bandits and other pirates who were not related to the case. Shi Xiaozhen, the director of the water security, was responsible for searching for the individual pirates who participated in the attack on the spirit ship.
(End of this chapter)