On April 24th, it was drizzling and white mist filled Xiushui County.

At that time, many people thought that the place where Tie Kuangren could be promoted to the fourth rank would be either in Xishan or on the border of Shenxiu Jiangxi and adjacent to Mount Tai. The more remote the location, the better.

After all, according to rumors, when the Iron Armor Sect's Hunyuan Iron Armor Skill reaches the fourth level, one must bury oneself in the rocks for three days and three nights.

No one thought that the place chosen by Tie Kuangren for promotion would be located 270 miles south of Xishan Mountain, in a small flat village at the junction of Xiushui County and Huizhu County.

Songfeng Jianlinshi only found out about Tie Kuangren's choice an hour before the incident, and he was extremely surprised.

When he led his troops from Xiushui Hall to the village called Mijiazhuang early the next morning, he immediately looked around.

This is an endless plain, and on the outskirts of this originally unremarkable village, a solid stone castle with a magic circle has been erected.

The walls of the stone castle are four feet thick. They are all made of basalt black rock and then cast with iron. Inside the stone castle, there are twenty arrow towers about twelve feet high.

The archer's power is doubled and his range is doubled.

At this time, nearly 3,200 elite members of the Iron Banner Gang had entered, and the Tie brothers also hid another 400 soldiers here, making the entire stone fort impregnable.

After seeing it, Lin Shi couldn't believe it for a moment: "The flag master actually chose to be promoted here? Does this place also have the conditions for promotion in the Hunyuan Iron Armor Skill?"

"Why not? It should be said that this place is one of the twenty-seven most qualified locations in Xiushui County."

Tie Xiaosheng, wearing the battle armor 'Iron Buddha', burst out laughing: "The world only knows that in order to advance to the twelfth level of the Hunyuan Iron Armor Skill, you need to bury yourself in the rocks, but they don't know that there is another necessary condition, which is that it must contain a large amount of gold and iron.

The rocks of the spirit.”

Lin Shi had some guesses about this. After all, they were the Iron Armor Sect masters of both the Metal and Earth Elements——

Tie Xiaosheng pointed at his feet again at this time: "Below us is a mountain, the remnant of the Western Mountain. The stone layers below are exactly the same as the Western Mountain, but they are buried in the soil without emerging.

Hundreds of thousands of years from now, when the mountains and rivers change, a huge mountain might emerge here. But the key is that there is a large black iron mine that has never been discovered, along with thousands of stones of celestial gold! This is just right for a madman.

, this mine has not yet been mined, and the earth energy and gold energy are very rich and pure."

Tie Xiaosheng's pupils brightened: "In the past, we accidentally learned about this and chose to develop the Tieqi Gang in Xiushui County. Now it's finally time to use it."

"Big black iron mine?"

Songfeng Jianlinshi was slightly surprised and looked down: "Is there a lot of black iron ore here?"

"There are more than you can imagine. They are nine miles around. The deepest point is only seven feet above the ground. I don't know how deep this vein is, but it should be very thick and the ore is of high quality."

Tie Xiaosheng smiled, and then pointed to the surroundings: "The land deeds for a large area of ​​land here are all in the hands of our Tieqi Gang. If we were not worried about affecting the atmosphere of this place, in fact, it would be the small road that would allow Xiao Chu to

The canal has been dug up to here. But it won’t be too late to wait until the madman is promoted to the fourth level before continuing to expand this small canal.”

Waves in the hearts of Songfengjianlinshi.

If it were just a large black iron mine, it would only be worth a little money.

After all, there is no shortage of black iron ore in Dongzhou, but the place is remote and has inconvenient transportation.

But if this canal can be connected here, it will be a big business that can earn hundreds of thousands of taels a month.

"So when I first heard Xiao Chu talk about digging a canal, I was really surprised."

Tie Xiaosheng's expression changed: "Speaking of Xiao Chu, how is the situation at Xishan Hall?"

"great!"

A strange color flashed in Songfeng Jianlinshi's eyes: "At noon yesterday, Xishantang had wiped out all the remnants of Jiudaowu and Baiyun Village, and then sent his troops south. Today he has garrisoned between Xishan Town and Xiushui City

, set up a temporary camp, and then ordered his magicians to use white mist to cover the surrounding area of ​​Xiushui County."

"White mist?" Tie Xiaosheng raised his eyebrows: "Again, what's the reaction inside Xiushui City?"

"What other reaction could there be? The county captain Shen Zhou was summoning the magicians to disperse them. Unfortunately, the time coincided with the plum rain season. Although they blew up strong winds over the county city, one wave of fog dissipated and another wave of fog came again, but

It’s just that the fog is thin now.”

Songfeng Jian Linshi laughed: "So at this time, the Shen family, the Shangguan family and the Long family did not dare to act rashly. A while ago, Shen Zhou summoned his younger brother Shen Xiu, and Shangguan Shenhao also summoned his two brothers.

The clan brother of Supreme Xuanzong?

However, both the Shen family and the Shangguan family had to gather their clansmen, family soldiers and many masters in the city's house, unable to move. The Long family even had to join forces with the Shangguan family. This is called a

Zhang Xian ate it all over the place, and even Shen Zhou and Shangguan Shenhao were worried that the mysterious master in the fog would kill their family."

Tie Xiaosheng couldn't help laughing: "Xiao Chu never disappoints people."

At this time, Songfeng Jianlinshi looked towards the center of the stone castle again: "Where is the flag master? He has gone deep into the rocks?"

"He entered the stone at noon yesterday, and he is now——"

When Tie Xiaosheng said this, his expression suddenly changed slightly and he looked into the distance.

About fifty-five miles away, seventeen lines of black smoke suddenly rose.

That was one of the outposts set up by Tie Xiaosheng on all sides, used to guard the surrounding areas.

According to the rules of beacon fire signaling in the Daning Army, yellow smoke is a hundred and black smoke is a thousand.

This means that at least 17,000 soldiers and horses are coming this way.

Tie Xiaosheng's face turned ugly for a moment.

Beforehand, he had ordered reliable personnel to search all directions to make sure that there were no large groups of troops within a hundred and fifty miles.

Furthermore, the brothers had kept the location of Tie Kuangren's promotion a secret until an hour before the incident, when they informed the core members of the gang.

Originally, the brothers expected that this would buy Iron Maniac a day and a half.

As long as a day and a half passes, Iron Maniac can regain a certain amount of combat power.

But now, only more than seven hours have passed since Tie Kuangren buried himself——

At this time, the entire stone castle was boiling with excitement, and the Three Thousand Iron Banners gang members seemed to be wound up and started to take action one after another.

"Alert! Enemy situation!"

"Seventeen streaks of black smoke, this is an army of 17,000 people. Could it be that the outpost sent out the wrong smoke? Where did Xiushui County get so many soldiers and horses?"

"Standing at the east post is Wang Tan, the leader of Xuanfengtang. This person is the most reliable."

"All archers prepare their arrow towers, bed crossbows and scorpion crossbows! Where are the arrows? Are they all ready?"

"Here comes a magician and checks the talisman array here again!"

Tie Xiaosheng put away his distracting thoughts for the time being. He strode down the city wall and personally arranged the defense of each section of the wall.

Fortunately, Chu Xisheng rose to power in Xishan at the beginning of this year and had more than 10,000 troops, which relieved the Iron Banner Gang from great pressure.

This resulted in the number of troops they transferred to Mijiazhuang Stone Fort being far more than they originally expected.

Iron Maniac's preparations are also very thorough. There are sixty repeating scorpion crossbows and one hundred eight-arm bed crossbows in the stone castle. Together with the defensive formations in the castle, they are enough to suppress two to three fifth-level masters.

Just half a moment later, Tie Xiaosheng saw a huge cloud of smoke and dust billowing up in the east.

At this time, Tie Niu Jia, the leader of the ancient market hall, came in response to the order and rushed to Tie Xiaosheng from the south side of the stone castle. He said with a hint of confusion and anxiety: "Master, do you have anything to ask me?"

What Jia Dali didn't understand was why Tie Xiaosheng called him over at this juncture.

He is in charge of the south side of the fort wall where he is sitting, and there are still many things that have not been arranged properly.

Tie Xiaosheng did not answer, he nodded slightly and continued to look at the east side of the stone castle.

At this moment, a group of knights galloped to the front of the castle gate.

Those were the troops who had been withdrawn from the beacon tower in the east, and the knight leading them was none other than Wang Tan, the altar leader of Xuanfeng Hall.

After entering the fort gate, this man hurriedly climbed up the wall.

He looked solemn and half-knelt behind Tie Xiaosheng: "Deputy Flag Master, the enemy has a total of 17,000 people, including 4,000 cavalry and 13,000 infantry. All of them have ninth-level cultivation, and

Half of them are wearing iron armor."

"Cavalry?"

Tie Xiaosheng's eyes narrowed, where did such a large group of cavalry come from on the ground near Xiushui County?

Moreover, the armor coverage rate of iron armor is so high, as high as 50%!

Even the Tianping Army stationed in the north can only lag behind in terms of equipment.

"Do you know where the soldiers and horses came from?"

This was also what puzzled him the most. All the troops and horses in Dongzhou were calculated by the two brothers, and special personnel were arranged to monitor their movements in advance.

Wang Tan spoke in a heavy voice and answered unambiguously: "Seven thousand of them are the standard soldiers under the eunuchs of Dongzhou Neifu. The remaining ten thousand are probably Yanding from Linhai, Wanglai, Nanwu and other counties."

.”

Tie Xiaosheng was slightly stunned when he heard this, and then he chuckled: "It turns out to be the prefect."

The eunuchs of the inner palace were established during the reign of the late emperor.

At the beginning of His Majesty's succession to the throne, Daning's household department had a deficit of tens of millions of taels of magical silver, and the court could not make ends meet both inside and outside the court.

So the late emperor established internal eunuchs in the thirty-six states of the world to take charge of the collection of commercial taxes, salt taxes and mineral taxes in the world.

In order to prevent the eunuchs from being taken advantage of by the local government, His Majesty even authorized the eunuchs from various states to prepare an internal army of 5,000 to 15,000 people for the purpose of imposing taxes.

Dongzhou is the origin of sea salt. In order to crack down on illicit salt sales, the coastal counties provided a large number of salt collectors and were under the dual jurisdiction of the eunuchs of the inner government and the salt patrol censor.
To be continued...