Tiantang Splendid

Chapter 4713 Greedy Ambition
When Lekum led his men to a cargo yard where the Tang people gathered, he saw more than a dozen Tang people standing in front of a house with swords in hand, staring at him fiercely.

He sent people to negotiate and try to appease them, but the Tang leader shook his head and said, "The lives of Tang people are not something you natives can take away at will. Since you have killed our people, you must bear the revenge of the Tang people. Unless you kill us all, there is no possibility of compromise."

Lekum naturally didn't understand Chinese, so he stared and waited for someone beside him to translate. When he heard that the Tang people still refused to reconcile, he hurriedly said, "Tell them that they can set any conditions. As long as they don't kill all of us Tagalogs, any conditions will be agreed to!"

Dozens of warships were stationed on the sea, bringing him unparalleled oppression.

However, the Tang people still refused.

They were guarding around the house, where were the bodies of three Tang people who had been killed on Lekum's order a month ago. They let the bodies stink and rot but refused to bury them in order to preserve the evidence.

Moreover, they did not negotiate conditions. Even though Lekum placed a dozen gold nuggets in front of them, the Tang people ignored them.

We were in trouble. Just after the Tang people arrived at the Pasig River, a large-scale malaria epidemic occurred. The high priest said that this was a disaster brought by the Tang people. He believed it and killed several sick Tang people, resulting in the current situation.

He just couldn't understand. They were just a few Tang merchants. Why would they send dozens of warships across the ocean to Luzon to seek revenge? Dozens of warships plus thousands of soldiers would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in food and money? Just for a few merchants?
Just as he was at a loss, his eldest son, who had been left behind, came running again. Before he arrived, he shouted from afar: "Father, the Tang people have landed! The Tang people have landed!"

Lekum's body was cold. He realized that the situation was irreversible. He gritted his teeth, made up his mind, waved his hand, and said loudly: "Since the Tang people are determined to kill our Tagalog bloodline, the brave Tagalogs will naturally not sit idly by and wait for death! Gather the tribesmen and prepare to go to war with the Tang people. The omnipotent Batala will bless us, and the invincible Amanipur will also help us drive the Tang people back to the sea!"

As they shouted, more and more natives rushed out from the surrounding houses, holding sticks, stone axes, bows and arrows, and gathered around Lekum, shouting and shouting, with high morale.

As the chief of the Tagalogs, Lekum's prestige cannot be underestimated, and his people are willing to follow him to fight the enemy.

They had repelled the invasion of the Malyu people time and time again, and suppressed the rebellions of the Ilo and Bicol peoples time and time again. Under the leadership of "Batala" and the chiefs, they were invincible.

Although the Tang people's knives were sharper and their armor was stronger, they were fearless.

In fact, the arrival of the Tang people brought about earth-shaking changes in the world of the "Tagalogs". The Tang people used large ships to transport luxury goods such as silk, porcelain, and glass in exchange for gold, rice and other materials, and they became rich. This made the "Tagalogs", who had been following the custom of "lying down" to inherit their ancestral blood for thousands of years, envious and jealous. They needed the Tang people's silk, porcelain, and glass, but did not want to pay for gold and rice.

So they were hostile to the Tang people, and repeatedly asked the Tang people to lower the prices of silk, porcelain, and glass, hoping to buy these things with only a small amount of gold. However, they were unwilling to pay even a pound of rice, because the "Tagalogs" did not know how to grow rice. Growing rice was the skill of the "Ilos", and there was also a war between them and the "Ilos"...

So when Lekum raised his arm and called for help, many people responded. All the tribesmen hoped to kill all the Tang people and rob all their goods.

The Tang people surrounding the house had solemn expressions on their faces. Seeing that the situation was not good, they retreated back into the house, strung their bows, drew their swords, and prepared for defense and battle.

Lekum waved his hand and said, "Don't pay attention to these Tang people. They are just trapped in a jar. Follow me to the port to kill the Tang troops!"

Lekum did not know the art of war, but he understood the principle of "the first attack is strong, the second is weak, and the third is exhausted". If he attacked the group of Tang people in the house now, he could easily kill them all. However, by then the morale of the tribesmen would have been lost, and they might not have enough morale to face the large Tang army that had landed. It would be better to go directly to the port when the morale was high, and repel the Tang people back to the sea while they were still unstable. Then he could turn around and deal with this group of Tang merchants with ease.

"Hoohoho!"

The tribesmen let out strange and shrill cries. Some of them were wearing linen clothes, and some even only used leaves to cover their private parts, revealing their dark, thin and strong bodies. They waved all kinds of weapons and rushed towards the port closely behind Lekum.

The Tang merchants in the house were ready for a fight to the death. Although they were equipped with swords and armor, the natives were too numerous and the human wave tactics would tire them to death. Once the war started, they would surely die.

The pride in their hearts prevented them from laying down their weapons and surrendering, not to mention that the bodies of their companions were still lying in the house. If they surrendered at this moment, how could they be worthy of these companions who died in a foreign country?

As a result, hundreds of thousands of natives ignored them and turned to the port to snipe the main force of the navy...

"Are these natives fools?"

"Don't we usually call them monkeys? They are not much smarter than monkeys."

"Using sticks and rocks to snipe at the Tang navy?"

"Our policy is to try not to massacre the natives, so they don't know how powerful the navy is."

"Well, but I guess we'll know soon."

……

In fact, what Lekum knew was faster, more direct and more profound than those Tang merchants imagined.

When he led his men to the port, the Tang army ships had just docked. Although the rain had stopped, the wind had not died down, and the sea was still turbulent. However, the Tang army was not afraid of the danger of running aground. They pushed the ships as close to the shore as possible, and then one small sampan after another went down from the large ship into the sea. Then the soldiers jumped from the side of the ship onto the sampan, some holding up shields, some putting away their weapons, and some taking out oars, and rowed quickly towards the shore.

Many sampans were launched from every large ship, and when combined together, there were countless of them, cutting through the waves and rushing towards the shore.

Lekum felt his scalp tingling. Although he did not know any military tactics, he had rich combat experience and knew that he could not allow the Tang army to land smoothly. He immediately ordered everyone to rush to the shore and line up, waiting for the Tang army to arrive at the shore so as to give them a head-on blow.

When the fastest sampan was more than ten feet away from the shore, Lekum led his men to prepare for battle, and saw arrows from the closer sampans flying into the air, instantly passing through the void, and falling obliquely above his head.

Puff puff!
The sharp arrows easily penetrated the simple clothes of the "Tagalogs" and pierced into their bodies. The beast-like howls came one after another, and the strict formation began to loosen.

Lekum's eyes were red with anger, and he kept shouting, "Hold on! Hold on! They are charging in boats, and they can't carry many arrows!"

The unparalleled prestige worked. The tribesmen, with pale faces and terrified expressions, stabilized the formation, allowing the arrows to fall obliquely from overhead, penetrating into the bodies of some unfortunate ones, causing them to howl in pain.

The reason why the "Tagalogs" were able to dominate Luzon for hundreds and thousands of years was that they were more brave and disciplined than other peoples such as the "Ilos", "Bicols" and "Malayus". Although arrows from overhead kept falling and reaping lives, they were able to hold their ground at critical moments.

But this cannot change the outcome of the battle.

Before the sampan reached the shore, the gun covers on the warships in the sea had been removed, revealing the ferocious barrels of the cannons. The soldiers put in propellant, stuffed in projectiles, ignited, and fired... Boom!

Then, without even looking at where the shell landed, he reached into the barrel with a long-handled brush to clean the gunpowder residue, then refilled the gunpowder, loaded the shell, and ignited the gun.

The waves on the sea were surging and the warship was shaking constantly, making it impossible to aim accurately. Despite this, shells landed on the coast one after another, with loud bangs and flames shooting into the sky, scaring the native army into panic and turning pale. Occasionally, a shell would fall into the crowd, causing limbs to fly everywhere and a group of people to fall down.

How could the natives, who were still living in the slash-and-burn stage, have ever seen such a powerful weapon? The formation had begun to panic and was on the verge of collapse.

Unfortunately, the huge waves made it impossible to control the landing point of the shells. Several shells even fell near the charging sampan. In order to avoid accidentally injuring their own side, they had to stop the shelling.

Lekum breathed a sigh of relief, but before he could calm down, the sampan had already run aground on the shore. Countless Tang soldiers, holding shields and waving swords, quickly gathered into pairs and began to charge on the beach.

Lekum raised a spear in his hand, his veins bulging, and shouted at the top of his lungs: "Fight! Fight!"

At the end of the queue, his wife Anniton, with a piece of animal skin draped around her waist and her upper body naked, was waving drumsticks and beating the war drums hard. The dull drum sounds spread far away on the beach, with a kind of captivating power.

The natives took advantage of the Tang army's unstable foothold to launch a charge, and the Tang army quickly gathered into more than ten arrays, each array with twenty to thirty people, sword and shield soldiers in the front and spearmen in the back, coordinating and taking care of each other, and stabbing into the enemy array like sharp swords.

Shields were used to resist the enemy's crude weapons, swords were swung horizontally to kill the enemies in front of them, and spears pierced through the gaps in the shields... The well-equipped and well-coordinated Tang army was like more than a dozen steel knives that quickly cut the enemy's formation into pieces and strangled them one by one.

The natives of Luzon are indeed brave and good at fighting, but have they ever encountered an enemy with such rigorous tactics and excellent coordination?

The defeat happened in an instant.

Countless natives shouted, dropped their sticks, stone axes, bows and arrows, turned around and fled into the distance, no matter how Lekum shouted and cursed, no matter how the chief's wife showed off her beautiful body and beat the war drum, they fled without looking back.

Lekum originally thought that he could fight with all his clan members, and that he could negotiate as long as the war was stalemate. However, he did not expect that his entire clan would collapse in the face of a charge by the Tang army, and he was unable to fight back.