nucmednet Chapter 728 Li Chuang Heads North
Chapter 728 Li Chuang Heads North
Remembering the general's instructions, Liu Heizi took it very seriously. He pretended to be friendly and took Niu Jinxing's hand, saying, "So you're a scholar. You're very talented, and the King of Chuang will surely give you an important position. However, the King of Chuang is currently discussing important matters with the generals and may not have the opportunity to meet you for a while. Why don't you come to my place for a cup of tea and rest for a while?"
At this time, Niu Jinxing was not yet the Prime Minister of Da Shun, but merely a scholar eager to make a name for himself. Seeing that the other party was clearly an important figure in the Da Shun army, he had no sense of caution. Moreover, he never imagined that the other party's mastermind was a time traveler who knew history, knew his future fate, and wanted to nip him, the chief civil official of Da Shun, in the bud. So, he could only reply with trepidation, "Then I will trouble this sir..."
Liu Heizi chatted with Niu Jinxing as they slowly walked into the depths of an alley, followed by several intelligence officers.
"Sir, you are from Baofeng County. Do you know a man named Song Xianze?" Song Xianze was the one who later presented the prophecy "Eighteen sons, master of the divine weapon," and was one of the few strategists around Li Zicheng. He was recommended by Niu Jinxing.
Niu Jinxing shook his head blankly: "Song Xianze? I don't know him..."
Liu Heizi stared at him for a moment, and seeing that the other person's expression seemed genuine, he thought that the two of them probably didn't know each other yet, so he relaxed and continued to ask, "Then you probably don't know Young Master Li Yan either?"
Niu Jinxing continued to shake his head: "I don't know him either..."
"Very good, haha..." Liu Heizi chuckled as he surveyed his surroundings. Seeing that he had arrived at a secluded and deserted spot in the alley, with no one around, he winked at the intelligence officers.
Several people approached silently. One of them suddenly covered Niu Jinxing's mouth, while another struck him on the back of the head with the hilt of a knife. Before Niu Jinxing could even resist, he lost consciousness.
Liu Heizi instructed: "Cover it with a burlap sack, tie stones to it, and throw it into the river to feed the fish when it gets dark."
Watching Niu Jinxing being stuffed into a large sack, Liu Heizi thought to himself, without his introduction, Song Xianze probably wouldn't have appeared, right?
Because of Liu Ye's foresight, Niu Jinxing, the future prime minister of the Great Shun Dynasty, disappeared without a trace. He didn't even know why he had met such a tragic end until he sank to the bottom of the river. The leader of the state, Li Zicheng, didn't even know that such a person had ever existed.
As Liu Heizi predicted, after Niu Jinxing perished at the bottom of the river, Song Xianze never appeared until the Shun army entered the capital. Li Yan, on the other hand, was never seen from beginning to end; it was as if he never existed.
Lacking a strategist to advise him, Li Zicheng was easily swayed and, under Liu Ye's guidance, gradually walked into a pre-set trap. In fact, even without Liu Ye's guidance, Li Zicheng and his subordinates' confidence had swelled rapidly after commanding an army of 500,000, and a northward march was only a matter of time. However, under Liu Ye's deliberate arrangement, the Shun army did not waver or hesitate, but went straight to the point, saving a lot of time.
In late June of the tenth year of the Chongzhen Emperor's reign, the well-organized Shun army officially marched north. Having easily captured Luoyang, the Shun army's "power" intimidated the various prefectures and counties within Henan province. The government troops, having already mobilized more than half their forces, dared not confront its might and fled at the mere sight of it. This allowed the Shun army to easily break through Huaiqing and Weihui prefectures, entering the territory of Daming Prefecture in Beizhili (present-day Daming County, Hebei Province), threatening the safety of the capital. Furthermore, by taking refugees along the way, its power grew like a snowball.
Li Zicheng rose from a subordinate of Gao Yingxiang to proclaim himself the "Chuang King" in just over a year. Initially, he was not taken seriously; Hong Chengchou's main efforts in suppressing him were focused on dealing with Zhang Xianzhong and others, and Emperor Chongzhen had only occasionally seen his name in memorials. No one could have imagined that in such a short time, this man would break free from the encirclement of government troops in Shaanxi, move into Henan, and within a few months become the strongest of all the bandit groups. He even put forward a "reactionary program" of refusing to pay taxes and made gestures of attacking the capital, throwing the court and the public into chaos.
Emperor Chongzhen hurriedly summoned his civil and military officials to discuss countermeasures and how to deal with this suddenly rising band of bandits.
Li Zicheng's rise disrupted Yang Sichang's "four main and six secondary, ten-sided net" plan. The initial success of the bandit suppression was met with a crushing blow, and Prince Fu, Zhu Changxun, was brutally murdered. The emperor spent a great deal of effort to suppress the bandits, only to watch as his uncle was boiled into human flesh soup by the bandits. This made the face-conscious Chongzhen Emperor lose face. Although he did not directly blame Yang Sichang, he felt immense pressure.
Yang Sichang knew perfectly well that the fundamental reason for the fall of Luoyang and the execution of Prince Fu was that the troops sent to suppress the bandits had overlooked Li Zicheng, while the direct cause was that he had diverted too many troops from Henan to guard against the Qionghai Army's so-called possible "invasion" from the south and Liaodong, leaving important cities like Luoyang undefended. The Emperor hadn't blamed him yet because he still trusted him, but his chances were running out. If he couldn't suppress this band of rebels in time, even the greatest trust would be exhausted, and his fate wouldn't be much better than his father, Yang He's.
After some thought, he stepped forward and stated his opinion: "Your Majesty, although the bandits appear powerful, most of them are women, children, the elderly, and the weak who are merely filling in. As long as we defeat their main force in one battle, their so-called hundreds of thousands of troops will vanish into thin air. I suggest that we transfer the troops from Beizhili to Baoding and Hejian to block Li's northward advance. Then, we should order Hong Chengchou to lead his troops back to the capital and launch a pincer attack from the north and south, thus achieving our goal in one battle and completely annihilating Li."
This proposal received considerable support. Due to the need to defend against the Qionghai Army, the troops in Beizhili and Henan were concentrated in Baoding Prefecture, Tianjin Wei, and Yongping Prefecture. With a slight adjustment, they could become a barrier against Li Zicheng. With the cooperation of Hong Chengchou's large army, a pincer attack would easily annihilate this bandit army.
However, Wen Tiren, whose stance had completely shifted, expressed a different opinion. He stepped forward and said, "Your Majesty, Hong Chengchou must not be easily withdrawn. Although Li Zicheng is currently powerful, Zhang Xianzhong in the southwest is not to be underestimated. Coupled with the likes of Luo Rucai, it is only thanks to Hong Chengchou, Sun Chuanting, and others that the southwest has not fallen into chaos. If we leave the southwest vulnerable in order to suppress Li Zicheng, wouldn't that be treating the symptoms but not the root cause? When the southwestern army withdraws, Zhang Xianzhong and others will be left unchecked, running rampant and inciting the people. Would their threat be any less than that of Li Zicheng now?"
Yang Sichang was speechless for a moment. The plan of "four cardinal points and six intermediate points, forming a net on all ten sides" was his own idea and had received strong support from Chongzhen. However, transferring Hong Chengchou and others back to Beizhili was, in effect, a denial of his own strategy and a case of "treating the head when it hurts and the foot when it hurts" as Wen Tiren had said.