After thinking about it, Li Laiheng smiled and replied: "If we break Luoyang and kill the current emperor's biological uncle, this will be a major event that has never happened in the three hundred years of the Ming Dynasty."
"Yang Sichang is currently the governor and assistant minister. How can he relieve his burden? Even if Chongzhen does not charge him with serious crimes for the time being, he will still hold a grudge. If he encounters another setback, the two accounts will be settled together. What's more, the sectarian disputes in the court are fierce, and those who usually
How could the courtiers who attacked Yang Sichang not make a big fuss out of what happened in Luoyang? Chongzhen always takes credit for himself, saying how wise he is, but blames his officials for his mistakes. He is unpredictable in mood and anger."
Niu Jinxing also said: "Yes, once Luoyang is breached and Fu Fan falls, Yang Sichang will only die. To be fair, although Yang Sichang is narrow-minded, he is still considered a rare shrewd and capable figure among the ministers of the Ming Dynasty. If he dies, Chongzhen will again
I can't find a decent supervisor. Hong Chengchou is okay, but he has to focus on Liaodong. Ruosun Chuanting and his like have only local talents but no courage to overall plan the overall situation. What's more, they can't get the same leadership as Chongzhen and Yang Sichang.
Such trust."
"Okay, in that case, Qi Weng will rest for a while, and I will immediately issue an order, respond to the master's call, and recruit armies from the two mountains to help the main force destroy Luoyang City."
After Niu Jinxing returned to the house to rest, when he saw Liu Tichun coming back, he closed all the concierges, lowered his voice, and said to Liu Tichun: "What do you think Li Laiheng's military strength is like?"
Liu Tichun looked like Hao Yaoqi, a straightforward and upright person. But in fact, his mind was far deeper than Hao Yaoqi. At this time, when he was alone with Niu Jinxing, he turned aside his face and said in a deep voice: "According to my estimation, the two of us are
If the soldiers of the mountain are mobilized with all their strength, they will definitely have a strength of no less than four or five thousand."
Niu Jinxing nodded and said: "Four to five thousand people! Yes, that's my estimate too."
"Weng Qi, if Li Laiheng doesn't have second thoughts, he should send at least 2,000 troops! If he sends less than 2,000 troops, things may be the same as what Dang Shousu said. We should be wary of whether Li Laiheng has second thoughts."
As Chuangying's strength grew, especially after Liu Zongmin's death, Chuangying gradually divided into two new factions.
One faction was headed by Li Guo, followed by Liu Fangliang. Li Laiheng's rapid development in the Liangshan area made Li Guo's status and prestige grow rapidly.
One faction was headed by Tian Jianxiu. After arriving in Henan, Tian Jianxiu married his daughter to Li Shuangxi, making this faction very important. Yuan Zongdi and Liu Tichun also attached themselves to Tian Jianxiu, and Niu Jinxing joined them.
After breaking into the camp, I became closer to them.
Before arriving at Desheng Village this time, Dang Shousu specially reminded Niu Jinxing and others to be wary of Li Laiheng's movements. Dang Shousu believed that Li Laiheng had not long since joined the camp and had only a shallow relationship with everyone, but his strength had grown so rapidly that they must be careful.
Whether he has two minds.
However, what he saw on this trip and Li Laiheng's attitude and performance changed Niu Jinxing's opinion a lot. He thought whether Dang Shousu was too prejudiced, so he said to Liu Tichun: "If Li Laiheng is willing to send more than 2,000 troops on this trip,
By responding to the attack on Luoyang, you can know that he and the marshal are indeed of the same mind!"
Liu Tichun also agreed with Niu Jinxing's view. On the one hand, he had an irreversible friendship with Hao Yaoqi, and on the other hand, he did feel that Chuang Jun's temperament had not deteriorated in the Victory Village.
Liu Tichun believed that since the Little Tigers were still an army similar to the Chuang Army, then Li Laiheng must still be a figure with the same heart as the Chuang King, rather than the careerist imagined by Dang Shousu.
The day passed quietly like this. After Li Laiheng said goodbye to Niu Jinxing, in order to cooperate with Li Zicheng's call to attack Luoyang as soon as possible, he quickly sent Zhang Pili to inform Gao Yigong, Bai Wang, and those who stayed behind who were scattered in the two mountains.
Uncle Qing from Xiaohu Village.
In addition to the direct lineage of Chuangying, Li Laiheng also issued an order for the village leaders such as Li Hao, Pu Xiang, Zhu You, etc. to all gather at Desheng Village within a few days to hold a meeting.
After conquering Pingfeng Village, Li Laiheng defeated several ambitious cottages in Xiong'er Mountain that wanted to be the second largest village in Dazhong, thus consolidating his hegemonic authority.
Li Laiheng was not as ruthless as Yu Dazhong. After he destroyed a village, he would only kill the chief culprit, and would also support other small bosses with lower status among the residents of the village to become the new village leaders.
Therefore, Li Laiheng's actions not only did not trigger dissatisfaction and counterattack among the village owners, but also further divided the joint actions of the village owners, making these loose powerful forces unable to resist the hegemony of the Little Tiger Team.
We can only let it go and obey Li Laiheng's military orders.
Sure enough, within a few days, all the top village leaders, including Li Hao and Pu Xiang, arrived as promised, and no one dared to disobey Li Laiheng's call and resist the orders of Victory Village.
Since these copycat village owners were unable to act together and individually were not as powerful as Li Laiheng 11, they naturally had no choice but to be "slaughtered" by them.
Fortunately among misfortunes, Li Laiheng's method of "slaughtering" the village leaders was much gentler than that of Yu Dazhong.
But when Li Laiheng expressed his intention, he asked the village masters of each village in the two mountains to prepare their own food, fodder, and equipment according to the number of people in each village. They were divided into three levels and sent out fifty, eighty, or one hundred soldiers.
The village owners headed by Li Hao immediately began to complain loudly. Each family said how few people there were in their village and how insufficient food, fodder and equipment were.
When Li Laiheng heard this, he laughed evilly. He waved to Fang Yiren and asked Fang Yiren to show him a rough number of people, equipment, food and fodder for each village, and said with a smile: "You village owners, I don't know what the numbers on this list are.
Right or wrong?”
Li Hao was the first to become an ally in breaking into the camp. He was the only one who was bolder and tentatively asked Li Laiheng: "Chief Li, what's going on with this list? It's not that Li Jiazhai can't produce a hundred
The human soldiers, but my estimate of the food, grass and equipment seems to be too high!!"
"Hahaha! Puxiang!"
After Li Laiheng laughed a few times, he pointed at Pu Xiang, the Taoist priest of Chaoyang Village. This young and handsome Taoist priest felt uncomfortable when he saw that all the village masters were staring at him, but he also knew that it was time to hug Xiaohu.
At the critical moment of the team's victory, he still replied decisively: "I wrote this list. These are the numbers I paid special attention to when I went to various villages to do things. There is absolutely no problem."
"Every village owner knows how many grains, grass, equipment and people they have. If there is anything wrong with the list I wrote, please point it out!"
The two village owners all glared at Pu Xiang. Who would have thought that this guy with thick eyebrows and big eyes would actually become a traitor!
What a traitor!
But Puxiang has Li Laiheng as his backer. He feels that it is more cost-effective to climb the high branches of the camp than to let these village owners hold grudges. Even if the village owners are angry in all kinds of ways, there is nothing they can do at this time. It is hard to explain, so they can only
He lowered his head and accepted Li Laiheng's arrangement.
Li Laiheng made a good calculation. Although he finally decided to send more than 2,000 troops to participate in the battle to attack Luoyang, he did not intend to use all his elite troops to make himself stand out. Instead, he tried to make up the number with conscripted copycat soldiers.
Among the more than 2,000 soldiers and horses, the elite field soldiers of the Little Tigers only accounted for less than a quarter. The remaining soldiers and horses were all militiamen recruited from Xiong'er Mountain and Funiu Mountain and soldiers from various cottages.
By mid-December, after Li Laiheng had arranged everything for the two mountain villages, he asked Uncle Qing to stay at Xiaohu Village in Funiu Mountain, while Bai Wang was transferred from Luanchuan to Desheng Village to control the Xiong'er Mountain area.
The remaining generals Gao Yigong, Hao Yaoqi, Fang Yiren, Guo Junzhen, Li Shiwei, Zhang Pili and others, plus Pu Xiang who completely surrendered to the Little Tigers, plus more than 2,000 soldiers and horses, and cattle
Jin Xing and Liu Tichun set off together, preparing to head north out of Xiong'er Mountain and march northeast along Luoshui to cooperate with Li Zicheng's main force to participate in the attack on Luoyang.
When they arrived in Yiyang, everyone heard that Luoyang's defense force had changed again.
First, Wang Shaoyu, the Luoyang garrison commander, had ordered the two groups of officers and soldiers guarding Gongxian and Yanshi to be transferred back to Luoyang to defend the city. About 2,000 soldiers were sent back to Luoyang to defend the city. The other was that the Shaanxi soldiers who had mutinied by their superiors were killed in Tongguan last month due to lack of pay.
About five to six hundred people fled to Shaanzhou and were called to Luoyang by Wang Shaoyu to help defend the city.
According to Wu Ruyi, who stayed behind in Yiyang, King Chuang had already adopted the strategy proposed by Yuan Zongdi. He sent agents to the army in Gongxian and Yanshi. This army was in arrears with pay for six or seven months, and the morale of the army was unstable on weekdays.
, now it is transferred back to Luoyang to defend the city and used on the edge of the knife. Of course it is more unstable and can be instigated at any time.
As for the Shaanxi soldiers who mutinied in Tongguan, they were from the same hometown as Chuangying, and Yuan Zongdi also sent people to infiltrate Luoyang City to join forces with them secretly.
In addition, Li Guo will also march towards the Yanshi area to cut off the way for King Fu and the Luoyang officials and gentry to escape eastward to Kaifeng, so as to catch them all in one fell swoop.
Li Laiheng lamented that the layout of the camp was very detailed. At the same time, because of the dilapidation of the area around Luoyang, he lamented to Niu Jinxing: "The closer we get to Luoyang City, the more devastated it becomes!"
Yesterday when the Little Tigers marched near Yiyang, Li Laiheng felt more and more that the territory of Henan Prefecture was deserted and miserable. There were only corpses of starving corpses on the road and not a single pedestrian.
What’s even more frightening is that many of the corpses of those who died of starvation were also mutilated. The missing parts were all meaty thighs. Were they dismantled and eaten by the hungry people? It’s horrifying to think about it.
There used to be a dung farm in Yiyang. There used to be a small vegetable garden there, but now there are no green vegetable seedlings left. What is left is a large cesspool and a small puddle. The water in the pit has not completely dried up.
.
Li Laiheng witnessed several hungry people squatting by the puddle, pouring the small buckets of dung they had just scooped out from the cesspit into the bamboo sieve, and then placing the bamboo sieve in the puddle and shaking it, making the dung become more broken.
It is so thin that it flows away from the cracks in the sieve, leaving the white, restless maggots inside the sieve.
He had long heard Niu Jinxing say that recently some people had found maggots from manure to satisfy their hunger. Now that he saw it with his own eyes, he felt both disgusted and endlessly sad. The people had actually reached such a state!
Li Laiheng didn't want to look any further and just walked away quickly. But at that time, a middle-aged hungry man with a child less than ten years old was digging through the dung pile with a hoe and picking up more than twenty grubs there.
When the child saw Li Laiheng nearby, he quickly bent down and protected the grub with both hands, while staring at him with surprised and hostile eyes. The middle-aged man also stopped his hoe and looked at him with vigilant eyes.
The look in his eyes was full of murderous intent, which made Li Laiheng, who had experienced many Shura battlefields, feel chills running down his spine.
The people have reached a point where they would kill for a maggot...
The pale setting sun shines on the desolate mass graveyard and on the gray roof tiles. Everything is eerie. Especially many houses are now empty, because people have moved away or starved to death. These empty houses are
Doors and windows were quickly torn down, and in some cases the entire house was demolished.
All the dismantled wood, no matter whether it was good or bad, was used as firewood. A gust of autumn wind blew, and Li Laiheng felt a chill in his body. The wind blew the dry leaves on the ground. Due to lack of firewood, almost all the trees had been sawed recently.
It's over. Only the dry leaves on the ground have not been swept away for a while, and they are rolling all over the ground in the autumn wind.
Li Laiheng suddenly heard footsteps behind him. When he looked back, he saw two people following him closely. The two people's eyes were sunken and their gazes were cold and terrifying.
It wasn't until Li Laiheng exposed two inches of cold light from the tiger-headed sword on his waist, and Zhang Pilu and other soldiers surrounded them, that the two hungry people slowly walked away.
If Li Laiheng was just an ordinary homeless man, might he be chopped into pieces, cooked and eaten by them?
But whose fault is it?
"Qi Weng, winter is coming, let's go to Luoyang quickly!"