Thief Emperor

Chapter 337 The mastermind behind the scenes is Li Shijun!
The turmoil in Changzhou City made Li Yun feel mixed emotions of joy and anger.

It was definitely not him who did this.

He once considered the idea of ​​actively provoking unrest in various states and counties, but he rejected it himself.

It's not that I'm doing this for the sake of my reputation, but it's completely unnecessary.

He is now the Jiangdong Recruiting Envoy. He no longer needs a reason or excuse to send troops to various states and counties. He can go to any state or county he wants. The reason why he has not had time to expand his sphere of influence is not because he cannot do it, but because he is unable to do so.

He was busy taking over the city of Jinling, busy setting up various military camps in the city, and busy making his subordinates form a systematic and organized army.

During this period, Li Yun has already set his eyes on three places in Jinling Prefecture and is preparing to establish military camps and expand his military force. As the economy can support it at the moment, he has no intention of expanding blindly.

There is absolutely no need to do such dirty things.

After all, at this moment, he has no shortage of territory and even less of manpower. The most important thing is to build up the base camp of Jinling City and do a good job of "laying the foundation". Otherwise, if the team grows stronger but the foundation is not solid, big problems will arise.

The foundation is not strong, and the ground shakes the mountains.

Just when Li Yun was fully devoted to the foundation-building work and was extremely busy, the unrest in the three states of Jiangdong began.

Muzhou and Shezhou are not too close to Jinling. Li Yun was not very angry about the unrest in these two states. After all, these were all expected.

The country is about to fall, and we cannot expect everyone to be honest and continue to abide by the rules. There are many honest people in this world, too many to count, but there are always some not-so-honest people.

Otherwise, there will never be any such thing as a change of dynasty.

What really made Li Yun angry was that Changzhou, a state next to Jinling Prefecture, was also in turmoil. As a neighboring state of Jinling Prefecture, this kind of turmoil was simply a slap in the face of him as the Recruiting Envoy, and it showed that he was not taken seriously at all.

This made him quite angry.

The good news is that we can take this opportunity to formally bring this neighboring state under our direct jurisdiction, which will provide an additional source of recruits.

This does not mean that Jinling Prefecture does not have enough soldiers, but Li Yun also has to consider the future of the army.

Some people in Li Yun's army have already begun to form groups. For example, those who came from the anti-theft team all consider themselves to be veterans. However, these people all followed Li Yun, so the tendency to form groups is not very obvious at present.

The remnants of the Jiangnan troops led by General Su are now indeed showing a tendency to stick together.

In addition, Li Yun also has people from Xuanzhou, Yuezhou, and Wuzhou under his command.

It is almost inevitable that people in these places will form their own factions in the foreseeable future.

Because it's human nature.

If this trend continues, and if large-scale conscription is carried out in Jinling, the largest group of Li Yun's subordinates in the future will be the Jinling soldiers.

With one more source of troops, we can defeat the enemy more thoroughly and eliminate some hidden dangers in the future.

Although it is still too early to think about future factional struggles at this stage, and even such thoughts cannot be told to others, they will definitely lead to ridicule.

But as the core leader of a team, you must have this kind of foresight.

If you don't think all these things through at this time, when the scale becomes larger in the future and you want to balance all parties, there will only be one way left.

That is to eliminate some people on the physical level to achieve balance.

With mixed feelings, when Li Yun arrived outside Changzhou City with the men of two captain's camps, he started to attack the city without much hesitation.

Nowadays, one of Li Yun’s most urgent needs is to show his strength to the outside world. This kind of display is not only to the people of Jiangdong, but also to people outside Jiangdong, and even to the imperial court.

If the unrest within a state or county is dragged on and cannot be resolved in time, it will definitely be looked down upon by the surrounding forces, and then the troubles that Li Yun will face will only increase!

Li Yun, dressed in full armor and covered with a face shield, took the lead and rushed to the front.

There were six people on each side of him, protecting his wings, with Li Yun as the arrow tip, forming a sharp arrow.

This is Li Yun's guard, one of the formations specially trained for Li Yun. At this time, on Li Yun's left is Yang Xi, and on his right is his old brother Zhang Hu.

This is a charge array, and has nothing to do with siege. However, after this array was practiced, it has never been used in actual combat. Now, it can be considered as being practiced on the battlefield.

Soon, as Li Yun issued the order to attack the city, the first batch of Wuzhou soldiers, or should they be called Jiangdong soldiers, had rushed to the foot of the city wall.

This time, the casualties suffered by the Jiangdong soldiers who rushed to the city wall were not very high.

It's not because they can withstand the arrows physically, but because the enemies on the wall are too weak. Archers are actually a very specialized type of soldier.

For example, if an ordinary citizen is given a suit of armor, a weapon, or even a hoe, as long as his morale is high and his will to fight is strong enough, he can become a qualified soldier and beat an enemy to death with a hoe.

But if you give him a bow and a bag of arrows, he will be at a loss.

This is why the imperial court banned crossbows, swords, and armor, but not bows.

This thing has a threshold, and it is not low.

Li Yun had already found out a lot about the riot in Changzhou while on the way.

It was a big village under the jurisdiction of Changzhou. For some unknown reason, they had a conflict with the yamen runners. There were hundreds of households in the village, and they rushed forward and beat the yamen runners to death.

No one knew whether it was the local officials who angered the public, or someone with ulterior motives instigated behind the scenes, but the next day, the young and strong men in the village took advantage of the fact that nothing had happened and entered Changzhou City. Together with a group of bandits who came from nowhere, they actually took down the capital of Changzhou!
This matter is quite strange.

After the rebellion of Qiu Dian in Yuezhou, the prefectures and counties in Jiangdong, which had been frantically collecting empty salaries, have begun to slowly fill the vacancies with their own official troops. Although the number is only four or five hundred people, under normal circumstances, unless there is a large-scale rebellion like Qiu Dian's rebellion, ordinary civil unrest can be easily suppressed.

The fall of Changzhou city was indeed somewhat strange.

But no matter what, among the group of people who have occupied the state capital, only some of the bandits can use bows and arrows, and the ordinary people can't use them at all, so there won't be too many long-range attacks.

Li Yun led the team and rushed all the way to the city wall and began to set up ladders.

At this moment, there were quite a few people guarding the city wall, and many of them were carrying stones and throwing them down from the city wall.

There is also a lot of boiling oil and the like.

Most of these people guarding the city were wearing civilian clothes and were obviously ordinary people in the provincial capital. However, behind them, many people were holding steel knives and forcing them to pour boiling oil and throw stones under the city wall.

In this way, not only the problem of shortage of manpower was solved, but also the people could be coerced to join them in the rebellion.

But even so, the strength of this city defense is still too low.

Li Yun, dressed in heavy armor, climbed up the ladder, and struggled to climb up despite the rubble that fell on him. When he was about half a meter away, he saw that the people on the city wall were about to pour boiling oil down. Li Yun exerted force with his feet and almost broke the step of the ladder. He suddenly jumped up, grabbed the edge of the city wall with both hands, and climbed up directly.

Li Yun was the first to enter Changzhou City!
After climbing the wall, Li Yun was left with nothing. Fortunately, Yang Xi was very prudent. Although he had not yet climbed the wall, he threw the sword at his waist onto the wall and shouted, "Envoy, lend it to me!"

Li Yun turned sideways, and instead of grabbing the scabbard, he grabbed the handle directly and drew the single sword in mid-air. Then he squatted slightly, looked at the "defenders" on the city wall who had been scared back nearly ten feet by him, and shouted angrily: "Put down your weapons, lie on the ground where you are, and you can save your lives!"

He had a loud voice to begin with, and the people immediately lowered their heads and lay on the ground.

The remaining thieves and villagers holding steel knives were still standing where they were. Li Yun sneered, stepped forward, and knocked down a thief with just one blow.

Then he leaned over and knocked a young man dressed as a farmer away more than a meter. After the man flew out, he lay directly on the ground, blood oozing from his mouth and nose, and it was obvious that he was not going to survive.

After Li knocked down two people, he felt relaxed all over.

He has been obsessed with "casework" during this period and has not come out to fight for several days to relax!
On the city wall, Li Yun was like a tiger among a flock of sheep. He quickly created a gap in the wall. The Jiangdong soldiers under the wall were able to climb up the wall along the gap.

At this time, Li Yun also got his big gun. He used the butt of the gun to knock a middle-aged man who looked like a leader to the ground, then took a step forward and stepped on his chest. After taking a look at the leader's outfit, Li Yun narrowed his eyes and asked, "Which gang are you from?"

The leader was frightened by Li Yun's murderous aura and immediately said tremblingly: "Guo...Guodi Mountain Bailong Village..."

Li Yun moved his feet and lifted him up with one hand. After taking a look at the leader's appearance, he smiled and asked, "How many people are there in your village? Who ordered you to attack Changzhou City?"

"We have about a hundred people in Bailong Village."

The leader swallowed his saliva and said tremblingly, "Some time ago, someone came to our leader and said... that he was a man of Li Shijun, the Jiangdong Recruiting Envoy, and asked the leader to make some trouble in Changzhou..."

"After the matter is accomplished, the village chief will naturally benefit."

"Later, the villagers of Xipo Village caused trouble, so the village chief came down the mountain and brought us here."

Li Yun sneered: "I can't recognize most of the words, but I remember the words 'recruiting envoy' clearly!"

After saying that, he threw the man in his hand aside, reached out and touched his chin, looked into the distance, his eyes became sharp.

"interesting…"

(End of this chapter)