The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 203: Listen up, fellow "living fathers", I will lead a million troops to the south of the Yangtze River!
"Your Excellency, Your Excellency, are you okay?"

While Hubei Governor Chang Dachun was in a daze, he heard a voice shouting in his ear.

He suddenly opened his eyes and found himself lying on the desk, with back pain. A ray of sunlight was shining through the paper window, shining on his body, but it could not dispel the gloom that was oppressing his heart.

Before Chang Dachun could come to his senses, the sound of a door being pushed open came, and then he heard a man with a Hunan accent asking, "How is it? Is it decent?"

Respectable? What does that mean?
Chang Dachun was just thinking about it when he heard his chief advisor, Yu Deshui, say, "No. He seems to have fallen asleep."

A woman with a Hunan accent and a sweet voice spoke again: "Hey, didn't you take poison?"

"Let me see"

Then a cold hand came towards Chang Dachun's nose, trembling.

By this time, Chang Dachun already understood what these three people were doing?

This is to check whether he is breathing!
What kind of people are these? They are checking inside the governor's office to see if the governor has committed suicide. Is there any law in this?

Thinking of this, Chang Dachun could no longer "lie down", and he pressed his hands down and sat up straight. He turned his neck which was a little stiff from sleeping, and then saw his chief advisor Yu Deshui, who had a small nose, small eyes and a round face, standing with Sun Yingzhao, the acting general of Wuchang, and a heavily made-up and graceful woman, staring at him together.

Chang Dachun was immediately furious: "Mr. Sun, Mr. Yu, what are you doing here? Also, who brought that prostitute here?"

"How can you talk like that?" The woman got angry when she heard this. She glared with her almond-shaped eyes and puffed out her chest. "Who is a prostitute? I am a high-ranking official!"

"Big official?" Chang Dachun was stunned and didn't know what to say.
Then the woman's voice suddenly lowered, and she said something that almost frightened Chang Dachun to death: "I am Xu Yuegui, the commander of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's God Worshipping Society's secret hall!"

"What? People from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom are coming! Catch the rebels!" Chang Dachun finally reacted, "Hurry up and send someone!"

But no matter how much he shouted, it was useless!

Just no one comes!

"Stop shouting!" Sun Yingzhao laughed, "Master Chang, it's useless even if you shout your throat out. No one will come to save you! Your Goshha has been dealt with by the warriors of the Dark Hall, and your patrol flags are guarding the various city gates. Now the entire governor's office is under the control of my troops!"

Chang Dachun looked incredulous: "Then, what about Cheng Zhijun, Shuang Junmen, Bo Junmen and others?"

"Of course they all faked their deaths!"

Chang Dachun's mouth twitched, and a trace of fear flashed across his old face: "Killed by the explosion? Did you blow them all to death with a bomb?"

"What's the bomb? Faking death, faking death to deceive the emperor, you know?" Sun Yingzhao said with a smile, "Cheng Zhijun, Shuang Junmen, and Bo Junmen all faked their deaths. Cheng Zhijun and Shuang Junmen left last night, and Feng Shoubei led 500 elite soldiers to escort them. They told the public that they committed suicide when Wuchang was captured, and Feng Shoubei escorted their families as they fled."

Chang Dachun opened his mouth wide and shook his head repeatedly: "Impossible, impossible"

"How is it impossible? Everything is possible if you pay! They spent 70,000 taels of silver, and I did it for them!"

Sun Yingzhao was very proud and patted his chest and said: "That old fellow Bo Le Gongwu had a lot of money. He spent 70,000 yuan per person, so he made a heroic sacrifice!"

"I made up the story. He led 120 warriors to charge into the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's Shi Yi Wang's army. At the age of 75, he fought with His Royal Highness Shi Yi Wang for 30 rounds before being killed. None of the 120 warriors survived! Lord Chang, if the emperor gets this news, should he posthumously grant him a hereditary title?"

"This, this, this, this is so shameless!" Chang Dachun was furious and slapped the desk with a "bang". "How can you be so afraid of death?"

Before he finished speaking, Master Yu turned around and said to Sun Yingzhao and Xu Yuegui: "I've been telling you, Lord Chang is not a coward. He won't fake his own death and escape." Upon hearing this, Chang Dachun immediately glared at his master fiercely.

"Sir, please don't worry." Master Yu said with a smile, "I have already written a letter of surrender for you."

"Surrender?" Chang Dachun felt like strangling his chief advisor to death. He raised his arms and rushed over. "Yu Deshui..."

Unfortunately, Sun Yingzhao and Xu Yuegui were well prepared and one of them held him down.

Master Yu quickly bowed to Chang Dachun and said solemnly, "Your Excellency the Governor has always loved the people like his own children. Could you bear to see the people of Jiangxia suffer the same fate as the people of Changsha, with more than half of them killed or injured? If the old man is kind enough to surrender the city, Jiangxia can be safe! If the people of Jiangxia live because of you, your profound sense of justice will surely be remembered by the people of Jiangxia for generations to come!"

"What do you mean by loving the people like one's own children? I, Chang Dachun, want to be a loyal minister!" Chang Dachun shouted, "As a minister defending the land, I only know how to die with the city. I will never be a traitor who surrenders the city!"

Master Yu shook his head and said, "Sir, I have already written a letter of surrender in your name and stamped it with your official seal. The letter of surrender has been sent to the Taiping Army by the Tiandihui leader in Wuchang City!"

Sun Yingzhao added: "Notices to pacify the people have also been posted in various government offices in the city, and troops have been sent to control them in your name. The important figures in Jiangxia City have also been notified in your name, and we will all prepare food and drink together to welcome the royal army."

Master Yu said respectfully, "Even if you are dead now, we can find someone to pretend to be you and surrender the city. In the future, the history books will still write about you, Chang Dachun, the descendant of the Ming Kaiping King. Although you are in the Qing camp, you have China in your heart. In the second year of the Tianli period of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, you led 300,000 people from Jiangxia City, Wuchang Prefecture, opened the city gates, welcomed Taiping, and followed the Heavenly King."

Chang Dachun sat down dejectedly and cried three times, "You guys are harming me."

"Holding a three-foot sword, I rule the mountains and rivers; I regard the four seas as my home and drink together. I capture all the evil spirits and bring them back to the net on the ground; I capture the remaining treacherous people and bring them into the net in the sky. The east, south, west and north follow the emperor, and the sun, moon and stars sing triumphant songs. The roar of tigers and dragons illuminates the world; how joyful is peace and unification!"

On a huge ship guarded by dozens of sand boats, Hong Xiuquan, the second son of God and the king of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was pressing the hilt of his sword, gazing at the majestic Hanyang Gate of the Wuchang Prefecture in the distance. A red Taiping Army flag was slowly rising. His ambition was suddenly unstoppable, and he casually chanted a poem in Hakka dialect with ups and downs, which was not at all "greasy"!
After reciting the poem, Hong Xiuquan turned his head and glanced proudly at the "three great fathers" standing behind him - Yang Xiuqing, Luo Yaoguo and Xiao Chaogui, as if telling them: "I can not only fight, but also write poetry! As long as I am serious, there is nothing I can't accomplish!"

"What a good poem! It is really a good poem!"

Yang Xiuqing, who was not very literate, immediately gave a thumbs up and praised Hong Xiuquan's poem.

Xiao Chaogui also hurriedly followed suit and complimented, "Your Majesty, you are truly a man of both civil and military talents! You can write poetry and command troops. Even Li Shimin and Zhu Yuanzhang are not as good as you!"

"Hahaha"

Hong Xiuquan knew that they were uneducated and could not appreciate the quality of the poem, so he smiled and turned his gaze to Luo Yaoguo: "My compatriot, you came from heaven, you must have read a lot of books, right?"

"I have indeed read a lot of books." Luo Yaoguo nodded.

He is an angel delivering food for God. How can he do that without any education?
Hong Xiuquan smiled and said, "Okay! How about you improvise a poem as well?"

Compose poetry?

Luo Yaoguo thought to himself, "Isn't this embarrassing for me? I'm just a delivery boy, how can I write poetry? Forget it, I'll just be a plagiarist! But who should I plagiarize? I got it."

Luo Yaoguo brewed his emotions for a while, and then he began to chant: "A man holds a Wu hook in one hand, and his spirit is higher than a hundred-foot building. Who has written history in the past ten thousand years? He wants to be crowned king three thousand miles away. He will follow the horses on the road with his swift feet, and will not have the leisure to chase the seagulls. He points to the moon by the Lugou Bridge with a smile, and thousands of troops and horses enter Yanjing!"

"Good!" Hong Xiuquan clapped his hands and laughed, "What a great line 'Pointing at the moon by the Lugou Bridge, thousands of troops march into Beijing'! But my countrymen, your thousands of troops are still a little too few. Only a real man can lead a million troops!"

His tone suddenly became solemn: "Qing compatriots, your brother-in-law, and fellow countrymen, now that Wuchang has been captured, I plan to lead a million troops and march straight to the south of the Yangtze River, and then make a concerted effort to send a million brave lions into Beijing. How about that?"

(End of this chapter)