Zhu Yuanzhang in the cellar

Chapter 178 Life-saving straw
Old Zhu turned around and left, naturally not because he had any opinion about Lu Daqi.

To be honest, he has several lists here.

Such as "List of Officials of the Rebel Army Who Surrendered in the Late Ming Dynasty", "List of Officials of the Qing Army Who Surrendered in the Late Ming Dynasty", and "List of Generals and Nobles Who Surrendered to the Rebel Army and the Qing Army in the Late Ming Dynasty", etc.

In addition to these, there are such books as "List of Officials Who Died for the Country in the 17th Year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty" and "List of Generals Who Died for the Country in the War against the Qing Dynasty".

Basically it's the difference between a whitelist and a blacklist.

For example, some senior officials in Huguang and Jiangxi now, the Hubei Governor Wang Yangji followed Zuo Liangyu to fight against the rebels and the Qing army, and died of illness three years later.

The military supervisor Wang Zan, the prefect of Mianyang Zhang Kuang, and the deputy prefect of Chengtian Prefecture Ma Biao were all loyal and died for their country, and are definitely members of the white list.

However, Jiangbei Military Supervisor Fu Shangrui, Jiangxi Dao Censor Huang Shu, Jiangxi Provincial Governor Zhou Shike, Xiangyang General Wang Guangen and other officials and generals who surrendered to the Qing Dynasty in the areas around Huguang and Jiangxi were on the blacklist.

Therefore, Zhu Yuanzhang could easily judge the loyalty of these officials and generals through the list.

Once on the blacklist, you can kill it in the future, and the whitelist can naturally be reused.

Lu Daqi was loyal to the emperor and patriotic throughout his life. After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, he strongly advocated resistance against the Qing Dynasty. Naturally, he was a member of the white list.

But now is not the time to chat with Lu Daqi. Old Zhu is paying attention to another thing - young Zhu Di.

Today is the third day of October in the sixteenth year of Chongzhen.

The news of Zhu Yuanzhang's appearance in Changsha had not even been sent to Beijing, and Chongzhen did not even know that there was a man in Changsha who called himself Taizu.

But there were only three days left before Tongguan was captured and Sun Chuanting was killed in battle.

In fact, Li Zicheng arrived at Tongguan today and ordered his subordinates to launch a fierce attack on Tongguan.

Three days later, Tongguan fell and Sun Chuanting was killed in the battle. From then on, Li Zicheng had no rivals and quickly went north to conquer Beijing and established the Dashun.

So now is the critical moment to change history.

At this moment, Old Zhu has appeared in the tent, and the radio in the tent is maintaining real-time contact with Young Zhu Di.

During these days, young Zhu Di rode non-stop, even robbing a lot of horses from the rebels. He fought off many small groups of rebels along the way, and traveled day and night until he finally arrived in Shaanxi.

The weather in Shaanxi in early October was a bit cold. Everything was bleak in early winter, the grass and trees began to turn yellow, and even the sky was gloomy, as if it was going to snow.

It rained in Guanzhong a few days ago, and the ground was not completely dry. The horse's hooves stepped on the mud, one step deep and one step shallow, and moved forward slowly.

Young Zhu Di had a difficult time marching during these days.

Wuguan is not a straight road, but a road located in the deep mountains and forests of Qinling Mountains. It not only has many undulating slopes, but is also surrounded by towering hills and jungles.

Not only was the road distance long, but the road conditions were also very poor. They initially used tricycles for transportation, but as time went by, the marching speed became very slow.

It’s not that the tricycle is of poor quality, it just breaks down on the road.

In fact, because it is a domestic brand with excellent quality, the chain can continue to rotate even if it is not lubricated.

The problem lies in the road and physical strength.

Since there was no place to charge, all they got were human-powered pedal tricycles that could only move forward by pedaling.

It's ok to walk on a flat rammed earth road, but if you encounter a more complicated road, such as a muddy road or a hilly road, you won't be able to walk as fast as you could.

It is common for wheels to get stuck in mud or be unable to pedal uphill.

In places like Hubei and Nanyang where the road conditions are relatively good, we can still maintain a marching speed of 50 to 60 kilometers a day.

It won’t work once you enter Wuguan.

After all, they didn't just set out with automatic rifles, they also brought marching rations and a certain number of bullets and mortars.

The baggage seemed to be small, but entering the mountainous area seriously slowed down the march.

Young Zhu Di had no choice but to get a lot of horses and use horse-drawn tricycles to travel. Only in this way could he enter Guanzhong on the third day of October.

At this moment, Guanzhong was already desolate.

From the first year of Chongzhen when Wang Jiayin, Wang Ziyu, Gao Yingxiang and others successively launched uprisings, to the fourth year of Chongzhen when Li Zicheng launched an uprising, Guanzhong was the hardest hit area of ​​uprisings and rebellions.

Due to constant natural disasters, population loss and government exploitation, many people either starved to death, fled or rebelled.

The Guanzhong Plain, which was once a vast fertile land, now has large tracts of dry and cracked fields covered with weeds. The villages and houses are dilapidated, and there is no human habitation within miles. Even dead bones can occasionally be seen on the side of the road.

You must know that young Zhu Di has just come out of Wuguan and headed north from Lantian to Weinan area.

This used to be the best arable land area in Guanzhong. It was irrigated by the Wei River, and there were many rivers extending from the Qinling Mountains, so it was not particularly short of water. During droughts in previous years, the area south of the Wei River was often relatively safe.

However, even the Weinan area is now in a state of ruin, which shows how much damage the Little Ice Age in the late Ming Dynasty and various man-made disasters brought to Guanzhong.

Not to mention the Loess Plateau in the north, the situation is probably more than ten times more serious than here.

Young Zhu Di was riding on a horse. A soldier next to him was carrying a radio on his back. He reported the situation to Old Zhu Di through headphones.

"Well, I see."

After hearing the younger Zhu Di's report on the situation in Guanzhong, the elder Zhu said thoughtfully, "Guanzhong is the worst hit by bandits, so it's not surprising to see this. Such incidents were common during the late Yuan Dynasty. The most urgent task is to quell the banditry and re-establish order."

"I understand, father. I am less than 200 miles away from Tongguan now. I will definitely arrive the day after tomorrow morning at the latest. However, I will hurry up and try to arrive the day after tomorrow night. As long as the date in the historical records is correct, I should be able to make it in time."

Young Zhu Di glanced around. In the distance, the north wind was blowing bleakly, and there were very few pedestrians on the horizon. Occasionally, there was smoke rising from cooking fires, but it was also scattered and alone.

"Okay, just pay attention to your own safety."

Old Zhu warned, "Remember, if the Ming Dynasty is destroyed, it's destroyed. Your father will help you rebuild the Ming Dynasty again. But if anything happens to you, your father will regret it. Do you understand?"

"Yes, the child must put his own safety first."

Young Zhu Di responded, then hung up the call and looked at the soldiers behind him.

He only brought 800 men with him.

But enough.

However, everyone is still very tired after traveling these days.

The quality of soldiers in the early Ming Dynasty under Zhu Yuanzhang's rule was still quite strong. Historical records show that the Beijing camp troops in Nanjing had to do drills, marches, horse riding, shooting and other training every day.

Young Zhu Di and his men also followed them in military training, running more than ten kilometers every day and riding horses around the city of Nanjing.

This is how Zhu's sons developed their very strong military skills.

In addition, in the past two years, the Ming Dynasty during the Hongwu Dynasty was in a stage of rapid growth. There was enough food, the soldiers ate better and better, and their salaries were getting higher and higher, so their physical fitness naturally improved rapidly.

Running eight meters in one second is the limit of one second, not the limit of the soldiers. Under such kindness, the soldiers were driven to maintain a high-intensity forced march of dozens of kilometers every day.

But people are made of flesh, not steel. No matter how strong their willpower is, they will still get tired, so the fatigue on the soldiers' faces is still very obvious.

Seeing this, young Zhu Di said to Li Wenzhong beside him: "Brother Bao, pass the order down, and hurry up tonight. We are less than a hundred miles away from Huayin. After arriving in Huayin, we will rest for a day before heading to Tongguan."

"Ah."

Li Wenzhong immediately picked up the intercom and said to the flags, "Attention, all flags. The King of Yan has ordered us to speed up our march tonight. We will reach Huayin in a few dozen miles. We will rest in Huayin for a day tomorrow. Everyone should have a good sleep and recuperate. We don't have to travel all day."

"Yes!"

The flag bearers of each flag were immediately cheered up and passed on the order.

Although Li Wenzhong lied and said the distance was less than a few dozen miles, and in fact the distance was more than 50 kilometers, how could the soldiers know?
Now everyone is on high alert.

I sleep less than four hours a day, about seven hours to be exact. For the remaining seventeen hours, even meals are taken during the day. I only have half a quarter of an hour every two hours to rest and go to the toilet.

The horses were not galloping along the way, but even if they walked slowly, dragging so many tricycles and supplies was a bit too much for the horses, and several weak horses had already died of exhaustion.

Therefore, the soldiers were not only physically tired, but also mentally exhausted, and urgently needed a day to have a good rest.

At the moment, Li Wenzhong used a trick of looking at the plum to quench his thirst, which gave the soldiers hope. They hoped to have a good sleep when they arrived in Huayin, so they cheered up and continued to move forward.

The journey was very long. When we arrived in Huazhou, we finally saw some people.

However, when the people saw the sudden appearance of the strange team, they became very alert and watched from afar without daring to approach.

At present, all the soldiers that can be mobilized in Guanzhong have been mobilized. The able-bodied men have either followed Li Zicheng to become rebels, or have been conscripted by the government to serve as soldiers. The rest are basically the elderly, the weak, women and children, who are struggling to survive.

Young Zhu Di even saw hungry and distressed people on the verge of life and death on the road, and government officials shuttling around the countryside to collect food and fodder for the front lines. The people were suffering terribly.

When he saw this situation, the most he could do was to disperse the soldiers, but he was powerless.

Without the stone tablet's travel function, he could not bring food over and solve the urgent problem. Therefore, he could only continue on his journey to quell the unrest in the world as soon as possible so that the people could return to peace as soon as possible.

The next day, young Zhu Di arrived in Huayin. It was already noon. The soldiers had not slept today and had been running all night. They were exhausted and in very bad condition.

They rested for a day and set off again on October 5th, rushing towards Tongguan.

At this moment in Tongguan, Sun Chuanting's situation was very bad.

The Ming army suffered a crushing defeat in the Battle of Ruzhou, with 40,000 main forces defeated and annihilated, suffering heavy casualties. Only Gao Jie's troops and Bai Guangen's troops, totaling more than 10,000 people, retreated to Tongguan.

At this time, Li Zicheng's power was already very great, with more than 400,000 people under his command, including tens of thousands of cavalry. It can be said that he had a strong army and a powerful force.

Although Tongguan is strategically located, the Wei and Luo Rivers meet the Yellow River in the north and flow down around the pass, and it is close to Mount Hua, the Western Peak, in the west.

The surrounding mountains are mountainous and peak-to-peak, the valleys are deep and the cliffs are steep. The roads are narrow and there is only a narrow goat path in the middle, which can only accommodate one car and one horse. It is known as "the road on earth ends at Tongguan".

However, the troops were too few to control the key points, and Li Zicheng had artillery units, so the defensive pressure on Sun Chuanting was still very great.

The most important thing is that Gao Jie and Bai Guangen are not on good terms.

For this reason, Sun Chuanting could only order Gao Jie to garrison the south of the city gate and Bai Guangen to garrison the southeast forbidden valley, to control the key points and wait for Li Zicheng to attack.

On the third day of October, Li Zicheng arrived outside Tongguan and launched a fierce attack on the south of the pass. Bai Guangen could have attacked Li Zicheng's forces in the Forbidden Valley, but he focused on defending.

Sun Chuanting was very angry and kept sending people to urge Bai Guangen to attack, but Bai Guangen used the excuse that he was also surrounded by the enemy army, so the pressure in Guannan was very great.

In the evening, night is about to fall, the sun sets, and a little afterglow of the early winter sun still shines on the western sky, filling the sky with brilliant clouds like fire.

On the Tongguan city wall, Sun Chuanting watched the rebel army retreating like the tide. There was no joy of surviving the calamity on his face, nor was there any anger towards the enemy. There was only a hint of unwillingness and cold numbness flashing in his eyes.

He knew that Tongguan could not be defended.

Because the past two days were actually Li Zicheng's exploratory attacks to find out the details of Tongguan.

It was just a tentative attack, but Sun Chuanting had already found it difficult to defend.

Once Li Zicheng figured out the situation, Tongguan would be doomed.

For this reason, he could only tap the wall of the city gate, close his eyes, and sigh: "This may be the place where my bones are buried."

"Report!"

At this time, a soldier pointed to the north of Guan and said, "Report! Commander, an army appeared in Guanbei. They said they are here to help you defend the city."

"Oh?"

Sun Chuanting thought that the soldiers were recruited by Shaanxi officials or the Qin Palace, and asked in surprise, "How many people are there?"

"Probably less than a thousand."

"More than a thousand? Who led them, Huang Shiqing or Wang Ding?"

Sun Chuanting was very disappointed when he heard that there were only so few people.

Because neither Huang Shiqing, the Right Councillor of Shaanxi who was ordered to garrison in Shangzhou, nor Wang Ding, the Shaanxi General who was raising troops in the rear, had many troops on hand.

This means that even if they had temporarily assembled an army, it was most likely not a group of well-trained elite soldiers. It would be good enough if they did not collapse immediately after entering the battlefield.

On the other hand, even the tens of thousands of elite Qin troops he trained in Shaanxi, although they defeated Li Zicheng at the beginning, would immediately mutiniate once the food and grass supply was not timely.

Therefore, at this critical juncture, the role of these people is probably similar to that of civilian laborers and auxiliary soldiers. It is impossible for them to go to the battlefield to kill the enemy, not to mention that there are only so few of them.

The soldier shook his head and said, "I asked, but they didn't answer."

"Go ask again."

"Yes."

The soldier who delivered the message immediately went back to convey the order.

But not long after, he suddenly ran back and reported to Sun Chuanting again: "Report, Commander. They said that it doesn't matter who they are, as long as you know that they can defeat Li Zicheng with more than a thousand people. If they can't defeat him, they will behead them. I hope you can go and see them."

"Ah."

Sun Chuanting was almost so angry that he laughed. He turned around and said with his hands behind his back, "Then I'll go see who's so arrogant."

Soon, surrounded by his guards, Sun Chuanting arrived at the north of Tongguan City.

At this moment, outside the north gate of the city, young Zhu Di was still riding on his horse, looking up at the towering Tongguan City.

Since Tongguan was located between mountain passes, Li Zicheng's army could not pass through. There was no need to defend the north of the pass, and there were too few soldiers guarding the pass. Therefore, no more than twenty defensive soldiers could be seen on the city walls and at the gate.

I'm afraid a soldier of several hundred men could attack.

But this is enough to show that Sun Chuanting was already in a very difficult situation. Otherwise, Li Zicheng only needed to send a few thousand people to find a way to take a detour, cross mountains and ridges, and perhaps he would have a chance to break in from the north of the pass.

However, historically, Tongguan would have been lost tomorrow. I think this is no longer a problem of Sun Chuanting's ability to mobilize soldiers for defense, but a problem of not being able to defend the city head-on. Therefore, it is not Sun Chuanting's fault for neglecting the defensive forces in the north of the pass.

After a moment, Sun Chuanting first glanced down from the top of the city wall, and frowned when he saw the other party's clothes.

It was not the uniform of the Ming army, but a strange light green outfit with a black coat on the outside that looked like cotton armor. They didn't even have a sword on them. Could they defeat Li Zicheng?
"who are you?"

Sun Chuanting shouted from above.

The main reason why he was willing to come over to meet him was that the other party did not attack.

After all, his troops were too few. If they were enemies, they would have already reached the city wall in the north gate.

"Fire!"

Young Zhu Di did not answer Sun Chuanting's words, but waved his hand to signal the soldiers to take out the mortars.

Then two soldiers took out the mortar from the tricycle, quickly set it up on the ground, aimed at the wilderness in the northeast direction, and then stuffed the shells into the grenade launcher.

"Boom!"

After a soft sound.

Immediately afterwards, a "swoosh" sound was heard.

Under Sun Chuanting's puzzled gaze, the shell landed in the wilderness three miles away, and then.
"boom!"

A huge explosion sounded.

The terrifying air waves caused the surrounding weeds to bend and sway in all directions.

Earth, rocks, and weeds flew everywhere, smoke and dust rose three feet high, and a round pit with a diameter of at least half a foot appeared on the spot.

The Ming soldiers on the city wall widened their eyes.

Young Zhu Di shouted to Sun Chuanting on the city wall: "Can I help you defend the city?"

Sun Chuanting had just woken up from his dream. Seeing that little Zhu Di's eyes were shining, he nodded repeatedly and waved his hand, saying, "Yes, yes, yes. Quickly, open the city gate and invite the warriors in!"

The fact that the other side did not attack the city proves that they are friends, not enemies.

With such a powerful weapon, you will definitely shine in the battle to defend the city.

At this moment, Sun Chuanting had already regarded young Zhu Di as the last hope of the Ming Dynasty, a life-saving straw!

(End of this chapter)