The Ming Dynasty began from Sarhu

Chapter 390: Wiping Out the Bandits
The bandits broke through the Guang'anmen city wall, and the old camp climbed down along the city wall, opened the city gate from the inside, and the army entered the city in a stream.

With a loud bang, the warhorse under Li Xianzhong raised its front hooves and let out a terrible neigh. Before he could hold on to the saddle, he was overturned by the shock wave and fell to the ground.

The guards were about to step forward to help him up when everyone was suddenly shocked by the scene before them.

With Guang'anmen as the center, the left and right city walls were twisted into exaggerated shapes, smoke, dust and dirt filled the air, and countless limbs and remains flew into the air and fell like raindrops.

Before the explosion subsided, suddenly, a ball of light brighter than the sun shot out from the Wanggongchang gunpowder depot and pierced the sky.

White light instantly flooded the Guang'anmen city wall.

God, forgive me.

Two hundred and sixty miles away in Tianjin, Xu Guangqi boarded a Fujian ship at Zhangjiagang Wharf. When he got on the sampan, he subconsciously made the sign of the cross on his chest.

At this time, a fireball suddenly rose in the capital city a hundred miles away. The golden fireball was like a living thing, still rolling and rising.

Although it was still late at night, the fireball had already illuminated the area within a radius of a hundred miles.

The fireball burned the missionary's eyes so much that Xu Guangqi felt he would go blind in the next moment.

"Can this old man go to fortune-telling with Blind Ke?"

The huge fireball was still rising and growing slowly, as if it was about to engulf Tianjin.

But the initial noise had subsided into silence, even the grass insects that had been chirping incessantly in early summer had fallen silent, and there was complete silence all around.

A moment later, the bells on the Fuchuan's window lattices shook violently, and the shock wave, centered in the capital, expanded at a visible speed to the surrounding areas of the capital. A mushroom-shaped black cloud continued to rise, obscuring the sky.

Half an hour later, the light finally disappeared. In the dark night, the mushroom cloud was like an invincible monster, wanting to devour everything, but it eventually slowly dissipated.

~~~~~~
A dazzling white light illuminated the night sky over the capital area for a hundred miles, turning darkness into day. A runaway comet, with an explosive equivalent to 10,000 tons of TNT and a force roughly equal to the Hiroshima atomic bomb, exploded and disintegrated approximately ten kilometers above Wanggongchang, the capital. Tens of thousands of lead-bullet-sized fragments of the comet plummeted to the ground at thirty kilometers per second. A second before impact with the main military tent of Emperor Wuding within the Guang'anmen Wengcheng, it ignited violently and disintegrated into billions of particles of dust.

It was like a thousand suns illuminating the sky at the same time. The low clouds in the Little Ice Age climate emitted a dark blue light under the bright light. The earth shook violently, and the cream-like clouds kept rolling, rising at an accelerated speed, all the way up to the stratosphere.

This tragic land, long ravaged by famine, plague and war, is finally reborn from the ashes.

The night is long and the dawn is coming.

Tonight, all the good and evil, grudges and hatreds that have been active on this land will be wiped out. Tomorrow the sun will rise as usual, and everything will start again.

In the slowly rising giant mushroom cloud, the streets and buildings of the capital instantly disintegrated into countless fragments...

Dust and smoke filled the air, the big tent collapsed and shattered, Liu Zhaosun was nowhere to be found, and a huge human-shaped black shadow was reflected on a relatively intact ruin, probably the last trace of his father-in-law Yang Hao left in this world.

The walls of Guang'anmen Wengcheng were as fragile as tofu. They fell from a height and shattered into countless pieces in an instant. The moat closest to the impact point instantly turned into steam, and the water of the Tongji Canal ten miles away was still boiling...

A massive mushroom cloud rose ever higher, as if to invite worship even after ravaging the land. The three thousand elite cavalrymen of the old battalion, who had been rushing from Jimingyi in Huailai County to the capital to reinforce Liu Zongmin, were engulfed in a cloud of dust and smoke as they reached the official road near the outskirts of the capital.

When the smoke and dust cleared, the more than 3,000 war horses seemed to be still slowly moving forward. However, when I got closer, I found that the riders were no longer human, but skeletons. Blue flames continued to emerge from the skeletons, and the horses beneath the withered bones had turned into hideous horse skeletons...

~~~~~
After leaving the city walls, Kang Yingqian was waiting in front of the moat. He had them blend in with the artisans leaving the city. Civilians and artisans had been escaping every day since the siege began, and neither side tried to stop them. Liu Zongmin, preoccupied with the siege, did not carefully examine the artisans who had surrendered.

After leaving the capital, they encountered several groups of bandits along the way, each consisting of thirty to fifty people. They avoided them from afar and headed east quickly.

Late at night the next day, we arrived in Tianjin.

Governor Yuan Keli led his troops to confront the bandits for two months. They tried to reinforce the capital several times, but were repelled by the bandits every time. Fortunately, the main force of the bandits was concentrated in the capital and did not besiege Tianjin.

Seeing the two queens, princess and prince coming, Yuan Keli sent soldiers to protect them.

"The bandits are rampant. I have no choice but to defend Tianjin and protect the people. The Queen and the Crown Prince will depart immediately for Liaodong for refuge. Tianjin is short of troops, so we can only send thirty combat soldiers for protection."

~~~~~~
At dusk on May 5, everyone had been in Zhangjiagang for a day. During this time, Xu Guangqi, Jin Ni Ge and others rushed over from Shandong, preparing to defect to Liaodong.

Xu Guangqi said with lingering fear:

"I'm afraid Shandong can no longer be defended. Liu Zongzhou and Shi Kefa have learned that the capital is in danger and are attacking Linqing and Jining day and night. Our people are almost wiped out."

Everyone was silent. Liaodong was the only place left for them to go.

However, after the appointed time, the emperor and his men still did not arrive. On May 6, Jin Yuji could wait no longer and insisted on returning to the capital, but was stopped by Pei Dahu.

At 9 p.m., a deafening explosion suddenly sounded in the sky west of Zhangjiagang.

Before people could react, a dazzling white light rose from the capital, and a huge mushroom cloud slowly rose into the sky. In the scorching shock wave, everything on the official road west of Zhangjiawan Wharf turned into nothingness.

Everyone rescued Xu Guangqi who fell into the water, and the missionary murmured:

"God bless this, this is fire from heaven..."

Jin Yuji burst into tears, and regardless of the scorching heat waves coming from the west, she grabbed the horse's reins and rushed towards the capital.

No one could hold her back, and the eldest princess Liu Yufei, who had just turned two, kept crying. Liu Kan, who was less than half a year old, also started crying.

Kang Yingqian suddenly roared:
"Empress Jin! The safety of the world depends on you and your children. Do you really want to disappoint Emperor Wuding?!"

Jin Yuji was exhausted and her voice was hoarse. She looked back at the smoke rising in the west, and was so heartbroken that she fainted.

At this moment, everyone was suddenly surprised to find that Queen West Yang Qing'er had disappeared.

(End of this chapter)