The Ming Dynasty began from Sarhu

Chapter 440: The Tiger Tamer: Journey to the Great Qidong
The Yalu River is winding and graceful. After flowing through Kuandian County, the river becomes more turbulent. When it reaches the Beitian Huashan section, the peaks are strange, the gorges are dangerous, and the ravines are deep.

It is late autumn, and the mountains are covered with fiery red maple leaves, which are quiet and charming. The infinite scenery attracts literati and poets to stop and linger.

However, in the autumn of the first year of Wuding, no one enjoyed this beautiful scenery.

Two months ago, taking advantage of the civil unrest in Qi, the Korean governor Li Shunyi led 20,000 Korean soldiers, brazenly crossed the Yalu River, and raided the undermanned Kuandian City. After the Korean army broke through the city, they killed all the defenders, burned and killed people in the city for five days, and finally captured tens of thousands of Han people and brought them back to their country.

After this battle, six out of ten Han people in Kuandian were killed, and the population was almost extinct.

Zhaojia Village, at the foot of Tianhua Mountain.

The autumn wind rustles the withered reeds, and the once bustling fishing village has become a ghost town, with only broken walls and wild grass left, and wild beasts roaming around from time to time.

On the deserted slope at the entrance of the village, a field of sweet sorghum grew crookedly. Because no one took care of it, the weeds in the field were almost higher than the waist.

Click!Click!
A sharp biting sound was heard, and a hungry black bear suddenly rushed out of the overgrown sorghum field.

Hei Xiazi waved his two thick and sharp bear paws, and with one slap, he grabbed a dozen sorghum stalks into his arms, then sat down on the ground. His huge body was like a mountain of flesh, and the crackling sound of bushes breaking could be heard around him.

It panted heavily and stuffed the sorghum stalks mixed with soil into its bloody mouth.

With a crackling sound, the sharp fangs crushed the ripe straw into crumbs, and the sweet juice dripped into the black bear's throat.

After drinking the sweet water, the black bear became excited immediately, howling and showing a ferocious smile on its black and white bear face.

A female wild boar with three piglets saw a black bear eating sorghum from a distance, and was so scared that they turned around and ran away.

The black bear smelled the scent of the wild boar, but didn't care. It continued to eat carelessly and soon ate all the sorghum around it.

As the sun rose to noon, its body began to feel hot. It spread its paws in front of its chest and staggered to a large, bare bluestone on the ground. It lay down and prepared to sleep.

The chirping of birds and insects around suddenly stopped, and everything was silent for a moment. A strong wind blew across the ground.

The black bear stood up unsteadily, shook his butt and looked around.

It didn't matter that I saw it. A gust of wind blew by, and there was a sound of a flutter in the forest. A huge tiger with white forehead and hanging eyes jumped out. Its tiger tail swept the surrounding bushes, making a rustling sound and causing leaves in the bushes to fall everywhere.

When the beast jumped up, its body was not even as tall as the black bear, and it was obviously not an adult tiger.

I don't know whether it was extremely hungry or had a grudge against the black bear, but as soon as they met, it pressed its two paws on the ground, pounced upwards, swooped down from mid-air, opened its bloody mouth, jumped onto the black bear's back, and started biting the bear's neck.

The black bear lowered its head, used its front legs to desperately protect its neck, and dug its legs into the ground.

The half-grown tiger suddenly roared towards the sky, emitting bursts of angry roars, and the surrounding rocks trembled with the sound of the tiger's roar.

The black bear, who was pinned firmly to the ground, suddenly stopped resisting, turned his belly over, stared at the vicious enemy that was rushing towards him, let out a low whine from his nose, and remained motionless, allowing the tiger to eat him.

~~~~~~
Jiang Liuer looked up at the distant valley, listened carefully for a while, and then asked Lao Qian.

"Old Qian, did you hear that?"

Old Qian had no time to pay attention to Jiang Liuer. He leaned on a worn-out sword, took out a coconut ladle, and drank water.

"I'm so tired, why haven't we reached Kuandian yet?"

Alessa, who was walking at the end, looked tired. He was carrying a dirty cloth bag, and every step he took seemed extremely strenuous.

"Did you hear that?"

Alissa shook his head.

In the distant mountain stream, in the misty clouds, the roar of the tiger gradually faded away.

"Jiang Liu'er, eat some venison and rest for half an hour. We can reach Kuandian City before dark. I'm afraid you've fainted from hunger."

As Alsa spoke, he walked under the tree, took off the cloth bag on his shoulder, took out the pickled venison from the bag and shared it with his companions.

Lao Qian took the meat and gobbled it up with dry fried noodles, saying:

"That's good. There's a general in Kuandian City who is my fellow townsman, all from Shenyang. I can finally sleep well tonight. When I go back this time, I will never come out again." Jiang Liuer stared blankly at the depths of Tianhua Mountain. After looking for a long time, he didn't hear the howling sound under the pine trees again, so he took out the coconut ladle to drink water.

The venison and fried noodles were given to them by a kind-hearted Solon hunter when they escaped from Nurgan City (Note 1).

Jiang Liu'er chewed the shriveled venison, trying to recall the appearance of the Sauron hunter. More than a month had passed, and he wondered if this family had been eaten by the Rakshasa ghost.

The group of Rakshasas on Kuyi Island eat everything.

Over the past month, Jiang Liuer and his three companions escaped from Kuyi Island, dodging the pursuit of Rakshasa ghosts all the way, and moved forward westward with difficulty.

Jiang Liuer's three companions are:
Lao Qian, a fur merchant from Shenyang, Alessa, a Jurchen from Haixi, and Matsushita, the little tiger from Sakhalin Island.

Except for these few, the rest of the northern expedition team were basically killed, or to be more precise, eaten by the Cossacks, including the bony arm of the chief officer Li Sanguang.

Jiang Liuer's team had 56 members, but only these few were left alive.

From the first year of the Tianqi reign to the first year of the Wuding reign, two expedition teams successively traveled thousands of miles, and the team members' footprints covered almost every inch of land in Nurgandusi.

The previous commander, Xu Xiake, died in Korea, and at least 800 Kaiyuan soldiers died on Sakhalin Island.

The dead were left with no trace, and the living were terrified.

Like the defeat of the Qi army in the interior, the northern expedition suffered heavy losses. The dozens of supply stations and troop transport stations they had established in Nurgan City and Sakhalin Island over three years of hardship were destroyed one by one by the Cossacks in the past six months. The team members were almost all killed or wounded, and their bodies were eaten by the barbarians.

The early expansion of the Great Qi Empire in Outer Northeast, like the emperor's expansion actions in Korea and Japan, was short of troops and lacked successors. In the end, the regime collapsed rapidly after the disappearance of Liu Zhaosun and was completely defeated.

I wonder how Emperor Wuding will punish these daring Cossacks.

However, one thing is certain: given Liu Zhaosun's current mental state, once Moscow is captured, he will at least cut off one of the Tsar's hands or legs and roast him in front of the Tsar.

Thanks to the time traveler (the Battle of Tsushima greatly stimulated the European powers), the Cossacks' eastward invasion in this dimension occurred at least thirty years earlier than the original history.

By October of the first year of Wuding (1626), the number of Cossack colonists who had arrived in Outer Northeast China had reached thousands, and a large number of Russians eager to get rich continued to move eastward.

They were well-equipped, highly motivated, and had the support of the Manchu nobles. Dudu made many promises to these people and even signed a treaty to cede Sakhalin Island to the Cossacks - although the Qing army did not occupy it at all.

While Emperor Wu Ding was advancing rapidly in Shandong, the Russians were building bastions on Sakhalin Island and Nurgan City, and were cautiously encroaching on the land of Outer Manchuria to the south.

The three survivors had been hiding in Sakhalin Island for two months until early September. When the main force of the Cossacks moved south, they killed two guards and fled back to Nurgan City on the other side of the sea by boat. After traveling thousands of miles, they finally arrived at Kuandian City next to the Yalu River.

During this period, he was chased by Rakshasa demons and blocked by Jianzhou Jurchens, and almost died several times.

I don’t know whose luck was blessed by these three people, but Jiang Liuer and the others escaped all the way back and were unharmed in the end.

It should be noted that their chief officer Ma Shiying almost died in Sakhalin Island, and another chief officer, Li Sanguang, ended up even worse.

Jiang Liuer saw with his own eyes that Li Sanguang's arm was cut off by the Rakshasa ghost, and then was eaten on the spot by a group of hungry enemies.

Fortunately, I returned to Liaodong and Kuandian and was finally safe.

Everything before him seemed like a lifetime ago. The fifteen-year-old boy understood more deeply the words given by Emperor Wu Ding when they set out from Shenyang:

"The enemies you will encounter in the north will be more ferocious than wild beasts. May you be blessed."

The emperor should have known the true identities of these Rakshasas long ago.

Jiang Liuer thought of Panasonic again.

Panasonic has grown up gradually, and like a rebellious child, it began to disobey Jiang Liuer's orders.

Three days ago, the little tiger killed two Korean soldiers who were robbing him on the road by the Yalu River, and left the tiger-taming boy without saying goodbye.

Note:
1. Nurgan City: also known as Nikolayevsk, is located at the mouth of the Heilongjiang River, across the sea from Sakhalin Island. It is now part of the Russian Far Eastern Federation. During the Ming Dynasty, it was the headquarters of its administrative agency in the northeast, Nurgandusi. During the Qing Dynasty, this place was called Temple Street and was under the jurisdiction of the Jilin General.

(End of this chapter)