The Ming Dynasty began from Sarhu

Chapter 830: Conquering Annan
A dazzling golden light shot out from the Demon-Suppressing Palace, shooting into the deep cave and illuminating half of the sky.

The zombies' roars behind him stopped abruptly.

Everything returns to nothingness.

"It seems they are afraid of the things in the hall."

Qi Meng picked up the Gatling gun and walked in without hesitation.

Zhu Youjian wanted to stop him, but it was too late, so he had to follow him in.

After crossing the huge threshold that is more than half a meter high, a long-stale musty smell hits your nose.

Qi Meng sneezed, and there was a rustling sound in the darkness, and something seemed to fly up.

Zhu Youjian asked.

"Is it a bat?"

"Vampire." Qi Meng didn't believe that bats could survive so deep underground.

Zhu Youjian was uneasy: "Turn on the flashlight."

Qi Meng turned on the flashlight. The space of the hall was much larger than he had imagined, and the beam of light could not even reach the end.

"Strange, I just saw that the Demon Suppression Palace wasn't very big."

"Time and space distortion is not technically difficult."

Zhu Youjian suddenly called out, "Old Qi, there's a Bixi! There's words on it."

Bixi, the sixth of the nine sons of the dragon in ancient mythology, is a famous auspicious beast, also known as Baxia, Ao, Guifu, Tianxia, and Dragon Turtle. It looks like a turtle and is good at carrying heavy objects, often used to carry the base of monuments.

The Bixi is about two meters tall, with a simple shape. The stone tablet is faded and it is impossible to tell what era it was made from.

Looking around, there was only a large tortoise shell placed in the empty hall, and nothing else.

"Blow it up!"

After Qi Meng finished speaking, he put down his backpack and began to place the high explosives and fuses.

"The tomb passage should be under this Bixi."

This bundle is not ordinary explosives, it contains one-fifth of an energy block.

Zhu Youjian stepped back.

"Blow up the Bixi, there might be a tomb passage underneath."

Zhu Youjian was worried that he would not be able to find the tomb passage, so he blew up the Demon-Suppressing Hall first. The two men died before they could accomplish their mission and were buried alive in this pitch-black underground cave.

He called out to Qi Meng, "Old Qi, don't rush down. I have a bad feeling."

Qi Meng said without even turning his head: "Ask yourself, when have you ever had a good premonition?"

Zhu Youjian knew that he could not persuade him, so he stood up and turned around a few times. On the stone material at the bottom of the stone tablet near the turtle's back, there was a densely packed inscription of small seal characters.

Zhu Youjian, relying on his memory and knowledge from his previous life, took a quick glance and knew what was written on it. He read it out loud:

"In the eighth year of Guangde, it opened when it met Qi!"

"I know I am the destined one, just like General Hong in Water Margin."

Zhu Youjian took a deep breath. How could this plot be exactly the same as in "Water Margin"? Except for the encounter, all other details matched.

Could it be that if I enter the tomb passage, I will travel back to the Song Dynasty?

"Water Margin" was written in the Ming Dynasty. It is possible that he was captured and brought back to the Ming Dynasty and traveled to Ximen Qing's hometown Linqing.

Zhu Youjian said earnestly:
"Lao Qi, let's go back. I have a bad feeling. Does anyone know where the bottom leads to?"

"What if the Demon Lord is released?"

Qi Meng said disapprovingly, "The world is in such chaos, many people are looking forward to the end of the world. Even the warlords are not afraid of them, so what is the Demon Lord?"

"If it's Shura Hell, once you enter, you'll land on the bare ground and be chased and crushed by a giant roller with nowhere to escape. You'll be crushed into pieces and then resurrected to continue being crushed."

"Have you been to Shura Hell?"

Zhu Youjian was terrified: "Every time I hanged myself on Coal Hill, the next stop was hell."

Qi Meng smiled and said, "I sympathize with you. Don't hang yourself casually in the future. Try to live hard and stop talking nonsense. I'm doing something important. Get out of the way!" "It's about to explode! It's about to explode!"

Zhu Youjian cursed and walked out of the hall cursing.

Qi Meng also ran out with a smile. Zhu Youjian was about to ask him questions when he heard some movement in the Demon-Suppressing Hall, like a kitchen knife scraping against a bluestone slab.

Then, there was a loud noise that made Zhu Youjian's ears buzz. As he expected, the pillars and eaves of the hall collapsed one after another.

The bluestone slabs weighing tens of thousands of pounds passed by the two men's noses like leaves, rushed into the darkness, and disappeared.

Smoke and dust rolled in from the sky, half of the hall was blown away, and in an instant, bricks, wooden poles, and tiles fell like raindrops.

"Get away!"

Qi Meng roared and threw Zhu Youjian to the ground, allowing bricks and rubble to fall on him.

Suddenly, the falling bricks, stones and wood blocks stopped in the air, and a dagger-shaped wood chip was less than three centimeters away from Qi Meng's throat.

A huge holographic projection panel appeared before my eyes:

There was a line of big words written on it that said "Congratulations on completing the mission."

A strong wind blew, and the Demon-Suppressing Palace began to disappear bit by bit like a sand castle on the seashore. At the same time, large swathes of sunlight shone in, and the giant stone steps connecting the underground and the ground also fell apart. However, all the stones and bricks perfectly avoided the two people.

"Lao Qi, I guess we'll be apart for a while again. Take care, brother."

"Take care, Zhu Youjian."

Qi Meng whispered, and the smoke and dust quickly engulfed everything, and Zhu Youjian's smile disappeared in the dust.

Qi Meng shouted a few times, but there was no response. He was worried whether Zhu Youjian was dead or alive.

I heard the sound of wind whistling in my ears. I opened my eyes and tried hard to see the surroundings clearly, but all I saw was a distorted starry sky and blurry space.

In an instant, he seemed to sink into a nightmare from which he would never wake up. His body plummeted, then flipped and rose again, and familiar scenes emerged before his eyes:
An asteroid hits the Earth, Homo sapiens wielding wooden clubs chase their prey, saber-toothed tigers cautiously walk on the glaciers, Dayu controls the floods, King Zhou burns himself to death, the stinking corpse of Ying Zheng, Ji Kang plays the seven-stringed instrument before being executed... Snow falls all over the battlefield of Sarhu, Shura Hell, Shen Lian's blood-stained Embroidered Spring Sword, artillery fire on both sides of the Hunhe River, the banner of the Later Jin Khan burning on the walls of Shenyang, Huang Taiji's dying curse, the sky full of flowers during the Waking of Insects in March, the endless Han River, a solitary boat, the statue of the Zhenwu Emperor opens its eyes and looks down upon all living things, the dead rats pile up in the capital, Emperor Chongzhen swings his sword and chops, the fire from the Wanggongchang explosion...

Qi Meng was like a solitary boat, floating in the endless void. Hundreds of thousands of years of time quietly flowed, disappeared, entangled, and overlapped around him, and finally merged into the vast galaxy.

After an unknown amount of time, Liu Zhaosun finally woke up from the nightmare.

Looking around, I found that the smoke and dust in the sky had finally dissipated. At this time, I heard the crisp chirping of birds and the sound of splashing water. Looking around, I realized that the time and space had completely changed.

As far as the eye can see, there is a lush tropical rainforest.

Pythons, monkeys, parrots...all kinds of wild animals roam freely in the rainforest.

The elephants, loaded with guns and ammunition, stretched out their trunks, swept through the green leaves on the roadside, and ate the leaves when the elephant soldiers were not paying attention.

Emperor Taizu Liu Zhaosun rode on the back of an elephant. In May, the Annan trail was unbearably hot, with smoke and dust filling the air. The unfamiliar foreign country, the unfamiliar climate and water, and the bites of mosquitoes made people feel extremely tired.

I just took a nap, but it feels like a thousand years have passed.

Liu Zhaosun was in a trance and vaguely saw Shen Lian leading the war elephant to a place under the shade of a tree to take a rest.

The emperor thought: The former Jinyiwei of the Ming Dynasty were also responsible for feeding elephants in Nanjing, so Shen Lian should be good at this.

On the dusty path, the war horses and elephants of the Great Qi Empire formed a long black line, stretching from Zhennan Pass all the way south, deep into the territory of Annan.

"Can the Empire truly rule this land effectively? Will Great Qi not repeat the mistakes of the Ming Dynasty?"

Along the way, Liu Zhaosun repeatedly asked himself, but the Nguyen family had been harassing Guangxi one after another, and Annan was like a fishbone, making Da Qi feel uncomfortable.

A Tang horse came galloping over, bringing the latest war report from the south:
"Your Majesty, the Nguyen clan of Annan has rebelled again. Nguyen Hue has sent his entire army to attack Licheng. The army was hastily repelled, and the Cantonese soldiers trampled on each other, resulting in countless deaths. Governor Hong begs Your Majesty to send troops to support us."

In the first year of Guangde, Taizu abdicated the throne to Liu Kan and focused on expanding the border in Lingnan.

In the eleventh month of the lunar calendar in the fifth year of Guangde (1637), the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, Hong Chengchou, was ordered to lead his troops out of Zhennan Pass and lead soldiers to attack Annan.

The Qi army advanced with unstoppable force, capturing the Annan capital of Licheng (present-day Hanoi, Vietnam) in just 10 days. Members of the Li clan and common people came out to greet Nguyen Hue, who fled back to Quang Nam.

On November 1638 of the lunar calendar in the sixth year of Guang Duc (), Hong Chengchou officially announced the canonization of Le Vichy as the King of Annan, and the Le Dynasty of Annan was officially restored.

Nguyen Hue of the Tây Sơn Dynasty first sent a letter to the Qi army camp, begging for surrender with humble words, and secretly "recruited one out of every three men" to recruit 80,000 soldiers.

On the fifth day of the fifth month in the eighth year of Guangde (1640), the army held a banquet to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival. The Ruan army launched a surprise attack on Licheng. Hong Chengchou responded poorly and the Qi army retreated.

On the first day of June in the eighth year of Guangde, Taizu sent 30,000 troops out of Zhennan Pass and personally led an expedition to Annan. This was the Battle of Annan.

(End of this chapter)