Taichang Ming Dynasty

Chapter 533 Disregard
"You, why do you want me to write this kind of letter home?" Wu Ergudai felt inexplicably creepy.

Amin released his hand from covering his face and gave Wuergudai a rather warm smile. "Your good brother is an official in the Ming Dynasty. Now he wants to pacify us barbarians. We can also pacify him in return."

"Oh," Wu Ergudai felt a little relieved. "Second Prince wants me to write a letter to win over Kebaku, use a sowing of dissension, and make him betray the Ming court?"

"Yeah," Amin nodded.

"Is this what Tianming Khan meant?" Wuergudai asked with a smile.

"Wu Ergudai," Amin asked calmly, his expression unchanged, "Are you worried that I might harm you?"

"Look at what you said, of course not!" Wu Ergudai looked away guiltily, "Why would I doubt you, Second Prince?"

"Haha, after all, that happened, it's okay for you to have doubts," Amin said with a smile. "Whether the Khan knows about this matter or not, wouldn't it be clear if you go and ask him yourself?"

"Since it was the Second Prince who sent the order, I believe it must have come from the Great Khan," Wuergudai said with a smile. "I won't bother asking the Great Khan, as it would only make things boring for me."

"Whatever you want." Amin shrugged.

Wuergudai noticed that Amin seemed a little unhappy and quickly put on an ingratiating attitude. "How can I get this letter home to Kebaku?"

"Don't worry about that," Amin said, pointing to a side room where writing brushes, inkstones, and paper were already laid out. "Just write here. Once you're done, I'll find a way to mail it for you."

Wu Ergudai was startled, not daring to object. He licked his dry lips, nodded, and said, "May I ask, Second Prince, how should I write this letter home?"

"You haven't written it?" Amin asked.

"I haven't seen Kebaku for twenty years. I don't even know where to send this letter, so how can I write it?" Wu Ergudai said.

"I'm talking about writing to other people."

"There's no need to write letters home if it's someone else's story," Wu Ergudai said with three key words. "My family is all in Dajin. If you want to see them, you can just walk there."

"That's right," Amin said without much reaction. "How about this. Even though we're trying to sow discord and win him over, we can't get straight to the point right away. We still have to write some good things about our brotherhood. For now, don't mention his official career in Ming, nor your situation in the Great Jin. Just write about family matters and how happy we are to hear he's still alive, and how happy other relatives and friends are too. Once we've had some time to interact and the atmosphere has become harmonious, we can then make an offer to win him over."

"I understand, Second Prince, I'll write it right away!" Wu Ergudai turned his head to look at the side room that Amin pointed to him.

"Okay, go ahead. I'll wait." Amin nodded.

"Yes." Wu Ergudai smiled and walked towards the side room.

Entering the side room, Wu Ergudai's face darkened.

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"Do you think I should tell the Khan about this?" As soon as he returned home, Wuergudai told his wife, Aisin Gioro Manggusi, everything Amin asked him to do.

"Have you signed your name?" Manguji was a typical middle-aged woman. She was over thirty, yet she still retained the charm and grace of a mature woman, with a healthy, fertile demeanor. If you only looked at Manguji's appearance, you wouldn't guess she was already a mother of three, her eldest son almost reaching adulthood.

"Nonsense! How can it be called a family letter if I don't sign it?" Wu Ergudai, who was only a few years older than Manguji, looked so weathered. The two of them sitting together looked like a pair of father and daughter.

"Is there Amin's own signature on the letter?" Manguji asked again.

"A family letter! I said it was a family letter, a family letter from the Hada tribe!" Wu Ergudai was a little annoyed. "Can it still be called a family letter if it's signed by him?"

Mangguji couldn't stand Wuergudai's impatience. She turned her head away, her temper rising. "If you're so impatient, why are you asking me? Just make your own decision."

"Oh!" Wuergudai's anger suddenly deflated. He quickly took Manguji's slender but not soft hand and gently patted the back of his hand twice. "I was anxious too."

"What's the point of you getting angry at me? You've already finished writing that damn thing." Manguji struggled slightly but did not retract his hand.

"I'm just mad at myself, okay?" Wu Ergudai said with a flattering smile. "Tell me quickly, should I tell the Khan about this?"

"Hmph," Manguji snorted. "One last question. Did you mention Amin in that 'family letter'?" As if in retaliation, Manguji added a playful emphasis to the word 'family letter'.

"No, I didn't dare to write it." Wu Ergudai shook his head.

Mangguji rolled his eyes at Wuergudai. "Then what else is there to say?"

"The Second Prince almost watched me write, how could I mention him." Wu Ergudai sighed softly.

"Oh, Wuergudai! I don't know what to say to you. We've suffered defeat on the front lines, the atmosphere is so tense, and so many troubles happened last year. How could you have complied with his wishes and written such a letter to your family without any basis in a secret room with only the two of us?" Manguji was deeply involved in all household affairs and her husband's careers. On some matters, she thought more thoroughly than the cowardly Hada Beile, Wuergudai. So much so that outsiders were used to calling her "Hada Gege" instead of "Mangguji Gege."

"The front line failed," Wu Ergudai was stunned. "Who told you that?"

"Do I need to know more about this?" Manguji's eyes were slightly clouded with uneasiness. "If the front line hadn't suffered a defeat, why would they withdraw?"

"Didn't you say to reinforce the rear?" Wu Ergudai said.

"You believe this kind of thing?" Manguji gave Wuergudai a blank look.

"Of course I believe it. I saw it with my own eyes. All the men in the old Zhuona village were killed. Only a dozen women were left, and all of them had their thumbs cut off. You know all these things." Although Manguji did not follow Wuergudai to inspect the Zhuona village, Wuergudai told Manguji clearly about the tragic situation in the village after he came back.

"Wulgudai. Do you think the Khan would withdraw his troops just because a few small villages were massacred? Even if he wanted to intervene, couldn't he have sent a minister or a prince back to handle it? Even if consolidating villages requires labor and deploying troops is necessary, is it really necessary to bring back all 100,000 men?" Manguji asked three questions in a row. "You mean the attack in the rear is just an excuse?" Wuergudai said thoughtfully. "The reason for withdrawing is that we can't continue the fight?"

"Of course. Last autumn, the troops were hastily withdrawn. Since the beginning of this spring, we have been engaged in military operations for nearly three months, but what have we gained in the end? Nothing at all." Manguji said, "If this doesn't mean we can't continue the war, what does it mean?"

"I haven't heard that the losses are huge." Wu Ergudai said.

"He's the Khan of the Great Jin Dynasty. If he didn't even have this ability to judge the situation, how could he have lured a valuable commodity like you to the Jianzhou tribe twice?" Manguji looked around and saw that the servants were gone. Then he said sarcastically, "I think the Khan's plan to conquer the Ming Dynasty will fail."

"You seem quite happy?" Wu Ergudai raised his eyebrows.

"I'm not exactly happy, I just don't care. I, Manguji, am the water that Tianming Khan poured on your Hada tribe. What does the success of the Jianzhou tribe have to do with me?" Manguji glared at Wuergudai. "I just hope the men in my family don't die in vain on the battlefield."

"No." Wuergudai leaned forward and tried to hug Manguji.

"Get out of here," Manguji pushed Wuergudai away. "I'm not talking about you, a useless old man. Esenderi is almost an adult. If we keep fighting like this, he will drag us to the battlefield sooner or later."

"Alas. There's nothing we can do about it." Wuergudai sighed. He wasn't a strong and bellicose man, but he and Manguji's son, Esen Deli, were both upright and full of vigor, and they were determined to achieve great things.

"There is still a way." Manguji lowered his voice and pricked up his ears.

"What method?" Wu Ergudai asked.

"Learn from your good brother Kebaku." Manguji leaned close to Wuergudai's ear.

"You, what do you mean?" Wu Ergudai was shocked.

"Let me ask you," Manguji stared at the entrance to the room. "Do you think Kebaku will betray the Ming?"

"I don't think so. He's been in Ming for twenty years," Wu Ergudai shook his head. "Maybe he can't even understand the letter I wrote home."

"You definitely won't understand it." Manguji rushed to say.

"How do you know?" Wu Ergudai asked.

"What nonsense!" Manguji asked. "Is your letter home written in Mongolian or Chinese?"

"Neither, of course my family letter is it," Wu Ergudai said halfway when he suddenly realized. "Oh!"

His family letters were written in "Jurchen," a script Nurhaci created by combining Mongolian characters with Jurchen phonetics and making minor modifications. By the time Nurhaci promulgated the so-called "Jurchen script," Kebakudu had already been taken away by the Ming. He certainly didn't recognize this script.

"You are still so smart," Wuergudai smiled and patted Manguji's head. When they first got married, Manguji was only twelve years old and had not even grown to Wuergudai's chest height. At that time, he often patted her head like this.

"Humph, that's right." Manguji shook his head proudly and continued, "Kebaku is your biological brother, the second legitimate son of the previous Hada Beile. The Ming Dynasty is definitely not promoting him now simply to let him contact the Chahar tribe. Even if Amin doesn't allow you to write any letters to him, he will find us sooner or later. When that happens, you won't be able to hide from him."

"What you mean is, if the Khan really asked me to write that letter, then we should follow through with it at the appropriate time?" Wu Ergudai suddenly felt his lips a little dry.

"That's exactly what I mean!" Manguji nodded and began with a reckless statement: "The previous emperor is dead. How many years do you think the Khan can live? Can he outlive the new emperor who is in his prime?"

"Be careful with your words!" Wu Ergudai said in a deep voice.

"No matter how cautious I am, this is the truth. The Battle of Sarhu was said to have annihilated 100,000 elite soldiers of the Ming Dynasty. And then what? It's been less than two years, and Liaodong has added another 200,000 soldiers. Even if my Great Jin can destroy these 200,000 soldiers, what can it do? There are tens of millions of people in the Han Dynasty! The bitter cold land of the Jurchens cannot resist the world after all. What's more, we used troops twice last year and this year, which made the country poor and financially exhausted, and in the end we got nothing." There was already a hint of despair in Manguji's tone.
"While the Khan was still alive, perhaps the Ming Empire wouldn't have been able to sweep through the land like it did a hundred years ago. But if the Khan dies, our Great Jin will inevitably face catastrophic destruction. The old Zhuona village is a ready-made precedent. Kill all the men and cut off the women's fingers, or just do it like the village under the red flag, slaughtering dozens of people, regardless of gender, without leaving a single person alive. Wu Ergudai, head of the family, it won't hurt for us to make plans as soon as possible."

"But," Wuergudai said with a sullen face, staring at Manguji. "But the Khan is your father." Manguji's blunt statement made Wuergudai feel that she was testing him on Nurhaci's orders.

"The Khan is also Chu Ying's father." Manguji said lightly.

"You, you..." Wu Ergudai's eyes widened. "Why did you suddenly say such a thing today?"

"I said it suddenly, but I have been thinking about these things for a long time," said Manguji.

"When did you start thinking about it?" Wu Ergudai asked.

"Wow, Wuergudai," Manguji's eyes narrowed and he pulled his hand back. "Are you going to interrogate me?"

"I'm not questioning you, I just think it's too weird." Wu Ergudai's face turned pale. "Second Prince is too weird, and you're too weird too."

"Amin? Tsk," Manguji folded his arms across his chest, as if lost in thought. "Perhaps Amin himself is also plotting a retreat."

"You said that the Second Prince also wants to surrender to the Ming Dynasty?" Wu Ergudai's bald forehead was covered with sweat.

"If that damned 'family letter' wasn't written at the Khan's behest, then either Amin is just out of boredom, as you think, trying to frame our family," Manguji said softly, "or he's trying to leverage your relationship with Kebaku to establish ties with the Ming Empire."

"No way." Wu Ergudai said, "I just told you that I didn't mention him in that letter."

"Wu Ergudai, are you getting senile? You're afraid he'll frame us, and he's also afraid you'll turn against him. Now that letter only has your handwriting and signature. Even if he's caught, he'll definitely turn against you!" Manguji's mind was extremely active. "He's invincible!"

"He is the second prince." Wuergudai looked at the entrance of the room nervously, fearing that someone would come in and hear their conversation.

"Before the Great Khan was even crowned Khan, Uncle Shulhaci was also the Second Beile." Shulhaci's death left a deep impression on Manggusi. It was the first time she discovered that her father Nurhaci was such a terrifying and ruthless person.

(End of this chapter)