Late Ming Dynasty: Summoning players from Liaodong to support the Ming Dynasty

The official road had long been abandoned.

Lu Jian lay on the swaying horse, the icy north wind filling his worn sheepskin coat like countless needles piercing his bones.

Behind him stood a dozen or so silent riders, all dressed like merchants, equally dusty and weary from their journey. Yet their warhorses were all carefully selected steeds from the Western Hills camp, their gait steady and unwavering even on the rugged snow-covered terrain. Each rider's waist was bulging, concealing more than one deadly weapon.

They are the emperor's eyes, the emperor's sword.

The Embroidered Uniform Guard.

After leaving Shanhaiguan, they abandoned the elaborate ceremonial procession that displayed the emperor's boundless grace, instead traveling by night and hiding by day, choosing secluded paths to travel at breakneck speed. Lu Jian's goal was clear: he wasn't there to show off his power; he was there to catch ghosts.

The audacious and outrageous lie that deceived the emperor was the "ghost" he was about to slay.

The deeper they went into the heart of Liaodong, the colder Lu Jian's chiseled face became.

A living hell.

This was the only word in his mind that matched the scene before him.

The ruins of the villages stretched endlessly along both sides of the road, charred beams leaning precariously in the snow like fingers of despair pointing to the sky. What was once a vast expanse of fertile land was now nothing but swathes of upturned black earth, mixed with specks of white.

That's not snow.

It's bone.

Human bones.

Lu Jian's mount snorted uneasily as it stepped over a corpse that had been gnawed by wild dogs, leaving only half a body. It was an old woman, her white hair frosted with ice, her withered hands still clutching a broken earthenware pot tightly.

One of the young guards following behind finally couldn't hold it in any longer. He suddenly reined in his horse, rolled over to the side of the road, and leaned against a dead tree, retching violently.

The procession stopped.

A seasoned guard handed over a water pouch with a blank expression, his voice hoarse.

"You get used to it after a while."

Lu Jian didn't turn around; his gaze swept across the desolate land. The cloying, stench of decay and blood in the air was so thick it was almost unbearable, seeping into his nostrils and lingering in his throat, making him want to vomit.

He was used to life and death; he had witnessed far more horrific scenes in the Northern Garrison's prison without batting an eye. But that was different. Death in the prison was orderly, a manifestation of power.

The death before our eyes is chaotic, it is collapse.

It is a huge, festering sore on the body of an empire, rapidly rotting and oozing pus.

"Boss..." The young guard rinsed his mouth, his face deathly pale as he returned, his voice trembling, "This godforsaken place, you can hardly find a human, not even a live rat. The victory report said... said they burned two thousand elite Jurchen troops... How... how is that possible?"

Another guard snorted coldly, lowering his voice, his words carrying a hint of sarcasm.

"What are we going to use to burn them? These bones as firewood?"

Lu Jian finally turned around, his cold, lightning-like gaze sweeping over the two people who were speaking.

"Shut up."

The sound wasn't loud, but it made the surrounding temperature drop even further.

The two men immediately fell silent, lowering their heads and daring not to speak again.

Lu Jian turned his head back, his riding whip lightly tapping the saddle. He knew better than anyone else what was going on.

Two thousand white-armored soldiers were burned.

How absurd!

"Sir, there's some noise ahead."

A scout silently returned from the woods ahead, his voice barely audible.

Lu Jian made a gesture, and more than a dozen men immediately dismounted, their movements perfectly synchronized and without making a sound, leading their horses into the withered woods by the roadside.

Before long, several staggering figures appeared at the edge of the snowfield.

They were a few defeated soldiers, if they could still be called soldiers. They had long since lost their armor, only wrapped in a few tattered cotton wadding and strips of cloth, and were trudging through the snow with wooden sticks in their hands. Each of them was so thin that they were unrecognizable, with high cheekbones and sunken eyes, looking like a few walking skeletons.

Lu Jian's eyes were cold as he gave his deputy a wink.

Two elite guards silently surrounded them, like two cheetahs hunting their prey.

Before the fleeing soldiers could even cry out, they were pinned to the ground, and a cold blade was pressed against their throats.

"Sir, spare us! Spare us! We're not deserters! We're... we escaped from Liaodong!" An older soldier cried and sneered, a foul stench emanating from his crotch.

Liaodong?

Lu Jian emerged from behind the tree, looking down at the few trembling cowards, his voice devoid of any warmth.

How is Guangning now?

Upon hearing the name "Guangning," the veteran shuddered, his eyes flashing with extreme fear.

"A dead city! Guangning has been a dead city for a long time!" he screamed. "Guangning has been besieged for almost two months! The food is probably all gone! Grass roots, tree bark, anything edible they could eat... and then... and then..."

His voice trembled, and his teeth chattered, as if he were recalling some horrific scene he couldn't bear to look back on.

"That damned butcher Amin has the city completely surrounded! Guangning has probably lost all contact with us long ago, the court... the court has long forgotten about us! Guangning is a living hell! Sir, don't go, please don't go! Going there is just suicide!"

Lu Jian listened quietly, his expression unchanged.

These words were exactly what he had expected.

This is the "common sense of military strategy," this is reality.

The idea of ​​burning two thousand white-armored soldiers to death or outsmarting a powerful enemy sounds like a huge joke on this land where even the living are almost extinct.

"What about Chu Ze?" Lu Jian asked the last question.

"Chu Ze? That garrison commander?" The old soldier's face showed a mixture of disdain and pity. "Him? If he were really capable, would Guangning have been besieged like this? He'd probably be dead by now, or... or eaten by his starving soldiers!"

enough.

Lu Jian didn't want to listen anymore.

He waved his hand, and the fleeing soldiers, as if granted a pardon, scrambled and stumbled towards Shanhaiguan, quickly disappearing into the snowstorm.

A lieutenant stepped forward and asked in a low voice, "Sir, why did you let them go?"

"Just a few good-for-nothings who are about to die. Killing them would only dirty my blade," Lu Jian said indifferently. He remounted his horse and turned his gaze toward Guangning, his eyes so cold they could freeze the air.

He stroked the hard object in his arms.

That is the Imperial Sword.

It is the emperor's anger, and it is also the emperor's expectation.

At this moment, Lu Jian was absolutely certain that what he was carrying was justice.

The garrison commander named Chu Ze, along with Yuan Chonghuan behind him, wove a false victory with an absurd lie, deceiving the young monarch who sat on the cold dragon throne, already on the verge of collapse from being tormented by countless bad news.

What utter audacity!

This is a desecration of all the victims on this land!

In this apocalyptic scene of corpses strewn across the land and people eating each other, what is there to talk about as a "great victory"?

Every word in that report was stained with the filth of lies, as if mocking the suffering of this land.

Lu Jian's belief grew stronger.

His trip was not to verify military achievements, but to put someone on trial.

To put to trial a traitor who dared to manipulate the emperor...

He had already begun to devise in his mind how to tear apart this deception in the sharpest and most ruthless way. He wanted to present the truth, bloodily and starkly, to His Majesty's desk.

That Chu Ze...

A cold smile curled at the corners of Lu Jian's lips.

It's best to pray that there's no imperial prison like the Jinyiwei in hell.

The column continued its march, the atmosphere growing even more oppressive than before. All the elite guards had confirmed the "truth" of their mission from the words of the routed soldiers. Looking at the horrific scene around them, and recalling the exaggerated victory report, a surge of anger and resentment rose within them, a feeling of being thoroughly fooled.

However, as their group actually stepped into Guangning, the surrounding scenery began to exude an indescribable eeriness.

"Boss, look over there!"

A sharp-eyed imperial guard suddenly pulled on the reins and pointed to a sparse grove of trees ahead.

The crowd looked in that direction and saw several corpses dressed in Later Jin uniforms lying haphazardly in the snow, a stark contrast against the vast white landscape.

Lu Jian's eyes sharpened. He dismounted and made a gesture. A dozen men silently dispersed, forming a crescent-shaped encirclement, and crept into the woods.

The five dead were all scouts from the Later Jin dynasty who had crossed the border.

Lu Jian's deputy checked each item one by one, his brows furrowing more and more tightly.

"The methods were clean." He stood up, his voice extremely low. "They were all one-hit kills. One was shot in the throat, two had their necks slit, and the remaining two had penetrating wounds in their chests, like they were stabbed with spears. It seems they didn't even have a chance to warn us."

This conclusion caused a stir among the surrounding guards.

One of the imperial guards couldn't help but whisper among himself, "Besides the Guan Ning cavalry, are there any other formidable forces in Liaodong? Could they be Chu Zezang's elite retainers?"

Lu Jian remained silent.

He crouched down and picked up a bit of snow with his gloved fingers. Beneath the snow lay blood clots, already congealed into a dark brown color. Judging from the degree of the body's frostbite, it had been dead for at least two or three days.

Is it a desperate struggle?

Send out the last of the city's capable fighters to ambush scouts and create the illusion that the outer perimeter still has the strength to fight.

This method makes sense, though.

However, this did not shake Lu Jian's judgment. On the contrary, it made him even more convinced that Guangning City was outwardly strong but inwardly weak, and could only rely on such petty tricks to bluff.

He stood up and brushed the snow off his gloves.

"Walk."

The procession continued onward.

But they stopped again after walking less than ten miles.

This time, it was a soldier from the Later Jin dynasty.

The manner of his death was truly bizarre.

He was upside down, stuck headfirst in a pit more than half his height. At the bottom of the pit, several crooked wooden stakes had mercilessly pierced his chest and abdomen.

The pit was dug extremely crudely; the soil around the edges was loose, and you could even see fresh shovel marks. The camouflage on top was ridiculously rudimentary—just a few withered branches and leaves haphazardly laid down, as if afraid that no one would notice there was a pit there.

Let alone an experienced scout, even a farmer with normal eyesight could tell something was wrong from dozens of steps away.

But ironically, a genuine Later Jin soldier fell straight into the pit.

"Pfft..."

The young imperial guard who had previously been gagging couldn't help but burst out laughing this time.

"Who the hell dug this up? Is it something a three-year-old would make? Even the mouse traps in my backyard are more sophisticated than this! Could this really kill someone?"

Before he could finish speaking, his deputy glared at him fiercely.

The deputy pointed to the corpse in the pit: "Look closely, that's not an ordinary Tartar soldier, it's a Bayara! A genuine white-armored soldier! Look at the style of his armor, and look at those leather boots!"

The young imperial guards' laughter abruptly stopped.

Others gathered around, their expressions shifting from mockery to confusion, and finally to an indescribable sense of absurdity.

A brave warrior in white armor, capable of charging into battle, died in a trap so stupid it was despised even by the village hunters.

What kind of strategy is this?

For the first time, Lu Jian's brows furrowed tightly together.

If the first ambush was a desperate struggle, then what about the second trap?

An eerie feeling, inexplicable by common sense, began to entwine around Lu Jian's heart like vines.

This land remains desolate and barren.

But beneath this deathly silence, something he couldn't understand or control seemed to be quietly growing. That thing was unpredictable, illogical, and full of chaos and malice.

"My lord..." The deputy also sensed something was amiss. "This Guangning City seems a bit strange."

Lu Jian did not answer; his gaze went beyond the ridiculous trap and into the distance.

There, on the horizon, a faint, slender outline can be seen.

It is the city wall of Guangning.

An unprecedented impulse surged within him. He desperately wanted to see for himself what was happening in that city.

They traveled several more miles, and as dusk fell, the wind grew increasingly fierce.

Just then, the most sensitive-hearing member of the elite cavalry at the very front of the column suddenly raised his hand and pulled on the reins.

"Shh!"

The entire group froze instantly, and more than a dozen elite Imperial Guards simultaneously gripped the hilts of their swords at their waists, a chilling killing intent permeating the forest.

"My lord... listen." The guard tilted his ear, his face full of confusion.

Lu Jian held his breath and listened carefully.

The wind howled and wailed, like the wailing of ghosts.

But in the gaps between the sounds of the wind, he vaguely heard another sound.

The sound was distant and indistinct, yet it carried a peculiar rhythm.

It was not the sound of battle cries, nor the wails of agony, nor the drums of war.

It was like... thousands upon thousands of people gathered together, shouting something in an extremely excited and orderly tone.

As they traveled a little further, the sound became clearer.

"One, two, three, four! Two, two, three, four!"

The unified chants, full of power, made people's eardrums buzz.

Lu Jian and his elite guards looked at each other, their faces filled with confusion.

Is this... a drill?

But what kind of army would shout such strange chants during drills?

Immediately afterwards, another slogan, like a thunderclap, slammed into their ears on the cold wind!

"For glory! Build roads and get rich!"

"boom--!"

Lu Jian's mind went blank with a buzz.

The dozen or so elite Imperial Guards behind him were all frozen in place, mouths slightly agape, expressions blank, looking like a group of wooden sculptures struck by lightning.

For...what?

Merit?

Building roads... to get rich?!

Lu Jian suddenly looked up, gazing in the direction from which the voice came. His worldview, his unbreakable cognitive system built upon blood and fire, conspiracy and power struggles, was shattered at this moment by this utterly absurd slogan.

He considered countless possibilities.

He imagined seeing a dead city littered with corpses.

He had imagined seeing a group of vicious swindlers.

He even imagined seeing Chu Ze's remaining troops putting up a last-ditch resistance.

But he never dreamed that at the end of this hell on earth, what awaited him was such a... completely incomprehensible, mad and energetic... demonic sound.