In the middle of the camp of the army, Li Zicheng was in the tent.

Because of the continuous heavy snowfall in the past few days, the army had to camp near Tongguan.

Finally, on the seventh day of the first month of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, the wind and snow gradually became smaller, and Li Zicheng hurriedly gathered a group of strategists and generals to discuss the next step of the army.

In the big tent as warm as spring, Niu Jinxing, Song Xiance and others quarreled over the issue of deciding the direction, and at this time, Huo Zhaowei, who was often silent, suddenly gave up his hand.

"King Chuang, Mr. Niu and Mr. Song have their own reasons, but their subordinates think that instead of going around to fight and marching into the army, it is better to take big cities like Xi'an and Luoyang like me in Huguang, and concentrate our forces to capture a few."

"These cities not only have a large number of wealthy officials and gentry, but also many imperial clans in them, and they can scavenge treasures, grain and grass for military needs."

"What's more important is that the world has been suffering for a long time, if King Chuang can eradicate these clans one by one, not only can he shock the world, but also win the hearts of the people who are persecuted by these clans, wouldn't it be wonderful?"

Before Li Zicheng could speak, Liu Zongmin grinned and spitted wildly:

"Mr. Huo, of course we know when you say this, who doesn't want to fight a big city, eat well, dress well, and have beautiful girls to sleep in, but which of these big cities is not high and deep, and there are no hundreds of thousands of people besieging the city for months, how can it be so easy to fight."

Li Zicheng nodded when he heard this, Liu Zongmin said it to everyone's hearts, but he didn't believe that Huo Zhaowei would not understand this, so he looked at Huo Zhaowei again.

"What Jie Xuan said is, but since Mr. Huo specifically proposed it, could it be that there is a good way to fail?"

Niu Jinxing, Song Xiance and others all looked at it together, if they could solve the siege problem, then they could really go anywhere in the world.

Huo Zhaowei smiled slightly and arched his hand: "It just happened that King Chuang learned that because his subordinates were in charge of logistics affairs, they had seen many officials and soldiers and the Dengzhou militia being good at using firearms, so they had a lot of knowledge of gunpowder. ”

"After months of hard thinking and experiments, my subordinates have found a way to help King Chuang break through the city."

"How?"

Li Zicheng stood up from his tiger skin chair abruptly, his face full of excitement.

Huo Zhaowei slapped his hands twice, and a sergeant outside the tent immediately walked in with a package, and the biting cold wind blew the necks of the people in the tent.

"King Chuang, please see, this thing is what my subordinates think, and I call it an explosive bag. It is made of gunpowder, and if you dig a tunnel under the city wall, you will put dozens of explosive packs together and set it on fire, and it will pierce through the gold cracked stone. ”

Li Zicheng walked quickly to the middle of the tent, took the explosives bag from the sergeant's hand, and carefully examined it.

However, you can't see anything from the appearance alone, Huo Zhaowei smiled at the moment: "King Chuang, his subordinates have already made several of them, so it's better to go outside and test them." ”

"Hahaha, okay, let's go see the excitement together."

Li Zicheng was happy at this moment, so he directly waved his hand and took the lead and walked out.

Outside the army camp, Li Zicheng led a group of civil and military personnel to a snowy field, where nearly 100 sergeants had already built an earthen wall two zhang wide and two zhang high, and tamped it with rammed earth piles.

Seeing this, Li Zicheng looked at Huo Zhaowei and said with a smile: "Mr. Huo, this is already prepared." ”

"Haha, that is, since the subordinates are offering advice, they naturally have to verify it for King Chuang."

Li Zicheng personally took Niu Jinxing, Liu Zongmin and others to the earthen wall to take a look, and found that in addition to the size of the earthen wall, the rest should not be much different from the city wall.

When a group of people walked down the earthen wall, Huo Zhaowei immediately commanded the sergeants of his logistics battalion to dig up the explosives package.

A quarter of an hour later, only a loud "boom" was heard, and the two-zhang high earthen wall seemed to be lifted from the ground by a huge force, and directly shattered into countless clods of earth.

Li Zicheng and the others were stunned when they saw this scene.

It's also funny to say that due to the lack of innovation, although the Chinese have been using gunpowder for a long time, no one has ever tried to use it as an explosive package.

Therefore, until the Taqing Dynasty replaced the Ming Dynasty, the city walls were still being built to defend the city.

Until the rise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Taiping army was best at using excavated tunnels to carry out explosive sieges, without the protection of the familiar city walls, the Qing army was suddenly defeated.

It was only since then that the city walls gradually withdrew from the stage of Chinese history, and the West had already begun to build modern cities.

This explosive bag is naturally Liu Ximing's means, and if he wants to achieve his goal, it is impossible not to give the rogues a little benefit.

Anyway, the Liu family does not rely on the city wall to defend, but relies more on the firepower system, and this thing is useful for fighting a dozen Ming army cities.

"Sir has made a great contribution to our army!"

It took a few minutes to wake up from the shock of the explosives pack, and the first thing Li Zicheng said was this.

As soon as he grasped Huo Zhaowei's hands, his eyebrows and eyes were full of ecstasy.

"With this thing, it is not a problem to break through Xi'an, Luoyang and other big cities, and the world will not be owned by the Zhu family, hahaha."

"Congratulations to King Chuang, congratulations to King Chuang."

Niu Jinxing, Song Xiance and others were also shocked, but fortunately, Huo Zhaowei was low-key, although Niu Jinxing and others were jealous, they still congratulated Li Zicheng with a smile.

After rewarding Huo Zhaowei with gold and silver women, Li Zicheng's army began to get busy.

On the 25th day of the first month of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, hundreds of thousands of troops appeared under the city of Xi'an.

In the palace of King Qin, everything in Wuchang City seems to be repeating itself.

"The king, the thieves are menacing, there is a momentum of not breaking the city gate and vowing not to stop, now there are few soldiers in the city, and the ministers implore the king to open the treasury and take out some silver money to help pay, otherwise the day the city is broken, the king will have no way out."

Ning Feiying, the political envoy of Shaanxi Zuobu, couldn't care about his old face at the moment, and knelt down to Zhu Cunji, the king of Qin, directly in the main hall of the Qin Palace.

Zhu Cunji only attacked the king of Qin last year, and he also specially overhauled the palace for this purpose, and when he heard Ning Feiying's advice, he also cried and became poor.

"Ning Fantai, you should know the situation in this king's mansion, now the mansion is almost uncovered, this king's newly repaired Ningde Hall has been under construction for more than half a year, but not even a shadow has been built, isn't this just a lack of money, where else do you say this king can get money."

After speaking, Zhu Cunji raised his teary head and looked at the officials in Shaanxi who were visiting with Ning Feiying.

"It's all like this in the palace, or the province will lend this king a little more, and when the court's money arrives this year, the king will definitely pay it back."

Before Ning Feiying and the others could laugh anxiously, Zhu Cunji pointed at everyone excitedly:

"Where is Sun Chuanting, didn't he form another Qin army, go and call him to defend Xi'an, the imperial court will raise troops for a thousand days, isn't it today, you must defend it."

Ning Feiying and the others watched Zhu Cunji's extremely talented performance, and their hearts suddenly became like ashes.

It is naturally impossible to pick money from Zhu Lao's house, and the treasury of Shaanxi Mansion has long been empty.

A group of officials in Xi'an had no choice but to send people around the city to spread rumors, telling the news that Wuchang had been slaughtered by all the rogues.

Under this kind of intimidation, the people in Xi'an had to tremble and go to the city to defend under the shouts of the officials, but of course this morale was almost zero.

Li Zicheng and others outside the city couldn't control what was going on inside Xi'an, and the new governor of the three sides, Sun Chuanting, did come, and brought a newly trained Qin army with him.

It's just that this Qin army is less than 10,000 people at the moment, and when he encounters a big thief like Li Zicheng, in addition to harassing him on the periphery, he doesn't dare to go straight to the Chinese army.

Sun Chuanting originally trained a Qin army, and this money was still paid by Liu Ximing in the name of Tuntian.

It's just that in the twelfth year of Chongzhen, this Qin army was all transferred to Shanhaiguan for defense, and it was already lost in the Battle of Songjin.

This time, he was reinstated, and he had no choice but to force all parts of Shaanxi to donate money on the one hand. On the other hand, he still found Liu Ximing with a cheeky face and talked about Tuntian again.

Liu Ximing already had the intention of using Sun Chuanting to check and balance the Liukou, so he agreed to do so after half pushing and half pushing.

In addition to his soldiers and horses, there were also general soldiers He Renlong and other troops who also followed, but all of them could only be harassed painlessly because of the large number of rogues.

Under the watchful eye of a group of Ming officials and soldiers, Li Zicheng uncharacteristically besieged Xi'an City.

Finally, on the second day of the second month of February, the Chuang army dug several tunnels under the city of Xi'an.

On the afternoon of the second day of the Lunar New Year, more than a dozen loud noises came from under the Xi'an city wall, and the originally majestic and straight Xi'an city wall collapsed like snowflakes in an instant.

This is like a signal, which directly drains the spirit of the people in Xi'an City.

In the horrified eyes of Sun Chuanting, He Renlong and others outside the city, Xi'an City was broken.

Xi'an was roped for several days, and one million taels of silver were found from the palace of King Qin alone.

At Huo Zhaowei's suggestion, King Qin's lineage was completely killed by Li Zicheng in order to deter the world.

When the news broke, the world panicked again.