A few days later, the Qishan army released some Song prisoners, and these captives brought a letter to Tong Guan, Tong Guan was shocked after reading the letter, and he immediately did three things, one was to write a secret letter, and sent someone to immediately rush to Tokyo to hand over the letter to Liang Shicheng and Wang Hao and others; Second, after waiting for the last letter to be gone for half a day, he sent someone to send the letter from the Qishan thief to Tokyo to present it to the emperor; The third is to order all Song troops to stop all actions, shrink the city to strengthen defenses, and closely monitor and guard against Qishan bandits.

The speed of the two letters sent to Tokyo was surprisingly fast, even two days earlier than the prince and his entourage who set off from the southeast two days earlier, two days earlier to Tokyo, after Liang Shicheng and Wang Hao read Tong Guan's letter for half a day, the emperor also received Tong Guan's recital, he was taken aback, and hurriedly ordered to urgently summon several ministers to enter the palace to face the saint,

In the past year, as long as the emperor is urgently called, there will definitely be no good thing, from the rebellion of the Liangshan thieves to the invasion of the Xia Kingdom, from the defeat of the Eastern Expeditionary Army to the defeat of the Southeast Army, almost overnight, the Great Song Empire, which has been stable and peaceful for a hundred years, is like a spell, and has become stormy and unlucky, but I don't know what bad things happened from where this time .......

The ministers arrived outside the palace one after another, and when everyone met, no one knew what was going on, so they had to enter the palace together with a worried heart, ready to welcome the emperor's fury, but when they saw the emperor's face, they found that the emperor did not show the slightest anger, although the face was not good, but the inexplicable light on his face was also extremely obvious,

The ministers saluted the emperor, and the emperor immediately asked Zhang Di to hand over the letter to them, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is something that Tong Guan just sent thousands of miles in a hurry, you can take a look." ”

Several ministers took the letter and looked at it together, and suddenly, the incomparable surprise was written on everyone's face, and they finally understood the reason why the emperor summoned them urgently overnight, and it was written very clearly on this letter, Qishan thief Kou wanted to negotiate peace with the Great Song Dynasty!

To tell the truth, this is indeed not bad news, now the southeast army has been defeated, the army is empty, the Qishan bandits occupy many advantages in strength and morale, if they re-attack the southeast now, the southeast will be in chaos! Although the imperial court still has sufficient troops elsewhere, it will not be able to support the southeast in a short time, not to mention that the money and food have not yet been settled. The Qishan thief took the initiative to negotiate peace at this time, which was clearly giving Da Song a rare respite!

However, the conditions proposed by the Qishan bandits are also extremely harsh, and they actually want to be a feudal town like the original Liangshan bandits!

How similar is this situation to the beginning, when the Liangshan bandit was also after the defeat of the Eastern Expeditionary Army, he put forward the same conditions to the Great Song Dynasty as a victor, when the Great Song had to compromise and agree to the Liangshan Bandit under the serious external and internal troubles, and that also became a shame for the Great Song Dynasty, and it has not been able to get rid of it to this day!

Many of the ministers immediately made it clear that they must not agree to the conditions of the Qishan bandits, because the Liangshan bandits are a ready-made example, they don't listen to the orders of the Great Song Dynasty at all, and they can't beat or touch them, and now they are making a lot of money from all over the Great Song Dynasty, saying that it is a feudal town, but in fact, it is not a country within a country? It was originally conceived well, and when the southeast is pacified, I will free up my hands to clean them up, but what about the facts? Not only did the southeast not be pacified, but it also lost the southeast army again, and it is far away when they will be able to exterminate them.

If one feudal town has not been resolved, how can there be a second feudal town?!

However, there are also several ministers led by Cai Jing who said that this matter can be considered to some extent, because they can see from the emperor's reaction that the emperor is not particularly disgusted with this matter, otherwise he would not be so calm, but the emperor is the king of a country after all, and some words are difficult to speak, and their responsibility is to say the emperor's mind through their mouths.

Wang Hao immediately stepped out and said, "Maybe the minister thinks that this matter may be an opportunity. ”

Sure enough, the emperor, who had been expressionless, suddenly lit up when he heard this, "What does Wang Aiqing mean ......?" ”

Wang Hao continued, "Shengshang, this time the southeast army was defeated, and the minister thinks that it is not so much how powerful the Qishan bandits are, but rather the carelessness of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince and Master Tong who lost Jingzhou and fell into the ambush of the bandits. And the Qishan thieves also understand this, they know that they can't defeat us from any aspect, so they will take advantage of the good situation, although they won the battle, but they took the initiative to negotiate peace with us, to put it bluntly, they are still afraid that our Great Song Dynasty will send troops again to defeat them in one fell swoop after the reorganization! ”

The emperor nodded immediately when he heard this, and the expression on his face suddenly looked much better, Wang Hao's words were all said to his heart, how could the dignified Song Dynasty not be able to defeat a group of thieves?! Alas, it's only the prince's incompetence!

The emperor was happy, but the faces of several ministers led by Zheng Juzhong suddenly became ugly, because Wang Hao's intention was not just to make the emperor happy, although he belittled the prince and Tong Guan together, but everyone knew that the responsibility for this defeat was mainly on the prince, he was clearly falling into the well, making the emperor invisibly hate the prince even more!

Wang Hao continued, "Although we are still sure that we can exterminate the Qishan bandits, but after all, because of the fiasco of the southeast army, we are now inevitably at a disadvantage in the southeast. At this time, the Qishan bandits proposed peace, which was just a rare respite for Tong and the Southeast Army, so that they could regroup and regain an advantage over the Qishan bandits! So we might as well agree to make peace with them for the time being, the longer it drags on, the better it will be for us! ”

"That's right! That's what I thought, too! Emperor Long Yan Dayue nodded again and again and smiled,

Wang Hao was even more proud, he looked at the emperor's unfinished look and secretly felt happy in his heart, and deliberately pretended to be very serious on his face and continued, "Holy Lord, I don't know if the minister has something to say? ”

The emperor waved his hand, "Aiqing has something to say, but it doesn't hurt to speak!" ”

Wang Hao immediately thanked him and said, "The minister thinks that we can agree to the conditions of the Qishan thieves and let them be the ...... of the feudal town!" ”

As soon as these words came out, it immediately attracted fierce opposition from many ministers, Zheng Juzhong pointed at Wang Hao very excitedly and said angrily, "Lord Wang just said that he used the negotiation with the thieves to delay time, and this has not yet fallen, but you said that you agreed to the conditions of the Qishan thieves, isn't it a contradiction?!" ”

Wang Hao didn't defend himself, he just looked confident,

The emperor was extremely dissatisfied with Zheng Juzhong's "princelings" because of the prince's affairs, and immediately waved his hand to Zheng Juzhong and others impatiently, "Let Wang Hao continue!" ”

Zheng Juzhong and the others had no choice but to shut up, each of them hung their heads, the emperor's attitude was very different from a few days ago......

Wang Hao smiled and said proudly to Zheng Juzhong, "Lord Zheng, please listen to what I say, even if we reorganize our army and start a war against the Qishan bandits, when we exterminate the Qishan bandits, we will definitely suffer great losses." Now we are negotiating with the Jin State, just waiting for the two countries to sign an alliance, maybe a few years later, we will start a war against Liao, so the time left for us to quell the rebellion in various places is getting less and less, at the same time, we must save our troops as much as possible, otherwise if we lose too much in the pacification of the rebellion, what will we do to recover the sixteen states of Yanyun at that time? But because of the two successive defeats of the Eastern Expeditionary Army and the Southeast Army, we have lost at least 200,000 troops! Is it worth paying such a big price to exterminate the thieves? So ......,"

Wang Hao turned to the emperor and said excitedly, "Holy Lord, so the minister has a bold idea, instead of us spending a lot of troops and financial resources to suppress the bandits, why not let the thieves fight each other?" The minister said before that Zhu Wu, the leader of the Qishan bandits, ...... with the Liangshan bandits, oh no, it was Jingdong Road Jinglu who appeased Lord Zheng and made him have a deep hatred, and last time we asked Lord Zheng to send troops to the southeast to quell the rebellion, Lord Zheng because of ...... And resisted the will, but although he was not in a hurry to take revenge, it was difficult to guarantee that Zhu Wu was willing to let him go, so the minister thought that Zhu Wu wanted to be a feudal town, but he had to promise one thing, that is, the Qishan army must unconditionally obey our orders, just when the time is ripe, we will let Zhu Wu lead the troops to attack that one, the two tigers will fight for one injury, or even two defeats, when the time comes, we will benefit again! In this way, we will be able to complete all the plans to suppress the bandits at the lowest cost! ”

"Yes, Holy Lord," Cai Jing echoed, "Let's negotiate with the Qishan Bandits, just to buy Lord Tong some more time, and no matter what the final outcome of this matter is, it will be beneficial to us!" ”

The emperor nodded, his face full of joy, "I also had this intention, Wang Aiqing and I thought of going together." In this case, let Wang Aiqing be my special envoy and go to the southeast to negotiate with the Qishan bandits! ”