Jianzhou, chimney mountains and forests, after Jinhetuala old village.

Hetuara was originally a small hill in the valley, surrounded by a wild mountain area before Nurhachi's fortune. The strange peaks are sinister like rocks piercing the sky, the forest waves are turbulent just like the roar of the huge sea, the forest is not visible on the back, and the grass is deep and cannot see the ground. Later, the Jurchen power of Jianzhou became bigger and bigger, and the scale of Hetuara also rose.

The former low walls have long been torn off, and a two-zhang high city wall with a mixed structure of earth, wood and stone has been built. Large quantities of forests have been cut down, making way for large areas of open space to house a growing population. Dense civil huts cover the entire valley and the slopes on both sides, smoke wafts in the air, herds of cattle, horses, livestock and vehicles are driven back and forth in the village, as if the festival is noisy, very lively.

All the Jurchens, young and old, had excited smiles on their faces, as if they had taken medicine. Today is the day of the distribution of grain, cattle and horses. A few days ago, the great Hou Jin Yingming Khan led the brave and fearless Eight Banners soldiers to defeat the Ming "Celestial Empire" army that oppressed them for more than 100 years, from now on they no longer have to worry about the Han officers and soldiers coming to smash every day, no longer have to worry about the hard-working fields and grain being robbed by the Han people, do not have to worry about doing business with each other in the Han people to cheat the Han people, now those Han people who are usually high up have become the Aha under their feet, they have turned over, and now they are the masters.

This was unthinkable before, but now it is a reality. More than 300,000 people and livestock were plundered from Fushun, and money and grain were piled up, and they had never seen so much wealth before, even if they buried their heads in the land and planted them for ten years and hundreds of years, they might not be able to get so much grain.

It's a windfall.

Amid the shouts of the soldiers, the villagers desperately carried bags of grain on the cart to their homes, and cattle, horses, and livestock were also brought into their own livestock pens. All kinds of utensils, iron pots, wooden bowls, lampstands, basins and other handmade products, this time the Eight Banners Army in Fushun can be called thorough.

A large number of Han male and female captives were also divided into several teams, and there were several red-hot iron marks in the blazing brazier, and each captive had to be deeply branded by this iron on his body, and the red-hot iron was fiercely imprinted on the skin and flesh and made a terrible sound, as if the oil in the meat was burned raw. The air was filled with the smell of burnt flesh and skin, and the screams of men and women were terrible one after another.

From then on, they were Aha slaves, and they worked forever for these state-building barbarians until they died. Sturdy men were forcibly shaved off their heads and incorporated into the army if they wanted to survive. The elderly and children are used for farming. The women were the most miserable, and the pigtailed soldiers who were waiting to pick people looked at the young Han women in the team, and one by one showed a rude and obscene lewd smile.

Most of these women had torn clothes and bare their breasts and legs, and it was clear at a glance how insulted they had been. From time to time, a woman was forcibly pulled out of the team by a pigtail soldier and pulled directly into the tun house next to her, and the woman's ** cry and the man's heavy gasping voice came out of the crack in the door, causing the onlookers to laugh. There are even women who were stripped naked on the spot and thrown to the ground by men.

This is the world of a herd of beasts, where bestiality prevails. Everyone is crazy, the Jurchens have always been unruly, their ancestors had conquered the Han people in the Central Plains hundreds of years ago, and now although the behemoth of the Great Ming Dynasty seems invincible, it turns out that it is not a big deal to beat him. Oppressed by the previously conquered peoples for more than a hundred years, it is time for us to turn over and call the shots.

When a slave becomes a master, he often becomes even more aggressive than his former master. Because only in this way can it seem that they can show their strength, because deep down they are actually inferior.

Li Yongfang stood by the window, looking at the crowd below who were frantically sharing the spoils, and the scene was like a scene of a mob gathering to make trouble and grab food. Such a terrible ** force, if it is guided without permission, may really be able to subvert the entire Liaodong, and it may be possible to re-enter the Central Plains like Mongolia.

He had already seen that the Jianzhou Jurchen would become a big thing sooner or later.

And the glory and wealth he longed for, it fell on Nurhachi, and it was a gamble. He is conceited and highly educated, but it is too difficult to climb up in the corrupt and dark officialdom of the Ming Dynasty, he does not have so much money to work up and down, he is less than forty, a middle-level officer who is not visible, and there is no backer in the court. In an environment where seniority is discussed in everything, I am afraid that when he retires, he will not be able to mix with a second-class general soldier.

Moreover, he did not have a good impression of the imperial court, twenty years ago when he was a half-grown child. He watched with his own eyes the villains under the mine tax eunuch Gao Huai break into their tunzi, bullying men and women and doing all kinds of evil. His sixteen-year-old sister and mother hanged themselves in the middle of the night after being beaten by those villains.

He was also insulted by one of his cousins, who had been ruined in her own home in front of his cousin.

He remembered that after that time, more than twenty women in their camp committed suicide. Their only pig and sack of miscellaneous grains were snatched away, and the first family in the village, Lao Zhangtou, was hung from a tree and whipped to hand over their mink and ginseng. All this because the dog eunuch said that there were veins under their village.

If it weren't for that incident, he might still be a hunter hunting in a mountain in eastern Liaodong.

Later, his father fell ill and died a few days later. The tunzi also dispersed, and all the strength ran out to beg for a living. He wandered around with the exiles and had seen enough of the sad scenes on the land of Liaodong. The cruel exploitation and brutal enslavement of the tax supervisors of the imperial court forced the soldiers and civilians of Liaodong to survive, and some abandoned their wealth and surrendered to captives, some were willing to be killed with sticks, some had their hands and feet cut off, and some threw themselves into the river and hanged themselves. Thousands of bitter feelings, inexhaustible. Liaodong, which was originally rich, has become a tragic scene of road cut-off, merchants screening traces, cities and towns going out of business, and depression in Luli.

And those damned tax collectors still run rampant, and from then on he knew that there was no god in this world, and even if there were, he would be blind. From then on, there was no longer an emperor in his heart, only himself. An emperor who is indifferent to his people, or even intensifies his persecution, is not worthy of allegiance.

Although he has read books, he does not have the foolish loyalty of the Ming Dynasty scholars. He knew that these eunuchs were all sent by the Wanli Emperor, and they took everything from him, and the culprit of all this was the current emperor, and he didn't want to die for such a regime. Later, although he joined the imperial army, this idea has not changed.

At the time of the fall of Fushun, he made a decision on his own. It's better to die than to live, anyway, he doesn't think that the current court is worth his life for it, since there is nowhere to escape, it's just a pity that he has the ability to die worthlessly. It's better to take refuge in Nurhachi and show off what you are good at.

So he put his fortune and future on Nurhachi's body, and the Jianzhou Eight Banners Army was the most elite and powerful combat attack force he had ever seen. The Ming army, the Mongol Tatars, the Korean soldiers, the Yehe soldiers, and so on are not compared. He judged for himself that if this force really broke out, it would have a chance to shake the world.

The eldest husband can't eat five tripods, and he cooks five tripods, which is his consistent philosophy. Besides, now even if he wanted to, there was no way back. He touched his forehead, and the slight stubble of his hair made his palms itch. He has shaved his hair, which means that he has since given up his Han identity and become a Jurchen.

Although he was not used to such embarrassing women-like braids, he had no choice. A few days ago, Nurhachi had ordered that Abatai's daughter be betrothed to him as a wife, in recognition of his "first righteousness". He is now the forehead of Houjin, and his name is probably on the list of Ming Court's bounty hunting.

He can only tie his fate to the Jurchen chariot and run with it to the end.

Following the crowd, a knight rode deftly through it to the downstairs of the house where he lived. Li Yongfang recognized it as his confidant, and he closed the window, only to hear the sound of hurried footsteps coming upstairs below.

"My lord, this is a secret letter that has just been sent."

Li Yongfang took the small note, and the family retreated. He unfolded it and looked at it, muttered for a while, and then immediately ordered: "Prepare the horse, go to Jiulongtan!" ”

Jiulongtan is actually a place name of Tunzi, and Tunzi is the general name of the village fortress in Liaodong, there are many mountains and forests outside the Guan, and these Tunzi are scattered in these mountains and forests like stars in the sky. At present, there are nearly 10,000 tunzi under the control of the Jianzhou Jurchens, and of course none of these tuns can compare with the scale of a medium-sized city as Shanghetuala. But Jiulong Lake is different, this is the royal villa area designated by the Houjin royal family.

It is more than forty miles away from Hetuala. This tun is named because of the topography. There are nine big ridges around the tun, stretching out to the center, towering and precipitous, resembling nine giant dragons. There are nine mountain streams between the nine ridges, the torrent in the stream rushes to the south of the tun, and the big bluestone of the boss and the boss on the intersection point is washed into a deep pool, and people call this pool Jiulong Pond.

There is no torrent in the dry day, the level in the pond is like a mirror, it is sky blue, reflecting the reflection of the Jiulong Mountains, and it is like nine giant dragons entrenched in the deep pool. At night, the sky full of stars is reflected in the pool, just as if there is a sky at the bottom of the pool. On rainy days, the torrent rushes down in the stream, and at the confluence point of the nine torrents, there is a big splash of water tens of zhang high, like a mushroom-shaped cotton mountain.

Tun people respect this dangerous deep pool like a god, I heard that there is a feng shui master who has said that this is a treasure of feng shui, a place where the real destiny of the dragon is born. Every February 2nd, the common people say that it is the day when the dragon raises its head, and it is the birthday of the mountain god, and every household goes to the pond to burn incense and paper, and put up kowtows.

There are a total of 36 households in the whole tun, planting grain and vegetables on the black soil on the side of this mountain root stream, not drought in dry days, not waterlogging in waterlogged days, and harvesting crops every year. When the farm is not working, he digs ginseng, hunts and picks mushrooms, and the houses he lives in are all big horse frames made of logs, or kilns dug by the mountains. The furniture utensils used, few ceramics, most of them are self-grown gourds, the big ones are used as rice bowls, and the small ones are used as rice bowls.

Each house enshrines two shrines, one is the mountain god and the other is the dragon king.

Although the Jianzhou Jurchens have now been founded as Khan, the standard of living is still far from being comparable with the Ming Dynasty. At least in Li Yongfang's eyes, these people are still living a primitive and wild life of slash-and-burn.

Li Yongfang came to Tunzikou with his entourage, and saw two teams of flag soldiers wearing iron leaf chain cotton buckle armor carrying waist knives and bows and arrows patrolling the intersection. All of them are fierce and brave. Seeing Li Yongfang coming, a leader shouted in Jurchen language: "The one who comes dismounts!" Then the rest of the crowd quickly drew their bows and arrows with very skillful and neat movements, and made a vigilant gesture.

"I am a concubine, and I have important things to see the Khan king to return." Li Yongfang took out his waist card and let the guards check it, and his Jurchen words were not bad.

"Wait here!" The guards know Li Yongfang, although he is now the forehead of the Dajin Kingdom, but even if the four major Baylors come, they have to follow the rules. Not to mention that Li Yongfang is just a surrendered Han in their eyes, and the king of Khan promoted him to make him a forehead, and even some of them secretly can't figure out why the young and noble Houjin Gege wants to marry this Han man who is more than ten years older than her.

Li Yongfang understood his current position, so he wisely chose to remain silent. In his eyes, there are not many of these people, they are just a group of subordinate slaves, and he will not bother with these people.

When Li Yongfang saw Nurhachi, the murderous Houjin Yingming Khan of Liaodong was talking to his fourth son, Huang Taiji, on the edge of the waterhole. Li Yongfang walked two steps forward quickly, "Slave Li Yongfang knocked on the King of Khan."

Nurhachi is sixty years old this year, but he is at most fifty years old, seven feet tall, wearing bright yellow gold silk yellow dragon cotton armor, and a pair of eagle eyes shoot out a gaze like a knife, cold and compelling. With two black beards on his lips, thin lips tight, and a slender face, the whole person stands there and feels like a domineering and bloodthirsty king eagle, ready to fly in the sky anytime and anywhere, and use his powerful strength to tear apart those who do not submit to him.

"White Lotus Sect ......" Nurhachi chattered with interest after listening to Li Yongfang's report. I remember that twenty years ago, a small colonel of the Ming army in Qinghe City mutinied, claiming to be the reincarnation of Allah in the East, and many people from the Jurchen tribe went to participate, and I remember that at that time, some people vaguely said that it was the White Lotus Sect. ”

Huang Taiji said on the side: "Father Khan, the famous son of the White Lotus Sect has also heard of it. I heard that it is a cult that is prevalent among the Han people in the Central Plains of Guannei, and it has a set of methods to confuse people's minds. I heard that Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, was the origin of the White Lotus Sect in the past. This White Lotus Sect has always opposed the Ming court and often rebelled and rioted. ”

"Feelings, this Qinghe City is really a hidden dragon and a crouching tiger." A glimmer of light flashed in Nurhachi's eyes, "Huang Taiji, the person you went to find out, what is the origin of this Yue Xiang?" didn't even look at the lives of his father and brother, Li Yongfang, don't you Han people pay attention to the three outlines and five constants? ”

"The words of King Hui Khan, this Yue Xiang slave also heard his name when he was in Fushun, and he was known as the first good man in Qinghe. once killed a big insect with his bare hands, and both civil and military were brave enough to skip people. It's just that how this Yue Xiang saw through our spies, the slave really doesn't know. Although the Han people have three outlines and five constants, there is also the saying that righteousness destroys relatives. It is difficult to ensure that after Yue Xiang learned the truth, he killed his relatives and sacrificed the lives of his father and brother. The temperament of those who read is sometimes stubborn and unreasonable, that is, he is willing to break through knowing that there is a sea of swords and fires in front of him. ”

"Father Khan doesn't have to worry, his sons have already arranged, and there is more than one nail in An** Qinghe, otherwise how can there be news coming out."

"Huang Taiji, you have always been in charge of the spies in the Ming Dynasty, and this matter will be handed over to you, so be sure to find out."

"The retainers obeyed." ……