Chapter 240: The Battle of Shao Ping (12)
The interrogation of Wang Quan and Cheng Ye went relatively smoothly, because he was greedy for life and afraid of death and wanted to live.
Wang Quan, as the highest administrative official captured since the start of the war, has gradually revealed the secrets that were previously unknown within the Black Turban Army.
According to Sikong Nan's reaction, the top of the Black Turban Army is not harmonious, and Bai Liyan has also judged that when the Black Turban Army completes the consolidation of its territory, the differentiation of internal interest classes will inevitably appear, especially the establishment of the privileged class, which is the fundamental purpose of their uprising, but they did not expect it to rise to the point of incompatibility.
This time to defeat Shao Ping was purely a fluke of luck, Wang Quan was already worried about Sikong Nan's arrival at that time, if it weren't for Ye Xin's department stopped thirty miles outside the south of the city, and directly drove the army to the city, Wang Quan categorically would not believe that the army of Longyuan Heavenly King went north to fight, and the root cause was that the division of forces within the Black Turban Army was extremely obvious, and the conflict of interests was extremely acute.
According to Wang Quan's confession, the Black Turban Army was roughly divided into two factions, the Central Plains faction headed by the Heavenly Kings such as Shengyan, Thunder, and Shentong, and the other faction was the westward southward faction of the Heavenly Kings such as Long Yuan and Chitose.
This is also the reason why Sheng Yan and other heavenly kings decided to attack the vassal states along the North Sea such as Changsun and Xianguo, because Beihai is rich and the plains are vast. Of course, Wang Quan only saw the wealth of Beihai, but he could not see the deep-seated strategic choice.
The Central Plains region is full of large countries, rich in strategic resources, and has a large land output, and the capture of the Central Plains is equivalent to controlling the core economic center on the map, and it can be backed by the North Sea and unify the territory from north to south.
The strategy to the south and west is more pragmatic, because to the south is the less populated state of Xu, to the west is the more populous and entrenched slavery of the Wei state, and other small states in the West Sea that are oppressed by the Wei state.
The capture of Xu is equivalent to opening the traditional power channel to the southeast of the country, as long as the civil uprising is launched, it is difficult for the patriotic country, a large country with millions of slaves and tens of millions of low-level peasants, to resist the explosive popular uprising, once the black turban army can be connected to the patriotic country on the map, the instant collapse of the patriotic country is predictable.
These two strategies have their own advantages and strategic limitations, and some disadvantages lie in the allocation of war resources and whether war resources can be obtained to feed the war machine in the war.
Economically, the development to the west, the country has a large population, the land is extremely extensive, and the surrounding four small countries in the West Sea cannot pose a substantial threat, but the country is far away from the hinterland of the Central Plains, and has always been a backward country that is more exclusive to the culture of the Central Plains, which is not accepted by traditional concepts, and the productivity is lower than that of the Central Plains.
Militarily, the road to defend the country is far away, even if the cavalry marches quickly, it will take about two months to reach the hinterland of the Central Plains, and the infantry does not take the water route, and the land route takes more than half a year, which is extremely inconvenient.
Although the Central Plains region is rich and has developed transportation, it is surrounded by strong enemies, and it is necessary to solve the problem by not concentrating heavy troops. An even more fatal strategic flaw was a three-front war, with the Jin Kingdom in the east, the Zhi Kingdom in the south, and the Sun Kingdom in the west, which had to be at war with the three major powers at the same time.
Therefore, from the very beginning, the Central Plains strategy was to evacuate all the population in the northwest of Zhiguo and turn the northwest counties of Zhiguo into white land.
At the same time, the Xian State was annexed, with the Wangqin River as the boundary, confronted the Jin State, stabilized the Zhiguo at the existing border, and then went north to defeat the Changsun State, through the Changsun State, detoured to the lower reaches of the Sishui River, attacked the Sun State from behind, and solved the Liang State once and for all, the Central Plains co-master, so that the world was leaderless.
This is the ultimate strategic intention of the Heavenly Kings such as Shengyan, Thunder, and Divine Power, Wang Quan is just a Taishou, he only knows about high-level discord, but he can't see the deep-rooted strategic problems, which is the irreconcilable contradiction between the two factions for the allocation of strategic resources.
The interrogation of Wang Quan and others lasted until the night, and Bai Liyan inserted the interrogation halfway, and most of the knowledge of the previous content came from other people's mouths, but there was one thing that was always incomprehensible.
Why did the Black Turban Army formulate two diametrically opposed military strategies, could it be that the top leaders of the Black Turban Army did not have a unified strategic direction from the very beginning of the plot?
This is extremely rare in the history of the earth war, and no military bloc has ever been able to launch two diametrically opposed strategic strikes at the same time when there are differences of internal opinions, not to mention that this is a huge war that has already swept tens of millions of square kilometers, and how can they fight on at least four fronts!
Multi-front operations are a major taboo for soldiers, and the root cause of this is the result of the inability to spread troops to a wider front due to the limited resources of the military and logistics industry, and concentrating forces to strike at the enemy is the preferred strategy of soldiers.
However, the Black Turban Army was not short of soldiers from the beginning, and it was able to fight as soon as it was called, and in a short period of time, it disabled the Sun State, suppressed the eldest grandson, coerced the Zhiguo, and confronted the Xian State, with a total strength of more than 1.2 million people, making the four major powers of the Central Plains fall into civil strife for a short time and cannot mobilize for war.
Moreover, it expanded to 1.2 million people in two or three months, for this era of bronze farming, no vassal state could send 1.2 million people to the battlefield thousands of miles away in an orderly manner within three months, let alone so many people, where are there enough military resources.
This problem has been bothering Bailiyan for a long time, until the Battle of Shaoping, the Black Turban Army has implemented its strategic goals with the two factions as the core from the beginning, so there is only one explanation, the Black Turban Army has extremely abundant strategic reserve resources in the early stage, which can support them to wage war in two directions, and it has this economic ability.
After the Shengyan Heavenly King was defeated on the banks of the Yongxing River last year, the Longyuan Heavenly King's strategy on the southern front was carried out extremely smoothly, which deepened their internal contradictions. Because at the beginning, military and economic resources were tilted towards the Central Plains faction to which King Shengyan belonged, and after the setback of the Yongxing River, this tilt began to shift to Longyuan, which was the southward faction.
So the question is, when did the Black Turban Army begin to prepare for this unprecedented seizure of power, how much war reserve resources are there, how long can it continue to expand, who is its top-level Heavenly Master, and what is the relationship between it and the Heavenly Kings? What is the role of Vagne? Where the evil arts of the Black Turban Army came from, Wang Quan didn't know anything about them.
The interrogation of the other envoys was eventually directed at the Holy Order, the propaganda body of the cult of the Black Turban Army.
However, all the holy envoys outside the military and politics are trained by the Holy Order, and the division of labor between the holy envoys is quite meticulous, and the ranks are extremely strict, and the selection conditions must be converted to the Heavenly Sect of the Monarch Father, and then the selection and training, all the deceptive tricks are directly taught by the higher holy envoys, and even the Heavenly Master.
They themselves knew that these tricks were natural phenomena that could be manipulated and unknown to the common people, but they could get privileges, such as women, meat, gold and silver, silk and silk, and so on. Therefore, almost no one questioned and opposed, and no one was willing to sell the secret.
What is even more outrageous is that in order to legitimize their income, an offering shrine was set up, and believers were required to regularly offer a certain amount of gold and silver to the gods of the Heavenly Sect, so that they could get the opportunity to ascend to the kingdom of heaven after death.
And these tributes are then given to the gods by them with spells, and even directly and nakedly accuse the women of good families as demon girls who have done sins in previous lives and repay debts in future lives, or saints who have been chosen by the gods of the Heavenly Sect, and ask these women to be sacrificed to the Heavenly Sect to serve the gods, which is actually for them to commit adultery and sexual pleasure.
The various measures taken by the Black Turban Army in the occupied territories are appalling and unprecedented since the historical records of the Central Plains, and some of them are only tyrants who are arrogant and extravagant.
Today's Black Turban Army has completely delegated the rights enjoyed by a very small number of privileged strata to the hands of every individual who is willing to keep secrets for them by means of winning people's hearts, so in essence, it has built a cancer class with rights and privileges and material privileges as the core.
In order to further cover up their crimes, they even set up prostitute camps by capturing women, and all the soldiers and generals were drawn into their evil plans.
As a result, a large number of foreign guest troops have done all kinds of evil and done everything after being transferred to foreign territory. In this way, the humanity of the grassroots soldiers is constantly corrupted with evil, making them more willing to do all kinds of evil.
Imagine a vicious gangster, facing the punishment of the brutal justice division, knowing that after being caught, he will die, can he still be captured, and he is bound to resist fiercely until he dies.
If adultery and plunder is a privilege, then opening a prostitute camp is also a means of bribing and winning over grassroots soldiers and corrupting human nature.
At the beginning, the interrogation work was only presided over by high-ranking generals, but as the situation further expanded, such a horrific and cruel method was unprecedented, Ye Xin weighed it again and again, and decided to send two-thirds of the centurion and above middle- and lower-level officers of the whole army to attend the hearing, and Lu Zhao, Fang Qian, Bai He, and others were also present, intending to make these crimes public.
The interrogation ended in the second half of the night, and Ye Xin held a meeting overnight to urgently discuss countermeasures.
What is even more odious is that the Black Turban Army took root in the Sun State and moved a large number of foreigners into the Xian State, resulting in the Sun people being extremely dependent on the officials of the Sun State stationed by the Black Turban Army, and the deep-seated distrust of the foreigners from other vassal states in the Xian State Army.
This law was not only implemented in Xianguo, but a large number of people from Zhiguo and Xu were moved into Changsun by the Black Turban Army, which disrupted the local geopolitical and folk environment for thousands of years. Let the people of different countries and different accents and folk customs supervise and report each other, thus forming a vicious circle.
However, any individual who violates the will of the Heavenly Sect of the Emperor may be punished by death, which further hits the people's revolt and strengthens ignorance. At the same time, he gave small favors and consolidated the rule of the Black Turban Army.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the face of the Black Turban Army is now the truth, in the name of doing the right thing for heaven, usurping power, seeking rebellion, arrogance, extravagance, and indulgence, endangering the local area and brutalizing the people, its crimes are heinous, and everyone will see it.
And now that Shaoping has been defeated, the people of Xianxi, Chunan and half of the capital are still in the midst of the fire, you have a good plan to expose the heinous crimes of the Black Turban Army to the public! ”
Ye Xin asked the generals, and there was silence when he sat down.
Those standing and sitting at the scene were all qualified to speak in the army, but at least two-thirds were illiterate. Even the holy envoy of the Black Turban Army said that the trick of bewitching the people with evil words is an invincible magic weapon against the illiterate people.
Just like phone scams, as long as you change your tricks, someone will still be fooled. If there were no knowledgeable people like Bai Liyan to see through the evil arts, how many generals would not be bewitched and mutinied.