April 20, 1687, was a quiet and ordinary day in Chengdu Province. Chen Ming, who had just returned from a business trip to southern Sichuan, put a reclining chair in the backyard of the commercial station, and then asked the maid to make a pot of tea, intending to rest beautifully for an afternoon.

He was so tired. The situation in southern Sichuan had just come to an end, and it took two years for the three generations of generals of the Shun army, old, middle, and young, to combine and command more than 20,000 elite soldiers, plus more than 30,000 united soldiers (local troops, each prefecture took turns to send rotational battles), and it took countless grains, materials, and money to roughly calm down this foreign land—at least on the surface.

Echoing this, it was the offensive launched by the middle and rear battalions of Dashun in the area of Xiangxi. Its goal is also aimed at all kinds of Tusi forces, the general Gao Shougui of the Mesozoic Dynasty of Dashun and Zhang Neng, the general of the older generation, each led more than 30,000 people and horses, from the east and west two directions, it also lasted two years, turned over countless mountain beams, drilled countless forests, and then temporarily subdued the local Tusi forces, changed the land and returned to a part of the house, and liberated a large number of people.

But it is worth mentioning that whether it is southern Sichuan or western Xiangxi, at present, Dashun has only extinguished the open flames on the surface, but the scattered and hidden embers are all over the ground. These people are naturally unwilling to be taken away from their power, land, property, and people, and they are like the undercurrent surging under the surface of the calm lake, as long as there is a storm on the lake, then they will jump out at any time, and use the prestige and connections accumulated over decades or even hundreds of years to coerce the people under their rule to rebel again. At that time, the Dashun court had to allocate funds to transfer troops to suppress it.

For thousands of years, the Central Plains Imperial Court has been constantly bloodletting in this kind of repeated surrender and rebellion, and finally it can no longer bear it, so it can only buy the local leaders and give them a certain degree of autonomy. This situation was especially obvious in the Song and Ming dynasties, when the central government, after calculating the economic accounts, found that it would be a huge financial disaster if a large army was mobilized to conquer the country, so it was better to have more than one thing and let the Tusi be autonomous.

This situation lasted until the middle of the Qing Dynasty, because of economic and social development, the population of the Han region increased greatly, the level of productivity also improved to a certain extent compared with the Ming Dynasty, and the national strength increased greatly. In addition, the Manchu emperor was not easily constrained by his ministers, so he began to reform the land on a large scale, laying the foundation for the current situation in the southwest in one fell swoop.

Now this time and space has almost reached the time node of large-scale land reform and return to the river in history, and the object has been replaced by the Great Shun Kingdom, and the background situation is also somewhat different. But in any case, although the national strength of Dashun is not as good as the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which has the whole of China in history, it is victorious in the fact that the power is mostly concentrated in Hunan, Sichuan and other neighboring provinces, and the domestic transportation facilities are also stronger than the Manchu Qing in history.

Moreover, they also used political means to surrender, divide and disintegrate all kinds of toasts, in order to achieve the purpose of each defeat, and finally eliminated a lot of toasts who were not convinced. Although the local situation is still very chaotic, and it is very difficult for the officials sent to the past to do things, they have finally achieved certain results. Otherwise, you think those new states and counties are fake? You must know that in the southern Sichuan Prefectures alone, the Dashun Zuoying Shogunate set up ten counties, including Yanjin, Daguan, Zhaotong, Zhuti (later Ludian County), Leibo, Mabian, Yiliang, Zhenxiong, Weixin, and Weining. Some of these counties were newly established, some were abandoned and reset, and some were expanded on the basis of the original hall and guard, liberating hundreds of thousands of people in total, greatly enriching the strength of the Sichuan shogunate and laying a good foundation for the future entry into the Yunnan-Guizhou region.

Of course, we can see from the map that the Sichuan shogunate's conquest of southern Sichuan was not fully successful, and there were still large tracts of land ruled by Tusi in the region. These people were either ostensibly recruited by the Sichuan shogunate, or they still had their hearts set on the south, or they simply set themselves up as kings, in short, they still controlled a large number of people, money, food, and troops. However, considering that the main military pressure on Dashun is now in the north, and that in the past two years, there have been many casualties (mostly due to illness and attrition), and countless money and food have been consumed, so they decided to temporarily withdraw their troops and truce and wait for this period to be relieved.

Chen Ming led a group of intelligence officers from the military police headquarters to follow the Shun army around the ravines and ravines in southern Sichuan for two years (during which he returned to Chengdu many times to deal with the affairs of the trading station), which was regarded as completing the task of assessing the combat effectiveness of the left battalion of the Shun army assigned by the army. At the same time, they also have a certain degree of understanding of the geography and customs of southern Sichuan, those intelligence officers are not dry food, they collected many specimens along the way, drew a large number of maps, many of which are not possible for non-professional officers to see, in short, what they got out is much stronger than the Shun army's own broken map. These things are now sent to Ningbo by ship, although it is unlikely that they will be used, but let's save them first, in case they can be used later.

After dealing with this matter, Chen Ming returned to Chengdu Commercial Station, planning to take a vacation for himself first, and then deal with affairs after resting enough. Anyway, now it's just some business chores, when will it be dealt with or not? It's not a militaristic event or anything, so there's no hurry!

However, Chen Ming wanted to rest, but God didn't plan to give him this opportunity. No, just after lying down for half an hour, the servant in front of me (this gentleman is an agent of the State Intelligence Administration) came to report, saying that Zhang Guangcui, the soldier and horse envoy of the left wing, had sent someone to visit secretly. Chen Ming had no choice but to get up and let someone lead him in to see why he had come.

"Sun Kewang has been killed!" As a result, the first sentence of Zhang Guangcui's envoy made Chen Ming stunned. Subsequently, the veteran-turned-envoy carefully described the situation to Chen Ming, allowing him to get a general picture.

It turned out that the Southern Ming Dynasty had been declining over the years, not only was the territory getting less and less, but the internal struggle was also becoming more and more intense. Especially after Li Dingguo, the king of Jin, was seriously ill, the king of Qin was extremely arrogant, controlling the power inside and outside the court, and he had a heart of disobedience. As a result, when everyone was speculating about when Sun Kewang would usurp the throne, perhaps because of his bad luck, or because he offended too many people, he was blocked between the inner city and the outer city when he was in the last dynasty, and was killed together with hundreds of guards.

As soon as Sun Kewang died, the internal and external forces that he had enveloped during his lifetime suddenly collapsed. Some of them changed their doors and took refuge in Li Dingguo, who was struggling to support his sick body and preside over the overall situation, but some of them had followed Sun Kewang for too long and couldn't get out of the car. In particular, some generals guarding the frontier, such as Bai Hui, the son of Bai Wenxuan, who guarded Dongchuan Mansion, directly contacted the nearby Shunguo generals and led more than 30,000 people to surrender, and the situation was very bad for a while.

Liu Zhonggui from Chengdu was also a little stunned when he received the news, because happiness came too suddenly! A moment ago, he was still thinking about whether Nanming would be in trouble because of their action to conquer the southern Sichuan Toast, but now people have played such a trick of brothers' walls, which is really dizzying, and I can't react!

Liu Zhonggui soon convened a meeting of many core members of the shogunate, including the secretary of Jiedu, the judge of Zhu Cao, the soldiers and horses of the former Yaqian, the soldiers and horses of the left and right compartments, the Marquis of Duyu, and the Duzhu Ya, to discuss how to act next. When it comes to this, they can't do it if they don't act! As the old saying goes, Tianyu does not take the blame, the Southern Ming Dynasty has sent such a big gift, if you don't laugh at it, like words?

Everyone was very excited at the meeting that day, and after deliberation, the unanimous conclusion was to march south and annex the Yunnan-Guizhou region. Moreover, Liu Zhonggui specifically instructed that the matter of transferring troops and grain should be avoided by the eyes and ears of the people on the east coast as much as possible, and although it is impossible not to leak the news at all, it is good to let the people on the east coast know about it one day later, because this will give them greater strategic room for maneuver. Of course, to Liu Zhonggui's surprise, he only convened everyone to discuss the matter the night before, and the next day the news was stabbed by Zhang Guangcui, the envoy of the left wing, to Chen Ming, and there was no one.

Zhang Guangcui, who once received the whole training of the East Coast people in Ningbo with Zhang Jingchun, Yuan Bao and others, was the first general in the Shun army system to accept the new style of warfare, and was one of the famous young generals in the left camp in the Liu Fangliang era. After Liu Zhonggui inherited the position of general of the left battalion and led his troops into Sichuan for development, Zhang Guangcui, who had repeatedly made military exploits, climbed to the high position of the left wing soldiers and horses, and he was also a number of generals in the left battalion.

Now such a general is willing to deliver information to the East Coast people, which is enough to show the success of the East Bank people in infiltrating the left battalion for many years. Of course, this does not mean that Zhang Guangcui is a pawn and spy of the East Coast people, in fact, it is impossible for the East Coast people to control this level of high-ranking officials, and people are willing to pass on news to the East Coast at a critical moment, and more factors are better to sell.

People are complex and unpredictable, Zhang Guangcui is willing to marry the East Coast people, but also to leave a way out for himself. This is all human nature, understandable, after all, he is not the only one in the Shun army who does this, there are many ways for people on the east coast to obtain information, and informants who are willing to sell intelligence also abound, which can only be blamed on the precarious situation of the Dashun regime back then, people have no sense of security, and have to frantically find a way out.

In any case, the information sent by Zhang Guangcui is still extremely valuable, at least the time is very effective. The problem now is that Chen Ming got this key information but didn't know what to do, he couldn't ask Liu Zhonggui about it, that would only mess things up, but he couldn't help but take action, because it would be his dereliction of duty. After thinking about it, he still returned to the study, and wrote a few warrants in one breath, asking people to immediately send them to the warehouse by the dock outside the city, and asked the person in charge of the warehouse to suspend the delivery. If nothing else, there happened to be a piece of military supplies in the warehouse that had been transferred from Ningbo for a long time, and the Chengdu shogunate paid about a quarter of the deposit, promising to repay the rest within a year after the delivery of the goods. Now Chen Ming asked the warehouse to stop shipping, the reasons are ready-made, the payment is not enough, and it will not be sent for the time being! If people have raised enough money to come and ask for withdrawal, then they will find other reasons, anyway, just delay it first, and Liu Zhonggui will not have the courage to force the people on the east coast.

In addition, Chen Ming felt that this information had to be sent to Madang Fortress as quickly as possible, and then the local navy would relay it back to Ningbo. Naturally, this information could only be brought back by a few senior intelligence officers in the trading station! Liu Zhonggui thought about it, but still felt that it was not too late, so he asked one person from the gendarmerie system and the State Intelligence Administration system to carry the intelligence to Madang together. It just so happened that the day after tomorrow, a small fleet of ships hired by the people from the east coast would be loaded with the goods of the river to the east, and let the two men leave with them, and then find a way to reach Madang Fortress as quickly as possible.

"His grandmother's, this time Shunjun really picked up a big bargain! The white painting of Dongchuan Mansion surrendered, the door of Yunnan was opened, and the army could drive straight in. And how could Changsha be indifferent after getting the news? I can't say that Guizhou and Guangxi will also ignite the flames of war, which will completely disrupt our strategic deployment. After writing the warrant, Chen Ming thought a little restlessly, "What will the higher authorities think about this?" ”