Yao Keming, the deputy general of the Mo battalion, led the cavalry to leave the camp at night in advance, one of the purposes of which was to find ships for the retreat of the army. However, most of the ships he collected on the vortex were abandoned grain carriers stuck in the dry mud on the riverbank.

When these ships were dug up with knives and guns by large groups of soldiers, their seaworthiness was clearly worrying to the passengers. However, the advantage of a wooden boat is that it will not sink if it is scattered.

Although the rotten bottoms of these grain carriers kept seeping and leaking, they miraculously persevered to their destination under the careful care of the soldiers on duty.

On May 29, the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, Yao Keming, the forward guerrilla general of Mo Chongwen's department, led 200 cavalry to take the lead in occupying Luyi County, which borders Henan and Nanzhi.

Three days later, on June 2, after a long drift on the water, Wang Shicong, Wen Ruzhen and Mo Chongwen, Yang Guodong, Ma Jinzhong and other officers and troops arrived in Bozhou with extreme exhaustion and hunger.

Bozhou and Luyi County are on the bank of the Vortex River, located in the northwest corner of the prominent boundary of Nanzhili.

It is Luyi County in the west, Guide County in the north, Xiayi County in the northeast 130 miles, Yongcheng County in the east 150 miles, and Shenqiu County in the southwest 200 miles.

That is to say, from Bozhou, no matter the east, west, and north directions, all enter the Henan boundary.

After another two days, the four departments were basically gathered and gathered in Luyi County, Bozhou, and the Chengfu Town of Bozhou, and the Yimen Inspection Division to collect grain for repair.

In Yimen Village, Wang Shicong, Wen Ruzhen, Mo Chongwen, Yang Guodong, and Ma Jinzhong were greeted by Liu Chao, a former lieutenant general of his old comrade-in-arms and former governor of Guizhou, Wang Sanshan, the first hero of Guiyang's siege and now in his hometown in Yongcheng. Coming with Liu Chao, there was also Liu Chao's younger brother Liu Yue, who trained 500 soldiers and 2,000 precious grains.

……

Liu Chao is over 60 years old (Note 1). When it comes to military qualifications, even Wen Ruzhen does not dare to compare.

Liu Chao's ancestor was a native of Shanxi, and his father came to Yongcheng to do business, and later settled in the southwest of Yongcheng to find a son camp (now Hunheji, Wolong Township).

Liu Chao studied literature in his early years and was an authentic scholar. Later, due to the short time of settling down and the social security was not enough, Liu Chao failed to immigrate in the college entrance examination, so he had to abandon literature and follow the martial arts, participated in the Henan martial arts examination in the 40th year of Wanli and the 46th year of Wanli, and unexpectedly won the first place in martial arts twice.

Why did Liu Chao participate in the two Wuke Township Tests, he never said, and others were not easy to ask.

In short, because of the unpleasant experience of failing to immigrate in the college entrance examination and being forced to join Rong, Liu Chao, a second-generation Yongcheng native, has formed a big bond with those rich gentry and wealthy families who have been entrenched in Yongcheng for 300 years.

During the Rebellion of Luxury, Wang Sanshan, a native of Yongcheng, served in Qianfu and acted cheaply on orders, and Liu Chao, who was a fellow townsman and a fellow townsman, became Wang Sanshan's cronies.

Guiyang was besieged, and Wang Sanshan divided his troops into three routes. Three Virtues, Three Kindnesses, Three Ways to Advance the Plan was really a great success.

Deputy envoy He Tianlin and others entered from Qingjiang and were on the right side; Yang Shisheng and others entered from Duyun (now Duyun, Guizhou) and were on the left side. And Wang Sanshan led 20,000 troops as the middle road, just a thief. Liu Chao led the generals Yang Mingshu, Liu Zhimin, Sun Yuanmo, Wang Jianzhong and others, Zhanlongli, attacked Bijie, killed An Bangjun, and captured An Bangyan's brother Aaron. The siege of Guiyang was resolved, Liu Chao's military merits were the first, and he was promoted by Wang Sanshan as the chief military officer of Sichuan.

It's a pity that Liu Chao's good luck came to an end.

Once the Southwest Yi rebelled, the counterinsurgency war was always long-term.

After the big victory in Guiyang, Wang Sanshan was hot-headed, thinking that the battle of Southwest Yi could be determined. Before Liu Chao's recital was issued, Wang Sanshan was captured and killed alive by the rebel seedlings who came back, and Liu Chao also suffered defeat.

Since then, Liu Chao has been losing on the road to officialdom.

In the ninth year of Chongzhen, the imperial court made great achievements to Liu Chao, and finally rewarded a "hereditary family of Yin Yizi's foreign guard". The general army is gone, and it has become a "foreign guard" and a "deputy thousand households", that is, if Liu Chao's son goes to office, he may be assigned by the ministry to reclaim the border in a remote place. If he does not take office, he will be nothing more than an idle military attaché's money.

However, even if this belated love, Liu Chao is not blessed: because Liu Chao has no son at all! Even if he marries Xiaosheng'er now, his body is almost sixty years old!

For such an absurd reward, Liu Chao was naturally angry to death, so he had to resort to the old method of running for official positions in the imperial court - entering Beijing for activities.

From the first month of the twelfth year of Chongzhen to June, Liu Chao took advantage of the opportunity to listen to the use in Beijing, went up and down for half a year, and spent countless money, but he waited from the emperor for a hateful ending of "reprimanding him with his resentment".

In November of the thirteenth year of Chongzhen, Yuan Shizhong of Huaxian County gathered hungry people against Kaizhou (now Puyang), and his power gradually expanded, with two or three hundred thousand people, and the troubled place expanded from Kaizhou to southeast Henan and northern Anhui.

After all, Liu Chao was born as a serious military general, and in order to protect himself in troubled times, he and his younger brother Liu Yue used their own personal soldiers to form a township army of hundreds of people.

At the beginning of this year, after killing Wang Qiaonian, the thief Li Zicheng swept through a large area of central Henan, southern Henan, and eastern Henan. At the end of March, Liankesui Prefecture (now Sui County, Shangqiu City), Guide and other important towns gradually became champions. Yuan Shizhong joined forces with the thieves in April, and put more than 100,000 people in the main force of the small Yuan battalion into the campaign of three attacks on Kaifeng, leaving the generals Zhang Xiance (Note 2) and Zhang Xianxi brothers in the Guide area to continue their activities.

At this time, the gentry and giants who lived in Yongcheng finally panicked. They remembered Liu Chao, who had always been thrown in the corner by them, complimented him on his "all-round talent in civil and military affairs", and asked him to take the money and food they had collected after several quarrels to recruit the corps for training.

Liu Chaoren is not old-hearted, and always wants to make a career in troubled times. So the two sides temporarily put aside their historical grudges and came to each take what they need.

With money and food and an old team that has fought in the war, it is not difficult to recruit soldiers. The groups of displaced people who went south and east from southwestern Shandong and eastern Henan were all good sources of soldiers.

Just a few months have passed, and now, Liu Chao and his younger brother Liu Yue have about 6,000 regimental training, and the small Yongcheng has become impregnable.

However, Liu Chao's original intention was to lead the troops. Recently, it was reported that the emperor was worried about the safety of Bianjing and intended to recruit Liu Chao to serve as the chief soldier of Baoding. Therefore, when Yao Keming visited Liu Chao with Wen Ruzhen and Mo Chongwen's handwritten letters, Liu Chao asked about the situation and immediately agreed to help: Mo Chongwen and Liu Chao's people went to Huitong Bank in Huai'an Mansion to exchange money for silver; Liu Chao paid two taels of silver in advance, purchased 2,000 stone of military rations, and transported them to Bozhou by car to help the hungry soldiers.

The reason why Liu Chao was able to agree to such a big event was that in addition to the old love, he was also sandwiched by his own little Jiujiu.

Once Liu Chao received the edict to serve as the chief soldier of Baoning and shoulder the burden of reinforcing Kaifeng from the west, then the training of the 6,000 regiments under him with poor equipment and no experience in battle formations was far from enough. But with the seven or eight thousand people in Wen Ruzhen's department, it's different.

Wen Ruzhen is a general in Guizhou, Mo Chongwen is known as the tiger of the Sichuan army, and Ma Jinzhong, who is often the vanguard of the left army, are good generals who can fight well. Once the four divisions of Wen, Mo, Ma, and Yang were fully supplied, they could immediately recruit displaced people, and there would be no problem in expanding the army to tens of thousands within two months.

At that time, he who had both old and grace with the generals of the Wen Department joined hands with the Wen Department to fight, and he would inevitably show his skills under the city of Kaifeng, and it was not unthinkable that he would immediately be crowned a great minister in the future.

Even if Wen Ruzhen and the others are unwilling to return to Kaifeng to fight with Li Chuang, then Liu Chao can also transfer his troops to the south, and use the strength of the Wen army to find trouble for the thief, and obtain the military merits and wealth that he urgently needs to display his ambitions.

Liu Chao is very confident that his plan to go south is nine out of ten. Because in just a few days, the entire officialdom in Huaibei and Huainan was shaken by the bad news that Zhang Xianzhong broke Luzhou.

Yongcheng is located at the junction of Henan and Anhui, and the news from the south to the north is very well-informed.

At the beginning of May, the thieves pretended to be students who went to the city to take the exam, and followed Xu Zhitan, the examiner who was a good teacher. The next day, Ge Li Yanhe Yilong attacked Wuwei Prefecture. In addition to the previously broken Lu'an, Shucheng and other places, the thieves and the fifth battalion of Gezuo have occupied the entire area around Chaohu Lake, and the only Lujiang County that has not yet fallen is also in danger.

The source also said that the thieves and the Fifth Battalion of Gezuo had taken the people and soldiers in the occupied areas and incorporated the villagers, and now there are more than 200,000 people.

Liu Chao knew that although the Xian Thief and the Fifth Battalion of Ge Zuo had a lot of troops, compared with the Thief, Cao Thief and Xiao Yuan Battalion, it was difficult to compare both the total number of troops and the actual combat effectiveness.

The thieves are claimed to be millions, but there are 500,000; The five battalions of the thieves and the left side of the army are claimed to be 200,000, but the actual strength is only more than 100,000.

The soldiers under the thieves have been fighting for a long time, but the five battalions of the thieves and Gezuo include tens of thousands of people who have recently been forcibly recruited into the camp.

What's more critical is that the thief Li Zicheng is dominant in the thief camp and has unified orders; And the strength of the sacrifice thief and the fifth battalion of the left is equal, and everyone is on an equal footing. When acting, the general direction is the same, and the small direction is in its own way, and there is no unified command.

Zuo Liangyu, who was in front of the thief, retreated without a fight and threw Kaifeng to the thief. The thieves are rampant in the Central Plains, and they are already unstoppable. But in front of the thieves, there was Lu Jiude, the chief eunuch of the prison army, who was mobilizing Huang Degong and Liu Liangzuo, two general soldiers, out of Fengyang and down to Chuzhou. The war between the two armies of officials and thieves is on the verge of breaking out.

If Liu Chao joins hands with the Wen Department to support Huang and Liu's second generals, forming a situation of east-west flanking, then it will be more certain that they will be completely annihilated, severely damaged the Xian Thief and the Fifth Battalion of Gezuo, or driven back to the Yinghuo Mountains.

Liu Chao's vision was perfect, but he ignored a basic fact since he came out of the mountain.

The gentry of Yongcheng pooled money to raise food for him to recruit displaced people and train village soldiers, not to let him make meritorious contributions and display his personal ambitions. In their eyes, Liu Chao is at most a high-level dog they raised, and he is used to take care of his own home. Once the dog has a pursuit and is ready to run away from home, then naturally, the owner of the dog will put a chain on the dog and bring a dragon head!

……

On June 4, the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, Wang Shicong, the governor of Runan Province in Henan, Wen Ruzhen, the general of Sichuan Aid and Suppression, Mo Chongwen, the deputy general, Ma Jinzhong, and Yang Guodong, the general of the staff of Yongcheng, met with Liu Chao and Liu Yue brothers, who were natives of Yongcheng, in Yimen Village west of Bozhou.

Old comrades-in-arms met in different places, new friends met for the first time, and everyone staggered and talked happily. They talked about their past friendships and exchanged their life trajectories. Ma Jinzhong personally participated in the Xingyang Conference, Mo Chongwen's successful entry into the Henan battlefield by mistake and his successful escape from death with the golden cicada a few days ago have become the focus of heated discussions.

When Liu Chao, who was drunk in a trance, scolded the wealthy gentry in Yongcheng for being unscrupulous, everyone echoed in unison, directly denouncing the greed and cruelty of the Henan gentry as the root of the people's uprising, and the drought and epidemic in Henan for many years were the source of the people's uprising.

When Mo Chongwen took out the letter from his brother Jia Denglian and told Liu Chao the true origin of the 10,000 taels of bills of exchange, Liu Chao, who suddenly realized, suddenly had round eyes, and complained that Yao Keming had concealed the owner of Huitong Bank, otherwise he would let his second brother Liu Yue, instead of a small follower, follow Brother Long to exchange silver. As long as he has the relationship with Huitong Qianzhuang, why should he, Liu Chao, suffer from the puff of the wealthy people in Yongcheng who are inferior to pigs and dogs!

With life-saving food, and learning the local details from the Liu brothers and the news of the thieves' capture of Luzhou, Wang, Wen, Mo, Yang, Ma and others had new ideas.

They began to ponder the feasibility of reclaiming troops in large areas of the Henan-Anhui region.

Compared with the red land in Henan, which is thousands of miles away and full of hunger, the land watered by the Huang and Huai rivers can finally see patches of yellow wheat under your feet.

Because of the dense river network, the drought here is not as serious as in Henan;

Because it is located at the intersection of the small Yuan camp that occupies eastern Henan and the fifth battalion of Gezuo that occupies the Yinghuo Mountains, the situation here is relatively calm;

Because of the existence of the Fengyang ancestral tomb and the support of Jiangnan taxes, it can be supported by the Fengyang garrison.

What makes the generals even more interested is that the morale of the people in Huaibei and Henan is available.

For example, in the neighboring county of Luyi, in February, thieves attacked the county seat, and Ji Maoxun, the magistrate of the county of Fudewang, supervised the battle day and night, and led 40,000 people to hold the lonely city for two whole months, until the city was broken on March 27. In order not to affect the people in the city, Ji Maoxun calmly hanged himself. Zhang Damo, a native of Yi, collected the corpse and buried it with a stone. The county's heroic Ding Hengchang (Note 3) held an iron whip and shouted the slogan of revenge, leading thousands of villagers who broke through to continue to fight in Bozhou.

According to the Tanmalay newspaper, at present, Ding Hengchang's department is gathered between the Xiqi River and the Ci River south of Bozhou and Luyi, and is based on Tuntian. If you can send someone to recruit you, you may be able to get a strong battalion of soldiers!

……

The high-minded talk of many martial artists can't help but make the only civil official, Wang Shicong, think about it.

Li Changxiang, a fellow villager of Wang Shicong in Dazhou and a close confidant of Shu Shizi, said in a letter to him that there were a large number of refugees from Yu and Chu who would rather abandon their homes and join Sichuan than become thieves. If you can occupy the land of Huaibei and southern Henan with Bozhou as the center, learn the method of Shu to hold high the banner of "protecting the country and the people, and the world is peaceful", organize the people and displaced people to reclaim the wasteland, plus the support of the Shu Palace, you will definitely be able to raise the army and support the people, and maybe you can create a paradise in the troubled times!

Occupying Bozhou is not enough, occupying Luyi is the finishing touch.

Why? Because Luyi belongs to Henan, and he Wang Shicong is an official of Henan.

As long as he occupies Luyi, he can proudly submit a letter to the court, and he has no "responsibility to abandon the land";

As long as he recovers the neighboring Chenzhou, he can proudly declare to the world that he still has the "merit of recovery"!

Once the situation in Henan Province is bad, it is not impossible for Wang Shicong, as one of the few remaining senior civil officials in Henan Province with heavy troops, coupled with the merits of Yue Wumu Temple in Zhuxian Town, to replace Gao Mingheng and be promoted to the governor of Henan in one step!

Note 1: According to local records in Yongcheng, Liu Chao was born in the tenth year of Wanli, that is, in 1582 AD.

Note 2: Zhang Xiance, also known as Zhang Junhui. See Ma Shiying's "Yongcheng Chronicles".

Note 3: Ding Hengchang, who was recruited by Emperor Hongguang and was a general for him. The Qing army invaded the south, he stubbornly defended the west gate of Shuixi, was defeated and captured, and refused to surrender. Torture is unyielding, and death is calm.