To say that Li Yuanyin's Jinyiwei has not eaten in vain for so many years, with Ji Qingwen's money, it didn't take much time to establish an intelligence network covering the entire Ming Dynasty.

This piece of information is composed of three sects and nine streams, seven aunts and eight women, beggars and gangsters, etc., although the scope of contacts is extremely wide, the backbone is very refined, only Li Yuanyin, Li Yan and Ji Qingwen know the overview of this intelligence network.

The core of the intelligence network is minimized and constricted as much as possible, ensuring that the two most important elements of the intelligence network are secrecy and speediness, and the depth and breadth of intelligence gathering are not very important in the face of these two points -- some trivial matters are not to be investigated rather than exposed to the information of this intelligence network.

However, sending troops to North Korea on order is a major event that shakes the world, and such a thing naturally can't hide from Li Yuanyin's eyes or Ji Qingwen's ears.

It turned out that Li Yuanyin secretly bought the little eunuch who served tea and water in the Qianqing Palace through Shen Liangzuo's door. And when Emperor Chongzhen was discussing with Wen Tiren, it was this little eunuch on duty, and after hearing the news, he pretended to tell Li Yuanyin that he knew about it in the palace.

After the insider learned the news, he took the opportunity to go out of the palace to buy goods and informed Duo Jiugong, who ran Ji's money village in Beijing. Duo Jiu Gong is an old Jianghu, and he is loyal to the Ji family, knowing that this matter should not be careless, so he sent his son Xiao Duozi to check the accounts on the grounds of checking the accounts, with the news, riding a fast horse, and immediately went south to report to Ji Qingwen.

In ancient times, although there were many means of transmitting information faster than riding horses, such as beacon fire and carrier pigeons, the information transmitted by the beacon tower was too single in content, and the carrier pigeon had to consider whether it could fly to the destination and whether it would be intercepted and killed halfway, which was not very reliable.

Truly confidential and critical information still has to be delivered by competent manpower.

Xiao Duozi is such a capable person, he crossed the horse, day and night, and it took him five days to finally deliver the news to Ji Qingwen, which was three days faster than the 800-mile expedited express that delivered the important military information.

Don't underestimate these three days, during this time, it is enough for Ji Qingwen to make detailed deliberations and complete preparations.

In fact, according to Ji Qingwen's plan, he is not willing to rush to the north now. Because through Chongzhen's three-year or so divine operation, the Manchurian Emperor Taiji and the Northwest People's Rebellion, which directly threatened the rule of the Ming Dynasty, have been suppressed by Ji Qingwen by various means, as long as there are no major changes, the situation in Chongzhen's early years has stabilized.

And Ji Qingwen wanted to take advantage of this stable situation to continue to earn a lot of silver, carry out land reform, promote newly introduced crops, train Ming military officers, build large ships, and other work. Moreover, the importance of these works is not inferior to that of suppressing the Eight Banners of Manchuria and the Northwest People's Rebellion.

Ji Qingwen himself also understood in his heart that during the Chongzhen period at the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was a Xiaoice period with an unusually cold and dry climate, which caused a situation where disasters continued so much that the imperial court had no time for disaster relief. Therefore, there was not enough time left for Ji Qingwen to show his strength with peace of mind, forcing him to deploy and carry out various tasks in a multi-pronged manner.

Rao is like this, the severity of the natural disaster, and the further impact of the disaster has far exceeded Ji Qingwen's own expectations, the most obvious manifestation is that Huang Taiji has a unique way to attack North Korea, and Chongzhen has no troops in his hands, so he can only mobilize the Ming Wu army far away in the south of the Yangtze River to reinforce.

Regarding the upcoming Chongzhen Emperor's will to order Ji Qingwen to send troops to the north, the opinions of the people around Ji Qingwen are not completely unanimous:

In the view of the strategist Li Yan, if he was ordered to go to Korea for reinforcements, he would inevitably have to confront the elite soldiers of the Eight Banners of Manchuria, and now the training of the Ming Wu Army has not yet been successful, there is still a gap of more than 1,000 soldiers, and many tactics have not been carefully practiced, so it is far from the time to carry out the final decisive battle with Huang Taiji. For today's plan, he can only obey the yang and the yin, first accept the will and then slowly go north, and in the process, actively use Ji Qingwen's power in the court to persuade Emperor Chongzhen to retract his fate.

In the view of Yang Zhan, who led the army to fight, it is not impossible to send troops to North Korea now. Of course, the nominal coach of the Ming Wujun is Ji Qingwen, who spends money and pays salaries, but in fact, it is Yang Zhan who is responsible for training every day. Therefore, no one knows the strength of the Ming Wu Army better than Yang Zhan. In his opinion, the Ming Wu Army already has the ability to confront and win head-to-head with the elite of the Eight Banners, and sending troops to North Korea is just a good way to test the effectiveness of the previous stage of training. After all, the Ming Wu Army had not been in battle to kill the enemy for a whole year, and there were more than 500 recruits who had never experienced a battle formation.

The opinions of these two parties are both considering Ji Qingwen, but they have different opinions, and no one can convince anyone.

At this time, even Ji Qingwen himself was a little difficult to make decisions, and suddenly thought that there was a guy named "Yuan Chonghuan" beside him, this guy had been the Jiliao Governor for several years, and his understanding of the overall situation in Liaodong was only second to Sun Chengzong, which could provide an important reference to Ji Qingwen.

Yuan Chonghuan, who was rescued by Ji Qingwen from the execution ground, was very polite to Ji Qingwen, and after considering the sentences, he analyzed the pros and cons of Li Yan and Yang Zhan's opinions, and introduced the actual situation in Liaodong and North Korea.

I only heard Yuan Chonghuan say: "The Korean country is small and the people are weak, if the emperor Taiji is determined to attack, there is absolutely no reason to hold on, it will definitely be a big flood and sand, and the momentum will be like a bamboo, as long as the country does not send troops to reinforce, then the destruction of Korea will be in the mundane." Once North Korea is destroyed, or it is completely occupied by Huang Taiji, it will become a henchman of the defenders of Liaodong in the Ming Dynasty - Huang Taiji takes North Korea, which solves the food problem, and at the same time can use the geographical location of North Korea to contain the Liaodong defense line to the west, collude with the Japanese people to the east, and threaten Shandong to the south, and then the imperial court will fall into a passive situation of being attacked by the enemy. Therefore, sending troops to rescue North Korea is actually the same thing as rescuing China. ”

These few words really spoke to Ji Qingwen's heart, and he suddenly remembered the slogan of "Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Protect the Family and Defend the Country". So Ji Qingwen overrode public opinion, made up his mind, supported the opinions of Yuan Chonghuan and Yang Zhan, and immediately began to prepare for sending troops to rescue North Korea.

Li Yan's opinion was refuted, and he was naturally unhappy in his heart, but his strength was still much broader than that of ordinary scholars, and then he threw a trace of unhappiness in his heart out of the clouds, helping Ji Qingwen to start preparing for the army.

Since it was to assist North Korea in resisting the elite of the Manchurian Eight Banners, the dispatch of troops must not be reserved, and the whole army must be dispatched in order to have any hope of victory. Therefore, this time he sent troops to Korea, Ji Qingwen did not leave a single soldier in the south of the Yangtze River: all the 2,000 soldiers of the Ming Wu Army went, all the 80 Yiwu miners went, and even the more than 1,500 dock workers (who are now shipbuilders and sailors) who worked in the wharf also went.

It is not easy for such a mighty team to cross half of China and rush from Jiangnan to Liaodong, and whether it can really defeat Huang Taiji or not, it is already very difficult to reach the country of Korea, which has already fallen half of the country.

Therefore, Ji Qingwen planned to abandon the original traditional method of walking north on two feet, and was unwilling to use the Cao to use the empty ship under the name of the governor of Caoyun, but proposed to let the soldiers under his command land on the ship at Dianshan Port, and take the newly built warship built by Ji Qingwen to reinforce Korea from the sea.

Ancient China has always valued the land and despised the sea, and the plan that Ji Qingwen came up with to transport troops at sea was just a safe and chic cruise ship in later generations, but it was unconventional and unheard of in the old days.

However, Li Yan and the others are also brilliant people, and after thinking about it carefully, they also feel that Ji Qingwen's idea is the best way to transport troops at the moment - not only fast, but also trouble-free, which can not only prevent the physical strength of the soldiers of the Ming Wu Army from being lost during the long-distance march, but also avoid the trouble of dealing with officials along the way.

So these people immediately made a decision, and immediately sent people to Suzhou to gather the whole army of the Ming Wu Army to Songjiang Dianshan Port, and prepared all the weapons, ammunition, grain and grass and other logistical baggage, and all the staff started to move the newly built big ship step by step.

Therefore, when Emperor Chongzhen's will really came, Ji Qingwen and others had already made all preparations, and happily explained the will, saying that they would immediately be ordered to go north to rescue North Korea, which could be regarded as leaving a good impression in front of Emperor Chongzhen.

…………

When Ji Qingwen sailed north to Korea, it was the weather in October, the northwest wind above the sea had not risen and the southeast wind still had spare strength, so Ji Qingwen took the battleship under his seat and rode the wind, but in two days he had crossed thousands of miles of waves and saw the Shandong Peninsula from afar.

It stands to reason that Ji Qingwen could go north directly and land in North Korea, but he chose to stay in Shandong for a while, not only to let the soldiers of the Ming Wu Army under his command go ashore to rest, but also to visit his friend, Sun Yuanhua, the governor of Shandong.

As it turned out later, his inadvertent move had an unexpectedly good effect later.

It was not suitable for the Ming court to appoint Sun Yuanhua as the governor of Shandong.

Sun Yuanhua was a good hand in developing muskets and making artillery, but he was a rough man in rectifying the affairs of the province. The great drought in the fifth year of Chongzhen swept from the north, and naturally spread to Shandong, causing a lot of trouble in several prefectures in northern Shandong. If it weren't for the fact that Shandong has been a rich land since ancient times, the harvest was not good, but the foundation was thick, and Sun Yuanhua was allowed to open a warehouse to release grain, so that he could barely support the situation, so that he could continue to bury himself in the manufacture of muskets and artillery.

When Sun Yuanhua was inspecting the military factory he had opened, he suddenly heard a report: "Your Excellency, a big ship is about to anchor in Laizhou Port. The little ones don't know what to do with this ship, so I ask the adults to show me......"

Sun Yuanhua was stunned for a moment, and thought: The big ship, the big ship? Since Ji Qingwen re-maintained the Songjiang Dianshan Wharf, most of the ships that were originally going to dock at Denglai Port decided to sail for another day or two, and simply docked, disembarked, and did business at the Dianshan Port Wharf. In addition to the official ships, today's Denglai Seaport has long been out of merchant ships, so where do the ships come from? And it's still a very large sea vessel.

Therefore, Sun Yuanhua was also quite shocked when he heard this, and immediately put down a two-foot-long barrel in his hand that was still being adjusted and repaired, turned his head and asked the spies who came to report the news: "You speak slowly." The officer asked you, have you figured out the identity of the shipowner? ”

The herald replied, "My lord, the ship is too far away from us to see the identity of the person who came. However, looking at the flag, it doesn't seem to be a ship of the Japanese Emperor, let alone a man under the Manchurian Emperor Taiji......"