In the eyes of the Manchurian Emperor Taiji, the Guanning defense line is still the Guanning defense line, which can be broken by the same method as two years ago. So he lit up the elite of the Eight Banners of Manchuria and stormed the newly built Dalinghe City.

Originally, in history, this Dalinghe City could not be completed until ten years later, and the one who presided over the construction had become the ancestor who escaped under the Jingshi City that year.

But now, with the support of the money that Ji Qingwen earned in Jiangnan, the "contractor foreman" of the Dalinghe Project has become the old supervisor Sun Chengzong, and the quality of this city is naturally very different.

Huang Taiji came in a hurry, and before he broke through the outer fortifications of the outer Dalinghe city defense, he encountered the stubborn resistance of the Ming army.

If it is placed in the time of Huang Taiji's father Nurhachi, he will definitely wave the three armies to attack with all his strength, and if one wave fails, the second wave will come, and if the second wave fails, the third wave will go to the third wave, and the city must be captured. Such a lifeless tactic worked exceptionally well in front of the Ming army, which had been out of battle for a long time, and could often achieve unexpected results, and its own losses were not as large as expected.

Therefore, Nurhachi has always tried this repeatedly, until the city of Jinzhou, Nurhachi still used such a tactic, and finally defeated under the artillery of Yuan Chonghuan and Sun Yuanhua, and he was also injured by artillery fire, and finally got the wound infected and died.

And Nurhachi's son, Huang Taiji, was far less brutal and tenacious than his father, but he was cunning and resourceful but better than Nurhachi.

He led the army to attack Dalinghe on the eastern road, which turned out to be just a feint - it was best to be able to take it, and it didn't matter if it couldn't be defeated - anyway, he himself didn't have much confidence in being able to break through Dalinghe City, which had a complete city defense system, head-on.

And this attack, firstly, Huang Taiji wanted to test the combat effectiveness of the Ming army in the northeast, and secondly, it was to signal to the Ming court: I, the Manchurian Emperor Taiji, am going to attack the Guanning defense line.

After setting off such a large firework, Huang Taiji did not continue to attack the Daling River, but immediately waved his army to the west, bypassing the entire Liaodong, and then went south from the Mongolian Wuliang Habu, which was empty due to nomadic escape, intending to enter the pass and plunder through the Xifeng Pass.

Such a route was already used by Huang Taiji two years ago.

But Huang Taiji thinks he is smart, but Sun Chengzong is not stupid.

Sun Chengzong Chongzhen was exactly 70 years old in five years, and his 70 years of life did not live to the gutter, but spent in the process of competing with countless enemies and opponents at home and abroad. In the past 70 years, the eunuch party is gone, the Donglin party is gone, Nurhachi is gone, and even Yuan Chonghuan is gone (not really gone), how can a mere emperor Taiji hide from Sun Chengzong's eyes?

Huang Taiji led the exhausted elite soldiers of the Eight Banners who had traveled thousands of miles, and came to Xifengkou to take a look, but what he saw was countless Ming troops with bright armor, these Ming troops were waiting for a long time.

It turned out that what Huang Taiji encountered in Dalinghe City was just a part of the elite soldiers of Liaodong - it was only because Dalinghe City was repaired too well, so that the strength of the original ten people played the level of twenty or thirty people, which made Huang Taiji misjudge, thinking that the main force of the Ming army was all gathered on the eastern front, and the Xifengkou on the western front would be extremely empty, repeating the mistakes of two years ago.

His judgment is not unfounded.

Huang Taiji is a person who does not talk about him, but he can be said to be the most eloquent and majestic among the various forces in the late Ming Dynasty, and he doesn't know how high it is compared to the rash and irritable Emperor Chongzhen.

He had already determined that the Ming court only had these few soldiers in the north, and now there were peasant uprisings in Shanxi, Shaanxi, and the Ming court needed to divide troops to suppress it. In this way, Xifengkou could not get the support of the Ming army in the northwest and the elite soldiers of Liaodong, and this area would inevitably be weak and could still be invaded by the elite soldiers of the Eight Banners of Manchuria.

Therefore, when Huang Taiji saw so many Ming court soldiers appearing in the Xifengkou defense line, he was immediately frightened and trembled, and made a slight contact with the Ming army, and won a small victory, so he turned his horse's head and retreated to the east again.

In fact, if Huang Taiji was like his father Nurhachi, he gave a death order and asked his Eight Banners elites to attack fiercely, he could also kill these Ming troops guarding Xifengkou. But he doesn't have Nurhachi's courage, not to mention that there is a big brother Daishan who was beaten half-crippled by Ji Qingwen by his side. Once his own war was unfavorable and his troops were lost, Dai Shan would take the opportunity to mobilize other brothers to oust his Manchurian Khan, who was not very reliable.

At that time, Huang Taiji wanted to ask for a good death, but it may not be possible.

Therefore, Huang Taiji looked at the large number of Ming troops at Xifengkou, only scolded a swear word, and then led all the elite more than 30,000 people of the Eight Banners to return east along the road they came.

The Ming army knew that its combat effectiveness was weak, and it was still a little insufficient to stick to the pass, and if it went out of the city to fight with the Eight Banners, it would inevitably be nine deaths, so it did not dare to follow the pursuit, and the Eight Banners army calmly retreated.

Although retreat is retreat, the food crisis has not been resolved, but after this long-distance travel, a lot of the grain looted and accumulated years ago has been wasted.

Just when Huang Taiji was at a loss, his strategist Fan Wencheng came up with a ruthless idea: since the Central Plains is difficult to invade for a while, it is better to invade North Korea!

Korea has always been the first subject state of the Ming Dynasty, and its political system is all modeled after the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, how weak, corrupt, and chaotic the Ming Dynasty was during the Chongzhen period, North Korea was ten times weak, ten times more corrupt, and ten times more chaotic. Therefore, whether it borders on the DPRK or not, as long as it can get its own territory, they want to invade and take advantage of it.

During the Wanli period, Japan's Toyotomi Hideyoshi crossed the sea to attack, causing almost the destruction of Korea, and it was all thanks to the support of the Ming Dynasty to save Korea from destruction.

Now, the Manchurian Emperor Taiji is coming again.

However, now the Ming Dynasty in the Chongzhen period is no longer the Ming Dynasty in the Wanli period.

The money accumulated by Zhang Juzheng's old minister in the past has long been squandered by Wanli, Tianqi and other faint monarchs, and the troops have also become overstretched under the double blow of the Manchurian Eight Banners and the Northwest People's Uprising, and there is no time to divide troops to protect North Korea.

What is even more odious is that, after all, Japan is separated from Korea by a rough strait, while Manchuria borders Korea, and it can invade Korean territory without hindrance without the need to build ships and cross the sea.

The Eight Banners of Manchuria can be said to be the most elite cavalry of this era, perhaps not one of them. really attacked with all his might, and even the Liaodong Iron Cavalry was difficult to resist, let alone a mere North Korea.

In just half a month, Pyongyang, Kaesong, Seoul and other important strongholds in North Korea have all fallen, and if it were not for the rugged mountain roads in northern Korea, the Korean king Yi Liang would have been driven into the sea.

When the news reached the Ming Dynasty, it was naturally another shock.

Cui Youhai, the Korean envoy who stayed in the Ming Dynasty, even came up with a tricky way, and knelt outside the palace every day without doing anything serious, begging the Ming court to send troops to rescue. However, Cui Youhai did not wear an official robe when he knelt, but wore linen and filial piety, saying that he was mourning for the Korean people who died, and he was tired of kneeling and cried a few times from time to time, so that outsiders could see it, and they thought that Emperor Chongzhen had died.

If he had been put to someone else and did such an unlucky thing, Emperor Chongzhen would have ordered Jinyiwei to beat him out with a court staff. However, Cui Youhai is not a courtier of Emperor Chongzhen, and if he beats this North Korean envoy, it will cause "international influence".

In desperation, Emperor Chongzhen could only convene a court meeting for several days to discuss the matter of supporting Korea.

Opinions were quickly divided into two factions - the majority of the civilian officials advocated reinforcements to Korea no matter how difficult it was, and it would be too shameful to lose this first subject country; On the other hand, it is the old supervisor Sun Chengzong who supervised the army in Liaodong, he believes that at present, the domestic soldiers of the Ming Dynasty are still insufficient, and there is no spare strength to send troops to North Korea.

The two factions disputed their opinions, and finally pushed the issue to Emperor Chongzhen. Chongzhen was also in a dilemma, so he could only seek the opinion of the new cabinet chief assistant Wen Tiren.

Wen Tiren originally had no opinion, whether to send troops to reinforce or sit idly by, in Wen Tiren's opinion, there was no difference, but since Emperor Chongzhen asked, he couldn't do without an opinion.

After thinking about it, Wen Tiren still decided to figure out the emperor's mind and speak according to Emperor Chongzhen's wishes.

If you want to say that Wen Tiren is useless, he can only know Emperor Chongzhen's thoughts well, knowing that this young emperor is a very face-saving lord, and the identity and status of the Heavenly Empire are here, so that Emperor Chongzhen is ready to help the little brother of North Korea in his heart.

So Wen Tiren made up his mind and wrote a book: The reason why China is China is because there are countless tributes from small states, and if even the capital of a subject country like Korea is unable to reinforce it, then other countries will despise the Celestial Empire, and the Ming Dynasty will not be a country because of this.

These words really spoke to Emperor Chongzhen's heart, and he immediately praised the first assistant of the cabinet, and then decided to send troops to Korea.

While it is easy to make decisions, it is difficult to implement.

Among them, there are thousands of difficulties, which are gathered into one sentence: no soldiers, no money!

Now that the imperial court wants to quell the popular uprising and resist Manchuria, the troops in its hands are now counting on one for two, so how can it divide its troops to fight in Korea? Moreover, it is the most elite Manchurian Eight Banners soldiers who are now invading Korea, and the soldiers are less and weaker, and they are useless, which is not much different from giving Huang Taiji's head.

After calculating it, Emperor Chongzhen could only decide: to use Ji Qingwen's Ming army.

Although the strength of the Ming Wu Army is only 2,000 people, and it is separated from North Korea by thousands of mountains and rivers in the south of the Yangtze River, the Ming Wu Army is the only mobile force in the Ming Dynasty that can be mobilized at any time, and without it is equivalent to having no soldiers available. This is still the first reason, and there is another reason that cannot be said explicitly, that is, Ji Qingwen is rich and tight, and when he sends the Ming Wu army to fight, the court only needs to pay some military salaries symbolically, and Ji Qingwen naturally has a way to solve the rest of the gap and deficit.

Of course, it was certainly not enough to send only 2,000 troops to the Ming army, and the imperial court mobilized more than 20,000 people from various garrisons and rushed to Korea one after another to fight.

In fact, Emperor Chongzhen also planned to recruit the white pole soldiers of the Qin Liangyu family of Sichuan Tusi, but because Sichuan was far away and there was a Shu Road blocking, it would take at least half a year to make a round trip, and the far water could not quench the thirst of the near, so he simply gave up.

A holy decree for the transfer of troops came, and it was placed on Ji Qingwen's table, but Ji Qingwen was not surprised at all, because of this news, he already knew it.