With the approach of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, the officials and armies in various places showed a trend of collapse, and the thieves who were chased around in the past became stronger and stronger.

On the one hand, Emperor Chongzhen, with an almost ridiculous idea, successively urged the Shaanxi governor Sun Chuanting to lead the army out of the customs, hoping that Sun Chuanting and Zuo Liangyubu would abandon their previous suspicions and join forces to encircle and annihilate the army.

Looking at the will of the imperial court's urging, from once every half a month at the beginning, to several times a day now, Sun Chuanting knew that it was unavoidable, and thought of Wang Zheng's words, and sighed:

"I know that the battle may not be successful, but if I am lucky, how can the husband be able to deal with the prison officials!"

With little hope, Sun Chuanting reluctantly reported the date of his departure.

In the second half of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, Sun Chuanting swore in the Guandi Temple in Xi'an, and chose this place naturally to take refuge in the spirit of the "martial saint", so as to stimulate the morale of the whole army and fight to the death.

After the ceremony, Sun Chuanting immediately ordered the chief soldier Ma Yi and Qin Yiming to follow Feng Shikong, the governor of Shaanxi, to enter the Nanyang area of Henan Province through Shangluo as a partial division, and he commanded Bai Guangen, Gao Jie, Niu Chenghu The general army of the three towns, a total of 100,000 horses, known as the 150,000 army went east to Tongguan.

At the same time, Sun Chuanting ordered the commander to transfer Chen Yongfu, the general soldier of Henan, to join the army in Luoyang, and Zuo Liangyu commanded the troops to the west, wanting to use the greatest strength to attack the army.

But at this time, Chen Yongfu, the general soldier of Henan stationed in Kaifeng, had already become the deputy general of the Kaifeng Mansion of the Shandong Army.

Soon there was a response from Licheng, but there were only eight words:

"Sit in Kaifeng, don't move."

Wang Zheng had long known that this battle was won or lost in history, and the so-called elites of the provinces under Sun Chuanting's command, except for the Qin army, which had less than 10,000 people, were just indiscriminate soldiers and ruffians, and they had no combat effectiveness at all.

Moreover, the Shandong army was all about military advice at that time, and it was not bad for the soldiers to be able to protect themselves after attacking, so there was no need to spend all their efforts to fight this battle that was bound to lose.

What's more, Wang Zheng actually didn't want the imperial court to win this battle from the bottom of his heart.

In fact, no matter whether the Shandong Army's troops in Kaifeng were dispatched or not, Sun Chuanting was already doomed when he left the customs.

There are not monolithic people in the official army, and there are many people who want to make meritorious contributions to join the army, and Li Zicheng had already received the news that the official army in Shaanxi would be out of the customs sooner or later as early as the beginning of the year.

Therefore, he slowed down the pace of his march northward, and instead seized large tracts of land in Henan and Shaanxi, which were empty, and from April and May of that year, the Chuang army began to transfer troops in a steady stream and strengthen the defense of the areas already occupied.

Then, Li Zicheng personally commanded the main force of the army to go north to Henan, concentrating on outside the pass, preparing to meet the enemy Sun Chuanting's troops out of the pass.

At this time, Niu Jinxing, in view of the fact that natural and man-made disasters in Henan had caused thousands of miles of red land, the army had passed, and the grain and grass problem was not easy to solve, decided to adopt the method of luring the officers and troops to go deeper, and suggested that Li Zicheng deploy the main force in the area south of Jiaxian.

As for the vast area from Tongguan to Jiaxian, except for a few patrol troops left, "all counties and cities have no garrisons and baggage."

In early August, the Shaanxi official army regained the important town of Luoyang under the deliberate retreat of the intruding army, and the morale of the army was greatly boosted for a while, and somehow, rumors that the intruding army was afraid of the Qin army boiled up.

After the occupation of Luoyang, Sun Chuanting reported to Emperor Chongzhen as usual, and his attitude in the excerpt was almost pleading, suggesting that the imperial court should not rush forward, and must adopt a steady and steady approach, so as not to cause a lonely army to go deep and unsustainable.

Sun Chuanting's meaning was to first use Luoyang as a base, repair the city wall, recruit displaced people, and then learn the effective methods of the Shandong army, open up the tun fields, store grain and grass, and take it step by step.

In this way, the advance can be fought, the retreat can be defended, and then the right time will be combined with Shandong Wang Zheng and Huguang Zuo Liangyu to jointly enter the Central Plains.

It can be expected that if Chongzhen adopts Sun Chuanting's suggestion and vigorously supports it, Li Zicheng will almost definitely lose.

However, Chongzhen was eager to regain his land, and many Northern Zhili courtiers were instigated by dissatisfaction with Sun Chuanting, and finally Chongzhen did not accept this suggestion, but issued an order to urge Sun Chuanting to pursue the victory.

Speaking of which, at that time, Sun Chuanting took the last elite of the five provinces of the Central Plains with the imperial court, with more than 100,000 soldiers and horses, and every time he was delayed, the imperial court had to take out a large amount of silver taels and baggage to transport the front line, and the finances that had long dried up could not be borne at all.

Sun Chuanting was afraid of the fate of the court and did not dare to stay, so he still led his troops to the south.

Li Zicheng saw that Sun Chuanting's troops were fierce, so he deliberately showed weakness according to the strategy of Niu Jinxing and others, and only sent a small force to resist a little, feigning defeat, and then retreated south, so that the Shaanxi official army could easily hit Baofeng County.

On October 8, the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, Sun Chuanting's troops went to Ruzhou, and Li Yangchun, the commander of the Chuang Department, surrendered the city.

On October 9, the official army arrived at Baofeng City, and Chen Kexin, the Baozhou Mu appointed by Li Zicheng, and Jiang Li, the state judge, took the city to resist.

On the evening of the 12th, more than 200 gentry could not bear the attack of the intruding troops, so they met to prevent fire, and took advantage of the chaos to go out of the city and surrender to the official army.

"The city of Baofeng is broken, the armies are flocking in, the city is boiling, and the fire is shining like daylight."

Chen Kexin, Jiang Li, and others were all hunted and killed by the Shaanxi official army, and the general army Qin Yiming and other troops also recovered Tang County on the night of the 12th.

On September 14, the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, the official army entered Jiaxian, and suddenly heard a cannon sound, and the intruders who had been ambushed had already been killed by bee chrysalis.

However, under the courageous impact of Zuo Guang and other Qin generals, the first battle of the Chuang army was lost, and the Guoyi general Xie Junyou was killed by Zuo Guang first.

But this was only a partial setback, Li Zicheng led the main force to retreat in a hurry, the officers and troops pursued relentlessly, and the lone army went deeper, unconsciously getting farther and farther away from the rear supply base camp.

On that day, the sunny turned cloudy and rainy, and suddenly the sky was full of thunder, heavy rain poured down, the road was muddy for a while, and the grain trucks of the Shaanxi officers and soldiers advanced and retreated slowly, and the delay did not arrive.

The officials and soldiers were in a panic, and Sun Chuanting gathered the generals to discuss and decided to "break the county and eat".

Jiaxian was originally a small and poor county seat, and after the officials and soldiers spent a lot of money to break through the city, they only grabbed a few hundred mules and horses, and tens of thousands of soldiers quickly ran out, which caused a chaotic scramble.

Li Zicheng saw that the official army was deeply rooted in the Jedi, and he was immediately overjoyed.

On the one hand, the army mobilized the displaced people to clear the wilderness, so that the officers and troops could not raise food on the spot, and on the other hand, they sent the general Li Guo to lead more than 10,000 old battalion horses to copy the rear of the officials and troops from the field road, and finally cut off the Ming army's salary road in Baisha, Ruzhou, Henan.

The generals and commanders of various departments were shocked when they heard the news, the news leaked, and the officers and soldiers were unstable.

Sun Chuanting had nothing to do, so he ordered the general soldier Bai Guangen to stay behind, and led the officers and soldiers of Shaanxi to retreat by separate routes, in an attempt to open up the grain route.

The soldiers under Bai Guangen watched the Shaanxi soldiers withdraw to welcome the grain, but they were left to starve and act as substitutes for the dead, and they were all resentful.

Mo persuaded the order of the superintendent Sun Chuanting, but even Bai Guangen couldn't stop it, and his subordinates scattered in a hurry, running behind the Shaanxi officials and soldiers.

"Although Guangen cut it, it can't be stopped."

Bai Guangen didn't want to stay here and wait for death, but seeing that the army's will was difficult to disobey, he pushed the boat down the river and retreated north with his troops.

As soon as the blocking troops deployed by Sun Chuanting fled, the intruding army took advantage of the situation to launch a general attack, and the officers and troops were in chaos, and the whole line collapsed.

In order to escape for his life, the sergeant of the train battalion under the command of Bai Guangen untied the horses pulling the cart and rode away, and the train overturned and overturned, and the road was blocked.

The cavalry swept past and chased after them, while the foot soldiers slammed the officers with big sticks.

No one expected that the Shaanxi soldiers under the Shaanxi Governor Sun Chuanting were defeated by thieves, killing more than 40,000 people, and tens of thousands of horses and mules were all captured by the army.

It is said that Li Zicheng waved his army to chase more than 400 miles to the north, took advantage of the situation to conquer Luoyang, and captured Tang County and other places.

The generals of the court under the command of Sun Chuanting were scattered, and only one of the general soldiers Gao Jie remained, and the two collected thousands of scattered soldiers to cross the Yellow River in the north, and went around to Tongguan to recuperate through Yuanqu County, Shanxi.

Not long after, the general soldier Bai Guangen also led the remnants of the defeated soldiers to Tongguan, and cured the deputy general, calling it the first disaster of escape.

King Li Zicheng shocked Xiangluo and inflicted a heavy defeat on the most elite troops of the Ming Court, the Shaanxi soldiers led by Sun Chuanting, the governor of Shaanxi.

The north and south were shocked when they heard it, and everyone was in danger for a while.