Emperor Chongzhen rode one of several luxurious four-wheeled carriages custom-made by Taifu Temple from the family of the abbot Tian Hongyu, and drove on the wide and flat official road of Beijing and Tianjin.

Unlike the last time he took the big boat to Tongzhou, he barely felt any bumps along the way.

Emperor Chongzhen looked through the window of the carriage and stared at the vast field that kept flashing between people and horses, and his heart was full of emotion for a while.

Since Li Daitao came to this era stiffly, the current Emperor Chongzhen has been in a variety of tense and busy situations of seizing the day and racking his brains.

I am afraid that if I make a mistake and make a strategic mistake, the Ming Dynasty, which was originally able to hold out for another seventeen years, will end up in my own hands ahead of schedule.

In the past few years, my life has indeed been as Ma Gan said that day, I don't eat well, I don't sleep well every day, I am exhausted, and I am worried.

It is necessary not only to fight with the Jianyu in the northeast and the thieves in the northwest, but also to fight with waves of pedantic ministers in the DPRK and China.

It is in response to the words of the Taizu of the Red Dynasty in later generations, it is really fighting with the sky, its "joy" is endless, fighting with the earth, its "music" is endless, fighting with people, its "happiness" is endless!

It's just that the "happiness" in this is happiness for some people, but for him, it really makes him unhappy, or makes him miserable!

Fortunately, after a few years, everything is getting better now, and the national strength of the Ming Dynasty has begun to gradually recover and improve, becoming better and better year by year, rather than being corrupted year by year as in history!

Many times, when he tossed and turned at night and couldn't sleep, he also reflected on what he had done in the past few years, reflected on whether he had made mistakes, and he also knew that there were problems with some of his previous arrangements.

He also deeply regretted some of these ill-conceived initiatives.

However, on the whole, now this Emperor Chongzhen is basically satisfied with the series of measures he has taken before.

At least, today, in the fourth year of Chongzhen, the situation of the Ming Dynasty can be regarded as the best time since the Apocalypse!

At least it is many times better than the situation in the first year of Chongzhen and the second year of Chongzhen.

Because the two biggest enemies outside the Ming Dynasty, that is, the Jianlu in the northeast and the thieves in the northwest, have been seriously weakened at present, at least in the past two years, they do not have enough strength to take the initiative to attack the Ming Dynasty, let alone enter the hinterland of the Ming Dynasty again.

Although Emperor Chongzhen has always been in Beijing and in the Forbidden City, Jinyiwei and Dongchang and the newly built Internal Affairs Office have a large amount of information from Dongjiang, Lushun and Liaoxi, which have been continuously sent to him.

Although this information is full of ideas and vague language, some of it is only a few words, not even a complete sentence, and most of it is some prohibitions and proclamations publicly released in the post-Jin country, which is not of much value.

Because whether it is the spies of Jinyiwei Liaodong Qianhu Office and Dongjiang Qianhu Office, or the spies lurking and recruiting in the Houjin country at the Dongchang Liaodong Station, they are still some Han people living at the bottom of the Houjin Kingdom, and it is difficult for them to break into the high-level circle of the Jurchen Eight Banners of the Houjin Kingdom.

However, Emperor Chongzhen was able to combine his great advantage of understanding history from later generations, and deduced some basic situations in the Later Jin Dynasty from some seemingly unrelated news.

Huang Taiji asked the Jurchen Eight Banners to reclaim the barren tuntian, which shows that there is also a serious problem of food shortage in the Later Jin Dynasty, and there is even a hidden danger of famine.

And Huang Taiji asked people to search for craftsmen and open mines and smelt iron to cast cannons, which shows that Huang Taiji is going to invest his small financial resources in the arms race with the Ming Dynasty.

At the beginning, Gong Yonggu, the commander of the Jinyi Guard, who learned this information, as well as Sun Chengzong, the Minister of Military Aircraft, Nan Juyi, the Shangshu of the Ministry of War, and several young people from the Military Aircraft Department, all expressed an idea, that is, the Ming Dynasty should launch a full-scale attack on Jianyu before the cannon was successfully cast.

In their opinion, if the Hongyi cannon was also built on Jianyu's side, then the future battle would not be able to be fought.

Isn't the thing that the Ming Dynasty can rely on now is the Jiancheng Cannon?

However, Emperor Chongzhen rejected this idea.

For him, once the Jurchens embarked on the same path as the Ming Dynasty, such as starting to build cities and artillery, and invested the limited financial resources of the Later Jin State in this arms race, then their demise was a matter of time.

In the original history, with the wealth, population, craftsmen and technology of the Ming Dynasty, it finally fell on this strategy.

So, in the case of the domestic economy of the Houjin Kingdom withering and the people living in poverty, how can the nobles of the Jurchen Eight Banners today implement such a strategy and finally succeed? !

Historically, their success was largely due to the failure of the Ming army's Liaodong strategy, the large-scale smuggling trade between them and the Jin merchants who collaborated with the enemy, and the repeated southward raiding of people and goods by the Jianyu army.

These people and materials snatched from Korea, Mongolia, and the hinterland of the Ming Dynasty not only supported the children of the Jurchen Eight Banners in the Later Jin Dynasty, but also greatly damaged the finances of the Ming Dynasty and alleviated their own economic difficulties.

If it weren't for these looted massive materials, if it weren't for the great turmoil of the Ming Dynasty, the small Houjin Kingdom living in a corner of the northeast would not have the ability to swallow the entire Ming Dynasty!

In this life, such a situation no longer exists.

Not only was the connection between the Later Jin Kingdom and Korea cut off by the various military offices of Donggang Town, which once again emerged from Korea, but they also did not conquer Mongolia as smoothly as they did in history.

Although Lin Dan Khan was frightened away by the people of the Later Jin Kingdom as in history and fled, the result of this life was cheaply given to the Ming Dynasty.

The land of Monan, whose climate is not much different from that of the Xuanda region, has become a fertile field for the Ming Dynasty to solve the problem of civil unrest, resettle the hungry and troubled people in various places, and use it to open up the wasteland.

Moreover, the Ordos Mongols, which had threatened the northwest region of the Ming Dynasty for more than 200 years, were also solved by the way.

This is equivalent to cutting off the two arms of the Houjin Kingdom to the Ming Dynasty, and all that remains is to see when the time is ripe, and Emperor Chongzhen himself will come to conquer Liaoshen again.

As for the thieves in the northwest, just after Emperor Chongzhen finalized the plan to go to Tianjin, the secret report from the Fusi of Jinyi Weixi Town, after a lag of more than ten days, was finally sent to Jingshi and to Emperor Chongzhen.

Lag also has the benefit of lag.

At least the secret report jointly signed by Gao Shiming and Hu Yikui, on the one hand, corroborates the military intelligence report of Li Banghua and others, but on the other hand, it is also more detailed and thoughtful than the information that Li Banghua and others had when they first wrote the report.

From the secret report of Jinyi Weixi Zhenfu Division, Emperor Chongzhen learned that after Luo Rucai led his troops to surrender to the fourth town of Wang Tingchen's Guards, Zhang Xianzhong led his Chinese army and rear camp and fled all the way west to Hezhou.

Although Wang Tingchen's troops did not pursue them in a big way, the cavalry of Hu Dawei's headquarters of the Fourth Guard Army had already arrived in Hezhou and engaged the thief patrols in Hezhou City.

Zhang Xianzhong led his troops to flee and the subsequent appearance of the cavalry of the official army made Liu Xiyao, the deputy marshal of the "righteous army" on the left side of the "righteous army", and his deputy Wang Lin of the world panic.

On the night of the 22nd day of the first month of the fourth year of Chongzhen, Liu Xiyao, the deputy marshal of the "righteous army" on the left side of the "righteous army" stationed in Hezhou, suddenly led his troops to evacuate Hezhou alone, withdrew to Lanzhou, and once again relied on the "Generalissimo Fengtian Changyi" to break Wang Gao Yingxiang.

And the leader of another branch of thieves who was ordered to garrison Jishi Pass on the left side of Hezhou, Wang Lin Chengcheng, was in a dilemma, and was half persuaded and half forced by Zhang Xianzhong, the eighth king of the deputy marshal on the right side, and the two teams merged into one, and went out of Jishi Pass to Xining Huangzhong together.

Zhang Xianzhong's Daxi Battalion was greatly weakened, and he did not dare to go to Lanzhou for fear of being absorbed, and his soldiers and soldiers of the Daxi Battalion felt that they had a deep enmity with Mu Suman, and they were unwilling to cross the river to Hexi to attach themselves to the Mu Suman everywhere.

Therefore, although the world is big, but in the second half of the first month of the fourth year of Chongzhen, Zhang Xianzhong has no way to go, either to stay in Hezhou City, which has long been without a single grain and continue to starve, or to go west out of Jishi Pass to seize Xining.

In this way, Hezhou, an important frontier town in the northwest, was unexpected by everyone, and became an empty city without fighting a war, and on the 24th day of the first month of the fourth year of Chongzhen, the fourth town of the Guards pursued Zhang Xianzhong, Hu Dawei, was recovered without blood.

The rapidly changing situation in the northwest frontier overwhelmed Li Banghua and others, who had just submitted the good news and had not yet received the imperial court's feedback.

Fortunately, this is good news, in addition to being more at ease with the thieves in the northwest, Emperor Chongzhen did not make any new arrangements, and only waited for the military reports of Li Banghua and others to be delivered again, and then dealt with it.

Today's Emperor Chongzhen is very convinced that after losing stability, especially after losing Lintao and Hezhou, Gao Yingxiang has only one way to go, that is, to Hexi.

And this is exactly the northwest strategy set by Emperor Chongzhen three years ago, and now the careful layout in the past few years has finally not been in vain.

It was also after getting the news from Jinyi Weixi Zhenfu Division that Emperor Chongzhen was really relieved of the affairs of the northwest.

As long as the ammunition supplies and transfers urgently allocated by the Armament Institute are in place, the situation in northwestern Shaanxi and Gansu will soon usher in a thorough improvement.