When Ma Rencheng heard this, he felt that this was not a difficult matter, so he nodded and said, "What's so difficult about this?" My uncle's fiftieth birthday was just a few months away, so I asked the person who gave the gift to bring it. ”

"Thank you very much!" Liu Cheng hurriedly called Yu He, recorded the questions he wanted to ask one by one, and when the record was completed, there were six or seven pieces of paper and more than 200 questions. ”

After Ma Rencheng left, Yu He stepped forward and asked, "Your Excellency intends to go southeast?" ”

"Huh!" Liu Cheng smiled slightly: "Laozi is a big official, he is ordered by others, and what else do you say. ”

"You can't say that, Han Xin and Taizu of this dynasty have all begged for food, they are not as good as adults at that time?" Speaking of this, Yu He looked around at no one and said in a low voice: "The sect leader of my family has a letter to ask the old man to tell the lord that with the matter of wool, he will definitely be able to gain the trust of Batur Khan this time, and if you need it, you can buy it even if you have thousands of Mongolian iron horsemen." ”

"Thousands of cavalry can also be bought?" Liu Cheng's eyes widened: "This can also work?" ”

"What's not to do? Didn't Tang Gaozu Li Yuan also buy Turkic cavalry with money when he raised his army? This dynasty also has Duoyan Sanwei, that Batur Khan went east and west, and the number of tribes he broke was innumerable, the old and weak women and children could be used as slaves, and we could buy the captured soldiers, and he got money, my lord, you have more people to serve the dead to drive, wouldn't it be the best of both worlds? “

"And these captives can be trusted?"

"What can I believe, he originally lost the battle and became a prisoner to milk and shepherd sheep and be whipped, but he came to the Central Plains Flower World, and it was too late to be happy! Anyway, it's all about fighting with your life, and it's selling your life to the Great Khans, isn't it selling your life to the adults? Besides, they didn't even know the way when they left the adults. As long as the adults treat them well, these Tartars are the most faithful. ”

"But you can get by with the Ming Army?"

"My lord, you can accept it as a righteous son and change it to a Chinese name, there are a lot of Tartars in the border army, isn't it just that you don't spend it? It's nothing more than one bought with money, and the other ran over by himself. What's the difference? It's just that the adults are now a little smaller, and there are only a dozen at most around them, and if they become guerrillas and deputy generals, even if there are three or five hundred Tartar sons around them, no one dares to gossip. “

Hearing Yu He say this, Liu Cheng also had a little bit of interest, although the emergence of firearms made the importance of cavalry on the battlefield declined, but in the late Ming Dynasty, cavalry was still an extremely important branch of the battlefield - if not the most important type of troops, after all, the high mobility of cavalry is irreplaceable by infantry and artillery. If you can solve this problem with money, as Yu He said. That would be great.

"Mr. Yu, you wrote back to my brother-in-law, saying that this matter should not be rushed, and the wool matter should be done first!"

"Got it down!" Yu He looked like he understood, and then said goodbye and went out. At this time, it was already completely dark, Liu Cheng lit the oil lamp and walked to the map, and began to carefully look at the part of Liaodong, and in his mind, the thin lines and triangles on it became rivers, mountains, plains and cities. Armies under different banners fought in this vast land, and with the continuous victories of the Later Jin army. More and more land fell into their hands, and the area of control of the Ming outside the Guanguan continued to shrink, and finally only the narrow Liaoxi Corridor remained.

"Time, time is the key to everything!" Liu Cheng muttered to himself. Like every traveler who knows the history of the Ming and Qing dynasties, Liu Cheng's real enemy is not the thief, nor the Ming court, which still seems to be the most powerful, but the Later Jin regime, which is still cramped in a corner outside the Guan. The reason is simple - in real history, Houjin is the last and only winner in this battle. But what Liu Cheng is most worried about now is not the weakness of his strength at this time, but the urgency of time. The most important thing in war is time, because an army can be re-formed after it has been destroyed, a fortress can be recaptured, and money can be re-accumulated once it has been spent, but once time has passed, it can never be recovered.

The history of the late Ming Dynasty is a stark example: if Li Zicheng had conquered Beijing, Dolgon's troops would have been sent a month later. Even if it was only fifteen days, then Li Zicheng would have plenty of time to defeat and incorporate Wu Sangui's tens of thousands of Guanning troops at Shanhaiguan, and even Li Zicheng might have forced Wu Sangui to surrender without a fight, because if the Manchu army could not arrive in time, Wu Sangui would have no way to let his soldiers fight a battle that would be defeated when Beijing had already fallen and all the troops had surrendered. If this is the case, then when Dolgon arrives at the city of Shanhaiguan with a large army, he will face a fortified city defended by a total of more than 100,000 Dashun troops, and the result will be self-evident. But history is no if, the Manchu army did not know that Beijing was captured by the Dashun army on the premise of the south, and after learning that Beijing had fallen, they changed the route of the march, and met Wu Sangui's messenger for help after Weng, Dolgon skillfully used the pressure of the Dashun army to force Wu Sangui to surrender to it, and used Wu Sangui's army to consume the strength of the Dashun army, and gave it a fatal blow in a stone. Liu Cheng knew very well that it was not luck that Dolgon was able to do all this, and the biggest advantage of the final winner of this great gamble was not how strong his military power was, no matter how strong the Eight Banners were, it was still far from enough to conquer an empire as large as China. Vast land, complex terrain, varied climate, and massive population are all enough to destroy the most elite armies. Calm observation, careful analysis, tenacious waiting, saving their limited resources, and daring to take a desperate gamble at the right time were the most important reasons why the Manchu rulers were able to finally take control of the Central Plains.

Thirteen years away from that fateful moment, no, twelve years should have been, will you be able to accumulate enough strength to get to the table in those twelve years to stop this from happening? If it was before the crossing, Liu Cheng simply disdained to answer this question - given a time-traveler who returned to the end of the Ming Dynasty for twelve years, he should consider how to besiege Constantinople, Baghdad, Delhi, Moscow, Paris, Rome and other world famous cities. But at this time, Liu Cheng didn't dare to give a positive answer, he wasn't even sure if he would be able to live until twelve years later, how could he be sure that he could stop Houjin's entry after twelve years? In the thirties of the seventeenth century, there were no antibiotics in the Ming Dynasty, and plague, tuberculosis, schistosomiasis and other infectious diseases that were almost extinct in modern society were still everywhere in this era. Liu Cheng had to come up with a way to do it, even if he died unexpectedly. It can still stop this from happening.

The easiest way is to prevent the outbreak of large-scale popular uprisings in the northwest, and without internal troubles, the Manchus may be able to win one or two battles, but it is impossible to enter the Central Plains. But Liu Cheng knew he couldn't do it—no one could stop the Ming gentry from seeing the famine as a great opportunity to annex the land of the small people rather than the root cause of the destruction of the empire—in fact, the gentry had been right for the past two hundred years: if the Ming could suppress the popular uprising, they would be the biggest beneficiaries of the famine, and only under the threat of death would the peasants sell the land they relied on for their livelihood to the gentry. And people like Liu Cheng who had such a sharp hand and forced the Jingentry of Yanzhou to take out money and grain to feed Ding Zhuang who migrated here can be said to be unique at that time.

The second is to destroy the Houjin regime outside the Guanxi in advance. However, this was not an easy task, the Houjin regime at the end of the fourth year of Chongzhen's reign had already passed his most difficult stage of creation, and the threat of Mongolia and Korea had been basically lifted by Huang Taiji in the east and west through flexible political maneuvers, and the town of Dongjiang in southern Liaoning had been driven to the islands of the sea after Mao Wenlong was killed, unable to threaten the Houjin hinterland. In this way, Hou Jin only needs to focus on a corner, and Liu Cheng does not have the confidence to defeat such an enemy, because the biggest trouble in the war between Ming and Hou Jin does not come from the enemy, but from the poor logistics and complex military and political command system of the Ming Dynasty, a warrior like Liu Cheng. As long as he touches this system, he will be regarded as a traitor with bad intentions, not to mention that the shadow of death will always hang over him in the process.

Then the question is back to the original point, Liu Cheng's idea is that since he is powerless to stop the civil strife of the Ming Dynasty, then he can find a strong enough enemy for Hou Jin. The Ming were not the only enemies of the Jurchens, and while fighting the Ming army, Huang Taiji was also at war with the Mongol Lin Dan Khan, a descendant of Genghis Khan and Dayan Khan, the last ruler of the Mongol Empire and the greatest enemy of the Later Jin in controlling southern Mongolia. If a powerful force rises in the steppe, it will pull Monan Mongolia back from the command of Huang Taiji. That is undoubtedly very beneficial to Daming.

Liu Cheng's chosen object was the Great Khan of Batur, who hoped to influence his strategic direction through the trade relations he had established with Xu Hecheng, a merchant who had a much higher status in the Mongol political structure than the Ming Dynasty, and who could also obtain horses, wool, soldiers, sulfur, and other necessary strategic resources through trade with the Great Khan. Of course, Liu Cheng can do very little now, but with his promotion in the Ming army and the increase in the number of troops under his control. Liu Cheng's ability to derive various benefits from this trade route will continue to increase, and the most important thing is that in this relationship, he only needs to contribute money without shedding a drop of blood, and he does not need to take any risks.

"Your Excellency, Your Excellency!"

A voice pulled Liu Cheng back from his reverie to reality. He calmed down a little and said in a deep voice, "What's the matter?" “

"Guyuan has arrived, and he said that he wants to see the adult immediately!"

"Guyuan?" Liu Cheng was stunned for a moment, thinking in his heart that something had happened to Yang He, he tidied up his shirt a little and said, "Please let him in!" ”

"Yes, sir!"

After a while, a stout man in his forties walked in, and he was still more than twenty steps away from Liu Cheng and shouted in a rough voice: "Lord Liu, Lord Liu, bring the wine, ask for good wine!" ”

Liu Cheng fixed his eyes and saw that it was an officer beside Yang He, named Yuan Han, originally Liu Cheng had a little benefit every time he saw him, and the two became acquainted with each other after a long time, and often revealed a little bit of the news around Yang He to Liu Cheng. This person is the best wine, and he has not suffered less from the military stick and leather whip for this appetite, but he still refuses to change his teachings.

"I said who it was, it turned out to be Lord Yuan!" Liu Cheng hurriedly took out half a can of wine left over from the table with Ma Rencheng at noon: "This is leftover at noon, if you don't like it, just wait for a while, and I'll let someone take a cup." ”

"It's good to have wine to drink, what kind of cup do you want!" Yuan Han snatched the clay pot from Liu Cheng's hand, opened the lid, took a big sip first, and spit out a big breath of intoxication: "Good wine, but this wine tastes a little different, let me guess what kind of wine it is." ”

"It's good!" Liu Cheng called his subordinates to take some dried meat and broad beans and put them on the table as snacks, he knew that if Yuan Han didn't drink enough wine, he wouldn't talk about business, and he didn't urge, so he sat down with a smile and a smile.

"Jujube stuffed, no, the taste is not so thick; Apricot blossom roast, it's not right, it lacks that aroma; Shanxi Fenjiu, no, it's not that strong: ......" In this way, Yuan Han took a sip and said six or seven kinds of famous wines from Shanxi and Shaanxi, but they were all denied by himself, and in the end he had to ask: "Liu Dusi, where is your famous wine, why can't I taste it?" ”

"It seems to be Lanling wine, using the big tune of Shanxi, and then take it out after half a year." Liu Cheng retold what Ma Rencheng said at lunchtime.

"Why didn't you say it sooner!" Yuan Han slapped his thigh violently, which startled Liu Cheng and asked tremblingly, "What's wrong?" Is this wine bad? “

"Of course it's good wine, but you didn't say it earlier, otherwise how could I be like a cow over there, now that the wine is almost finished, I don't want to taste it carefully!" Speaking of this, Yuan Han shook the wine jar gently in his ear, and then put the empty wine jar on the table, looking like a mourner.

"So that's what happened!" Liu Cheng laughed: "This is given to me by the county master Ma, if you like it, tomorrow I will let people go to his house to ask for some more to have a drink with you, okay?" ”

"That's true!" Yuan Han was overjoyed when he heard this, his hands rubbed twice and sighed: "Or Liu Dusi, you have the ability, you can make a world anywhere, even the gentry have to send wine to please you, it is far worse than you to stay in Guyuan." ”

"Lord Yuan, you are joking, being able to stay by the side of the Lord of the Army, this is the blessing that others can't ask for, as the saying goes, the Bodhisattva burns incense next to him, what good things can be, the Lord of the Army will forget you, those of us who are doing errands outside, I also want to ask Lord Yuan to say a few more kind words in front of the army." (To be continued.) )