Author's note: I don't know what's going on, a scene that should have appeared here was previously logged out without a part of the context, and the author didn't find it sloppily, and only found it after being reminded by the reader. There were about 1,000 words in the part that was mispasted last time, and today I have 1,000 more to make up for this mistake, sorry again.

"I have met Hou Xun before, his standard camp is now less than a hundred miles away from us, and he is the opponent of King Chuang. Hou Xun is very good at reading, and he is excellent at learning, he can be called a heart like a stone, and he has never doubted that he is doing something wrong. He was convinced that everyone he killed was to repay the court; He was convinced that every time he killed someone, he was one step closer to a peaceful and prosperous world, and every time he killed someone, more people would be saved. Therefore, Hou Xun killed with peace of mind, killing people would only make him sleep more soundly and deeply, and he would never be as suspicious as King Chuang, and sometimes weak as King Chuang. Xu Ping paused for a moment and said: "It's like tigers and wolves, they won't have doubts when they eat people, they won't be weak, this kind of doubt and weakness will keep you away from beasts and beasts, so that you are still alone." There are many people in the Forces nouvelles whom I admire, and of whom I was a part. I always told myself that if I didn't fight them, Henan would be ruined; But the captives of the Forces nouvelles, I will not go and slaughter them, because I also have doubts, and I am sometimes weak. ”

"It's funny," Li Zicheng interjected: "The camp that dominates the world is actually commanded by me and Brother Xu. ”

"Because we don't want to be the Yellow Nest, if the king is a person like the Yellow Nest, the last general is not willing to serve the king. And I don't think weakness and hesitation are anything unspeakable, on the contrary, I am proud of it, although I have fought for many years, I still do not get satisfaction and pleasure from killing, I will be sad, I will hesitate, I will wonder if the evil I have done can really bring benefits to the people of the world. And every time this happens, I know that I am still alone, not a man-eating tiger wolf. Xu Ping said with emotion: "Since ancient times, if the royal industry wants to prosper, there must be a precursor. Most of the kings I know are not human anymore. The king's goal is to dominate the world, and I am not willing to be the forerunner, and I often worry that the king will one day become hard-hearted. ”

"Brother Xu, don't worry, although I want to overthrow the Ming Court, I still remember that I swore with Brother Xu by high-fives - kill one and take it down." Li Zicheng laughed, this time he smiled very easily: "Not every leader of the rebel army is the same, you see, there are people who rob the people to form a harem before they have their will; There are also those like me who have only one wife; There are those who are ruthless and easy to kill, and there are those who are indecisive like me. Therefore, the king should also be able to be strange, I don't believe that you must have a heart like iron to seize the world. ”

"That's right," Xu Ping said loudly: "King Chuang, let the people of Kaifeng have a nightmare for one more month, and be afraid for a while." When we defeated the new army and the Chu army, we immediately contacted the defenders to break the city. The people of Kaifeng will definitely be able to reunite with their families, recognize each other as mothers and sons, and reunite with husbands and wives, and the end will promise you! ”

……

After breaking up with Xu Ping, Li Zicheng took his guards to chase his army, and when he returned to his own Chinese army, Niu Jinxing was already waiting a little impatiently: "King, our vanguard met Zuo Liangyu's vanguard in Zhuxian Town. ”

"How's the war going?"

"Haven't fought yet," although the camp was well prepared, Li Zicheng had already put the vanguard on the defensive in advance, so as not to hurt the vanguard of the Chu army and cause Zuo Liangyu not to dare to continue to advance, Niu Jinxing had already found that the main force of the Chu army was rapidly approaching their vanguard: "Zuo Liangyu is not clear about our strength, he seems to have mistakenly thought that we are rushing to attack Yu Dong, and Zhu Xianzhen is a partial division of our army, so he is anxious to hit our rear guard by surprise." ”

"Good!" Li Zicheng ordered to speed up the march, his plan was to let Zuo Liangyu attack first, but when he arrived at the battlefield, he would find that he was opposite the old camp of the Chuang army led by the prince of Chuang, according to Li Zicheng's understanding of Zuo Liangyu, this sudden shock is likely to cause Zuo Liangyu to abandon the army and flee - in Zuo Liangyu's view, the lives of ordinary soldiers are not lives at all, this kind of master can pull as much as he wants, as long as he keeps his relatives, the chaos caused by abandoning the army and escaping is not only harmless, It was even conducive to him to take his relatives away from the battlefield safely.

"King, what about after defeating Zuo Liangyu?" Niu Jinxing asked, "What are the king's plans?" ”

"Of course, I went to help Brother Xu immediately." Li Zicheng replied without thinking.

"There's no hurry." Niu Jinxing shook his head again and again: "Yang Zhiyuan has never been known for his martial arts, in my opinion: even it is much inferior to Jia Minghe, and this time Brother Xu's strength is not at a disadvantage, and General Yang is definitely not Brother Xu's opponent." ”

"Then we have to go to reinforce Brother Xu, so that the new army can be wiped out."

"We need to preserve our strength." Niu Jinxing saw that Li Zicheng opened his mouth to speak, and hurriedly added: "The king has misunderstood, I mean that we have to preserve our strength for the subsequent actions." ”

"What action followed, what action?"

"Originally, I thought, what should we do after we open the seal? My original idea was to cross the Yellow River and go straight to the Jingshi," Niu Jinxing believes that the key to the rebellion since ancient times is to attack the center of the imperial court, and the capture of the Jingshi needless to say, even if the center is attacked, the imperial court will be paralyzed, and it will not be able to effectively organize forces to suppress it: "But now the situation has changed somewhat, and the first is the problem of the new army." Although Yang Zhiyuan is definitely not Brother Xu's opponent, Huang Hou still has a few battalions under him, and if the king takes the old battalion to the Beijing Division, it may not be beneficial. ”

"Isn't it just that you can't beat it? What is not necessarily beneficial. Li Zicheng answered.

"The second change is Brother Xu's several battalions, even if he wins this battle, it is estimated that he will lose something, but if he rectifies it, he will recover quickly, so let Brother Xu attack the Jingshi." Niu Jinxing thinks that Yang Zhiyuan is nothing remarkable, and Xu Ping's losses will not be very large, and he can recover in ten days and half a month to compete with the remaining new army: "And the king is handsome and the old battalion is directed at Shandong." ”

"Shandong?"

"Yes." Niu Jinxing nodded, and said with a straight face: "If Zuo Liangyu escapes, we won't pursue, after Brother Xu finishes beating Yang Zhiyuan, let him go back and continue to besiege Kaifeng, isn't Brother Xu almost in touch with the people in the city?" This breakthrough in Kaifeng was given to him, and the king immediately attacked Shandong, and the first target was Fengyang, the central capital. ”

The last time Zhang Xianzhong broke through Fengyang, he dug up the imperial tomb, Niu Jinxing was afraid that Li Zicheng would do such a thing, so he took precautions in advance: "King, when we break through Fengyang, we must not learn from Zhang Xianzhong's nonsense, the king wants to sprinkle and sweep the memorial and write a sacrificial text." Confess your pure heart to the people of the world, in fact, it is not wrong, for three hundred years, the ancestors of the king have been the children of the Ming Dynasty, and the king was also before the army was raised, and what the king wants to tell the world is that the king is thinking of the old grace and wants to be a minister. But when today's son is really an unworthy descendant of the Zhu family, the king has no choice but to raise benevolent and righteous soldiers and hang the people to fight crimes, but he is still uneasy in his heart, so he pleads in front of the imperial tomb of the Ming Dynasty. ”

Li Zicheng frowned when he heard this: "So others will say that I am coy, right?" ”

"This is not called cowardice, this is called rules, there are no rules." Niu Jinxing believes that as long as the Jingshi is broken, then the rule of the Ming court will collapse, even if Chongzhen escapes, he will lose his prestige, and those with local ambitions will stand on their own, and those without ambition may surrender to the new lord: "After making a case in front of the Ming Emperor's mausoleum, if the king breaks through the Jingshi again, those scholars who want to defect to the king, and even the feudal officials, can have an excuse: King Chuang is doing the way for heaven, that is, Chongzhen's ancestors are supporting him in the dark." The king, with the size of China, it will take a year to go, let alone unification? The king must give an excuse to those who want to go to you. ”

Li Zicheng nodded, he had basically been persuaded by Niu Jinxing.

"After the capture of Fengyang, the king should wait for the opportunity to move. At this time, Brother Xu must have captured Kaifeng, and after the Ming court lost Kaifeng, he would definitely concentrate all the remnants of his forces in Zhili to defend the Beijing Division, and even Huang Hou and his new army would definitely be among them. At that time, we can take a look again, if the Beijing division can go down with a drum, then we will go down with a drum, at this time Shandong is in our hands, the Ming court is isolated from the north and south, the prestige of the court is discredited, and the south of the Yangtze River can be passed down. At that time, even if Chongzhen Lao'er enters the mountains, it will only be a partial achievement under the king. "Because of Kaifeng Xu Ping's threat to the Beijing Division, Niu Jinxing thinks that the remaining forces of the Ming Court will become dead soldiers who have lost their mobility, and the Ming Court will use all its strength to prevent the Henan Invasion Army from attacking Zhili, if there is spare strength, he should first try to recover Kaifeng to remove the threat of the camp to Zhili, such a battle is of course very beneficial to Xu Ping, and it is also a combat mode that he is very familiar with. However, this is not what Niu Jinxing is most concerned about, what he is most concerned about is that in this way, Li Zicheng's headquarters will be completely free and can calmly devote himself to any battlefield: "If the Beijing division is not easy to fight, the king will let the Xu brothers contain the new army, and the king will attack Yangzhou along the canal, attack Nanzhili to eliminate the Jiangbei army, and then cross the river to seize Nanjing, Zhejiang, and Fujian, and the Gao brothers can also go out from Yunnan and attack the two Guangzhou." At this time, the Ming court's decrees in the north and south were not in order, and I estimate that the southern army would not have any fighting spirit. ”

The most important point is that Niu Jinxing doesn't want Xu Ping to be in the limelight again, and now Xu Ping's prestige is already a well-deserved second person in the camp - this is the most optimistic estimate that Niu Jinxing feels. Moreover, the territory effectively controlled by Xu Ping is larger than Li Zicheng's, if Xu Ping's allies are added, it is difficult to say who is bigger and who is small in the strength of Li Zicheng and Xu Ping. Fortunately, Xu Ping's foundation in the camp is still unstable, and there are many Li Zicheng's irons among his subordinates, but despite this, Niu Jinxing already feels a huge threat.

Therefore, Niu Jinxing hopes that Xu Ping can be satisfied with the honor of capturing Kaifeng, and then ...... Then honestly stay in Kaifeng and don't go anywhere. If the new army is not worried, then Li Zicheng will be responsible for capturing Beijing, and can even use this as an excuse to cut Xu Ping's military power off some - Niu Jinxing feels that he has nothing to say to use the attack on Beijing as an excuse to transfer those Li Zicheng's old troops from Xu Ping; If the new army is still a nuisance, then use Xu Ping to contain the new army, while Li Zicheng captures Shandong, pacifies Jiangnan, and confines Xu Ping and his allies' territory to the perimeter of Kaifeng.

"The king doesn't want anything, the king doesn't want to dirty his hands," Niu Jinxing complained secretly in his heart, but he was immediately relieved: "So since ancient times, a person like me has been needed to think about the king and bear the notoriety for the king, which is why I am useful and I have a place." ”

……

"Brother Yue, what are you doing in Xuzhou?" Gao Chengcang has always had a very loud voice lately, and he doesn't like to sit down and talk, he always stands up straight like a proud rooster, and looks forward to himself while talking.

Yue Mu, who had just returned from Xuzhou, looked at the brand-new felt hat on Gao Chengcang's head, and said with a smile: "Brother Gao has really been promoted, congratulations, congratulations." ”

"What's elevated? It's not high at all. Gao Chengcang suddenly laughed when he heard this, and reached out and caressed the corner of the felt hat, this beautiful hat made him feel like he stood out from the crowd in a group of old brothers who still wore hats - of course, Gao Chengcang would never say this. From the moment he received this felt hat, it occupied the position that originally belonged to the shadow puppet, and the furoshiki that was carefully covered on the shadow puppet is now also used by Gao Chengcang to cover the felt hat.

"Brother Yue, you are so good, why do you want to go to Xuzhou." Gao Chengcang still felt very sorry for Yue Mu, only a few people knew the truth, and these people were told by Xu Ping that they were absolutely not allowed to spread the word: "The team said that the meritorious service will be given to the lieutenant officer, Brother Yue, you are at the end of the day, why can't you suddenly think of going to Xuzhou to practice the militia?" ”

"It's not what I think, if I can choose, I don't want to go to Xuzhou for a day." Yue Mu spread his hands and made a helpless expression: "This is the order of the general, to select a batch...... Oh, I want to transfer those who are not qualified to be lieutenants to Xuzhou to train the militia, and the team thinks that I can't be a lieutenant, so they send me together. ”

"...... in the team" Gao Chengcang felt that he had just become an officer, and it was not appropriate to say bad things about these critics, but as far as he knew, all the people who were transferred to Xuzhou were not seed non-commissioned officers trained as officers, and Yue Mu had always performed well, and he was by no means the same as those people: "Forget it, at least I dropped you back from Xuzhou again, which means that the general still values you as a brother of Yue." ”

"Yes, the general values me." Yue Mu sighed with emotion, and most of the people who were transferred to Xuzhou with him stayed in the militia group, and he was the only one who received a special order issued by Xu Ping ten days ago to transfer him back to serve in the guard battalion.

"Why did the general transfer these people to the Xuzhou militia? In this way, what combat effectiveness does the Xuzhou militia have? Didn't the general say that he would train these militias as a preparation for our guard battalions? Zhang Xingpei, who wore a hat, sat on the side with his spear, although he had beaten Gao Chengcang to the ground in the fight, but now Gao Chengcang is a second lieutenant, he has just been promoted to a third-class sergeant, one level lower than Yue Mu, but Zhang Xingpei is a very satisfied person, and often boasts to people: Only half of the 4,000 soldiers of the Guards Battalion carefully selected by the general at the beginning became non-commissioned officers, and he was one of them.

"The militia in Xuzhou ......" Yue Mu laughed twice, shook his head and didn't continue.

"Tell me, say quickly, what's wrong with the militia in Xuzhou?" Seeing Yue Mu's disapproving look, Gao Chengcang immediately became energetic: "Are they holding rifles or bamboo guns?" Can they tell the difference between the hat and the felt hat? ”

"Tell the difference between the felt hat and the hat." Yue Mu laughed, but then shook his head again: "There are some rifles, and these days I am responsible for instructing fifty people to learn how to fire muskets." ”

"Fifty!" Gao Chengcang slapped Yue Mu on the shoulder: "Good guy, Brother Yue is amazing." ”

"You can imagine how rough the teaching is, from how to charge and aim at these basics, to listening to the trumpet, password, and queue, I am teaching alone...... Hey, they deal with and deal with the Bianjun, maybe it's almost the same, but when they fight the new army, don't even think about it. Yue Mu has not been trained as an instructor, and he doesn't know how to train the troops, but despite this, Xu Zhou still treats these instructors who were hastily transferred from the guard battalion as treasures, and it is obvious that the guard battalion will never lend its own training team to these local troops: "In the past month, I have been training with them with empty guns, which is too bad." ”

"What's wrong with empty gun training, if you don't practice empty guns, you will shoot yourself to death." Gao Chengcang interjected disapprovingly, when they first entered the guard camp, Xu Ping and Yu Shenhe personally went down and took these recruits to carry out hundreds of empty gun exercises, but despite this, when conducting live-fire training, there are still people who forget safety steps or make mistakes in their movements, resulting in training accidents and casualties.

"Yes, we practiced with empty guns at the beginning, but after about a hundred shots, we loaded gunpowder and shot once, right?" Then continue to practice with empty guns, but the interval is getting shorter and shorter, and soon there will be gunpowder shooting, and after another period of practice, they will begin to reload and shoot, although the empty gun training continues, but it will not replace the live ammunition training, and Yue Mu's situation in Xuzhou is not at all the case: "I applied for live ammunition shooting for my subordinates, but I have not been able to approve it, I have gone to the Xuzhou defense envoy to argue with reason, and finally promised to give me 150 ammunition, so that each of my subordinates can do three live ammunition shooting, but until I left Xuzhou, this batch of gunpowder was not able to give me." ”

Xuzhou has changed a lot, but for Yue Mu, a soldier, what impressed him the most was the endless gunpowder workshops, which were heavily guarded and full of heavily armed Xuzhou soldiers. More gunpowder workshops were being built, and a well-informed companion said that the Xuzhou Yamen was planning to build a fortress to protect the large area of the workshop within the walls.

After hearing Yue Mu's words, the other colleagues in the guard battalion were a little surprised, and Qin Dedong, who had been listening quietly, immediately said: "In the teaching team, the recruits shoot live ammunition in the morning and train with empty guns in the afternoon every day. ”

"yes, more diligent than when we were recruits." Yue Mu nodded: "Every day I can see a large number of gunpowder trucks from Xuzhou, towards Kaifeng here is the most, but gunpowder is definitely not enough, Xuzhou's militia is already the best equipped, I heard that all the gunpowder in our army is produced in Xuzhou's workshop, but the Xuzhou defense envoy can't give me one hundred and fifty gunpowder, I brought a month's soldiers, they didn't fire a shot." ”

Yue Mu still didn't say one thing, that is, as soon as Xuzhou heard that there was another war with the new army, he was full of complaints, and the winter battle knocked Xuzhou's warehouse to the ground. After the battle with Yang Wenyue, the warehouses in Xuzhou were suddenly overflowing: there were so many gold, silver, grain, and cloth that they could only be spread on the ground, and every day a new warehouse was repaired, and it would be immediately filled. New gunpowder workshops and gun bureaus have sprung up like mushrooms. After hearing that Zuo Liangyu was not Xu Ping in charge of cleaning up, the officials of Xuzhou sighed one by one, feeling that they could not live this day.

……

Xu Ping's camp was brightly lit, and Li Dingguo, Li Guo, Sun Kewang and other generals gathered together. Prior to this, Xu Ping had already introduced his strategic concept to them: Today, the seven battalions of the army will set off for Yeji Gang, and the seven battalions of the army are all trained according to the model of the guards battalion, and they also adopt the exact same formation. Although it was not at full strength, the 7th Battalion still had 22,000 armed soldiers, and they would all set out for this battle.

There are also thousands of soldiers who have been trained but do not yet have weapons, who will stay and wait for orders, temporarily obey the orders of the remaining troops in Kaifeng, monitor the movements of the Bian's army, and add them to the front if Xu Ping needs them.

In order to train these 30,000 infantry, the camp of Kaifeng Province had done its best, and now the production of gunpowder was so tight that it began to compete with the peasants for manure. In addition to these 30,000 qualified infantry, the training teams of each battalion also simply trained about a similar number of second-echelon troops near Kaifeng, although the soldiers of the second-echelon were far from being comparable with the soldiers in the battalions, but they had also conducted some live-fire exercises, smelled the pungent smoke of gunpowder, heard the deafening sound of gunfire, and now they are the troops responsible for besieging the city, and have some firearms and war horses. The local troops in the counties are now completely abandoned, and they are now mainly receiving cold weapon training, such as the local troops left behind by Sun Kewang to defend the Guide Mansion, and many of them are still practicing how to bow and arrow and strong crossbows.

After the assignment was completed, groups of soldiers drove out of the camp and marched in a majestic southeasterly direction, their supreme commander Xu Ping on horseback, and saluted the army with his staff officers.

"If all goes well, we can seize most of General Yang's baggage and deal a severe blow to the new army." Xu Ping looked up at the bright sun, and the dry earth made the army move quickly and effortlessly: "Autumn is really a good time to fight, I hope this battle can annihilate three more battalions of the new army." ”

"The general is so courageous," Yu Shenhe heard Xu Ping's words and said with a smile: "If we annihilate three more battalions of the new army, we will be able to counterattack Shandong." ”

"I don't like to fight the New Army." Sun Kewang shook his head and said: "The consumption is very large, and even if you win the battle, it will be far from being able to make up for the loss." ”

"It's not that we want to fight the new army, it's that they come to fight us all day long," Yu Shenhe said: "Besides, as long as the new army is defeated, we can go to fight other officers and soldiers, and fortunately, there are other officers and soldiers to fight, and we can always capture enough motivation to continue fighting the new army." ”

"yes!" Xu Ping let out a long breath, he raised his left hand and stretched out his five fingers, counting them one finger at a time: "Kaifeng is already in our bag; General Young didn't know that we had counted every road; Zuo Liangyu is about to collide with the elite of King Chuang; After Yu Dong learned of the defeat in the two ways, he must have anointed the soles of his feet. ”

The four fingers have been closed, only the thumb is still alone, Xu Ping looked around: "I didn't leave anything, right?" I didn't miss anything, did I? ”

"No, sir."

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