Zhu Youzhen didn't delay much, and after arranging various matters, he immediately left Fushi City.

The three Praetorian Guard battalions were guarded, plus the Martial Arts Boys' Battalion, with a number of nearly 10,000 people, and they also divided the vanguard and guard, marching all the way to the north.

Zhu Youzhen rode in the carriage, looking at Wei Wei's distant mountains and the heavy loess under his feet, and his heart was fluttering for a while. This piece of yellow earth and the people living on it subverted his country in the previous life, and in this life, it will be the foundation of the Ming Dynasty! Heavenly reincarnation, everything is so incredible.

The route of return and the way of coming are different, and the situation seen is completely different.

When he came, there were many displaced people in northern Shaanxi, and they were all frightened and fled in fear when they saw the army passing by. When they went, the displaced people everywhere basically disappeared, and smoke rose from all the villages along the way, and the people who passed through were no longer afraid of the army, but greeted the roadside one after another, and took the initiative to take out their rough food to reward the army.

The faces of the people were no longer numb, but smiling.

Life is still difficult, but I can survive, and most importantly, there is hope! How could they not be grateful to the Emperor and the Praetorian Guard for giving them hope?

Looking at the smiles on the faces of the people, Zhu Youzhen also smiled. Isn't everything you do to see these smiles!

The people are asking for such a simple thing, just to live, and if even this can't satisfy them, don't they deserve to be hanged again?

From Fushi to Qingjian, through Mizhi all the way to the northeast, from Fugu across the Yellow River into Shanxi.

The situation in Shanxi is different from that in northern Shaanxi. When I was in northern Shaanxi, I often saw people digging irrigation ditches under the county and township organizations, and the counties and townships were busy. In Shanxi, you can only see barren fields, empty on the roadside, and faintly lodging corpses in the ditch. Not long after Wang Jiayin, Gao Yingxiang's Liumin Army was driven from Shanxi to the grassland, there had just been a big battle here.

Many villages and towns along the way were silent, and even the occasional populace appeared, and they fled in terror when they saw the army.

I didn't meet a few homeless people on the way, and I don't know where I went?

In every state and county, the officials were trembling, and the squires who greeted them were all wearing shabby cloth clothes, and they were extremely cautious. The food supplied to the army was perfect, for fear of being picked on a little wrong.

Zhu Youzhen did not plan to stay in Shanxi to fight local tyrants, and naturally he would not embarrass these local officials and gentry, but comforted them and praised them for their contribution to driving away the exiled army into the grassland, which made these local officials sincerely frightened and moved.

It took a few more days, and finally arrived in front of Ningwu Pass, and after Ningwu Pass was the boundary of Datong Town.

Looking at the plaque of Ningwuguan, Zhu Youzhen thought of Zhou Yuji and ordered someone to call him over.

"Does Aiqing know anything about this Ningwu Pass?" Zhu Youzhen asked.

Zhou Yuji said: "The minister has heard that Ningwu Pass is an important pass in Shanxi, located on Huagai Mountain, Guancheng is located on the Inner Great Wall, with more than 20 miles of side walls to separate Shanxi and Datong, and the head pass, Yanmen Pass is a total of three passes, covering the entire Shanxi. If the Tartars go south, even if Datong is lost, there are three passes, and the Tartars will not be able to enter the Jin. ”

Zhu Youzhen praised: "Aiqing is well-informed and strong, and he is really talented." ”

In the last life, Zhou Yuji was the general soldier of Shanxi, in Ningwuguan with thousands of Ming troops to resist Li Zicheng's more than 100,000 thieves army for more than ten days, killing nearly 10,000 enemies so that Li Zicheng could not advance an inch, and finally because the city wall was blown down due to the exhaustion of ammunition, Zhou Yuji was martyred in a bloody battle, that is, Zhou Yuji's wife Liu also took the servant woman to the roof and the thief army in a bloody battle, relying on bows and arrows to kill a large number of thieves, and finally was set on fire by the thief army.

The battle of Ningwuguan was the only tough battle encountered by Li Zicheng in the battle of crossing the Yellow River east and advancing into Beijing, which brought great casualties to the Liumin army.

From Shanxi to Datong Xuanfu, hundreds of thousands of Ming troops surrendered without a fight along the way, and only Zhou Yuji fought to the death against the strong enemy in Lone Pass.

But in this life, such a thing will never happen again, Zhu Youzhen is very confident! Because the "murderer" who killed Zhou Yuji is firmly under his control at the moment, and he will never have the opportunity to trouble the world again!

......

In the Martial Arts School of Fushi City, Li Hongji, who was walking with a group of new students, sneezed heavily, a little panicked in his heart, and couldn't help but look left and right, was that bastard talking bad about himself behind his back?

"Smack", a whip broke through the air and hit Li Hongji on the back heavily, Li Hongji grinned in pain and quickly stood up straight.

......

After passing the Ningwu Pass, they arrived at Datong Town, and the governor of Xuanda, the governor of Datong, greeted him and wanted to send troops to escort him, but Zhu Youzhen refused.

Zhu Youzhen asked them to return to the station, and ordered the castle along the way to provide food and drink for the army, and there was no intention of entering the city to repair. And his decision also made Datong officials regret and breathe a sigh of relief at the same time.

The emperor's rush to march undoubtedly made them have less chance to perform in front of the saint, but the emperor would have less trouble if he did not enter the city, and he did not have to worry that the emperor would know about his past mistakes. Zhu Youzhen's behavior in northern Shaanxi made the officials in Datong a little frightened.

When I entered Datong Town, I saw a different scene. Datong is a military town, the people are all military households, and most of the adult men are soldiers or military surpluses.

With the insight of later generations, the current Zhu Youzhen knows that these military households are even worse than ordinary people, and they are called military households, but in fact, they have lost their military fields, become slaves of the generals, cultivate fields for the generals, and are bullied and exploited by them. In peacetime, he farmed the land for the generals, and when he was fighting, he had to go out to fight and be used as cannon fodder, and he had no freedom at all.

The generals embezzled food and exploited the soldiers, and used part of the money they were greedy to support their families, and these families spent the money allocated by the imperial court, but they belonged to the generals privately, and the generals were transferred, and the family members followed, so that the soldiers were generals and the military system was completely corrupted. How much of the millions of food and salaries allocated by the imperial court every year are really spent on ordinary soldiers?

The military system must also be reformed, looking at those ragged border soldiers, Zhu Youzhen said secretly. It's just that now is not the time, Daming has accumulated many drawbacks, there are too many places to change, and everything has to be done slowly.

First train the Praetorian Guard, and then find an opportunity to win the Jiannu, and regain the prestige of Liaodong with a great victory over Jiannu, which is the time for complete change!

Thinking of this, Zhu Youzhen suddenly remembered one thing, he had not received the war report from Liaodong for more than ten days, how was the war going, did Sun Chuanting destroy Jiannu's grain transportation team? What about the cavalry that attacked from the sea?