Forbidden City, Yingtai!

"Major General, long live is waiting for you inside. The old slave will send you here, and you can go in the rest of the way. Wang Chengen stood on top of the painting boat and made a gesture of please to Wu Sangui.

There was a middle-aged waiter on the shore who bowed down and served, apparently specially to guide Wu Sangui.

Wu Sangui never dreamed that there would be such a big inner lake in the place where the emperor lived. What made him even more unexpected was that there was an island on this lake, which seemed to be not small.

On the small pier, the waiter bowed and did not speak, but made a gesture of please.

"Dare to ask my father-in-law, what kind of place is this." Walking on the path, Wu Sangui took out a piece of silver and stuffed it into the hand of the waiter. The chamberlain did not take the money, nor did he answer, but led the way straight ahead. It's like a puppet with a string!

"He won't answer you, the chamberlains here have their tongues cut. They can't speak! A voice came from overhead, and Wu Sangui looked up sharply. Seeing Zhu Youzhen holding on to the railing, he looked at him with interest.

"Hurrah!" Wu fell to his knees without saying a word.

"Flatten, no need to be polite here."

Wu Sangui hurriedly got up, ran a few steps, walked over the steps and ran to the platform. Zhu Youzhen was standing in front of the railing, looking into the distance by the railing. Standing behind Zhu Youzhen, Wu Sangui peeked at a large area of the palace.

"That's the Qianqing Palace, and I should have seen you there. But Li Xiao has many eyes and ears, and I have to be a little more guarded. Here are all clever people selected by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and their tongues have been cut out. I won't talk in my life, and I won't leave here. Perhaps, this is the only place where I can talk to Aiqing without worrying about leaking out. Zhu Youzhen patted the railing and sighed melancholy.

"Minister! Long live the love! Wu Sangui knew that this was the emperor's heart. The news of his coming here, and what he said to the emperor, will not be spread outside. Even if Li Xiao was shocked, he couldn't find out the news here.

"Last time, I saw that you were a buildable. This time I have made another meritorious achievement, and I am glad that Daming has such a loyal courtier as you. Let's talk about it, what's going on with this Li Xiao. Jin Yiwei is a rice bucket, and the news he heard is not useful at all. ”

"If you go back to long live, Li Xiao is indeed from Liaodong and Ivory Village, which is true. Chen and his younger brother Li Hu drank wine, and took advantage of the wine to talk to him.

In the year that the first emperor succeeded to the throne, the Tartars entered his village. The whole village was slaughtered, and the brothers fled with a younger sister. first went to Liaoyang Mansion and met Ao Canghai. Later, Li Xiao offended a local master. He was sent to the front line of the Hunhe River, and when the Hunhe River was defeated, he fled back. Liaoyang fell, and he fled to an island called Phi Dao at the mouth of the Dongjiang River with Man Gui and other routs.

Li Xiao made his fortune on Phi Dao, and Li Hu said that he didn't know how his eldest brother could prepare gunpowder. It may have been taught by a gunsmith from the Wa Kingdom! ”

"Gunsmith?" Zhu Youzhen asked thoughtfully.

"That's right! is called Daofu Youzhi, Li Hu said that his eldest brother can make gunpowder, which may have been taught by this Japanese people. As for why Li Xiao commanded the operation, it is estimated that he has no division and is self-taught. According to Li Hu, when Li Xiao was a child, he only learned to write for a few days with Mr. Wu from the village's private school. Who is that Mr. Wu, the minister has no way to ask. Li Hu said that when the Tartars slaughtered the village, they were burned alive. ”

"Oh! I remembered that Jin Yiwei once said that Li Xiao had a famous gun-making master under Li Xiao. Known as a dream of Zhai, he is indeed a master of gun-making in the Japanese country. The matter of Mr. Wu, Jin Yiwei and your news are almost the same, and there is no way to find out.

Strange, a person who hasn't even passed the Xiucai exam. How can I teach such a student! ”

"Li Xiao's career is actually inseparable from three people. One is Ao Canghai, who was originally Li Chengliang's subordinate. Later, he became a head catcher in Liaoyang Mansion, a small official with the size of mustard seeds. It's not a cause for concern to be vulgar.

The second is Man Gui, this person's Xuanfu people were on errand under the Xuanfu general army at first. Later, the Tartars made a great trouble, and the imperial court transferred troops to defend Liaodong, and Man Gui and his 100 men followed him to Liaodong. They met Li Xiao in Liaoyang Mansion, and Li Xiao made a lot of contributions to them. Afterward......! ”

"These brocade guards have said it, I know it. Tell me, he made the capital into a miasma, making money everywhere to make money. Where did he spend all the money? I heard that he raised soldiers and paid a lot of money, is there such a thing? Zhu Youzhen waved his hand and interrupted Wu Sangui.

"Li Xiao's salary for leading soldiers is indeed high, and he divides soldiers into soldiers and non-commissioned officers. Generally, in the first year of being a soldier, he will become a private, and the monthly service is three taels of silver. In the second year, he was a first-class soldier, and his monthly allowance was three taels and five cents of silver.

If he was promoted to deputy squad leader, he would be a corporal, and his salary would also rise to four taels. The sergeant was four taels and five cents, and the sergeant was five taels of silver. And then there are the officers, the second lieutenant is six taels of silver, the lieutenant is six taels and a half, the captain is seven taels, and the major is ......! ”

"Wait, I don't understand. Why didn't his soldiers follow the military system of the Ming Dynasty, and what was he called it? Listening to Wu Sangui's words, Zhu Youzhen frowned. This kind of thing, Jin Yiwei didn't report it.

"Li Xiao doesn't know where to get the military system, but this military system is very effective. He organized eight people into a squad, which had a squad leader and a deputy squad leader, and the remaining six were soldiers. Generally speaking, the squad leader is a sergeant, and the deputy squad leader is a corporal.

Three squads were organized into a platoon, and the platoon leader was a second lieutenant officer. The three platoons were organized into a company, and Li Xiao's smallest action unit was the company. That is, whenever there is something going on, he will send at least one company.

This method of compilation can effectively link the soldiers together. Officers at all levels performed their duties and were very efficient. In Yichen's opinion, it is much better than our Ming Dynasty's 100 households, 1,000 households and other military systems.

Especially when several companies are organized into a battalion, it is even more different. Generally, a battalion must be accompanied by a mortar company, which is the kind of artillery that fires very quickly. Platoon guns plus mortars, if let them occupy the high ground. When you get two or three miles away, they bombard you with mortars. At a distance of one or two hundred paces there were muskets, and if you got closer, there were grenades.

Under the layers of fire nets, you have to admit even if you have thousands of troops. The minister thinks that in terms of combat power. Li Xiao's 18,000 soldiers can already fight with the Tartars, and they can also win the battle. Even Li Xiao's army will not have many casualties. ”

"There are more than 76,000 Tartar soldiers in armor, and I heard that there have been eight banners of the Han army recently. Are you really sure that 18,000 soldiers will be able to exterminate the Tartars? Listening to Wu Sangui's words, Zhu Youzhen still didn't believe it. After all, the military strength of the Tartars is more than three times that of Li Xiao, and there are also firearms of the red-haired people to help. It may be possible to win, but it is difficult to lose much. You must know that from ancient times to the present, most of the wars have been fought by killing 1,000 enemies and losing 800 of themselves.

Although Zhu Youzhen was idle and had nothing to do before, he didn't read less military books. He didn't believe that Li Xiao's army could be so strong.

"Hooray! This still refers only to the inland operations in Liaoyang and Shenyang. If it is a coastal area like Li Guanzhen, Li Xiao's naval guns are extremely powerful. It can be said that Li Xiao's gunboats can now go sideways in Daming. From south to north, as long as the ships with the Li family's flag are flying, no one dares to move.

No matter how ferocious the pirates of the Japanese Kingdom were, they had to stay away when they saw the Li family's fleet. It can be said that Li Xiao's second brother Li Xiu is now the overlord of the sea. On the sea, as long as the name of Second Master Li is mentioned. What Koreans, Japanese people, red-haired people, and Rakshasa people all give face. Now on the sea, there is already a legend of the king of the seven seas. ”

"King of the Seven Seas!" Zhu Youzhen gritted his teeth hatefully. The whole world is not the king's land, and the shore of the land is not the king's minister. The sea is no exception, as a descendant of the Zhu family. Zhu Youzhen has more lofty ambitions than his ancestors, that is, the sea is also his home.

When he was a teenager, he once went out of Beijing to Tianjin Wei, and Zhu Youzhen was shocked by the vastness of the sea when he saw the sea for the first time. The beautiful legends of the abbot, Yingzhou, and Penglai have always haunted his heart. This is also the reason why, after ascending the throne, he changed the name of this small island to Yingtai.

"Yes! That's what I heard from the boat boss who came to Yizhou to run the boat. Oh yes! Long live, Li Xiao has already set foot on Yizhou. Now He Kegang, the former general of the Liao army, is running Yizhou. I heard that there are more than 30,000 people, and tens of thousands of catties of sugar are produced every year. The recent drop in sugar prices in the capital is related to Li Xiao's ship of sugar to our Daming.

Also, they found an herb called camphor in Yizhou. Weichen hasn't seen it either, but the mothballs made of that thing are put in the clothes and bedding, and it really doesn't attract insects. Li Xiao also got this thing back and sold it in our Ming Dynasty. These two things are very lucrative, not to mention the expensive front door. Li Xiao's ...... these things, and the eldest son of the Commodity Inspection Department can't collect taxes. ”

"Huh?"

"Hooray! The officials of the Commodity Inspection Department are all scholars, and the merchant fleet under Li Xiao is said to be a merchant fleet, but it is actually no different from pirates. If the people of the commodity inspection department dare to go on the ship to inspect the goods, they dare to throw people into the sea. Li Xiao hired a large number of black thugs in Tianjin Wei Port, and whoever dared to trouble the Li family would throw sacks into the Haihe River. No one dares to care! ”

"Humph!" Zhu Youzhen gasped for breath in his nostrils, and the knuckles of his fingers holding the white marble railing turned white.

"The money Li Xiao got back, he didn't spend it indiscriminately. Part of it was used to raise soldiers, and the other part was to try to produce new weapons on Changxing Island. Yuan Chonghuan's victory in Li Guanzhen actually relied on a new weapon called rocket artillery.

Wei Chen saw with his own eyes, a phalanx of more than 1,000 people. But in the blink of an eye, it was gone, and there were scattered corpses everywhere, none of which were intact. That scene can only be described as the sky falling apart. I heard that Li Xiao also has a kind of arsenal ship, which is even more powerful than this kind of rocket artillery. However, Li Xiao looked at this kind of arsenal ship very strictly, and Wei Chen tried his best to fail to take a look. ”

"And this kind of thing?" Zhu Youzhen was stunned, and more than a thousand people disappeared in the blink of an eye.

That's still a fierce Tartar soldier, if it's a pawn of the Ming Dynasty......!

Zhu Youzhen didn't dare to think about it anymore!