Mining City.

Like the Siyan City in Yanchi, because there are too many mines near Qingshi Mountain, a mining city has been set up here since the Yuan Dynasty, and it became a "mining city" in the Ming Dynasty.

Of course, for the imperial court, what they value more is the rock salt here, which is the same as the well salt in Sichuan and the red salt in Helan Mountain, the color and taste of Ruzhou rock salt are unique, and the price is much higher than that of ordinary salt.

In addition, in addition to coal and iron mines, there are also lead mines, so this has become one of the production areas for the Imperial Horse Supervisor to reserve lead bullets and lead for the Shenji Battalion.

Of course, according to the consistent practice of the Ming Dynasty, whenever a new vassal king takes office, in addition to giving the grange, there are also a large number of shops, mines, and workshops.

Such an important place naturally became the focus of the imperial court's attention in Henan.

After the battalion system was also implemented in the interior, in addition to the provincial capital Kaifeng, the Runing Mansion at the junction of the three provinces was the only place where a sub-guard general was set up.

As a result, the mining city, which is only the size of the county seat, has become a place where the generals of the guards, the mine supervisors, the inspection department, and the ambassadors of the military department gather together, plus the warehouses and shops set up by the three kings in the city, as well as the merchants who come and go here to purchase coal, iron, lead, and rock salt, the bustle of the mining city is much stronger than that of ordinary county seats.

Not to mention anything else, it is more lively than the four counties of Baofeng, Xiangcheng, Yexian and Jiaxian.

In addition to the shops and warehouses, the Qinglou wine shops, cloth shops, grain stores, ironware, woodware, lacquerware, and woodware that exist in these shops are also crowded with traffic, row upon row.

However, this is a castle that has grown up because of the mines, and it is certainly not as tall as the serious county seat.

A three-zhang high rammed earth city wall with no bricks wraps the various houses inside crookedly, and it can be seen that the city wall is constantly being torn off and extended outward because of the continuous expansion of the houses.

Since the imperial court set up a sub-guard general here, the new general Chen Yongfu occupied the house of Wang Heizi, the largest merchant in the city (it is very likely that Wang Heizi took the initiative to give it up), and regarded it as a general's mansion and a place to garrison troops, so you can imagine how big Wang Heizi's house is.

To say that this Chen Yongfu was originally just a thousand households close to Guide Mansion in Shandong, and he was promoted to this position because of his outstanding performance in the war to encircle and suppress the Yuyuan thieves.

And the reason why he was able to make meritorious contributions in the extremely complex geography of Yuyuan was nothing else, relying on two words.

Water, fire.

Since the tunnel runs through the Yu Garden, then flood it with water, and since the elm money can grow into a big tree when it lands, then burn it with fire.

Rao is like this, Yuyuan traverses Shandong, Henan, and Beizhili, and he has a few thousand households, and the merits he can make are obviously limited, and it is precisely because of the existence of Yuyuan thieves that the commanders of the guards and other thousands of households in the three provinces close to Yuyuan continue to have money and food and meritorious deeds.

You Chen Yongfu exterminated the Yuyuan thieves alone, and let others be shameless or want money?

As a result, Chen Yongfu was "promoted" to Runing Mansion.

After arriving in Runing Mansion, it happened that since the thieves in northern Shaanxi surged, there were bandits and bandits in the Dabie Mountain area from time to time in the name of the "righteous army", which created an opportunity for Chen Yongfu.

So, this time, he really rose to the top and became the general of the extremely wealthy and populated mining city, but in fact he was guarding the mountains of western Henan, and the bandits in western Henan were all under his jurisdiction.

However, this time, he obviously hit the nail, Jin Shenghuan's men and horses who were operating in the area of Lushi County - Song County were mainly miners in Lushi County, very strong, Chen Yongfu thought that he was the same as the bandits of Dabie Mountain, but as a result, his son, Lushan garrison Chen De's encirclement and suppression was ambushed by Jin Shenghuan.

After learning the details of Jin Shenghuan's department, Chen Yongfu immediately wrote to the Henan General Army, asking for expansion, and claiming that he did not need money and food from the government.

At this time, the Henan general soldier was Chen Hongfan, who had the reputation of "Qin Hui of the Ming Dynasty".

At this time, his main force was still in Dengzhou, and his righteous son, the cavalry Qianzong Zhuangzi, first withdrew to Henan, and went north to participate in the battle to encircle and suppress Long Thirteen, and later fell into the hands of Long Thirteen.

Chen Hongfan naturally knew about the group of thieves in western Henan, but at this time, Chen Hongfan was no longer Chen Hongfan, who had served in Liaodong and Yulin, but Chen Hongfan, a Han girl who had been bought by Li Yongfang, was the least powerful of his troops in the war to encircle and suppress Kong Youde.

And Kong Youde was able to contact Emperor Taiji and successfully escape from Dengzhou by water, didn't he, the female cadre, play a role?

It's hard to believe.

Therefore, Chen Hongfan didn't care about the bandits in Henan at all, what kind of group of thieves in western Henan, naturally the more the better, and the more chaos the Ming Dynasty was, the better.

All this, the imperial court and the governor of Henan obviously knew nothing.

Therefore, he did not hesitate to refute Chen Yongfu's suggestion, and also threatened Chen Yongfu to have "no disobedience and no thoughts", which made Chen Yongfu naturally shocked and hurriedly gave up.

However, his proposal was agreed to by the current governor of Henan, Xuan Mo, and instructed him to let his other son, Chen Pin, pull up another team in the name of Ruzhou Lian Zong, of course, the money needed to pull up this team was naturally covered by the large and small merchants in the mining city.

Among them, almost half of the richest man in Henan, Wang Heizi.

So, Chen Yongfu had 2,000 men and horses, cavalry of the first army, his father and son were all brave and martial, naturally trained well, and when they were about to march west to suppress Jin Shenghuan again, Long Thirteen's army came.

No matter how powerful Chen Yongfu is, after learning that Long Shisan actually defeated the armies of Xu Dingchen, the governor of Shanxi, Zhang Zongheng, the governor of Xuanda, and Hong Chengchou, the governor of Shaanxi, he will not be arrogant enough to take the initiative to go out of the city to challenge.

What's more, he is familiar with the Henan cavalry Qianzong Zhuang Zigu, he knows very well, in his mind, although Chen Hongfan is despicable, but some of his generals are still quite powerful, and the most powerful of them is naturally Zhuang Zigu!

But Zhuangzi Guqi was all folded in the hands of this thief in front of him!

So, as soon as he got the news of Long Thirteen's arrival, he immediately launched the Strongwall Clearing.

Around the mining city, there were three smaller forts, all of which were formed on the basis of the previous iron mines, rock salt mines, and lead mines, and he made all the people take refuge in this large three and four fortresses.

And let the hosts of each mine (some are people from the government, some are people from the palace, and some are people from Wang Heizi) gather young and strong people to garrison, and each fortress has about 1,000 people.

Of course, in Baofeng County, Xiangcheng County, Ye County, and Jiaxian County, after learning that the thieves were coming, the four county towns were also fortified and clear, and the infant city was self-defending.

This is the situation that Dragon Thirteen is facing now.

Let's not talk about Long Thirteen, but still focus on the General's Mansion in Mining City, at this time Chen Yongfu was convening an emergency meeting to discuss the matter of war defense.

In addition to the generals of his general's mansion, it is nothing more than the four kings plus Wang Heizi and other big merchants, and the focus of the discussion is nothing more than how much each merchant needs to be young and strong, how much money and food, and so on.

By the way, I have been talking about the four kings before, but now there is one more king, and that is naturally because the Tang King of Nanyang Mansion also sent someone.

Just last year, the old Tang King died, and the father and son of the old Tang Dynasty who had been imprisoned for more than ten years finally saw the light of day, and the son of the old Tang King died in the captivity, leaving only the eldest grandson Zhu Yujian, so Zhu Yujian inherited the title of Tang King.

Zhu Yujian, a prince who has been imprisoned for more than ten years, did not give up on himself when he was imprisoned, and read a lot of books, especially military books, at first glance, he is ready to do big things.

A few years later, Zhu Yujian was confined in Fengyang Mansion again because he went north to King Qin without authorization, this time the most powerful thief brigade of the Ming Dynasty went south to Henan, he was naturally very concerned, and he also estimated that most of the thieves would go south to Nanyang Mansion, so he quickly sent his own guard of honor Wei Zheng (the chief of the palace guard, equivalent to a thousand generals) to come to the meeting to discuss.

At this time, the major royal palaces, after experiencing Zhu Di's Jingyan battle, were no longer the guards under Zhu Yuanzhang's original establishment of princely palaces in various places, as well as the most elite guards directly under the Ministry of Honor, and they were lustful in addition to making money.

grain

, silver, antique treasures, and beautiful women are transported to the palace like flowing water, especially with the two feudatories of King Lu (the younger brother of the Wanli Emperor) and Fu Wang (the son of the Wanli Emperor), which are the closest to the current emperor, which is simply the power of the world.

Especially the former, because in addition to getting the fief of Henan, he also inherited the fief and shops of King Jing, the uncle of Emperor Wanli, and the money and strength are still above King Fu.

The first King of Lu was extremely desolate, and it is said that the women of the people of Weihui Mansion had to serve in the Luwang Mansion for three days before getting married, which shows the extent of their desolation.

As a result, the various palaces obviously did not pay attention to the Honor and Guard Division, and only the new Tang King Zhu Yujian not only restored the number of the Honor and Guard Division of the palace to a scale of 1,000, but also secretly ordered the county kings of the Tang Dynasty to secretly train their troops, otherwise he would not have any soldiers and horses to go north to King Qin.

Of course, even if it is the guard of honor in the Tang Palace, Chen Yongfu will not take it seriously, the Tang King is just Zhu Yuanzhang's concubine, far away from today, and no one listens to what he says, Chen Yongfu is just polite on the surface.

In the end, Chen Yongfu unceremoniously vetoed the suggestion of the Yiweizheng (Zheng Liupin military attaché) to ask him to "take the initiative", and ignored it very much, only to discuss it with others who listened to his orders.

This guard of honor was originally a slave of Zhu Yujian's father, a former son of Qinghai Tusi, there are many Tusi in the Ming Dynasty, and there are several in the vicinity of Xining City alone, including both Turen (here refers to the Tu people, that is, the descendants of Tuyuhun, not the Tu family), Tibetans, Mongolians, and Huihui.

It is common for these toasts to attack each other, and as an official government, they would like to do so, so that they will have the opportunity to get their hands on it, and if a hereditary toast dies, there are naturally a large number of Yiren nobles who hope to be on top, and at this time, the recommendation of the local government is extremely important.

As a result, in Qinghai and Gansu, there are not many toasts that can be inherited for a hundred years, more than half a year, that is, about three generations, at this time, the government will hint to other nobles openly and secretly, "Your opportunity has come, why don't you do it?"

This guard of honor is a victim of this "tradition", his whole family was naturally killed by the new Tusi, at that time the long history of the Tang Dynasty Mansion happened to be from Lanzhou, after meeting him, he took him to Nanyang, and later became Zhu Yujian's father (died before ascending the throne) personal servant.

He is a native (Tu people), believes in Tibetan Buddhism, now the big name is Zhu Xiaozhong, skilled in bow and horse, with the support of Zhu Yujian's father, he also entered the martial arts of Nanyang Mansion, and also passed the martial arts, so he had the opportunity to become the honor guard of the Tang Palace.

"No!"

Zhu Xiaozhong saw that he was going to be snubbed, and the characters that Tang Wang gave him were about to fail, so he couldn't help shouting.