The war is imminent, and Ningyuan City, as a large rear area and an important material storage place, has implemented wartime control.

The market was opened and closed, and every house was closed.

The streets were full of soldiers and men who were responsible for transporting supplies.

Martial law notices are posted in front of each house, including no climbing, making noise, lighting cannons, lighting fires, drying clothes, etc., and violators will be immediately beheaded.

Yang Chengying stationed the army outside the city and led Ning Wan and my party into the city.

Yan Keshu, the governor of Ningyuan Prefecture, came to greet him alone.

Ning Wan asked him: Why is he alone.

He replied that all the people in the state government were sent out on errands, leaving him alone to sit in the state government and lead the affairs of all parties.

Yang Chengying nodded with satisfaction.

"Let's go, take Gu around, and see how you do."

"Your Highness, please come with your ministers."

Yan Keshu pointed the way behind Yang Chengying and inspected Ningyuan City.

Compared with the era of Yuan Chonghuan, Ningyuan City has expanded three times, and it is already an important town in western Liaoning second only to Jinzhou.

Yan Keshu spent a lot of money to recruit civilians, digging pits on all sides of the city wall and burying water tanks for the enemy to dig tunnels during wartime.

In the northwest and southeast corners, watchtowers were built one foot higher than the city wall.

Xinning Yuancheng is close to the sea and has developed shipping. There is a large number of ships coming in and out of the southeast, and vigilance is required.

As for the northeast, that is the direction where the enemy may sneak up and spy on his own army.

After inspecting the circle, Yang Chengying felt very satisfied.

When he arrived at the state office, Yan Keshu took out a booklet, which detailed statistics of the courtyards, beams and pillars of the houses, the walls and stones, and even the trees in the courtyard in the city.

Yang Chengying understands that this is just in case.

In case Ningyuan City is besieged and the materials for defending the city are insufficient, Yan Keshu must plan in advance where to start demolishing.

After reading it, Yang Chengying said happily: "No wonder you can leap from the township to the governor of Ningyuan Prefecture, you do have the ability."

"Thank you, Your Highness, for your compliment." Yan Keshu took the opportunity to show his merits, "With the strength of the Liaodong Army, the peasant army will definitely not be able to enter. I am afraid that they will use their means to send troops to attack Ningyuan City and burn the grain and grass."

Ning Wan saw it, and took over the conversation with a smile: "Lord Yan, it's good for you to do this. There's one thing, I have to remind you."

"Lord Shangshu, please instruct, the deficiencies of the lower officials must be corrected." Yan Keshu hugged his fist towards Ning Wan, looking respectful.

"You'll have to send a pond to ride, the more the better." Ning Wan reminded him, "This way you can get more accurate information, instead of waiting for other towns to send news."

"Xiaguan Xie Shangshu reminds."

Yan Keshu was still a little proud, but after listening to my reminder, he instantly realized that there was a big hole in his work.

This is also the fault of many civilian officials, who do not attach importance to intelligence work.

Yang Chengying smiled and said, "It's already good. Just change it according to my request, and see that you are entangled in affairs, so you don't have to stay here to accompany us, go down on an errand."

"Your Ministers obey." Yan Keshu respectfully stepped back.

After he left, Yang Chengying looked at Ning Wan, "You are too strict."

"I'm saving a 'good official, as long as he has the idea of asking for merit in his heart, and not all his mind is on defending the city, there will be mistakes."

Not only did I not feel guilty, but I said, "There are some things that I don't remind, and it will be too late for Zhang Cunren to come."

Zhang Cunren was in charge of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, taking the law of the Great Zhou as the criterion and supervising hundreds of officials.

He sent someone to find him, and the official's career was basically gone.

That night, Yang Chengying stayed in Ningyuan Prefecture.

Early the next morning, a top-secret piece of information was delivered to Yang Chengying's desk.

Yang Chengying was eating, his mental state was very relaxed, and he even had the leisure to feed the cat.

He took a sip of porridge, took a piece of old noodle steamed buns, ate a bite himself, broke a little and threw it to the little yellow cat raised by the state government.

According to Yan Keshu

Tell him that he picked up an abandoned cat in the alley, and adopted it with the mentality that he might be able to live if he raised it.

As a result, the kitten was raised, and it was getting fatter and fatter, and those who didn't know thought that his wife raised the cat with small dried fish.

Seeing that Ning Wan and the others entered the back house of the yamen and went straight here, Yang Chengying patted the crumbs on his hands.

When they entered, he said, "Look and see if this information is wrong!"

The first thing I saw was that he used to manage a "one-storey building" and was in charge of intelligence exploration.

After reading it, he handed it to Dolgon, and then said to Yang Chengying, "The information is fine."

Dolgon read the secret letter, frowned, and handed it to Yan Mingtai.

"How is that possible!" Yan Mingtai exclaimed, "Li Zicheng crisscrosses the north and south, and has both the three sides of Shaanxi and Henan, why only sent 60,000 troops."

Although he had never participated in the suppression of the peasant army, he had heard Hong Chengchou mention it many times, and the number of peasant armies was very large.

Simply think about it, there are at least 100,000 soldiers and horses on the three sides of Shaanxi alone, plus Xiangyang and Henan, although the foundation has been broken.

Yan Mingtai roughly estimated that Li Zicheng poured out of the nest, with at least ten or two hundred thousand soldiers and horses.

Ning Wan said, "No! 60,000 to prove that this information is fine."

"Why?"

"Because he only has 60,000 elites."

Immediately afterward, Ning Wan and I relied on the fragmentary information sent from many parties to piece together a complete context for Yan Mingtai.

He analyzed that due to being stared at and beaten by the Ming Dynasty supervisors in the early days, Li Zicheng's lineage has not been much.

Although there were many surrendered Ming troops who took over, first, the time for incorporation was too short, and second, in order to stabilize the surrendered soldiers, they did not dare to change generals.

Chongzhen's generals in his later years were arrogant and domineering, and they grew into large and small military leaders, and they would not fight hard.

Only Tang Tong, a stunned young man, fought with Hong Chengchou for the sake of performance, and only six of his subordinates fled in a hurry.

"No matter how many soldiers and horses there are, it means that Li Zicheng has decided to take a gamble."

Yang Chengying turned the topic back to the issue of troops, "We can't stay here anymore, the army is gathered in Qiansuo Town. Obey my orders at any time, pass through Shanhaiguan, and enter Gyeonggi."

Speaking of stud, Yang Chengying actually has the same determination and transparency as Li Zicheng to "do big things, either a big victory or a big defeat".

He brought an army of 170,000 this time, including He Kegang, Meng Qiaofang, Kong Youde, Azige, Duoduo, Yue Zhi, Shuo Zhi, Wu Sangui, Li Yangeng, Li Shutai, Zhang Hongmo and a large number of generals, as well as the soldiers and horses under their command.

This time, Yang Chengying did not mobilize the Mongolian cavalry.

He had already planned to leave the Mongol cavalry to Hong Chengchou.

In the future, Hong Chengchou led the Mongolian cavalry into Tibet to complete the unification of Tibet.

"The lion fights the rabbit with all our might, not to mention the peasant army that overthrew the Ming Dynasty, we must go all out to win this battle, as long as we win, we will be able to complete the long-cherished wish of these years."

Yang Chengying clapped his hands excitedly: "Okay, since the peasant army is about to reach Shanhaiguan, summon all the generals of all armies, we will sum up, how should this battle be fought!"