According to the news from Jingshi, this Zhou Kui really deserves to be an iron rooster, even if the whole family was arrested by Liu Zongmin, he still insisted that his family was poor, and he had not received Yulu for half a year, and there was not much silver taels at all.

The son and daughter-in-law were tortured to death, and they were unwilling to take out a tael of silver.

This kind of behavior is not to see the coffin and not cry. When Daming was still there, with the identity of Jiading Bo and Guozhang, Emperor Chongzhen had no way to take his hob meat.

But Li Zicheng and Liu Zongmin are not Chongzhen, they have nothing to do with Zhou Kui, after the other party refused to pay the money, Li Zicheng personally tortured and plundered Zhou Kui to death.

In the end, there was no way, Zhou Kui could only honestly hand over his family wealth, and Shunjun copied a huge sum of three million taels of silver from his home.

If Chongzhen was helping to donate, he could understand the truth that the skin would not be attached to the hair, and take out a small half of the silver as a salary, the Jingshi army would be greatly boosted, and maybe he could barely maintain it.

Of course, you can't put all the blame on Zhou Kui, he is just stingy and doesn't understand the overall situation. What really led to the surrender of the Jingshi without a fight was most of the officials and nobles.

After Feng Yuan knew this, he sneered, and by the way, he sent someone to tell Emperor Chongzhen the news.

It is said that when Chongzhen knew that Jiading Bo Zhou Kui had been copied out of three million taels of silver, and that the total amount of silver copied out by hundreds of civil and military officials and nobles in the entire capital was as high as sixty or seventy million taels, he trembled with anger and couldn't eat for two or three days.

......

"Seventy million taels of silver...... The capital is worthy of being the core of the wealth of the world, and if the emperor had this money, the situation in the north would not be so bad!"

Pizhou Mansion, Feng Yuan summoned his subordinates to prepare for the meeting, and Tan Youdao, Jiang Yingjie and others also heard the news.

When they knew that Li Zicheng had tortured 70 million taels of silver, everyone's faces changed.

Tan Youdao sighed again and again, the Ming Dynasty is not as good as day by day, isn't there just no money to make trouble. There is no money for drought and flood relief, so there are millions of displaced people.

In order to save money, Chongzhen abolished the Tianxia Post Station, and as a result, the post soldier Li Zicheng rebelled.

"Seventy million taels of silver is enough to recruit a million troops! Once the thief army goes south, we will be in danger!" Jiang Yingjie said with some worry.

As the saying goes, money is the power of the gods.

Seventy million taels of silver, whether it is recruiting troops or doing other things, there is no difficulty.

The treasure that Feng Yuan got from Jinling was only more than 20 million taels of silver, and it only took a small part to recruit a team of soldiers and horses and take the important land of Huaibei.

Li Zicheng got two or three times as much silver as Feng Yuan, and he could do more.

However, Tan Youdao shook his head.

"Don't worry about this, the money in Li Zicheng's hands was all looted from the hands of those officials and nobles in the capital, and now the name of the Dashun Torture Camp is well known in the north. ”

"It can be said that Li Chuang's torture camp has made them lose the support of the northern gentry, if Li Zicheng can remain undefeated, it is fine, once there is a slight setback, the officials who originally belonged to Dashun will inevitably attack in groups, and if it is a little worse, Li Chuang will collapse!"

Tan Youdao used to be a scholar and knew the thoughts of those gentry officials very well.

For the gentry, even if Li Chuang looted all the people in the capital, as long as they did not move their property and let them continue to be officials, they could continue to support Dashun.

But Li Zicheng became the Emperor of Dashun, but he did not understand the truth that "the Son of Heaven and the scholars rule the world together". When he entered the capital, he still did not change the old routine of robbing the rich and helping the poor, and fighting local tyrants to divide property.

This kind of behavior is diametrically opposed to the "Ming Jun" in the eyes of the gentry.

After being cleaned up by Li Zicheng, these people will definitely miss Chongzhen's reign. After all, when Chongzhen was in power, their life was very comfortable.

However, Chongzhen was ruthlessly betrayed by these gentry officials once, and almost died of the country. With this kind of painful lesson, I believe that he will never believe in those civil officials and scholars who are "all in power".

"What Master Tan said makes sense, but the student wants to add that Li Zicheng still has hundreds of thousands of troops, if he can calm down, assign officials, and sort out civil affairs, even if he can't capture Jiangnan, he will be able to stabilize the north in the future, and rule the river with my Ming Dynasty!"

A Confucian scholar who followed Tan Youdao to the government office said.

He was Liu Fang, a Huaibei scholar who took refuge before Feng Yuan went to Beijing.

This person is from Fengyang, a few years ago, he was admitted to Xiucai, and later Fengyang was broken by Zhang Xianzhong, so he lived in Lianghuai, and barely made a living with his ability to write and calculate.

Later, Feng Yuan won most of Huai'an Mansion, and this person came to Pizhou to defect, and he had some insights on civil affairs and the general trend of the world. It is very valued by Tan Youdao.

So during this discussion, Tan Youdao also brought Liu Fang in after reporting to Feng Yuan.

When Feng Yuan heard this, his gaze stopped on Liu Fang for a moment.

What Liu Fang said also makes sense, after Li Zicheng captured the capital, he rested the three armies, refined the soldiers and horses under his command, and divided all the other homeless people and cannon fodder into households, and it only took a year to lay a foundation in Beizhili.

When the time comes, even if the gentry in the north refuse to resist and resist, they can calmly suppress it with a large army.

Liu Fang, who has such an opinion, has no reputation in history.

Feng Yuan could only sigh in his heart, there are countless strange people in the world, but except for a very few, most of them have no chance to get ahead, and in the end they live their lives.

There is a good saying, five people are called Mao, ten people are called Xuan, 100 people are said to be handsome, 1,000 people are said to be Ying, and 10,000 people are called Jie! One in a thousand is a talent, and one in a thousand is a hero.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, tens of millions of people were slaughtered by thieves and Qing soldiers. Among so many people, there are definitely many heroes.

But even heroes, without opportunity, are like ordinary people, they can only be crushed by the general trend and cannot get ahead.

"Mr. Liu is right, if Li Zicheng follows Mr.'s strategy, it is indeed possible to sit firmly in the north, but ...... This king has just received news that Li Zicheng has already led the main force of troops and horses at this time, preparing to attack Wu Sangui......"

"This king invited you to come here to discuss, if Wu Sangui let go of Shanhaiguan to lead the Tartars into the customs, how should we deal with it!"

Tan Youdao and Liu Xiang's expressions changed, and they were both shocked by the news that Feng Yuan said.

"Wu Sangui leads the Tartars into the customs?"

The two glanced at each other, Wu Sangui was the chief soldier of Liaodong, and tens of thousands of Guanning iron cavalry under his command had resisted the Liaodong Tartars for many years, and the prince suddenly said that he would lead troops to join the Tartars, which made people a little unbelievable.

However, if you think about it seriously, what the prince said is also very likely to happen.

If Li Zicheng wants to take Beijing as the capital, he must first watch his east gate. Shanhaiguan is the top priority.

Wu Sangui relied on Guanning Tieqi, and thought that he would listen to the tune and not listen to the announcement as he had done in the Ming Dynasty before, and Li Zicheng would definitely not agree.

The so-called Guanning Iron Cavalry consumes more than half of the Ming Dynasty's salary every year. Liaojiao, one of Chongzhen's three salaries, was specially set up for the Liaodong Army.

However, the "Guanning Iron Cavalry", which consumes millions of taels of military pay every year, has not won any battles, and has retreated again and again in Liaodong, and the original Liaodong capital with vast land is only a few cities in the Liaodong Corridor.

With this record, Li Zicheng, Liu Zongmin and others looked down on Guan Ningjun a little.

And Wu Sangui also looked down on Li Zicheng and these thieves, and thought that if the Guan Ning army entered the customs, he would definitely be able to defeat the thieves.

The two sides were disgusted, and the result was that Li Zicheng directly led the army to the east, preparing to defeat the Guanning army in one fell swoop.