Only then did Manshun discover that the place where he was being imprisoned was on top of the Yixian city wall, inside the city gate tower! Now he opened the window, and the scene outside the city shocked him.
Yishui flows not far outside the city wall. It's not that the water volume is not large in summer, but it is slowly reflecting the starlight.
In the fields opposite Yishui, as far as the eye could see, there were military tents, all of which were occupied by troops stationed there. The military tents were very shabby and inconsistent, but they were actually full of people.
Fires were used for warmth and lighting at night, and the firelight formed a huge military formation in the wilderness, leading to the foot of Xiling Mountain in the distance.
The county seat of Yixian County is less than twenty miles away from Xiling. From here, you can see that the entire Xiling is red, and you can imagine that there are more troops stationed there.
"Hahaha... Manshun, did you see it? This is my army. There are already 100,000 troops stationed outside Yi County at the moment, and more armies are coming in a steady stream!"
"One hundred thousand? Impossible...how could there be so many people, and how could the court not know about it at all?"
Yi Xin smiled, "If the court knew everything, how could I come forward? That fool Zai Cheng doesn't even know what the Eight Banners are? He actually wants to fight against the entire Eight Banners and create the so-called centralization of monarchy!"
"Delusion! The Eight Banners has its own thoughts and its own life. You can only go with the flow, it is irreversible!"
Zai Cheng laughed arrogantly from the side and said, "Soldiers? We don't have soldiers, do we? There are tens of millions of disaster victims in the North. We can recruit as many soldiers as we want from them!"
"Now you see it is one hundred thousand, and in a few days it will be five hundred thousand, one million!"
"These victims will work for whoever gives them food to eat!"
"Ah! I understand... There was no civil uprising at all. It was all promoted by you secretly! It wasn't the victims who wanted to rebel, but you who forced the victims to rebel?" Manshun shouted in horror.
"That's right! That's right...and that's not all! The victims are just a group of people who are about to starve to death. They have no military training. They are just the skin of the army!"
"The skeleton of the army is not the victims of the disaster! It is the Xishan Hidden Army that my father prepared long ago!"
"How can I, Amma, not leave any backup for training at the Xishan Camp? There are many places where troops can be hidden in the huge Taihang Mountains and Mongolia in the north!"
"There are so many servants who have children in my family, and they lead so many carefully selected soldiers. In fact, they are not even on the roster of the Xishan Camp!"
"We did train together back then, but these people's names are not on the list. These people are all raised by my family on military pay, and they have no connection with the Ministry of War!"
"When that foolish emperor Zai Chun launched a coup, I, Amma, had already ordered these hidden troops to be broken up into small groups and go into the mountains to live in seclusion as bandits!"
"Now that the world has changed drastically, they immediately gathered towards me, Amma, and on the way, they were able to capture victims of the disaster and expand their army. It was really killing two birds with one stone!"
"Hahaha..." Guiziliu laughed excitedly after hearing his son's praise. He pointed at the mountains in Xiling in the distance and said.
"The vast Taihang Mountains are the backbone of North China! Whoever controls the Taihang Mountains will control the land of Yanzhao, and even the entire Zhili and Shandong Plains!"
"The importance of Taihang is no less than that of Hangu Pass to the land of Guanzhong, and Jianmen Pass to the Kingdom of Heaven... It has been a battleground for military strategists since ancient times!"
"Think about those days! If the Ming Dynasty could hold on to Taihang, even if we, the Qing Dynasty, could enter the Pass, we would not be able to rule for a long time. After all, this is the place where we have a commanding position!"
"Thanks to the blessing of our ancestors, those Shanxi merchants from Shanxi came over early and gave us a blessed land in the Qing Dynasty!"
"Not only that, Taihang Mountain is also the place where Xiao Letian's evil spirit suddenly appeared... Damn, he's not a human at all, he's just a mountain spirit and water monster that jumped out of nowhere!"
"Perhaps this is the old goblin who has been practicing in the Taihang Mountains for many years! With the Feng Shui energy of Taihang, he suddenly became the overlord of East Asia!"
"Xiao Letian can use such a treasured land, but I, Yi Xin, can't use it?"
"My soldiers are hidden here. This is the skeleton of a million-strong army in the future. His command system is the backbone of the army!"
"The disaster victims plus the hidden army, coupled with several actual combat encounters, I will not be able to escape from the world!"
Manshun's face turned pale and he was really frightened, but he still stubbornly wanted to resist, "One hundred thousand troops are stationed here, and the imperial court doesn't even know about it!"
"It is conceivable that the magistrate of Yi County and the general manager of Xiling have surrendered, right? They betrayed His Majesty..."
"Haha... What is surrender? What is betrayal? This is just to bring order out of chaos and get them back on the right path!"
"Liu Henzhen is a Han. That boy has taken refuge with Xiao Letian a long time ago. He is not a follower of Zaichun at all!"
"As for Elsu? He is a bannerman. You have to remember that he is a member of the Mengba Banner. Zai Chun has hurt the Eight Banners deeply. Do you think any bannerman will continue to be loyal to him?"
"Not only in Erles, but also in the disaster-stricken areas of the four northern provinces, why are the civil unrest so serious? Why are the green and flag camps in various places not very effective?"
"Hahaha... That fool Zai Chun has no idea who the little bannermen officers in these places will be loyal to in their hearts!"
"Are you loyal to an iron-blooded king who centralized his power? Or are you loyal to the Eight Banners system that your ancestors have relied on for generations?"
"Hahaha... Fools will all make choices. They have no choice but to rely on the Eight Banners system, and now I am the only one who truly represents the interests of the Eight Banners!"
"The Zhengshuo of the Qing Dynasty is in my hands, and the right to control the Eight Banners has long been out of the hands of that foolish Emperor Tongzhi!"
Hahaha... Yixin and his son were laughing wildly at the top of the city. In the distance was the camp of a hundred thousand troops. The huge matrix pattern composed of bonfires spread out so far on the ground that it was impossible to see the end at a glance!
Manshun's heart was twisted together in shock. Such a huge conspiracy was something he had never dared to imagine before!
He didn't know how many Hidden Army there were, but it seemed that these Hidden Army could support the command system of a million-strong army, so the number of the Hidden Army should be at least 30,000 and less than 100,000.
There are plenty of victims. As long as there is food support, there are as many as you need. Tens of millions of victims are too much cannon fodder!
There are also the rebellion of the Eight Banners who are not loyal to the emperor in various places. Many of these people may have begun secretly loyal to Guiziliu in the last years of Daoguang. God knows how many connections this prince who has not succeeded in seizing the throne has left behind.
Not to mention that there are more bannermen with ulterior motives in the capital. No wonder he has such accurate information. There must be high-level officials among the bannermen in the capital who are tipping him off?
"Ah! Could it be that those princes..." Manshun actually shouted out what he was thinking!
"Haha...guess, you guess slowly, you have plenty of time..."
