"The Wu soldiers inside heard this. I am Xia Guoxiang, the son-in-law of Emperor Zhaowu of the Great Zhou Dynasty. The Great Zhou Kingdom is almost over!"
"The soldiers of the Great Zhou Dynasty had just been defeated at Laodaohe outside Changsha City. The King of Chu of the Great Zhou Dynasty was defeated and captured. King Qin of the Great Zhou Dynasty and his son fled back to Hengyang with their troops. They imitated Li Shimin and launched a mutiny, killing the emperor's grandson. , and even forced the old Emperor Zhaowu to give up his throne to him. Wuwu."
"The Great Zhou Dynasty is over, the emperor's grandson is gone, and the throne of Emperor Zhaowu has been taken away by the rebellious and unfilial King Qin. What are you still holding on to? Surrender quickly!"
Outside the South Gate of Jiujiang City, early this morning, Xia Guoxiang, who had been defeated and captured in the previous Xiaogu Mountain Water Battle on the Yangtze River, had put on the official uniform of a second-grade military attache of the Ming Dynasty, and stood in front of a group of Lin Xingzhu who also surrendered to the Ming Dynasty. Under the protection of the Tengpai soldiers under his command, he approached the south gate, and then started to spread rumors and persuade him to surrender at the top of his lungs with tears streaming down his face.
It is said to be a rumor, but it is not a "full rumor", but a "half rumor" with a certain degree of authenticity. For example, when Xia Guoxiang claims to be Xia Guoxiang, it is true - he is the real Xia Guoxiang!
It is also true that the Zhou soldiers were defeated by the Laodao River outside Changsha City - although Li Laishun was still on his way to Jiujiang, his "feather letter" to Li Zicheng had already been delivered first.
This Li Laishun is so good at life. He is both Li Zhongshan's good nephew and Li Zicheng's good grandson. He has to deal with both sides.
He knew that Li Zicheng would not let Wu Yingxiong go. It was impossible for Li Zicheng to catch Wu Sangui and kill him. How about catching Wu Yingxiong and killing him to relieve his hatred? This old man just thinks about it, how can he stop him?
But he also promised Li Zhongshan to let Wu Yingxiong run away, so when he arrived in Jiujiang Prefecture, he could not allow Li Zicheng to kill Wu Yingxiong, because he had to fulfill his promise to his uncle, the general!
He is General Li's most reliable nephew!
So Li Laishun rushed to Jiujiang day and night, and at the same time sent his men to deliver a message to Li Zicheng at an accelerated speed of 600 miles to kill Wu Yingxiong. He had to move quickly. It would be difficult to kill him when King Li Zhong arrived.
In order to send Wu Yingxiong on the road as soon as possible, Li Laishun also thoughtfully suggested to Li Zicheng to use a deceptive trick to deceive the few Wu soldiers and generals in Jiujiang Fucheng who were stubbornly resisting. Let them surrender in Kaicheng and hand over Wu Yingxiong.
And Xiang Guoxiang is now helping Li Zicheng trick Wu Yingxiong!
But what he said about Qin King Wu Yingqi escaping back to Hengyang is actually true. Although Wu Yingqi has not returned to Hengyang on September 24, he will be able to return to Hengyang in a few days. This It's half a rumor, right?
As for Wu Guogui, the king of Chu in the Great Zhou Dynasty, who was defeated and captured, that was also a half-rumor that was about to come true. Wu Guogui had been defeated and surrounded, but he had not been captured yet, let alone surrendered, but was seriously considering the matter.
The story that Wu Yingqi ran back to Hengyang to launch a mutiny, killed the emperor's grandson Wu Shifan, and forced Wu Sangui to give up the throne to him is completely false.
Although these two things are false, they are so real to a group of Wu family soldiers and generals who have great confidence in the old Wu family's fatherly kindness, filial piety, brotherly friendship and brotherly respect...
This is the eldest brother, the prince, the second brother, King Qin, and an old emperor who started a rebellion... Shouldn't the next step be to cause trouble with the Xuanwu Sect?
Moreover, the eldest brother and the prince were still trapped in Jiujiang City. How could King Wu Yingqi of Qin be willing to live under Wu Shifan, who looked like a girl?
Therefore, this old Wu family's version of the Xuanwu Sect's change has long been expected by everyone.
Now when I hear what Xia Guoxiang said, it feels like it is true.
After thinking about this idea again, everyone felt that they could no longer follow Wu Yingxiong. Wu Yingqi is now plotting to usurp the throne. How could he send troops to save his brother again? Come and kill your own brother!
Wu Yingxiong, who was boarding the Dasheng Pagoda at this moment, had just met Xia Guoxiang on the small south gate tower and listened to the true and false words of Xia Guoxiang.
And he basically believed it!
He originally thought that his good brother Wu Yingqi had bad intentions. In fact, he was not the only one who thought so. Even his father Wu Sangui was worried that Wu Yingqi would become too powerful and cause some changes in the Xuanwu Gate or the Jingnan War in the future.
So in this Eastern Expedition, Wu Sangui did not take Wu Yingqi and Wu Shicong with him at the beginning. This was to prevent them from making contributions and gaining prestige!
As a result, the Eastern Expedition failed miserably. Wu Sangui pretended to be Wu Youliang, and Wu Yingxiong, the prince, was trapped in Jiujiang City!
Even Wu Yingxiong had a vague feeling that his father Wu Sangui no longer "loved" him and was thinking of changing to the prince! Replace him as the prince with Wu Yingqi.
After mistakenly believing the rumors about Xia Guoxiangfang, Wu Yingxiong, who was already discouraged about his future, became even more discouraged. He no longer had the intention to stay at the front line of Xiaonan Gate, or even to arrange for his men to refute the rumors. Instead, he climbed up to the Dasheng Pagoda of Nengren Temple alone as if he was lost... As if he could see the pagoda after boarding the pagoda. Stay further away. If his father Wu Sangui comes to rescue him, he can see it from a distance.
It is a pity that there is no Wu Sangui on the Yangtze River, there is no Wu Sangui on the official road to the west of the city, and there seems to be no Wu Sangui in the mountains to the south of the city and Poyang Lake to the east of the city!
That's right. Wu Yingxiong thought to himself: Hong Chengchou couldn't hope for my father in Songshan City, Emperor Chongzhen couldn't hope for my father on Meishan Mountain, and now I can't hope for my dad at the Dasheng Pagoda in Jiujiang City. Got it!
Thinking of this, Wu Yingxiong burst into tears. While he was crying, the floor of the highest floor of the Dasheng Pagoda under his feet suddenly shook violently. Without paying attention, he dropped it and a piece of it was covered with dog excrement. As soon as my tearful face hit the floor and it was hurting, there was a "rumbling" explosion in my ears!
What exploded?
As soon as Wu Yingxiong thought of this, he heard one of his own soldiers shouting: "The city wall next to the Xiaonan Gate seems to have exploded!"
"What? The city wall exploded?" Wu Yingxiong said in shock: "How could the city wall explode?"
Wu Yingxiong said this to himself, then put his hands on the floor and tried to get up. Then he looked at the small south gate near Nengren Temple. As expected, there was thick smoke billowing from the right side of the small south gate!
"Is this... someone named Li buried gunpowder? That person named Li is so despicable!" Wu Yingxiong gritted his back molars when he said this.
He was not confused and immediately figured out that the city wall would not explode for no reason... This must be Li Zicheng's mischief.
The despicable and shameless Li Zicheng must have buried the gunpowder!
He really guessed it right.
It turns out that Li Zicheng now has some miners recruited from Daye County, Xingguo Prefecture, Wuchang County, Huanggang County and other places - there are many iron ore and coal mines in that area. When Wuchang Prefecture and Huangzhou Prefecture were not fighting, The miners still had enough food and clothing, and not many were willing to serve as Li Zicheng's soldiers. But after Wu Sangui came, Wuchang Prefecture and Huangzhou Prefecture were in chaos, and these mines were no longer available, so many unemployed miners went up to the mountains to join the king.
These miners can't do anything else, but they are good at digging and digging, and they can do it quickly and well.
Moreover, they also use gunpowder when mining, so they are quite good at blowing up something.
In addition, the Ming army already had engineers as a branch, so Li Zicheng organized these professional diggers into his own engineers.
When Li Zicheng failed to attack Jiujiang's ministers for a long time, he began to have bad intentions.
He asked his miners to dig for several days, digging a tunnel leading to the city wall near the small south gate. Then the miners put the black powder into a coffin and smuggled it into the tunnel.
Today, I took advantage of the opportunity that Prime Minister Xia went to the Xiaonan Gate to spread rumors and persuade people to surrender, attracting many people to listen. I lit the gunpowder fuse buried under the Xiaonan Gate city wall.
With a "boom", the city wall several feet wide collapsed, sending dozens of people flying into the sky, at least half of whom were key officers under Wu Yingxiong. This is really immoral and smoking!
On the Ming army's position outside the Xiaonan Gate of Jiujiang City, Li Zicheng was lying behind a bunker made of sandbags, holding a monocular telescope and staring with one eye, carefully looking at the place where the smoke and dust were rising in front of him. With a gust of river wind blowing, most of the smoke and dust finally dissipated.
Now Li Zicheng finally saw clearly the section of city wall that had collapsed due to gunpowder. A large section of the city wall to the east of the Xiaonan Gate of Nanchang was gone. The city bricks collapsed and formed a slope, and the rammed earth layer inside was also blown apart. There were large and small pieces piled there, as if the whole thing had been turned over.
Li Zicheng put down his telescope, opened his throat and shouted: "Beat the drum! Advance the troops to E Chong! Rush in and kill Wu Gouxiong, Wu Sangui's son!"
"yes!"
The soldiers behind Li Zicheng agreed in unison, and then ran all the way along a trench crowded with elite soldiers of the Zhongwang Mansion in white hats and Tsing Yi, shouting: "The old prince has an order, beat the drum! Advance the troops! Charge." "
Hu Yiqiang, Li Zicheng's general and the one he had trained with great effort over the past few years, heard the shouts of Li Zicheng's soldiers. He held an order flag and was the first to jump out of the ditch. Then he shook the flag left and right, and then stood alone. Holding the flag, he pointed forward while raising his arms and shouting: "Loyal to the Prince's Mansion Army, move forward to kill Wu Gouxiong!"
Behind him, soldiers from Prince Zhong's Palace poured out in an endless stream, and the shouts resounded throughout the battlefield in an instant: "Prince Zhong's Army, charge!"
Thousands of soldiers from the loyal prince's palace, carrying flintlocks and spears and holding up bamboo ladders, shouted loudly and moved forward. Their starting position was a trench that surrounded Jiujiang City on three sides. The straight-line distance from Jiujiang City was only three to four hundred steps. As for Jiujiang City's own outer trenches, most of them had been filled in during the previous city offensive and defensive battles. The attacking infantry could rush directly through the filled outer trenches.
The defenders of Jiujiang City had already reacted. Flintlock guns and matchlocks were stretched out one after another and started shooting. However, under the suppression of the firepower of the sharpshooters of the Zhongwangfu Army, it did not appear to be very dense. The officers of Prince Zhong's palace army and their soldiers rushed to the gap in one breath. Wu Yingxiong's officers and soldiers have been besieged for a long time, and they have long been panicked. Coupled with the "rumors" about Xiangfang Xia, everything is now on the verge of collapse.
If Wu Yingxiong could step forward at this time, he might be able to lead his Wu family soldiers to fight out the elite soldiers of Prince Zhong's Mansion. But at this time, Wu Yingxiong disappeared. He himself collapsed!
The soldiers of the Wu family who couldn't see Wu Yingxiong thought that their general was on the wall next to the Xiaonan Gate just now and had now collapsed to the sky! Why do they still want to fight now? Either he dropped his weapon and ran around, or he knelt on the ground and asked the soldiers of Prince Zhong's Mansion to surrender!
Of course, there are still some die-hard Wu soldiers and generals. Most of these people are now following Wu Yingxiong's best friend Guo Zhuangtu. Instead of blocking the opening in the city wall, they rush towards Nengren Temple where Wu Yingxiong lives.
Guo Zhuangtu learned from several guards of Wu Yingxiong that the Prince of Zhou had gone up to the Dasheng Pagoda again, so he panted and went up to the top floor of the pagoda, where he found Wu Yingxiong sitting on the floor and crying. .
"Your Majesty, the city is destroyed, my lord."
Guo Zhuangtu was about to say that he wanted to save Wu Yingxiong and rush out, but Wu Yingxiong waved his hand and said: "It's over, it's over, the Great Week is over, Shifan has been killed by the second child! How can I still live?"
"Prince, don't listen to Prime Minister Xia's nonsense!" Guo Zhuangtu shook his head desperately, "He fell into Li Zicheng's hands, with the knife on his neck. What else did he want to say?"
Wu Yingxiong shook his head: "Xia Guoxiang was not captured by Li Zicheng, he should be captured by the Ming Navy. Looking at his official robe, he should have surrendered to the Ming Dynasty and was awarded the title of second-grade military attache! Why did Li Zicheng use the sword? Put it on the neck of a second-grade military attaché of the Ming Dynasty?"
This question really stumped Guo Zhuangtu.
Li Zicheng is not King Chuang now, but Li Fengtian, who is in charge of the military affairs of Prince Zhong's palace. How can he force Yi to surrender to the Ming Dynasty and make Xia Guoxiang a second-rank military attaché? How come Xia Guoxiang is the uncle of Wu Xiaotuo and Wu Xiaoxian! Even if you don't look at the monk's face, you have to look at the Buddha's face, so he can't go too far.
In fact, Li Laishun borrowed Xia Guoxiang from Liu Guoxuan, and the second-grade official uniform was borrowed by Li Zicheng from his officers.
Just when Guo Zhuangtu didn't know how to explain to Wu Yingxiong, the shouts of the soldiers of Prince Zhong's palace had already reached outside Nengren Temple from far away.
"Kill."
"Kill him, capture Wu Gouxiong alive."
"Whoever gets Wu Gouxiong's head will be rewarded with a thousand taels of silver and will be granted the title of Chief Military Officer!"
Wu Yingxiong climbed up tremblingly, and Guo Zhuangtu quickly went up to help him a little. The two of them looked under the Dasheng Pagoda, only to find that there was no one of Wu Yingxiong's best friends underneath!
And the soldiers from Prince Zhong's palace in white hats and blue robes had already knocked open the mountain gate of Nengren Temple and rushed into the courtyard of Nengren Temple like a tide!
Wu Yingxiong knew that he was doomed, so he sighed and said to Guo Zhuangtu: "Hongzhi, today is the day I die."
"Prince!" Guo Zhuangtu knelt down with a plop.
Wu Yingxiong shook his head and sighed again, then he took off his belt and shook his head and said: "Hongzhi, if I fall into the hands of Li Zicheng, I have no way of living. I'm afraid I won't even die. I have to Walk decently."
Guo Zhuangtu was speechless, because Li Zicheng would not let Wu Yingxiong go. If Wu Yingxiong falls into his hands, he doesn't know how much torture he will suffer!
He could only kowtow to Wu Yingxiong, and then watched Wu Yingxiong walk step by step towards the railing of the stairs in the tower, fastened both ends of his belt to the railing, and then put the belt around his neck. Finally, he climbed over the railing again, with a sad face, and jumped down in despair!
Wu Yingxiong. Hang up!
September 30, Yong'an City, northeast of Changsha City.
Having been hungry for several days, Wu Guogui was dejected, dragging his feet, leaning on a broken bamboo spear, and slowly walked into Yong'an City, where the Ming army was stationed, with a group of Wu Zhou officers who were similar in temperament to him.
He came to surrender to his son-in-law Li Zhongshan. It would be impossible not to surrender! I'm hungry! That Wu Yingqi just ran away, trapping him and his twenty to thirty thousand defeated soldiers in a river bend east of Yong'an City.
Although I was trapped and had to eat and drink, the cold water from Laodao River seemed to be enough. However, Wu Guogui did not surrender immediately, because Wu Yingqi could leave him and run away, but he could not be shy and not involve Li Zhongshan and Li Fuchen's army for Wu Yingqi.
So he had been hungry for several days, and finally he couldn't stand it anymore. The soldiers below had crawled out of the camp in large numbers and surrendered to Li Zhongshan and Li Fuchen. If they continued to starve, the team would be completely dispersed, so he led his generals out of the camp. Come to Yong'an City Camp to surrender to Li Zhongshan.
"Father-in-law, Lao Taishan, my son-in-law has finally come to you!"
"Sandi Wu, the banquet for Jie Feng has been prepared for you. Come on, let us two have a good meal."
Wu Guogui, who was so hungry that he was about to have a big meal, suddenly heard two loud voices.
He looked up and found that Li Fuchen and Li Zhongshan had come out from the tent that must have been quite huge to greet him.
Wu Guogui, the defeated general, was quite calm. He just stood there carelessly and did not kneel down and kowtow to beg for mercy. However, he did not curse and beg for death. He just sighed quietly: "It seems that the Eighteenth Sons will rule the world between you two." It’s on me!”
Li Zhongshan laughed when he heard this and said: "The king of the world is the guest of the world, the world is the master, and the common people are the foundation of the world! My father-in-law, Lao Taishan, you lost to my son-in-law, not because of war, but because of Wu The family and the world are too small, but the world of people is too big. The Lord of Zhou claims to have millions of soldiers, but our republic really has millions of soldiers. How can Wu and Zhou win?"
Li Fuchen waved his hand and said: "Second brother, stop chanting. Your father-in-law has been hungry for several days and has lost weight. Let's eat and talk!"
"Talk while eating? What to talk about?" Wu Guogui asked.
"Of course we are talking about your becoming the King of the West!" Li Zhongshan smiled and said, "Old Taishan, you have a share in this republic. If the old King of the West doesn't want to do it, then you can become the new King of the West!"
Li Fuchen took Wu Guogui's arm and said to him with a smile: "Third brother, please don't deny that the title of Western King does not belong to you alone, but to the thousands of people in Yunnan, Guizhou and Huguang who sacrificed their lives to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. , Sichuan and Shaanxi-Gansu righteous people!”
Li Zhongshan immediately took up the topic and said to Wu Guogui sincerely: "Yes, Old Taishan, you don't want their blood to be in vain, right?"
Wu Guogui looked serious: "Of course not, how can the blood of a righteous man be shed in vain?"
"Yes!" Li Fuchen said, "So you are not becoming the Western King for yourself, but for them!"
(End of chapter)
