Ming Zuo

Chapter 695 The Great Chaos in the Central Plains
The road to escape and ascend to heaven is in front of him, but Li Zicheng has shown qualities far beyond ordinary people.

"Hurry up and tell the leaders of all walks of life to come here and cross the river. You are divided into different places. No matter what, the officers and soldiers cannot be attacked."

When everyone heard this, they were shocked.

"Chuangjiang, I'm afraid of delaying, we will be trapped again."

Liang Yue was different, pointing to a low mountain to the east and said: "General Chuang, my troops are going to guard this mountain. Unless all of them die in battle, we will definitely not let a single officer come over."

Li Zicheng glanced at him fixedly, feeling extremely sad in his heart.

Of all the generals under his command, Liang Yue was the only one who dared to fight.

"Brother, I will wait for you to cross the river."

With Li Zicheng's persistence, all the Northwest rebels trapped on the north bank of the Yellow River were rescued.

In the next three days, following Li Zicheng's method, various volunteers crossed the Yellow River and entered the hinterland of Henan.

For such a long time, the officers and soldiers did not respond.

This time they were caught in a predicament, and all the volunteers from all walks of life were frightened, and they didn't dare to stay after jumping out of the encirclement.

They marched fast, and reached Mianchi in just one day and one night.

It was too late when Fanghezhong officer Yuan Daquan received the military information.

He only had more than [-] people at hand, and when he collided head-on with tens of thousands of rebels, they were all swallowed up in the blink of an eye.

The urgent military situation was sent to all parts of Daming, and all the officials were dumbfounded.

"You two angels, this is the end of the matter, what should we do?"

Knowing that the matter was serious, Wang Pu hurriedly went to find Yang Jinchao and Lu Jiude to discuss a solution.

They were the chief culprits who let the rebel army go. Once they were found out by the court, they would definitely die without a place to bury them.

At the critical moment, the eunuchs from the palace were more determined.

"Hmph, Wang Zongrong, why are you panicking? Isn't it all because of the censor who is going his own way in such a situation? Our brothers have tried to persuade us with good words, but he was deceived by lard, and now he is out If it’s wrong, naturally we should ask him to explain it.”

Wang Pu was dumbfounded when he heard this, he didn't expect these two eunuchs to be so cruel and ruthless that they pushed all the blame on Liu Lingyu.

But if a dead fellow Taoist is not dead and poor, he can be exonerated. Wang Pu doesn't care about Liu Lingyu's life or death.

"The final general is stupid, it all depends on the two father-in-laws."

After thinking about it, in order to keep safe, Wang Pu took out half of the treasure he had allocated and dedicated it to Yang Jinchao and Lu Jiude.

Seeing how knowledgeable he is, Yang Jinchao and Lu Jiude decided to protect him.

The two ruthless eunuchs wrote urgent memorials that day, sent them all the way to Beijing, and sued Liu Lingyu.

Liu Lingyu was dumbfounded when he heard that the rebels broke through the Yellow River and ravaged the Central Plains.

What about the great contribution to recruiting surrender and accepting rebellion?
What about being promoted to the throne?

He panicked and went to find Yang Jinchao and Lu Youde to discuss countermeasures.

But by this time, he had become an abandoned son, and Yang Jinchao and Lu Jiude didn't see him at all.

Liu Lingyu was completely desperate, knowing that he was doomed.

He staggered back to his residence, wanting to find Xu Yaqing to explain his funeral.

Although the ending is tragic, but the last moment of life is accompanied by a peerless beauty, it is not in vain.

As a result, when I returned home, I saw that the place was in a mess, as if it had been ransacked by bandits.

All the property that could be seen and hidden was lost.

There is even less trace of the peerless beauty who is charming, gentle and considerate to him.

"Haha...hahahaha..."

Standing alone in the empty courtyard, Liu Lingyu let out a desolate and lonely laugh.

What a glorious career.

What a beauty.

Once the end of the road, it turns out that everything is in vain.

Trembling, Liu Lingyu took off his belt, tied it on the door beam, and ended his ridiculous life.

He didn't know until he died, why did he fall to such a point?

And because of what he did, the Northwest Rebel Army had a vast world, and finally entered the core hinterland of the Ming Dynasty.

The current situation in Henan is already very bad.

Starting from the third year of Chongzhen, there has been a severe drought for four consecutive years.

[There is no harvest in autumn, and it is difficult to plant wheat.There is no grass in the wild, and nine rooms are empty.So there are those who are worth five cents of silver for a bucket of rice, those who work for a day without getting enough rice, those who pluck grass roots and leaves to satisfy their hunger, those who abandon their wives by their husbands and those who abandon their wives by their mothers, those who sell their children for less than a few meals, and those who hang themselves in empty forests. Those who willingly fill ditches, those who starve to death on the side of the road, those who beg for quail clothes and vegetables, those who die with sticks, those who flee with mud doors and sacks, and those who cannibalize each other...]

This description is all derived from "The Spiritual Book of the Central Plains" written by Lu Weiqi, then Minister of the Ministry of War in Nanjing.

It is not difficult to see that the disaster in Henan is not worse than that in Shaanxi and Shanxi.

Because of this bad situation, Henan has long been full of wars, but there have not been such powerful rebel forces as Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng, Lao Huihui, Zhang Xianzhong, etc.

However, with the arrival of the Northwest Rebel Army, the people in Henan, who had already been furious, immediately became like clouds.

What is even worse for the Ming Dynasty is that the local officials and officers in Henan basically have no combat experience, and their defenses are extremely empty.

When the Northwest Rebels came here, it was like a fish entering the water. They felt that the sea and the sky were open and unimpeded.

In order to get rid of the pursuit of the officers and soldiers, the Northwest Rebel Army galloped like lightning in the west of Henan Province.

Wherever he went, he tried his best to attract the people who belonged to him.

The troops lost due to repeated battles with the government army soon swelled to a terrible figure.

With a wider world, the rebels have also become smarter.

They began to divide their troops and attack everywhere, which involved the energy of the officers and soldiers.

Rampaging Wolf, Yidougu, Mantianxing, Sweeping King and others led an army of more than [-] westwards to Wuguan, approaching Xi'an, and there is a great momentum to return to Shaanxi.

Hong Chengchou's scalp was numb, so he could only mobilize nearby officers and soldiers to chase and intercept him.

This army of rebels did not fight to the death with the official army, and immediately turned around and went south, breaking through Xunyang, Pingli and other places along the way.

When Hong Chengchou led his army to catch up, they had already entered Sichuan.

On the other side, Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong, Lao Huihui and others were the main force of the rebel army.

They continued to go south and came to Lushi Mountain.

The terrain here is dangerous and remote.

A group of local people who have lost their land have been mining in the mountains for a living, and the government slandered them as mine robbers.

With the arrival of the Northwest Rebel Army, these common people joined in one after another.

With these local eyes and ears, the rebel army is even more comfortable.

They went straight from the country road to the inner countryside, then passed through Dengzhou and Xishui, and suddenly appeared in the Yunyang and Xiangyang areas.

As the rebel army moved thousands of miles away, Henan, Sichuan, and Huguang were all shaken and encountered soldiers.

These areas with weak forces are the places where the disaster is the most serious.

The rebel army absorbed a large number of people in these places, and their power expanded rapidly.

The entire peasant uprising at the end of Ming Dynasty began to enter a new stage.

The rope to hang the Ming Dynasty was also tightened.

Emperor Chongzhen, who was in Beijing, began to feel fear.

(End of this chapter)