Follow Zhu Yuanzhang to conquer the country

Chapter 138 Zhu Yuanzhang wants to make decisions for the people!

"Liu Bowen will not come!"

"I originally thought that after I reduced my power, I could let him, Liu Bowen, help you eliminate the demon thieves."

"Who would have thought that it would backfire."

Tuotuo sighed because of this and only spoke to Duo'er beside him.

Duo'er just picked up the newspaper on the table and read it, and then couldn't help but cursed: "What a Liu Bowen!"

"Prime Minister!"

"He is not completely loyal to me, Dayuan!"

"Song Lian's article stopped him from working for the court. This shows that he cares more about his personal reputation and is not really in the same heart with us!"

Duo'er only said to Tuotuo angrily.

Duo'er just said yes.

After hearing this, Tuotuo said: "Let me tell you, how did Zhang Cheng prevent the monster thieves in Chuzhou from falling apart because of Guo Zixing's death? If you dare to take back Jiqing, almost none of Zhang Cheng's monster thieves were eliminated. It was he who took the initiative to Only by giving up Jiqing did we have enough capital to ask other demon thieves in Chuzhou to unite under Zhu Yuanzhang's banner."

Snapped!
Tuotuo slapped the table again: "Those traitors in this dynasty really deserve to be killed, but they are just trying to enrich the thieves!"

Tuotuo asked Duo'erzhi again: "Tell me the truth, how many real demon thieves did you eliminate after you recovered Jiqing?"

"Sure enough, nothing can be hidden from the Prime Minister."

Duoer only replied.

After hearing this, Tuotuo also nodded, and even more frowned:

Tuotuo said, "It's not Liu Bowen's fault."

Tuotuo sighed and said to Duo'er: "If you can capture this person in the future, you must not kill him, but respect him. If this person can be used by my great yuan, he should be a prime minister, and he may be able to Let me revive the great Yuan Dynasty."

Tuotuo said.

Duo'er only nodded: "What the Prime Minister said is that Zhang Cheng from Chuzhou has been giving us a lot of headaches!"

Duo'er only persuaded Tuotuo to come.

"These three people are famous people in the world. The impact of killing them will be too great!"

"The most terrifying thing now is that these two groups of thieves are in danger of merging since they are trading weapons."

Duo'er only said: "Maybe 20,000."

"Yes, this is scary. Once he, Zhang Shicheng, really forms an alliance with monsters like Zhu Yuanzhang, our foundation in Jiangnan will be in danger!"

"It is said that there are now dense factories in the south of Chuzhou City, and the sound of knocking is endless day and night. They must be making weapons every day. In addition, a lot of iron materials have also been smuggled into Chuzhou in various ways. You can even see businessmen from some princes and ministers in most of our cities. The team said it was because selling iron in Chuzhou was tax-free and the bargain price was high, so everyone rushed there to make profits."

Duo'er just thought for a moment and said, "No less than 50,000!"

"No!"

Tuotuo said.

"Prime Minister, calm down!"

Tuotuo said with both voice and look.

Tuotuo smiled slightly.

Tuo Tuo looked at Duo'er with a frown and said, "If you want to blame it, it's Zhang Cheng from the Demon Thief who is too powerful. With just one article, he can make three famous people from eastern Zhejiang unable to be used by us!"

Duo'er couldn't help but said: "The Prime Minister is the Prime Minister after all. He has a broad mind and far-reaching intentions. He does not act based on personal likes and dislikes, but only thinks of the country. He is admirable. Please rest assured, Prime Minister, I will capture this person alive!"

"We only caught a dozen bandits who were alone or escaped. Including the bandits who colluded with the demon thieves, there are about 200 people."

Tuotuo didn't speak, just stared at Duo'er.

"This is because the country's officials are not happy with governance, so such a great talent has become a thief."

Subsequently.

"These weapons were supplied to Zhang Shicheng by a trading company called Chuzhou Ordnance Company."

“Not only can’t we kill him, but he must also be protected!”

Then, Tuotuo asked Duo'erzhi: "How is the situation you were asked to investigate? Why does Zhang Shicheng keep having so many weapons?"

"to be frank!"

then.

Duo'er only asked Tuotuo: "Prime Minister, do you want to simply send someone to kill Liu, Zhang, and Ye, lest they really become thieves like Song Lian?"

Duo'er felt numb because of his stare, so she had no choice but to continue:
"Actually, it's less than three thousand."

Tuotuo still didn't speak.

"Probably more than just these three."

"There are already results."

"If you don't tell me the truth, will I, Dayuan, have a future?!"

Duoer had no choice but to grit her teeth and continue to reply.

When Tuotuo said this, he asked Duo'erzhi: "In other words, those tens of thousands of heads were obtained by your subordinates who killed the good and took the credit?"

"Yes!"

"I have failed to control you in my humble position. Please punish me, Prime Minister!"

Duo'er only replied quickly.

Tuotuo sighed and said with a wry smile: "I am about to be dismissed from my post, how can I punish you again!"

"But I did feel sorry for the Prime Minister in my humble position and failed to live up to the Prime Minister's expectations."

Duo'er just said that, pushed the golden mountain and knocked down the jade pillar, knelt in front of Tuotuo, and said with tears.

Tuotuo helped him up and said with a smile: "What are you talking about? You have to go back to Jiqing as soon as possible and send people to carefully investigate. Since Zhang Cheng's main force has voluntarily withdrawn from Jiqing, where are they now?" , will it still be hiding around Jiqing, and will it attack Jiqing again? We must find out, this is related to the fate of you, me and even the entire Dayuan!"

"Yes! I understand the humble position!"

Duoer only agreed.

"There is a will!"

Unfortunately, at this moment, the Yuan Ting imperial envoy came in to announce the decree.

Tuotuo had no choice but to kneel down and greet him.

This imperial edict was naturally to remove Tutu from his official position, and ordered him to live in Huai'an temporarily and not to sign official affairs.

The imperial envoy who announced the decree was Gong Shitai, the Minister of Civil Affairs.

Gongshitai did not rush to announce the decree, but first helped Tuotuo:

"Prime Minister, don't be anxious!"

then.

Gong Shitai bowed his hands to Tuotuo and said:
"I deliberately delayed all the way, but unfortunately the Ministry of Education pressed me very hard, so I had to rush to the Prime Minister before Gaoyou City was destroyed. Please forgive me!"

"Thanks to your kindness, the guilty person will be grateful."

Tuotuo replied with his hands in hand.

Gong Shitai asked again: "Have the arrangements for the suppression of bandits in the south and north of the Yangtze River been properly arranged? If not, it will be better if the arrangements are made. I will announce the order again and say to the outside world that I am temporarily ill and will take a rest in the post house."

"Basically, it's fine. It doesn't matter if the imperial envoy announces the decree."

Tuotuo replied.

The tribute master nodded: "That's good."

then.

Gong Shitai announced the decree.

Tuotuo did not resist the order, but accepted it, and readily handed over the military talisman and seal.

After receiving the order, Tuotuo left Duoerzhi alone and said: "Since I have been dismissed from office, I will go to Huai'an to live temporarily. From now on, I will leave it to you to suppress bandits in the south and north of the Yangtze River! You must To defend Jiqing, we cannot allow Zhu Yuanzhang’s Chuzhou monster bandits in the north of the Yangtze River to successfully cross the river and take root in the south of the Yangtze River. This bandit has Zhang Chengzhi to help him, and the hidden dangers are great. Once he takes root, he may really destroy our Yuan Dynasty!"

"Yes!"

Duoer only nodded with tears in her eyes.

"In addition, the news of my dismissal should not be informed to the entire army for the time being, so as not to shake the morale of the army."

"Moreover, from now on, if you have anything to report to His Majesty, it means that you no longer recognize me as the Prime Minister and are only loyal to him!"

Tuotuo said.

"It's natural that I won't tell the entire army about you for the time being."

"But let me betray the Prime Minister, I can't do it!"

Duoer only replied with tears in her eyes.

Tuotuo suddenly said seriously: "It must be done!"

"For the sake of Dayuan and my Golden Family, you must put aside your personal grudges and clear up the relationship with me as soon as possible, so that His Majesty and Hama will feel that you have changed camps, so that they will not only change me, but also You will completely ruin the entire cause of suppressing thieves!"

Tuotuo said.

Duo'er nodded solemnly after hearing this.

"Also, as you just said, we have to guard against Zhang Shicheng and Zhu Yuanzhang forming an alliance under Zhang Cheng's influence. Therefore, you should report to His Majesty as soon as possible and suggest that Zhang Shicheng be recruited. If he wants to become king, let him be my great yuan. King! Let your majesty see your loyalty as well as your ability." "Although your majesty won't tolerate me, you are not an ignorant king and will understand the deep meaning of your doing this."

Tuotuo ordered again.

Duoer only said yes with tears in her eyes.

then.

Tuotuo then bowed to Duo'er and said, "I'll leave the country and country of Dayuan to you!"

"Prime Minister!"

Duoer was so frightened that he bowed to the ground and cried: "Prime Minister, please don't do this. I will do as you say. Please rest assured that unless I die, I will never let Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhang Cheng and other thieves be around." Jiangnan has a foothold!”

Next.

Tuotuo walked to the post house to see Gongshitai and waited for Gongshitai to send him to Huai'an.

"Hurry up and report back to Your Majesty, saying that the national thief Tuotuo has accepted the order and is preparing to go to Huai'an!"

Gong Shitai here gave instructions to a group of cavalry around him in the post house.

The cavalry therefore said yes and left.

As for Gong Shitai, after Tuotuo came, he put on a smile on his face, walked towards Tuotuo, glanced at Duo'er and said:
"Prime Minister, let's go."

Tuotuo nodded: "The imperial envoy is affected!"

Duo'er didn't say goodbye to Tutuo here, but only said goodbye to Gongshitai.

Soon.

Duo'er just returned to Jiqing and met Fushou, the censor of the Censorship Station of various Taoist circles in the south of the Yangtze River, and gave him instructions:
"Send additional cavalry to search for demon thieves in the surrounding areas, especially Zhang Cheng's Shenji Battalion. Are they in Jiangnan?"

"This is also what the Prime Minister meant."

Duo'er just said that with her hands on her hips and said seriously:
"The Prime Minister has a keen eye for fire and knows that we recaptured Jiqing without spending a single soldier. But as the Prime Minister said, this thief is indeed an extraordinary person. He can abandon a big city like Jiqing at the drop of a hat. It is really not something ordinary thieves can do." owned."

"That's what You Cheng said."

"The humble post has sent extra troops to check. There are no large groups of monster thieves on Jiqing Road. In addition, the sentinels sent to Jiangbei also reported that Zhang Thieves' headquarters and Zhu Yuanzhang and other Chuzhou monster thieves have gathered in large numbers in Jiangbei. Zhang Thieves Most of them even went to Huaiyang."

Fushou answered at this time.

After hearing this, Duo'er immediately became thoughtful and asked, "Huaiyang?"

"Yes!"

"Our people said that they had received these demon thieves pretending to be common people, and heard with their own ears that the demon thieves themselves said that they were from Hua Yun, Tang He, and Mao Guang, and that they came under the orders of Mr. Zhang."

Fu Shou replied.

After hearing this, Duo'er hurriedly ordered: "Map!"

Soon, someone laid the map in front of Duo'er.

Duo'er only laughed after looking at it: "This is an opportunity. Since most of the demon thieves are in Jiangbei, then we only need to prevent them from crossing the river and gather them all in Jiangbei to annihilate them!"

"That's what You Cheng said!"

Fushou agreed and said: "However, there are still many spies left by demon thieves in the south of the Yangtze River. Once the demon thieves cross the river again, I'm afraid it will still be easy."

"In addition, I recently sent people to investigate the surrounding areas and found out that the monster thieves plundered the official warehouses on Jiqing Road and purged the evil gentry and profiteers as well as the royal family and nobles' property in Jiangnan because of their hasty retreat. They were not taken away in time, but were distributed in large quantities to the Han people along the river. Many of these people secretly interacted with the demon thieves, worked for the demon thieves, and were even organized by the demon thieves to study."

"But now, the Jiqing treasury is empty, and the court has no food for the time being. It is better to cleanse the Han people within ten miles along the river in the name of clearing out the bandits. The money and food can be used to supplement military needs, and at the same time, to avoid future demon thieves. After crossing the river, there will be internal response."

Fu Shou suggested at this time.

Duo'er only nodded after hearing this: "It should be so. The monster thieves in Chuzhou mobilize the stupid people. There is a high possibility that the stupid people on the riverside will be bewitched by the monster thieves and become unruly people. We would rather kill them by mistake than let them go! To avoid becoming monster thieves. Jiang is helping us, but we are afraid that we don’t have enough manpower, and it will take a lot of soldiers and horses to wipe out everything along the ten miles of the river.”

"Don't worry about the soldiers and horses. Many volunteers from the Jin Gentry Militia have expressed their willingness to help the court to eliminate these unruly people to prevent the thieves from getting bigger."

"And they expressed their willingness to prepare their own dry food for this, because this time the demon thieves gathered to celebrate the disaster, they suffered a lot of losses, so they wanted to make up for it from these unruly people."

"This method to make up for the current lack of food and salary was originally proposed by them."

Fushou said with a smile.

Duo'er only nodded after hearing this: "That's good, but this is a big deal. After all, it is a massacre of the people. Now that the Prime Minister has been dismissed, I have to be cautious. I will wait until I quickly request an order from His Majesty. You just have to prepare first."

"Yes!"

Within a month, Duo'er received a reply from Emperor Yuan Shun Tuo Huan Tie Mu'er.

"The southerners are abominable, as the Lord has told me, but 40% of the money laundered will go into the palace."

After Duo'er read the decree, her face darkened and she said on the spot:
"The Prime Minister said that he is not a foolish king, but I think he is very foolish! He dared to take 40% of the money and food for raising the army. What on earth was he thinking? Isn't this destroying his own foundation?! I'm afraid he won't. If you are willing to sin against the people, please ask him for instructions."

Fushou was originally a Semu person, so he had no objection to Duo'er only scolding the emperor, but he was a little disappointed that the emperor wanted to take away 40% of the money.

Because this is a way to make money that he and the local landlords and bureaucrats finally thought of.

So Fushou said: "In this way, we can only expand the purge area to twenty miles, but I am afraid that after giving 40% of the money to the palace, it will still not be enough. I can only barely pay half the salary to the hundreds of thousands of troops south of the Yangtze River and north of the Yangtze River. Anyway, ten miles Twenty miles is full of killings, there is no shortage of Han people in the world, the superiors will understand."

"Then twenty miles!"

Duo'er just thought for a moment that the suffering people were indeed better than the suffering emperor, so she gritted her teeth and agreed.

Yang Yuangao, who was sent by Tuotuo to serve as a rafter officer next to Duo'erzhi, pursed his lips and said:
"In this case, with half of the military salary left, I would like to call on all the officials in the countryside to raise donations!"

Duo'er was very happy when she saw this: "Very good, if you, Yang Wensu, can raise funds, I will recommend you to be Zhongshu's counselor!"

"Thank you Cheng."

Duo'er only said in a deep voice: "Send the order, for twenty miles along the river, we must go through the knife first and then the fire, and we must wipe out the stench of thieves!"

"Yes!"

The person with colored eyes is blessed with good fortune and longevity.

So, next, along the entire Jiqing Road, Yuan soldiers and landlord armed forces marched into the village in large numbers, killing people and robbing houses when they saw them.

However, the area where Zhang Cheng's rebels had been active was basically only the common people within ten miles along the river, and almost all of them were mobilized in advance to withdraw to the north of the river.

Therefore, these Yuan soldiers and landlords' armed forces raided basically the people within ten to twenty miles along the river, and basically still the people in the core ruling area of ​​the Yuan Dynasty.

Because the semu and landlord armed forces below would inevitably over-execute, so in many cases, even the people within thirty to fifty miles were raided.

After all, those who work for the Yuan Dynasty at the grassroots level are basically Semu and Han landlords and bureaucrats. They care more about their personal interests and want to take advantage of the opportunity to make money without considering the impact of doing so on the Yuan Dynasty.

For example, in a village far away from the river in Jiangning County, many people were ordered to line up and kneel in a row. The officers with colored eyes sneered because of this: "How dare you take the food from the thieves! Did you know that it was stolen? Ours is food that comes from improper sources.”

"Your Excellency, if we don't receive it, we will starve to death last winter! The court doesn't care whether we live or die, so we can't really just watch ourselves starve to death and freeze to death, right?"

"It's better to die of hunger and freeze than to receive food and charcoal from a thief!"

A Han militia leader next to the lustful officer said something first.

"That's right. If you take it, you will be contaminated by the evil spirit of the thief, and you will die!"

The lustful officer started talking and then waved his hand.

So, a row of Yuan soldiers came over with spears and stabbed these people to death on the spot.

By the way, when the rebels were withdrawing, they sent people to these unmobilized places and warned the people who were unwilling to withdraw in advance, so that they could be on alert and hide at any time.

Therefore, there are still many people who hid in lakes, swamps or caves when Yuan soldiers and landlords entered the village.

However, there were still many people who had a sense of luck and were not wary of Yuan soldiers, and were caught, robbed and slaughtered.

"father!"

A girl was caught by armed landlords when they saw her going home to get food. Her father was beheaded to drain the blood, so she ran out of the hole and her family couldn't hold her back.

Seeing this, a passing Yiyuan soldier rode over and cut off the girl's arm that was being held by her family with a knife, causing her arm to fall to the ground bloody.

"what!"

The girl screamed and fainted from the pain.

Before his family could react, the Yuan soldiers got into the cave and killed all of his family members. Soon they gathered the family and other nearby people who had been killed and burned them.

For a time, many places along the river were filled with mourning. The river was as red as blood, and there were fires for hundreds of miles, which lasted day and night.

……

"Come on, we have to cross the river as soon as possible!"

On the Chuzhou side, after receiving the secret report from Yang Wensu in advance, Zhang Cheng came to meet Zhu Yuanzhang and informed Zhu Yuanzhang of the matter.

When Zhu Yuanzhang found out, he almost wanted to grind his steel teeth into pieces, and said: "These beasts are really reactionary!"

"It's just that there is no news from Feng Guoyong! I don't know if the Chaohu Navy wants to surrender."

Zhang Cheng couldn't help but say something.

Zhu Yuanzhang said: "No wait! If he doesn't vote, then force him to vote and send troops to Hezhou first!"

"Row!"

"After sending troops to conquer the state, first send troops to conduct military exercises around the lake. If they don't surrender, they will engage in military conflagration and then cross the river!"

"At the same time, we can first let Wen Zheng and the others lead the local Jiangnan soldiers they recruited in Jiangnan to cross the river with our warships to harass the bandits!"

"Let Hua Yun and others pretend to attack Yangzhou and Huai'an and force some Yuan soldiers from Jiangnan to move north."

Zhang Cheng said.

Zhu Yuanzhang nodded: "These are all decided in advance, let Wen Zheng quickly lead the mobilized Shenji Battalion to set off! Although the Semu and those Han scum under Hu Yuan are destroying Hu Yuan's foundation, after all, they are slaughtering the people ! We must stop them as soon as possible!"

(End of this chapter)