Daming kill

Chapter 148
Hu Guangcheng of the Ming Dynasty announced that there were 16 prefectures under the jurisdiction of the political department, and the boundaries were mainly today's Hubei and Hunan provinces.

Chengtian Mansion is located in the lower reaches of Xiangyang Mansion. Its territory roughly governs Zhongxiang, Jingshan, Tianmen, Qianjiang, Dangyang, Jingmen, and Xiantao in Hubei today. It belongs to a large mansion.

However, Chengtian Mansion does not connect to Henan, and there is De'an Mansion to the north of it, and then Henan.

Li Ping and Song Baolai led their huge team of nearly 5000 people to avoid Zhengnan for only two days, and then frantically approached Hanshui, which is not far from them.

The reason why it is said that the Han River is not far from them is because the Han River from Xiangyang flows to the southeast and is very southward.And the continuous mountains in the west also continue to the south until Jingmen Prefecture, and the nearest point to the Han River is less than 30 kilometers.

The crazily changing route so quickly was because Li Ping had made a major mistake in judgment.

He did not expect that the peasant army did not concentrate its main force to pursue Zuo Liangyu along the Han River and attack Zhongxiang, the governor of Chengtianfu, which had great political significance.

On the contrary, a huge main force of the Peasant Army, and it is very likely that Li Zicheng's headquarters army horses are actually sticking to the mountains and heading south from the land road without stopping, with the intention of directly attacking Jingmen Prefecture and taking Jingzhou Prefecture.

Li Ping, who didn't want to go to the mountains to be a savage, had to run southeast to chase Zuo Liangyu.And the small Yicheng where the peasant army was blocked on the Han River also gave him more living space in this direction.

When summing up what went wrong, Li Ping realized that it might be that Xiangyang, which has no food, has driven the huge peasant army crazy, and the lack of food makes the peasant army unwilling to fight to the death first out of safety. Zhongxiang, the prefectural city that was defended to death.

The peasant army may not have forgotten the difficulty of attacking Kaifeng.

Why did the peasant army think that the official army might stick to Zhongxiang, the capital of Chengtianfu? This has to start with the imperial power of the Ming Dynasty.

In the Ming Dynasty, there was the theory of "two capitals" and "two capitals" and four capitals.

The so-called "two capitals" are Shuntianfu in Beijing and Yingtianfu in Nanjing, and the "two capitals" are Fengyangfu in Zhongdu and Chengtianfu in Xingdu.

Yingtianfu in Nanjing was the place where Zhu Yuanzhang established the tripod, Shuntianfu in Beijing was the official capital after Zhu Di, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and Fengyangfu in Zhongdu was the place where Longxing was established in the Ming Dynasty.

Then what happened to Xingdu Chengtian Mansion?

Of course it's not easy.

It's all because Chengtian Mansion produced a Jiajing emperor, an emperor who was born as a feudal lord, an emperor who made a detour in the original bloodline of the Ming royal family.

Emperor Jiajing was the only Ming emperor who was born in Jiufan, grew up in Jiufan, and later inherited the throne with his biological father as a vassal. Therefore, Chengtianfu is of great significance to Emperor Jiajing and all subsequent Ming emperors.

To put it bluntly, Chengtian Mansion is tantamount to the place where the emperors of Chongzhen's lineage rose up, and the tomb of Emperor Jiajing's father and grandfather of Chongzhen's grandfather Xingxian King Zhu Huhang is also here.

Because Chengtian Mansion is so important, Huguang's governor, Huguang's inspector censor, and Huguang's general soldier, the most important figures in Huguang, are all in Chengtian Mansion and Zhongxiang.

Both Xiangyang and Kaifeng belong to the key strategic positions, but in terms of their importance to the Ming royal family, they are completely incomparable with Chengtianfu, not even comparable.

However, when Li Ping finally arrived at the south bank of Chengtianfu City, Zuo Liangyu's army, which he thought he could keep up with, had already disappeared. Li Ping, who was surprised and shocked, had to leave the Fucheng area and go eastward along the river.

Fortunately, Chengtianfu City is on the north bank of the Han River, while Li Ping is on the south bank.

Otherwise, once discovered by the Huguang bosses in Fucheng, it will be easy to detain the defenders.

Zuo Liangyu can ignore the heavyweight bosses in Huguang, but Li Ping doesn't have that capital.

Of course, Zuo Liangyu ran across the Chengtian Mansion unceremoniously, without caring about anyone, and he could definitely be called a great god among the great gods.

This is basically the rhythm of hitting Emperor Chongzhen's face directly.

Li Ping did not commit any foolishness to engage in political speculation, and many well-connected people in Chengtianfu City were also running.

It seems that everyone is not optimistic that Chengtianfu City, which is only politically important but has no geographical risks at all, can be defended, nor will they believe that Yicheng, which has not been defeated by the peasant army in one go, can continue to stand firm.

But soon, all the people who fled east were stunned.

Because along the east of the river, only a short distance away from Chengtianfu City, the popularity on both sides of the river has disappeared, leaving only patches of scorched earth and wild beasts gnawing on human corpses.

In particular, Li Ping's thousands of troops made the few villagers who returned to their homes and tried to rebuild their faces change again and scattered like birds and beasts.

This also made it very difficult for Li Ping's troops to supply supplies and ask for directions. They could only keep gnawing at their modest family background, and the road ahead was long, and it was not known how long they would continue to walk.

Although most of the 5000 people are women and children, the number of people who eat horse chews every day is still not a small number.

If this goes on, you must starve to death.

As a last resort, Li Ping could only take the risk of letting the whole army leave the river and go deep into the "inland".

On this day, because they traded refined salt in a remote mountain village for a small amount of grains, chickens and ducks, the villagers happily told Li Ping that there was a large village more than a dozen miles away from this mountain village. The town, you can go to exchange for more things.

In order not to frighten the common people, Li Ping decided to take only a dozen riders to try his luck.

The town that is said to be very big is actually not that big. From a distance, there is only one main street, so it is probably bigger than the big village.

Li Ping, who was a little disappointed because of running around all the way, had to laugh wryly with his left and right.He couldn't blame the villagers for lying, but he himself ignored the limits of the knowledge of the villagers.

But as soon as they approached the small town, Li Ping and the cavalry immediately became nervous.

The corpses that could not be seen on the street but the vaguely visible ones and the constant cries in the town all revealed that this place was not peaceful.

"Sir, let's go back, it's too unsafe." Malan only observed for a moment before hastily suggesting.

"Don't worry, let's see."

Li Ping glanced at this small town that was neither noisy nor thieves were on guard.Intuition told him that it didn't seem like there were too many soldiers or bandits here, and it was easy for them to run away on horseback.

After observing for a while, Li Ping directly ordered: "Send one person back to call for reinforcements, send two people to investigate, and we are going to go in."

Malan obviously hesitated for a moment, but he didn't stop, and then hurriedly arranged.

As long as you look carefully, you can find that there is not even a living figure on the periphery of the town or inside as far as you can see, and there is no big movement inside. There should not be many murderers in the town.

And he didn't even know how to set up the sentry post, and he didn't look like a veteran.

After a while, a cavalry sent in to investigate came back.

"There are officers and soldiers inside. There are not many people, probably dozens of them. I only saw a mule, which didn't look like an elite. Some of them were scattered and searched around, and some were gathered in a yard and were having fun. They didn't find the sentinel. Investigate and be vigilant," the cavalryman reported.

"Go in." Li Ping no longer hesitated.

Although he was mentally prepared, after entering the town, Li Ping was still smoked by the pungent blood.

It is enough to conclude that a massacre has just occurred here just by seeing the dozens of lying fresh corpses on the street and the blood flowing all over the ground just after entering the town.

What's even more strange is that in an open shop on the street, there are two bandit soldiers pressing two women happily as if no one else is there. The corpses in the shop in different shapes don't seem to affect their mood at all.

Hearing the sound of horseshoes, the two bandit soldiers just turned their heads and smiled with their yellow teeth bared, obviously they were used to it.

Li Ping's face turned green, which was completely incomparable to the feeling of the ruins after the catastrophe he saw a few days ago.

At this time, three or four bandit soldiers came out of the alley scattered in colorful clothes, one of them was obviously wearing a woman's skirt, and they looked at Li Ping's dozen or so riders with a little bit of vigilance.

Li Ping could feel that they were not worried about being killed by gangsters, but only worried that Li Ping would take their loot.

At the entrance of a slightly larger courtyard facing the street, another cavalryman who came in earlier was chatting with a bandit soldier at the entrance of the courtyard. The most miserable and intensive cries of the women came from this courtyard.

When the cavalryman saw Li Ping, he spoke first, "Captain, this town is a team of the official army, and it is also under the command of General Zuo. Their captain is inside."

Li Ping immediately understood the cavalry's intentions, and the boy's reaction was quite clever, probably to reduce the opponent's vigilance.

"Master, please come inside, our captain is waiting for you to grow old!" the bandit soldier flattered.

Although they are all captains, the bandits also understand that cavalry captains and infantry captains are completely different concepts.

Li Ping ignored the bandit soldier, snorted heavily, got off his horse and strode into the courtyard.Immediately behind him, four or five cavalrymen also dismounted to follow, while the others remained vigilant on their horses.

The bandit soldier hurriedly shrank aside, presumably because he was used to the arrogance of the cavalry masters.

Just as soon as he entered the yard, Li Ping almost tripped over something soft.

Looking down, it was a baby who had been thrown to death.

The strong contraction in his heart immediately made Li Ping frowned.

"Ouch! Master, be careful." A dry man with disheveled clothes came up to him at this moment.

When he got close to Li Ping, the dry man kicked the small body aside.

Li Ping felt something rolling in his stomach, and his face turned black.

The dry man thought that Li Ping had made a mistake, so he smiled embarrassedly, and then began to ramble.

"Grandpa, I didn't expect you to run so far. It's not easy! I thought we were the only ones who couldn't drink soup by the river. We met each other by fate, and I'm not as stingy as others. Young lady, you are inside the house, you should relax first. If there is anything in the town that the brothers like, just go and get it yourself."

While he was pretending to be generous and forthright, he kept squinting at Li Ping's expression.

Judging from his posture, this guy should be the captain of this group of bandits, and he was still very worried that Li Ping and the others would take the lead.

Li Ping forced a cold smile on his face, but walked a few steps into the courtyard, his eyes quickly scanned at the same time.

I saw more than a dozen mutilated corpses lying scattered in the middle of the yard, and on the side of the yard, there were about 20 old and young men kneeling and trembling.

On the other side of the courtyard, a young man with a knife was standing in front of a kneeling middle-aged man in a crying voice. Next to the young man were two soldiers with swords full of grinning faces.

As for the screams and cries of the women, they came from several rooms with open doors inside.

Li Ping's eyes turned around, and then returned to the young man holding the knife.At this time, those three people were also looking at Li Ping.

"Let that kid hand in a nomination certificate, and if he kills the shopkeeper, he will be my soldier." The dry man accompanying Li Ping quickly explained.

"Hurry up."

"Hurry up."

"If you don't do it again, I'll kill you."

The two men holding swords with grinning faces shouted again, but none of the people kneeling there dared to raise their heads.

The young man burst into tears, and the hand holding the knife trembled even more.

Li Ping's face was already a little livid, and he suddenly turned to look at Ma Lan.

Malan was immediately terrified by the cold and angry eyes that he had never seen on Li Ping.

"Clang..." suddenly sounded.

Malan knew very well that it was the sound of a knife being unsheathed.

In an instant, Ma Lan saw the dry-eyed man beside Li Ping screaming in pain.

Then, Ma Lan saw his officer waving a bloody knife and rushing towards the two soldiers holding the knife.

"Chop them up!"

A loud voice echoed in the yard at the same time.

Malan and the soldiers beside him reacted immediately, and instinctively started to move in an instant.

……

Two quarters later.

Li Ping was sitting in a daze at the gate of the courtyard with the bloody Yanling Saber in his hand. He had been using this Yanling Saber all the time, so he had feelings for it.

At this moment, Malan rode over to report: "General, check it again. There is nothing wrong with it, and they are slaughtered, which is the same as the number confirmed by the two survivors. Their team is not full."

"Hundreds of people, let 27 people kill Xiao Erbai and arrest dozens of them. The rest ran away, and none of the bandits was injured. A bunch of cowards." Li Ping stared blankly at Ma Lan. Say.

Ma Lan hurriedly got off the horse, scratching her head in distress, not knowing how to answer.

In fact, Li Ping didn't want Ma Lan's answer, he just sent it out of feeling.

Not to mention that the looting of Zuo Liangyu's army made Li Ping a little surprised. Even this place more than [-] miles away from Hanshui was not immune to disaster. Let's say that the rebel army dared to leave the large group alone in small groups. Going deep into populated areas shocked him even more.

But the folks are still completely unable to stop it, and they dare not stop it. The serious emptiness of the ruling power of the government and the extreme cowardice of the people can also be seen.

Li Ping couldn't help thinking of the historical materials of the Anti-Japanese War that he had read.

In some areas, one or two devils dared to go out of the county without any weapons to the countryside to eat, drink, have fun and insult women, but the people did not dare to resist at all.

He once doubted the authenticity of those records.

But today, he really believed it.

(End of this chapter)