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Chapter 662 Using one’s body as bait
"I don't know why, maybe it's God's will!" It's not that Hong Tao didn't want to answer this question, but he couldn't answer it for the time being.

Wang Xiangqian, the Minister of War, resigned due to illness, but did not leave Beijing immediately, but delayed for a while. This delay happened to coincide with his brother being appointed as the Minister of Agriculture, and the factory shares that originally belonged to him were transferred to Wang Xiangjin.

Then the old man was completely relieved. He lost a minister and got another one in his place, and his shares were not lost at all. As long as his younger brother didn't have any major accidents, the Wang family would still be the top family in Shandong in the next ten or twenty years. The emperor's grace was enormous!

The emperor is so kind, and as a minister, you can't pretend not to know. How can you repay him? Asking your brother to fulfill his duties and serve the royal family is nonsense. There is more than one royal family in the Ming Dynasty who can do this. Anyone who sits in the position of Shangshu will have to do the same.

So the old man wrote a secret letter to the emperor and asked his family to deliver it to Ma Jinglun in Tongzhou. The letter was sent very carefully. He knew that his family could not meet the emperor's confidants such as Wang An, Wang Chengen, Yuan Keli, Yuan Yingtai, and Li Ruzhang, and he was unwilling to hand it over to outsiders, so he chose Ma Jinglun.

Outsiders may not know this, but as the Minister of War, he must know that the founder and editor of Banyuetan is the emperor's confidant. Giving the letter to him is basically equivalent to sending it to Wang An, which is safer.

What was written in the letter that had to be circulated around so that only the emperor could read it? When Hong Tao opened the letter, he immediately felt that Wang Xiangqian was right and it was not excessive at all.

This old man probably knew that he didn't have much time left, so he planned to help the Wang family repay the emperor's favor at the last moment of his life so that his brother could stay in the position of Shangshu for a few more years, and then he revealed a big piece of news.

Zhang Bingzhong, the general of Datong, has close ties with the Mongolian high-ranking officials in Guihua City that are unknown to outsiders. If the emperor wants to carry out military reforms and intends to take action against the border troops, he must be more vigilant in the direction of Datong.

How did he know? The letter didn't say. When Wang An was sent to ask in person, the old man was already unable to eat or drink and was barely breathing. The East Factory and the Statistics Department were dispatched to Datong for a secret investigation, but after half a year, nothing useful was found.

It’s not that Zhang Bingzhong has a clean background, but the people around him are all from his hometown Yanghewei, and there are also some Mongolian soldiers and generals, so it is difficult for outsiders to sneak in and find out information.

This matter troubled Hong Tao for half a year. As the saying goes, a dying man's words are kind. Wang Xiangqian and Zhang Bingzhong had no grudges or conflicts of interest, so there was no need for him to bite Zhang Bingzhong before he died. But there was indeed no evidence against Zhang Bingzhong, so he couldn't just say "I think there is something wrong with you, so I'll arrest you."

It's not that they haven't thought about transferring him elsewhere, but the Zhang family has been operating in Datong since Zhang Xun, and by the time of Zhang Bingzhong's generation, it had been decades, and the family is deeply rooted. It's hard to find a suitable excuse, let alone a suitable candidate, in a short period of time.

Datong is an important border town, not far from the largest central city of Right Wing Mongolia, Guihua, and the defense pressure is already very high. It would be inappropriate to just find someone to replace him. Moreover, a forced transfer would cause dissatisfaction in the Zhang family. If they have no intention of doing so, wouldn't it be troublesome for themselves?

After much deliberation, Hong Tao could only resort to the last resort, which was to lure the fish in a thick nest. He would start with the garrisons, further reduce the power of the Five Military Commandery and the Ministry of War, and make a sign of military system reform in order to alert the enemy.

Then he would find an excuse to take the risk and act as bait, deliberately wandering around Datong without too many soldiers, pretending to know nothing, to see if there would be any fish biting the hook. If it was true as Wang Xiangqian said, Zhang Bingzhong had already had deep contacts with the right-wing Mongolian tribes in Guihua City, and now that the emperor was about to take action on the military system, he would definitely have to make the final decision.

Whether to hand over the military power or fight back, there are two possibilities, and Hong Tao is not sure which one is more likely. If he can meet Zhang Bingzhong in person and have a chat, he should be able to make some sense. After traveling through time so many times, other skills have not improved much, but the art of judging people has become more and more proficient.

After a few face-to-face conversations, you can roughly guess whether the other person is lying and how many lies they have told. This is not a special skill, but the sequelae of having seen countless people. As the ancients said, there is no other reason, but practice makes perfect. In fact, the same is true for familiarity.

But there is still a question: did the Zhang family of Datong have second thoughts? What is their connection with the Ordos and Tumed tribes? Why did they specifically target these two right-wing Mongolian tribes? This has to start with the status of Guihua City among the right-wing Mongolians.

Chi Le Chuan, under the Yin Mountains; the sky is like a dome, covering the four fields; the sky is vast, the fields are boundless, the wind blows the grass low and cattle and sheep can be seen. This ballad originated from the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and most people should have heard it.

The Chi Le Chuan is located in the southern part of the middle section of Yinshan Mountain and the north bank of the Yellow River. It was renamed Tumo Chuan because the Tumed tribe settled here. It was later called Qiantao Plain. There are many rivers and lakes in the area, including the Dahei River. The land is fertile, with rich grasslands and suitable for farming.

The Tumed people were semi-nomadic and semi-agricultural here, and built a number of towns. In the third year of the Wanli reign (1575), the Ming court specially named one of the largest towns, Guihua City.

Where is this Guihua City? It is 300 miles northwest of Datong, at the eastern end of the Qiantao Plain and the southern foot of the Daqing Mountain. In Mongolian, it is called Kukuhetun, also known as Khot, which means the blue city.

At this time, this place was very famous, because there was no decent city on the grassland before Guihua City. So since it was built, it gradually became the political, economic and religious activity center of the Right Wing Mongolian tribes. Among them, the Ordos tribe, which was adjacent to the Tumed tribe, was even closer to the water and got the moon first, and even had the meaning of stealing the show.

If Wang Xiangqian was right, and Zhang Bingzhong did have close ties with the Mongolian high-ranking officials in Guihua City, then 90% of them were the two most powerful tribes, Tumed and Ordos. This would give us a reason to target them, because the friend of our enemy is our enemy!

Speaking of the Tumed tribe, it belonged to the right wing of the Mongolians south of the desert. Its origin and status were similar to those of the Kharchin tribe. Both were ragtag armies, that is, vassals of the Mongolian Golden Family.

The Kharchin tribe was originally a Tungusic people living in the Amu Darya River Basin in Central Asia. They were incorporated into the Mongolian army during Tore's westward expedition and brought back. They were arranged in the Karakorum area to provide mare's milk products to the Khanate and do some logistical work.

In Mongolian, Kharchin means people who make kumis. They lived in the northern desert in the early Ming Dynasty, and later moved to the southern desert with the Oirat Mongols. Soon they were driven out of the territory of the Ordos tribe and settled in the area from Xuanfu to Luanhe River.

(End of this chapter)