Red Mansion: I am Jia Lian

Chapter 375: Cannot be traced!

The cavalry of the Xishan camp was not at all inferior to the grassland cavalry in a head-on collision. Their advantage in equipment was very obvious. The fierce confrontation lasted only a quarter of an hour, and the Xishan cavalry broke through the grassland cavalry's formation.

The Chahar tribe was in chaos, and the Shenji Camp successfully re-arranged its formation without any flaws. If Jia Lian had not been afraid of the Bahamas tribe that was slowly approaching, he would have continued to move forward.

The Xishan cavalry, who were about to pursue the victory, heard the sound of the horn. They had no choice but to let go of the enemy in front of them and slowly retreated to the flank to complete the consolidated formation.

The King of Chahar no longer cared about the jars and pots. He left everything behind and retreated.

The Bahama tribe did not launch an attack. After a feint, they retreated northward. Jia Lian could no longer chase them, so he could only let Ye Bu Shou and his family generals work harder to catch up and give them a good fight.

Jia Lian looked at the smoke and dust in the distance and sighed helplessly: "The heroes on the grassland should not be underestimated. I know it's just a show, but I don't dare to continue gambling."

There was no way. After continuous fighting, the troops were already very tired. Jia Lian did not dare to risk losing his capital. At worst, there were at least 20,000 cavalrymen on the other side.

If we really continue to pursue them, they will just run away, and there is also the risk of them taking advantage of our mobility and dividing and surrounding us.

This battle was not fought in vain. In the previous internal strife, the Zhou army alone captured more than 4,000 heads, and the Chahar tribe suffered huge losses. Including the losses in the internal strife, the Zhou army beheaded more than 7,000 people.

Since the initiative was launched, all the records added up to over 10,000 beheadings. It can't be said that it's not brilliant!

"The Xishan camp will clean up the battlefield! The rest of the troops should hurry up and rest early tonight. We will send troops to relieve Datong tomorrow!"

After giving the order, Jia Lian turned around and went back into the city. The fire had been extinguished, and there were ruins everywhere, with wisps of smoke visible everywhere.

General Sun came to greet them with his face covered in smoke and smog. Seeing how disheveled he looked, Jia Lian guessed that he did not have time to wash, but deliberately did not wash to make himself look more disheveled.

How should I put it? The performance of the Xishan Camp in this battle was indeed mediocre, and it was all led by the Shenji Camp. In terms of military strength, the Xishan Camp was above the Shenji Camp, and the official positions were higher, but the combat effectiveness was much worse.

If it was any other boss, Sun Tongzhi would have tried to take credit for it, but this was Jia Lian, right? How could he dare to do that? He could only hope that Jia Lian would show some leniency in his report and give him some credit.

"Uncle Sun, you're overthinking it!" Jia Lian said to him calmly. Old Sun chuckled, feeling reassured.

General Sun found a house in the city that was not too old and a big house for Jia Lian to live in. After the staff entered, they immediately started to work. Old Sun had been jealous for a long time. He looked at these staff and said, "General, where did you find these talents?" Jia Lian sneered and said, "Find? Find a few for me! They were all trained during the Shandong battle. I brought them up personally."

When he entered the inner room and sat down, two charming women came out to serve tea. Jia Lian did not say anything at the time. He waited until they left before asking, "What's going on?"

"They are all women we rescued. They have nowhere to go, so I picked a few to serve them in the house." General Sun is also a good person, but it's a pity that he would not ask for money when Jia Lian is away.

"Forget about it, Governor. Let the officers of each battalion choose first, then the junior officers, and finally the soldiers with good performance. Let me make it clear first, you must treat them well when you bring them back, and don't give them away and sell them off when you get tired of them. If I find out, I will not have a good ending. These women have nowhere to go, and although life is a little harder with the soldiers, there is always hope. Also, don't mess around for the time being, and settle them in a centralized place until the war is over."

Jia Lian already had experience and was very skilled in handling the situation. You can't force these abducted women to die, right? If the officers don't like them, wouldn't it be nice for the soldiers to get a wife for free?
Don't talk about respecting women's wishes, what era is this? If all these women were sent away, it would be God's mercy if only half of them survived.

When did the women's rights movement begin? After the Industrial Revolution! Women only started to think about equality when they had economic power.

No matter what, if you don’t have the financial ability but always want to make transfer payments, is that feminism?

The few women who stayed behind were all extremely outstanding. Jia Lian was not in a hurry to send them away. He wanted to wait and see the family generals. Many of them had not made it to the expedition before, so he wanted to see if there were any needed this time.

Before dark, the staff brought the statistical results. After two days of continuous fighting, the attack killed 10,305 people, 588 of our own people were killed, and 1,666 were injured.

The main casualties came from the Xishan Camp, while the Shenji Camp suffered less than 500 casualties. As for the spoils, no matter how the spoils from the Xishan Camp were dealt with, the spoils from the Shenji Camp would definitely be distributed uniformly.

It is true that Jia Lian is a superior officer, but it is not his place to control how others distribute the spoils of war. The Shenji Camp captured a lot of spoils, including more than 3,000 war horses, more than 200 taels of gold, and more than 80,000 taels of silver.

There was a mature routine on how to distribute the fruits of war, so Jia Lian handed it over to his staff and began to write the battle report himself.

【On the 13th, we confronted the enemy outside Xuanhua City. I was afraid that something might happen, so I didn't dare to delay, so I decided to take the initiative to attack. On the 14th, the left army took the initiative to attack, using infantry to fight cavalry. The two armies faced each other, and the sound of gunfire was endless. After a day of fierce fighting, the enemy suffered heavy casualties and retreated to Zhangjiakou. Our army took advantage of the situation and pursued them, and stationed troops under the city. That night, a fire broke out in the city, probably because of an internal conflict among the bandits. After discussing with Sun and Yang, I unanimously decided to attack. Sun led the Xishan Camp to attack the city, and broke the city after a hard fight for an hour. Yang led the Shenji Camp to attack the enemy in the north of the city, and broke two enemy camps in a row. At dawn, he fought with the enemy in the north of the city... Yang and Sun made the greatest contributions in this battle...】

This is the characteristic of Jia Lian's battle report, which is concise and restrained when boasting. It mainly praises the two commanders Yang and Sun, and Jia Lian's contribution as the commander-in-chief will not be reduced in the slightest.

After finishing the battle report, General Sun came in and said in a low voice, "We have seized 3,000 taels of gold and 300,000 taels of silver in the city. Your Excellency, please tell us how to deal with them."

Jia Lian knew without asking that this was a tribute paid to Jia Lian and General Sun by his subordinates in the Xishan Camp.

"Two plus one makes five!" Jia Lian was not polite at all. If Sun Tongzhi didn't get this money, he would be unable to sleep at night.

"I understand. I will have someone send him back to the capital directly tomorrow. What do you think..." Commander Sun hesitated for a moment, which fully demonstrated his emotional intelligence.

"My family doesn't need this little money. I'll give you an address and you can have someone deliver it to your door." After leaving the address of the sisters in the south city, Jia Lian pushed the report over.

After reading them separately, General Sun was very surprised and whispered: "You should be the first to receive the credit, I..."

"Why are you being so polite? I even think you've made such great contributions. You won't understand what I'm telling you." Jia Lian interrupted him with a rude tone, but General Sun was secretly delighted.

We carried guns together, shared the spoils together, and the only thing missing was going to jail together and committing suicide together. He had two of the four iron things in life.

From now on, the relationship between the two will not be as simple as being members of the imperial party!

"I have absolutely no dissatisfaction with your decision, sir." General Sun quickly expressed his opinion. Anyone who didn't get closer to him at this time would be a fool.

"Well, I'll check with Commander Yang later. No problem, we'll send it to the capital tomorrow morning." As he was talking, Commander Yang came in. Seeing the two of them, he hurried forward to greet them. The three of them had been getting closer recently, and were used to holding small meetings to decide on the entire tactic.

After the greetings, Jia Lian raised his hand to signal for silence. When the two of them were watching quietly, Jia Lian said softly, "Zhangjiakou prefect and garrison commander, are you two related?"

The two shook their heads after hearing this. How could they not understand that Lord Jia was planning to kill someone? They should first ask clearly whether it was one of their own, so as not to kill the wrong person.

Jia Lian has always been good-tempered, but now he is showing his fangs.

Why did they choose to kill these two? Because the root cause of Zhangjiakou's abandonment of the city and escape was the two chief officers, which led to the suffering of 5,000 people in the city who did not have time to leave. Who else should they kill if not them?
Jia Lian also had another consideration. The relationship in Datong was more complicated. As an important military town, Datong was one level higher than Xuanhua and had more powerful troops. The prefect was easy to deal with. The general was directly under the Ministry of War, and the governor of Shanxi had no control over him. It was true that Jia Lian was the commander-in-chief of the left army and had a gold medal. If you didn't kill anyone in Datong, would these soldiers be convinced? Maybe they were thinking of giving Empress Jia a warning so that they could compete for the credit.

With this in mind, Jia Lian decided that once he arrived in Datong, the first thing he would do was to kill people. This would intimidate the local people and make them behave themselves and not cause trouble for him.

So, one reason was that he was angry that the defenders of Zhangjiakou really fled without fighting as he had guessed, causing the people to suffer; the other reason was to intimidate Datong. Without their permission, the officials of Zhangjiakou dared to flee early. I'm afraid they were grasshoppers on the same line and would share the spoils.

Considering that the emperor would definitely reorganize the army, and considering that his contributions were too great, he had to cool himself down and create some trouble.

The three of them, with Jia Lian as the core, quickly reached a consensus. After some discussion, they dispersed to prepare.

........................

Qianqing Palace!
Emperor Chenghui held the newly delivered battle report in his hands. After reading it, he showed a worried look on his face. Kong Zhao and Liang Daoyuan were also secretly worried.

They read it first before passing it to the emperor. Kong Zhao saw that the emperor's expression was not right, so he quickly comforted him: "Your Majesty, Lord Jia has a profound family background and is a steady leader. Although the troops are not superior in the battle report, even if they cannot win, they will not lose. I have seen Lord Jia's strategy, which is to set up camp outside the city and form a corner with Xuanhua City, and hold on to delay time. This is Old Chen's strategy."

Emperor Chenghui didn't say anything after hearing this, he just looked up at the ceiling. How could he not know that Jia Lian's tactics were fine? The problem now was that the Tongzhou granary had been burned, and the grain would not be delivered for a while. Also, once the Shanhaiguan direction learned of the change in the capital, they would tear off their masks and raise the flag to rebel.

"Your Majesty, the battle report from Lord Yue said that outside the passes such as Juyongguan and Xifengkou, there are mostly scattered cavalry, and no large group of rebels. It would be better to withdraw some troops back to the capital, just in case." Liang Daoyuan spoke slowly while carefully observing Emperor Chenghui's expression.

Emperor Chenghui rejected it without hesitation: "No!" [What kind of bad idea is this? The most urgent task is to stabilize the three borders. The grassland cavalry relies on its mobility advantage. What if the northwest is just a feint and the real purpose is to concentrate troops to attack the north? Can the troops from all directions come back in time to support? It is better to rely on the troops from Shandong and Hebei to reinforce the capital. ]

Qiu Shian came in and saw that the two ministers were silent. Emperor Chenghui spoke up, "I have something to say. The two ministers are my loyal followers."

Kong Zhao and Liang Daoyuan quickly stood up to express their gratitude for His Majesty's trust.

Qiu Shian whispered, "Saint, after checking, we found that the warehouse management of the Ministry of Revenue is quite mixed. There are remnants of Li Ni, the White Lotus Sect, the people of the Prince of Dongping, and corrupt officials. All parties joined forces to steal from the warehouse, and half of the warehouses were emptied. When the war started, the Ministry of Revenue wanted to check the granaries, and they joined forces to set the fire in order to settle the accounts."

When Qiu Shian talked about corrupt officials, his tone slowed down a little. Emperor Chenghui knew his habit and instantly realized that there was a mastermind involved, but it was not convenient to talk about it here.

The two cabinet ministers lowered their heads in silence, and could only marvel in their hearts at the efficiency of Captain Long Jin's work, for finding out so quickly that various forces were involved.

How can it be described with just one word: chaos!

Kong Zhao and Liang Daoyuan were actually also very worried because some of their people were among the officials who were arrested.

I don't think he will give it up online and then lead the cabinet to him.

This is really hard to say.

Qiu Shian knows the importance of things. He will definitely not say anything that cannot be said and will just gloss over it vaguely.

What Emperor Chenghui needs right now is unity between the monarch and his subjects. Naturally, he would not take the matter of the two cabinet ministers receiving some filial piety seriously. Is this also a big deal?

It was just a coincidence!

"Prime Minister Kong, do you have any opinion?" Emperor Chenghui didn't want to get too serious, so he let Kong Zhao speak, giving him a chance to ease the situation.

"Shocking, shocking! Your Majesty! In my opinion, severe punishments should be used in times of chaos to cut the Gordian knot." Kong Zhao did not hesitate at all. He must not be dragged into this situation. He had to kill, kill, kill. Once they were all killed, he would be safe.

Liang Daoyuan also stood up and echoed: "Your Majesty, this is what I mean. The current situation is delicate and we must not be lenient! We must punish severely to serve as a warning to others."

Emperor Chenghui did not speak immediately. He pondered for a moment and said, "The three courts will conduct a joint trial and deal with the case strictly and quickly."

At this critical juncture, we must unite the people and not allow people to be unstable. Emperor Chenghui was very dissatisfied and could not take drastic measures.

But since it is just a small meeting of three people, it must be the cabinet's opinion, and Your Majesty will accept the advice readily.

Kong Zhao and Liang Daoyuan are already very familiar with this kind of gameplay, and they must take the blame, otherwise they will be implicated.

The two men stood up to accept the order. Qiu Shian also asked someone to send the files over and arranged for the prisoners to be transferred to the Ministry of Justice prison.

After the two ministers left, Qiu Shian whispered, "Saint..."

Emperor Chenghui raised his hand to signal him not to say anything: "I know what's going on!"

Qiu Shi'an then gave up. Emperor Chenghui also wanted to investigate it thoroughly, but the problem was that he couldn't. In the west, Jia Lian was outnumbered and had to deal with many more, while in the east, people were ready to make moves. The situation was too difficult.

In other words, Emperor Chenghui didn't know that Jia Lian had won and that the various tribes on the grassland were fighting among themselves, otherwise he would not have been willing to let these insects go.

(End of this chapter)