In Taiyuan, Shanxi, the air is full of cold breath, and everywhere the eye can see is covered with snow. Hong Chengchou couldn't help but sigh, closed the window, the charcoal basin in the house was burned very strongly, and the red light had already illuminated every corner of the house, steaming that small area hot. He walked slowly to the charcoal basin, reached over and probed, and felt a little hot, so he moved his stool a little farther away, sat down, and turned his head sideways to remember what had happened.

Hong Chengchou is a Jinshi in the 44th year of Wanli, not long ago he was a political envoy in Shaanxi to participate in politics, and he made meritorious contributions to suppressing the rebellious people in Shaanxi, so he was promoted, but the official he promoted was different from the governor of Yansui and the governor of Shaanxi in the history of the old world, but was transferred to the political envoy of Shanxi Chengxuan, and became a second-class member of Shanxi. After Hong Chengchou took office, Shanxi's public order was relatively good, and it was separated from the Yellow River by mountains, but the chaotic people in Shaanxi were unable to enter Shanxi for a time until the Yellow River froze at the end of last year. After the Yellow River froze, the group of rebels began to cross the river from Shenmu, and then began to pour into Shanxi like mercury from all over the places where they had not had time to take precautions, burning and looting along the way, and now they have arrived at the front line of Xiangling Taiping and stopped, it is estimated that this group of rebels is waiting for the winter to pass, and once the spring begins, the offensive will be resumed.

If you want to talk about this kind of thing, Hong Chengchou has not never fought, and he is also a veteran of fighting with the peasant army, he and Wang Zi's chaotic army even fought several battles, and rarely lost, but this time the chaotic people entered the Jin, and the court did not seem to want him to be mixed in, but sent another general to be responsible for the rebellion in Shanxi.

The general who was sent by the imperial court to command the rebellion was named Zuo Liangyu, this Zuo Liangyu he was actually more familiar with, this Zuo Liangyu is a standard military attaché, born in the army, has not read, and does not even know a few big characters, but because he has practiced martial arts since childhood, he is especially good at opening bows and archery, and the skills of opening bows left and right are even more perfect. In the eighth year of the Apocalypse, Ning Yuanwei mutinied, and the governor Bi Zisu committed suicide and died. However, this Zuo Liangyu seems to have attracted the attention of Hou Sui, a member of the Donglin Party of the Ministry of Households, and after Hou Sui pleaded with people in many ways and promoted him through connections, he was reinstated at the end of the ninth year of the Apocalypse, and was soon entrusted with the important task of putting him in charge of quelling the rebellion in Shanxi.

According to the past habits, don't look at the name of the Wu Dynasty with such a big martial character, but the military attache is definitely on the side in the imperial court, and there are not too many things in the Dawu Dynasty to suppress the military with literature. First of all, Zuo Liangyu brought 100,000 troops into Shanxi, not to mention Taiyuan, even if he added a few nearby guards, the troops could not carry Zuo Liangyu's much. Zuo Liangyu belongs to the imperial court appointee, has a holy decree in his hand, and a real army of 100,000, so he is very arrogant and domineering, although he has civil moderation above him, but he can't be moved at all, even Hong Chengchou, the envoy of Chengxuan, can't do anything about him.

The commander-in-chief of the Shanxi Pacification Battalion where Zuo Liangyu is located is Zheng Chongjian, who is a right-hand politician in Shaanxi, this Zheng Chongjian is the same as Hong Chengchou, both of whom are Jinshi in the forty-fourth year of Wanli, Hong Chengchou and Zheng Chongjian have this relationship, so the relationship between the two is still good, and sometimes when they encounter problems in the peace, they can get together to discuss the problem, but when the matter turns to Zuo Liangyu, the two of them are helpless. Fortunately, Hong Chengchou also has a military general known as "He Maniac" He Renlong, this He Renlong is a Wujinshi in the Wanli period, a native of Mizhi County, Shaanxi, at the beginning, he was subordinate to the then Yansui Town Governor Hong Chengchou, and when Hong Chengchou suppressed the rebellion in Shaanxi, he contributed a lot, and fought bravely, and was nicknamed "He Maniac".

He Renlong had an army of about 10,000 people, including 5,000 elite soldiers, and he could be regarded as a miracle in the battle to quell the rebellion, so Hong Chengchou and Zheng Chongjian often acted as a "fire brigade" by mobilizing He Renlong's army to block the actions of the rebel army in Shanxi. However, whether it is Hong Chengchou or Zheng Chongjian, everyone has the bottom in their hearts, in fact, it is not He Renlong who is blocking the chaos and unable to act now, but the cold winter. The rebel army has no logistical supply, they have to eat wherever they go, collect supplies on the spot to supply the army, the larger the size of the army, the more bloated it becomes, and in the winter season, there is no food everywhere, so they can only huddle in a place where they can get food and wait for the winter. If Zuo Liangyu's army can't be mobilized, and still rely on He Renlong's army to come everywhere to fight fires, it is conceivable that once the frost thaws this spring, the rebellious army will inevitably rise in all directions, robbing houses everywhere, and after obtaining food, it will really spread throughout Shanxi as quickly as mercury.

How could Hong Chengchou not know what this Zuo Liangyu was thinking? When he participated in the mutiny in Ningyuan, the main reason was that the officers and soldiers of the 13th Battalion were in arrears of food and salaries because of the imperial court, but Liaodong Tong sentenced Zhang Shirong to discriminate against the soldiers. Zuo Liangyu, who fought in Liaodong, can be regarded as a brave fighter and has made a lot of contributions, but he has always been thankless, he also wants to be promoted and make a fortune, and he is also very hot for those high-ranking officials in Liaodong to drink and talk happily and share the life of silver, but because his level is too low to participate, now he has finally risen to the point where he can share silver because of his military merits, and he will naturally not let go. The main reason why he is now self-respecting is that he wants to coerce Zheng Chongjian and Hong Chengchou to jointly ask him for merit, first upgrade to a level and then go out to fight against thieves, and Hong Chengchou They are simply disgusted to the extreme for such a military attache who simply puts his hand in his pocket, and would rather rely on He Renlong's firefighting team than let Zuo Liangyu get any merit.

Thinking of this, Hong Chengchou couldn't help but sigh, in fact, there was another thing he was very worried about on the entire Shanxi battlefield, that is, the guest army sent by Zheng Zhilong in Nan'an, Fujian. He Hong Chengchou is a native of Nan'an, Fujian, and Zheng Zhilong is a fellow villager, Zheng Zhilong in Fujian He already knew about the things that happened in Fujian, this time in the chaos in Shanxi sent guest troops from all over the country, but only the guest army from Fujian left a deep impression on him - the soldiers of the Zheng family army don't look tall, not strong, but they have uniform training, don't look at them only more than 1,000 troops, but they can face the thousands of troops used by the king in the case of frontal field battles, and also defended the Taiping City.

Not long ago, a battle report was sent from near Taiping and Xiangling, Zheng Jiajun not only held Taiping County in the siege battle, but also killed the bandit leader Zhang Cunmeng in the battle, killing and wounding thousands of rebels in the battle, such a record made Hong Chengchou unbelievable. These Zheng Jiajun only use firecrackers, most of them even use spears, firecrackers are not uncommon, and there is also a battalion of firecrackers in He Renlong's army, but they have never exerted such terrible power at any time. When Hong Chengchou received the battle report, he wanted to call back the people of the Zheng family army and merge them into He Renlong's fire brigade, but at this moment, Taiping City has been surrounded by Wang Ziyong's army, and it is impossible for Zheng Jiajun to withdraw without the army, rather than letting them forcibly break through and be chased and killed by Wang's own people in the field battle, it is better to let them stay in Taiping City, at least they still have a strong city wall to defend, in the case of no artillery in the thirty-six battalions used by Wang, It is basically impossible to capture Taiping City.

But he also knows that the people take food as the sky, and the army is determined by the amount of grain and grass, and the key to whether Taiping City can be defended is not whether the Zheng family's guns are elite and whether the soldiers are brave, but how much food there is in the city. As long as there is enough food, these people can hold the wall until they die of old age, and without food, even the strongest wall is a joke.

He didn't know how much grain there was in Taiping City, he only knew that last year's autumn tax was not harvested much, if there was no greed for ink in the local official warehouse in Taiping, it should be no problem to survive until the middle of this year, but it can't count the number of refugees who fled into the city, if you add them, maybe it's hard to say.

A few days ago, I sent a post from the cabinet, saying that there would be a strong army coming to reinforce it, saying that it was an elite army drawn from Annanwei, but the number is not clear, about 2,000 to 5,000 people, and it will be drawn soon. Hong Chengchou specially paid attention to the date, this post was sent from the Beijing division more than ten days ago, and it was more than ten days from the Beijing division to here, if it was sent to Annan, thinking of this, he couldn't help but rub his cheeks a little hot with his hands, and sent it to Annan, even if everything is normal, it will take at least a month to arrive, with the mobilization speed of the Wu Dynasty army, from receiving the notice to prepare grain and grass for armament to the time it can be set off, there is no drama without thirty days, and thirty days later, it is already spring, even if the snow is not finished, There's not much thickness left. From Annam to Shanxi, thousands of miles of troops, thousands of troops drove over, and it was not until April and May, by that time, that time the rebel armies had already bloomed everywhere. And since ancient times, there has been a saying that the south is invincible to the north, whether it is the Warring States and the Han Dynasty or the Tang and Song dynasties, the difference in combat effectiveness between the southern army and the northern army is quite large, so big that it is almost completely impossible to resist, not to mention that this support army can be regarded as a strong army, even if it is a strong army of the first class in Annan, it is probably the average combat effectiveness here, and it is only about 2,000 to 5,000 people.

Suddenly, he seemed to hear a strange sound from outside, but when he listened carefully, he couldn't hear it clearly, and he raised his head from the side of the charcoal basin with some difficulty, turned his neck from side to side, determined the direction, and walked in the direction from which the sound came from. walked to the door and pushed the door open, and a gust of cold wind suddenly poured in, making Hong Chengchou can't help but shrink his neck. At this moment of shrinking his neck, that strange sound quickly entered his ears by the wind, it was a kind of "buzzing" sound similar to that of bees flying in the air, but the sound was far more than ten times louder than the sound that bees can make, could it be a large bee? He thought about it and felt that it was not right, in winter, when everything tends to be asleep, not to mention bees, even bed bugs don't like to come out and wander around, so bees must be hiding in the honeycomb now, and they will never run outside, so no matter how big the bees are, it is absolutely impossible to come out at this time, so what is it that is buzzing outside when it is not a bee?

He walked into the patio and looked up at the air, the sound seemed to be clearer, it was obvious that the sound was indeed coming from the sky, Hong Chengchou twisted his head left and right to try to find the direction where the sound came from, at this moment, a black shadow suddenly swept over the patio, startling him a lot, he clearly saw a huge black eagle-like thing in the air suddenly swept over.

This black shadow has four long wings, divided into two layers above the body, and there are wheels on the two talons, which are not tucked behind when flying like ordinary eagles, but stretch out under the wings and move downward. The eagle's tail also has two small wings, and it seems that the wingtips are still wagging constantly.

"Monster!" "Strange birds!" "Come on!" For a while, there were exclamations everywhere in the courtyard of his house, "whoosh" With a few sharp whistling sounds, a few arrows in the air flew towards the strange bird. However, the height was obviously far less than the height at which the black shadow flew, and it only lost the power to fly upwards under the black shadow's abdomen, and then fell again, causing the people below to scream, as if someone had hit a tree, making a popping sound of snow falling to the ground.

The black shadow was visibly unaffected by the ground, hovering in the air for a few moments, and finally presumably choosing a target, dived in the direction of the ground, and then raised its head and flew out into the distance. But at the point of the dive, a yellow umbrella appeared, with a shiny metal cylinder underneath it, which slowly fell down in the air.

"Quick! Go get me that thing! Hong Chengchou turned his head and saw that several relatives around him were also looking at the metal cylinder curiously, and hurriedly ordered loudly, "You must get it for me, I want to see what it is." ”

A few of his relatives nodded their heads one after another, then turned around and rushed out the door, the metal cylinder not far away was still slowly falling under the yellow umbrella, as if waiting for them to get it.