The next day, when Deng Ming opened his eyes, it was already dawn, and it was almost noon. In the past two days, his jīng god has always been highly nervous, and yesterday he fell into a deep sleep when he relaxed a little, and he did not wake up until now. Deng Ming didn't realize that Yuan Zongdi checked his clothes, and while putting on the military uniform of the Ming army, he thought in his heart:

"It seems that I think the people of the Ming Dynasty are too complicated, the people of this era are simple, there should be very few liars, they will believe what you say, they don't know how to doubt others, this is probably the so-called ancient style, right? I was in a panic yesterday to deal with their problems, and I thought that they were full of loopholes, and these people were convinced! Well, they really respect the readers, and they didn't wake me up when I slept until this point. ”

After walking out of the camp, Deng Ming found that there were actually two guards at the door, and after seeing him get up, the two guards smiled and said, "Did Mr. Deng sleep well?" Yasukuni is invited. ”

At this time, Yuan Zongdi was inspecting the position set up by the Qing army in front of the city of Chóngqìng. As for Deng Ming, he has unceremoniously given the other party an evaluation of a gentleman - he can sleep until nearly noon in one breath, obviously he is used to enjoying himself and has not done any work.

The guards brought Deng Ming to Yuan Zongdi, and next to him stood Zhou Kaihuang and Li Tianba. Li Tianba was an envoy sent by the Yongli court, and Yuan Zongdi intended to let him obtain first-hand information so that he could report to the court in the future. A person who may be a noble relative of the country appears out of thin air, and the Son of Heaven and the court will definitely ask for details in the future.

Yuan Zongdi explained the shape in front of him to Deng Ming, and he was determined to let this sect disciple see his own splendor.

Located at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, Yuan Zongdi led his army up the Yangtze River, while Tan Wen, who joined him, led his boat division up the Jialing River.

"In this way, we can completely cut off the communication between the inside and outside of the city, and we can precaution against the sneak attack of the captive's ships." Yuan Zongdi said: "If we are stationed in the lower reaches of Chóngqìng, then the reality of our army can be observed in the city of Chóngqìng, and once a captive boat appears upstream, it will be a great threat to our army if it goes down the river from the upstream." ”

There were many Ming soldiers moving in front of the city, and Deng Ming looked from afar and saw them holding shields and brandishing axes to destroy some wooden stakes standing on the ground. The outside of the Chóngqìng city wall is densely covered with such wooden stakes, like a grove.

"What are these stakes?" Deng Ming asked strangely.

"It's called a plum blossom pile." Zhou Kaihuang explained for Yuan Zongdi: "The staggered arrangement of layers and standing in front of the city can prevent ladders, rushing cars, and ladder cars from approaching the city wall. The army of Inspector Wen and several generals is already on the way, and it is almost there, and we must clear these stakes before they arrive, so that Chóngqìng can go down with a single blow. "The Wen Inspector Zhou Kaihuang said is Wen Anzhi, the Inspector appointed by the Yongli Imperial Court.

Facing the pile sweep team of the Ming army, the sound of guns and cannons kept coming from the head of the city. Deng Ming looked at the large wooden stakes under the city, and asked with some surprise: "With so many wooden stakes, how much work did it take them to bury?" ”

It was Zhou Kaihuang who solved Deng Ming's question: "In July this year, when we learned that the Wu thieves had invaded Yunnan, our army came to besiege Chóngqìng. Just when we could break through the chóngqìng, the Wu thief returned to the division to relieve the siege of chóngqìng, and our army had to retreat to Kuizhou in an unfavorable battle. However, in order to ensure that the back road is worry-free, he strengthened the city defense here at night, and the 180,000 army of Wu thieves tossed from July to the end of October, and these wooden stakes were buried by them. It wasn't until November that the thief left Chóngqìng again. ”

From these people, Deng Ming learned that Wu Sangui sent troops this time, and he had almost all the mobile forces of the Qing court in his hands, not to mention the jīng rui in Shaanxi and Shanxi, and even the Qing army field troops in Huguang were originally under the command of Hong Chengchou, and they are all under Wu Sangui's control, and the Qing court obviously wanted to complete its efforts in one battle and annihilate the Yongli regime in Yunnan in one fell swoop. For this expedition, the Qing court also transferred a large number of sailors and boats from the south of the Yangtze River to continuously transport troops and supplies downstream to Chóngqìng along the Yangtze River for the use of Wu Sangui's army.

"If it was placed in the past, when the hundreds of thousands of troops of Wu thieves invaded Yunnan, the court would not dare to rely only on the Yangtze River to transport troops and supply supplies." Speaking of this unprecedented scale of attack, Zhao Tianba, who was born in the Western Army, also showed a worried face: "Sun Kewang defected to the enemy, he knows the inside situation of our Ming army, where the population is dense, where there is a granary, which roads are good, which cities and fortresses are in disrepair, he knows it very clearly, he must have provided a lot of information to Wu Thief, and helped Wu Thief choose the route of attack." ”

Sun Kewang was originally the old department of Xiying, and was responsible for specific internal affairs construction work in Yunnan for many years. In the past, the Manchu Qing Dynasty was blind to the deployment of the Ming army in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, so the Qing army did not dare to rashly enter the territory of the Ming army. However, Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo had internal strife, and then Sun Kewang surrendered to the Manchus, so that the Qing army knew the roads, storage, and defense of the rear of the Ming army in the southwest. What's even more fatal is that many local officials and generals of the Ming army in the southwest were promoted and appointed by Sun Kewang, and after Sun Kewang surrendered to the enemy, Li Dingguo purged Sun's old department, and these people were resentful. The Manchu Qing Dynasty attacked the Ming court this time, carrying a large number of letters written by Sun Kewang to the officials and officers in the southwest, and five counties and more than 30,000 troops in Guizhou alone surrendered without a fight because of these letters, and the eastern defense line of the Ming army quickly collapsed.

Zhao Tianba was convinced that the King of Jin would be able to repel Wu Sangui's attack, but he was also well aware of the difficulties, otherwise the court and the King of Jin would not have ordered him to escort several eunuch angels to Kuizhou. The purpose of these eunuchs, who represented the imperial court, and Zhao Tianba, who represented the king of Jin, was the same—to do everything possible, even if it was both soft and hard, to let the friendly forces of Sichuan and Huguang fully support the operations on the Yunnan side.

On that occasion in July, Yuan Zongdi and Liu Tichun cooperated in the attack on Chóngqìng with good results, forcing Wu Sangui to turn back halfway, giving Li Dingguo, the king of Jin, a few more months to prepare for deployment, during which the troops stationed in Guangxi returned to Yunnan to prepare for the war. This time, after learning that Wu Sangui had once again commanded the army, Wen Anzhi, the governor of the Yongli court, immediately flew to Liu Tichun, Yuan Zongdi, Hao Shaoqi, Li Laiheng, and the three Tans stationed in Wanxian - Tan Wen, Tan Hong, and Tan Yi, and asked them to immediately gather again to besiege Chóngqìng.

There are some things that Zhao Tianba will think about in his heart, but he will never say it verbally, and he can see very clearly the situation of the two mobilizations of the Sichuan and Emming armies: the Sichuan and Emming armies had to resist Wu Sangui's army alone, not for their own safety, but for the imperial court far away in Kunming. The last time they attacked Chóngqìng, the Ming army here lost their troops, and although they gathered again this time, if Wu Sangui returned to the division again, it was bound that these friendly troops would suffer great losses.

"Once, twice, three times, this is far away from the imperial court, and it is difficult for the imperial court to support it except for rewarding officials, and they have helped the imperial court again and again but have not received anything, I am afraid it is not a long-term solution." Zhao Tianba was a little worried in his heart, and couldn't help but think of the construction that Liu Wenxiu, the king of Zhao, gave to the imperial court before he left, using the main force of the Ming army in Yunnan to enter Sichuan and use Chengdu as a base. Liu Wenxiu's view was: In this way, if the Qing army invades Yunnan in the south, the Ming army will have descendants of the troops to take the lead in the battle, and the friendly troops in Sichuan and Hubei will not have any complaints, and they can resist the enemy outside Yunnan and prevent the other party from approaching Yunnan, the most important material production base. It's just that Li Dingguo was worried that there would be another incident when the army was far away from the imperial court, and he thought that Wu Sangui would not dare to invade Yunnan without regard to the Sichuan and Hubei Ming armies, so he did not adopt Liu Wenxiu's opinion and remained in Kunming.

This time, Wu Sangui ignored the threat of the Ming army on the flank, and drove straight into Yunnan, and the shape immediately became very urgent as Liu Wenxiu said. Due to the long distance and inconvenient transmission of information, Zhao Tianba did not know that Li Dingguo had been defeated and retreated at this time, and the Qing army was approaching Kunming.

Although he had not been in contact with Yuan Zongdi and the others for a long time, the information they provided was very important to Deng Ming, allowing him to have a clearer understanding of the situation in front of him. Now Deng Ming has no doubt that what he sees is the last moment of Han resistance in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. In the face of the Qing army's step-by-step advance, the former "anti-thieves" such as Chuang Ying and Xiying are making the final struggle for the survival of the Ming Dynasty. In front of these Han people who did not want to be slaves of the country, they did not care that they once belonged to different camps, even hostile camps, and fought side by side against foreign invasions. After so many years of repeated tug-of-war between the Ming and Qing dynasties, as well as the large-scale counterattack of Huguang by the Ming army in the west not long ago, Yuan Zongdi and other generals who broke into the camp still had illusions about the battle situation and felt that the current shape was acceptable. But Deng Ming knew that the War of Resistance against the Qing Dynasty would take a sharp turn for the worse, which could not help but make him secretly think about what he should do next.

Tan Wen's department in the upper reaches of the Jialing River is also doing the same work as Yuan Zongdi's department, although Yuan Zongdi is fragmented, but Deng Ming has already understood that Tan Wen, Tan Hong, and Tan Yi stationed in Wanxian County are all descendants of the Ming army - to be honest, Deng Ming has never figured out what Yuan Zongdi is doing with him.

Although the two sides had a common goal, Deng Ming also noticed that Tan Wen's division and Yuan Zongdi's division were distinct, their battle lines were not coherent, and there was an obvious gap between the two armies. Chóngqìng's Qing army seemed to be blind to this, and could see that there were only a few surveillance troops on the city wall facing the junction of Yuan and Tan, and seemed to be completely unconcerned about them converging and attacking.

"Mr. Deng, do you want to go over there and have a look?" Although Yuan Zongdi was very reluctant in his heart, he had already told Deng Ming that Tan Wen was different from himself, he was the official and military descendants of Miao Honggenzheng, whether it was Wen Anzhi, the governor sent by the Yongli Imperial Court to the Sichuan and Hubei areas, or the children of the clan such as King Han who fled, they always attached more importance to these court descendants, no, to be precise, they were a lot more eccentric. Since it was judged that Deng Ming might be a powerful disciple of the clan, Yuan Zongdi naturally couldn't detain him in his camp.

"Me?" Deng Ming was extremely surprised by this question. He positioned himself as a scholar who joined the army, and he pondered in his heart: "If according to the 21st century, I am just a candidate who submitted his resume to Yuan Zongdi, right?" Although the resume is submitted casually, it seems bad to reveal the idea of changing jobs and shopping around during the interview. Besides, this is not the future, no matter how simple and honest the ancients are, they can't see it as clearly as the future, right? At this time, isn't it the death of those who pay attention to the death of a confidant? What does Yuan Zongdi mean by this question? ”

Deng Ming, who had enough sleep, turned his mind quickly and came to his own conclusion: "Yes, this must be Yuan Zongdi testing me." The ancients were more straightforward, and did not know much about psychology, the art of language, and the weaknesses of people, but Yuan Zongdi treated me with great courtesy, showed respect and trust, and provided me with food and shelter. ”

Since he understood this, Deng Ming said categorically: "If you are willing to serve the Guogong in your later life, how can you go elsewhere?" ”

Whether it was Deng Ming's attitude or the content of what he said, Yuan Zong was stunned for the first time, and he was stunned: "If you are really a clan, then who dares to let you work?" How can you serve a courtier? Oh yes, although I know that he is a member of the clan, and most of them are the third prince of the Lie Emperor, he doesn't know that I already know, so he still pretends to be garlic here. Well, yesterday I put the beads back untouched, and the third prince probably thought I hadn't seen it. ”

Yuan Zongdi, who suddenly came to his senses, turned his mind and immediately realized again: "Although the group of people in Xiying were all thieves before, in the final analysis, Emperor Lie was not forced to death by them. And if this Royal Highness is the flesh and blood of the Emperor Lie, although so many years have passed, he is still not sure what he hates King Chuang in his heart, I have to explain quickly, I didn't care about those things in Běijīng back then. And now the explanation is better, His Highness still doesn't understand that I have guessed his true identity, and now the explanation can appear more sincere than seeing someone put the dishes on the plate. ”

Yuan Zongdi thought of it, and sighed slowly: "This prince followed King Chuang back then, and the idea in his heart was to eliminate the villains around the first emperor and assist the Lie Emperor in his crusade against the northern captives. Thinking so in my heart, this is also the appointment I made with King Chuang. Later, King Chuang sent his father south to Xiangyang, and when King Chuang entered Beijing, he was bewitched by Niu Jinxing's evil villain, and he actually had a heart of disobedience. It's a pity that this duke was not around King Chuang at that time, otherwise he would definitely be able to persuade King Chuang to rein in the precipice. ”

Deng Ming was amazed when he heard this, stared at Yuan Zongdi's face for a long time, didn't realize his faux pas, and countless thoughts flashed in his heart in an instant: "Are you loyal to Chongzhen?" Yuan Zongdi, you lied to the ghost...... Looking at his sincere appearance, is there really a secret that no one knows? No, I was almost deceived by him, he said this because now that he has accepted the title of Ming Dynasty, he has to appear brave and loyal in front of outsiders. It just so happened that he didn't go when Li Zicheng entered běijīng, and now he is trying to wash himself, should I praise him a few words? …… But it's not necessarily good to follow his words, he certainly doesn't mean it at all, and if I follow his words, most likely he will know that I don't mean it, and if I don't use the right words, he might think I'm making fun of him. Well, anyway, there are no outsiders around, and I should praise the righteous act of breaking into the camp, which is what he really likes to hear, and it also seems that I am indeed with him. Now that I'm defecting to him, I can't mistake the inferiority. ”

"What Guogong said, the students didn't think so." After a while, Yuan Zongdi stopped talking to observe Deng Ming's reaction, and the latter felt that the other party was trying to examine his tendencies, and immediately said: "During the Chongzhen period, the people were not happy, and the people were easy to eat...... King Shun is the time when the sky is up, and the people are in response to the people's feelings. Besides, this artifact has no owner, so what can't King Shun do if he takes it? It's a pity that Wu Sangui's thief led the enemy soldiers into Shanhaiguan and damaged the great rivers and mountains of my Han family. ”

Deng Ming's words shocked Yuan Zongdi, as well as Zhou Kaihuang and Zhao Tianba behind him. Now they are no longer Li Zicheng's subordinates back then, they are all Ming soldiers and generals, and of course this kind of rebellious and reasonable remarks cannot be mentioned. Especially when it came out of the mouth of a sect disciple like Deng Ming, it obviously showed that he didn't intend to forgive these former thieves at all, so as soon as he heard Yuan Zongdi's self-defense, he made sarcastic and sarcastic remarks.

"I was really confused back then, I didn't know that Emperor Lie loved the people like a son, and there were indeed a few villains around Emperor Lie......" Yuan Zongdi was shocked and hurriedly continued to defend himself, and put forward a reason that Deng Ming could not refute - Emperor Chongzhen was surrounded by Jiān ministers.

"I heard that there is the king of Yao Shun first, and then there are the ministers of Yao Shun." Deng Ming first didn't understand why Yuan Zongdi would defend Chongzhen so desperately, and then thought: Maybe it's because he and the other party haven't had a deep relationship, and the other party is worried that saying bad things about Chongzhen is not in line with Yuan Zongdi's current status as a prince of the Ming Dynasty, even if he just agrees with Deng Ming's statement. In order to further win the trust of others, Deng Ming also let go, and then said: "During the Chongzhen period, corrupt officials and corrupt officials emerged in endlessly, but the Son of Heaven still trusted and reused these courtiers...... It's like a den of bandits who do all kinds of evil, and their mountain king is a saint, is this possible? ”

This time, it was Zhao Tianba's turn and Zhou Kai's eyes were about to pop out. Zhou Kaihuang agrees with what Deng Ming said, but the key problem is that this should not be what a Ming subject should say, nor should it be said to a Ming general, especially Deng Ming may also be a son of the clan, may be the third prince of Chongzhen - is there such a son who scolds Lao Tzu? Zhou Kaihuang's eyes became more and more suspicious when he looked at Deng Ming: "Is this person really the orphan of Emperor Lie?" ”

Zhao Tianba gradually calmed down after the initial shock, and sighed secretly in his heart: "This Mr. Deng is really the prince of Emperor Lie, I didn't believe it yesterday." Since Emperor Lie was martyred, who can say a bad word about Emperor Lie from other clan relatives? Except for his in-laws' sons, if any clan dared to say such a thing, it would not be punctured in the backbone? ”

Yuan Zongdi also regained his peace at this time, Deng Ming is undoubtedly Chongzhen's prince, and other Ming Dynasty relatives are not qualified to criticize a martyred emperor, who would dare to say irresponsible remarks to the emperor if they are not relatives? Although it is a big faux pas for the son to blame Lao Tzu, it is an attitude, a very clear attitude not to be held accountable, and only the prince of Chongzhen can express this attitude. Yuan Zongdi couldn't help but think that if Deng Ming still maintained such an attitude in the future, then the imperial court would most likely not investigate the crimes of the old generals. The other party probably realized that he had insight into his identity, so he made an undisguised attitude - Chongzhen's orphan's attitude of not pursuing the soldiers who broke into the camp.

"The Son does not speak of the Father." Yuan Zongdi said softly, which was not only to show his gratitude to Deng Ming, but also to imply that he had understood the other party's attitude and did not need to continue to discuss the rights and wrongs of the past.

Yuan Zongdi's words made Deng Ming stunned again, and he pondered in his heart: "The son doesn't say anything about the father? This means that the son should not speak ill of Lao Tzu, right? But Yuan Zongdi is obviously not Chongzhen's son, what does this mean? Why can't you hear it...... Oh, I understand, it's the courtiers who shouldn't listen to others say bad things about the monarch's father, now after all, he is the courtier of the Ming Dynasty, and I, in theory, can be regarded as the courtier of the Ming Dynasty. ”

"Well, what Guogong said is that we, as courtiers, should not talk about the emperor." Deng Ming was not very sure in the end, so he said tentatively.

"Not bad." Yuan Zongdi nodded.

"What's going on?" Deng Ming saw that the other party really meant this, and couldn't help but look down on Yuan Zongdi a lot in his heart: "No wonder he respects scholars so much, he really doesn't have any knowledge." The courtiers commented on the emperor a lot, especially in the Ming Dynasty, there were too many things for officials to scold the emperor, and they were not even afraid of the court staff, the emperor playing the board. ”

Yuan Zongdi thought in his heart: "Is it true that the third prince has no knowledge at all? Of course, there are many courtiers who dare to scold the emperor, but how can he explain the sentence 'the son does not say anything about the father'? Well, presumably this is the attitude of the third prince, which means that although he guessed that I knew his identity very well, he was still unwilling to expose it, and asked me to continue to call him Mr. Deng. Moreover, the third prince insisted on not going to Tan Wen's camp, which was to show me his trust in me. ”