When Wu Sangui's personal guard heard this, he strode up to Deng Ming and asked in a loud voice, "You are Li Ming, the president of Baoning Qian?" ”

Deng Ming politely clasped his fists and saluted: "It's a humble position, dare to ask what you command?" ”

At the moment, Deng Ming doesn't know the other party's plans, but even if he turns his face, he has to make the other party feel that he is not a threat first.

"Does Mr. Li Qian have any other companions?" Wu Sangui's personal guard asked again.

"And a few more." After a long period of cooperation, now Deng Ming and his gang have a very tacit understanding, and they can break out and hurt people at any time.

However, Deng Ming felt that it was best not to do it here at the post station, because there were Qing soldiers inside and outside, and the post station was close to the avenue, and there were often large groups of Qing soldiers passing in front of the door.

"Come with me to Kunming, the handsome man wants to see you." Wu Sangui's personal guard said proudly.

The people in the post station were in an uproar, and Deng Ming's surprise was not trivial. It is said that there should be many Qing generals in Yunnan who can be called commanders, but Wu Sangui calls himself a marshal, so the others are naturally demoted to the rank of general. Since the Qing army officer in front of him used this title, it was theoretically that Wu Sangui wanted to see him. This made Deng Ming a little strange, Wu Sangui, who was in charge of an army of more than 100,000 or 200,000, did he also have to ask about such a remote battlefield as Dongchuan? He also specially sent people to wait in northern Yunnan, and as soon as he saw someone returning from Dongchuan, he was anxious to summon him for questioning. Deng Ming secretly said in his heart: Wu Sangui, you are not too young, you are not afraid of dying of exhaustion if you do such a thing?

"Handsome ......"

When he spit out these two words, Deng Ming's tone had a hint of inquiry in his tone, and he observed the reaction of the Qing army officer.

The other party's face was really full of arrogance, his chin rose a little, and he ordered Deng Ming: "Hurry up and clean up, let's go." The subtext in his words is obviously: In this place in Yunnan, who else will be handsome besides King Pingxi?

Deng Ming did not resist this order. Now the people in the post station are all gathered around, and their attention is focused on Wu Sangui's envoy and himself. Just now, if you find an opportunity to have a quarrel with the other party, people mistakenly think that the quarrel caused a dispute, and as a result, the conflict leads to murder, in that case, the Qing army may not be in a hurry to pursue it; But now there is no such opportunity, since it involves the king of Pingxi, if his messenger is killed, the surrounding Qing army will definitely rush out to pursue the murderer when they hear the news, and the Ming army will not be able to escape safely as long as one person is injured. In addition, although they robbed a lot of horses on the way, most of them died because they were not well cared for, and when they entered the post station, they each had only one mount left, and they were not in very good condition.

After hinting at his subordinates not to act rashly, Deng Ming honestly packed up his things and followed Wu Sangui's messenger away. However, before leaving, Deng Ming used Wu Sangui's tiger skin to replace the worst mounts of the Ming army with good horses in the post station.

Deng Ming did not plan to go to Kunming, he secretly made up his mind, first made a submissive gesture to gain the favor of the other party, paralyzed this envoy of Wu Sangui and the soldiers around him, on the way to Kunming, looking for an opportunity to make a surprise attack in a sparsely populated place, killing these people, and then immediately turning the horse's head and returning to Dongchuan -- as long as all the items on the enemy's corpse that could be identified were taken away, it is estimated that the local garrison would not immediately know who died, and by the time they discovered the true identity of the deceased, the Ming army would have run away long ago. Maybe he can also dress up as Wu Sangui's guard, and trick him into a big meal before returning to Dongchuan.

……

Di Sanxi had been confronting the Qing army in the stronghold for several days.

Di Sanxi led 300 soldiers to leave Jianchang, and some people fled before entering the boundary of Dongchuan Mansion, and after they reached this desolate place, they fled and fled, and now they have fled almost 100 people, and more than 1,000 auxiliary soldiers have also fled more than 300 people.

The stronghold in front of him is the closest to Jianchang, and it is also the largest stronghold built by the Qing army on Dongchuanfu Avenue, with a large number of people and more than 100 soldiers to defend. The Qing officers and soldiers here were puzzled at first when they saw the beacon towers behind them being lit one after another: it was clear that they had not found the enemy troops at the front line, why were they in a hurry at the back?

The men of the Qing army general who were killed by Deng Ming fled back to Dongchuan one after another, adding nearly 200 soldiers to this stronghold; After learning this shocking news, the commander in the stronghold immediately realized that Deng Ming and his entourage, who had crossed the border before, were disguised by the Ming army, and he immediately sent someone to the rear to report it. But the messenger was met with the ruins of one stronghold after another, and some of the people who had escaped from the breakdown. Some people who had nowhere to go also ran to this officer.

When there were more than 300 Qing soldiers in the stronghold, Di Sanxi's main consideration every day was no longer how to capture the stronghold of the Qing army, but how to defend his camp. Seeing the increase in the strength of the Qing army on the opposite side, the morale of the Ming army, which was already low, fell to the bottom, and despite the help of loyal guards, the escape of the Ming army continued, and some people simply defected to the Qing army on the opposite side.

Di Sanxi originally planned to go to Dongchuan to cause some sabotage, but within a few days, half of the soldiers he brought with him fled, and the auxiliary soldiers also dispersed Sancheng - this was by no means the normal level of Di Sanxi, and he had never led his troops in many years to be so wolf-like.

First of all, the soldiers were skeptical about the purpose of Di Sanxi's expedition, some people always thought that Di Sanxi wanted to flee to the Qing army, and those soldiers who were unwilling to leave their hometowns and separate their families would find opportunities to sneak back to Jianchang anytime and anywhere, so that Di Sanxi could not be guarded against. There are also some people who feel that it doesn't matter if they defect to the Qing army, and when they see that the war situation is unfavorable, they will naturally surrender and pass.

Secondly, due to the surprise attack by Deng Ming that had just occurred, Di Sanxi's prestige in the army had been reduced to an unprecedentedly low level, and he had been discussed as an incompetent person in Jianchang for so long, and the soldiers naturally lacked confidence in Di Sanxi as the commander-in-chief, and were wary of his command.

In the end, Jianchang lacked the ability to attack Dongchuan Mansion, Di Sanxi left the supply base and came to Dongchuan under difficult conditions, and the soldiers and auxiliaries felt that victory was far away, and they were full of complaints about Di Sanxi's decision to go on a rash expedition.

Now Di Sanxi has become a tiger, if he launches this expedition and gets nothing but food and grass in vain, and half of the army runs away without fighting, he will not be able to turn over at all. Although he knew that there was little hope of capturing the stronghold of the Qing army, Di Sanxi could only grit his teeth and persevere, hoping for a turnaround.

There is another reason to support Di Sanxi's persistence, that is, he has captured a few strong men of the Qing army, according to them, it seems that there is really a small group of Ming troops behind this stronghold to wreak havoc. Di Sanxi guessed that it might be Deng Ming and his party. Even if Di Sanxi can't defeat the stronghold of the Qing army, as long as he persists here and waits for Deng Ming to come back, he can win some sympathy points with his offensive posture - there is no merit and hard work.

Di Sanxi thought that Deng Ming would soon return to the division after destroying a few strongholds, but the left and right just didn't come back, during this period, more than 20 soldiers had surrendered to the Qing army, and the strength of the enemy army had exceeded Di Sanxi's double, which made the remaining more than 170 soldiers and a large number of auxiliaries in the camp panic, and Di Sanxi also began to doubt whether he could still confront each other.

In fact, this was the darkness before dawn, and when Di Sanxi felt that he was at the end of his rope, the officers in the Qing army camp opposite were also bitter.

Although this base was built as the largest warehouse in the entire Dongchuan Province, the reserves in it were very limited. The materials allocated by Kunming to Dongchuan Prefecture were not much, and if there was an urgent need in other important war zones, they would be misappropriated, so the grain stored in this stronghold was enough to eat for more than ten days and less than twenty days. In the past, supplies were constantly being carried from the rear, and the amount of food that was brought in every day was always slightly more than the amount consumed.

But now the strongholds in the rear have been destroyed, and there has been no food for many days, and the Qing army is empty. The original soldiers and auxiliaries, plus the soldiers and auxiliaries who fled back from Jianchang, and the Qing soldiers who defected from the rear strongholds, the savings were about to be wiped out. It is good to surrender a few Ming troops, but they also have to eat every day.

In the past, the Qing army often dug wild vegetables and hunted around to slow down the consumption of supplies, hoping that the supply lines in the rear would be opened as far as possible, but now that Di Sanxi has come, he has set up camp in front of him, and it has become very dangerous for the Qing army to collect supplies. The Qing army officers' thoughts were similar to Di Sanxi's - Di Sanxi hoped that Deng Ming would come back soon and return to Jianchang with him, and the Qing army officers also hoped that Deng Ming would leave as soon as possible, so that the supply lines could be restored as soon as possible.

In addition to the material problem, the troubles of the Qing army officers in the stronghold are not much less than Di Sanxi, he was originally a thousand generals, with more than 100 soldiers, but now there are more than 300 soldiers in this camp, most of them are not his subordinates, these people are chaotic with their own factions and gangs, causing a lot of trouble to the Qing army officers. Moreover, this Qing army officer also had his own little abacus, he let his descendants eat better, and the dangerous and tiring work was handed over to the newcomers to do, whether it was to reconnoiter the enemy situation or go into the mountains to hunt, the defenders of the original stronghold stayed in a safe place and never participated in the adventure.

This unfair treatment soon aroused great dissatisfaction among the newly arrived more than 200 Qing troops, but these larger officers of the Qing army were killed by Deng Ming, and only a few small generals remained, and there was no ability to compete with the thousands of generals with strongholds, otherwise maybe there would be infighting in the Qing army camp.

In the face of Di Sanxi's threat, the Qing army officers who held the power of food distribution had been able to maintain basic military discipline before, and did not let Di Sanxi take advantage of the chaos to seize the camp, and even forced some newly recruited Qing soldiers to launch a tentative attack on Di Sanxi's camp.

However, as the grain reserves in the stronghold were nearly dry, the prestige of the Qing officers quickly declined, and when they saw the gruel without a few grains of rice in their bowls, a large number of later Qing soldiers reached a peak of dissatisfaction with the descendants of the officers who could still eat dry rice, and no one was willing to obey the order to disturb Di Sanxi. Subsequently, the Qing army began to flee and surrender to the Ming army camp.

On the first day when the soldiers of the two armies surrendered to each other, Di Sanxi's troops continued to grow negatively, but after hearing the surrendered Qing soldiers tell that the camp opposite had run out of military rations, Di's surrender came to an abrupt end. The next day, Di Sanxi took the opportunity to launch a heart attack technique, and after getting a guarantee that he was not guilty of the past, dozens of Ming troops who had surrendered in the past surrendered collectively that night, and at the same time brought back a large number of hungry and panicked Qing soldiers and auxiliaries.

Seeing that the army was about to collapse, the Qing army officer did not care about the danger, and once again mobilized all the auxiliary troops out of the camp to hunt and collect wild fruits. Seeing this, Di Sanxi was not to be outdone, and immediately dispatched the army to disturb him, and also scattered his auxiliaries all over the mountains and fields to find something to eat - the food that Di Sanxi brought was about enough for 1,500 people for a month, but he took precautions and took advantage of the situation to collect a little more.

The two armies of the Ming and Qing dynasties clashed three times on the same day, and fought two more battles the next day. At present, the morale of the two armies of the Ming and Qing dynasties is up and down on the edge of collapse, so although the two armies have fought five times, the casualties are in single digits: the Ming army has one dead and five wounded, and the Qing army has two dead and four wounded, and on average, each battle will cost about one casualty on both sides.

Whether it is Di Sanxi or the commander of the Qing army's stronghold, they are also quite satisfied with such results. The purpose of their war is almost the same, they all want to boost their momentum, frighten the enemy, and show their military strength that cannot be taken lightly; At present, the main strength of the commanders of both sides is focused on the question of how to stabilize the morale of their own troops. In the five battles of Tongguò, the commanders of both sides felt that their goal had been achieved, showing the enemy the strength and vigor of their own army, and both sides also had a tacit understanding that neither would attempt to attack the opponent's camp or engage in a life-or-death main battle.

As more and more Qing troops surrendered, Di Sanxi gained an advantage but also increased his troubles, that is, the rate of his military food consumption increased greatly. In addition to nearly 100 Qing army soldiers, there were also more than 500 Qing army auxiliaries, who were hungry a few days ago, and when they arrived at the Ming army camp, they feasted happily, and Di Sanxi was shocked by the amount of food they ate; On the contrary, due to the defection of a large number of his subordinates, the logistics situation has been greatly improved, and the food of the Qing soldiers has improved a lot, and the shaky military spirit has suddenly stabilized.

Di Sanxi calculated that if he didn't control it, the military rations he brought would quickly run out. After arriving at the Dongchuan battlefield, he had already sent people to Jianchang to announce to Feng Shuangli his determination to fight to the death against the Qing soldiers. In the past two days, the battle situation has improved, and he has also sent back a messenger who has won all five battles in two battles, and that it is possible to destroy this Tartar army, which is twice as numerous as his own - Di Sanxi is not lying, this Qing army was indeed twice the size of Di Sanxi's army when it was at its largest.

In order to reduce consumption, Di Sanxi formed a team of surrendered auxiliaries, and each team sent one or two Ming soldiers to guard them, took them back to Jianchang, and handed them over to Feng Shuangli for disposal. Before leaving, everyone was given three days' rations, and if they wanted to run, it was better to run than to stay in the camp and eat all of Di Sanxi's limited food.

The day after the first group of Qing army auxiliaries was sent to Jianchang to be taken prisoner, a team of Jianchang envoys came to Di Sanxi's camp. It turned out that after the envoy sent to Jianchang by Di Sanxi arrived at the beginning, Feng Shuangli met the envoy and learned that Di Sanxi was fighting in Dongchuan, and immediately felt guilty. It was precisely because he didn't take the initiative to take the initiative that he forced this henchman to today's field, so Feng Shuangli sent fifty soldiers as reinforcements, as well as more auxiliaries and grain trucks.

Di Sanxi was not very interested in reinforcements, these fifty soldiers were not familiar with him, and they were not easy to command, and they were not even as good as those Qing soldiers who had just surrendered. However, there were finally reliable guards to escort the captives, and Di Sanxi immediately sent the fifty people back to their homes, while taking away all the remaining Qing army auxiliaries. As for the auxiliary soldiers of the Ming army, Di Sanxi felt that it would do more harm than good in the case of food shortage, so he returned them to Jianchang.

For Di Sanxi, Feng Shuangli's most timely reinforcements were those grain trucks. After making some preparations, Di Sanxi beat gongs and drums to unload all the grain on the grain cart in front of the Qing army camp, and then let the Qing army carry the grain to march and demonstrate in front of the Qing army camp for a while, and finally lined up in a neat array and moved into his camp gate.

Di Sanxi's battle was extremely successful, and that night all the non-descendant troops in the Qing army's camp ran over to surrender to the Ming army, and even the descendant troops of the Qing army's defenders defected fifty people. Seeing that victory was in sight, Di Sanxi was very happy, and treated these soldiers well, and asked them to set up another battalion outside their camp.

When I got up the next morning, I saw that the fifty Qing soldiers had fled back one by one. It turned out that the Qing army saw that Di Sanxi was using food to launch a psychological war, and decided to plan and let half of his men go to the Ming army camp to eat tonight. Because it was common for these soldiers on both sides to rebel, Di Sanxi was careless and did not take precautions, not only was he eaten by these people with their open bellies, but they also took some food away before leaving.

After discovering the scheme, Di Sanxi was furious, announcing that he would not accept the individual surrender of the Qing army on the opposite side from now on, and that if they wanted to eat, they would have to come over together and hand over the camp at the same time.

After getting angry, Di Sanxi beat his chest and lamented: I was originally a loyal confidant of King Qingyang, and I always prided myself on being a good general in the world, but I didn't expect to be labeled as a traitor and a fool, and now I am in a poor mountain and remote place, entangled with a nameless Qing army Qianzong.

Now Di Sanxi really has a feeling of "the dragon swims in shallow water and is played by shrimp, and the tiger falls in Pingyang and is bullied by dogs".

……

Kunming.

Deng Ming followed Wu Sangui's personal guards all the way to the front of the city, although at first he wanted to sneak attack Wu Sangui's guards on the way, but there was always a Qing army on the avenue, and an enemy army had just passed by him, and he would encounter another before he went far, so there was really not enough time for him to do it. When staying at the hotel, Wu Sangui's guards also chose very large-scale and heavily guarded "high-end" post stations, and Deng Ming also couldn't find opportunities in this kind of place similar to a small fortress.

When it came to the vicinity of Kunming City, the patrolling Qing troops were even more numerous than they could count, and it turned out that Hong Chengchou had finished his inspection of the armies in Guizhou and Yunnan and returned to Kunming today, so the Qing army was on strict alert, and Deng Ming did not have any chance to make trouble.

Outside the city of Kunming are densely packed with army camps, of which more than 50,000 Qing troops were brought by Hong Chengchou and Wu Sangui, and more than 30,000 are former Ming troops who have recently surrendered to the Qing court. At that time, it will be Zhao Liangdong who will command them, and he will take his headquarters to monitor these surrendered troops, and in the past few days, Zhao Liangdong has also applied grace to these generals, asking them to fight with the King of Jin with all their strength to show their sincerity with the old master.

Walking to the gate of Kunming, Wu Sangui's guards showed the waist card that Deng Ming had coveted for a long time to the guards, and at the same time introduced the identities of Deng Ming and the others - they were all Baoning soldiers.

"Please untie the sword." The guards at the gate of the city first let Wu Sangui's guards over, and then said politely to Deng Ming and the others.

Deng Ming looked at Wu Sangui's personal guards who led the way with some surprise, and protested: "Why do you treat us like this? ”

"This is the order of the marshal," Wu Sangui's guard looked proud, and explained for the city gate: "In addition to the marshal's personal leadership, foreign troops must untie their swords when they enter the city." ”

His arm couldn't twist his thigh, and since Deng Ming couldn't turn around and leave, he had to take off his weapon unwillingly, and his guards had no choice but to hand over the weapon in their hands when they saw this. The guards at the gate of the city put together the weapons of Deng Ming and the others, and then handed him a number plate: "Return this number plate when you leave the city and bring back your weapons." ”

Before entering Kunming, Deng Ming thought that the city would be very prosperous, because Zhao Tianba had described some of the scenery of Kunming with him, but after entering the city, Deng Ming saw that the city was lifeless, there were no pedestrians on the street, and there was no cooking smoke when it was time for lunch.

After tentatively asking Wu Sangui's guards, Deng Ming learned that after Wu Sangui occupied Kunming, he arrested all the strong men in the city as masters, and their families were driven out of the city to be monitored by the army, and threatened those strong men that if they dared to escape, they would be questioned about their families. Li Dingguo has been in Kunming for many years, and Wu Sangui is not at ease with the people in the city, afraid that there are still hidden works in Xiying; Moreover, after driving all the people in the city out, Wu Sangui may also take possession of the food of the people in the city.

There were many Qing troops attacking Yunnan this time, and Wu Sangui was afraid that other troops would sack Kunming, after all, this would be his place of residence in the future, so now only 10,000 descendants of Wu Sangui and Hong Chengchou were stationed in the city, and all other Qing troops were stationed outside the city. If something happens to enter the city, it must be disarmed, which is also for security reasons, not only to prevent the western camp from mixing in, but also to prevent people from other armies from entering the city of Kunming to fight and make trouble.