Shandong, Dengzhou Prefecture.

"Wei Donggua, is there anything you did calling everyone here today?"

The townsfolk gathered around shouted loudly.

Recently, the people in Jiaodong have been impetuous, and there are rumors everywhere that the army is going to fight back to Shandong, and after 18 years, the land of Shandong is finally going to be replaced with a red flag.

Of course, there were reasons for this commotion in Zhoushan Ming Army. Before arriving in Jiangnan, Ren Tang and others had been vacillating between Zhejiang and Shandong, and had not determined the final target of attack, and after launching an attack on Zhejiang, the Sichuan army was also thinking about moving to Shandong after achieving results in Zhejiang. Therefore, Zhang Huangyan took precautions and sent some Shandong people who had fled to Zhoushan back to their hometowns, so that they could spread the news and report to the gentry who secretly supported the Ming army.

As for the prefectures and counties in Shandong, there was also a lot of rumor after entering April, when the Sichuan army had just arrived at the mouth of the Yangtze River, and there were rumors everywhere that the number of troops exceeded 100,000, and the troops were directed at Shandong, and they intended to use Shandong as a springboard to attack Beijing -- this statement was not very believed by the Qing court, because Beijing generally believed that the Sichuan army was able to repeatedly flow along the Yangtze River because of their superiority in naval divisions, but they did not have the ability to engage the elite of the Qing court in the northern plains.

Of course, the Shandong side also knows the truth of "the south boat and the north horse", but when it comes to the lives and lives of officials at all levels in Shandong, they are still highly nervous, and Beijing has also sent some reinforcements to Jinan for the sake of safety. Until May, after the war broke out in Zhejiang, the alarm on the Shandong side was still not lifted, and many people in Beijing were worried that the Sichuan army would carry out a major expansion in Zhejiang, and then besiege Nanjing or the northern expedition to Shandong.

However, in the past month, the rumors have gradually subsided, because Zhoushan knows that the Sichuan army will not continue to attack Shandong, so the reconnaissance teams sent have returned to Zhoushan, and those Shandong gentry who have contact with Zhang Huangyan have also received the news, Zhang Shangshu asked them to immediately stop all preparations, not to show flaws, or be noticed by the Shandong government of their actions.

Shandong's government is relatively well-informed, and when Jiangning, Suzhou and other places once again complained to Beijing about the emergency, they also knew that the Sichuan army was probably going back. Qing court officials in Jinan and other places breathed a sigh of relief, and in addition to celebrating each other, they wrote letters to impeach their colleagues in the southeast. In the past, the northern provinces had been verbally and penally criticizing the two rivers and Huguang, but now Zhejiang-Beijing has also added that they are also willing to threaten the southeast with these recitals, so that they will know that they are in a state of being guilty of making meritorious contributions.

After the First World War of Gaoyouhu, the impeachment attack on the southeastern governors reached its peak, when the northern governors scolded several governors and governors in the southeast to death. But after the news of the "Kangxi" case came out, the northern governors felt that the water was very deep, and the Empress Dowager, the auxiliary minister, and the prince Baylor seemed to be involved a lot, so they collectively closed their voices, and no one wanted to offend people in a daze when they couldn't figure out the situation. But more than a year later, this major case is still covered with clouds, and the auxiliary ministers will not admit it. Now that the battle of Gaoyou Lake has become a taboo in Manchu officialdom, no one will mention the mystery of the defeat of the emperor in public except for the princes.

At this time, Beijing and Jinan also knew that the Sichuan army was probably about to retreat, and even if the gentry in Shandong did not have connections from Zhoushan, they knew more or less from their relatives and friends that the Ming army's breach of entry into the army was probably about to be repulsed by the Qing troops in Liangjiang, Zhejiang, and Huguang. Although the Qing court was already thinking about the aftermath of the retreat of the Sichuan army, the people at the bottom still knew nothing about it. In the absence of developed media, it takes a long time for intelligence to spread from the top to the bottom of society. It is precisely because of this lag that at the same time as the Ming army retreated, the rumors about the Ming army's Northern Expedition in the Shandong countryside had just reached its peak.

Wei Donggua, who summoned everyone today, had a serious expression: "I called the brothers today, because Mr. Yu has something to do." ”

The general master Yu in Wei Donggua's mouth is the general Yu of Qixia County.

In the early years of Shunzhi, Yu Qi organized the righteous army to resist the Qing army in Shandong, and accepted the Qing court's appeasement in the sixth year of Shunzhi and became the general of Qixia County. Although Yu Qi is only a general, he became a wealthy man after accepting Zhao'an, and the scale of the manor established by the Yu family in Qixia County is known as the largest in Shandong. In the manor, Yu Qi also accepted and accommodated hundreds of green forest heroes, and funded various underworld ways to open martial arts halls, so that the power spread throughout Jiaodong.

Last year, that is, in October of the eighteenth year of Shunzhi, Yu Qi's brothers, Yu 9 and Yu 10, beat Song Yibing, a gentleman from Laiyang, for gambling trivial matters. But the Yu brothers didn't take Song Yibing in their eyes. The Yu brothers gambled a thousand not to mention, and beat themselves hard, Song Yi was furious, but as the son of the squire, according to the inspection of the nephew, he was helpless to take the Yu brothers. Even Song Yibing's uncle advised him to settle things and not get along with the younger brother of Yu Qi, a tyrant in Shandong.

Song Yibing, who was full of resentment but had nowhere to vent, actually sued Beijing for this reason, and asked his father's old man to send a letter of denunciation to the court on his behalf, saying that Yu Qi was plotting against him, and his uncle, who was the envoy, also fornicated with Yu Qi, intending to cause chaos together. At that time, the Qing army in Chongqing was defeated, and the 50,000 Sichuan army was going downstream, and Beijing was too anxious to be distracted, and the case was suppressed.

Although the matter was not dealt with immediately, the officials in Beijing who were involved in the case still chose to believe Song Yibing's report -- he killed his relatives in righteousness and dragged his uncle into the case, which could not help but be believed. Moreover, Yu Qi's strength in Shandong was strong, and after Shunzhi recruited Yu Qi and his tens of thousands of righteous troops in the sixth year, the Qing court's strength had been fighting against the Ming army in the south, and they forgot to cut off his wings. After seeing Song Yibing's report this time, Beijing found that Yu Qi was indeed a hidden danger, whether he really planned to do wrong or not, but he did have the strength to threaten the stability of Shandong.

When there was a lot of rumors in Shandong, Beijing's treatment of Qi was the same as Guan Xiaozhong's old trick against Ma Fengzhi back then, and it did not irritate Qi too much, so as not to raise troops to respond to the Sichuan army. After confirming that the Sichuan army had begun to return upstream and that the main force of the Ming army had entered the mouth of the Yangtze River, Beijing instructed Jinan to take down the isolated Yu Qi as soon as possible to eliminate this hidden danger.

The Shandong magistrate's method of dealing with Yu Qi was the same as Guan Xiaozhong's treatment of Ma Fengzhi, planning to summon Yu Qi in the name of the banquet, and then suddenly attack and arrest him. However, unlike Ma Fengzhi, Yu Qi is a local snake in Shandong, and there are many relationships between black and white, and someone secretly told Yu Qi before the Hongmen banquet of Qixia County Order, and as a result, the Yu brothers resisted arrest and defeated the officers and soldiers.

After escaping back to his manor, Yu Qi confirmed that he had been charged with the crime of rebellion, so he decided to raise troops again without doing anything and endlessly, and passed the message to the heroes of Jiaodong, asking them to join him in the matter--now although the Ming army is gone, the people and heroes of Shandong are not so well-informed, and it is also helpful to do things.

Wei Donggua also just learned about this, his martial arts hall was funded by Yu Qi, and until now, they didn't know that the Sichuan army had retreated. Since the Sichuan army was about to land in Shandong, the benefactor Yu Qi called for an incident again, and Wei Donggua came to gather the heroes around him.

"Have you heard of the third prince in Chengdu?" In fact, Wei Donggua doesn't know how far Sichuan and Chengdu are from Dengzhou, but as long as you have heard of the popular romance of the Three Kingdoms, who will not know Chengdu? Wei Donggua did not immediately play the banner of out of the seven, but first borrowed the momentum of Deng Ming, he knelt down to the west as he spoke, kowtowed a few times in public, and then calmly stood up and continued: "The third prince has five tiger generals under him, all of whom have the courage of ten thousand people, and there is also an old superintendent of Wen, known as the reincarnation of Wolong!" ”

Due to a series of battles such as Gaoyou Lake, Deng Ming became a household name in Shandong, and the name of Fengjie Wen'an was also repeatedly legendary.

Although everyone had talked about Deng Ming in private, they never thought that Wei Donggua would mention it so blatantly, and for a while, everyone was stunned, and they all looked at Wei Donggua speechless.

"Second prince, please!" Yu Qi's letter was just a few strokes, there were no goals and slogans for the uprising, and Wei Donggua didn't know what name to use in a hurry, but since it was anti-Qing, it was always not wrong to raise the banner of the Ming clan, right?

A big man walked out from behind in full view, Wei Donggua didn't say a word, kowtowed to this person three times, and then introduced this person to everyone: "This is the second prince of Emperor Lie." ”

Everyone present was in an uproar, and several people had already shouted: "Wei Donggua, isn't this Li Tiezui who is setting up a hexagram stall on the roadside?" ”

The man known as Li Tiezui looked to be about forty years old, and he strode up to everyone and said loudly: "You know the third prince of Chengdu, right? He's my brother! My original real name was Zhu Zhenlong, and after the martyrdom of Emperor Lie, he changed his name to Li Tongyao, and he was incognito in the township for 20 years, and Wei Donggua already knew it. ”

"Exactly," Wei Donggua hurriedly came up to add, and took out a letter: "I told Master Yu about this, you see!" This is Yu Ye's letter. Mr. Yu asked me to protect the second prince to go to him, and Mr. Yu wanted to recover Shandong and drive the Jianzhou Tartars out of Shanhaiguan! ”

Someone stepped forward to recognize Yu Qi's handwriting, since Yu Qi was going to be reversed, then this matter should not be fake.

And the second prince is still on the side: "My brother already knows that I am here, and he is coming with an army of millions, and the white clothes and white armor still carry the filial piety of my father!" Let's all follow me, and when my brother sits on the dragon chair, you can all be crowned kings! ”

"It's the other way around, it's the other way around! Break into the city of Beijing! Many people shouted excitedly, and soon the cry became loud.

Although Zhu Zhenlong said that he didn't want to be the emperor, he was also the emperor's brother, and everyone bowed to Zhu Zhenlong with Wei Donggua: "Chitose, we will protect you and enter the Forbidden City." ”