A few days ago, Deng Ming and Li Guoying's troops had clashed. ww.vm) At that time, the Ming army in western Sichuan was in constant contact with the Ming army in Wanxian County, and obtained more and more detailed information. Three days ago, Deng Ming announced to his subordinates that Yuan Zongdi had wiped out a large number of Qing troops, so that the number of armored soldiers at Li Guoying's hands dropped to about 12,000, instead of more than 15,000 as previously guessed by the Ming army. In this way, the 10,000 armor soldiers in Deng Ming's hands and the 5,000 armor soldiers in Wanxian County already have a numerical advantage over Li Guoying's 12,000 armor, and it seems that a head-on battle can be considered to lay the foundation for victory.

However, Yuan Zongdi was not very enthusiastic about such a decisive battle, because Yuan Zongdi felt that he had some indigestion. Originally, there were only 40,000 or 50,000 Ming troops in Wanxian, and after capturing 10,000 prisoners in one go, Yuan Zongdi felt that it would take him a long time to digest the fruits of victory. When he learned that Li Guoying was coming to attack Wanxian, Yuan Zongdi had no idea of going out of the city to face the battle, and Yuan Zongdi did not pursue after Li Guoying began to retreat.

According to Yuan Zongdi's experience, prisoners of war had to be kept in custody for at least a year to dispel most of them from fleeing, and during this time it was impossible to bring them into battle or undertake auxiliary work. In order to monitor and control these captives, Wanxian needed to maintain a strong army, so that no one would take risks and start a rebellion or cause trouble. These tasks are the most important for Yuan Zongdi at present, and the strength at his hands is limited, and Li Guoying's army is strong, so Wanxian watched the Qing army leave without any harassment and containment work.

Until he got in touch with Deng Ming, Yuan Zongdi still didn't have any attacks. He felt that if the number of captives continued to increase, he would need to devote more energy to preventing them from joining each other; And if there were too many prisoners in Wanxian, it would take longer for the Ming army to divide and collapse, and it would take longer for them to completely lose the idea of defecting - in short, Yuan Zongdi thought that he had made enough money in this gamble, and now it was time to end the gamble by exchanging chips for real money, and it was not too late to start a new game after he had digested the fruits of victory.

However, Deng Ming was obviously not satisfied with more than 10,000 captives, and Chengdu's digestion capacity was much higher than that of Wanxian, so Deng Ming repeatedly sent people to urge Yuan Zongdi to send troops to cooperate with him.

Although Yuan Zongdi felt that Deng Ming was a little greedy and chewy, but the relationship between the two families was close, and he could not ignore Deng Ming's request, so Yuan Zongdi reluctantly gathered a thousand armor soldiers and personally brought them to join Deng Ming-the main battalion of Wanxian County did not set off, because Yuan Zongdi needed them to stay at home to monitor the large number of prisoners, so as not to cause accidents.

"Yasukuni will probably bring a thousand soldiers to reinforce us." After reading the express letter sent by Yuan Zongdi, Deng Ming said to his subordinates.

"What is enough for a thousand soldiers?" Ren Tang said dissatisfiedly, now there are as many as 70,000 or 80,000 Qing troops blocked near Zhongxian, although the number of armor soldiers is about the same as the Ming army, but it is not the Ming army in western Sichuan with a total strength of only 20,000 can eat.

"Yasukuni does have his difficulties." Deng Ming asked the envoy from Wanxian County, and knew that Yuan Zongdi had reluctantly sent a thousand armor soldiers to support him by boat. In recent years, Yuan Zongdi's strength has swelled rapidly, many of them are soldiers brought back from Hubei, and some are received from Xiong Lan, the original backbone of the Dachang soldiers only accounts for less than half of the Wanxian army, and this time he swallowed tens of thousands of prisoners in one bite...... If it weren't for Deng Ming's repeated invitations, Yuan Zongdi would definitely personally sit in Wanxian County and concentrate on supervising his subordinates to avoid accidents.

"Aren't we in a bigger problem?" Ren Tang said dissatisfiedly.

Although Li Laiheng, Liu Tichun, Hao Shaoqi, and He Zhen also benefited from the appearance of Deng Ming, none of them could compare with Yuan Zongdi's power expansion. But despite this, Li Laiheng and the others have not moved for a year, and they are all busy digesting the fruits of victory. It takes time to get acquainted with unfamiliar territory and the sudden increase in new subordinates, and it takes a long time to train cadres. Yuan Zongdi, who was the most well-fed, was actually the most dangerous now, and if it weren't for Chengdu's continuous supply of materials, his logistics might have gone into big problems long ago.

However, compared to Deng Ming himself, the expansion rate of the power of these generals is simply not worth mentioning. None of Deng Ming's 300,000 strong men in Chengdu and Xuzhou followed Deng Ming for more than three years, and all the generals under him were begged or borrowed from other generals, soldiers joined one after another, and the magistrates even adopted a complete cronyism system.

There is no team, old department, pro-soldiers, no reliable old brothers, according to the standard of ordinary warlords, Deng Ming's current internal organization is not as good as the gangsters who have accumulated years. Although Yuan Zongdi and others did not say it explicitly, they also hinted at Deng Ming, feeling that he should give due consideration to slowing down the expansion and integrating the interior to strengthen cohesion.

However, Deng Ming took these good words as a deaf ear, and still gobbled them up, and brought back the people of western Sichuan to enjoy complete personal freedom, and when recruiting troops, he treated his peers who met the standards equally, and did not consider the issue of loyalty at all-anyway, the most reliable person was also asked from Liu Yao almost two years ago, who could be much better than whom?

A loyal team means a group of people who are willing to obey orders unconditionally, and the chain of loyalty between them and their superiors has been unbreakable over a long period of time. Needless to say, the King of Jin, the King of Yanping County, and even the other warlords also had some absolutely loyal subordinates, whether the commander turned around to fight the emperor of the Ming Dynasty after surrendering to the Manchu Dynasty, or held the banner of the Ming Dynasty to resist the Qing army, these people would not question their commander's decision. Feng Shuangli, Li Laiheng, Hao Shaoqi, and Yuan Zongdi all have such hardcore subordinates, and even Xiong Lan has subordinates like Pu Fu. But Deng Ming didn't, whether it was to let the old Sichuan army go to Fengjie to find trouble with Wen Anzhi, or let Zhou Kaihuang and Yuan Xiang attack Yuan Zongdi, and let Zhao Tianba lead troops to raid Kunming...... Orders like these cannot be executed. The only ones who could do whatever they wanted without worrying about the consequences were teachers like Chen Zuocai, and the others, even those like Liu Yao, senators of the Qingcheng faction, although they had no real power in their hands, Deng Ming did not dare to act rashly, so as not to arouse the dissatisfaction of the bosses of the commercial banks. At present, most of the merchants in Xichuan are from the disciples of the senators of the Qingcheng faction, and Liu Yao and Yang Youcai have the most old departments.

Deng Ming's guards came from the three walls that Li Laiheng gave him, and if there was a conflict with Hu Shuai, the guards would be loyal to the old master. If this situation was encountered by other warlords, it is estimated that he would have been unable to sleep at night, but Deng Ming ate well and slept soundly, and after the battle with Li Guoying, Deng Ming captured 12,000 prisoners and still had no intention of being satisfied, and was bent on blocking the retreat of the Qing army and swallowing the remaining 70,000 or 80,000 Qing troops.

Although Yuan Zongdi himself had not yet arrived, the envoy had once again expressed similar concerns about the Duke of Yasukuni, feeling that Deng Ming should accept it as soon as he saw it, and if the prisoners made trouble in the rear, and there was no army that was absolutely loyal to him, the situation would probably get out of control. One bird in his hand is better than two birds in the forest, Yuan Zongdi was worried that Deng Ming would be able to swallow these tens of thousands of Qing troops, and he would not have the ability to quickly digest them, and in the end, it would lead to turmoil in western Sichuan and unstable people's hearts.

"We have a different system from the Yasukuni Gong." Deng Ming said softly, signaling that Ren Tang didn't have to complain more on this issue, which was also the answer to the questions of Yuan Zongdi and the others in his heart.

Whether it is Li Dingguo, Zheng Chenggong, Li Laiheng, or Yuan Zongdi, they may still have a long way to go to unify the whole country, but the internal unification has been completed, and they are all dictators in their respective mountains, and the power in their hands can be regarded as a narrow scope of imperial power. But Deng Ming is not like this at all, the officers and soldiers and people in western Sichuan respect Deng Ming very much, and also worship his military exploits and reputation, but if you say how afraid he is, it may not be.

Even within western Sichuan, Deng Ming was far from completing the reunification, and he took out his interests to exchange with people from all walks of life, with the bosses of commercial houses, and with Tong Xiucai. In order to let the Mongols raise horses honestly, Deng Ming also had to treat them equally, and also sent the commander of the Mongolian Eight Banners to the Senate to raise them. After the Chen Zuocai incident last time, while everyone respected Deng Ming more, their fear of him also dropped to a new low. Liu Yao and others gradually discovered that although they couldn't provoke Deng Ming, Deng Ming didn't seem to be able to provoke themselves, at least they wouldn't mess with themselves for no reason.

Externally, Deng Ming was a member of the Anti-Qing League, but internally, he was just the leader of the Western Sichuan Alliance.

"We don't need to send people to monitor whether the prisoners are doing their jobs in a real way, and we don't need to be on the lookout for them all day long, and the trouble of the Yasukuni Gong is not a problem for us." Although Deng Ming lacks absolute loyalty to himself compared to other warlords, it is an exchange of interests anyway, and it doesn't matter if there is less violence: "Since the Yasukuni Gong is unable to send a large number of reinforcements, it is a trouble to block Li Guoying." ”

Li Guoying had many exchanges of fire with Deng Ming's blocking troops in the past few days, and at the same time sent people to comprehensively reconnoiter the Ming army's defense line -- the Ming army, which had water superiority, had a great tactical advantage in the near shore area, but the lack of civilian men made it difficult for them to fight far away from the riverbank.

After learning about Sun Sike's suicide, Li Guoying was so angry that he was about to vomit blood, but he managed to hold on, and now he is trying to find a loophole in Deng Ming's defense line.

"When Li Guoying finds out the disposition of our army, he will break through from the area close to the inland, and then the role that our ships can play will be greatly reduced. The Qing army was about four times as strong as ours, and we couldn't fight them. Although Deng Ming was able to foresee Li Guoying's strategy, he couldn't come up with any good solutions: "If we want to form a tight defense line so that Li Guoying can't retreat with his whole body, we need at least 50,000 troops, and the more the better." ”

Originally, Deng Ming expected Wanxian to be able to dispatch to level the strength of the two armies, but Yuan Zongdi could only provide a poor Baba with a thousand armor soldiers.

"We need to quickly mobilize more than 30,000 soldiers and civilians, but Chengdu may not be able to provide so many troops at once." Deng Ming was troubled because he could not offer much to compensate his fellow Xiucai for responding to the call-up, and he estimated that the comptoirs would certainly be more reluctant to let their workers join the army - there was no need to oppose it openly, as long as they made some arguments behind their backs and hinted at wages and bonuses, the workers' enthusiasm for joining the army would be greatly reduced.