Chapter 930

The Jingtai Emperor ascended the throne, and the first thing was to handle the funeral of the late emperor, then issue a great edict of amnesty for the world. After that, even if he hated the second and third princes who were originally fighting against him for the succession, he couldn't take action to vent his anger immediately. He still had to obediently promote them and issue princely titles according to tradition. "Eh? The second brother just accepted his fate like this?" Bai Lang was also quite surprised when he saw the edict saying that the second brother was promoted to Prince of Han, the third brother to Prince of Chu, the fourth brother to Prince of Chengdu, and others had their own promotions.

The second brother probably has to find a way to protect himself, such as becoming a great Confucian—equivalent to a Grandmaster. Of course, the second brother has a flexible mind and many methods; maybe there are other ways. The third brother is quite simple; it is very easy for him to be safe—just request to go out and be a border king. There is no Great Ming Dynasty here, and there are no successful examples of vassal kings rebelling.

The fourth brother has no problem at all, and the Jingtai Emperor has never regarded this fourth brother as an opponent. Among these brothers, the ones he feared most before were the second and third, and now isn't it just the fifth, Bai Lang? Bai Lang's title is still Prince of Jin, just changed to receiving double salary and adding one guard. The Jingtai Emperor even bestowed many eunuchs and palace maids on his mansion. In any case, Bai Lang knew that this guy must have taken the opportunity to send many factory guards to monitor him.

After the Jingtai Emperor took power, this person couldn't wait to implement new policies—the Zheng-tong Emperor ascended the throne as a youth and had been the Son of Heaven for seventy years. The imperial court and the local areas were full of his people. How could the Jingtai Emperor tolerate this situation? So he wanted to implement new policies. "It's nothing more than dismissing a group of people and then promoting a group of people. It can also be said that the medicine is changed but not the ingredients; it's just a normal personnel adjustment." This is how Bai Lang sees it. The late emperor had been on the throne for more than seventy years, already making the Great Wu Dynasty riddled with holes. Let the Jingtai Emperor wipe his butt first after taking power.

The southern great clans joined forces with the imperial court, already exploiting the locals to the point where the common people didn't even have clothes to wear. Propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame could be said to have basically vanished—of course, they still talk about propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame among themselves, but those common people outside who have no clothes to wear are just treated as animals. So when someone rose up and attacked the county town, the county magistrate and the great clans in the city wanted to pull people up to defend the city, but almost all the common people who were pulled were just going through the motions.

Those servants and housemen didn't dare to use the decimal system to force the common people to work, because they really dared to open the city gates directly and surrender to the "chaotic bandits." This "bandit army" raised the banner of "acting on behalf of heaven," and the leader was this guy Xiangpang—at this time, Xiangpang was eight feet tall, majestic in appearance, and held a Pu Dao. This was a hundred-refined blade he forged himself after personally collecting iron ore. The blade was as long as the handle, and the whole blade stood as tall as him.

The blade was wide, and if the blade tip were seen by Bai Lang, he would definitely say it was a well-forged big blade-style tip, with a counter-edge that could pick and stab—because the blade was also a finger thick, the strength of the blade tip was also sufficient. The weight of this blade was quite heavy, which was nothing to a master. At this time, Xiangpang was standing in front of his brothers, looking up at the closed city gates and the official flags standing on the city walls.

"Eating meat and sucking bones..." the young man just said this. Afterward, Xiangpang rushed toward the city wall with big strides, his hands separated, and he saw this Pu Dao floating between his palms, with bursts of purple thunder wandering on the blade. "Spring Thunder Bursts!" Xiangpang shouted, grabbed the handle with both hands, and one blade turned into hundreds of falling thunders covering the sky and earth, directly smashing the ten-zhang-long city wall into rubble and collapsing it.

Seeing their boss show his power, the righteous army cheered and rushed in with the weapons they had just refined and forged from ore. "Surrender and you won't be killed!" The thunderous roar resounded throughout the city. The common people threw down their weapons without hesitation, and the housemen, seeing the righteous army leader destroy ten zhang of the city wall with one strike of thunder-based martial arts, were terrified and knelt down, not daring to move. Xiangpang easily took the county town, killed the county magistrate and yamen runners, and the great clans in the city were all executed. Seventy percent of the wealth was put into the army as rewards, thirty percent was distributed to the common people, and the grain and grass obtained were split fifty-fifty with the common people of the county town and surrounding villages.

Carrying grain, grass, and money, the number of the righteous army expanded again. Within ten days, they broke seven counties and obtained more than 10,000 troops—Xiangpang did not blindly expand the army, but carefully selected them. He only recruited soldiers from the countryside and the homes of common people in the county whose land had been distributed by him, and he also chose the strong ones. The next step was to attack the provincial capital. The mounds in the countryside had already been swept by him—those wealthy landlords, although they called themselves great clans, their earthen forts could not withstand a single strike from him.

What he dreamed of and received in his dream that day was naturally the Purple Thunder Divine Skill. This person was also a natural master at practicing this divine skill. He truly learned it as soon as he learned it, and once he learned it, he became proficient. In the future, I'm afraid he will innovate and go further. This person is also only half a step away from being a Celestial Expert, and the progress of this martial art is simply much faster than Bai Lang's.

How could the local commander-in-chief let such bandits be so rampant? And the true great clans of this province also attached some importance to it. Immediately, they gave money and grain and even provided people, letting the commander-in-chief lead twelve battalions and many guerrilla generals, totaling 30,000 troops, directly to field-battle and encircle the righteous army of Xiangpang. This commander-in-chief, Mao Yi, was also a man who knew military affairs. Immediately, he divided the 30,000 troops into two. He personally led 20,000 as the main force to intercept Xiangpang's army and fight them head-on, while guerrilla general Fa Xiao was the surprise force, leading 10,000 people to wait for the sound of cannons and then bypass to attack from the side and rear.

It is precisely because of this that the battlefield must be chosen, and the interception battlefield chosen by Mao Yi was the Yangguan Road leading to the provincial capital. This road junction had a mountain and a river. The river water was divided into two at the foot of the mountain, one was the Yangguan Road and Yangguan Bridge. The flat land in front of the bridge was quite large and funnel-shaped, and the foot of the mountain extended, sandwiched between the plain side and the river water. When the road passed here, it naturally formed a gap with a mountain on one side and a river on the other, with a width of only thirty zhang.

Mao Yi let Fa Xiao's 10,000 troops cross the river first and then cross the river again, deploying them in the hills formed by the other river channel and the mountain body. There was no passage here, so few people walked. His own 20,000 troops camped and formed a formation on the funnel-shaped plain of this Yangguan Road, preparing to annihilate Xiangpang's army in one go.

In terms of military equipment, he had the advantage. Although the soldiers under his command ate empty rations—originally, this provincial commander-in-chief, together with the battalion leaders, had a military quota of 47,000 people in the Ministry of War. Now, after adding the private armies of local great clans, there were 30,000. It's just that the weapons and armor of these 30,000 people were complete, and those that were crudely made were about one-tenth, which was already considered a conscience.

With advantages in military equipment and troop strength, and this was also the regular army of the imperial court, Mao Yi thought that in terms of training, it was naturally the same. Since this was the case, where was the possibility of losing? This time, he must kill them cleanly and report a good merit.