Chapter 93: The Fierce Tiger Is About to Escape Its Cage

Inside Qianqing Palace, the light was bright, yet it could not dispel the stagnant, almost palpable heaviness.

Zhu Youjian's eyes were blood-red, shot through with veins.

He sat quietly before a crude sand table, his gaze fixed for a long time on a single spot on the map, utterly motionless.

Beside him, documents of every kind lay scattered across the floor, nearly submerging his thin, frail figure.

Gao Shiming stood in attendance to one side, his eyes just as red, his spirit dazed and weary.

Ever since receiving several military dispatches yesterday afternoon, His Majesty had been utterly unlike his usual self.

He had directly ordered that all personal memorials, routine memorials, military dispatches, and related official assessment reports concerning Liaodong affairs since the Battle of Sarhu be brought into the palace.

Then, leading a group of eunuchs from the Directorate of Ceremonial, he had read and sorted through them without sleep or rest, right up to this very moment.

For documents predating the fifth year of Tianqi, he sought only the general outline; for those after, he scrutinized every word and every sentence.

Once all the documents had been reviewed, His Majesty sat here withered like a statue, not having uttered a single word for a very long time.

He could sense that beneath that silent, turned back, an unprecedented storm was brewing.

Zhu Youjian was indeed experiencing a storm, though it was merely a brainstorm.

Nothing to it — the project requirements changed, so what's a little overtime?

He had once gone two days without sleep or rest to cobble together a proposal, presented it on stage the very next day, and directly won the client's contract.

This level of information density from the feudal era — a mere trifle.

As for why it was so urgent, he could only blame a series of sudden changes that had thrown off his pace.

Originally, he had been proceeding methodically, planning to spend two days digesting the situation in Liaodong.

But man proposes, Heaven disposes.

Yesterday afternoon, three urgent reports arriving one after another had completely disrupted his rhythm.

The first concerned Sun Chengzong.

The old man's heart was still young despite his age; upon receiving the edict, he had set out directly and had already reached a post station on the outskirts of the capital yesterday.

The other two, however, were purely bad news.

Zhu Youjian's fingers gently rubbed a military dispatch from the Ji Garrison.

Three feathers were affixed to it, signifying an express delivery of three hundred li.

The dispatch's content was nearly farcical.

"... The previous report was untrue. Hudun Tuohan (Ligdan Khan) is in good health, and his rear is secure. The past news was a barbarian from beyond the frontier fabricating a story to swindle rewards; the man has already fled without a trace..."

The truly bad news came in the dispatch's latter half.

"... Furthermore, the defending general sent men beyond the pass to investigate from many sources. According to rumors among the Duoyan tribes, Hudun Tuohan is assembling his mounted archers, claiming a force of one hundred thousand, intending to invade westward against the Right Wing Mongol tribes."

"The Kharchin Khan and Buyan Ahai have resolved to resist and have already sent men to contact the Tumed tribe's Boshitu."

"However, the attitudes of the various Duoyan tribes differ; among them, the Rubu tribe's stance is ambiguous, seemingly having no intention to lend aid..."

(For those who cannot distinguish the various Mongol factions of the late Ming, it is strongly recommended to carefully examine the table and diagram below; they are extremely important.)

Ligdan Khan's Western Expedition!

If his transmigration were a game, then this event was absolutely S-rank, epic-tier!

This great event, capable of altering the entire landscape of East Asia, was actually happening in this very late autumn, right after his enthronement!

This was the beginning of Ligdan Khan's ambition to dominate the steppe, yet it was also the prelude to his destined downfall.

Even more, it was the beginning of the Later Jin — that caged fierce tiger — escaping its prison!

Zhu Youjian's gaze shifted from the military dispatch and fell somberly upon the sand table.

His fingers slowly traced across mountains and rivers, finally stopping at the northeastern corner, upon a city marked by a wooden block.

Shenyang.

The current capital of the Later Jin.

The greatest adversary of his lifetime, that man called Hong Taiji, should, at this very moment, be within that city, plotting his conquest of the realm.

Before Hong Taiji ascended the throne, how dire had the Later Jin's situation been?

In Zhu Youjian's mind, the strategic map of the Great Ming's three-sided containment slowly unfolded.

To the west lay the Liaoxi Corridor, stretching from Shanhai Pass to Jinzhou, like an iron arm linking the Mongols on the left and the Bohai Sea on the right, firmly pressing down on the Later Jin's shoulder, preventing it from advancing westward.

To the south lay the territory of Lushun, watching for an opportunity to recover Haizhou and Gaizhou, constantly stabbing at its vitals.

To the east, the Dongjiang Garrison supported Joseon and harassed Kuandian and the coastal regions, severing its hamstrings.

These three invisible chains trapped the Later Jin firmly within the confined area of Liaoyang and Shenyang.

Thus, although the Later Jin's momentum was fierce, it was ultimately the desperate struggle of a trapped beast.

Its roar was loud, its posture ferocious, yet its claws could not reach far after all.

In the fifth year of Tianqi, Nurhaci, wielding the might accumulated over several years, personally led a great army in a fierce assault on Liaoxi, only to be bloodily repelled beneath the walls of Ningyuan and return in defeat.

That battle restored the Great Ming's prestige.

In the words of contemporaries: "Since the calamity in Liaodong began, every city has collapsed at the mere rumor of their approach; for eight years the rebels have now suffered their first defeat, and thus the realm knows there are still men of ability in the Central Plains!"

His elder brother, the Tianqi Emperor, was even more overjoyed and issued an edict of commendation: "A feat unseen in these seven or eight years, deeply sufficient to restore honor to the frontier!"

At the same time, the Later Jin's internal situation worsened, adding frost to snow.

A great famine ravaged the land; grain prices soared, with a single dou of rice costing ten taels of silver, and even the tragedy of cannibalism occurred.

Yet Nurhaci merely issued a cold and cruel order — kill all those without grain.

The Later Jin at this time, though one could not say it had turned from prosperity to decline, had indeed reached its lowest ebb since raising its army.

If only the Great Ming could seize the opportunity at this moment and deliver one more fatal blow, perhaps this mortal affliction could be eradicated at the root.

One must understand that when the small challenges the great, what is most feared is falling into a stalemate.

The smaller side must rely on a continuous string of victories to maintain morale and prestige; once its offensive is blunted and it becomes mired in a war of attrition, defeat is not far off.

——Wasn't a certain war in later ages exactly the same?

Yet, as it happened, at this very juncture, in the eighth month of the sixth year of Tianqi, Nurhaci died, and Hong Taiji ascended the throne.

He stepped onto the stage of history one year earlier than himself.

What Hong Taiji inherited was a wretched mess, beset by troubles within and without.

Powerful enemies ringed him on the outside; famine and civil unrest plagued the interior. In power, he was further shackled by the joint rule of the Four Great Beiles, checked and constrained at every turn.

And yet, faced with this seemingly hopeless deadlock, Hong Taiji took only four short months to play a single move of heaven-startling brilliance.

Overriding all dissent, he refused to touch the solid Ning-Jin defense line. Instead, he swung his forces eastward — first smashing Dongjiang, then pressing down on Joseon. In a single campaign, he forced the Joseon king, Yi Jong, to sign a "Brotherly Covenant."

The Dongjiang garrison was badly crippled, and Joseon, once a sworn ally of the Great Ming, became, to a certain degree, a granary for the Later Jin.

The Later Jin's provision problem was solved, and Hong Taiji's personal prestige soared to its zenith.

The first chain was on the verge of snapping.

By the fourth month of this year, riding the prestige of his great victory, he came sweeping back to attack Ning-Jin once more.

The result, as before, was an army stalled beneath impregnable walls.

This seemed to prove that, so long as the defense line held firm, the Later Jin remained powerless.

And now, Ligdan Khan's western campaign had delivered into Hong Taiji's hands the perfect opportunity to break the second chain.

The Ligdan Khan of history possessed grand ambition but no magnanimity. He subjugated the Mongol tribes by force of arms, and everywhere he passed, he drove men's hearts away from him.

Hong Taiji would seize this chance that came once in a thousand years, raising the banner of "Oppose Ligdan Khan" to unite every tribe that hated Ligdan Khan and strike the Chahar together.

As one side waned and the other waxed, Ligdan Khan would find himself abandoned by allies and followers, ultimately meeting defeat and death in Kokonor.

And Hong Taiji would thereby gain the allegiance of all Southern Mongolia, winning the right to strike freely along thousands of li of the Great Ming's northern frontier wall.

When that day came, the so-called Liaoxi chain would lock down nothing but the Guan-Ning Army itself.

Absolute strategic superiority, combined with Mongol cavalry, Jurchen agriculture and iron-smelting technology — the two fused together…

Then the tiger and the rhinoceros would burst from their cage, and none could ever restrain them again!

Zhu Youjian's fingers tapped lightly on the sand table, producing a dull, muffled sound.

None of this had yet come to pass.

This year, 1627.

Ligdan Khan, thirty-five years old. Hong Taiji, thirty-five years old.

And he, Zhu Youjian, seventeen years old.

Three sovereigns who would decide the future fate of East Asia stood, in this year, at the crossroads of their respective destinies.

Where would their first clash unfold?

Zhu Youjian's gaze roamed across the sand table — from Ning-Jin, to Dongjiang, to the vast Mongol steppe — his eyes distant and profound.

The great current of history surged forward like a rolling flood, rousing boundless ambition in a man's heart.

And he — this soul from a later age, this youngest monarch of the Great Ming, this player of the board who in theory held the mightiest power in the land — could he, on this chessboard already played once before, place the single stone that would overturn heaven and earth?