Chapter 1351: Li Dingguo, Be a Good Traitor! (Subscription Requested)

Li Laiheng stared wide-eyed at Niu Jinxing, thinking: so according to you, if Li Dingguo becomes a traitor, this emperor of mine can slip out of Chongqing Prefecture with full justification and save his life. But if Li Dingguo is a loyal subject of our Shun, then this emperor of mine has to stay put in Chongqing Prefecture and wait to die?

So should this Li Dingguo be a traitor or not? That really is a hard question!

"Your Majesty," Gu Junen now volunteered, "this subject is willing to make a trip to Hezhou and ask His Highness the Prince of Tang to go sound out Li Dingguo."

Sound out? Li Laiheng thought: isn't that just asking Liu Wenxiu to go persuade Li Dingguo to betray the Shun?

This business is truly an unheard-of wonder! An emperor having to beg his own subordinate to turn traitor. If this Li Dingguo is loyal to the Shun to the death, then this emperor of mine is done for! Maybe I won't even get to be the Chongzhen Emperor of the Shun dynasty!

He understood it in his heart, but Li Laiheng could not say it aloud. A man in a high position must pretend to be muddled when the occasion calls for it!

"That works!" Li Laiheng nodded. "You must speak properly with the Prince of Tang. Whether Li Dingguo rebels or not concerns the very survival of our Shun dynasty!"

Gu Junen let out a breath of relief. He had fully grasped the implication behind Li Laiheng's words! This emperor was not muddled after all — the Shun still had hope!

Gu Junen beat his chest and said: "This subject understands! This subject will certainly see the matter through properly. Your Majesty may set your mind at ease!"

Hezhou belonged to Chongqing Prefecture and was not far from the prefectural seat; one could reach it by the Jialing River water route. And since the Jialing water route was still under Shun army control, the road from Chongqing to Hezhou had not been cut. Gu Junen left Chongqing on the fourth day of the twelfth month of the first year of Dongxing, and two days later arrived at Diaoyu Fortress in Hezhou.

The very Diaoyu Fortress where the Mongol Great Khan Möngke met his death in history! After the Shun entered Sichuan, this fortress had become a vital stronghold guarding Chongqing Prefecture, and over twenty years it had been continuously reinforced and expanded until it was extraordinarily formidable.

That was why Liu Wenxiu could hold it with more than ten thousand prefectural troops!

But Liu Wenxiu also knew that holing up in a fortress was a dead end. In history, the Song army held Diaoyu Fortress for so many years — and in the end, did the Mongols not still take the realm?

One city cannot resist an entire state! What was more, the Great Ming was not the Mongols. They were no northern barbarians — they were the legitimate rulers of the realm from the start. They could completely break men's will with offers of amnesty and surrender!

And Gu Junen's arrival gave Liu Wenxiu a wholly new understanding of the business of turning traitor and going over to the enemy!

So in this world there was such a thing as a good traitor! And such a thing as a half-false, half-true surrender!

This world is complicated — even being a traitor is that complicated.

"Prince of Tang," in the study of the Prince of Tang's residence in Hezhou, Gu Junen watched Liu Wenxiu set down the Zhu emperor's edict in his hand without a word, then lowered his voice and said, "In truth, even if Prince Jin's going over to the remnant Ming is real, it must have been out of sheer desperation!

The tide is what it is now, and Prince Jin cannot turn back the flood. Nor can he abandon all the brothers and prefectural troops' families gathered in Long'an Prefecture and flee to Yunnan with only a handful of men! For the time being, going over to the remnant Ming and playing a Lord Guan whose body is in Cao Cao's camp but whose heart is with Han is not a bad choice."

Liu Wenxiu was somewhat stunned by these words!

Whose side are you on, Gu Junen? You haven't betrayed the Shun too, have you?

Liu Wenxiu thought: you are an elder of the Shun old-camp faction! The old Shun emperor Li Zicheng treated you so well — can you bear to betray him? No — you're not sounding me out, are you?

With a slap, Liu Wenxiu struck the table and shot to his feet!

Gu Junen was startled by his reaction and stared at him blankly, his old heart in his throat.

"Marquis of Qi, what kind of talk is this? We, the princes of the council, are loyal subjects who never serve two masters — alive, we are kings of the Shun; dead, we are ghost-kings of the Shun!" Liu Wenxiu said loudly. "We would rather die in battle than go over to the remnant Ming! If Li Dingguo truly dares to rebel, I will muster my troops and march to Long'an Prefecture to take his head!"

"Prince of Tang, calm your anger!" Gu Junen of course knew Liu Wenxiu was speaking falsely, but he could not call it out. Now was the time for talking in circles.

He said: "But what if Prince Jin truly has reached a dead end? Right now the remnant Ming has already broken in from the east. The Micang Road and the Lizhi Road linking Hanzhong and East Sichuan were opened back in the ninth month. The Jinniu Road from Hanzhong into West Sichuan was also brought under remnant Ming control in the tenth month, and the remnant Ming forces in southern Sichuan and Guizhou now hold Dalou Mountain and can march north on Chongqing Prefecture at any time!

So here in Sichuan, our Shun is already beset on three sides and on the verge of collapse!

And Prince Jin, pinned down by remnant Ming forces in northwestern Sichuan, is in an especially perilous position."

The truth was that once Kuizhou Prefecture in East Sichuan fell, the Shun's defensive system in Sichuan collapsed! Because Kuizhou Prefecture not only guarded the gateway to East Sichuan but also bordered directly on Hanzhong.

Once Kuizhou was lost, the gateway from Hanzhong into Shu was thrown wide open. The northern-route Ming army commanded by Wu Sanfu first opened the Micang Road and the Lizhi Road in the eighth and ninth months, linked up with the eastern-route Ming army, and then struck westward at Li Dingguo, who had just suppressed the White Lotus uprising at Dajian Mountain.

And because Li Dingguo's troops had suffered defeat after defeat, and because the wholesale evacuation of Shun prefectural military households from Sichuan had thrown everyone into panic, they had long since lost their former fighting strength. They fought Wu Sanfu twice and were crushingly defeated both times, and had no choice but to retreat toward Long'an Prefecture and Songpan Guard in order to draw close to Ai Nengqi.

But once Li Dingguo withdrew westward, the gateway to Chengdu was thrown open again. Although Li Laiheng had already sent Yuan Zongdi to Chengdu to take charge, how could Yuan Zongdi possibly have the ability to sort out such a chaotic war situation? All he could do was delay Wu Sanfu's offensive and organize more prefectural military households to withdraw to Yunnan.

And the purpose of Li Laiheng holding out in Chongqing Prefecture was likewise to cover the withdrawal of more prefectural military households to Yunnan. And what trapped Li Laiheng was precisely these withdrawing prefectural military households!

If Li Laiheng fled Chongqing Prefecture before Li Dingguo's defection, then the prefectural military households would be hunted down by the Ming army all along the way. When the time came and everyone suffered terrible casualties with nowhere to vent their anger, Li Laiheng the emperor would become the "scapegoat emperor."

It was entirely possible that the moment Li Laiheng reached Yunnan, he would become the Retired Emperor.

Gu Junen suddenly spoke with added weight: "Your Highness, Prince of Tang, now is the time when as long as the green hills remain, one need not fear a lack of firewood! If Prince Jin does not pretend to go over to the remnant Ming, then not only will the tens of thousands of soldiers and more than a hundred thousand dependents under him all come to a bad end — even His Majesty will be trapped in Chongqing Prefecture, unable to move!"

Liu Wenxiu thought: who is this "green hill" you speak of? Li Dingguo or Li Laiheng?

At this point Gu Junen also rose to his feet and gave Liu Wenxiu a deep ceremonial bow. Liu Wenxiu said hurriedly: "Marquis of Qi, what are you doing?"

"Prince of Tang!" Gu Junen said. "The survival of the Shun now rests on how Prince Jin chooses! And Prince Jin is closest to you — surely you are the only one who can persuade Prince Jin and save the Shun in its hour of peril!"

Me, go persuade Li Dingguo to become a traitor? Liu Wenxiu thought: how would I even put it? "Fourth Brother, how about being a good traitor?" Would that even work?

Seeing the troubled look on Liu Wenxiu's face, Gu Junen added: "Prince of Tang, if you do not make this trip, then not only will Prince Jin come to a bad end — all of us will come to a bad end!"

Liu Wenxiu sighed at these words.

Gu Junen went on: "Moreover, as long as Prince Jin and Prince Ai of Chu hold the territory of Ü-Tsang and the Sichuan borderlands and preserve tens of thousands of our Shun's finest troops, then even under the remnant Ming's banner they can help tie down remnant Ming forces! Did not the old emperor of your Western Camp also surrender to the remnant Ming back in the day? And did he not raise the banner of righteousness again afterward?"

A feigned surrender? But no — the current Hongxing Emperor of the Great Ming is not the Chongzhen Emperor of old. A feigned surrender would not be so easy now!

Li Dingguo would probably have to waver back and forth between feigned surrender and real surrender.

At that thought, Liu Wenxiu sighed and nodded: "Very well, I will make a trip to Long'an Prefecture! But I will say the ugly words up front: my fourth brother has always been utterly loyal to the Shun dynasty, and I cannot guarantee I can persuade him. If I do not succeed, I ask Your Majesty to make plans early — by all means, do not hang yourself from this one tree of Chongqing!"

(End of Chapter)