Chapter 516: Li Zicheng, You've Been Outplayed!

Li Zicheng's Shun dynasty is now at the stage of "rising with vigor," and its efficiency is very high!

As soon as the decree to hang Zuo Menggeng's entire family was issued, the Quan General and Marquis of Ru, Liu Zongmin, who also oversaw military discipline, immediately set to work with his men.

First they surrounded Zuo Menggeng's command residence with troops, then arrested everyone in the Zuo household, high and low, and next came the confiscation of the estate. Zuo Liangyu was not particularly greedy, but sitting in that position, he had certainly saved up several hundred thousand taels of silver! After that came identity verification. It was a huge household, and not everyone bore the surname Zuo — there were plenty of maids, servants, secretaries, and account managers who did not need to be dragged off to hang.

Besides, Zuo Menggeng still had a great pile of wives, concubines, and singing girls! Didn't each one have to be inspected? Those with alluring looks had most likely been forced into the Zuo household, so they had to be rescued. Liu Zongmin was now kind-hearted too — people called him Liu the Great Philanthropist!

And there were some plump this and fertile that, still in their prime, who at a glance could bear children — those had to be sent to Li Zicheng. Li Zicheng still had no son or daughter! Shun Taizong had not yet produced one, and with a third of the realm under him and no heir, he was frantic with worry. Liu Zongmin was frantic along with him, but he could hardly imitate Gao Jie and go help out himself, so he could only help Li Zicheng find women.

Once all these miscellaneous matters were finished, two or three days had passed, and the hour for Zuo Menggeng to set off on his final journey had arrived.

The streets were truly emptied, and crowds lined the route to see them off, all cheering! Some people even picked up stones and clods of earth and hurled them at the Zuo family in the prison carts. Fortunately, Shun soldiers maintained order along the way; otherwise, they would not have needed to wait to be hanged — they would have been stoned to death by countless rocks and clods.

Locked inside a cage-style prison cart, Zuo Menggeng had already completely collapsed. Li Zicheng had been truly vicious this time — the whole family hanged! Old and young, all neatly together, not one had escaped. They were all locked in prison carts and being hauled toward the execution ground!

What shattered him even more was that the escorts before and behind the prison carts were not Li Zicheng's veteran camp soldiers, but the Regional Commanders, Vice Regional Commanders, and Assistant Regional Commanders of the Zuo family army, plus more than a thousand of Zuo Menggeng's own household retainers!

These fellows usually acted like loyal dogs before Zuo Liangyu and Zuo Menggeng, practically wagging their tails, and now they were fully armed and escorting the entire Zuo family to the gallows.

Such treachery of the human heart truly exceeded the expectations of this young commander Zuo Menggeng. And Li Zicheng's ruthlessness also exceeded the expectations of these Zuo army officers and household retainers who were escorting the Zuo family to their deaths.

Li Zicheng was now killing a chicken — no, killing a monkey for the chickens to see!

With the whole "monkey" family about to die, how could the "chickens" not be afraid? Their families were all inside Jiangling city, under the "protection" of Li Zicheng's men. Li Zicheng's soldiers did not need to lift a hand to kill them — if they simply stopped protecting them, the common folk of Jiangling, who hated the Zuo family army to the bone, would devour those people alive.

So in the past two days, Li Zicheng had issued a whole string of imperial edicts reorganizing the Zuo family army without the slightest courtesy.

The remnants of the Zuo family army inside and outside Jiangling, after a strict muster and the weeding out of the old, weak, sick, and disabled, still numbered over thirty thousand men. Without distinguishing household retainers from ordinary soldiers, they were all broken up and incorporated into the various camps of the Shun army. The Zuo officers and the Zuo household retainers were formed into a separate camp, and now they were escorting the Zuo family to their deaths — this was their chance to demonstrate loyalty!

The execution ground was reached very quickly, set up right outside the main gate of the former Chu Prince's mansion. It was spacious there, convenient for the crowd to watch. Li Zicheng sat boldly and imposingly atop the gate tower of the princely mansion, surrounded by a great crowd of civil and military officials. Huang Shu also stood nearby, dressed in a blue robe, utterly delighted. Li Zicheng had just rewarded him with the post of Minister of the Punishment Government. The legal procedures for hanging the Zuo family had been his responsibility, and he had also led men in arranging the execution ground. The gallows and hanging ropes had all been carefully inspected to guarantee that the Zuo family could be dispatched properly.

Of course, the grace of his former master could not be forgotten. Huang Shu had paid out of his own pocket to have thin coffins made for the Zuo family, one for each. The burial ground had been found through the help of the Grand Military Advisor Song Xiance — an excellent feng shui site!

"Imperial Lord, the Zuo family has all been brought!"

"What a huge family!"

"They deserve death a thousand times over."

The crowd of civil and military officials around Li Zicheng had already caught sight of the prison cart procession, and every one of them wore a gloating expression. Only Huang Shu made an effort to put on a somewhat sorrowful look.

Li Zicheng also sighed and said to those around him: "Pass on Our decree: let the Zuo family first kowtow before Zuo Liangyu's coffin, then go down to keep him company!"

Zuo Liangyu's coffin had also been found and was placed on the execution ground, facing a row of gallows that would be used to hang his sons and grandsons.

Who knows what he would think if he knew from the underworld?

Li Zicheng asked again: "Is the Zuo family all accounted for?"

"Only Zuo Mengmei is missing!" Liu Zongmin said. "That little wench is no good person either. She colluded with He Tengjiao to plot against her brother Zuo Menggeng's life and almost succeeded. Fortunately, the Imperial Lord arrived in time. Now that little wench and He Tengjiao have joined forces and retreated to Jiangnan, leaving only one or two thousand men to guard a pontoon bridge on the Yangtze.

Imperial Lord, once the Zuo family is finished, I will lead men across the Yangtze and capture Zuo Mengmei to hang as well!"

"Someone else will deal with her," Li Zicheng said with a smile. "Will that boy Zhu Cilang let her off? Minister Huang, what do you say?"

Hearing Li Zicheng's question, Huang Shu immediately answered: "The Imperial Lord is sagely wise. Zhu Cilang is cunning, vicious, and ruthless — he will not let Zhu Cizhao's family off."

"Then will he come over?" Li Zicheng asked again.

"He will, he definitely will!" Huang Shu said with a laugh. "There are quite a lot of troops on the opposite bank of the Yangtze! The troops under the Chu Prince's mansion number over ten thousand, Zuo Mengmei's lover Zhang Yong has eight thousand Shaanxi soldiers, Ma Jiaolin has seven thousand Shaanxi soldiers left in Yuezhou, He Tengjiao has brought at least another ten thousand or so — oh, and Jin Shenghuan has thirty thousand men, originally stationed at Yiling, who have now also crossed the Yangtze. All these troops together amount to seventy or eighty thousand!

If Zhu Cilang does not come over, won't these troops be swallowed up by He Tengjiao and Zuo Mengmei working together? Then how will he ever usurp the throne?"

Li Zicheng sneered: "We will wait for him right here at Jiangling. He has to travel over seven hundred li to get here, and we can wait at ease for the exhausted enemy!"

"All hanged?"

"All hanged, young and old alike, not one spared. This Li Zicheng is too ruthless."

"Ah, Zuo Menggeng brought this on himself! If he had submitted to Us earlier, would he have lacked the wealth and rank of Wu Sanfu?"

"Indeed."

Inside the traveling palace at Wuchang, Zhu Cilang was receiving Chang Yanling, who had come by night from Gong'an.

Commander Chang was no fighter, so the military affairs on the Gong'an front were now jointly managed by Wu Guoyong, Zhang Yong, Jin Shenghuan, and Qiu Lei, assisting He Tengjiao and Zuo Mengmei. One army, two masters, four men making decisions, and below them a great heap of warlords large and small — it was a complete mess.

He Tengjiao also knew this would not do, so he sent Chang Yanling hurrying to Wuchang to ask Zhu Cilang to come and take charge of the overall situation.

But Zhu Cilang was not confident he could defeat Li Zicheng at Jiangling. No matter what, he was the great military strategist who had killed Hooge — how could he not know Li Zicheng's advantages and his own weaknesses?

Although Li Zicheng's forces were weaker, he held the advantage of interior lines and could clench his fist to strike at people!

Moreover, his core force had already been consolidated. He must have brought a considerable number of his elite troops to Jingzhou; otherwise, he could not have strung up Zuo Menggeng's entire family so easily.

This showed that Li Zicheng had completely taken control of the Zuo family army left in Jiangling, most likely breaking it up and absorbing it. Now around Jiangling, Li Zicheng's army probably numbered around a hundred thousand. With the cannon fodder absorbed from the Zuo family army, Li Zicheng could fight a hard battle in earnest!

And although Zhu Cilang's forces were stronger than Li Zicheng's, they had to be split between Wuchang Prefecture and Jingzhou Prefecture, and he also had to watch the waist at Yuezhou Prefecture. So they could not concentrate their strength!

Furthermore, the troops deployed in Jingzhou Prefecture were very difficult to command — there were several separate factions. Among them, Zhu Cilang's own core force was just Wu Guoyong's single division, which was not easy to integrate.

If the integration of the troops was not successful, there would be no way to fight a hard battle.