Chapter 525: Zhu Cilang, This Is a Crooked Deal Among Crooks!

In the third year of the Shun's Yongchang era, at the height of summer, Jiangling City.

The summer cicadas droned on and on, seemingly without end, until every sovereign and subject in the great hall of the Jiangling traveling palace was thoroughly agitated.

It was called a great hall, but in truth it was not great at all — merely the most presentable hall left in this princely residence after it had twice suffered catastrophe. And with so many people crammed inside, it did not seem spacious in the least. The weather was hot besides, and though several basins of ice had been placed in the four corners of the hall, they did nothing to lessen the stifling heat within. The high officials in their blue robes and black gauze caps stood there, watching Li Zicheng, whose heavy brows had not relaxed once since his return from Huya Mountain, and none of them dared even breathe loudly.

Those summoned to pay their respects today were all old hands of the main camp. Even Huang Shu, who had been much favored of late, was not among them — if Zuo Liangyu and Zuo Menggeng were counted as an independent force, then Huang Shu was a man who had served three masters!

And he had also brought ruin upon the family of his previous master, Zuo Menggeng... How superstitious was Li Zicheng about being emperor? How could he possibly trust this "master-destroying" Minister Huang?

So not long before, Li Zicheng had given Huang Shu an important assignment: to accompany Yan Ximing, Right Chancellor of the Xi state, who had come to Jiangling to seek reinforcements, into Sichuan to meet Zhang Xianzhong — and Zhang Xianzhong was far harder to serve than Li Zicheng. Li Zicheng was also quite ferocious, but he still had some sense of reason and would not kill without cause.

But Zhang Xianzhong needed no reason to kill. If he felt like killing, he killed — who cared who you were?

So among the civil and military officials who had served under Li Zicheng for any length of time, no one was willing to go to Sichuan to see Zhang Xianzhong. Huang Shu was new and did not know the danger, so he went. Whether he would survive depended entirely on his luck.

But even if Huang Shu had not gone to Sichuan, he would not have been qualified to appear in this suffocatingly hot great hall today.

Because the matter to be discussed today had to be kept from spreading!

Li Zicheng held two memorials in his hand. One was jointly submitted by Yuan Zongdi and Bai Wang, reporting on the new developments in the class struggle in the two prefectures of Xiangjing and Nanyang... The common people there had already forgotten the great kindness of His Imperial Majesty Li Zicheng, and had all been incited by Zhu Cilang and Zhu Yujian to turn against the Shun.

Although the prefectural cities of Nanyang and Xiangjing were safe for the time being, elsewhere there was no guarantee!

And Yuan Zongdi and Bai Wang, concerned for the families of the main camp soldiers and unwilling to let them become targets of revenge for the peasants of Xiangjing and Nanyang, had concentrated them in Xiangjing City as much as possible.

But this in turn had further accelerated the collapse of Shun rule in the rural areas of the two prefectures!

Yet the bad news from Xiangjing and Nanyang was not what angered Li Zicheng most. Anyone with any military sense knew that Xiangjing was an iron-forged, bronze-cast stronghold that would not fall quickly.

As long as Xiangjing was not lost, the Shun could barely maintain its position in northern Huguang.

Moreover, the road from Xiangjing retreating along the Han River to Yunyang and Hanzhong was not so easily cut off, so even if the battle situation turned unfavorable, the troops, supplies, and main camp families Li Zicheng had placed in Xiangjing could still withdraw along the water route.

But the memorial from Liu Fangliang, garrisoning Hanyang Prefecture, greatly disappointed Li Zicheng — Hankou Town, firmly guarded by the Yuangong Dyke and the Guishan Fort, had fallen less than fifteen days after the Ming army launched its offensive.

And what was more... those fifteen days of siege warfare had not been intense in the least. The Ming army had mounted only a single assault — the charge that broke through the Yuangong Dyke on the fifteenth day of the campaign.

Before that, the Ming army had merely been digging trenches and emplacing a kind of giant cannon capable of lobbing explosive shells, then carrying out endless bombardment...

The Yuangong Dyke could withstand direct-fire solid shot, but it could not stop explosive shells falling from the sky along parabolic arcs!

And the ceaselessly falling explosive shells inflicted heavy casualties on the Shun officers and men defending the Yuangong Dyke, and their morale sank extremely low — they had never seen such a weapon, and could not imagine that the enemy possessed so much gunpowder that it seemed it would never be exhausted.

So when the Ming army launched its assault, the Shun defenders there had long since suffered mental collapse and were powerless to resist.

And the fall of Hankou Town also placed the Guishan Fort within the fire coverage of these terrifying "lobbing cannons"! Because Guishan was less than two li from the northern bank dyke of the Han River, and twenty-pound mortars could easily reach it.

And the Shun army's Hongyi cannons and Great General cannons deployed on Guishan, because of too many dead angles in their fields of fire, could not reach the cleverly positioned Ming mortars at all.

And once the Guishan Fort was completely suppressed, the Ming army's Yangtze fleet could pass through the blockade line and enter the waters of the Jing River...

"Your Imperial Majesty, Zhu Cilang has gone too far in bullying us... How many troops does he even have in Huguang? How dare he advance on three routes and fight us? I say he's courting death!"

The speaker was General of the Guard Liu Zongmin. He was truly infuriated by Zhu Cilang's "throwing away the script" behavior, and wished he could immediately lead troops to kill Zhu Cilang.

"Courting death?" Li Zicheng cast a sidelong glance at this crude fellow Liu Zongmin. "Do you have a plan?"

"Well..." Liu Zongmin said, "What plan could I have? I only know that our forces in Huguang are no fewer than that Zhu fellow's! And our forces can concentrate in one place, while Zhu Cilang must divide his troops."

Li Zicheng nodded. This crude fellow did know how to fight after all.

He glanced at Tian Jianxiu: "Yufeng, speak."

Tian Jianxiu said, "Your Imperial Majesty, Jiexuan is right. We shouldn't care how many routes he comes by — we should just kill our way down one route!"

"Which route do we kill down?" Li Zicheng asked again.

"Kill our way to Xiangjing and Nanyang!" Tian Jianxiu said loudly. "Damn it all, they dare seize my territory! If I don't teach them a lesson, I'll write my surname Tian upside down from now on!"

"Tian upside down is still Tian!" Li Zicheng reminded him, and the hall erupted in laughter.

Gu Junen, however, wore a grave expression: "We cannot return to Xiangjing and Nanyang. That is a land contested on all sides, caught between the Tartar caitiffs and the Zhu bandit. Even if we could drive off the Zhu bandit, what then when the Tartar caitiffs come right after? And besides, the hearts of the people..."

Li Zicheng nodded, silent.

Gu Junen continued: "And if we return to Xiangjing and Nanyang, how can we still enter Sichuan? Without entering Sichuan, how can the three-way division of the realm take shape? Your Imperial Majesty, the old brothers have fought life-and-death battles at your side for so many years — they cannot be left without a proper end!"

Li Zicheng's brows knotted: "Well said... I cannot let the old brothers down!"

These words already carried a note of discouragement, but a leader of one side in chaotic times always had to make plans for every contingency.

Gu Junen said: "To retreat and still be able to enter Sichuan... we must fight a decisive battle with the Zhu bandit in the Jingzhou-Yuezhou area!" He weighed his words. "And we cannot delay. We must force the decisive battle before the Guishan Fort is destroyed by the Zhu bandit!"

Li Zicheng's brow furrowed deeply as he muttered to himself: "The Zhu bandit's grand camp in Jiangnan cannot be attacked... That bridgehead north of the river also looks extremely solid — small and hard, very difficult to take!"

Siege warfare had never been the Shun army's strong suit, while building fortifications and defending them was precisely the specialty of the Kenan New Army — the Nanjing Military Academy even had a dedicated "fortification course" that taught how to construct bastion forts.

Though it was only a crash course, the knowledge learned there was more than enough to deal with Li Zicheng's Shun army.

So Li Zicheng did not expect his own army to be able to seize by storm the bridgehead at the pontoon bridge south of Jiangling City.

"Your Imperial Majesty," Gu Junen said thoughtfully, "this subject knows that outside Shishou County there is a stone mountain, its northwest side bordering the Yangtze, about fifty zhang high. If cannons were deployed on its summit, they could blockade the river."

Gu Junen was a native of Zhongxiang County, Chengtian Prefecture, Huguang, from a landlord family, and an educated man who had passed the xiucai examination. In his youth he had traveled widely through Huguang, and had been to Shishou, so he was very familiar with the terrain there.

"Cross the river?" Li Zicheng was still somewhat worried.

Gu Junen shook his head: "Stone Mountain covers little ground and cannot hold a large force... We can first make a show of strength to draw the Ming army east to reinforce, then hold the mountain with elite troops and set up decoy forces north of the river. Then the main force crosses the Yangtze northward and advances west, to see whether we can break through the Hukou Crossing grand camp and the northern bridgehead.

If we succeed, then the whole of Jingzhou Prefecture and Shizhou Guard can be taken by Your Imperial Majesty, and the road into Sichuan will lie open."