Chapter 747: This Rebellion Will Not Succeed

When the urgent report of the Xuzhou mutiny arrived, even I, Sage Zhang, was a bit stunned.

He knew the Wuning Garrison was somewhat unreliable, but he had not expected that at this moment — when the trend of Zhang Zhou unifying the realm was so obvious, and the empire's main force, the elite troops of Hexi and Longyou, had combat power off the charts — there would still be people so blind.

But on the surface, I, Sage Zhang, remained very composed. He smiled contemptuously.

"Wang Jun cannot read the times. Xue Huairang and Pan Huan have only brute courage and no brains. Who will go capture and kill them for Us?"

Yang Jiye, Gao Huaide, and the others surged forward, all clamoring for the assignment.

Li Cunhui, standing beside Zhang Zhao, also rose. "Sage, let your son go."

Yang Jiye looked at Li Cunhui with some displeasure. "Third Brother, you're already Duke of Wei. Why fight your younger brothers for such a small bit of merit now?"

Li Cunhui glared hard at Yang Jiye, then turned to Zhang Zhao and said, "Your son does not need many troops. Five hundred cavalry of the Right Yulin Guard will suffice.

But Father must issue an order to Defense Commissioner An Taiwei of the Jiaodong Province, directing him to select three thousand elite infantry and cavalry from the various guard stations of Jiaodong Province.

In addition, your son will take away the Pinglu Garrison of the imperial army at Qingzhou Prefecture. With a force of five thousand, pacifying the Xuzhou unrest should be enough."

Zhang Zhao looked at the supremely confident Li Cunhui, pondered for a moment, then said, "What We want is not merely to pacify the unrest in Xuzhou."

Li Cunhui cupped his hands. "Your son understands. The reason I want to steal Sixth Brother's merit is that I fear he would be rash.

The Wuning Garrison of Xuzhou is called an imperial army, but in reality it is still the old Wuning Army of Xuzhou. They hold large tracts of farmland along both banks of the Si River, and most of the Wuning Garrison's families are also in this area.

After your son rides south through the night, I will not attack Xuzhou city. Instead, I will seize the Wuning Garrison's families along both banks of the Si River as hostages and force them to release Dalang."

Li Cunhui understood Zhang Zhao's mind. For the Wuning Garrison, an imperial army, to rebel was already humiliating enough.

If his son-in-law Zhao Kuangzan were lost as well, then Sage Zhang's face would lose even more luster — it would be no different from being slapped twice.

So Zhao Kuangzan absolutely had to be saved, because anyone with clear eyes knew this unrest was the Emperor "fishing." But if Zhao Kuangzan were lost, it would be like catching the fish but using his son-in-law as bait to chum the water — that would be truly ugly.

Zhang Zhao thought for a moment, then said to Supervisor Dong behind him, "Send a palace eunuch to Zhang Liecheng and have him go with the Duke of Wei.

Tell him: the first batch of Wuning Garrison men who came out to make trouble, and all rebel officers above the rank of Chief Supervisor, are people I no longer intend to keep."

After speaking, Zhang Zhao considered for a moment and continued, "But at the same time, tell Zhang Liecheng that We will also issue an edict pardoning the entire Wuning Garrison, and have the Duke of Wei carry it with him."

The words "take the blame" immediately rose in everyone's minds. The Emperor was going to use the edict pardoning the Wuning Garrison to put on a posture of being willing to do anything for Zhao Kuangzan — first fish the son-in-law back, then talk.

Whatever else could be said of Zhang Zhao, this Shaoming Emperor, his credibility was rock-solid. Whatever he promised, he would definitely deliver.

So with the Wuning Garrison's families held hostage and a pardon edict in hand, they would certainly release Zhao Kuangzan.

But resolving it this way was too stifling for the Emperor. Without a circle of people dying, how could it intimidate those who came later? So Zhang Liecheng was the one to take the blame — and this blame was not easy to carry.

Because you could not come right out and say the Emperor's edict was useless. That would be openly telling the whole world either that the Emperor's golden words could be reneged on, or that Zhang Liecheng wanted to rebel.

So this blame had to be carried just right — neither implicating the Emperor nor dragging yourself down with it. It required great skill.

The moment the Emperor raised this matter, Li Cunhui, Yang Jiye, and Gao Huaide immediately fixed their eyes on their noses and their minds on their hearts.

Only Pan Mei and the others, whose status was still not high, looked somewhat puzzled, not understanding why the Emperor would send the dignified Duke of Jiaocheng, Commander of the Brocade Guard, to do such a thing.

But the others knew. Clearly, the Emperor was making Zhang Liecheng carry this blame because of the Hexi Trading Company matter.

Presumably, besides Cao Wanjin and Kang Jinshan of the Hexi Trading Company needing to be sensible, Zhang Liecheng would also have to handle this matter well before he could successfully extricate himself.

Xuzhou.

Wang Jun was far shrewder than Zhang Zhao, Pei Yuan, Guo Tiance, and the others had assumed. He understood one thing very clearly: to make trouble, there was only an opportunity while the Emperor had not yet returned to the Central Plains.

Once the Emperor returned — never mind the forty or fifty thousand elite troops of Hexi and Longyou — the Emperor's personal prestige alone could deal a tremendous blow to rebels like them, possibly frightening some into defecting on the spot.

So according to Wang Jun's plan, after seizing Zhao Kuangzan, they should immediately raise the banner of "purging the wicked from beside the throne" in Zhao Kuangzan's name, send out proclamations in all directions, and directly march troops west, first capturing Shangqiu Prefecture — that is, Songzhou — and then threatening the Eastern Capital.

At present, the entire court could only field the three thousand men of the Hanshan Capital's inner garrison. The remaining imperial guards and imperial troops in the capital combined numbered fewer than two thousand.

With such weak forces to protect the two capitals, and also to safeguard the Empress and the imperial princes, they would inevitably be forced to hunker down and defend Luoyang and Kaifeng.

And if the court's army ventured out to attack, they would concentrate superior forces and crush them.

If they did not come out of the cities, they could seize all the other cities and use the plundered wealth to recruit more desperadoes.

Finally, using Luoyang and Kaifeng as bait, and promising three days of unrestricted slaughter after the walls fell, they believed they could surely obtain an army with soaring morale — breaching the cities would not be difficult.

At the same time, Zhao Zaili would personally lead the former Weibo yabing guards he had recruited to Hua, Wei, and other prefectures, destroy the pontoon bridges on the Yellow River, and delay the troops from Hebei coming south to the rescue.

Moreover, there were accomplices in Chang'an and Luoyang ready to respond. If even one place succeeded, the great matter would be settled — and Chang'an in particular had a very high chance of success.

In this way, the Emperor's great army would be blocked north of the Yellow River, while the families of his officers and soldiers were all in Henan, Guanzhong, and Hexi-Longyou.

With rumors flying everywhere, no matter how heroic the Shaoming Emperor was, he could not stop soldiers worried about their families from deserting.

Chaos would come again, and the "good old days" when the sword in your hand was the only law would return!

Unfortunately, the plan was perfect, but it stalled at the very first step.

Wang Jun's strategy depended entirely on speed. If it slowed, the Eastern Capital court would begin summoning the guard-station troops and patrol soldiers of the various regions — that is, the stout lads of the archery societies and spear-and-staff societies.

These men were not necessarily strong in combat, but as long as they were led by a capable general, holding towns like Shangqiu Prefecture, which already had high walls and thick defenses, would be no problem.

They only needed to keep the rebel Wuning Army from entering the Central Plains heartland, and great merit would be theirs.

So as soon as Zhao Kuangzan was under control, Wang Jun demanded that his co-conspirator Li Yuanzai — Commander of the Wuning Garrison's Left Battalion and former Commander of the Wuning Army's inner infantry — immediately muster the Wuning Army to attack Shangqiu Prefecture.

But after seeing Zhao Kuangzan taken hostage, Li Yuanzai could not resist opening the Jianghuai Province treasury and hauling the great stores of gold and silver inside back to his own house.

When his soldiers saw him doing this, they immediately felt the old days had returned. In groups of three and squads of five, they looted street by street and ward by ward. No one escaped their clutches unless they were family or relatives of the Wuning Army.

Xuzhou sat at a critical junction of water and land routes and was a key trading node between Zhang Zhou and the Southern Tang. In recent years, Zhang Zhou's stable situation had also given merchants some confidence, so Xuzhou Prefecture had developed very well, and there were quite a few merchants in the city so rich they dripped with oil.

Thousands of Wuning Army soldiers plundered like locusts. Fires blazed across the city, and screams rose from all sides.

In the end, the former Later Jin yabing guard scum recruited by Xue Huairang, Pan Huan, and the others could no longer restrain themselves and joined the looting.

They came from all corners of the realm, and with the Wuning Army already having looted for two or three days, there was no more profit to be had. So these men decided to go all the way and directly plundered the families and relatives of the Wuning Army inside the city.

Ha! Now that's more like it!

And so, forget marching out — the two groups started fighting each other directly, much like gangsters brawling in later ages. Even Xue Huairang and Li Yuanzai stepping in could not stop it.

The two sides fought in Xuzhou city with bangs and cracks for two or three days before it was finally mediated to a stop.

As a result, not only was time wasted, but whether it was the Wuning Army's ranks or the murderous scoundrels recruited by Xue Huairang and Pan Huan, they had all filled their pockets in Xuzhou. Everyone was busy hauling gold, silver, and silk home, and no one was willing to go out and risk their lives at this point.

What a joke — the Hanshan Capital! Just hearing the name makes a man's legs go weak!

You, an outsider from Hedong, actually expect us fellows to travel a thousand li to the Eastern Capital to fight those steel monsters of the Hanshan Capital Army to the death? Do you take us for fools?

Only now did Wang Jun find himself dumbfounded. It was at this moment that he suddenly realized — never mind how formidable someone like Zhang Zhao was, even Liu Zhiyuan, whom he had previously thought somewhat hesitant and indecisive, was an extraordinary figure. At the very least, he could make the tens of thousands of killers throughout Hedong grudgingly obey military orders.

No wonder that wretch Hou Yi, after making sure that neither Guo Wei nor Bai Wenke would take part, drove him out as if he had been bitten by a dog. Looking at it now, he had not been wrong.

If Guo Wei or Bai Wenke were here, perhaps only then could these thieving killers below be kept in check and made to act according to military orders.

Wastrels like Xue Huairang and Li Yuanzai could never accomplish anything great.

However, just as the Xuzhou unrest planned by Wang Jun was turning into a complete mess, Liu Renzhan, the Military Governor of the Qinghuai Army at Shouzhou in the Southern Tang, was moving with remarkable speed.

As the only remaining famous general of the Southern Tang, Liu Renzhan had a clearer head than anyone else.

A Son of Heaven like Zhang Zhao was fundamentally different from the Zhuangmiao Emperor of the former dynasty.

The Zhuangmiao Emperor drove away all those close to him, favored treacherous sycophants and court performers, and credited himself alone with the achievement of seizing more than half the realm.

Moreover, most of the warriors of Daibei and Hedong had been promoted and entrusted with authority by his father Li Keyong, and the Zhuangmiao Emperor could not exercise full control over them.

But the Shaoming Emperor was a first-generation ruler who had risen from humble origins. All the famous ministers and great generals of the Zhang Zhou dynasty had grown up following him. Unlike the Zhuangmiao Emperor, who pushed his trusted confidants away, the trusted confidants of the Shaoming Son of Heaven forever surrounded him.

Therefore, Liu Renzhan did not believe that Wang Jun and the others could succeed, and even less did he believe that anyone could keep the Emperor stranded on the steppe.

So his demand was simple: use this unrest to take back the lands of Huainan. Liu Renzhan did not even aspire to Huaibei. As long as he could retake Huainan, he could still establish a reasonably solid defensive line.

After that, he could rely on the two strong fortresses of Shouzhou and Chuzhou to contend with the Zhou army.

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