Red Mansion: Seizing Jiangdong, starting with pirates

Chapter 103, Wu Sheng's Death

After the death of the Jin thief, the government and the army began to divide the spoils.

The Governor-General of Zhili sent an army of 15,000 men, but the leader was not the Governor-General himself, but his nephew, named Gao Zhi.

Chen Zhengdu and Gao Zhi joined forces to encircle and wipe out the bandit troops, countless of whom surrendered.

Chen Zhengdu is now considered a veteran general. After having been tempered by countless wars, big and small, he has the bearing of a strong general. He is no longer the boy who was scared away by Fang Yong's arrow in Zhongwu.

Gao Zhi is just a pampered young man, how can he compare with him?

Therefore, when dividing the results of the surrendered soldiers, Chen Zheng relied on his own qualifications to pick out all the good fighters among the surrendered soldiers, leaving only a bunch of old and weak ones for Gao Zhi.

Gao Zhi could not compare with Chen Zhengdu in terms of official position or qualifications, so he could only swallow his anger and keep the matter in mind.

At that time, Yuan Tianyou and Tang Ming, who were ordered to plunder, successfully bypassed Hejian City and brought 50,000 troops to the wealthy places such as Botou.

The two men each led 25,000 men and divided the work of looting.

Yuan Tianyou loved treasures, killed people and looted goods, and plundered countless gold, silver and treasures.

Tang Ming was lustful. He searched house to house for beautiful women, captured them for his own pleasure and used them as military prostitutes. He also seized food and clothing from every household.

Anyone who disobeyed them would be slaughtered by the two men.

The two men had a clear division of labor. In just six or seven days, they plundered countless wealth and food, and the convoy they escorted was longer than their army.

Wang Ziteng knew about the looting by these two men, but he deliberately turned a blind eye to it and waited until the two men finished looting before encircling and suppressing them together.

The two men had no idea about this and were worried that their return would be too conspicuous and they were afraid of being discovered by the government troops in Hejian City, so they took a detour to Wuzhou County, 50 miles away.

As expected, they were ambushed on the way and all the looted supplies were buried. The two generals only led more than 2,000 people to break out of the encirclement and escape back to the Jin bandit camp.

Wu Sheng was horrified when he saw the two men who had escaped. Soon he received the news of the death of Deng Xianlai and others, which made Wu Sheng even more frightened.

Although he has a large number of soldiers and horses at this time, he does not have much food and fodder. His men are in disarray. Once the food and fodder are exhausted, a mutiny is bound to occur, and he will die without a burial place!

Wang Ziteng in the east, Gao Zhi in the west, and Chen Zhengdu in the south were all eyeing him covetously.

He can't afford any failure now.

If you attack any one of them, the other two will definitely send troops to rescue.

Wu Sheng didn't dare to take the gamble. After much thought, he decided to lead his troops north to solve the food and grass problem first.

To be honest, Wu Sheng is a little regretful now. He had only focused on expansion before, but never thought that food and grass were so important!

Fortunately, Deng Xianlai and others are all dead, and now no one objects to his going north.

Wu Sheng led his army and marched quickly north.

Since Wu Sheng had never read any military books, the dispatch of his army was a mess.

Which army was in the front and which was in the back? There was no preparation at all for scouts, marching routes, time planning, and material distribution.

It was just that the gangsters, big and small, were just walking around in one direction without any overall planning.

As soon as Wu Sheng set out, Chen Zhengdu immediately took the lead and led his troops to follow, chasing and fighting.

When Wang Ziteng and Gao Zhi saw Chen Zheng leaving, they also left.

The three parties followed the Jin bandit troops, neither getting closer nor moving away, but nibbling away at them step by step, compressing the Jin bandits' living space bit by bit.

Once Wu Sheng chose to stop fighting, the three sides immediately retreated. Wu Sheng, who was short of food and grass, did not dare to pursue them.

As long as Wu Sheng continued to march, the three armies would catch up and bite him like hyenas. Wu Sheng had no way to deal with this situation and could only urge his men to speed up their march.

What Wu Sheng didn't know was that there was an ambush waiting for him in Baiyangdian.

As Wu Sheng had been supervising the march, his army stretched for dozens of miles, and Wu Sheng was in the middle, not taking care of the front or the rear.

The vanguard army rushed into Baiyangdian without any preparation and was directly attacked by Wang Ziteng's ambush.

When the news reached the central army, Wu Sheng was afraid that the front army would be surrounded by the ambush troops of Baiyangdian, and he would be trapped here, so he hurriedly led his troops to rescue them. However, this distanced him from the rear army.

Upon seeing this, Wang Ziteng led his troops forward without hesitation and cut off Wu Sheng's rear army.

Chen Zhengdu and Gao Zhize led their troops to attack as planned.

In terms of military strength, the three parties combined are no match for Wu Sheng.

But the so-called military strategy is to use military tactics to allow more of our soldiers to fight against fewer enemy soldiers at a certain point, and then gradually defeat the enemy. This is the essence of defeating the enemy with a smaller force.

Chen Zheng realized this through many actual combats. He led his troops to break through the Jin bandit army's formation and asked Gao Zhi to lead his troops to block the bandit army on the flank. He personally led the most elite troops to tear open the enemy's formation, kill into the bandit army, and capture the bandits and their leader.

Gao Zhi readily agreed to Chen Zhengdu's request, but then did not act according to the agreement.

After Chen Zhengdu led his troops into the enemy camp, Gao Zhi did not provide any cover, which led to Chen Zhengdu quickly suffering from countless crazy attacks from the Jin bandits.

Chen Zheng knew that Gao Zhi was deliberately trying to harm him, but he had no other choice at this time. He could only fight to the death, relying on the less than 20,000 veteran soldiers around him who had fought their way out of the mountains of corpses and seas of blood in Zhending, and tried his best to break through the enemy's encirclement.

Chen Zhengdu and the old soldiers around him were covered in blood, like demons, and their roars shook the sky.

They tore a hole in the encirclement of thousands of bandits and rushed to Wu Sheng.

Apart from experiencing a few battles when he just started the rebellion, Wu Sheng had been enjoying himself afterwards and had long lost his original bloodiness. Now, after seeing this scene, how could he still have the will to fight?
Wu Sheng ran away wildly, surrounded by his men.

Chen Zhengdu held a spear in his hand, rode his horse and chased wildly, sweeping away the bandits with unstoppable force.

The setting sun is as bloody and the wind is as picturesque as a painting. The murderous aura rises to the sky and scatters clouds!

While running away, Wu Sheng only felt the spear light behind him, and tears and snot flowed from his face with fear.

In less than a year, the corruption of power turned this young man who once captured the city alone into a useless person who only knew how to enjoy wealth and glory.

Wu Sheng fled and Chen Zhengdu chased him.

Because he was constantly blocked by bandits along the way, Chen Zheng was never able to catch up with Wu Sheng.

However, during the pursuit, Chen Zhengdu achieved the achievement of killing millions of troops.

Although this achievement of killing a million troops is a bit exaggerated, no matter what, Chen Zheng, who achieved this, has already won a place among countless generals in terms of combat strength.

The pursuit lasted from day to night. Chen Zhengdu's horse died, and more than half of the old soldiers around him also died. There were less than three thousand people left.

But it's finally over.

At this time, Wu Sheng was at the end of his rope. He ran all the way out of Baiyangdian while being chased by Chen Zhengdu, lost contact with the main force, and came to Dongwan Town with only a few hundred men left.

This place is not far from the capital, but Wu Sheng’s dream of reaching the capital will end here.

At dawn, Chen Zhengdu blocked Wu Sheng in a ditch.

Finally caught it!
The sun was rising at this time. Looking at Wu Sheng who was standing in the ditch with a look of despair on his face, Chen Zheng laughed out loud.

The hoarse but happy laughter could be heard over three miles away.

Not far away, Mao Cheng lazily got up from the tent.

However, it is said that before Mao Cheng went to the capital to ask for merit, in the letter, Wang Ziteng asked Emperor Longqing for a batch of troops.

In order to wipe out the Jin bandits, Emperor Longqing had to squeeze out 12,000 soldiers from his teeth and give them to Mao Cheng to take back.

Due to the lack of warships, Mao Cheng took the land route.

However, due to the unfortunate experiences that Mao Cheng had encountered bandits twice, once by the White Lotus Sect and once by the Huaiyin bandits, these two experiences left Mao Cheng with a great psychological trauma.

He did not dare to engage in battle with the enemy army, so he led his troops to march as slowly as possible, twenty miles today, and if he walked more, ten miles tomorrow. He maintained this speed, so now Mao Chengcai had just left the capital and was stationed near Dongwan Town.

Mao Cheng was stunned when he heard laughter in the distance.

"What's going on? Who's laughing?"

(End of this chapter)