Chief Armaments Master of the Ming Dynasty

Ziwu Ridge.

The news reached the valley at the end of January.

Li Zicheng stood in front of the central command tent, listening to Gu Jun'en read out the copy of the report sent back from Xi'an Prefecture by the scouts, and remained silent for a long time.

Yuan Chonghuan was imprisoned, Wang Qiayu died, Zu Dashou retreated eastward and then returned, and Huang Taiji left troops in four cities and led the main force back north.

Every event is like a boulder thrown into the center of a lake, creating countless waves.

However, these waves cannot yet reach the mountains of Ziwu Ridge.

"General, this is a golden opportunity." Gu Jun'en put away the report, his eyes gleaming. "The imperial court is in dire straits from the Jurchens, and all its elite troops have been transferred eastward, leaving Shaanxi vulnerable. We can take advantage of this opportunity to expand our territory."

Li Zicheng remained silent.

He gazed at the snow-capped mountains in the distance, his eyes deep and thoughtful.

"Your Majesty, tell me, did Yuan Chonghuan really collude with the enemy?"

Gu Jun'en was taken aback, not expecting Li Zicheng to ask this.

"This... I don't know. But in court matters, truth or falsehood is never important. What's important is that someone wants him dead."

Li Zicheng nodded.

He certainly understands this principle.

This was true not only in the imperial court, but also within the rebel army.

He thought of Liu Zongmin, of Liu Zongmin's trespassing into the crafts area that day, and of the words Lin Fan had said to him.

Does anyone want him dead? Maybe not.

But it's certain that some people want to take away his power and snatch food from his bowl.

"Your Majesty, issue the order. Starting tomorrow, all battalions will intensify their training. A major battle is inevitable after spring."

He paused, then added, "In Lin Fan's new military camp, increase the daily training time by one hour. Tell him that, no matter what method he uses, he must build me at least ten more steel cannons by the end of March."

"Yes."

Gu Jun'en accepted the order and left.

Li Zicheng stood alone in front of the tent, gazing at the distant valley.

From there, the faint sounds of the new army's drill chants could be heard.

Neat and powerful, each strike like a hammer striking an anvil.

He listened for a while, then turned and went back into his tent.

A map was spread out on the table.

His gaze fell in the direction of Yan'an Prefecture.

That was his hometown, the place where he started his uprising.

After the start of spring, the government troops in Shaanxi will inevitably take some action.

Whether to fight or defend, to make peace or contend, every step must be taken precisely.

He picked up a charcoal pencil and circled several points on the map.

Then, he put down his pen, stared at the circles and dots, and remained silent for a long time.

---

The second day of the second month of the third year of the Chongzhen reign.

Yutian County Town.

Before dawn, just after the city roosters crowed for the first time, Zhao Dashuan, a soldier guarding the city, was dozing off against the battlements, wrapped in a tattered cotton-padded coat with exposed fluff.

He was a local garrison soldier, forty-seven years old this year. He had spent half his life on watch and guarding the city, but had never seen a real battle.

When the news of the Jurchens breaking through Xifengkou and plundering the capital region came last year, he was nervous for a few days. But as time went on, seeing that the Jurchens were only loitering in the distance and had never attacked Yutian, he relaxed.

"Big Brother Dashuan, wake up." Someone nudged him.

Zhao Dashuan opened his eyes groggily and saw Li Erzhuang, a seventeen or eighteen-year-old recruit, whose face was as white as paper.

"What's wrong?"

"Look to the north."

Zhao Dashuan looked in the direction Li Erzhuang was pointing, his sleepy eyes narrowing into slits in the morning mist.

Something is moving on the northern horizon.

It's not a cloud. Clouds don't move that fast.

It wasn't the wind. The dust stirred up by the wind was scattered, but that dark mass, like a huge, moving iron plate, was rolling towards Yutian at an alarming speed.

Zhao Dashuan's drowsiness vanished instantly.

His pupils suddenly contracted.

"Enemy attack!"

The piercing shouts shattered the morning silence and exploded on the walls of Yutian City.

The soldiers were jolted awake from their dreams, rushed out of the barracks in disheveled armor, and stumbled toward their respective sentry posts.

The people in the city also woke up, and the screams of women, the cries of children, and the shouts of men blended into a desperate clamor.

But it was too late.

The Later Jin cavalry arrived too quickly.

They came from the direction of Yongping Prefecture. They were about two thousand elite cavalrymen of the Bordered Blue Banner under the command of Amin Beile, led by Jiala Ezhen Tongtulai.

They set off from their temporary camp in Jizhou before dawn, marching sixty li overnight, all to catch Yutian off guard.

On the city wall, the defenders hurriedly set up muskets, raised the drawbridge, and closed the city gates.

With trembling hands, Zhao Dashuan loaded the musket with gunpowder, which spilled all over the ground.

Li Erzhuang squatted under the crenellations, clutching his spear and trembling, muttering to himself, whether in prayer or weeping, it was unclear.

"Hold on! Hold on!" Battalion Commander Chen Laotie roared as he ran around on the city wall.

He was a retired soldier in his fifties, the only person in this small town who had actually been on the battlefield.

"Don't panic! The Jurchens have come from afar and lack siege equipment; they can't breach the city walls! As long as we hold on—"

A stray arrow flew from below the city and struck him squarely in the face.

Chen Laotie's voice stopped abruptly.

His eyes widened, the knife in his hand slowly slipped from his grasp, and then he fell backward, crashing onto the inner passageway of the city wall, kicking up a cloud of dust.

"The sergeant is dead!"

I don't know who shouted.

The morale of the defending troops collapsed instantly. Those garrison soldiers who had never been on the battlefield could no longer hold on after losing their only pillar of support.

Some people threw down their weapons and ran away, some collapsed under the battlements trembling, and some knelt on the ground praying to God.

Zhao Dashuan did not run away.

He stood blankly by the barricade, staring at Chen Laotie's corpse.

Old Tie always scolded him for being lazy, stupid, and for not being able to assemble a musket properly even after half a lifetime of playing.

But Lao Tie never withheld his salary—even though the salary was pitifully small to begin with.

Last winter, Lao Tie gave him one of his old cotton-padded coats, saying, "You're getting old, don't get cold."

"Old buddy..." Zhao Dashuan murmured.

The Later Jin cavalry had already arrived at the city walls.

They had no siege ladders, no shields, but they had something more terrifying than siege equipment—fear.

Tong Tulai stood outside the city, looking at the panicked Ming soldiers on the city wall, a contemptuous smile appearing on his lips.

He waved.

"Release the arrows."

Hundreds of horse archers were drawn simultaneously, and arrows flew up the city walls like locusts.

Instead of aiming and firing, they used barrage—a deluge of arrows to completely crush the defenders' will.

Screams echoed across the city wall.

People kept falling, wounded by arrows, their blood flowing down the crenellations and freezing into dark red ice on the cold city bricks.

Zhao Dashuan lay prone under the crenellations, arrows whistling past his head and embedding themselves in the wall behind him with dull thuds.

His mind was blank, with only one thought echoing repeatedly—I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die.

Just then, a series of noises came from the direction of the city gate.

The city gates were opened.

There's an inside man in the city.

Zhang Wenda, the magistrate of Yutian County, was terrified when the Jurchens breached the pass last year.

He secretly sent someone to contact the Jin army in Yongping and agreed to surrender the city this morning.

While the garrison's attention was drawn to the cavalry outside the city, he sent his trusted servants to open the north gate.

Tong Tulai's cavalry surged into the city like a tidal wave.

Upon hearing the loud noise from the direction of the city gate and seeing the braided soldiers pouring into the city, Zhao Dashuan's last shred of will to resist crumbled.

He threw down the musket and ran away.

But he didn't know where he was going. He just instinctively wanted to leave this place, to leave these ruthless killers, to leave this city that was about to become hell.

He ran down the city wall and across the street.

The streets were in chaos. Everywhere were panicked people, dragging their families along, crying and screaming as they fled for their lives.

The Jin cavalry rampaged through the streets, their sabers flashing, each strike taking a life.

A woman carrying a child ran past him, only to be overtaken by a Jin cavalryman.

A flash of light, and the woman's head flew off, spraying blood all over Zhao Dashuan's face. The child fell to the ground, wailing loudly. Cavalrymen galloped past, their hooves crushing the child's skull.

Zhao Dashuan's legs went weak. He slumped against the wall, trembling all over.

Warm blood streamed down his cheeks; it was the woman's blood.

He wiped his face, looked at his hands covered in bright red blood, and suddenly vomited.

"Mother... Mother..." he murmured unconsciously, like the child whose skull had been crushed.

A Jin cavalryman spotted him.

The saber was held high, reflecting a cold, icy light in the morning glow.

Zhao Dashuan closed his eyes.

"Put away your swords! Men, stay here. We can never have too many working animals!" A leader behind the cavalry shouted in Manchu.

Upon hearing the sound, the cavalryman wielding his sword deflected his blade and struck Zhao Dashuan heavily with the flat of the blade, knocking him to the ground.

Several Jin soldiers rushed up, tied Zhao Dashuan's wrists with ropes, and dragged him to the side of the street.

There was already a long string of prisoners tied together like livestock.

Zhao Dashuan was tied to the end, his hands aching from the rough hemp rope, but he could no longer feel it.

He turned around and took one last look at his home.

That low, mud-brick house was built by his grandfather, passed down to his father, and then to him. Last year, his wife died of illness, and his son went to Shaanxi to join the army and has not been heard from since. He is now all alone at home.

Now, I don't even have a home anymore.

The mud-brick house collapsed in the raging fire, sending sparks flying everywhere.

Zhao Dashuan was dragged along, staggering northward. Behind him were the burning city of Yutian, the sounds of screams rising and falling, and the triumphant laughter of the Jurchens.

He didn't cry. He had already cried all his tears.

He walked numbly toward a future more terrifying than death.

On the same day. Sanhe County.

The same scene played out again. Another force of the Later Jin army, about 1,500 cavalry, led by Jiala Ezhen Yekeshu, launched a surprise attack on Sanhe at dawn.

The garrison in Sanhe was smaller than that in Yutian, and the city walls were lower.

The Jin army didn't even need any inside help; they simply used timber looted from nearby villages to build makeshift ladders and captured the city wall in a single charge.

Magistrate Wang Maoxue was captured in the county government office. The Jin army tied him to the back of a horse and dragged him for several miles until his body was ground into a mangled mess of flesh and blood.

Sanhe fell.

---

Xianghe County.

Xianghe has no city walls.

This small town, famous for its canal transport, has only one dilapidated earthen wall.

When the Jin army's cavalry appeared on the horizon, the dozens of yamen runners and local militia guarding the city scattered in panic.

The Jin army entered the county town with almost no resistance.

But they did not occupy it.

Their mission was not to occupy, but to plunder and burn.

They took everything they could carry away—grain, cloth, ironware, livestock, and people.

What you can't take with you, burn it all.

The largest granary in Xianghe City, storing grain destined for the capital this spring, was burned to the ground.

The burning and looting lasted for three whole days.

Yutian, Sanhe, Xianghe, Jizhou, Baodi... the counties and prefectures outside the capital that lacked city walls or had weak defenses were repeatedly combed by the Later Jin army like a comb.

The Jin cavalry came and went like the wind, here today and there tomorrow. The Ming army was exhausted and could not catch a glimpse of them at all.

Amin, stationed in Yongping, received daily battle reports from various forces—reporting the number of people captured, livestock, and grain.

A satisfied smile remained on his face.

"Jirhalang," he said to his brother, "look, the Ming Dynasty is like a dead camel. It looks big, but the flesh is rotten. We can cut it up however we want."

Jirhalang did not respond.

He was Nurhaci's nephew and Amin's half-brother.

Unlike the headstrong Amin, he was calm and composed, and rarely showed his emotions.

"The Great Khan said before he left that the four cities must be defended to the death, but not to advance too far," Jirgalang cautioned. "We've now divided our forces in all directions, and although we've gained a considerable amount, our strength is also scattered. What if the Ming army concentrates its forces and launches a counterattack..."

"A counterattack?" Amin scoffed. "What can we use to counterattack? Yuan Chonghuan is in prison, Zu Dashou nearly collapsed, and the morale of the Guan Ning army is shaky. That old man Sun Chengzong is sixty-seven this year; can he still ride a horse? Every single one of the Ming Dynasty's loyalist troops dares to engage us in open battle!"

Jirhalang remained silent.

He knew Amin was right.

Last year, the Ming army was able to defend Beijing in the two bloody battles at Guangqumen and Yongdingmen, but it was also severely weakened.

Apart from Yuan Chonghuan's Guan Ning Army and Man Gui's Xuan Da Army, most of the troops sent to defend the emperor were a motley crew that collapsed at the first sign of trouble.

But his intuition told him that venturing deep into enemy territory and splitting his forces to plunder in all directions was ultimately a major taboo in military strategy.

He didn't try to persuade him any further.

Amin is the commander-in-chief, and he is the deputy commander.

According to the military law of the Jin Dynasty, a deputy general can only offer suggestions, not disobey orders.