"Okay!" Wu Dun was completely moved by the beautiful scene described by Lin Shuhan. "I will write a letter right now to urge my father to send troops to help. It's not enough to just write to my father, I also have to write to Mr. Cai Wenchou. You don't know that my father believes in Mr. Cai the most, and although Mr. Cai is in Bohai, he always has his heart with the Han Dynasty. He will not fail to help the Han Dynasty if it is in trouble."
As he spoke, Wu Dun could not wait to ask his servants to prepare the pen, ink, paper and inkstone. He wrote two letters crookedly and was about to seal them up himself when he heard Qiu Yizi say, "I have another request. Please give it to Dali Khan as well."
"Please go ahead." Ulton immediately stopped what he was doing.
"I heard that your sister, Princess Yiran, gave birth to my descendants. This time your country is sending troops south, please ask these two to come along..." Qiu Yizi said.
Wulton thought about it and agreed without hesitation: "This is what I should do. I will add this sentence for His Highness Yi."
After that, he unfolded the folded letter again and wrote Qiu Yizi's request after the main text. Although his writing style was not formal and solemn, it made these requests particularly conspicuous and abrupt, which made people pay attention to it. Therefore, Qiu Yizi had nothing to be dissatisfied with.
Just like that, more than a month passed, and things were developing more and more in the direction that Qiu Yizi wanted, and good news came one after another.
First, Li Shengjie followed Qiu Yizhi's order and no longer blocked the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in Zhenjiang, Jinling, and Jiangyin. Instead, he led his own navy up the river, took advantage of the flood season of the Yangtze River, and moved through the Three Gorges to the junction of Bashu Road and Shanxi-Shaanxi Road, directly blocking the power of Shanxi-Shaanxi Road, which Zheng Xin had been operating for a long time, and directly going south to Sichuan.
Another passage from Shanxi to the interior of the country is Huguang Road. This place should have been guarded by the Left General Wei Hu. However, after Wei Hu was detained by Zheng Xin, the troops here were temporarily taken over by Liu Qing. Liu Qing was of ordinary ability and could only barely gather the troops. It was difficult for him to spare some to directly support Qiu Yizhi in the capital, but he did block an important passage for Zheng Xin to invade other places from Jiangnan.
On Zheng Xin's side, Zheng Tinghang of the Grain Transport Office had transported all the grain and supplies stored in Jiangnan to the north in advance. In addition, Jiangnan had experienced a turmoil a year ago and was in a period of transition, so it was indeed difficult to maintain a large-scale operation of more than 300,000 troops.
Unfortunately, the remnants of the Lingnan Palace had not been destroyed, and they were still stirring up trouble in Quzhou and Wenzhou in the southern part of Jiangnan. In order to focus all his attention on dealing with Qiu Yi, Zheng Xin could only assign 30,000 troops to Dai Luanxiang, the former general who was sent south by the late emperor's will, to suppress the remnants of the Lingnan Palace.
Dai Luanxiang had already planned the plot with Qiu Yizi earlier. Now that Zheng Xin had sent his troops, he took advantage of his high prestige in the army to gradually squeeze out the officers planted by Zheng Xin and replace them with officers he trusted, thus taking control of the army.
Zheng Xin was not a fool. He saw Dai Luanxiang's actions and was naturally very concerned. He originally wanted to use the method of cutting off the logistical supply of Dai Luanxiang's troops to force Dai Luanxiang to hand over the military power again. However, Dai Luanxiang did not look down on the military rations and supplies allocated to him by Zheng Xin. Instead, he found Xu Rong, the governor of Yuezhou, Huang Wangang, the governor of Suzhou, and Zheng Tinghang, the general manager of the grain transport, and directly asked them for military pay.
These people had long been secretly in contact with Qiu Yizhi, and were thinking of ways to hand over the grain and grass under their jurisdiction to Dai Luanxiang. Zheng Tinghang, in particular, simply allocated all the materials that had not been shipped to Jiangbei in time to Dai Luanxiang.
Zheng Xin originally had some prejudice against Zheng Tinghang, and Zheng Tinghang had done two serious things that aided the enemy in just one month, which made Zheng Xin no longer care about the filial piety of "not changing the rules of the previous king for three years" and immediately decided to send someone to deal with Zheng Tinghang.
Although Zheng Tinghang was a bit pedantic, he knew how to cherish his life. Upon hearing the news, he simply resigned and ran directly to Dai Luanxiang's army. Now even Zheng Xin couldn't do anything about him, so he could only swallow his anger and hope that Dai Luanxiang, the "first famous general in the country", just wanted to protect himself and would not help Qiu Yizi.
However, the situation was becoming more and more urgent. After Qiu Yizhi returned to Luoyang, he did not lose his footing at all. He not only accepted the responsibility of the regent, but also set up a new government with the queen. The new emperor turned out to be Zheng Xin's biological son. After that, a series of anti-rebellion edicts were issued in the name of the emperor, the regent, and the empress dowager. Most of these edicts were written by "Mr. Bansong" Lin Shuhan. They were written with great literary talent, like sharp blades piercing people's hearts. Even Zheng Xin's most trusted confidants in civil and military affairs were shaken after reading them.
Therefore, with the orthodox court in the north and the remnants of Lingnan in the south, the only way for Zheng Xin to move north quickly and defeat Qiu Yizhi to regain control of the capital Luoyang. As long as such an action is successful, then whether Zheng Xin becomes the emperor or the emperor emeritus will be a matter of his own words.
At this time, Li Shengjie's fleet, which had been blocking the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, suddenly moved westward along the river. Although it made it difficult for Zheng Xin's army in Shanxi and Shaanxi to move eastward to join the battle, it opened up a path for the army in Jiangnan to cross the river and head north.
Zheng Xin also knew that Li Shengjie had an unusual relationship with Qiu Yizhi. His move must have been instructed by Qiu Yizhi, and it was undoubtedly a trap. However, Zheng Xin was confident that he had more than 200,000 troops under his control in Jiangnan Road, and they were all elite troops; while Qiu Yizhi was in the center of the court, the troops that could be mobilized and used were only 50,000 to 60,000. His own troops were several times more than Qiu Yizhi's, so Zheng Xin felt that this risk was worth taking.
So Zheng Xin specifically sought out his second brother Zheng Sen, who was well versed in military tactics and commanded the Youyan cavalry, to discuss the matter of heading north to attack Qiu Yizi.
Although Zheng Sen was a little dull, he finally came to his senses at this time and realized that the one who committed the unforgivable crime was not his sworn brother Qiu Yizi, but his elder brother Zheng Xin who stood in front of him with a righteous appearance. He asked him to give up all his delusions on the spot and go to the Empress Dowager to apologize.
Zheng Sen was a straightforward person. He did not hold back when talking to Zheng Xin. His words were quite heavy and tough, which aroused Zheng Xin's anger. In a rage, Zheng Xin immediately ordered his men to imprison Zheng Sen. However, he did not expect that Zheng Xin was very popular. After he was imprisoned, generals at all levels kept visiting him to comfort him. As more people gathered, they even held a banquet in the small courtyard where Zheng Sen was imprisoned.
This violated Zheng Xin's taboo. Seeing that Zheng Sen had become increasingly fat and strong during the days of imprisonment, he was cruel and found a doctor in Jiangnan. He prescribed a few laxatives to mix with the daily meals delivered to Zheng Sen, hoping that Zheng Sen would get seriously ill after taking them, so that he would be quiet for a few days. However, he did not expect that the doctor was too harsh. After Zheng Sen took the laxatives, he vomited like the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. A brave general died just like this.
As soon as this incident came out, Jiangnan was in an uproar, and everyone pointed the finger at Zheng Xin, accusing him of poisoning his own brother. Especially Zheng Hua, the King of Heluo who came to Jiangnan with his brother, suddenly remembered that he was the elder of Zheng Xin and Zheng Sen, and he had to speak up at this moment. Zheng Xin was not in the right to begin with, and could not withstand Zheng Hua's questioning, so he simply went all out and imprisoned his own uncle.
After doing this, the morale of Zheng Xin's people became even greater. It was even heard that some people wanted to rescue King Zheng Gui of Lingnan and his two sons who were imprisoned by the old Emperor Zheng Rong, in order to regain their place in the fold.
Zheng Xin has always known that among his uncles, Zheng Hua is an idle prince without ambition, but Zheng Gui is determined to ascend the throne and become emperor. Moreover, Zheng Gui's talent, prestige, and even seniority are not comparable to his. If he really gets the chance, he may not be able to subdue him.
So Zheng Xin discussed with several advisers around him, and suddenly announced to the whole world that Emperor Zheng Rong was killed by Qiu Yizi. He also fabricated a decree of succession, saying that he would pass the throne to his eldest son Zheng Xin. Zheng Xin was about to follow the old emperor's will and raise an army to attack Qiu Yizi, who had usurped the throne, and at the same time he wanted to execute Zheng Guiming, the King of Lingnan, who had rebelled.
In this way, Zheng Gui, the once powerful King of Lingnan, did not die at the hands of his brother the emperor Zheng Rong, nor at the hands of the resourceful Qiu Yizi, but was involved in the struggle for the throne of the next generation. He was inexplicably strangled to death in prison with a white silk by Zheng Xin, his nephew whom he had only met a few times. Naturally, his two sons were not spared either.
If Zheng Xin had taken out these things a month earlier, his document full of loopholes might have been able to deceive people. But Qiu Yizhi took the initiative, issued the manifesto, established the emperor, and occupied the capital, making Zheng Xin's actions seem like a helpless move under pressure.
Qiu Yizi is not an easy person to deal with either.
Zheng Xin's fabricated will of the late emperor had just been passed to the capital, and before the night had passed, Qiu Yizhi's subordinate, "Ban Song Layman" Lin Shuhan, wrote a notice with a big brush, and ordered his clerks to copy hundreds of copies overnight, and sent them to the world by express post. Lin Shuhan is worthy of being the leader of Jiangnan scholars. His notice refuted Zheng Xin's so-called "will" word by word, and even Zheng Xin blushed with shame when he read it in his hand.
However, Zheng Xin had to prepare for the war before he could start, and he could not lose in the battle of words. So he gathered his literati and poets to read Lin Shuhan's article carefully, and he had to find faults in it and refute it.
Unexpectedly, Lin Shuhan's writing was not only brilliant but also extremely logical. Zheng Xin's "literary experts" studied it for a whole day and could not find a single word to attack. So they had to find another way and wrote a document together, avoiding the main point and saying that Qiu Yizi was a foreign traitor who wanted to usurp the throne of the Han Dynasty.
After reading the statement, Lin Shuhan did not show any mercy and argued with reason. He quickly drafted another rebuttal statement, which was then published to the world after Qiu Yizi briefly reviewed it.