Chapter 201: Great Defeat, Demons Proliferate

In mid-December, Gao Yingxiang and Zhang Xianzhong joined forces to march eastward to Nanzhili and besieged Luzhou Prefecture.

However, they fought for seven days and seven nights but failed to take it down.

Because they were afraid of being surrounded again, they could only withdraw their troops temporarily.

They turned eastward to capture Chaoxian and Hanshan, and then besieged Quanjiao.

After Gao Yingxiang and his men planned to take Quanjiao, they would find an opportunity to cross the Yangtze River and go straight to Nanjing, the secondary capital of the Ming Dynasty.

After receiving the news, Chongzhen was immediately furious and urged Lu Xiangsheng to wipe out the rebels as quickly as possible.

At the same time, looking at the national destiny golden dragon above the capital, Chongzhen's eyes flashed, and his heart was once again eager to move.

Previously, he wanted to use the power of the national destiny golden dragon to attack Datong and Xuanfu, but was swallowed by the incarnation of the dynasty's national destiny golden dragon.

Therefore, he never knew what the result would be if he used the national destiny golden dragon to attack.

Originally, when Zhang Xianzhong broke through Zhongdu Fengyang and burned Zhu's ancestral mausoleum, he was ready to take action.

However, Chongzhen at that time had not fully recovered and had no way to split the national destiny golden dragon clone again.

Now, he has finally recovered a little and can bear the pain of splitting the clone again.

However, thinking of the pain of splitting the clone and tearing the soul, he hesitated again.

In the end, he decided to wait.

Unless it was absolutely necessary, he really didn't want to tear his soul again.

On the other side, seeing that the situation was so tense, coupled with Chongzhen's urging, Lu Xiangsheng certainly didn't dare to neglect it, and didn't celebrate the New Year of Chongzhen's eighth year.

He traveled day and night, and on the first day of the New Year, he rushed from Henan to Zhongdu Fengyang and mobilized troops from all directions to encircle and suppress.

When Gao Yingxiang and Zhang Xianzhong saw that the Ming army reinforcements had arrived, Nanjing also strengthened its vigilance.

They had no choice but to give up the plan to cross the river, lift the siege of Quanjiao, and go north again to start besieging Chuzhou Prefecture.

Thanks to Zhang Xianzhong's brutality, the Chuzhou army and civilians fought desperately and held on until the eighth day of the first lunar month.

Just when the city was about to be breached, the army led by Lu Xiangsheng finally arrived at Wuli Bridge in the east of Chuzhou City.

Zu Kuan and his 3,000 Guanning Iron Cavalry took the lead and rushed to the front of the army.

Lu Xiangsheng personally led 300 family servants in the middle and commanded the troops to charge forward.

This fierce battle lasted from dawn to dark, with corpses piled up like mountains and blood flowing like rivers. The iron and bloody aura that soared into the sky intertwined and dyed the entire battlefield bloody.

At the end, the rebel army led by Gao Yingxiang and others finally couldn't hold on and began to collapse.

Lu Xiangsheng commanded the Ming army to pursue them relentlessly, all the way from the east of Chuzhou City to the foot of Guanshan in the northwest, killing corpses all over the ground and blood flowing like rivers.

It can be said that the corpses filled the ditches and trenches, and the Chu River stopped flowing.

In the end, it was Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Xianzhong and others who led their personal troops to break through the night and barely escaped the pursuit.

In the next few days, the bloody aura was always rising to the sky. Within a few miles, the birds, beasts and insects were silent. When the people passed by, they could only vaguely hear the sound of shouting and killing.

Occasionally, you can even see some illusory soldiers fighting.

After discovering the people, these illusory soldiers will turn around and chase the people.

However, those illusory soldiers seem to be subject to some restrictions and cannot really stay away.

Often after chasing for a period of time, when the people escape, they will collapse, and then reorganize and manifest in the distant battlefield, and continue to fight and kill in their lifetime.

Obviously, they are the same as the ghosts in the territory of the Salvation Army. They are also the souls of the dead, integrating the spiritual power of the people and the energy evolution of the surrounding heaven and earth.

Because it is evolved from the souls of soldiers who died in battle, it can also be called a fighting soul, and it will continue to repeat the fighting state in its lifetime.

However, the energy of heaven and earth outside the territory of the Salvation Army is five times thinner than that of the Salvation Army.

Therefore, they did not evolve the power to interfere with reality and kill humans at the first time.

However, as the spread of the matter became more and more widespread, a large amount of spiritual power gathered, and the power of these ghosts was rapidly increasing.

I am afraid that it will not take long before they can directly harm humans.

Lu Xiangsheng naturally heard about the situation on the battlefield.

But at this time, it was the critical moment to wipe out the rebels, and he didn't care much. He just asked the prefect of Chuzhou Prefecture to deal with it, and then turned to chase the rebels.

Facing Lu Xiangsheng's order, Chuzhou Prefect Zhong Daonan couldn't help but be a little dumbfounded.

Although he also condensed some spiritual power in the process of reading and practicing calligraphy in the past.

But, is it a bit too much to let him deal with those ghosts?

However, he had no choice but to obey the order from the Governor of Four Provinces, Lu Xiangsheng, and began to send people to investigate.

On the other hand, after the battle of Chuzhou, the main force of the uprising army lost more than half of its troops, and its morale was greatly damaged.

Gao Yingxiang thought about it and decided to go north to attack Fengyang, the capital of Zhongdu, again, on the one hand to get some supplies to make up for the losses, and on the other hand to boost morale.

However, what he didn't expect was that the Ming army was already prepared this time.

Zhu Dadian, the governor of the grain transport, personally led more than 10,000 Ming troops to garrison Fengyang. Gao Yingxiang took a look.

Well, it seems that the Ming army is already prepared, so don't fight.

In the end, Gao Yingxiang didn't even dare to fight, and turned around and went west.

At this moment, the rebel army was almost in a desperate situation with Lu Xiangsheng's army chasing them from behind and Zhu Dadian blocking them from the front.

However, Gao Yingxiang and others were glad that.

Zhu Dadian had no sense of the overall situation. He was ordered to garrison Fengyang, so he only focused on defending Fengyang and protecting the Fengyang Imperial Mausoleum. He had no intention of taking the opportunity to send troops to encircle and kill the rebel army with Lu Xiangsheng.

He was afraid that when he sent troops to pursue, Gao Yingxiang and other rebels would take advantage of the opportunity.

Therefore, he watched the rebel army rush westward through Huaiyuan to Suzhou, Xia Xiaoxian, and finally ran back to Henan.

Upon hearing the news, Lu Xiangsheng stamped his feet in anxiety, but he was helpless.

And to be honest, although Zhu Dadian did nothing, he could not be considered wrong. It can only be said that he had no sense of the overall situation and could only follow orders rigidly.

In the end, Lu Xiangsheng could only continue to chase in depression.

At this time, after Gao Yingxiang suffered a disastrous defeat in Chuzhou, he relied on the title of King Chuang and gained the participation of many rebels along the way. In addition to the people he coerced, his strength had recovered.

He successively attacked states and counties in Henan, and even threatened the provincial capital Kaifeng.

In February, Lu Xiangsheng's army finally caught up with Gao Yingxiang again in Zhuxian Town south of Kaifeng.

After a great battle, Gao Yingxiang was defeated again without any suspense, and the whole army retreated to Nanyang.

Lu Xiangsheng pursued him relentlessly and finally caught up with Gao Yingxiang and other rebels at Qiding Mountain in Nanyang, giving the rebels another disastrous defeat.

At this point, Gao Yingxiang's elite and extraordinary warriors had lost most of their combat effectiveness, and Zhang Xianzhong was also seriously injured.

Facing the relentless pursuit of Lu Xiangsheng, the two finally decided to split up and flee after some discussion.

Zhang Xianzhong fled eastward to the Tongbai Mountain area to hide.

Gao Yingxiang fled westwards into the Yunyang mountainous area.

Because the Guanning Iron Cavalry was not conducive to fighting in the mountainous area and could not enter, this allowed Gao Yingxiang to take a breath.

However, this was not without any disadvantages.

After all, the mountainous area was barren, and it was difficult to find food and supplies.

Even after Gao Yingxiang fled to Yunyang, he captured Zhushan County and scraped the ground three feet to get only 600 dan of food.

And his men had more than 20,000 people.

In less than ten days, the 600 dan of food they had robbed was eaten up.

At this time, Lu Xiangsheng had already sent infantry to the Yunyang mountainous area to encircle and suppress.

Gao Yingxiang had no choice but to lead his men and horses all the way west, and in March he ran back to the border between Henan and Shaanxi, wanting to enter Shaanxi for repairs.

After receiving the news, Wang Chao hesitated for a moment and finally agreed.

However, Wang Chao also had a request, that is, not to stay in Shaanxi for a long time.

In this regard, Gao Yingxiang naturally agreed.

Now, he hopes to enter a safe place and rest for a while.

As for the future, we will talk about it later.

After entering Shaanxi, Gao Yingxiang and others almost suspected that they had entered another world.

You know, Shaanxi is the first province occupied by the dynasty. It has been five or six years since then, and it is naturally the first to develop.

In the city, there are wide and flat streets, and on both sides of the road are rows of three-story buildings with cement bricks and tiles and bright windows.

Well, as glass and cement are necessary for time travelers, the dynasty allocated them together with the manufacture of steel, guns and cannons when it established the weapons manufacturing department in the first day of the new year.

Regardless of whether it can be studied or not, let's study it first.

In fact, the manufacture of glass and cement is much simpler than the manufacture of steel guns and cannons.

Naturally, glass and cement have been manufactured long ago.

Cement is basically used in road construction, construction and so on in the territory of the Salvation Army.

Especially in steel manufacturing, the technological breakthrough of steam machine tools has made it possible to mass-produce steel bars.

After that, many buildings began to use reinforced concrete structures, which were not only stronger but also faster to build.

Especially for street-side buildings, in order to gain more building space, they were basically three-story buildings.

When Wang Chao entered these streets for the first time, he couldn't help but be in a trance for a moment.

For a moment, he almost thought he had returned to the modern era.

However, most of these three-story buildings were still in the Chinese architectural style, not the kind of buildings in later generations.

And the people coming and going were all wearing ancient costumes from the Ming Dynasty.

And Manchuanli, where Gao Yingxiang was waiting to enter, was such a city full of modern atmosphere.

In fact, if Manchuanli was not the border of Shaanxi, what Gao Yingxiang and others saw was not an ancient city, but a series of houses without city walls.

In addition to the wide and flat streets and the houses lined up one after another, there are also the people living in the city, everyone's face is full of smiles, everyone is full of rosy glow, obviously they are not worried about food and clothing.

Moreover, the clothes they wore were not all gorgeous new clothes, but at least they were all clean and tidy, not like the lower class people at all, and they were no less beautiful than some dignitaries and wealthy businessmen in the past.

Some soldiers who followed Gao Yingxiang and others into the city could not help but cast envious and jealous eyes.

Why do we fight desperately in the outside world, starving for a meal or a full meal, while these ordinary civilians can enjoy rich food and gorgeous and clean clothes?

For a moment, they all wanted to take off their clothes and break into the restaurants on both sides to eat and drink.

In addition to these, there are many shops and stalls on both sides of the streets that are not main roads. The dazzling array of goods dazzled Gao Yingxiang and others, and they wanted to take them all in.

Looking at the performance of the crowd, Zhao Zesheng, the magistrate of Manchuanli who contacted them, couldn't help but smile more, and a full sense of pride filled his chest.

This is the result of their years of hard work under the leadership of the king.

For the people outside, it is not an exaggeration to say that this place is a paradise.