Chapter 1107 Causes and Consequences
Shangguanye went downstairs in a huff, but did not leave the Immortal Residence. Instead, he walked through the lobby to the backyard. There are three private rooms in the courtyard here, which are private rooms specially prepared for dignitaries. Compared with the dining environment in the building, More private and secluded. Zhang Pucheng, who was upstairs, rarely had the opportunity to come to this place. He didn't know that there was such a place in Shenxian Juli, and he didn't expect that Shangguanye was not planning this matter alone.
Shangguanye walked to the door of one of the wing rooms and pushed the door straight in. When the two people who were talking in the room saw him coming in, they immediately stopped talking. One of them asked him: "How is the matter going? Is Zhang Pucheng willing to cooperate?"
Shangguan Ye pulled up his chair and sat down, poured a cup of tea into his mouth, raised his hand to wipe the corners of his mouth, and then said bitterly: "My mouth is drying after talking about it, but this guy named Zhang is still stubborn. , refused to let go!”
The man continued to ask: "Is his attitude so firm that he didn't even relax after listening to your persuasion?"
Shangguanye thought for a moment and said, "It's not that he's not loose. He heard that Haihan had already established his own country in the south and was a little scared. It's just that this guy decided that I wanted to harm him and refused to cooperate with me no matter what. But there’s nothing you can do about it!”
Another person also spoke at this time: "Look, when you led the troops to Fushan County to collect grain, you didn't get much benefit. The consequences of offending people are now revealed!"
Shangguanye said: "Did you leave this pot to me alone? I didn't decide this matter alone. Don't forget that when we came back from the food collection, we both benefited from it!"
"Don't bring up the matter of Chen Guzi rotten sesame seeds anymore. It's better to think about how to proceed with this matter first!" The person who spoke before saw that Shangguan Ye was a little angry, so he quickly tried to persuade him and changed the topic back to business: "You and I, brothers, want to get rich. The opportunity is right in front of us. Don't worry about old things anymore!"
Shangguan Ye's two accomplices are not ordinary. One is a military general from Yanzhou Prefecture named Guo Xingning. He has known Shangguan Ye for many years and can be regarded as an old friend in the military. The other person was from Jinan Prefecture and served in the Shandong Capital Command and Envoy Department. His name was Liao Jie. During the Denglai Rebellion, he was transferred to Denzhou to supervise the war with the official position of commanding Qianshi. The person he was responsible for was Shangguan Ye and Guo Xingning. Administer the troops. These three people have been partners for a long time, and they have all been on the battlefield during the attack on the rebels. It can be regarded as a life-long friendship.
However, this time it was not Shangguanye's idea to target the Haihan people who had just arrived in Shandong. Although he did have an older brother serving in the Zhejiang Linshan Guards, his older brother was just a temporary job tester with no real power. The level of contact he had was limited, and the value of the intelligence information he could provide was not much higher. The real source of information about the Haihan people actually came from Liao Jie.
Liao Jie is not from Shandong, but from Zhejiang. He also has an elder brother who happens to be working in Zhejiang, but the nature of the organization he works for is quite special. He is a privileged Yamen Jinyiwei who is responsible for detectives, arrests, intelligence collection and other tasks. Although the official position is only for a hundred households, the power in his hands is very great. The superiors can inspect the officials and the subordinates can arrest the people. There is almost nothing that they cannot do. The most important thing is that his brother has been investigating and collecting information related to Haihan since he entered Zhejiang, and he has a very detailed knowledge of Haihan's situation.
Yes, that's right, Liao Jie's brother is Liao Xun, a member of the Jinyiwei family who fought against Haihan many times in Zhejiang and finally disappeared from the officialdom as a "disappearance".
The grudge between Liao Xun and Haihan has long been irresolvable, so the content and angle of his research are also full of hostility. In addition to several of his associates in Zhejiang official circles, these "research results" also include Some of them informed their brother Liao Jie in Dengzhou, Shandong Province through letters.
According to the information provided by Liao Xun before, these three people already have a certain degree of understanding of Haihan, who they have never met. They believe that the most terrifying thing about Haihan is not his powerful force, but his terrifying financial resources and resources. The way to continuously make money is precisely because of this basic condition that Haihan talents were able to build an army-like armed force, build a large-scale fleet, and use large amounts of gold and silver to bribe and win over Ming officials.
To Daming, the existence of the Haihan people is like a parasitic vine on the trunk of a big tree, sucking nutrients from Daming bit by bit to strengthen itself. To remove them, they must first cut off all kinds of people between Haihan and Daming. , trade and cultural exchange channels. However, the scale of Haihan's operations on the southeast coast was too large and involved the interests of countless people. Even if Emperor Chongzhen personally issued an order, it would be difficult to completely change the status quo. At present, very few people in the government who still insist on confronting Haihan in various places do so to safeguard the Ming Dynasty. The vast majority of them are like Liao Xun, and they just want to restore or reduce their own damaged interests as much as possible through confrontation. The starting point can be It is not a noble sentiment like patriotism and loyalty to the king.
However, Liao Jie and others had slightly different ideas than Liao Xun. Liao Xun had conflicts with the Haihan people because of the damage to their personal interests. He wanted to expel the Haihan people from Zhejiang and regain the maritime trade market that he originally controlled. But what Liao Jie and others thought was that since the Haihan people were so rich that they could rival the country, they should find a way to make a fortune from these wealthy southerners.
Originally this was just a topic for them to chat after dinner, and no one really planned to implement this plan. After all, the Haihan people's activity area was in distant Zhejiang, and they were simply beyond their reach in Dengzhou.
But a month ago, Liao Jie received news from Zhejiang that his brother Liao Xun and his whole family had disappeared from Hangzhou. The government searched through many sources but found no clues. Also missing during the same period was Liao Xun, whom Liao Xun had mentioned in a letter. of his two official allies. Although Liao Jie didn't know what happened to his brother in Zhejiang, judging from the list of missing persons, he believed that it was most likely related to the Haihan people. What happened to Liao Xun's family was no different than the family was exterminated. This also made Liao Jie have a great hatred for Haihan. However, due to the limitations of his responsibilities, he could not go to Zhejiang to investigate the truth of the matter, so he could only record the account first. Come down and slowly look for opportunities to take revenge on Haihan. In the last letter Liao Xun sent to Shandong, it was mentioned that the Haihan people were collecting various winter supplies in Zhejiang, and they seemed to have the intention of heading north. Based on Haihan's past leapfrog development trajectory, Liao Xun deduced that the opponent might skip Jiangsu and head directly to Shandong, where they had already attracted a large number of refugees, probably before the next winter.
Because of Liao Xun's incident, Liao Jie naturally no longer kept some of his plans against Hai Han in the verbal stage as before. Instead, he contacted his two most trusted partners and began to plan a revenge plan together—— In other words, it is not an exaggeration to say that it is a plan to make a fortune.
If you want to get money out of the hands of Haihan people, the easiest and no-brainer way is to wait for them to offer bribes and gifts. According to the news sent from Zhejiang, after the Haihan people arrived there, the first batch of people in the government who were bribed and bribed were the commanders and envoys of hundreds of thousands of households in the coastal guards. Many people received benefits from the Haihan people. benefits. This is good news for Liao Jie, Shangguan Ye and Guo Xingning. After all, they are currently considered powerful figures in charge of the military in Dengzhou. If the Haihan people come here one day, they will definitely not be able to avoid dealing with them. time.
Of course, considering the current situation of the garrison in Dengzhou area, even if the Haihan people are willing to use a similar method to deal with the government in Zhejiang after arriving here, they must take the initiative. This is because in addition to the thousands of households and commanders stationed at various coastal guard posts in the Dengzhou area, there are also many foreign generals such as Shangguanye who were transferred during the war. There are still seven or eight people stationed in and around Dengzhou City alone. It is obviously impossible for so many people to equally share the benefits given by the Haihan people by eating from a big pot. Whoever comes first may get the big share.
However, Liao Jie has a family feud with Haihan, and has basically eliminated the possibility of accepting Haihan's wooing, and will not live in peace with the Haihan people who may come to Shandong. The content of his plan with Shangguanye and Guo Xingning , naturally there is no peaceful solution.
The three of them are all active officers in the front-line army. They have soldiers under their command and are not lacking in combat experience. Their strength is far beyond that of the combination of Liao Xun, Yu Pingfeng and Guo Zheng in Zhejiang, but they have not put all their treasures on the line. In force. According to the information previously provided by Liao Xun, the strength of the Haihan Armed Forces is already superior to that of the Zhejiang Ming Army. It not only has a huge maritime fleet, but also well-trained musketeers. If they want to fight head-on, Fujian The Shibazhi Group and the Zhoushan Boat Gang in Zhejiang are the best examples.
Although Liao Jie and the others believed that seeing is believing when it comes to force, and did not fully believe that Haihan was as powerful as Liao Xun boasted, considering that a head-on confrontation might cause great damage to their troops, they still wanted to find A more tricky way to overwhelm Haihan.
Liao Jie believes that there is a very obvious weakness in Haihan's system, that is, the Haihan people who are boasted as omnipotent among southern folk are actually only a small number of Han people from overseas, and these talents are the core of this group. The army, business groups and even the many people who work for them are actually recruited from countries such as Ming Dynasty and Annan. They are peripheral personnel called "naturalized people" and have little individual value. For example, when Haihan operated in Zhejiang, they occupied the Zhoushan Islands and controlled most of the waters south of Hangzhou Bay. However, there were only a few Haihan people who truly belonged to the core of power.
These people are the centerpieces that direct Haihan's operations. Liao Jie believes that their individual value is at least a thousand times that of naturalized citizens. As long as they can capture a few important figures in Haihan, their command system can get out of control and even go further. Blackmail the other party into paying a sky-high ransom. But this plan also has a big problem, that is, the Haihan people attach great importance to personal safety. They almost never go out alone. They are surrounded by a group of armed guards wherever they go, especially when they are in non-Haihan controlled areas. With an organized army accompanying him, it is difficult to have a chance to attack him.
At this stage, it was actually difficult for the three of them to continue planning the details of the operation, because all they knew about the situation came from second-hand information from Zhejiang, and they had never really come into contact with the Haihan people. In this case, pure talk on paper does not have much practical effect, and we can only wait until the Haihan people actually appear before making further plans.
But what they didn't expect was that the Haihan people came to Shandong faster than expected, and they had received warnings from the health center in the eastern Jiaodong Peninsula in the past few days. Before Feng Fei of Qishan Qianhu Institute reached an agreement with Haihan, Liao Jie had already guessed that what appeared near the Dengzhou coastline was most likely the Haihan fleet heading north. The news that came later quickly verified his guess. The Haihan people chose Zhifu Bay as their base and began to contact the local garrison and government.
Liao Jie knew that the opportunity had come, so he summoned Shangguanye and Guo Xingning to continue discussing the previous plan. Zhifu Bay is under the jurisdiction of Fushan County. The military aspect is within the defense zone of Qishan Qianhu Station. According to the past practices of the Haihan people, they generally will not directly conflict with local officials or garrison, but will try to bribe and win over to gain a foothold. opportunity. The magistrate of Fushan County and the Qianshu of Qishan County are obviously the local officials they will inevitably come into contact with.
Liao Jie had no hope for the integrity of local officials. Fushan County was a very poor place. Now it had to rely on Dengzhou to distribute relief every year to survive. The county's population was less than half of what it was before the war, and there were Bandits are plundering, and it can be said that local officials have basically no luck. In this case, the wealthy Haihan people are undoubtedly like Gods of Wealth to them. Liao Xun believes that the Haihan people can quickly get rid of local officials and will force them to send Dengzhou reports about Haihan merchants. The group donated bridges, built roads, and provided relief documents to the public in exchange for legal permission to settle in the local area and build a port.
However, the measures taken by the Haihan people were far beyond their expectations. Not only did they use the methods they were accustomed to in the south, but they also quickly defeated the bandit armed Wanjiajun and captured the bandit leader Wanmeng alive. When Zhang Pucheng escorted Wan Meng into the prefect's Yamen, Liao Jie had already received the news. Although he did not meet Zhang Pucheng with the prefect Chen Zhongsheng, when the two went into the study to talk in detail, Liao Jie had already brought Shangguan Ye and Guo Xingning rushed over to check Wanmeng's identity.
With the military strength of Fushan County, Liao Jie could confirm that this was not Zhang Pucheng's fault, but the Haihan people who had just arrived, who made the deal and handed the person over to Zhang Pucheng to show his merit in Dengzhou. This can basically confirm that Zhang Pucheng and the Haihan people have had contact and even reached some agreements. Liao Jie naturally set his sights on Zhang Pucheng, and followed him all the way to Shenxianju, asking Shangguanye to contact him and try to persuade him to join his camp.
(End of chapter)