The big fish Shi Ji spoke of was actually a beautiful mermaid.
Because they feared accidentally injuring Wang Jun, once they confirmed that all escape routes front and back were blocked, the guards around Wang Jun gave up resistance and surrendered without a fight. Therefore, the squad led by Shi Ji, aside from two men injured by traps, captured Wang Jun and her five servants without expending any effort.
Also because they worried Wang Jun would be violated by the chaotic troops, her guards immediately revealed her identity. No one had expected that this raid on Chuzhou’s den in Maoshan would actually catch such a catch as the daughter of Wang Wenqian, Chief Secretary of the Chuzhou Defense Commissioner’s Office and Governor of Yangzhou. Naturally, Shi Ji didn’t care that it was already deep into the night and immediately escorted this big fish Wang Jun and her five servants before Han Qian.
Seeing Wang Jun and her several servants bound tightly like dumplings, Han Qian was extremely surprised. The Wang family’s eldest daughter should currently be at Mubu Mountain in Yueyang observing mourning for her grandfather Wang Jixiong. Even if she worried Yueyang would detain her, she should have fled to Dantu to reunite with her father Wang Wenqian. How had she ended up in Maoshan?
Marquis Xinchang Li Pu also stared in puzzlement at the Wang family’s eldest daughter with her refined appearance, then hesitantly glanced at Han Qian twice, not knowing how he would handle Wang Wenqian’s daughter.
Many matters Marquis Xinchang Li Pu had finally pieced together completely by now.
When Han Qian was in Tanzhou, he had clearly known that Anning Palace had poisoned Shen He and intended to control the imperial palace. He had even seen early on that Emperor Tianyou’s life was also in Anning Palace’s grasp. To delay the timing and avoid Emperor Tianyou hastily ordering the Chuzhou Army to cross the river for imperial rescue, he had conspired with Yang Yuanpu to execute a grand deception, fooling everyone including Emperor Tianyou himself, making Shen He appear to die from plague.
Unfortunately, Chuzhou had Wang Wenqian.
In the end, it was Wang Wenqian who used schemes to force Han Daoxun to pierce through this paper window, subsequently stirring up towering waves in Jinling.
Afterward, it was also Wang Wenqian who proactively contacted them to conspire at Qiuhu Mountain to promulgate the proclamation denouncing the rebels, stimulating Anning Palace to dismember Han Daoxun by chariot.
Marquis Xinchang Li Pu believed that after Han Qian sought revenge for killing his father, Anning Palace would be next, followed by Wang Wenqian. Otherwise, Han Qian wouldn’t have expelled Wang Jixiong’s remains from Xuzhou without giving him a burial place. He also concluded that Han Qian’s meaningless surprise attack on Danyang at dawn today was to vent personal grievances, but didn’t know how he would treat Wang Wenqian’s daughter now.
When Wang Jun accompanied her grandfather Wang Jixiong to Xuzhou to mourn Han Daoxun, no matter how much hatred Han Qian harbored, he couldn’t make things difficult for Wang Jun. Otherwise, people throughout the realm would only mock him for bullying women and children. But now that Han Qian had captured Wang Jun in Chuzhou’s secret lair set up in Maoshan, there seemed no need to preserve any face.
Han Qian couldn’t possibly send her to Dantu and into Wang Wenqian’s hands, could he? Marquis Xinchang Li Pu thought to himself.
“Confine the guards in the dungeon, and select another clean compound for Miss Wang and her maid servants to live in. Keep them under strict guard and wait for Wang Wenqian to send someone to ransom them!” Han Qian didn’t want to waste too many brain cells on Wang Jun and instructed Shi Ji to separately imprison and place Wang Jun and her servants under house arrest.
However, Wang Jun lacked the self-awareness of a captive. Having just been untied, rubbing her wrists that were red and swollen from being bound by ropes, she looked at the war machine components just moved from the secret vault in the courtyard and asked Han Qian in surprise, “Lord Han deployed these before the Jinling incident? What a pity. If Lord Li and Master Baishi and the others had the courage to independently defend Qiuhu Mountain without being calculated by my father, Uncle Han wouldn’t have died so miserably. But it’s also strange—if you wanted to set up a secret stronghold outside Qiuhu Mountain, you should have chosen a location by the river in the northern foothills of Baohua Mountain. Why choose Maoshan? Before the Jinling incident, you couldn’t have prophetically known my father would use a siege strategy…”
Being stared at by Wang Jun like this, Han Qian felt uncomfortable all over, as if this woman before him could see right through him.
He had heard that Wang Jun had been exceptionally intelligent and well-read since childhood. When Wang Jixiong served as prime minister, he had openly mentioned that many of his memorial documents and reports were ghostwritten by Wang Jun, who was only thirteen or fourteen at the time, yet they all met Emperor Tianyou’s wishes.
However, Han Qian didn’t know that upon seeing the war machine components piled in the courtyard, she could in the blink of an eye spot such a critical doubt—one he couldn’t speak of.
From the dream world, he had seen the predetermined course of history. Earlier, he had been uncertain whether he would be in Jinling or elsewhere when turmoil erupted there, so how could he not try his best to make more preparations?
As the saying goes, a cunning rabbit has three burrows. He hadn’t placed the second burrow in the northern foothills of Baohua Mountain close to the great river, but rather in Maoshan. Han Qian’s main concern was that history had an extremely difficult-to-reverse powerful inertia, deploying according to the situation of Jinling being besieged.
Once the Chuzhou Army implemented complete siege on Jinling, it would mean Baohua Mountain, which was closer to Jinling and Runzhou and bordered the Yangtze River, would already be completely under their control. At that time, even if large amounts of armor and provisions were hidden in Baohua Mountain, it would be very difficult to go in and retrieve them.
As long as no extremely strong force rose in Jiangnan East Circuit, Maoshan’s strategic position would be far less prominent than Baohua Mountain’s, thus being overlooked by the Chuzhou Army, Anning Palace, and the Shouzhou Army.
The key point in all this was that Han Qian had very early on been considering the situation after Jinling was completely besieged. But in the current era, even those ranked among the top three to five wise men could only see some signs and traces of the Chuzhou Army’s intention to besiege Jinling after the battle at Jingshan Nunnery.
Wang Jun perhaps understood her father’s calculations more clearly, but being able to spot such a critical doubt in such a short time secretly alarmed Han Qian.
Han Qian didn’t respond to Wang Jun’s questioning, but no matter how thick-skinned Marquis Xinchang Li Pu was, being criticized like this by Wang Jun, a young girl, made his old face turn red. He wished he could find a hole to bury his old face in.
“Miss!”
Wang Jun and her two maid servants received preferential treatment and had their ropes untied, but the three guards were still bound tightly on the damp muddy ground. One of them thought Wang Jun had been too straightforward and inadvertently leaked Chuzhou’s core secrets, so he called out in warning.
To be honest, they didn’t know what schemes Chuzhou would use to take Jinling City, but having usually seen their young mistress engage in battles of wits with the family head, they also knew the young mistress best understood what choices the family head would advise Prince Xin to make. They couldn’t help reminding her to keep her mouth shut before Han Qian and not easily leak Chuzhou’s secrets.
Wang Jun covered her cherry lips with her hand, glancing apologetically at the bound guard. Then, as if talking to herself, she explained, “Lord Han’s surprise attack on Danyang, then abandoning it without defending it and turning instead to defend Maoshan—he actually saw through my father’s scheme long ago, so it shouldn’t count as me letting something slip.”
Only then did Marquis Xinchang Li Pu ponder a different meaning. Staring at Wang Jun, he asked in surprise, “Your father wants to use a siege strategy? Besiege what—besiege Jinling?”
“Han Qian didn’t explain to you why he seized Danyang but didn’t defend it?” Wang Jun didn’t yet know that Li Pu had actually already had his military authority seized by Han Qian. Seeing them standing together in apparent harmony, she thought the surprise attack on Danyang by the remnants of Taowu Ji’s military households at dawn was something Han Qian had done after consulting with him, and asked back in surprise.
“Don’t ask him. Lord Li hasn’t even figured out yet why the Chuzhou Army drove him to requisition grain around Yanling. He’s still fantasizing that there’s a chance to lead forty to fifty thousand elderly, weak, women and children to withdraw eastward to the shores of Lake Tai to requisition grain!” Han Qian said coldly.
With Han Qian and Wang Jun piercing through these two key points, no matter how slow Marquis Xinchang Li Pu was, he could now figure out what Wang Wenqian’s siege strategy was all about.
He stood there dumbly, his hands and feet icy cold:
Siege—it was to besiege Jinling City!
The main force of the Chuzhou Army would cross the river and move south, but would face the elite Shouzhou Army also crossing the river southward. Fearing that fierce battle with the Shouzhou Army would result in mutual destruction and benefit Yueyang, which had been secretly and actively preparing for the Jinling situation for months.
Under such circumstances, the Chuzhou Army dared not rush into decisive battle and could only concentrate forces to first confront the Shouzhou Army elite on the north and south banks of Chishan Lake. At this time, driving his three thousand remnant troops and forty to fifty thousand elderly, weak, women and children toward the Maoshan-Yanling line would complete the deployment they needed to blockade Jinling from the east.
By acting thus, Wang Wenqian not only used his forty to fifty thousand elderly, weak, women and children—who posed no threat—to consume the stored grain around Jiangcheng and Danyang, but more importantly used them to blockade the passage through which provisions from Jiangnan East Circuit could enter Jinling via the southern corridor of Liyang and Danyang.
Jinling consumed six to seven million shi of grain annually, with eighty to ninety percent coming from the rich rice-producing prefectures of Jiangnan East Circuit.
Completing this step, the longer the Chuzhou Army and Shouzhou Army confronted each other, the more favorable the situation would become for Chuzhou.
The Chuzhou Army itself was better at field battles. When Jinling and its surrounding counties increasingly lacked grain and the people became restless, causing the foundation of the Shouzhou Army’s foothold in Jinling to waver, it would be even harder for them to win in field battles.
Holding the advantage and initiative, Chuzhou could calmly reap the allegiance and loyalty of the prefectures of Jiangnan East Circuit, could continuously levy provisions and troops from the prefectures of Jiangnan East Circuit, ultimately dragging things out until the Shouzhou Army was at its weakest for a fatal strike.
In the end, from beginning to end, he was merely a chess piece Wang Wenqian had used to plan the overall situation?
Of course, Wang Wenqian acting thus had another layer of intent—to intensify the conflict between Yueyang and local forces in Runhu and other prefectures.
With the main Chuzhou Army crossing the river southward, fifty thousand troops would need to levy sixty to seventy thousand shi of provisions monthly from local areas. Local forces would mostly not dare to resent Chuzhou, but his three thousand remnant troops and forty to fifty thousand elderly, weak, women and children would also need to requisition a comparable amount of grain monthly. What would local forces, who always only dared to squeeze soft persimmons, think?
Wouldn’t they naturally psychologically tend to submit to Chuzhou while viewing Yueyang as enemies and bandits?
Thinking that from beginning to end he had fallen into Wang Wenqian’s calculations, and that in the end it took a young girl to expose it, Li Pu truly wished he could dig a pit right now and bury himself in it.
At this moment, Li Pu felt cold throughout his body. Besides Wang Wenqian’s profound calculations, what alarmed him even more secretly was Han Qian, who from Xuzhou could easily see through Wang Wenqian’s schemes.
As for Han Qian having secretly hidden armor and provisions in Maoshan beforehand, he didn’t think as deeply as Wang Jun did, merely considering it to be the cunning rabbit’s three burrows of the suspicious-natured Han Qian.
Of course, there was still one point of confusion in his heart, but he was too ashamed to ask—namely, the purpose behind Han Qian seizing Danyang but not defending it, ultimately bringing three thousand remnant troops and nearly fifty thousand women and children here to defend Maoshan…