Chapter 100: Grinders and Juicers
On the afternoon of May 22nd, at the Hunhe River southeast of Shenyang City.

The rushing Hunhe River turns a corner here and flows significantly to the south. The water flow rate on the east side is faster, while the flow rate near the opposite concave bank becomes much slower.

The east bank is convex in shape, with its sharp corners sandwiched by the river, making it difficult for large groups of soldiers to deploy, making it a good choice for a major operation.

Li Hao looked at the large number of enemy troops chasing from the south, turned around and said to the surrendered soldiers and prisoners:

"The riverbed is flat to the north, and horses and men can cross it. You can cross the river here, and leave my millstone, broadsword, spear, shield and other weapons. Also, find a few pots of plum needle arrows that can penetrate armor, and place them on this convex bank for me to use at any time."

From the 16th to the 18th, he killed people in Shenyang for three whole days and finally cleared out all the Tartars who dared to move around in the streets and on the city walls.

Although important targets such as Huang Taiji and Dorgon were not killed, the rest of the Ai family's family members were all killed. The families of the two yellow flags of Tartars in the city and the officials of each flag in office in the capital who could be caught were all killed.

During this period, Huang Taiji, who was commanding the battle somewhere outside the city, was unwilling to accept the defeat. He repeatedly dispatched the city's defenders, as well as soldiers armed with nets and hooks, into the city for a fierce battle. He also sent mounted Tatars to supervise the battle and even used fire attacks.

But Li Hao blocked the soldiers with swords, ran away when fire came, and hid in the city gate when he encountered net soldiers and hook soldiers.

Because the space in the city gate was narrow and cramped, he only had to stick to the wall and use two spears to push away the dense net in front of him. As long as he was not caught in the net, he could quickly counterattack and kill people like a mountain of corpses.

The dead soldiers were just specially trained infantrymen and had no intention of seeking death. If 20% to 30% of a team were killed or wounded, their will to fight and morale would be gone, and they would all hesitate and refuse to move forward.

The cavalry Tatars supervising the battle were helpless. Even if they offered extremely tempting rewards and land, the soldiers just didn't dare to charge forward.

In an encounter battle, Li Hao would often jump off the pile of corpses alone and chase after the fleeing dead soldiers to kill them.

Although the mounted Tartars could also shoot arrows to block the attack, as long as they hit the Jinzhou general, an arrow would be returned to them after a while.

This made the Tartar supervisor dare not stay any longer. After all, if a Ming general was hit by an arrow and survived, he would most likely fall off his horse and lose his life if he was hit by an arrow.

The two sides fought for a whole day until the various soldiers of the Later Jin Dynasty dared not enter the city. In the next two days, Li Hao imitated the experience of attacking the big city before and accepted the surrender of Haixi, the wild Jurchens and the Han people.

He also brought the surrendered militiamen to visit the diehard Jianzhou Jurchens in the city to express his condolences.

The only surprise was that Liu Xingzuo and his six brothers were found imprisoned in a mansion on West Street in the city.

The Liu brothers have the same structure as the Shang brothers, with five brothers and two cousins, Liu Xingpei and Liu Xingbang.

Li Hao was still confident about Liu Xingzuo himself.

When this man defected to the Later Jin Dynasty, Liaodong experienced the Gao Huai Rebellion, and the people were on the side of Jin rather than Ming. The Liu brothers were whipped by the Kaiyuan garrison for impersonating others' clothes, so they led their brothers into the mountains to seek a living.

Later, his property was seized by Daishan and other two Red Bannermen who loved their family, and he was ostracized. In the second year of the Tianqi reign, he decided to rebel. Although the Liu brothers were taken back to Liaoyang City by the Eight Banners soldiers due to the procrastination of the Dongjiang side, their hearts were always on the side of the Ming Dynasty and they often passed on intelligence. In the official history, his ending was that he died fighting for the Ming Dynasty near Yongping.

Upon learning that the general who had attacked the city was the commander-in-chief of Jinzhou of the Ming Dynasty, Liu Xingzuo and his brothers directly killed the old slave's goddaughter to show their loyalty to the Ming Dynasty.

The brothers originally had two hundred Jurchen soldiers and more than four hundred Han soldiers under their command, but after being imprisoned, only a dozen unarmored soldiers were left in the mansion to serve them.

These soldiers were extremely loyal to the Liu brothers and were also veterans of ten battles. Li Hao used them as a framework and filled them with surrendered militiamen, thus obtaining a patchwork armed force of nearly 400 people.

After conquering the city of Shenyang, the Jinzhou general led this armed force south along the Hunhe River, preparing to return to the Ming army camp on the west bank of the Sancha River to prepare for several fierce battles with the Eight Banners soldiers who had crossed the river.

However, they did not expect that after walking for fifty or sixty miles, the reconnaissance cavalry sent to the nearby area would report that more than three thousand Tartars were heading north, and they seemed to be preparing to block Li Hao and others on the bank of the Hun River.

"General, I am a guilty person. Please allow me to follow you and kill the Tartars here to atone for the sins of the Liu brothers."

Liu Xingzuo sent his younger brothers across the river with armored militiamen, but he himself dismounted and knelt in front of Li Hao, asking to join the battle.

This is a big square-faced man with thin eyebrows and thin lips. Many Han people in Liao have thin, long and curved eyebrows. It is unknown which family he inherited the genes from.

"it is good!"

Li Hao reached out and lifted Liu Xingzuo up with one hand. "Bring a wooden barrel with you. If the Tartars shoot rockets at me and I can't dodge them, you can pour river water on me."

Fire is still very scary. Once the rocket ignites the cloth armor or burns the ropes of the lamellar armor, Li Hao's defense will be greatly reduced, and the damage he suffers will triple or quadruple.

Although the upper limit of health points has reached 2,800, as long as it drops by 100 or 200, Li Hao will feel distressed and want to just kill people to recover health.

"I obey your orders."

Liu Xingzuo had been beaten by the Kaiyuan garrison for presumptuous behavior. After he rebelled against the Jin Dynasty and returned to the Ming Dynasty, he attached great importance to titles and etiquette.

At present, he is just a commoner and has no official rank or position, so it is quite appropriate for him to call himself a commoner.

"When you return, I will reorganize your group of men and grant you the title of captain and the rank of garrison commander of a large fort."

Liu Xingzuo knelt down again to express his gratitude. He attached great importance to his official position.

Armored militiamen crossed the river one after another. It would take some time for the Tartars to arrive. Li Hao took advantage of this opportunity to wet their armor with Liu Xingzuo. "General, the Tartar leader is Yuetuo, Daishan's eldest son. Some of my former men were robbed by the two red flag Tartars one by one. The 600 men they robbed last time were stuffed into the two red flags as dead soldiers."

The Tatars approached to within five or six hundred steps and began to form a battle line. Liu Xingzuo was sharp-eyed and recognized Yue Tuo who was leading the troops.

He was a young Tartar in his twenties, and he was accompanied by several veteran generals who helped to command the soldiers.

Li Hao ordered him to point out Yue Tuo to him, "Look again, are there any other descendants of the old slave, other Han officials such as Li Yongfang and Tong Yangxing, or important generals and civil officials of the Later Jin Dynasty, if there are any, point them out as well."

He did not know Nurhaci's descendants, nor was he familiar with the main generals of the Later Jin Dynasty, and suffered a lot because of this.

After rubbing his eyes, Liu Xingzuo looked into the distance, "There are still a few Niulu Ezhen in the two red flags, but no famous generals. The most famous general in the two red flags is Guarjia Laosa. This Tartar is a Jiala Ezhen. The fields of the flagmen under his jurisdiction are all in Shenbei and Xinmin. He is mainly responsible for managing the grassland Tartars."

He had also been affiliated with the Zhenghong Banner for a long time and was familiar with the Niulu'ezhen under Daishan's jurisdiction.

"Only Yuetuo?" Li Hao raised the millstone with a handle beside him, "Then we'll find a way to kill him later."

Ever since the Jinzhou general killed several fierce generals of the Later Jin Dynasty, the descendants of Lao Ai family dared not lead the charge and just hid behind the formation to supervise the battle.

This had a great impact on the morale of the Eight Banners.

"There is also an old man named Xifu, from the Hesheli family. His family has always been in charge of the communication between the Tartars and Korea and Mongolia."

Li Hao shook his head. "I don't know him. I'll reward him with an arrow and leave him with a complete head. Tell me, what do the Tartars and North Korea mainly sell?"

After connecting southern Liaoning, the sphere of influence of the Later Jin would be gradually compressed until the surviving Jurchens could no longer hold on and would either surrender to the Ming or flee to the mountainous areas in the east.

By then, Li Hao was going to go into the mountains to dig holes, and by the way, he would go to Korea to kill some people and bring back some soldiers.

The Korean muskets in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties were quite well made. Korean musketeers can be considered a unique type of soldier on the peninsula, and are better at using firearms than the Liao Dynasty's three-eyed gunners.

"The Tartars sold horses and ginseng to Korea, which was in dire need of horses. The Tartars also bought their gunpowder from Korea, as the gunpowder prepared by the Eight Banners craftsmen was of poor quality."

The Jinzhou general nodded and said, "In the future, we will use this as an excuse to ask the Li family on the Peninsula to contribute some money to help with military pay."

The Joseon Dynasty was a vassal state of the Ming Dynasty and was named an unconquered country by Zhu Yuanzhang. The term "torture and salary" is inappropriate.

It seems like the father is too strict.

Providing financial assistance is more in line with the relationship between the father and the son.

The Tatars arrived very early but were reluctant to launch an attack. Although Li Hao had a good chat with Liu Xingzuo, he became a little angry when he saw no Eight Banners soldiers coming up to offer their lives and heads for a long time.

"Come here, what are you dawdling about for?"

The Jinzhou general shouted loudly.

The terrain on both sides of the Hun River is empty, with only the sound of flowing water as the background sound. The dead soldiers who were moving forward step by step had already lost their fighting spirit.

When someone saw that the killer on the opposite side was his former superior Liu Xingzuo, a dead soldier immediately shouted:

"General Liu, we were forced to do this. None of the brothers want to fight General Li. Can we avoid death if we surrender?"

The dead soldiers were divided into three rows and surrounded the convex river bank. The Tatars supervising the battle were at the back. Even if the dead soldiers in the front row spoke, they would not understand what the Han soldiers said.

Although they did not understand, the Tatars supervising the battle in the rear were not satisfied with the speed of the dead soldiers' advance, and also felt that the dead soldiers in the front row had no good intentions by speaking Chinese, so they shot several arrows in a row, forcing the dead soldiers to go forward and fight fiercely.

Hearing this, Liu Xingzuo quickly said, "General, many of them are my subordinates. The Jurchen soldiers holding the net are also captured fish-skinned Tartars. They have long been dissatisfied with the exploitation of the old slaves and the major Tartars, and have been thinking of following me for a long time."

He was afraid that the famous General Li would not accept his defection.

"Of course you can. Just jump into the river and run to the west bank. If you really want to surrender, run to the north. There are several flat areas there, making it easier to cross the river."

Li Hao waved his hand and agreed to the surrender of this group of dead soldiers.

The round stone millstone in his hand was found during a fierce battle in the city. It is about one foot in diameter and weighs thirty to forty kilograms. It is quite useful as a juicer in a sea of ​​corpses.

The only drawback is that you cannot get the complete head of the Tartar, so the reward you can get in return is less.

The Han soldiers among the dead were overjoyed. They dropped their weapons, bowed to General Li, and then headed towards the river in the east.

Of course, before jumping into the river, they did not forget to take off their already incomplete armor, in case the river water wet the armor and increase its weight, dragging their bodies into the river.

PS: It’s the 100th chapter now, please give me recommendations and monthly votes.

(End of this chapter)