Flower Stealing Master

Chapter 322: Temujin’s intentions

It turned out that Zhao Min's trip to the south as an envoy to the Song Empire was just a pretense, and their real purpose was to contact various rebels in Shandong and Henan.

Over the years, Mongolia had fallen into the quagmire of wars with other countries around it, and the Great Khan Temujin was very dissatisfied with the current situation. So he made a move to adjust the entire strategic layout.

According to Temujin's plan, Mongolia would adopt a strategy of taking a step back to advance, and first cease war with some countries, and free up its hands to strike and destroy other countries.

It's just that when it was time to determine which country they would cease the war with, an unexpected problems arose. It turned out that Temujin was already very old, and he could return to the Eternal Heaven in a few years. Therefore, all the Mongolian prince’s were eagerly looking at the seat of the Great Khan.

However, the candidate for the next Great Khan wouldn’t be decided by Temujin alone. According to Mongolian customs, only the person with the most military achievements and the highest prestige could be the Great Khan.

If Temujin appointed someone who couldn’t make the others accept him, it might be fine while Temujin was still alive, as with his prestige, no one would dare to make any moves. However, once Temujin returns to the Eternal Heaven, would any of the other princes who hold military power obey him?

Under the rule of that weak Great Khan, Mongolia was doomed to fall apart.

Temujin clearly didn't want that, so he divided the princes with titles quite early and let them fight the various other countries by themselves. In that way, it would be clear at a glance who had the most military achievements and who had the highest prestige.

The princes were also trying their best to attack their respective target countries, fearing that they would fall behind the rest of their competitors. Therefore, at the critical moment of vying for the position of Great Khan, would any of the princes be willing to ally with his target country?

For example, the alliance between Mongolia and the Southern Song Empire was only happening due to the fact that Prince Kublai, who was in charge of attacking the Southern Song Empire, wasn’t able to advance for a long time. So he naturally had to agree even if he was unwilling.

The princes have long been accustomed to using various political intrigues, and if they really had to, they all wanted to ally with the target country of their competitor, but as everyone was about the same in terms of strength, and no one could do so, so the strategy of taking a step back to advance had been delayed for quite a while.

Therefore, Temujin had no choice but to think about other things. Among the most powerful princes, except for Zhao Min's father, the Prince of Ruyang, Chaghan Temur, the rest were all Temujin's grandsons. No matter who won the fight, the position of Khan would still be in his own bloodline.

But the Prince of Ruyang was the son of Temujin's sworn brother Mu Huali, and his power was too great.

If his grandsons fought like the snipe and the clam, in the end it would be Prince Chaghan who would end up benefiting as the fisherman.

So Temujin quickly set his sights on the Prince of Ruyang, but the prince had made great achievements in battle, and he was also the elder of Kublai and Alibuge. It’s just, no one knew what sins the Prince of Ruyang had committed in his previous life to have given birth to a daughter like Zhao Min, who didn’t care about her own family and devoted all her attention to the Ming Cult’s Zhang Wuji.

Anyway, as his power grew stronger and stronger, and Temujin finally had the intent of making a move against the Ruyang Palace.

However, it definitely wasn’t possible to do that in an instant, so he could only weaken the strength of the Ruyang Palace step by step. The first step was to move the Ruyang Palace out of the Western Region base camp which was their root. Then he planned to exchange the areas allotted to Alibuge and Chaghan. He wanted Alibuge to take charge of eliminating the Ming Cult and Hui tribes in the Western Regions, and Chaghan would have to deal with the Manchus and the Jin Empire.

Of course, all this had not yet been officially announced, but the news had been deliberately leaked from the Khan’s court. After the Ruyang Palace knew about it, it immediately had a severe reaction.

The people headed by the prince Wang Baobao thought that the Great Khan was deliberately favoring prince Alibuge, who held the most elite cavalry in the Mongolian camp, but let the Ruyang Palace deal with the most powerful Manchu and Jin Empires. The Great Khan was making Alibuge in charge of the Western Regions to earn military merits, so as to help him compete for the position of Great Khan in the future.

Although Zhao Min faintly felt that something was wrong, she subconsciously didn't dare to think too deep into it. However, the Prince of Ruyang only let out a deep sigh, and after spending a day alone in his study, he began to make arrangements for taking over Alibuge's mess in the future.

As a senior general in the army, the Prince of Ruyang had experience that Prince Alibuge, who was still rough around the edges, didn’t yet have. He learned from the mistakes Alibuge had previously made by fighting head-on with the Jin Empire and the Qing Empire, and sent Zhao Min to the Jin Empire in advance. He wanted to make alliances with various rebels in their country, and intended to bring down the two powerful countries from within.

In the past, the Jin Empire conquered the huge Northern Song Empire in a short period of time, but it still couldn't digest the territory of the Northern Song Empire. In the Yellow River Basin, the people in the Central Plains still had the Northern Song Empire in their heart, and there were many local separatists and armed forces. In addition, the Jin Empire had been in constant conflict with Mongolia in recent years, and its finances were extremely tight. Therefore, it had to increase the taxes of the people, which increased the population of the rebels, who were very active in the areas like Henan and Shandong.

And the Red Coat Army was the largest among them.

The situation of the Qing Empire was also not much better, and they had to worry about various rebel forces, such as the Heaven and Earth Society, the Red Flower Society, and the Golden Serpent Camp in Shandong.

However, due to the resourcefulness of Emperor Kangxi, their situation was not as bad as the Jin Empire. Among the rebel forces, he managed to make the Golden Serpent Camp in Shandong, which was the most powerful, into a group of scattered ruffians.

However, Zhao Min keenly realized that the Golden Serpent Camp was still of great value.

Therefore, she wanted to contact the Red Coat Army and slowly expend energy of the Song court.

Of course, they naturally couldn’t make the Qing and Jin courts realize their intentions in advance, so they used the guise of going to the Southern Song Empire as an envoy. This was also the reason why Zhao Min and her party didn’t travel through Xiangyang, but insisted on passing through the borders of Jin and Qing Empires.

Seeing just how strong Yang Miaozhen's martial arts was, Zhao Min was both happy and worried. She was happy that the Jin Empire had such a serious problem, and their emperor must having trouble sleeping and eating. She was also worried that because Yang Miaozhen was so strong, she might not want to ally with Mongolia. She originally thought that if she had to, she would use Monk Jinlun and Xuanming Elders to threaten them with force.

But seeing Yang Miaozhen, who was completely dominating the fight, and comparing Song Qingshu's performance against Monk Jinlun and Xuanming Elders, Zhao Min dejectedly gave up that idea .

Ding!

With a crisp sound, the two figures in the field separated.

Yang Miaozhen's face was pale, she smiled bitterly and said, "I lost."

As soon as this remark came out, her subordinates all looked at her in disbelief, and there was an uproar in the crowd, "How is it possible, didn't Fourth Lady still have the upper hand just now?"

Yang Miaozhen's face turned cold, and she angrily said, "You guys know the rule, if you lose, you lose. Could it be that you think that this Lady is lying to you?"

Seeing Yang Miaozhen showing off her feminine side, Song Qingshu thought it was quite interesting. Then he pointed to the wound on his chest, and explained, "If the Fourth Lady hadn't been lenient with the spear before, this Song would have been seriously injured and died. So, it’s a tie."

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