Hu Zongxian's Divide and Conquer Plot!

[Modern Live Streaming Room]

A dense barrage of golden bullet comments scrolled across the holographic screen, the entire screen filled with sighs for Hu Zongxian and Qi Jiguang.

["Hu Zongxian is having a really tough time. Above him are Emperor Jiajing seeking immortality and Yan Song and his son demanding money; below him are pirates threatening his life; and in the middle is a bunch of incompetent teammates dragging him down!"]

"This is like clinging to life with an entire rotten state apparatus!"

"To be able to achieve such results in this meat grinder, these pillars of the Ming Dynasty are simply divine beings!"

As the dim golden lights in the studio gradually dimmed, Zhu Dijun looked at the comments on the screen, grabbed a bottle of water, took a big gulp, and then slammed the bottle into the wastebasket.

"Family members, do you feel saddened? Do you feel it wasn't easy?"

Zhu Dijun braced his hands on the podium, a sharp, cold fire igniting in his eyes.

"In this utterly chaotic battlefield, sighs and tears won't save the Ming Dynasty's coastal defenses! Let's continue today and see how a truly ruthless figure in the Ming Dynasty, with a terrible hand of cards, managed to overturn the Japanese pirates' table!"

He struck the holographic keyboard three times in a violent manner.

Three glaring, blood-red skulls slammed onto the map of Jiangnan on the big screen—[Xu Hai], [Chen Dong], and [Ma Ye].

"Spring of the 35th year of the Jiajing reign! March to April! The life-or-death struggle against the Japanese pirates in the south!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the laser pointer, and red beams of light danced wildly across the map of Zhejiang and Southern Zhili.

"Xu Hai joined forces with two major Japanese pirate leaders, Chen Dong and Ma Ye, and assembled an army of fifty to sixty thousand! More than a thousand warships blotted out the sky, and they landed directly in western Zhejiang!"

A striking red circle firmly locked onto a county on the map—[Tongxiang].

"The army launched a surprise attack on Zhapu and Pinghu, completely surrounding Tongxiang County! Family members, who's trapped inside? It's that Zhejiang governor Ruan E from last year, who was always at odds with Hu Zongxian and gave nonsensical orders!"

Zhu Dijun was so angry that he laughed, his laughter sounding like a blade scraping against glass.

"Ruan E was crying and begging for help in the city. The imperial court dispatched Zong Li, a guerrilla general, with elite reinforcements from Hebei to rescue him, but they suffered a crushing defeat in open battle, and Zong Li was killed on the spot! The Ming Dynasty's local garrison troops in Jiangnan were completely routed and dared not advance an inch! Jiangnan was utterly shaken, and the Japanese pirates' advance once again came close to Nanjing!"

On the big screen, flames soared into the sky once again in the Jiangnan water town, and tens of thousands of Japanese pirates swaggered around outside the city like locusts.

"As the supreme commander of the Ming Dynasty's southeastern military affairs, how many troops did Hu Zongxian command?"

Zhu Dijun wrote two words heavily on the whiteboard: "Two Thousand!"

"Fifty or sixty thousand against two thousand! How the hell are we supposed to fight that?!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

Under the old crooked tree on Coal Hill, Zhu Youjian heard this comparison of troop strength and closed his eyes in despair.

"It's over..."

Emperor Chongzhen's withered hands dug into the soil. "Two thousand against fifty thousand, the garrisons collapsed, and the visiting troops perished. This situation is even more hopeless than my Battle of Songjin! Hu Zongxian... how can Hu Zongxian possibly break this deadlock?"

On the screen, Zhu Dijun kicked the edge of the podium, causing the entire studio to vibrate with a piercing hum.

"What if we can't win a direct confrontation? Are we going to fight head-on like Zhang Jing and get tricked to death? Hu Zongxian will show you what the ultimate insidiousness of Ming Dynasty civil officials is!" Zhu Dijun roared.

"He directly appointed his fellow townsman—Luo Longwen! A man who was extremely influential in both the underworld and the Jiangnan smuggling circles, a figure with connections in both the legitimate and criminal worlds!"

"Hu Zongxian showered Luo Longwen with a massive amount of gold and silver treasures, stunning beauties from Jiangnan, and even offered him an official position from the Ming Dynasty! He went directly to Xu Hai's camp to carry out a counter-espionage plot!"

On the holographic screen, Luo Longwen sat in Xu Hai's military tent, all smiles, pushing over boxes of silver and jewelry.

"Hu Zongxian had accurately predicted that these pirates were just a motley crew hastily assembled for money! He bribed Xu Hai with a large sum of money, promising him high-ranking positions and generous salaries, while simultaneously sending people to Chen Dong and Ma Ye to spread rumors that Xu Hai was trying to monopolize everything!"

Zhu Dijun gripped the control panel tightly with both hands, a disdainful sneer on his face:

"Use money! Offer official positions as bait! Spread rumors to sow discord among these pirates! This is the devastating blow of the Ming Dynasty's officialdom! In less than a month, the three factions of Xu Hai, Chen Dong, and Ma Ye have completely fallen into chaos! They're suspicious of each other, ready to draw their swords, and have even lost all will to attack the city!"

A red laser pointer drew a large X on the perimeter of Tongxiang.

"The siege of Tongxiang was lifted without bloodshed!"

The live stream chat exploded with comments.

"Holy crap! The Ming Dynasty civil officials' methods of manipulating people's hearts are truly unparalleled!"

["If I can't beat you head-on, I'll dismantle you from within! Hu Zongxian has truly mastered the art of Machiavellianism!"]

"Although the methods are insidious, in this desperate situation, this is a life-saving miracle cure!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer and slammed it onto the big screen.

"That's it? Wrong! The counter-espionage plot was just an appetizer! Hu Zongxian wanted to uproot these beasts completely!"

The timeline jumps wildly, freezing at July and September.

"July! Battle of Zhapu! The Japanese pirates were unstable internally, so Hu Zongxian decisively launched an attack! He joined forces with Yu Dayou, who had just been transferred, and Qi Jiguang, who had been promoted to the rank of adjutant general, and launched a combined land and naval attack on the Japanese pirate stronghold at Zhapu! They killed thousands and recovered a large number of coastal strongholds!"

"Then, September arrived!"

Zhu Dijun's eyes blazed with intense fervor as he wrote four large, blood-red characters on the whiteboard: "[Shenzhuang Annihilated]!"

"This is the ultimate pinnacle of Hu Zongxian's counter-espionage tactics! He first forced Xu Hai, who had been completely deceived, to capture his former allies Chen Dong and Ma Ye alive and send them to the Ming army camp to demonstrate their loyalty!"

On the holographic screen, Xu Hai, his hands covered in blood, tied Chen Dong and Ma Ye into a pretzel shape and threw them in front of the Ming army's formation.

"Afterwards, Hu Zongxian left Xu Hai no way out! The army directly surrounded Shenzhuang, and a huge fire burned through Xu Hai's camp stronghold!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was like thunder.

"Xu Hai was defeated and, with nowhere to turn, committed suicide by drowning! Tens of thousands of Japanese pirates were completely wiped out in this great fire! Zhelin, the largest stronghold of Japanese pirates in western Zhejiang, was eradicated!"

"Following the great victory at Wangjiangjing, the Japanese pirate raids in the Suzhou-Songjiang region suffered a truly devastating defeat!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Yuanzhang quietly watched the raging fire in Shenzhuang burning in the sky. Finally, a cruel sneer appeared on his deeply lined old face.

"What ruthless methods! But I like them. What's wrong with using some tactics to deal with these Japanese pirates?"

Old Zhu stroked his sparse beard, a fierce glint in his eyes.

"Borrowing them with huge profits to make them fight each other, squeezing out all their value before eliminating them completely! This Hu Zongxian is a peerless genius at dirty work!"

He turned to look at the assembled civil and military officials below and said, word by word:

"War isn't just about swords. If our Ming soldiers are rotten, at least their brains aren't, then there's still hope!"

The story takes place in a parallel timeline of the 35th year of the Jiajing reign in the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Xiyuan Taoist Temple.

Emperor Jiajing, Zhu Houcong, looked at Hu Zongxian's achievements, a slight smile playing on his lips, and lightly flicked his whisk. "Hu Zongxian has not disappointed me. The man recommended by that old dog Yan Song is ultimately quite useful. As long as the chaos in Jiangnan is quelled, what harm is there in letting him take a small cut?"

On the backdrop, the studio lights shifted instantly from a vibrant, warm red to an extremely oppressive, cold gray.

Zhu Dijun casually tossed the blackboard eraser aside, and his entire demeanor suddenly darkened.

"In the grand scheme of things, Hu Zongxian did manage to stabilize the situation through political maneuvering and counter-espionage. But my family, does this prove that the Ming army is capable of fighting? Absolutely not!"

He slammed his hand on the keyboard, forcibly rewinding the timeline on the big screen by one month—[August: Battle of Longshan]!

"On the eve of the Battle of Shenzhuang, Qi Jiguang personally experienced an extremely horrific battle that he would never be able to forget for the rest of his life!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a black marker and wrote down two extremely disparate numbers on the whiteboard.

"On one side, there are eight hundred Japanese pirates invading Cixi Longshan."

"On the other side, there are tens of thousands of regular troops that the Ming Dynasty has assembled in the area!"

He pressed his hands firmly on the podium, staring intently at the camera: "Eight hundred to ten thousand! No matter how you calculate it, it was a sure thing! And the result?!"

The large screen then cut directly to a muddy battlefield.

Eight hundred Japanese pirates, wielding samurai swords and clad in tattered bamboo armor, charged towards the Ming army formation with strange cries. The tens of thousands of Ming regular soldiers, dressed in neat uniforms, upon hearing the pirates' shouts, in unison dropped their spears and muskets, letting out terrified screams, and turned to flee!

The army of ten thousand men, like a flood bursting its banks, was chased and slaughtered by eight hundred Japanese pirates who roamed the mountains and fields!

"Collapsed at the slightest touch! Absolutely collapsed at the slightest touch!" Zhu Dijun laughed angrily, slamming his fist on the control panel. "The Ming Dynasty's regular army is so rotten it's beyond saving!"

In the scene, Qi Jiguang is riding a warhorse, watching his soldiers scatter like a tide, his eyes bloodshot, his teeth almost grinding to powder.

"Just when the defense line was about to completely collapse, Qi Jiguang, alone, with only a bow!"

Zhu Dijun's voice suddenly rose, filled with a chilling murderous intent.

"Qi Jiguang charged alone, drew his powerful bow, and fired three arrows in quick succession! The three heavy arrows pierced the heads of the three Japanese pirate leaders at the forefront!"

On the screen, the heads of three Japanese pirate leaders exploded like watermelons, their brains mixed with blood splattering everywhere. The remaining Japanese pirates were terrified by this incredible archery skill, and their offensive momentarily halted. Only then were the Ming army able to barely maintain their footing. Yu Dayou arrived shortly afterward, and together with the Ming forces, they finally repelled the Japanese pirates.

The studio was deathly silent.

Zhu Dijun straightened up, letting the pale spotlight shine on his profile.

"Three arrows decide the fate of the world. Pretty cool, right? But in Qi Jiguang's heart, this was a thousand times more disgusting than eating a dead rat!"

He smashed the broken pen in his hand on the ground.

"This battle completely shattered Qi Jiguang's last illusions about the old Ming army. He finally understood that leading this bunch of useless people, whose backbones had been squeezed dry by the system, to fight was tantamount to sending them to their deaths."

On the big screen, Qi Jiguang stood on the battlefield littered with debris, watching the garrison soldiers who were scrambling for the belongings of their fallen comrades. His eyes shone with a chilling light that could overturn the entire military system of the Ming Dynasty.