Chapter 16 Chapter 16: Jiang Xingben’s Suspected Young Woman’s Adultery Xue Wanjun

"The Tang Dynasty is seven thousand miles away from me. On the way, we have to pass through two thousand miles of desert. There is no water or grass, and the wind is biting. There must not be many people coming from them." He smiled triumphantly, "I have been to Chang'an before. I’ve seen their equipment on the road, it’s terrible! The cities in the Qin and Long borders are all empty cities, not much better than the Sui Dynasty. Li Shimin is now sending troops to attack me. If there are more soldiers and horses, there is not enough food. The widow analyzed, The number of Tang troops must be less than 30,000, and I can defeat them in one fell swoop."

After finishing his theory, Wentai began to talk about his plan: "We have to wait for work and reap the benefits. When the Tang army arrives at the city, they will run out of ammunition and food within 20 days. What will they use to fight us? At that time, our army will attack bravely and capture the general of the Tang army alive. There is no need to worry at all. !" If the plan goes smoothly, the chief officer of the Jiaohe march, the official minister Hou Junji, and the deputy chief Xue Wanjun, the general of Zuo Tunwei, will be miserable. Under the leadership of Qibi Heli, a guide who is familiar with the terrain, the Tang army, composed of Turks and Qibi tribes, marched to the mouth of the Gobi Desert quickly despite the severe cold.At this time, Qu Wentai suddenly changed his previous self-confident style, and began to panic all day long.

He didn't know why he was so confident, and he didn't know how he was so confused that he made a wrong judgment. He didn't know what he should do and what he shouldn't do.Neither sat nor stood, could not eat, could not drink water, and in the end, because of fear, he fell seriously ill, died, and passed away. Is there anything worse than this? Have. That is, who is responsible for this impending war. Qu Wentai's son Qu Zhisheng successfully succeeded to the throne, and Hou Junji led the vanguard and arrived in Liugu smoothly. The scouts reported back: "Today is Qu Wentai's funeral, and all officials from Gaochang are present... A surprise attack at this time will definitely win!"

Hou Junji did not agree with this approach, he said: "The Son of Heaven asked me to lead the expedition because of Gao Chang's rudeness, and now we are being rude to attack him while he is in mourning." He looked at the person who made this suggestion, Said, "Remember, we are here to inquire about crimes, not to destroy the country." Everyone continued to beat gongs and drums and march forward in a high-profile manner. When we arrived at Gaochang, it was already August, and what appeared in front of us was Tiandi City (now Lukeqin, southwest of Shanshan, Xinjiang), the gateway to the east of the capital of Gaochang.

Hou Junji sent someone to announce that as long as they surrendered, there would be no more fighting, and everyone would go to the capital together.The defenders of Tiandi City did not respond to a single word. Xin Liaoer, the vanguard and Zhonglang general, was ordered to take the siege equipment and took more than an hour to capture more than 7,000 people in the city. Only the capital is left in Gaochang, which is an isolated city. However, Qu Zhisheng has a backing, and Western Turkic has already agreed to send troops to help. As long as he survives this period, he can wait for the arrival of reinforcements.

In order to ease the situation, Qu Zhisheng wrote to Hou Junji, "It is my father who offended the emperor, and Zhisheng has nothing to do with him. Now he has suffered retribution. Zhisheng has just ascended the throne. I hope Shangshu will take pity on him." Hou Junji wrote back, "If you reform, you are a good boy. If you are really willing to reform, you can bring all the officials and come to the city gate empty-handed to show your sincerity." Qu Zhisheng was silent. On that day, the Tang army launched a general attack on Gaochang. Gaochang is well defended, and the moat outside the city can also block the pace of the Tang army's attack.

Hou Junji didn't compete with the moat, and asked thousands of people to carry the tools they had prepared long ago, digging and digging, and filled the moat to death in an instant.The Gaochang defenders were frightened to death. They saw countless long-headed monsters with a height of more than ten meters running over the huge pile of soil. This thing is similar to a bird's nest hanging on a bamboo pole. Soldiers standing on the bird's nest can directly see the movement in the city.Such a perverted invention surprised the Gaochang defenders.Just be surprised, Tang Jun is like this.The situation in the city was gathered under the tent, Hou Junji gave an order not to talk to them, but to use more perverted weapons directly.

In this way, many small but huge guys were introduced from the former military guard of honor. This is a trebuchet, designed to deal with defenders who don't open the door. The guards who stretched their heads to check were the first to suffer. When the boulders fell, some of them had a good life, but were hit with a concussion; According to records, the rainy flying stones are not as big as fists as we imagined.The small stones weighed tens of kilograms and the large ones were several hundred kilograms. They were thrown into the sky by giant catapults, and the kinetic energy was converted into potential energy, and the potential energy was converted into kinetic energy.It is worth noting that one end of the trebuchet is a huge rock, and the other end is a thick rope pulled by two hundred soldiers. Oh, it is indeed a bit abnormal.

It's really hard for these guards. Even if the energy is not conserved, and the stone has no speed when it reaches the city wall, the weight of several hundred catties can crush people to death. After holding on for a few days, Qu Zhisheng finally waited for reinforcements from the Western Turks. The Western Turks carried out the rescue according to the original plan, stationed troops far away in Futu City, and "echoed" with Qu Zhisheng.It seems that the Khan of the Western Turks has already had a well-thought-out plan for the development of the situation.However, this man was humorous, he promised Qu Wentai to send reinforcements, and he did, but when Hou Junji led the army across the Gobi Desert and stationed troops under the Gaochang capital to attack the city, the Western Turks began to leave one after another.

They said that they didn't see Tang Jun, and thought it would be easy to deal with him. Now that they saw him from a distance, we should leave too. Goodbye, Zhisheng! Khan took his wife and children with him and fled westward for more than a thousand miles. Shaboluo Yehu Khan ran away, and the support from Futu City was gone. ... Isn't this cheating! In fact, it's not so cheating. Although Khan ran away, he left the general Yugushe behind, and let Yugushe stay in a fake manner for a while. I don't know what Yu Gushe thinks in his heart, maybe he feels that he is wronged.When Khan ran away without a trace, he surrendered Futu City to Tang Jun.

Even so, the capital of Gaochang still stood firm, with the courage to not give up until the Yellow River.Hou Junji let the trebuchet continue, and the rest of the troops divided into groups to attack other cities that refused to surrender.Gaochang was originally a sparsely populated city, and twenty-two of them were knocked down in one breath. There were more than 8,000 households and nearly 20,000 people were captured. Qu Zhisheng collapsed completely, opened the door and surrendered. In September of the fourteenth year of Zhenguan (640), Qu Zhisheng and the officials of Gaochang were captured, and Hou Junji returned triumphantly.Li Shimin held a three-day banquet to reward those who made meritorious deeds. Since then, the territory of the Tang Dynasty has set up states and counties, ranging from the sea in the east, Yanqi (Xinjiang) in the west, Damo (Russia) in the north, and Linyi (Vietnam) in the south.Anxi Duhu Mansion came into being.Li Shimin took Gaochang as Xizhou and Futu City as Tingzhou, and set up Jiaohe City in this famous place, and left troops to guard it. The Battle of Gaochang in the Tang Dynasty united the Western Regions and the Central Plains, and at the same time effectively suppressed the troublesome Western Turks in the west, which can be described as infinite merit. Those who have meritorious service must be rewarded, and those who have done wrong must be punished. What is amazing is that apart from Hou Junji and Xue Wanjun, the most credited person this time is Jiang Xingben, a garden architect, garden designer, and weapon manufacturing expert who was personally praised by Li Shimin. Jiucheng Palace and Luoyang Palace, which are used for summer vacation, are his masterpieces. Jiang Xingben does not stick to professionalism, and the large and delicate weapons he designed have been widely used in wars. When the army arrived in Yizhou, on the hillside, countless craftsmen began to cut down trees and made extremely advanced weapons including ladders, crash cars, trebuchets, nest cars, etc.It can be said bluntly that in that era, science and technology were the primary productive forces and Li Shimin had already recognized it.Li Shimin rewarded talents in an eclectic manner. In order to commend Jiang Xingben's contribution, he issued an edict saying: "For war, equipment is very important. No matter how brave the soldiers are, they are not as powerful as the giant crossbows that shake the sky and the earth. The soldiers defeated the enemy with weapons, which created a great deterrent to the enemy. Jiang Xingben personally directed the manufacture of siege equipment , so that they were able to create such a good record, and the thousands of miles of land and mountains were also peaceful. I really appreciate such capable people, and since ancient times, there have been few comparables!" Qu Wentai's observation was correct, but his mistake was that he didn't know that the siege equipment was all freshly made. It's scary not knowing technology! While rewarding Jiang Xingben heavily, Hou Junji and Xue Wanjun should also be rewarded. But someone stood up to object and exposed their crimes, saying that they had done shameful things in Gaochang. Later, Li Shimin figured it out.It turned out that Hou Junji's command of the army was not strict, and more than half of the property collected from the Gaochang court was stolen by soldiers. Judging from this matter, Hou Junji was indeed wronged. What was not wronged was that when the soldiers were afraid of being punished and gave him money, he accepted it without even thinking about it.Dali Temple interrogated the insider, and the insider revealed that it wasn't that the soldiers insisted on stealing, it was because a few generals saw Hou Junji blatantly stealing the treasure, and everyone let go of their courage to grab the spoils. The matter is already very clear. Hou Junji, as the commander-in-chief of an army, cannot strictly demand himself, lead by example, teach by example, and make the entire army a mess, which is an unforgivable crime. Li Shimin issued an edict to imprison Hou Junji and others together, waiting to be punished. Unlike Hou Junji, the vice-commander Xue Wanjun's crimes did not seem to be serious, and he was named Lu Guogong by Li Shimin.But the good times didn't last long. Someone exposed that Xue Wanjun had done shameless things after the war, and said that there was enough evidence to prove his point of view. The evidence is a woman from Gaochang, who looks very charming and very sexy, the kind that makes men dizzy when they see it.After this woman was brought back as a prisoner by the army, Xue Wanjun saw that she was attractive, so he pulled her over to have sex.Xue Wanjun enjoyed it so much that he didn't stop these days. The whistleblower spoke so eloquently that Xue Wanjun was furious. The Gaochang woman also said that she had never done such sneaky things with Lu Guogong, and someone must have tried to do something bad to her, and falsely accused her if she couldn't.In order to prove her innocence, she and Xue Wanjun met at Dali Temple to confront the informant. Things got serious, and Wei Zheng found out, Wei Zheng severely criticized him, and he remonstrated: "First, isn't it a joke to talk about someone's private affairs in the courtroom? "Secondly, the emperor envoys his ministers with courtesy, and the ministers serve the emperor with loyalty. "Third, if this matter is true, because such a private matter that you love me and I love you, all meritorious ministers will be guilty, who will be willing to serve the country in the future? "Fourth, if there is no such case, wouldn't His Majesty's efforts to investigate such a case chill the hearts of the soldiers? "Fifth, in the past, Duke Mu of Qin used to steal horses, King Zhuang of Chu pardoned his ministers, and women in Gaochang were wiser than Yao and Shun, Duke Mu of Qin and King Zhuang of Chu. I am so excited about His Majesty, Your Majesty will definitely give us a satisfactory answer, I will wait and see!" The flattering was loud, the words were sonorous and forceful, cadenced, polite, concerned about the country and the people... Li Shimin laughed out loud when he made such a remonstrance.He ordered that the charges against Xue Wanjun be dropped and that the matter be no longer pursued. And Wei Zheng was also praised for his flattering to the highest level. As for Hou Junji, because it is a crime that must be punished with solid evidence, very few people intercede for him, but Emperor Eloquent and Zhongshu servant Cen Wenshu objected to this verdict: "Your Majesty is not wrong to imprison criminals, but if you do this, people from all over the world may think that your Majesty only looks at other people's mistakes, but turns a blind eye to their merits. Think about Li Guangli and Chen Tang in the Han Dynasty, and then think about Jin Dynasty. Wang Jun of the Sui Dynasty and Han Qinhu of the Sui Dynasty were all guilty when they won, but the owner thought they were meritorious and rewarded them all. "People are like this. There are few people who are honest and honest, but more greedy and extravagant. Therefore, Huang Shigong (Zhang Liang's teacher) said in "Military Situation": "To use wisdom, to make courage, to make greed, to make stupid, so the wise are happy to stand For its merits, the brave are good at pursuing their ambitions, the greedy are eager to seek their own benefits, and the fools do not care about their death.' Only when there are things that make people desire, people will be aggressive. "I think that Hou Junji is a person with desires. I hope that His Majesty will put more emphasis on credit and less on big mistakes, and allow Junji and others to re-enter the court. Of course, there must be guilt, but It won’t be what it is now. Although they are not honest ministers, they are also greedy and foolish generals. It is better to have generals who are advancing towards their goals for their own self-interest, than to be imprisoned, meritorious but resentful Puff. If His Majesty can really do this, although it is said that he has wronged the law, it can demonstrate morality." After reading, Li Shimin ordered to release Hou Junji and others for minor punishment. Xue Wanjun: When a woman is molested by a man, she will always say, "Why are all men like this?" Why is this? Hou Junji: I think so. On the one hand, it can maintain their ladylike image; on the other hand, they can accept molestation with peace of mind.