Chapter 25 The first section of the extremely smooth road to the emperor

Before the age of twenty-five, Zhu Yuanzhang had been sinking into the bottom of the society, with a miserable fate and nothing. From the age of twenty-five to twenty-eight, Zhu Yuanzhang's fate curve showed a wave of rapid rise: At the age of twenty-five, he joined Guo Zixing's army and became Guo Zixing's son-in-law.At the age of twenty-six, because he recruited 700 soldiers including Xu Da, he was promoted from an ordinary soldier to a town governor, and became a mid-level officer. At the age of twenty-eight, Guo Zixing died, and he became the actual leader of Guo Jun.In just over three years, he rose from a poor monk at the bottom of society to one of the "heroes" of the rebel army at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.

The thirteen years from the age of twenty-eight to the age of forty-one were the thirteen years when he officially embarked on the road of being a king. Although there have been great shocks and dangers in the past thirteen years, it has basically risen steadily, all the way higher: At the age of twenty-nine, he led his army to capture Jiqing (Nanjing), an important town in the south of the Yangtze River, and formally established his own base. At the age of thirty, he successively captured Changxing, Changzhou, Ningguo, Jiangyin, Changshu, Huizhou, Chizhou, Yangzhou and other places, and established his own base areas.

During the two years between the ages of 31 and 32, he conquered the affluent eastern Zhejiang and doubled his base area.Together with Chen Youliang and Zhang Shicheng, they became the Big Three in Jiangnan. In the past two years when he was thirty-three or thirty-four years old, he repelled Chen Youliang's attack twice, and at the age of thirty-four, he was named Wu Guogong by King Xiaoming. In the past two years between the age of thirty-five and thirty-six, Zhu Yuanzhang turned from the defensive to the offensive, defeating Chen Youliang, his biggest opponent in the battle of Poyang Lake.

At the age of forty, after three years of fighting, he eliminated another formidable enemy, Zhang Shicheng, and all Jiangnan was his. At the age of forty-one, he proclaimed himself emperor in Yingtian (Zhu Yuanzhang renamed Jiqing to Yingtian, namely Nanjing in 1356).In the same year, Xu Da succeeded in the Northern Expedition, and Emperor Yuan fled north. Looking back at Zhu Yuanzhang's path from beggar to emperor, it was really smooth.Liu Bang, another famous commoner emperor in Chinese history, experienced ups and downs such as being "assigned" to Sichuan by Xiang Yu before he became emperor, and successive rebellions by generals after he became emperor, which was not as smooth as Zhu Yuanzhang.From the bottom of society to the highest point of society, Zhu Yuanzhang is like a blue-chip stock with daily limit all the way, without any suspense.

In fact, in terms of cunning and machine change, Zhu Yuanzhang was only above the middle level among the heroes at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.Those uprising leaders who were born as vagrants, which one is not insightful and experienced in human relations.Compared with the two ends of the first mouse, which were fierce and thick, Zhu Yuanzhang did not see how far he could defeat them.When it comes to strategy and tactics, although Zhu Yuanzhang is better than others, he can't do every step of the way. The decisive factor why Zhu Yuanzhang stands out among the heroes is that he possesses other vital qualities that those reckless heroes do not have.