Chu calendar, year 4109, March.
In this year, the Great Chu Empire, which had been peaceful for a long time, welcomed a " great earthquake." The number one religious sect, the Heavenly Saints Association, actually rebelled.
On the first day of the third lunar month, the millions of followers of the Heavenly Saints Association, led by Li Qiyi, the leader of the Heavenly Saints Association, called themselves the Heavenly Saints Army. They shouted," Fight against the violent Chu Kingdom, kill the fatuous ruler, punish the evil sycophants, and eliminate the evil!”They openly raised their troops to rebel.
After Li Qiyi's actions, the world was in an uproar, and heroes everywhere responded.
Yu Ba of the West Region and Northern Jade incited another rebellion of the Han Tribe, Li Ju of the East Region responded to Li Qiyi's call to rebel against Chu, Zhu Bujue of the South Region also took the opportunity to respond, and so on.
The entire Great Chu fell into the flames of war.
Emperor Chu Jiangsheng, who had been immersed in wine and women, was shocked when he learned that the scale of the rebellion was so large. The officials of the Imperial City were also stunned. Rebellions happened every year, but no one expected that it would be the Heavenly Saints Association this time. Moreover, it came so suddenly and so fiercely.
It was impossible for Li Qiqi's big movements to go unnoticed. In fact, some people had already noticed it, but their words were not as important. In addition, the officials bribed by Heavenly Saints Association were covering for Li Qiqi in the court, so no one listened to such voices.
Moreover, everyone knew that the Heaven Knife Sect and the Emperor Suppression Sect had always been the most loyal supporters of Great Chu. They were the two sharp swords of Great Chu. They had contributed greatly to the elimination of the sect rebellion and the maintenance of local stability.
The Heavenly Saints Association was the number one religious sect. If they openly rebelled, wouldn't they be going against the entire religious sect. What did this have to do with the other major religious sects? How would the imperial court view the major religious sects?
And you, Li Qiyi, are already over 50 years old. You don't enjoy your life, but you risk your entire family to rebel. What are you trying to do?
Do you want to be the emperor? But even if you conquer the empire, how many years can you sit there? And who would inherit it? You don't even have a son.
The officials loyal to the Chu family couldn't figure out Li Qiqi's motive for rebelling. Jiang Sheng, Emperor Chu, couldn't figure it out. Even Wang Teng couldn't figure it out. However, it didn't matter anymore. The uprising of the Heavenly Saints Association had already begun. The Great Chu Empire was in danger.
At first, the rebel army entered various places under the guise of preaching, but in the end, they suddenly raised a rebellion. Under the attack from both inside and outside, the soldiers stationed in various places were no match for them, and many cities fell.
The first thing the rebel army did after attacking the city was to open the granaries to provide food to the poor people. Then, they killed the corrupt officials and the despotic.
When the poor people saw the corrupt officials and landlord tyrants who usually rode on their heads die one after another, they applauded and cheered that the heavens had eyes. Therefore, many people joined the ranks of the Heavenly Saints Association, and the scale of the Heavenly Saints Association grew rapidly like a snowball.
Some people might not be outstanding in martial arts, and their intelligence was not top-notch, but they were destined to become the source of chaos in the world. Song Jiang was such a person!
The Heavenly Saint Union had Song Jiang, Zhuang Yan, and the other rebel kings as their military advisors. The Heavenly Saint Army naturally wouldn't take many detours. These people had their own set of experience in rebelling and were very familiar with it.
The Heavenly Saint Army revolted mainly against the aristocratic families.
At the beginning of the founding of Great Chu, Emperor Tianming had obtained the support of the aristocratic families by promising to share the world with them. However, this had also resulted in the situation where the aristocratic families could not be shaken off.
The total population of the aristocratic families was less than one percent of the total population of Great Chu, but they occupied ninety-five percent of the wealth of Chu. Moreover, they still wantonly used all kinds of legal and illegal means to occupy the people's fields. The people could not survive, so they naturally stood up and rebelled.
The Heavenly Saint Army was almost filled with such poor people, so it was not difficult to imagine the attitude of the Heavenly Saint Army towards the great clans.
The Heavenly Saint Army did not differentiate between good and bad. They would slaughter any aristocratic family they saw, so they were naturally boycotted by all the aristocratic families. This directly led to the fact that whenever the Heavenly Saint Army attacked the city, the aristocratic families in the city would join forces to help the Chu army defend the city.
Moreover, the support of the aristocratic families was very strong. If they wanted money, they would give it to them. If they wanted food, they would give it to them. If they still could not defend it, they would even send private soldiers to help defend the city.
They had no choice but to help. Once the city was breached, their families would be destroyed. All their clansmen would be killed, and their family property would benefit the Heavenly Saint Army. This was something that all the aristocratic families could not accept, so they naturally resisted.
Therefore, rather than saying that Li Qiyi wanted to rebel against the Great Chu royal family, the rebellion of the Heavenly Saints Association was more like a rebellion between the poor and the rich. This was a long-standing contradiction, which led to a war between the poor and the rich. The Heavenly Saints Army was the representative of the poor, while the royal family represented the aristocratic families.
What did the poor have? Other than himself, there was nothing else. However, the wealthy families controlled power, wealth, and knowledge. Therefore, the competition between the poor and the wealthy families had always been unfair.
Therefore, the Heavenly Saint Army had been successful in the early stages, but now they were in a stalemate. Li Qiqi and the others were also wondering what they had done wrong.
"Through everyone's joint analysis, they finally came to this conclusion. Great Chu and the aristocratic families are like these two mountains. It's not too late for us to turn around and deal with the aristocratic families after Great Chu is destroyed! It would be time-consuming and laborious to deal with two of them together, so why not use a time-saving and energy-saving method?
This analysis made all the canal marshals silent. In the end, Li Qiqi decided to change the original policy of the Heavenly Saint Army. Instead of targeting the aristocratic families of the world, they would target the small aristocratic families that caused trouble.
Li Qiyi didn't know that his decision had saved the doomed Heavenly Saint Army. If the Heavenly Saint Army still stood on the opposite side of the aristocratic families, even with the help of Song Jiang, Fang La, and other summoned figures, it was destined to fail. After all, no matter how strong an individual was, he couldn't resist the general trend.
The Heavenly Saint Army had changed their attitude towards the aristocratic families. Seeing that the Heavenly Saint Army did not provoke them, the aristocratic families naturally would not provoke the Heavenly Saint Army. They did not care about the rise and fall of the Chu Clan. They only cared about the rise and fall of their own families. Besides, there was nothing bad about the change of dynasties. It might even be an opportunity for their own families to grow stronger!
Of course, there were still some people who cared about it. They were the notorious small aristocratic families. When these aristocratic families saw that the commoners dared to stand up and rebel, and attacked them because of a "trivial matter", they were instantly terrified. Therefore, they did their best to help the soldiers defend the city.
After all, the power of a small aristocratic family was limited and could not be of much use. However, to the garrison soldiers, no matter how small a mosquito was, it was still meat. It was better than nothing!
Under the influence of Song Jiang and the others, the Heavenly Saint Army did not suffer the joint attack of the aristocratic families. Before the Chu family could react, the attack on the city was naturally very smooth. With a continuous supply of blood, the Heavenly Saint Army naturally regained its vitality!
Song Jiang and the others also formulated a strategy for Li Qiyi to unify Chu. The Heavenly Saint Association's three-step strategy for the country.
The first step was to gather all of their forces to take down Liao Province.
Due to the uneven distribution of the Heavenly Saint Association's power in various places, some places were not strong enough to deal with the local soldiers. Therefore, Song Jiang suggested to Li Qiqi to transfer the relatively weak forces of the 36 Revolutionary Army out of the local area first and concentrate their forces on the important territories that could be taken down.
A bird in the hand is better than ten birds in the forest.
Because the Heavenly Saints Association had the greatest influence in Liao Province, and Liao Province was the wealthiest and most populated province in Great Chu, it became Song Jiang's first target.
After Li Qiqi saw Song Jiang's plan, he felt that it was highly feasible, so he directly transferred 12 of the 36 canal marshals to Liaozhou for the uprising. He also sent Zhuang Yan to ensure that nothing went wrong.
The second step was to occupy the four prefectures, with Si Prefecture as the secondary and Hai Province as the secondary.
Although the four prefectures were easy to attack and difficult to defend, they were located in the hinterland, so there were few defenders. They were rich and had a large population. If they could occupy the Central Plains, they could get millions of soldiers.
As for the third step of Song Jiang's plan, it was much simpler and cruder. It was to build on the foundation of the second step. The million soldiers of the United Heavens Saint Army would crush the Great Chu's capital city and destroy Chu in one battle.
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