Chapter 58: The Great Battle (3)

The carriage raced like the wind all the way until it reached Shuncheng Gate.

There it was intercepted by the Manager of the Bureau of Military Affairs Shiliemen and the Chancellor Harachang leading a troop of soldiers.

Harachang, a man in his thirties with a square face and a tall, slender build, raised a torch and blocked the front of the carriage. Behind him, the Yuan soldiers raised their bows and arrows.

He sneered, "Ming spies have sneaked into Dadu with the intention of kidnapping His Majesty. The Crown Prince and the Consort have given their orders: His Majesty is safe, and the people in the carriage are spies in disguise. Fire and shoot them dead."

As every Yuan soldier nocked their arrows and bent their bows, preparing to let fly, Toghon Temür, wearing his small braids, stood at the front of the carriage and pointed at the leather robe embroidered with five-clawed golden dragons on his body. With a face full of anger, he said, "To think that you, Harachang, are the eldest son of Bayan, whom I trusted the most—look at what this is!"

He took out the imperial jade seal hidden in his bosom and flashed it. The surrounding Yuan soldiers looked at each other in dismay and successively stepped back to clear a path.

Zhu Shuang saw that the grand imperial seal in his hand was an ink-black jade treasure talisman, four inches square, with intertwined, coiled dragon knobs on top, square at the edges, hollowed with a transverse aperture in the middle, and its seal characters carved in the shapes of worms, birds, fish, and dragons.

His eyes burned with fiery heat. Wasn't this the Heirloom Seal of the Realm that Emperor Zhu was longing for day and night? Perhaps it was not the actual one belonging to the First Emperor of Qin, but in ancient times, where legitimacy and heritage were prized, getting one's hands on the Grand Seal of the Great Yuan was equivalent to immensely boosting one's claim to orthodox rule.

As an extremely filial son, Zhu Shuang could already not wait to help Zhu Yuanzhang inherit this Great Yuan seal in advance.

The two hundred men he had ambushed suddenly burst out to seize the city gate, throwing the Yuan soldiers into immediate chaos.

Seeing that the surrounding Yuan soldiers had no fighting spirit whatsoever, Shiliemen and Harachang let out long sighs and gave the order to open the city gate and let the Yuan Emperor depart.

When the carriage drove out of Shuncheng Gate, Zhu Wenzheng, Qiu Fu, Zhang Yu, and others stationed outside the gate stepped forward to greet them. Zhu Shuang gave him a very covert hand gesture indicating that the deed was done.

At Zhu Wenzheng's command, more than forty thousand men charged out in unison toward the city gate, which had not yet been closed.

Clad in silver armor, riding a white steed, and wielding a long spear, he took the lead and charged straight in.

There were only a little over ten thousand old, weak, sick, and disabled soldiers left defending Yuan Dadu, and the sounds of battle lasted for less than an hour.

Over three thousand officials and more than five thousand princes and nobles of the Yuan court, along with a thousand concubines from the inner palace of the last Yuan Emperor, were escorted out.

The gold, silver, and treasures that the Yuan Emperor had prepared to pack up and take away, filling over a thousand carriages, also fell into his hands.

Toghon Temür, who had been kept completely in the dark, was overjoyed at the sight. Patting Zhu Shuang on the shoulder, he praised him in an imperial tone, "Kuntemür is truly my Zhuge Liang and Jiang Ziya!"

"I shall appoint you as the Chancellor of Military and State Affairs, granting you supreme command over the empire's armed forces."

"Transmit my decree: we shall set out tonight on an imperial tour to Shangdu."

Zhu Shuang was gnawing on a lamb leg and mumbled vaguely, "Tour Shangdu? We are going to Nanjing to enthrone you."

Toghon Temür was dumbfounded. Even as foolish as he was, he knew by now that he had fallen into the hands of the Ming army.

Zhu Shuang reached out and wiped the grease from his hands onto Toghon Temür's dragon robe, then yanked the Heirloom Seal of the Realm right out of Toghon Temür's bosom. Tucking it safely into his own chest, he said intimately, "Your Majesty, let your humble servant keep this seal safe for you for now. I will definitely return it to you the next time you ascend the throne."

Seeing the pacification army outside the carriage curtains, fierce and formidable like tigers and wolves, Toghon Temür turned pale at the lips and swallowed hard. "I won't have any use for it from now on, so Your Excellency needn't stand on ceremony."

Zhu Shuang smiled. The reason he had snuck into the inner palace of the Yuan dynasty alone was precisely out of fear that this old champion of long-distance running would escape.

Toghon Temür was the last emperor of the Yuan dynasty during its era of grand unification. Just as Kublai Khan had captured Emperor Gong of Song back then, could there be anything more symbolic of orthodox legitimacy than this?

"Did Köke Temür and his mother escape?"

When Zhu Wenzheng came to report, Zhu Shuang furrowed his brows.

Historically, this crown prince of the Yuan dynasty had managed to bounce around the grasslands for eight years.

Never mind, let old man Zhu worry about that.

He gave the order to rest in place and take inventory of the treasures.

Just as they were about to set up pots and cook meals, scouts galloped back to report that a massive enemy force had been spotted in the distance.

Zhu Shuang sat on his horse, narrowed his eyes, and looked closely. The Yuan cavalry several miles away were flying banners bearing the character Qi.

Wasn't this his old acquaintance and brother-in-law, Köke Temür?

He waved his arm and shouted, "All troops mount your horses, hoist the banners, and prepare for battle!"

The pacification army put down their bowls, rose in unison, and mounted their horses.

Köke Temür had just escaped Li Wenzhong's pursuit with fifty thousand remnant soldiers.

These were the last foundation troops of the Temür family. As long as he reached Dadu, captured the emperor, and returned to the grasslands, with his administrative and military talents, within three years he could still muster a force of two hundred thousand to sweep across the Ming borders.

Galloping at top speed all the way, Köke Temür had just caught sight of the strange-armored army in the distance and was still feeling puzzled within his heart.

The moment the banner bearing the character Qin was raised, Köke Temür's vision went dark and he almost fell off his horse.

Zhu Shuang bared his white teeth and laughed aloud, "Bind the Yuan Emperor to a carriage drawn by eight horses and charge straight into the enemy's central vanguard!"

Toghon Temür had his limbs bound and was sprawled in the shape of the character da upon his imperial chariot.

Zhu Wenzheng drove the carriage while Zhu Shuang stood on the spacious platform, shouting in Mongolian to the nearly forty thousand Mongols within the pacification army, "Those who come are not guests; there will surely be a battle!"

Holding the blue *sulde* of Genghis Khan, Zhu Shuang waved his arm and roared forward, "In the name of the Eternal Sky, make the enemy bleed rivers!"

The Mongolian horns sounded, and the entire earth trembled.

The chest plates worn by the Qin soldiers reflected a blinding, snowy light under the scorching sun, dazzling the Yuan soldiers so they could not open their eyes.

Köke Temür watched as the silver torrent of steel surged toward him.

Having fled all the way, the fierceness in his blood was ignited. He hacked several fleeing soldiers around him to death.

With bloodshot eyes, he roared, "The entire army fight to the death! Hack out a bloody path!"

The Yuan cavalry drew the recurve bows slung across their backs, releasing a sky-shrouding rain of arrows like a swarm of locusts.

The black shower of arrows crossed the sky, falling like raindrops into the Qin soldier formations.

The arrows clanked against the armor worn by the Qin soldiers, yet out of the tens of thousands of horsemen, only a mere hundred or so were struck and fell from their horses.

The men around them paid no attention, their eyes locked firmly on the enemy before them.

The hooves of tens of thousands of Qin soldiers made the earth shudder.

Their unified roar shook a thousand miles:

"Tens of our clan, a lightning raid!"

"Hundreds of our clan, shatter the enemy's heart!"

"Thousands of our clan, slaughter the stubborn foe!"

"Tens of thousands of our clan, the blue sky shakes with fury!"

The previously clear sky suddenly became overcast with heavy clouds, rolling with thunderclaps.

Amidst the flashing lightning and roaring thunder, the tens of thousands of Qin soldiers appearing half-lit and half-shadowed were spine-chilling.

The Yuan cavalry behind Köke Temür shouted in terror, "It's Genghis Khan! They are Genghis Khan's soldiers!"

Having cut down dozens of men, Köke Temür's eyes were already bloodred.

"Anyone who dares to disrupt our military morale dies! Those who don't want to die, charge for me!"

The two armies collided, and the sounds of slaughter shook the heavens and earth.

A Yuan cavalryman swung his saber down, but the curved blade in his hand was cleanly cleaved into two pieces by the strangely styled saber of a Qin soldier.

The blade's edge did not pause in the slightest as it sliced through the leather armor across his chest, and he slumped sideways, tumbling off his horse.

The iron cavalry of the Qin army repeatedly trampled the Yuan formations into utter disarray.

Köke Temür's eyes were fixed dead on that carriage, with only a single thought in his mind: to slay the general and capture the standard.

Letting out a fierce roar, he charged toward Zhu Shuang with several thousand household guards and loyal suicide troops.

Seated upon the carriage as it proceeded completely unhindered, Zhu Shuang shouted, "Mangudai!"

The front of the carriage turned, the horns upon it sounded, and the tens of thousands of Qin soldiers who had been charging forward executed a synchronized retreat.

Every single one of them turned around to ride backward in their saddles, unslung the recurve bows from their backs, drew the quivers from their waists, and shot arrows back at the thousands of cavalry pursuing them.

Dense arrows crossed the sky like a swarm of locusts, descending in a deluge of arrow rain.

After three rounds of arrow fire, the very last remnants of Köke Temür's personal forces were dead and wounded to the last man.

Köke Temür would never have dreamed that he, the last renowned general of the Great Yuan, would one day be defeated by Mongol military tactics.