Chapter 228 The Sword of Dharma Over the Cui Family

Since Wang Laogunzi has accepted the amnesty, why does he continue to occupy Erlang Mountain and still regard himself as a bandit?
Let me start from the beginning!

The reason why Wang Laogunzi was secretly recruited by Song Wenhui, or the reason why he was recruited, was because he was entrenched on Erlang Mountain, occupying this key geographical location, and he had an army of 3,000 soldiers with pretty good combat effectiveness.

The distance between Erlang Mountain and the Cui family's old nest, Guangning Prefecture, is less than a hundred miles. As long as Wang Laogun is willing, he can lead his troops to Guangning Prefecture within a day and threaten the safety of the Cui family!

Therefore, as long as this old man Wang stays on Erlang Mountain for one day, the Cui family will have to concentrate a lot of energy to deal with him, and the family's manpower and material resources will be tied up.

From this perspective, Wang Laogun is a poisonous thorn in the heart of the Cui family, threatening the safety of the Cui family at any time...

For their own safety, the Cui family certainly wanted to remove this poisonous thorn. Although no one in the family held an important position above commander in the army, the Cui family still mobilized their own network of contacts and urged the government army to carry out three encirclement and suppression operations on Erlang Mountain where Wang Laogunzi was located. The third encirclement and suppression operation even mobilized more than 20,000 troops.

However, due to the natural barrier of Erlang Mountain, these three encirclement and suppression campaigns all ended in failure.

Not only did he fail to wipe out Wang Laogunzi, but he helped Wang Laogunzi and made a name for himself in Liaoyang!

Over the years, under the leadership of the head of the Cui family, Cui Shao, the development of the family strength can be said to be booming. It has made further progress. Not only has it surpassed the Gongsun family and the Yun family, which are also two of the three clans in Liaoyang, in terms of strength, it also has a strong appeal among the gentry!

In addition to possessing powerful forces, although the Cui family superficially submits to Governor Song Wenhui, they actually have strong independence, and the family is closely united around the head of the family, Cui Shao. Therefore, the influence that Song Wenhui can exert on the Cui family is extremely limited.

The emergence of a powerful and uncontrolled force under one's rule is difficult for any superior to accept, even though this force behaves very low-key and does not act ostentatiously, and seems harmless...
Although under the leadership of Cui Shao, the Cui family has tried its best to conceal its own edge, Song Wenhui, who has a strong desire for control over power, still feels the threat from the Cui family. In order to check and balance the Cui family, he secretly recruits Wang Laogunzi, so that this poisonous thorn in the heart of the Cui family can be used by him to entangle the Cui family for him!
Although Song Wenhui's move was covert, the Cui family, as the local boss, certainly noticed Song Wenhui's move.

But there was nothing they could do. Firstly, they could not wipe out Wang Laogun. Secondly, as Song Wenhui's subordinates, their actions were controlled by Song Wenhui. Therefore, the Cui family was forced to choose to keep the matter secret and swallow their anger silently.

After learning about this through the Supervisory Office, Ye Mingsheng immediately realized that he could make some trouble around this old man Wang and stir up the relationship of mutual trust between Song Wenhui and the Cui family, which was not very solid to begin with!

This is also the reason why Ye Mingsheng was willing to speed up the negotiations with Guo Zhiping even though he knew that he could still lower the price in Guo Zhiping's hands during the negotiations!
The grudge between Guo Zhiping and Wang Laogunzi will be his greatest weapon against Wang Laogunzi!

Just imagine, if he, Ye, helped the Cui family get rid of Wang Laogun, the sword of Damocles that Song Wenhui placed over their heads, what would happen?
Ye Mingsheng believed that after hearing this news, Song Wenhui would have a question in his mind!
Is that why I did this?
Song Wenhui's first reaction must be, have the Zhenwu Army and the Cui family reached some kind of agreement? Are the Cui family going to unite with the Zhenwu Army?

After this second reaction, Song Wenhui will start to think about what the Cui family will do next without Wang Laogun’s control?
Will they join forces with the Zhenwu Army to completely resist him?

For Song Wenhui, the feudal lord who had dominated Liaoyang for decades, the Gongsun family's backstabbing had already revealed the decline of his rule in Liaoyang...
In order to deal with the Gongsun family, Song Wenhui has concentrated all his energy, but he still can't deal with the Gongsun family. If the Cui family strikes back at this time, it will undoubtedly be a fatal blow to Song Wenhui's regime. As long as Song Wenhui doesn't want to admit defeat, he has no other choice but to choose a showdown and start fighting for his life.

Therefore, in order to prevent himself from being caught off guard by the rebellion of the Cui family, Song Wenhui would definitely allocate some of the forces originally concentrated to deal with the Gongsun family to guard against the Cui family.

As a result, the siege of Gongsun family was lifted, and Ye Mingsheng's strategy of besieging Wei to save Zhao was successful!

However, Ye Mingsheng's move was not as simple as besieging Wei to save Zhao. He had a deeper purpose for his deliberate planning and great efforts...

Ye Mingsheng didn't have to wait too long in the room before Cui Dakai found him. After looking at Ye Mingsheng deeply, he said:
"The master is waiting for you in the study!"

Seeing that the other party was finally ready to have a good talk with him, Ye Mingsheng was naturally happy to do so.

Under the guidance of Cui Dakai, Ye Mingsheng came to Cui Shao's study. Looking at Cui Shao, whose face was still as calm as water and was looking at him with scrutiny, he smiled slightly and sat on the chair opposite Cui Shao without waiting for Cui Shao to speak.

The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds without saying anything. Facing Cui Shao's powerful aura and terrifying gaze, Ye Mingsheng did not waver in the slightest, and his gaze did not dodge at all.

After a stalemate of nearly ten seconds, Cui Shao nodded slightly, as if he approved of Ye Mingsheng's performance, and broke the silence by saying:

"Can you tell me how you conquered Erlang Mountain?"

Ye Mingsheng heard this and said directly without any pretense;
"It's simple. Erlang Mountain has natural barriers. I never thought of attacking the mountain directly from the beginning!

"Some of my subordinates have a grudge against Wang Laogun. I used my subordinates and a large sum of money as bait to lure Wang Laogun down the mountain, and then concentrated a superior force to ambush him.

"It's not difficult for me to fight his 3,000 men with my 7,000 men. One hour is enough to end the battle. Once Old Stick Wang dies, the remaining remnants on Erlang Mountain will not be able to do anything!"

Cui Shao fell into silence after hearing this. He did not seem to have expected that the old man Wang, who had troubled him for years, could be solved so easily by the young man in front of him who looked about the same age as his son. This made him unable to help but sigh in his heart.

“The young are to be feared…”

(End of this chapter)