According to a peasant who fled from Zhuzhou to Yicheng, Shen Yanzhi had mobilized hundreds of convicts in Zhuzhou, intending to destroy the fish-mouth dam and flood Wucheng and Qingzhou downstream.

Although the flood channels had been dug long ago, Qin Zheng was still somewhat frightened to hear this news.

Moreover… with Shen Chan accompanying her, Qin Zheng always felt that it was unlikely for Shen Yanzhi to go mad and dig the dam.

Zhuzhou.

Because Shen Chan almost suffered a miscarriage, Shen Yanzhi led the remaining ten thousand soldiers to leave Wucheng.

In order for Shen Chan to see a doctor and recuperate, they were delayed for several days on the road before finally arriving in Zhuzhou.

As soon as the army arrived at the city gate of Zhuzhou, they were stopped by archers on the city tower.

The commander on the city tower shouted, “Shen family rebels, surrender now!”

Shen Yanzhi raised his eyes coldly on his horse, with a hint of a sneer at the corner of his mouth. “This young master and his generals have risked their lives on the battlefield. It’s unfair to label us as rebels.”

The commander shouted, “You, Shen family, are ambitious! You murdered His Highness Crown Prince and still have the nerve to argue!”

Shen Yanzhi’s words were purely to extract more information.

As soon as he heard the commander mention the Crown Prince, the smile on his lips became even colder. “So Crown Prince has returned to Zhuzhou. His Highness is addicted to wine and women.

This was witnessed by the special envoy sent by His Majesty to Wucheng.

There’s no need for me to argue.

Deserting the battlefield at such a critical moment, abandoning tens of thousands of soldiers’ lives, and now coming back to accuse me?

What virtue and ability does Shen have to harm His Highness Crown Prince?”

The commander couldn’t contain his anger. “You surnamed Shen, stop spouting nonsense! Clearly, you drugged His Highness and deliberately created the illusion of His Highness being addicted to wine and women in front of the special envoy!

Slandering His Highness reputation! Wasn’t the An family also set up by you?”

Shen Yanzhi sneered, “Using the An family as hostages was also Crown Princ’s order in the first place. Shen acted according to orders.”

He had advised the Crown Prince back then, and after the Crown Prince adopted this plan, it was indeed the Crown Prince himself who ordered his men to go to Yongzhou to take in the family.

Pushing all the blame onto the Crown Prince, this was still the trick Li Xin had used on him.

In the past two days heading north, Shen Yanzhi had completely calmed down.

Now, even if Li Xin went all out to attack Jianghuai, he might not necessarily win.

The game between Li Xin and the former Crown Prince of Chu had already shifted from completely favoring Li Xin in the beginning to gradually favoring the former Crown Prince of Chu.

He was caught in between these two forces.

The former Chu officials firmly grasped the hearts of the people and officials.

Li Xin, on the other hand, in order to consolidate the court, vigorously employed former Chu officials, trying to use a complete bureaucratic management system to restrain courtiers.

At the same time, he was also balancing the new nobles who had followed him in the beginning, but if the benefits were distributed unfairly, it was easy to cause resentment.

The former Chu officials felt that they had received less benefits and would yearn for the former Chu dynasty; the courtiers who followed Li Xin to conquer the world saw Li Xin promoting the former Chu officials, and would also develop a sense of crisis.

With penetrable loopholes, he had confidence in widening these gaps!

Shen Chan’s body couldn’t withstand the long journey, so he had to capture a city to garrison and let Shen Chan rest and recuperate.

All the frustration Shen Yan Zhi had encountered with Chu Chengji was vented in this bloody battle.

When he broke through the city gate, his face and clothes were covered in bloodstains, his expression cold, like a malevolent spirit walking the earth.

After the city fell, the people packed up and fled.

This was the first time Shen Yanzhi had seen such a large-scale exodus.

After sending someone to inquire, he learned that someone had captured hundreds of convicts in his name and sent them to destroy the fish-mouth dam.

Clearly, someone wanted to pin the blame on him.

If the fish-mouth dam was destroyed, the entire area along the river in Zhuzhou would be flooded.

Shen Yan Zhi ordered Shen Chan to be transferred to a safe place and personally led troops to investigate the fish-mouth dam.

The weather was getting cloudy, the cold wind blowing, as if a storm was imminent.

The outer layer of the fish-mouth dam had been chiseled open, and the officials and soldiers cursed as they beat the convicts digging and chiseling stones: “Hurry up! If you don’t break through this dam before the rain comes, you’ll all die here!”

A middle-aged foreman knelt on the ground, begging desperately, “Sir, we can’t dig! We can’t dig! This was built by Emperor Wu back then.

If we dig it, we’ll incur heavenly punishment! When the water from this reservoir is released, most of Zhuzhou to the south will be flooded! Not to mention the floods in Qingzhou, it will cause countless deaths! “

The soldiers kicked the pleading foreman away and whipped him twice harshly, “You old fool who doesn’t know any better! I told you to lead the people to dig!”

On the official road halfway up the mountain, a man in brocade robes lifted the curtain of his carriage and looked at the soon-to-be-destroyed dam with madness and satisfaction in his eyes.

This man was the Crown Prince. Previously, the mother and daughter of the An family speculated that he had also sent a letter to An Yuanqing.

In fact, they had overestimated his abilities.

The only person he could rely on at the time was that advisor.

Since the advisor had gone to the An family and not returned, he guessed something was wrong.

Before the situation was exposed, he fled Wucheng and headed north to Zhuzhou.

He lied to the Zhuzhou commander, claiming that he was injured and temporarily unable to speak, and wrote about the good deeds Shen Yanzhi had done.

He ordered the Zhuzhou commander to kill Shen Yanzhi if he saw him defeated and fleeing back.

He also ordered the destruction of the dam in Shen Yan Zhi’s name.

Once the water from the fish-mouth dam rushed out, all the lands south of the Yuan River would suffer a flood.

By then, Shen Yanzhi and the remaining Chu remnants would find it hard to escape this disaster!

Shen Yanzhi would bear this infamy, but a dead man couldn’t clear his name.

Just as the Crown Prince was feeling smug, the sound of hoofbeats came from the distance on the official road.

The soldiers beating the convicts at the dam heard the sound and looked towards the end of the official road, seeing a cavalry in Chen army uniforms rushing towards them.

The soldiers thought they were their own people and paid no attention.

But when the Crown Prince saw the Confucian-robed man on horseback, his expression instantly turned fearful.

He slammed the carriage door heavily, urging the coachman to drive away quickly.

The ground shook even more violently at this moment, and the soldiers at the dam shouted, “It’s broken through! We broke through!”

Water spewed out from the gap the size of a wooden barrel, unable to withstand the tremendous water pressure, the entire dam began to crack.

The convicts wailed as they rushed to higher ground, and even the overseers seemed to realize the seriousness of the situation, pushing aside the convicts running ahead of them and running to the shore without regard for their lives.

But with a loud roar, almost as if the earth was shaking, the cavalry Shen Yanzhi brought with him, all their horses reared and whinnied, no longer daring to advance a single step.

This was reverence for nature.

The entire dam burst open, and the floodwaters spread like an ocean downstream and to the surrounding low-lying areas.

The convicts and overseers who hadn’t had time to escape struggled and wailed in the flood.

Even though Shen Yanzhi had seen the bloody and cruel scenes of the battlefield, seeing this flood still stirred up an unprecedented sense of helplessness and paleness in his heart.

He stumbled off the horse and knelt on the ground, watching the rushing flood below, his fingers digging deep into the mud, his expression anguished: “A-Zheng!”

The breach in the fish-mouth dam caused the water from the reservoir to surge into the Qingzhou Daduyan Reservoir.

The Daduyan Reservoir couldn’t hold so much water.

If the embankments were breached again, the waters of both reservoirs would flood Qingzhou simultaneously, turning it into a vast ocean.

At this moment, the dark clouds in the sky reached their culmination, condensing into bean-sized raindrops, adding to the force of the flood.

Shen Yanzhi felt the raindrops hitting his handback, causing a sharp pain that made his eyes sting.

Chen Qin, with his men, captured the Crown Prince who was trying to escape in a carriage. “Master, how should we deal with this person?”

Shen Yanzhi slowly stood up from the rain-soaked ground, water dripping from his hair and eyelids.

His phoenix eyes were reddened by anger.

He swung his fist directly at the Crown Prince’s face, one punch after another, bruising and swelling his face, breaking his nose, and cutting his lips…

He kept punching until the Crown Prince’s face was covered in blood, his own fist torn and bleeding, before Chen Qin pulled him away.

“Master, please calm down,” Chen Qin advised.

The rain washed over his wounds, causing a piercing pain, but Shen Yanzhi seemed numb to it.

With no one holding onto the Crown Prince anymore, he collapsed to the ground like a pile of mud.

Trying to crawl up with his hands in the mud, he was stepped on the back by Shen Yanzhi and pushed his face into the mire.

“You Li family, all are nothing but a bunch of beasts! Scum! You don’t deserve to live in this world!”

This autumnal downpour lasted for three days and nights.

Thanks to the irrigation ditches and main drainage channels dug in Qingzhou earlier, the floodwaters from the upper reaches of the Yuan River did not cause much damage to Qingzhou.

Cen Daoxi, being proactive, averted a major disaster.

Coupled with his achievements in Xuzhou, his advisors no longer dared to underestimate him.

He was glorified as almost godlike, and even Qin Zheng was praised for her keen insight and use of talented individuals.

Since Wucheng was not initially within the protected area, many fields and houses were flooded.

Fortunately, Qin Zheng, upon hearing the news, arranged for the evacuation of the people from the city, resulting in minimal casualties.

However, for several days, bodies of the Zhumian citizens floated down the Yuan River.

Fearing a mass of bodies in the water would cause disease, Qin Zheng and Chu Chengji discussed and decided to have Dong Cheng lead Qingzhou’s official ships to retrieve the bodies, for the monks of Yungang Monastery to perform rites and cremate them.

Refugees from Zhumian prompted the soldiers to erect shelters, separating those with fever from the healthy ones in the floodwaters to prevent cross-infection.

Perhaps due to the cooling weather in autumn, more and more refugees developed fever.

In some villages along the river, many children were also infected.

Qin Zheng feared the outbreak of the disease she had worried about.

When she brought it up during discussions, the ministers paid little attention, claiming that occasional fevers in the cooling autumn were common.

Everyone, using the tragic catastrophe caused by the Crown Prince, spared no effort to condemn Li Xin.

The forces coming to seek refuge with Chu Chengji increased, and military commanders suggested taking advantage of this opportunity to continue northward and recapture Bianjing in one fell swoop.

However, contrary to expectations, Chu Chengji did not agree this time.

Qin Zheng thought he shared her concerns, but when she asked, she learned of another layer of his worries.

“The current one hundred thousand troops are no longer the five thousand bandits who descended from Liangshan.

Taking down several prefectures is not enough for military supplies.

Feeding troops requires money, and the people below also need to eat.

The silver and grain in the prefectural treasury must be spent on the frontline first.”

Wucheng was flooded, and the homeless Wucheng people would have to rely on the grain from several other prefectures within their influence for their livelihoods for the next year.

If they went north now, they would have to make winter clothes for the soldiers once winter came, and there would not be enough silver to spend.

Moreover, the timing was not favorable.

Most of the army formed from the Jianghuai area were southerners and were not used to the harsh cold of the north.

If they went north and fell ill from the cold or were seen as sick cats by Li Xin’s troops, it would not only waste money and food but also be the most difficult to handle if the morale was scattered.

Although Chu Chengji’s reason for not agreeing to send troops at this time was different from Qin Zheng’s, the purpose was to recuperate and recuperate, which could be considered as the same goal.

Qin Zheng said to Chu Chengji, “Huai Zhou, let’s buy more medicinal materials.”

Chu Chengji asked, “Are there not enough medicinal materials for the patients in the relief sheds?”

Qin Zheng shook her head and said seriously, “There are enough for now, but I’m afraid they won’t be enough later.”

In Chu Chengji’s indifferent and gloomy gaze, she earnestly said, “I’m worried that the flood will cause an epidemic.”