This is a Guandi Temple.
The temple has long been dilapidated, and only the main structure of the temple remains: the rite gate and the main hall.
Part of the wall of the main hall has also collapsed, but it is still a place to stay on this March night that is suddenly warm and then cold.
In the hall, a young man wearing a lake-blue Confucian shirt was leaning against a fire to keep warm.
The firewood was burning and his face was clearly visible in the light of the fire.
Although his face was a little pale and a bit sallow, he couldn't hide the perseverance in his eyes.
"Master, it's already the middle of the night.
You should rest quickly.
We have to go on the road tomorrow morning."
A high-pitched voice sounded, the tone full of sorrow.
"Liu Banban, how far is it from Huai'an Fucheng now?"
"If we go back to my master, I estimate that we still have two hundred miles to go, and it will take at least three days to get there."
The young man closed his eyes and began to think about his next move.
Now Jiangbei is under the control of the Ming army.
As long as they reach Huai'an Fucheng, they can ask the army to escort them to Yangzhou.
When you arrive in Yangzhou, you can reach Yingtianfu in Nanjing in one or two days across the river.
After he calmed down a little, he opened his eyes and said harmoniously: "Liu Banban, go and tell Guard Han that we will set off at Yin time tomorrow morning."
“So early” Liu Banban was startled and opened his lips to say something, but seeing the young man's determined eyes, he swallowed the words that came to his lips.
"Slave, I obey."
Seeing Liu Banban get up and leave, the young man let out a long sigh of relief.
These days, he has lived in anonymity and slept in the open.
He feels exhausted.
If there wasn't a glimmer of hope in the south, he might not be able to hold on anymore.
His status is beyond words, he is Zhu Cixiang, the Crown Prince of the Ming Dynasty.
To be precise, this is not necessarily the case, because his soul came from later generations, and it was only at the end of February of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen that he inexplicably took possession of the crown prince of the Ming Dynasty.
In his previous life, he was a university history professor, and he happened to be responsible for teaching the history of the late Ming Dynasty and the Southern Ming Dynasty.
Although he was also dressed as a prince, the timing of the time travel was not very good.
It is now March of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, and the intruder Li Zicheng is approaching the city of Shenjing.
In the original history, Li Zicheng captured the capital on March 19, and Emperor Chongzhen hanged himself on Meishan.
It was already March 29th, and Li Zicheng estimated that the city had been breached.
Of course, Zhu Cixiang could not get accurate information.
Nowadays, information is blocked due to the chaos of war.
According to the original history, the ministers in Nanjing only learned of the fall of Shenjing after mid-April.
Now it seems that the trend of history has not changed significantly because of his arrival.
The only change is that he was ordered by Emperor Chongzhen to go to Nanjing to supervise the country and escaped before the outer city of the capital was breached.
Zhu Cihong escaped from the capital on March 16, with only one eunuch and a dozen guards.
The eunuch's name was Liu Chuanzong, and he was Zhu Cihong's personal servant.
He was very loyal and reliable.
The captain of the guard is called Zhao Xin, and he is also an old man among the guards of the East Palace.
Zhu Cixi still trusted them.
Zhu Cixiang and his party first rode fast horses from the capital to Tianjin Wei, and then took a boat from Jinmen and took the sea route all the way south to Haizhou.
It took three days to get from the capital to Tianjin, and nine days to get from Jinmen to Haizhou.
After arriving in Haizhou, Zhu Cixiang and his party abandoned the boat and rode horses, running all the way towards Huai'an Mansion.
They all ride fast horses and can run seventy or eighty miles a day.
It is estimated that they will reach Huai'an Fucheng in three days.
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As long as he reached Huai'an City, the area actually controlled by the Ming army, Zhu Cixiang's safety was basically guaranteed.
He knew that it was the third day of the fifth lunar month that Nanjing ministers supported King Fu as the governor of the country, and that King Fu Zhu Yousong officially proclaimed himself emperor on the fifteenth day of the fifth month.
It is only March 29th now.
If everything goes well, he will reach Nanjing within ten days, and Zhu Cixiang will not fall into the whirlpool of the struggle for the throne.
Zhu Cixiang was a professor of history in his previous life.
He certainly knew that a large part of the chaos in the Southern Ming Dynasty was due to the competition between civil servants and military generals for the decision-making power, which led to the expansion of military commanders and the expansion of feudal vassals.
If Zhu Cixi, the crown prince, could come to Nanjing to inherit the imperial line, the situation would be much better.
Of course, having soldiers in hand is the most important thing.
Naturally, Zhu Cixiang would not count on people like Gao Jie and Liu Zeqing, let alone the Nanjing Jingying camp.
The three major camps in Shenjing are all in such a state of decay, let alone the Nanjing Jingying camp.
What Zhu Cixiang wanted to do was to train and form a new army and firmly control the military power in his own hands.
However, these are all things he needs to do after arriving in Nanjing to inherit the imperial line.
What he needs to consider now is naturally how to reach Nanjing safely.
Zhu Cixiang inherited all the memories of this body, so it was impossible for him to have no feelings for his father in this life.
In fact, in Zhu Cixiang's memory, Emperor Chongzhen was a very emotional person, even a loving father.
He said that the intruders were besieging the capital this time.
Emperor Chongzhen called Zhu Cihong to his side and asked him to take more than a dozen of his confidants to break out of the city and go to Nanjing to supervise the country.
Emperor Chongzhen himself, his queen, King Yong, and King Ding all stayed in the capital to create conditions for Zhu Cixiang to break out.
After all, the capital was already in danger at that time, and the more people who broke through, the lower the possibility of success.
If the emperor wants to leave, there will be hundreds of people accompanying him.
With such a big target, the possibility of being discovered and intercepted by intruders will greatly increase.
From that moment on, Zhu Cixiang was determined to avenge Emperor Chongzhen.
Even though the task of restoring the Ming Dynasty was extremely heavy, he had to shoulder it alone.
Zhu Cixiang sighed and closed his eyes again.
He is really too tired.
I'm afraid he can sleep for another two hours tonight.
A night of silence.
At Yinshi the next day, Zhu Cixiang was awakened by his chamberlain Liu Chuanzong.
It was still dark, and Zhu Cixiang was also very sleepy.
But he knew he had to hurry.
If he wanted to reach Huai'an Mansion within three days, he would have to ride a horse and walk seventy or eighty miles every day, which was quite a challenge for Zhu Cixiang's pampered body.
There wasn't even a well in the Guandi Temple.
Zhu Cihong didn't care about the many people who wiped their faces, and got on his horse under the service of Zhao Xin and Liu Chuanzong.
The two of them served Zhu Cixiang on their horses and then climbed on their backs.
A group of more than ten people beat the horses and headed south.
The road from Haizhou to Huai'an is relatively easy to walk, but due to the numerous bandits and bandits that have emerged in this area in recent years, many merchants have stopped coming here.
Without the caravan, the official road seemed a lot deserted.
The sky gradually became brighter, and Zhu Cixiang found that more and more refugees had gathered on the official road, most of them fleeing from Haizhou to Huai'an.
Most of these refugee teams were dozens of people, walking sparsely, and all of them were in ragged clothes.
They looked at them with empty eyes, and some even had red faces and swollen cheeks.
Zhu Cixi knew that this was a sign of having eaten someone, so he did not dare to be careless and told everyone not to delay and to hurry up.
In the late Ming Dynasty, cannibalism was nothing at all.
The refugees were so hungry that they ate not only dead bodies but also living people.
The first ones to eat were women and children.
After the women and children had finished eating, they ate the weak ones.
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Zhu Cixiang and his party were all riding horses, and they were carrying dry food on their backs.
In the eyes of the refugees, they were just a pot of braised pork.
It would never be a good thing to be targeted by these refugees
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