The disgraced official I took care of was actually Zhu Houcong's childhood friend.

Chapter 425

On the grasslands, Anda led his small tribesmen on a continuous migration, all to avoid being found by the Tiger Army led by Linlu.

Since Lin Lu was stationed in Datong, he led the Tiger Army to continuously eliminate Mongol tribes on the grasslands. With the help of the merchants in Datong, although they could not find all the Mongols, they could find about half of them.

Although the Tiger Legion was small in number, speed was of the essence. They attacked where the enemy was unprepared, and many Mongols were asleep when they suddenly found that flames were already raging outside their yurts.

As some Mongol tribes fell, the territory of the Ming Dynasty continued to expand. Originally, the Ming Dynasty needed to find a pretext to declare war on the Mongols, but with Altan Khan leading his troops to attack Datong, the Ming Dynasty had a sufficient reason to send troops.

Among the Mongols, figures like Altan Khan were considered hawks, while the others were doves. The number of hawks and doves among the Mongols depended on the balance of power between the Ming Dynasty and the Mongols. The stronger the Ming Dynasty was, the more doves there were among the Mongols, and vice versa.

Over the years, the Mongol strength had been continuously weakened by the Ming Dynasty, and it was actually quite weak. If the garrison commander of Datong hadn't been so ineffective, it would have been impossible for Anda to lead a tribe to break through Datong's defenses.

To put it bluntly, Altan Khan's attack on Datong was intended to show the Mongols the benefits of attacking the Ming Dynasty, and also to boost the confidence of other Mongols. If this battle succeeded, the number of hawks among the Mongols would increase, and it would only be a matter of time before Altan Khan became the Great Khan.

But Altan Khan failed. Not only did he fail, but he also attracted the Ming army. Originally, the Mongols were not worried about the Ming army because the Ming army's warhorses were far inferior to the Mongols' warhorses. They could not possibly be a match for the Mongols on a long-distance raid across the grasslands.

Moreover, the Mongols lived a nomadic life, following the water and pasture, and had no fixed abode. Finding a large Mongol army accurately on the vast grassland was as difficult as climbing to heaven.

Therefore, the Mongols were always aggressive towards the Ming Dynasty. For them, even if they failed to attack the Ming Dynasty, it would not pose a significant threat to them.

Emperor Yongle (Zhu Di) launched several northern expeditions, but failed to completely wipe out the Mongols. On his last expedition, he couldn't even find where the Mongols were. This was the advantage the Mongols had.

The Mongols never expected that this time the Ming army would not only come and go like the wind, but also always be able to accurately locate their tribe's location.

The Mongols panicked. They received news from Altan Khan that the merchants from the Ming Dynasty who had been trading with them had betrayed them. Upon receiving this news, the Mongols were furious. Whenever they saw merchants from the Ming Dynasty again, they killed them on the spot without saying a word.

They were afraid that these merchants would attract the Ming army.

This caused undeserved disaster for other Shanxi merchants, since merchants from Datong were only a small minority; there were many other merchants and Mongols doing business in Shanxi.

However, neither Lin Lu nor Zhou Chu, who devised the plan, cared about these things. Since they had colluded with the Mongols, it was only reasonable for them to be killed by the Mongols.

As a result, the Shanxi merchants in Taiyuan suffered the most severe losses. They had previously attempted to run on the Royal Bank, depositing a large amount of silver there and trying to bankrupt the Royal Bank through a system of exchange.

The result was a failed attempt to steal a chicken and instead lost the rice. Before the silver from various places could be transported back, most of it was robbed. Some of it was stolen by imperial guards disguised as bandits, while some was stolen by local people and bandits working together.

The local bandits and civilians were able to succeed entirely because the Shanxi merchants' silver transport caravans were constantly being informed of their routes and whereabouts. As for who was informing them, the Shanxi merchants didn't even need to think to know.