Great Ming: Ambushed by Bandits, I Expose a Northern Yuan Prince in Hiding

In the fifteenth year of Hongwu, eight-year-old Zhu Gaochi, heir to the Prince of Yan, went out for a stroll. His guards casually seized three robbers in the street. They thought they were ordinary thieves, but under interrogation, the men confessed that Wusitu, Prince of Pingnan of the Northern Yuan, was hiding at Niulanshan, gathering men to rebel.

Zhu Di personally led a large army to suppress them. Wusitu and two hundred elite soldiers escaped through a secret passage, only to run into Zhu Gaochi's three-rank rotating volley formation of arquebusiers at the foot of the mountain. Fifty arquebusiers took turns firing. More than a hundred enemies died on the spot, and the rest were captured. The Ming army lost only ten men.

Zhu Di was delighted that his son had distinguished himself, but Zhu Gaochi quietly demonstrated the "three-rank firing" tactic to the arquebusier unit. That night, an urgent memorial arrived in Nanjing at top speed. After reading it, Zhu Yuanzhang slapped the table and exclaimed, "This son of my fourth boy is far better than that bunch of useless grandsons of mine!"

An imperial edict was immediately sent back: Zhu Gaochi was to escort Wusitu to the capital to meet the emperor, with supplies provided at every post station along the way. As the party headed south, refugees in Huaian blocked the road, weeping and pleading for help. Japanese pirates had breached Andong County, the government troops had scattered, and thousands of civilians were being hunted down.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.