Chapter 512

Xu Qilang was stunned. After a long time, he was now able to react as the blood flowing in his body seemingly felt like it was going to burst out in an instant, "Your Highness, do you mean to seize the Sixteen Prefectures?"

"It's not about seizing," Xie Xuanchen corrected, "It's recovering."

This was Xie Xuanchen's real purpose. Xie Xuanchen could bring Ye Luyan back to captivity with just 40,000 people, so why did he bother to go to all the trouble to summon both General Xu and General Chang together? By gathering the northern troops, from the beginning, his goal was to retake the Sixteen Prefectures.

Since the Sixteenth Prefectures of Youyun were cut off, several dynasties such as Guangjin, Houjin and Zhou tried to reclaim them, but they never succeeded. After Xie Yi succeeded to the throne, the first thing he did was to put the recovery of the Sixteen Prefectures on his agenda. At that time, Xie Xuanchen was pacifying various small imperial courts in the south. They originally planned to recover the lands after a few years of recuperation and military training from pacifying the rear area.

Counting the time, this year had reached the year Xie Yi planned for it to occur.

Xie Xuanchen made Xie Yi angry when he was younger, but even though he had grown up, he wasn't even able to send his father off one last time. It was unfilial of him to do this for someone else, so he planned to do this and fulfil his father's final wish as an act of filial piety.

***

The capital, Chuigong Palace.

The Emperor looked at the report coming back from the front lines with a gloomy expression.

"With the 300,000 troops in Hejian and Zhongshan, who issued the document allowing them to mobilise their troops?"

Prime Minister Song, Jiang Honghao and some other officials standing at the bottom held their breath before they answered, "It's Prince An."

"Xie Xuanchen?" The Emperor's face became increasingly dark, "Shouldn't he already be released from military powers? Where did he get the right to mobilise the border troops?"

Prime Minister Song and Jiang Honghao lowered their heads as neither of them spoke. The Emperor had already ordered Xie Xuanchen to be dismissed from his post. At first, he did so after being coerced by Ye Luyan. Later, the imperial envoy who accompanied the Beirong people to Zhongshan City for the news came back and said that Xie Xuanchen refused to concede and seemed to be disrespectful to the court. At that time, the Emperor was really suspicious of him and the subsequent orders about removing Xie Xuanchen from his military power were done with full intentions.

Even if he took a step back and they claimed Xie Xuanchen did so for the sake of the country and the people, since the capital's issues have been resolved, Ye Luyan has returned to Beirong and everything is back on track. What was Xie Xuanchen resisting an imperial order for?

Not only was he holding on to the military power of the Zhending Mansion, he even mobilised 300,000 men in Zhongshan and Hejian to make his moves on the border. Military generals only have the power to train the troops but they did not possess the power to command them to war. They were not able to position the army elsewhere without the central government's orders and the supervision of the civilian officials accompanying the army.

But now, without the court knowing anything about it, Beizhen's 300,000 troops were mobilised at the border as some even went beyond the country's borders. With such disregard for discipline and law, was it possible that he was intending to lead a rebellion?