Chapter 12: The Wind Rises (This Chapter is Free)

Liu Yun encountered a problem when he was executing his order, that is, the third row of the Imperial Guard Company led by Wu Dingguo went to the base to collect heavy weapons, and there were not enough vehicle drivers and heavy weapons operators. The newly recruited Imperial Guard Company soldiers had no idea what the car was, and it was unheard of for mortars and automatic grenade launchers.

As a last resort, Liu Yun had to assign eight members of the Tiger Guard to the Imperial Guard Company so that the Imperial Guard Company could fully display its combat effectiveness. The remaining three men from the Tiger Guard Company followed the Imperial Guard Company to stand by with the Imperial Guard Company and were ready to take helicopters to provide air support at any time. But this also means that Liu Yun no longer had a reserve team composed of elite special forces.

After discussing the details of the action, each of them entered their own positions. No one expected that things would change so quickly. In just a few days, a palace transformation evolved into a civil war, and the life-and-death battle was about to begin. History cannot be changed, it can only create a new glorious temple or thatched house after the destruction of the old pedestal.

Liu Yun knew that he could not place his hope on local military chiefs who only said "loyalty to the emperor and patriotism" on his lips, but at least he had to force them not to stand on the hostile side. So he asked Emperor Guangxu to issue imperial edicts to the governors of various places and even the generals who held heavy troops, denounced Li Hongzhang as a traitor, and listed his various crimes since the Sino-French War, and then ordered military chiefs from all over the country to "——Those who dared to help Li rebels will be punished without mercy. Anyone who is loyal to the coalition and immediately sent troops to Beijing to suppress the rebels will be promoted to another level, and there will be no other rewards. Those who hesitate after receiving the edict will be the same as those who assist Li rebels, and the nine clans will be punished without mercy——”

In addition, Prince Chun and others were asked to issue instructions, ordering the military chiefs who were close to the Houdang Group to send troops to the Beijing-Tianjin area to attack Li Hongzhang.

Liu Yun was very clear about the psychology of those military commanders. They must be undecided. They wanted to see which side would have an absolute advantage after the progress of the matter, and then followed the strong and went up to step on the weak together. Besides, Li Hongzhang must have sent someone to their place to move. Under the threat of "force" and temptation, those guys who are self-protection will be even more able to wait and see. To make them surrender to their own side, they must gain an advantage on the battlefield, at least win a big victory, and save the capital. By then, Li Hongzhang will face the dilemma of the wall falling down and everyone pushing him, and he is not far from being completely finished.

But, how to win?

Liu Yun was not sure yet.

Wen Yi walked to him: "What's wrong, don't you have confidence?"

Liu Yun shook his head: "You haven't seen the troops at the bottom? The 3,000 Eight Banners soldiers in the Nine Gate Admiral's Mansion are almost all opium and thin lazy people, and they cannot fight at all. Yesterday, when I was patrolling the city, I saw that almost every rifleman was holding a new and shiny old single-shot Lin Mingden rifle. The gun oil had not been cleaned yet. I just found a few soldiers to demonstrate the "fucking" gun movements, but I couldn't even figure out what the three points and one line was! The situation of the Wu army in Beidaying was not much better. The cannon was wiped clean. This was a good thing, but when I asked the gunner, how many live ammunition fires had it been? The gunner said that it only took one round of shells in four years, and the cannon he was responsible for was still dud-"

"I just came back from the army, and I saw everything you said, so I'm less confident than you now."

The two looked at each other and smiled bitterly.

"If there was enough time, we could have stolen some powerful weapons and brought them here. I was too nervous at the time and always felt that if we took one more minute, our actions would be more dangerous, so-"

Wen Yi patted Liu Yun on the shoulder: "What's the point of saying this now?"

"Report!" Lieutenant Ma Chengwu, a communicator at the headquarters, walked into the house with a radio, "Lieutenant Yang Zhengjin, a consultant at the base, asked to have a direct call with Captain Liu."

Liu Yun took the phone and said, "I am Liu Yun, what's the matter?"

"Report to Captain Liu, when we were distributing weapons to the third platoon of the Imperial Guards, we found a set of psychological warfare equipment. The name is very strange, called 'gl3'. The packaging indicates that only officers who have undergone intermediate psychological warfare training or above are qualified to command the use of this equipment. We think you should know what happened, so we contacted you immediately-"

"You read it right? It's really 'gl3'?" Liu Yun began to feel that God had not completely abandoned him.

"It's printed clearly, and you're absolutely right."

"Okay, it's great. Let me tell you, send a helicopter to pick me up immediately. The equipment must be kept properly. No one is allowed to open the outer packaging before I arrive. In addition, tell Wu Dingguo that his third row of platoons will be on standby after receiving the weapons. Do you understand?"

"yes!"

Putting down the phone, Liu Yun shook his neck: "Oh, there is no way out, Lao Wen, help me preside over the matter here later. I want to go back to the base and contact us on a radio if there is any situation."

Wen Yi nodded: "No problem, by the way, what did they find? Your expression suddenly changed from almost despair to relaxed excitement before attending a picnic. It must be a good treasure."

Liu Yun nodded and smiled: "It's an amazing treasure. I thought I didn't bring it. I don't know why, but it finally came out at a critical moment. It seems that we are destined to create a brand new branch on the tree of history. No one can stop it. You wait and see. I bet this will be a civil war with the least bleeding."

In the early morning of March 25, in a section of trench near Tonghui River in Gaobeidian, Beijing suburbs, Zhong Xiahuo was busy teaching the so-called soldiers who trained the army to use rifles one by one. Since he was appointed as the commander of the 1,500 Wuzi Zhengjun Army of the First Regiment yesterday, he has been doing similar tasks most of the time, such as telling ordinary soldiers how to dig trenches, organizing gunners of the seven-men mountain cannons to conduct their first live-fire training since joining the army, teaching those battalions how to submit reports accurately and clearly and understand the orders of superiors, etc. These tasks made him exhausted.

"Report--" A scout cavalry jumped off his horse in front of the trenches, ran over and knelt down and hit Qian.

"Get up and talk." Zhong Xia threw Lin Mingden's single shot in his torch to a general, grabbed the scout cavalry's shoulder and helped him up.

"Just just now, I met a group of infantry from the Huai Army in the forest along the river. There were about four or five hundred people. They were sitting and resting. Less than five miles away from us, a small team of cavalry chased me for more than two miles, and finally I was thrown away-"

"You said there were cavalry chasing you?"

"Yes."

Zhong Xiahuo touched his chin and patted the scout on the shoulder: "Thank you for your hard work, by the way, what's your name?"

"Chen Xingyun."

"The name is good, you, go to the artillery position with me, right away."

"Yes! Sir!"

The two of them got on the horse and quickly stopped in front of the seven-seven-and-a-half-year-old Krupp mountain cannon.

Yan Canglong, deputy battalion officer of the Wuzi Cannon Camp, came up and said, "Mr. Zhong, you are here."

As soon as Zhong Xiahuo landed, he ran towards the nearest cannon and shouted: "Stop talking nonsense, ask the gunner to get on the cannon, open the bullet and medicine box, prepare for ten rapid fires!"

"Yes, yes," Yan Canglong responded hurriedly, and turned around and shouted to the gunners sitting on the bullet box basking in the sun: "Did you hear that? Why don't you work quickly? A bunch of lazy bones!"

Zhong Xiahuo knelt on one knee behind the cannon, called Chen Xingyun, took out the war zone map that Zhang had just obtained yesterday, spent a few minutes explaining how to look at the map, and then asked him to point out the locations of the Huai Army infantry.

"This is it, I can't be wrong." Chen Xingyun lit up at a corner of the map and shouted with great certainty.

Zhong Xiahuo immediately shook the handwheel of the sight, set the fire and hit the world, then ran to the next cannon, repeating the action just now, until all the seven cannons accurately aimed at the target, and then personally ordered: "All gunners, get on the cannon!"

Krupp Qisheng's Mid-mountain artillery was assigned to four, one of whom was responsible for aiming, one was responsible for loading and firing, and two were responsible for taking out the shells from the ammunition box and passing them to the loading hands. Now Zhong Xiahuo has adjusted the shooting and firing the masses instead of those aiming hands who only know to aim directly from the battle hole. In fact, the gunners went into the battle in groups of three.

Zhong Xiahuo pulled out a saber from his waist that had been set in his style three hundred years ago in Canglong. He was the command flag and finally explained to the gunners: "When I hear me shouting for preparation, I will load it, and when I see me swing the knife down and shouting to open the fire, I will pull the rope. Without my order, I am not allowed to act without my own. Do you understand?"

"I understand!" everyone responded in unison.

"Prepare - open fire!" Zhong Xia waved his fire knife, and the Qimen Mountain Cannon spewed out orange flames almost at the same time, and then thick smoke spread in front of the position with the wind and drifted towards the Tonghui River bank.

Seventy metal 'medicine' tubes soon scattered behind the mountain cannon. Zhong Xiahuo raised his telescope and saw strands of gray and black smoke columns rising under the clouds of the tree head in the distance.

This was the biggest killing in the imperialist mutiny in 1890. The vanguard of the Huai Army led by Ma Yukun, the admiral of the Yi Army of Huai Army, encountered the opponent's firepower in the woods 2.5 kilometers east of Gaobeidian. Within 90 seconds, seventy 75mm mountain artillery shells exploded in the ground of his vanguard camp. All 500 officers and soldiers of the battalion lost their combat effectiveness. More importantly, Ma Yukun, who was leading a cavalry team with more than 40 people to inspect the vanguard camp in person, was also shot and killed. When the Yi army battalions heard about it, they immediately stopped advancing towards Beijing and retreated ten miles to camp.

What happened next changed the entire battle situation and left countless magical legends among the people.

On the afternoon of the 25th, the Yi Army battalions were flying over the garrison by the Tonghui River, accompanied by a huge "buzzing" sound, which attracted officers and soldiers to come out to watch.

The clouds changed from dark red to dark, and then from dark to gray and white, and finally expanded into a snow-white cloud curtain that had been around for several miles, hanging in the blue sky. The officers and soldiers were pointing the sky and talking a lot, suddenly saw a gray skeleton appearing on the cloud curtain. Some people screamed and ran towards the camp tent, and some people turned onto the road in Tianjin and ran wildly. More people stood in place, frightened by this unprecedented horror scene. The people who stayed behind saw another scene after the skeleton: a few blood-red large characters in Kai-style skeletons bulged around the skeleton.

Now, it is for: "Heavenly punishes Li Hongzhang, and those who follow the thief will die." The edge of the word "ink traces are dripping, and it seems like blood flowing. The entire scene lasted for nearly half an hour. Within thirty miles, tens of thousands of Huai soldiers, including President of the Huai Army Song Qing and General Jiang Zikang of Tianjin, could see clearly. The chaos quickly spread to the entire army. Within a few hours, the extremely brave elite Huai army troops who were suppressing the Taiping Army were almost completely collapsed. The scattered soldiers and bravely fled in all directions. A few other officers and soldiers forced Song Qing and Jiang Zikang to surrender to Zhong Xiahuo's troops in front of him.

Wen Yi also saw this scene. At that time, his second regiment was carrying ten mountain cannons and two fifteen-shen (150mm) heavy cannons along the Beijing-Tianjin Avenue to detour towards the enemy. The officers and soldiers saw the words "Heavenly punished Li Hongzhang" appearing on the white clouds in the sky for no reason. The morale was greatly boosted and they accelerated their progress. Sure enough, they captured countless Huai Army defeated soldiers along the way.

"Old Liu, your secret equipment is really wonderful," Wen Yi shouted on the radio, "I am almost a Huai Army prisoner-of-war shelter. Needless to say, I know what gl3 is, but I don't know the name means, please explain it?"

"It's very simple. Gl3 means Ghost Face No. 3. You historian always like to dig deeper. Okay, now accept the order and order your troops to send a small number of personnel to escort prisoners back to Beijing. Most of them set off to Langfang and wait for Zhong Xiahuo's regiment there. After the two armies gather, they will head to Tianjin together. I will lead the direct regiment to follow up."

"clear!"

Tianjin, Zhili Governor's Office. People, carriages and horses were crowded in front of the gate. The screams of people and the neighing of cows and horses were mixed in distortion. On one of the ox carts, Li Hongzhang was shouting at the servants: "What's wrong? Didn't you tell you to stare at him? Go and find him back!"

A servant Weisheng said, "The young master took a fainting girl to the Zizhu Forest in the afternoon. The young man didn't know where he went, so the young master didn't let me follow--"

"Waste! A bunch of waste!" Li Hongzhang's face turned purple and turned to the head guard next to him: "Don't worry, let's go first, go to Tanggu, there are warships waiting for us, and then go east and south, there are places to go--"

"Where is Lord Li going? He also needs to take a warship. Do you want to defect to a foreign country?" An officer suddenly pulled the curtain and stared at Li Hongzhang.

Li Hongzhang said angrily: "General Nie, what do you want to do?"

Nie Shicheng bowed and said, "I don't want to do anything. I just want to know where Lord Li is. If Lord Li wants to defect to the foreign country, don't blame me for being rude. I will be blocked by my life."

"You--" Li Hongzhang's eyes turned pale and he fainted.

When he woke up, he was already locked in a bedroom with his son Li Jingfang, and a row of guards were vaguely distinguished outside the paper window.

"Dad—we can't escape this time—" Li Jingfang cried.

"Stop!" Li Hongzhang waved his hand and slapped him, shouting angrily: "Say, where did you go just now! You are still carrying a girl. When has it been? Is there nothing else in your mind except women?"

"That's Chun'er. I didn't expect that she would escape successfully and finally returned to me. At noon today, I asked the cook to help her put 'medicine' in her meal, and then took it to my own house in Zizhulin. Who would have thought that when things were about to happen, the Nie man rushed in with a group of people and tied me up--"
Chapter completed!