With the successive deaths of He Tengjiao, Jin Shenghuan and Li Chengdong, after a year's return, the Yongli Imperial Court once again ushered in a situation of collapse and cracking.

The battlefields of Huguang and Jiangxi are okay, although the Qing army has occupied a large area in the previous months and has squeezed the Ming army into the corner, but at least Du Yinxi and Jie Chongxi still have jurisdiction and sufficient authority over the generals within the theater, whether it is the loyal battalion adapted from the rest of the Dashun army, or Cao Dahao, Zhang Zisheng, Hong Guoyu and other generals, the appointment of the imperial court and the military orders of these two people can still be prohibited. Even if the situation is unfavorable, at least they are still fighting bloodily.

However, Guangdong, which was not under the direct threat of the main force of the Eighth Banner Army, was reversed with Du Yonghe's theft of the post of governor of Liangguang.

Just like Chen Kai and Shi Lang's opinion, Du Yonghe bribed the generals with a lot of money to push himself to stay, but in fact, he couldn't restrain the generals who were similar to his own status, so he could only turn into a plate of loose sand. In addition, the generals had no far-sighted ambitions, blindly gathered in Guangzhou and other wealthy areas, and lived a life of spending all their days and drinking wine, and Guangdong, which could have burst out with greater strength, completely became a nominal occupation zone.

Regarding this matter, Qian Bingjian, the editor of the Hanlin Academy at that time, later mentioned it, according to his opinion: "At that time, the generals were only available to become Dongzi Yuanyin." When he heard the change, he ordered Li Yuanyin to gallop into his army, take charge of the commander, and summoned Du Yonghe to join the Yuanyin forbidden brigade. He refused to be ordered by the court, and there was no way to refuse Yuan Yin. Yuan Yin is decisive and wise, and his brothers Li Yuantai and Li Jianjie are all important positions in the military government, and they are the most known as Xiaojian. Yuan Yin to, the generals have different aspirations, Yuan Yin is also enough to make it. So the army was moved to Nanlong, and the heavy troops were on the ridge, and the northern division could not be driven into it for a long time."

Although Qian Bingjian's words were suspected of being hindsight, they also clearly showed the important shortcomings within the Yongli court at that time - within the imperial court, from the emperor Zhu Youlang and the first auxiliary minister Qu Shiyun down, the people in power were ignorant of the ability to perceive the situation, and lacked the wisdom of knowing people, thinking that taking advantage of the opportunity of Li Chengdong's drowning to death could take advantage of Liu Yuansheng as the governor to return the military and political power of Guangdong Province to the imperial court, but the result backfired and increased in vain.

Of course, the actual impact of the great changes in Guangdong is not very great for Zheng Chenggong's department, at least at this stage.

"Now Du Yonghe can't effectively control the generals, Guangdong is a plate of scattered sand, except for Wu Shi Bo Yan Keyi is still sitting in Meiling, the other generals have already returned to Guangzhou, and there is no intention of enterprising. Even assuming that Liu Yuansheng really took over the post of governor of Liangguang and the complete collapse of the Jiangxi battlefield, their attention would be more focused on the direction of Southern Jiangxi rather than the Chaozhou Mansion where our army was located. In other words, the imperial court and Du Yonghe and others are still relying on our army to block the Tartars in the direction of Fujian for them. ”

Chen Kai explained in detail the current strategic environment of Zheng Chenggong's department under this great change, and clearly proposed that when the Qing army really crossed the Meiling Mountains, the Ming army in Guangdong was afraid that there would be no way to repel the invasion of the Qing army, and the difference was nothing more than how long it would take to resist before it completely fell.

The situation is not optimistic, because no one knows when the Qing army will go south, and even Chen Kai can't remember it clearly. But whether it is the fear of the unknown or its own development, seizing all the time to expand the occupied area, and then expand the strength, is the most important thing to do at present.

With such a big premise, Chen Kai's proposal was quickly passed, and even those things that had been proposed by Shi Lang before Chen Kai returned, because Chen Kai spoke in more detail about the overall situation, and all of them became Chen Kai's credit, and Shi Lang was able to receive very little praise.

At the same time, Huang Ting, Ke Chenshu, and Gan Hui led the reinforcements to suppress Zuo Town, Zhongchong Town and Youchong Town to the south, and cooperated with Chen Hui, who was responsible for the local defense of Chenghai, to seize Outing Village to ensure the stability of southern Chaozhou.

Zheng Chenggong has long been interested in the problem of Ou Ting Village, not only because Chen Junge refused to surrender and refused to pay taxes to the Ming army, but more importantly, Zheng Chenggong has received many reports about "Ou Ting Bei is dangerous and solid, gathering crowds to plunder, and many merchant ships at sea are intercepted, and they are very cruel", and the target of his attack is not limited to maritime merchants, even the merchant ships of the Zheng family will inevitably be attacked.

Chen Junge's name is Xiucai, but in fact, he is a bandit style of robbing merchants and dividing oneself-respect, and his methods are fierce, even characters like Xu Long and Wu Liuqi, and they cannot be compared.

The army was dispatched to pull out this nail and ensure the safety of the maritime trade route. It's just that this time, Zheng Chenggong didn't have the spirit to pay attention to it for the time being, but Chen Kai took the initiative to say that he wanted to observe with the army.

"Since you want to go and see it, then you can go out with the army."

Chen Kai inexplicably ignored the order for military uniforms that he had just pulled from Zheng Hongkui, but suddenly became interested in this Ou Ting Village, Shi Lang objected, the excuse was nothing more than to defend the power of the matter, but Huang Ting and Gan Hui did not agree, Ke Chenshu even supported Chen Kai's plan, and Chen Kai repeatedly said that the Ou Ting Village was easy to defend and difficult to attack, so he wanted to see it with his own eyes and never interfere in the siege of the city, so this matter was decided without much effort.

The three towns come out of Jieyang County, go down the Rong River, wait near the sea, the army lands on the shore, and arrives close to the Outing Village on foot, and the siege of the city is carried out.

Outing Village, also known as Outing Back Village, is located in the south of the Hanjiang River Delta, because there are flocks of seagulls inhabiting and foraging and breeding here all year round, heaven and earth, people and birds are harmonious, and together paint a beautiful scenery, so it is called Outing Dam, and because of the homonym of "dam" and "back" in southern Fujian dialect, the local people call it Outing Back; Over time, Outing became "Outing's back".

Its village was built in the troubled times of the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, and the villagers repaired the village to defend themselves because of pirate attacks. By the Ming Dynasty, the walled wall was already impregnable, the moat, the river bridge, and the gate were complete and stable, and the lanes in the village were staggered and orderly, and the living facilities were complete.

Chen Kai arrived with the army and looked at it with great eyes, Huang Ting even sent people to find the people around him, plus the information he got earlier, they also had a more detailed understanding of this walled city.

The walled city is about 450 zhang long, about 100 zhang wide, there are moats dug around, and the traffic with the outside world is carried out by four gates and four bridges. In addition, a large area around it is covered with beach silt, shaped like a swamp, and it is difficult to get out of it, which can be described as a place that is easy to defend and difficult to attack.

"Outing four gates, said Nanxun, said Beiding, said Xining, said Beiping. There are four bridges outside the gate, one is called the Turtle Bridge, one is called the Xining Bridge, one is called the Fucai Bridge, and one bridge is located outside the Nanxun Gate, which is different from the other three stone bridges, this bridge is a wooden bridge. ”

Speaking of this, Huang Ting saw Chen Kai nodded, and then said: "Ben Shuai has sent someone to investigate, Outing is a snake land, and Outing Village is also a serpentine village. These four doors and four bridges are like the four legs of this snake. The snake is born with four legs and is about to turn into a jiao, but unfortunately, one of the four legs is wooden, which destroys the overall feng shui. ”

Huang Ting is the old general of the Zheng family's Zheng group, and his status is not as good as those marquis and uncles, but in addition to his rich combat experience, he is also a person who has read military books, and there are many things to explain feng shui and metaphysics in the ancient military books, which is also a show of knowledge.

Chen Kai didn't know whether this feng shui thing was useful or not, or that it contained the great truth of military science, but since Huang Ting mentioned that this was a serpentine village, it was still right to hit seven inches.

"There is no mistake, that is, to find its seven inches of land, break the opening, and this stockade will be considered broken."