After receiving Li Xuan's will, although Li Daobing, the leader of the Hanlin Academy, could not rush back to Jinling in person because he had to drive with him, he was his right-hand man, Xia Fenzhong, one of the deputy chiefs of the Survey and Statistics Department of the Hanlin Academy, and also the head of the third office, immediately rushed back to Jinling City to preside over Chen Lifu's case.

The first room is responsible for the clan and relatives, the second room is responsible for the military, the third room is responsible for the Gyeonggi civil officials, the fourth room is responsible for local civil officials, the fifth room is responsible for foreign domains, the sixth room is responsible for civil unrest, the seventh room is responsible for counterintelligence, the eighth room is responsible for public opinion, and the ninth room is responsible for the internal supervision of Hantong; The three departments are the General Affairs Office, the Logistics Office, and the Organization Office.

Under Li Daobing, the head of the Hantong section, there are three deputy section chiefs, and these three deputy section chiefs assist Li Daobing in dealing with the huge Hantong, and at the same time, each deputy section chief will basically serve as the head of one of the institutions.

Xia Fenzhong, who is the deputy section chief and also the head of the third office, is responsible for monitoring the Gyeonggi hundred officials, and basically all the supervision work of the departments directly under the central government, including the monitoring of the cabinet departments, the departments of the Hanlin Academy, the Central Inspectorate and the Central Court, are under his management.

But such a person with real power is actually not well-known in the Tang Dynasty, and many people, even officials within the Tang Dynasty, have actually never heard of his name.

Because Hantong never publishes the list of high-level Hantong to the outside world, and internal transfers are never announced to the public, and even outsiders cannot understand the organizational structure of Hantong.

They don't know, and they don't have the courage to ask, why? Because almost everything in the Hantong is top secret, their organizational structure, except for the three major places, is all referred to by numbers, the first room, the first section, and the first group.

The list and resume of the personnel of Hantong, except for Li Daobing, who needs to stand on the stage, are all confidential, and those who do not have relevant authority cannot be known at all.

For example, Xia Fenzhong, the degree of confidentiality of his personal files is second-class top secret, and there are only a handful of Xia Fenzhong's personal files that can be seen in the whole world.

Therefore, most of the outside world know that Hantong is very powerful, but there is rarely an intuitive feeling of how it is powerful, even if it is their direct competitor Military Intelligence Department, in fact, they don't know much about the internal structure of Hantong.

Hantong is like a transparent net, everyone can feel their existence, but no one can see their existence.

And now, Xia Fenzhong feels that Chen Lifu's case may be an opportunity for the outside world to really understand the power of their Han Tong, because this time they are going to do a big job!

The Son of Heaven has already personally issued an order to strictly investigate Chen Lifu's case!

What to look for?

Naturally, it's not to check whether Chen Lifu is guilty or not, this kind of matter is related to their Han Tong's, even if Chen Lifu is really wronged, they Han Tong will not take a second look at it, there are many people who have been wronged in this world, and they can't control it.

What they want to investigate strictly is that this time Chen Lifu's case was a party and a private act!

Regardless of whether they were connected in series to frame Chen Lifu, or in order to rescue Chen Lifu, they are all the targets of their investigation!

When Xia Fenzhong returned to Jinling with Li Xuan's will, Li Xuan also put Chen Lifu's case behind, and perhaps this matter caused widespread public opinion in Jinling and Jiangnan, maybe this matter had a great impact on some people, but for Li Xuan, it was just a trivial matter.

Even the signs of forming a party and running a private business in this matter made Li Xuanduo frown and ordered a strict investigation.

Now his focus is still on the Southwest Campaign.

With the passage of time, the Tang Dynasty Wang's division has successfully launched the second phase of the Southwest Campaign!

In order to cooperate with the actions of the First Army, the Second Army continued to act as the vanguard and took the lead in carrying out relevant operations!

After replenishing a large amount of ammunition and new soldiers, the Second Army, which was fully equipped and fully supplied, was divided into two routes, besieging Huangmei all the way, and bypassing Huangmei and heading straight to Guangji.

And these two places, in fact, have long been abandoned by the Ming army, their main force has long been withdrawn, and only one or two thousand people are left in the city to defend.

And these 2,000 troops are not the governors, but the local youth!

What's even funnier is that it was not the generals or officials of the Ming army who led these young people, but the local gentry, because when the main force of the superintendent withdrew, the local officials also ran away.

In order to avoid chaos in the city, the local gentry cobbled together young men to maintain order in the city.

Although many of the gentry wanted to resist, the difference in strength between the two sides was so great that they did not put up a decent resistance at all.

Under the attack of the Second Army, Huangmei City was breached after only two hours!

Guangji is better, they have been guarding for a long time!

And you must know that the two hours and half a day mentioned here are not the time after the troops of the Second Army of the Tang Dynasty launched the general attack, but from the arrival of the forward troops of the Second Army of the Tang Dynasty under the city!

In fact, these two cities did not succeed in holding out until the arrival of the main force of the Second Army, and they were all after the arrival of the vanguard troops of the Tang Army, which was to declare the city broken.

Of course, in fact, they did not put up much resolute resistance, and the forward troops launched a tentative attack, which was originally only used to reconnoiter the defensive firepower in the city, but these young men in the city collapsed directly.

It is said that it will go down without a fight, but in fact, there is no problem at all!

After taking these two places, Qizhou also did not stop the attack of the Second Army, which sent an infantry division over and spent two days to take the city.

The reason why it took two days was because it was a state city, and although the main force of the local Ming army was withdrawn, there were still thousands of people with thousands of young men to resist stubbornly, trying to delay the second army's attack.

Therefore, the troops of the Second Army spent a day building artillery positions and so on, spent half a day preparing for artillery fire, spent half an hour fighting for the city walls and gates, and spent another two or three hours controlling the city and clearing the remnants of the city.

So, it took them two days!

The Second Army's offensive in the above three places was very smooth, but when they continued to push to the northeast, they encountered a small trouble when they were in Qishui, and the Ming army stationed here was not a small number of superintendents with young and strong, but genuine superintendents, numbering about 8,000 people.

Moreover, these governors actually abandoned the city, but chose to build fortresses on several small mountains outside the city with their backs to the river, and relied on the crossfire of artillery, muskets, and bows and arrows to defend.

When the vanguard of the Second Army first carried out a tentative attack, they did not expect that the counterattack of the Ming army would be so sharp, and it actually lost hundreds of people.

After the arrival of the 3rd Infantry Division, it also tried to attack this fortress outside the city, but found that this was a hard bone!

The Ming army in these fortresses actually did not have many large-caliber artillery, but their fortresses were very cleverly constructed, and they had the subtleties of the fortresses that the Tang Army was studying and the Tang Western Company was building and using.

Although these forts were independent, they were actually not far apart, and there were trenches connected to each other, which could provide fire support to each other, which caused the 3rd Infantry Division a great headache.

At the same time, although these fortresses are not good, large-caliber field artillery can often collapse a section of their earthen wall, but these earthen fortresses have a characteristic, that is, the soil layer is soft, which can absorb the kinetic energy of solid shells, and these fortresses still have a roof.

The shells of the heavy howitzers exploded, but the Ming army was hiding in the reserved fortresses and trenches, and the casualties were very limited!

Whenever the Tang Army thought that under such a fierce shelling, even if the Ming army commanders in these humble fortresses were not killed by shrapnel, they would be shocked to death by the shock wave, so they tried to send commandos to rush up to occupy the position, and those Ming troops would come out and counterattack with small bowl guns, bows and arrows, and muskets.

In order to avoid too many casualties, the assault battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division had to stop halfway!

This situation made the senior generals of the 3rd Infantry Division quite annoyed!

Although the casualties of the Third Infantry Division will not be large in this way, after all, the generals of the Third Infantry Division are not stupid, and it is impossible to say that in order to conquer a fortress, they will carry out a strong attack regardless of casualties, but the fight is also quite uncomfortable.

In the end, there was no choice but to give up the intention of a quick battle and start the earthwork that the Tang Dynasty King Division would do in every battle!

Dig a trench directly, throw grenades into the opponent's trenches and fortresses when you get closer, or direct the nine-pound field guns in the rear to carry out precision strikes!

And when this kind of battle, the Suifa pistol, which has not been valued by the Tang cavalry, has also been valued by the army generals, because when conducting trench operations, the soldiers' rifles are too long, and it is difficult to fight in narrow trenches, but Suifa pistols are different, directly load the bullets, and then bring them, and when they are ready to fight, they will open the insurance, ready to pull the trigger and shoot at any time!

Although the small pistol can only be used once, the hit rate at close range is also considerable, and it is easier to use a rifle with a bayonet in a small battle.

In this way, with few casualties, they successively conquered the enemy's fortress positions, successfully annihilated half of the 8,000 governors, and forced them to flee across the river!

But after this battle, Wang Chaohong, the commander of the Second Army, frowned!