As soon as the city of Wuzhou was basically cleared, Li Xuan couldn't even wait for the troops to completely clean up Wuzhou, and he had already held a strategic meeting in front of the emperor.

However, at the first imperial strategic meeting that morning, the opinions of all parties were too different, and no agreement was reached at all, so the meeting was temporarily adjourned near noon, and after a group of people had eaten and rested, the imperial strategic meeting was held again at half past two in the afternoon!

And this time, many generals inevitably disagreed again on the direction of the follow-up army's march!

Zhu Xu, who had just been promoted to colonel of the army, strongly advocated continuing the main force to advance eastward into Zhaoqing and even Guangzhou, and took advantage of the fact that the retreating Ming army had not yet deployed dense troops in Zhaoqing to build and improve the city defense, and the Guangdong region had not yet raised a large number of young and strong people, and took advantage of the victory to pursue and seize Zhaoqing, Guangzhou, Foshan, and other places in one fell swoop, laying the foundation for thorough control of Guangdong.

As for the Huguang direction, especially the 30,000 Ming troops who had already marched into Xingquan Province, it was possible for the Second Army on the Guizhou side to resist step by step, and if necessary, they could abandon Xingquan Province and even most of Guizhou, as long as they ensured that Liping Mansion was not lost.

It was even proposed that even if Liping Mansion was lost, it would not hesitate to do so, as long as the Second Army retreated to Liuzhou at that time.

Anyway, Guizhou is barren, there is no development potential at all, but the two Guangxi areas are different, although the two Guangxi in this era are still not as prosperous as the south of the Yangtze River, but there are still a few plains of output, and there are a lot of mineral resources, and at the same time, it can also directly get in touch with overseas to obtain the most scarce sulfur, saltpeter and many other strategic materials.

In short, their core point is that they would rather not Guizhou than seize Guangdong!

However, Colonel Xu Ke of the Second Infantry Regiment, Major Lu Yuzhi of the Second Cavalry Battalion and several others believed that although Guizhou was barren, Xingquan Mansion was the land of Longxing, and even the land of their ancestor Longxing had been lost, which made the people of the world think of their Tang Dynasty!

This potential political repercussion cannot be ignored.

At the same time, Guizhou, especially Xingquan Mansion and Liping Mansion, are the gateways to Liuzhou, and only by holding these two places can Liuzhou be prevented from being threatened by the Huguang Ming Army, and when Liuzhou is safe, it will be able to keep the hinterland of central Guangxi, and then keep the two Guangzhou.

In addition, they also believed that the Ming army in the direction of Guangdong was weak now, and there was not much strength at all, and it was completely possible to send a partial division to capture Zhaoqing and Guangzhou, and the main force should go north.

However, there were also internal disagreements about where they went north, some people thought that they should return to Liuzhou, and then return to Xingquanfu from Liping Mansion to resist the Ming army, and some people thought that they should go north to Guilin, and after capturing Guilin, they would go up to the northeast and seize Huguang Jingzhou, and directly cut off the back road of the 30,000 Huguang People's Army that had already marched into Xingquanfu.

Everyone once again engaged in heated debates over the follow-up strategic direction, and even the core operational command center of the Tang Dynasty, the staff officers in the Operations Department of the Privy Council, were seriously divided on this.

For a while, I couldn't come up with a perfect plan that all parties agreed on.

In this regard, Li Xuan's idea is very simple, directly let the Operations Department formulate the above three strategic plans for backup.

In fact, at present, Li Xuan already feels that the situation of the Tang Dynasty has been greatly improved, whether it is to go east or go north to Huguang, or to return to Guizhou, in fact, it is okay, and the result cannot be too bad.

As for which one is better, that's not accurate.

Because the prospects are relatively optimistic, this time Li Xuan does not plan to directly interfere in the work of the Operations Department and these senior generals, after all, they are more professional in this kind of thing.

As for himself, Li Xuan can proudly say that his knowledge in the direction of science is better than any contemporary person, but he does not dare to say that he is more powerful than these people in terms of fighting.

In addition, no matter how good a person's idea is, there may be something that he has not thought of, and the next two dozen people meet together to discuss, even if the discussion process is full of quarrels, but it also means that all kinds of possibilities will be raised, as far as possible to improve the battle plan, to avoid unexpected possibilities.

Li Xuan sat down at the top with peace of mind, closed his eyes, and seemed to ignore the arguments of the people below, but of course this was impossible, he had been listening.

It's just that in order to maintain a detached saint state, he shows a disdainful attitude of listening.

At this time, in the debate of the people below, the middle-level officers have been arguing fiercely for a long time, although they still failed to convince them to sleep, but basically the idea is already clear, it is nothing more than the three roads of eastward, north to Guilin, and back to Liuzhou.

And after discussion, the pros and cons of these three paths and even many details have been put forward and improved, and now all that remains is to make a choice.

At this time, Hao Bonian, Chen Keqiao, and Zeng Ziwen were sitting together, and then talking in a low voice!

I only listened to Chen Keqiao said: "The three plans have their own advantages and disadvantages, but from the perspective of my Datang's future strategy, I still tend to go east to Guangdong, even if I don't send all the main forces to Guangdong, but at least send an infantry brigade to go, and the artillery and cavalry have to pull half of it, so that we can take Zhaoqing and Guangzhou as soon as possible!" ”

Speaking of this, he continued: "The rainy season is coming, according to the current weather, we still have half a month at most, beyond this time, we will not have enough time to seize Zhaoqing and Guangzhou, after missing this time, if we use the power of guns to attack Zhaoqing and Guangzhou and other places, it will be at least three months later!" ”

The rainy season in the Liangguang region comes several months earlier than the rainy season in the Jiangnan region, because in the Huaxia region, the rainy season first appears in the southern regions such as Liangguang and then gradually moves northward, so it will form such a scene, when the rain is falling in the south, it is still snowing in the north.

When the rain continues in the south of the Yangtze River, Guangdong is already sunny!

This kind of regional climate difference also means that if the Tang Dynasty Division does not hurry south to Guangzhou, it will encounter a headache rainy season in the future, and the impact on the battle will be very large, and the biggest enemy of the Tang Dynasty Division will not be the Ming army, but the continuous rain!

So Chen Keqiao said: "So I think that it is still necessary to go south as soon as possible, and conquer Zhaoqing and Guangzhou in one fell swoop with lightning speed, and after taking these two places, it will be easy to control the rest of Guangdong, and the southward strategy of my Tang Dynasty Wangshi will be truly completed!" ”

However, Zeng Ziwen said at this time: "Since we are talking about the rainy season, if this rainy season comes a few days earlier, or if our army is blocked under Zhaoqing City, or if it is blocked under Guangzhou City for so many days, then our army will fall into great passivity!" ”

At this time, Chen Keqiao said: "If our army sends a regular army of 10,000 people to the south, and then brings a garrison of 10,000 people, an army of 20,000 is enough to attack the city and pull out the wall, and it is impossible for Zhaoqing, which is only guarded by thousands of remnants, to resist the attack of our army!" ”

At this time, Hao Bonian also spoke: "Judging from the current situation of my Datang, it is necessary to continue to advance eastward, and it is necessary to attack decisively and quickly, the current situation in Guangdong is very good, we need to seize the time to consolidate the results and avoid Zhaoqing becoming the next Wuzhou!" ”

"However, the Ming army on Huguang's side can't ignore it, I heard that Zhang Yue, who went to Huguang this time, has rich experience and is quite powerful, otherwise he would not have been able to overwhelm many officials and generals in Huguang in such a short period of time, and sent 30,000 Ming troops east to Xingquan!"

"So this is also going north!"

Hao Bonian paused slightly when he said this, and then said: "So this time the division of troops is inevitable, our First Army is huge, no matter whether the rainy season will come or not, this Guangdong will not need the main army of tens of thousands of people in the First Army!" ”

Just as Hao Bonian said, the strength of the First Army is strong, the First Infantry Brigade, the Third Infantry Brigade, the Liuzhou Independent Regiment, two artillery battalions, two cavalry battalions, one Guards, two baggage regiments, and two garrison brigades.

Even if there were more than 5,000 dead and wounded in the battle of Wuzhou, the military department of the Tang Dynasty Division was not dry, and they had already begun to prepare for the recruitment of soldiers in advance for the large number of casualties that might occur in the Battle of Wuzhou, although the Privy Council Training Department had not yet been able to complete the training of this group of soldiers who were expected to be replenished to the First Army.

But for this kind of thing, the Tang Dynasty also had a wealth of experience early, and the one-month training was not completed, so the best quality was selected from these recruits who did not complete the training and directly supplemented to the regular army, and then continued training in the regular army.

Although this will inevitably lead to a decline in the strength of the troops, this decline is controllable, after all, there cannot be too many new recruits.

In particular, among the main forces of the existing First Army, that is, the Sixth Infantry Regiment, the shortage is relatively serious, and the other losses are relatively small, while the Sixth Infantry Regiment is still a unit with pure cold weapons, and in addition to the great damage, it is impossible for it to undertake an important combat mission for the second time in a short period of time.

As for the replenishment of the garrison brigade, it is even simpler, they have captured 20,000 people in Wuzhou, even if some of them are selected to supplement the regular army after all.

There are also some people who are estimated to be unwilling to surrender to the Tang Dynasty and fight for Li Xuan, the Holy Monarch of the Ages.

But even so, according to the usual experience, out of these 20,000 people, it should be possible to select at least fifteen thousand people to serve the Tang Dynasty King, well, including those who were willing at the beginning and those who were unwilling at the beginning, but were willing later!

These people are enough to replenish the existing two garrison brigades, and they can also form two more garrison brigades.

These extra Ming troops will form the Sixth Garrison Brigade and the Seventh Garrison Brigade.