Guilin all the way to the north, is Huguang Jingzhou, although this section of the road is not easy to walk, but it will not block the Fourth Army for more than a month.

Even if the mountain road is difficult to walk, but there is not much heavy equipment in these years, at best, it is only those few artillery, no matter how difficult the mountain road is, send more people, this artillery can resist it.

It was not the terrain that really stopped the pace of the Fourth Army, but the Ming Army!

The tens of thousands of Ming troops who entered Guilin from Huguang did not fight head-on with the Fourth Army at all, and attacked the supply lines of the Fourth Army in hiding, and the Chenke Bridge was quite large.

The thousands of people under his command stopped and walked along the way, and sometimes even had to turn around and go back to pursue the Ming army, and there was no way to march with all their strength.

Fortunately, Li Xuan later sent him reinforcements, and after the Sixth Infantry Regiment, the First Battalion of the Liuzhou Independent Regiment and the Sixth Garrison Brigade also arrived in Wuzhou, he was finally able to lead the main force north with sufficient troops.

He left behind a regular battalion of the 6th Infantry Regiment and a reserve battalion, and a garrison regiment of about 4,000 men, and then went north with the remaining main force of about 7,000 men.

For the remaining troops, his requirements are very simple, don't chase the tens of thousands of Ming troops who scattered to attack the supply line, focus on guarding a few important cities, such as Guilin Fucheng and several key cities on the supply line, and then send troops to escort the baggage troops.

As for those Ming troops to attack some small counties, they went with him, anyway, there is nothing to lose a few small counties, not to mention the many counties in Guilin, the Tang Dynasty has not established a truly stable rule.

The garrison of Guilin Mansion numbered about 4,000 men, commanded by Colonel Zhou Yibao, deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Brigade, and was stationed in Guilin Mansion.

Although he has 4,000 people under his command, but to maintain such a long supply line, he has to hold several important cities in Guilin Mansion, and the task can be said to be quite heavy, after all, among the 4,000 people under his command, only one infantry battalion and one reserve battalion are regular troops, and the remaining 3,000 people are garrisons, and these garrisons are just Ming troops who have surrendered for more than a month.

Therefore, sitting in Guilin Mansion, on the one hand, he vigorously organized and strengthened the local thief hunting camp in Guilin Mansion, and also asked the Privy Council to send another part of the troops to Guilin to fight together to encircle and suppress the nearly 10,000 Ming troops active in Guilin Mansion.

If they don't fight this tens of thousands of Ming troops to kill them, they will always threaten the supply line of the main force of the Fourth Army, from Wuzhou all the way to Huguang Jingzhou, this supply line is quite long, and a long time will have to be taken by land, and it is impossible for the troops of the Fourth Army to send heavy troops to protect the transport troops at all times.

After all, if there are fewer factions, such as only sending dozens or hundreds of people, it is very likely that they will be swallowed directly by the Ming army, but if heavy troops are sent, will important strongholds such as Guilin Fucheng, Yongfu, and Yining still be defended?

After accepting Zhou Yibao's request for help, Li Xuan didn't think about it for long, and quickly approved the plan, but the reinforcements he planned to send were not regular troops or garrisons, but armed forces independent of the army: the robbery camp.

There is no way, now the Tang Dynasty needs to use troops in almost every direction, and it is said everywhere that the troops are insufficient, not to mention that the regular army cannot be withdrawn, even the garrison brigade Li Xuan can no longer be deployed.

Of course, this is not to say that Li Xuan has no troops on hand, but he can't use them easily.

In addition to the troops under the jurisdiction of the four armies that are currently fighting abroad, for the time being, Li Xuan still has the Guards Army, the Third Garrison Brigade, and the Liuzhou Independent Regiment on hand, and as for the Fifth Infantry Brigade, this has not yet been formed into an army, so it is not counted for the time being.

The two newly established garrison brigades, the Sixth Garrison Brigade has been dispatched to the Fourth Army, and the Seventh Garrison Brigade has also been incorporated into the command of the First Army according to the original plan, and was dispatched to the central and western regions of Guangdong in early April.

Of course, the Ming army is not stupid, and the sailors of Guangdong are already waiting for the area of the Qiongzhou Strait, and there is still a question mark over whether they can successfully cross the sea.

The reason why I want to put a question mark is because the Qiongzhou Strait is not wide, which is lucky, and I can sneak across the sea and go ashore with a small sampan, but if I am unlucky and just happened to be caught by the Ming army's sailors, then let alone the successful landing, I am afraid that few people will survive.

Regardless of whether it can hit Qiongzhou Mansion or not, but such a large coastal area as Leizhou Mansion, Gaozhou Mansion and Lianzhou Mansion all need troops to garrison, and because the Ming army can use the naval division to land everywhere, this force cannot be too small.

The Sixth Garrison Brigade and the Seventh Garrison Brigade already had their own places to go, and now Li Xuan had only the Guards Army, the two battalions in the Liuzhou Independent Regiment, and the Third Garrison Brigade left to move.

The Third Garrison Brigade also has a predetermined battle plan, that is, to cooperate with the First Army to attack Guangzhou, and now it is undergoing final training, and it will not be long before it will go south to Guangzhou.

And the Guards are Li Xuan's life-saving troops, unless he personally recruits, or the enemy kills Zhaoqing Mansion, otherwise, the Guards will never be used easily, even if the entire Guizhou is lost, this Guards will not be used easily.

The Liuzhou Independent Regiment originally had three battalions, one battalion had been strengthened to the Fourth Army, and now there were only two battalions left, and if nothing else, one battalion would have to be transferred to Guangzhou in the follow-up to shoulder the heavy task of breaking through the city of Guangzhou, so that he would have one battalion left on hand, which was worthy of a reserve of less than 500 people.

In this case, how could he still send this battalion to the Fourth Army.

But Guilin always let the Ming army make trouble like this, there was no way, Li Xuan could only hit the idea of catching thieves.

Is the booty camp combative? It must not be strong, if it really fights, under the same number of people, it is estimated that it will not be able to beat the tax inspection team, and it will definitely not be able to beat the regular guard army of the Ming army, but the robbery battalion is also holding weapons, and the army that has undergone a certain amount of training is still slightly stronger than the young and strong and the people anyway.

Moreover, in some areas that have been controlled for a long time, relatively large threats have basically been eliminated, and these poaching camps do not have too much task pressure.

Some time ago, Li Xuan also downsized the scale of the theft hunting camp and the tax inspection team, but even if it was downsized, the scale of the theft hunting camp was still relatively large, after all, every county had a robbery hunting camp, with dozens of people at least and one or two hundred people at most.

In the end, he ordered from Liuzhou, Wuzhou, Xunzhou and other Guangxi state capitals to draw the capture and theft camps, especially the state capitals that had been peaceful for a long time, not all of them, but one government to transfer so two or three hundred people, and finally raised about 1,500 people to hunt and steal camps, ready to let them go north to Guilin to reinforce Zhou Yibao to fight.

When Zhou Yibao heard that his reinforcements were just a group of thieves, he was naturally disappointed, but there was no way, it was better to have reinforcements than no reinforcements, and the thieves would be hunted for the camp!

In order to quickly reinforce Guilin, these raiding camps still sat on the transport ships of the Logistics Department and the Navy, and the first batch of nearly 500 people composed of Xunzhou Mansion and Wuzhou Mansion quickly arrived in Guilin Mansion, and the Privy Council gave the name of these 500 people as the first Capture and Theft Camp in Guangxi, which was distinguished from the Capture Camp in various places, because the Capture Camp in various places is usually a place name and then added a Capture Camp, such as Zhengtai County Capture Camp, Wuzhou Mansion Capture Camp, etc.

The troops formed by the two subsequent bandit-hunting camps in other state capitals will also be called the No. 2 Raid Battalion and the No. 3 Raid Battalion in Guangxi.

After the first robbery camp in Guangxi arrived, Zhou Yibao personally went to see their state, and after seeing it, he issued a strict order that the robbery camp should not be used for field battles and baggage escort tasks, but could only be used to defend the city.

There is no other reason, this strength is really too scummy, Zhou Yibao suspects that even if they defend the city, they can't beat the guards of the Ming army.

However, although the strength of Guangxi's No. 1 Capture and Theft Battalion is so bad that Zhou Yibao wants to go crazy, there are 500 people anyway, if it is in the eyes of outsiders who don't know their strength, these 500 people are the pseudo-Tang thief army.

And now the Ming army has a slight sense of fear for the puppet Tang thief army, even if it is a small place defended by hundreds of people, it will gather thousands of people to fight.

If these 500 people are released into the city of Wuzhou, they can directly free up hundreds of troops of the Fourth Army, squeeze a little here, squeeze a little there, Zhou Yibao felt that when the other two capture and theft battalions also arrived in Guilin, he should be able to have a mobile force of 1,000 people on hand, and it was still a regular infantry battalion as the core, and when the time came, it was time to take the initiative to attack.

Just when Zhou Yibao was racking his brains in the rear to ensure the supply line of the Fourth Army, Chen Keqiao also led the troops to officially enter Huguang Jingzhou.

On the first day of entering Jingzhou, the forward troops under his command captured Chengbu, and the front of the troops was directed at Suining, and what was the place after Suining? It is the state city of Jingzhou, and the Huguang Ming army entered the base camp of Xingquan Mansion.

The Huguangming Army, which fought in Xingquanfu, passed through and entered Xingquanfu from here, and at the same time, it was also an important logistics base for the Huguangming Army, and there was no one.

The grain, grass and ordnance transferred from Huguang and other places and even Nanzhili and other provinces came to Jingzhou after a long journey to collect and distribute, and then transported from here to Xingquan Prefecture for the use of tens of thousands of Hu Guangming troops.

The strategic location of this Jingzhou Prefecture City is so important, Chen Keqiao can naturally see it at a glance, so after he led his troops into Huguang, he didn't go there, but directly killed Jingzhou Prefecture!

The local Ming army soon killed the puppet Tang thief army into Jingzhou, and the soldiers pointed directly at the news of Jingzhou Prefecture to the rear, and it didn't take long for Zhang Yue to know the news.

As a governor of the four provinces who knew the soldiers, Zhang Yue immediately sank his face when he heard the news!