Hearing these words, and looking at the outfits on their bodies, the soldiers guarding the door also knew the severity, and of course, they would not rashly put these two knights in.

Immediately, someone trotted forward, and after confirming each other's identities, the officer with the rank of second lieutenant accompanied the two knights inward.

It didn't take long for the two knights to personally hand over a letter to Zeng Ziwen, the head of the Privy Council's Operations Department.

Zeng Ziwen first took out the seal at the bottom and compared it, and after confirming that it was a letter from the First Infantry Brigade, he opened it, and after opening it, he was not in a hurry to see the content, but looked at the handwriting and the seal at the end of the letter, and really confirmed that this was a letter written by Hao Bonian himself, and then he took a serious look at the content of the letter.

And at this look, a look of ecstasy immediately appeared on his face, and this kind of ecstasy had not appeared before when he received Zeng Ziwen to defeat the Ming army at Anjia Wharf.

An operational staff officer next to him was a little curious: "My lord, could it be that there is good news from the south again?" ”

Zeng Ziwen immediately said loudly: "Liuzhou's great victory, General Hao has sent good news, the southbound army has conquered Liuzhou City, and has also annihilated all the puppet Ming thief army in the city!" ”

"This official must attack immediately and report this great victory to the Holy Lord!"

After that, Zeng Ziwen couldn't wait to go out with Hao Bonian's personal letter, and then went straight to the temporary palace not far from the next door, that is, the former Xingquan Mansion to face the saint.

Zeng Ziwen is in a good mood and walks relatively fast, and the people he meets on the road are all smiling, and when someone asks him why he is so happy, he just smiles and doesn't say anything.

Although it won't take long for the news of Liuzhou to spread, he still wants His Majesty to know first.

After arriving at the palace, he asked to face the saint, but because he came a little earlier, and His Majesty had not yet come to work, he could only let the people from the Hanlin Academy report it, and he waited patiently!

Anyway, this is good news, and it's not a bad thing, so it's okay to wait, and it won't delay anything.

When waiting for His Majesty's arrival, Zeng Ziwen was also thinking in his mind that he had taken Liuzhou this time, and he had also defeated the Ming army's 8,000 troops in Xiangzhou before, and in the short term, Liuzhou Mansion was already completely under his own control.

At the same time, the partial division of the southward army, that is, the 1,000 troops sent to Guilin, is also progressing relatively smoothly, this unit led by Lieutenant Colonel Xu Ke, who has served as the commander of the Fourth Infantry Battalion and the First Infantry Battalion, and is now the deputy commander of the Second Infantry Regiment, has a force composed of the Second Reserve Battalion and the 13th Garrison Battalion of the Second Infantry Regiment, but about 1,100 people, but after they entered Guilin Mansion, they did not rush to attack Guilin Mansion City, but fought on the periphery of Guilin Mansion, and successively conquered Yining, Yongning Prefecture and other small cities. And in the process, a lot of Ming soldiers were captured, plus the soldiers recruited by the officials of the Recruitment Department of the Ministry of War who went with the army, also allowed them to form a new independent garrison battalion, and the second reserve battalion was able to always maintain full strength.

After this round, the eastward advance force not only did not decrease, but also expanded by nearly 1,000 people, so that the westward advance force had expanded to about 2,000 people, occupying the western and southwestern parts of Guilin Prefecture.

However, although Guilin Mansion is not the key defense area of the Ming army, and there are not many troops in Guilin, there are still thousands of Ming troops and young men guarding the city, and the westward troops do not have artillery, muskets and other firearms, but are all cold weapon troops, and it is still difficult to conquer a city guarded by thousands of people, so Lieutenant Colonel Xu Ke's next goal is to continue to capture other small counties in Guilin Prefecture, so as to achieve a strategic encirclement of Guilin Mansion and cut off the connection between Guilin Mansion and Wuzhou.

Judging from these circumstances, the situation in Guilin is still relatively optimistic!

In addition, half a month ago, the Operations Division had also ordered a mixed team of the regular army and two battalions of the garrison army to go south from central Guizhou to Qingyuan Mansion in Guangxi from central Guizhou, although the number of troops sent was not much, but there were not many regular troops in the western part of Guangxi, and it was not a key defensive area of the Ming army.

Now that the ministry has entered the Qingyuan Mansion, I believe that it will not be long before good news can come.

Based on the above, the foundation has been laid in Guangxi, especially in the central and northern regions of Guangxi, and at this time, it is logical for the holy car to go south.

The high-level officials of the Tang Dynasty all know that the southward strategy is not only the southward movement of the army, nor is it just the southward movement of the southbound detachment, but the political, industrial, and military center of gravity of the entire Tang Dynasty to the south!

Long before the army went south to Guangxi, the Tang Dynasty had already begun to prepare to move to Guangxi.

Hao Bonian's army has not yet conquered Liuzhou Mansion, and all the ministries of the Cabinet and the departments of the Privy Council have already sent a large number of officials to the south, especially the Recruitment Department of the Ministry of War, the workshop of the Ministry of Industry, and the Ordnance Department and Training Department of the Privy Council.

Even if it is the Ministry of Rites, the Ministry of Rites and other departments, there are basically people at the level of waiters who go to Liuzhou to work first.

On the one hand, their mission is to support the southbound army in the battle, and on the other hand, it is also to welcome the Holy Driver, and more importantly, to work first.

For example, on the Ministry of Industry, in order to be able to establish a large-scale workshop as soon as possible after entering the capital city of Liuzhou, preparations have already been carried out in Rongxian County, and workers have begun to recruit for basic training.

Once Liuzhou is taken, these officials who entered Liuzhou in the early stage will be stationed in Liuzhou as soon as possible to make a front stop for the holy car to go south!

Before taking Zhaoqing in the later period, Liuzhou will become the political, military, industrial, and commercial center of the new power of the Tang Dynasty.

Only after taking Zhaoqing will the political center of the Tang Dynasty be transferred again, but even after taking Zhaoqing in the later period, Liuzhou will still be an important stronghold of the Tang Dynasty, because the various workshops established in the early stage cannot be relocated.

And the north of Liuzhou is Xingquanfu, Liping Mansion and other places where the Tang Dynasty started, and these two places are close to Huguang and cannot be easily abandoned.

At that time, Liuzhou will be an important transit point connecting Guizhou and Guangxi, and its strategic position is still very important.

Even if you take a step back, if the vast army of Hu enters Guizhou, and your own side loses Xingquan Mansion and Liping Mansion because of the strategic center of gravity to the south, resulting in insufficient military strength in Guizhou, this Liuzhou will become an important strategic support point to resist the southward movement of the Ming army.

At the same time, because of the Liujiang River, a tributary of the Xijiang River, it can obtain convenient transportation links with Wuzhou through river transportation, so the development of industry and commerce here is also a certain merit.

Otherwise, the Tang Dynasty would not have hurriedly wanted to go south to Liuzhou and prepare to establish a large number of workshops here.

That's because there's a need.

Now it is the second year of Xuanping, if the number of years is used to record the history of the Tang Dynasty, then strictly speaking, the Tang Dynasty has been established for four years, from the first year of Anjian, the second year of Anjian, the first year of Xuanping, and the fourth year of Xuanping, the Tang Dynasty has gone through four years.

Although it is said that the first year of Anjian was only a little more than a month, and then the second year of Xuanping this year has just begun, if you use the actual time to count, in fact, the time when the Tang Dynasty was established was only two years and one month!

But in the past two years or so, not to mention the first half of the year, it was Li Xuan's father Lear who was fooling, but in the next year and a half, he has been fighting against the Ming army and expanding himself.

Especially in the last half a year, that is, the Tang Dynasty took the initiative to attack Zhengtai County, the Tang Dynasty successively conquered Zhengtai County, Xingquan Mansion, Liping Mansion, and then the last two months were swept through the central and eastern parts of Guizhou with the autumn wind sweeping the leaves.

As for Guiyang, it is a provincial city anyway, even if Zhu Zhihai, the governor of Guizhou, is dead, but other senior officials in Guizhou have already taken on the responsibility, desperately hoarding forces to defend Guiyang, and the strength of the westward troops is not strong enough, and this is really impossible to take down in the middle of the meeting.

By now, the Tang Dynasty has actually embarked on the road of retreat if it does not advance, just like sailing against the current, if it does not continue to expand, it will be encircled and suppressed by the Ming Dynasty.

Whether it is for its own development or from the perspective of self-preservation, the expansion of the Tang Dynasty is impossible to stop.

And for now, the expansion of the Tang Dynasty is to go south!

Now that the capital city of Liuzhou has been taken, Zeng Ziwen guessed that I am afraid that the holy car will officially go south in the short term!

Zeng Ziwen guessed correctly, after Li Xuan heard the news of Liuzhou's good news, he came out to meet Zeng Ziwen just after breakfast, but he didn't say much to Zeng Ziwen.

Because at this time, Li Xuan had already passed down the holy decree to convene a strategic meeting in front of the emperor, and ordered all cabinet ministers, directors of various departments of the Privy Council, and officers at or above the regimental level in Xingquan Mansion to attend this meeting.

In this pre-imperial strategic meeting, there is no need for Li Xuan to say more, the civil and military officials who have already received the news of the great victory in Liuzhou have proposed to move to the capital of Liuzhou at the beginning of the meeting!