In Guan Zhuofan's eyes, since Li Hongzhang played Wu Xi to "help with military affairs", his intentions have been revealed. What he didn't know was when Li Hongzhang planned to do it, so the arrival of Bian Ning and Huang Haiqing was too timely, and it was not in vain that he took great pains to bury this "nail" in Li Hongzhang's yamen.

Speaking of which, Li Hongzhang came up with such a method of diverting the tiger from the mountain, or borrowed from Guan Zhuofan, who gave him a great inspiration when he played Zhao Jingxian's assistant in military affairs.

"Guan Yixuan transferred Zhao Cripple into his domain's yamen, we might as well draw a gourd in the same way, and transfer Wu Xu to be the leader of the Changsheng army, which can also be regarded as an assistant in military affairs." Before the promotion, he said to Zhou Fu and Li Hezhang, "There are the most foreigners in the Changsheng army, if you talk about dealing with foreigners, who can be better than him Wu Zirun?" Military affairs first, this reason is above board, and others can't say anything. ”

This is just the first step, it can be regarded as a foreshadowing, and when the army is launched, Wu Xu will naturally act with the army. After breaking Taicang, the second step began, which was the fold that Huang Haiqing copied back.

The excerpt was written very high-soundingly, saying that Wu Xu was originally a member of Jiangsu Gaosi and Shanghai Dao, and now he is also the leader of Chang Shengjun, and it is difficult to win a huge position, so he has to open a position for him. Wu Xu is a third-grade official, if he says that he wants to remove an envoy, of course he can't be dismissed from the position of Gaosi, so it becomes a logical thing to get rid of the position of the fourth-grade Daotai.

As for the candidate for replacement, in order to show his selflessness, Li Hongzhang said in the excerpt that "the ministers have no prejudices, and the court will select the meritocracy to fill the position." In private, he sent someone to deliver a letter to Zeng Guofan. Ask the teacher to protect someone for him. to act as Shanghai Road.

This person. is called Huang Fang, a native of Changsha, Hunan, in the fifteenth year of Daoguang, and in the fifth year of Xianfeng, he served as the magistrate of Shanghai, and he can also speak foreign languages, and later entered the curtain of Zeng Guofan and became friends with Li Hongzhang. There is such a person who knows Shanghai well and has dealt with foreigners. Li Hongzhang naturally had the confidence to take out Wu Xu.

This arrangement could have been called seamless, but unfortunately it was a pity that Guan Zhuofan was missed.

In Guan Zhuofan's opinion, although Wu Xu is still "obedient", he is not as handy as using his own people after all, so he has long wanted to replace him with Yang Fang. It's a pity that last time, he used the method of ensuring Wu Xu's promotion, and wanted to squeeze Wu Xu out of his position on Shanghai Road, but the official was promoted. But it is still entrenched in the yamen of the Taoist platform. Only later did I find out that Wu Xu not only made money from Xue Huan. He also bribed the Manshang Book Quanqing of the Ministry of Officials with a lot of money, so he sat firmly in this position.

Now, with Li Hongzhang's knife, Guan Zhuofan is determined to sing a "borrowed knife to kill".

The next day, Suzhou didn't go either, so he sent someone to invite Yang Fang to the Yamen of the Domain Division on Qingya Street, without greetings, and went straight to the point: "Qi Weng, I want to use your 50,000 silver." ”

"Done." Yang Fang didn't ask Weishenme, and replied quietly, "Is 50,000 enough?" Not enough yet. ”

"It's enough," Guan Zhuofan laughed when he saw him so cheerful, "I'm going to take the 50,000 silver, grab the food, and go to get a Shanghai Dao for Qi Weng." Now that there is a war, the money of the grain station is also tight, and in the future, this money can always be taken from the grain platform. ”

I see! Since Guan Zhuofan said that the tiger grabbed food, then who the tiger refers to, it is unknown without asking.

"Then where is Wu Zirun......?"

"He is still his Jiangsu Gaosi, but the position of Shanghai Daotai cannot be kept - Li Hongzhang has already played." Guan Zhuofan briefly said what happened, "Let me say it directly, he Futai wants to dig up this piece of meat from Shanghai, it was a dream." ”

Hearing Guan Zhuofan say this, Yang Fang was also arrogant, shook his head and said: "Yixuan, since this is the case, then I have to spend the money myself, why use the money from the Xuanjun Grain Station?" I won't tell you the truth, no matter how bad I am, I can still get it at any time for one or two hundred thousand silver. ”

These 50,000 taels, Guan Zhuofan has laid out. Among them, 20,000 are ready to be handed over to Xu Gengshen for distribution, and the other 10,000 are ready to be sent to An Dehai. With these two sums of money, he planned to let Zhang Shun take the afternoon boat and return to Beijing by water from Tianjin.

"Qi Weng, on the military plane and in the palace, I have my own way, and I will do it. But I always have to find someone, xiangshang face to protect a Bao Qi Weng, this matter, I can't come forward, I have to find another person. “

"Yixuan, I listen to you, which one do you say you should find?"

"There is a general He on the river, who is now in Shanghai. This person is Wu Zhijun's wife and brother, and he is also reliable, so I will arrange for you to connect with him. ”

"Yixuan, what do you mean......" Yang Fang said as if he had realized something.

"Caoyun Governor Wu Tang," Guan Zhuofan nodded and said, "Let's spend 20,000 silver to buy him a secret guard." ”

*

*

Spending money on Xu Gengshen and An Dehai is naturally to pave the way for Yang Fang, but they are usually in Beijing, and they can't speak for Yang Fang for no reason, there must be someone who will report Yang Fang's name to Beijing from the local government first. With such a reason, Xu Gengshen and An Dehai are easy to perform.

In the Qing system, in order to record meritorious personnel or recommend people with special talents, local officials could adopt the method of promoting to the imperial court, which was divided into two types: Ming Bao and Secret Bao.

There is also a guaranteed word, but the weight is very different! Ming Bao is a routine guarantee, handed over to the Ministry of Officials to review the file, but the secret protection is directly sent to the Military Aircraft Department, by the Minister of Military Aircraft to read the secret storage, which is a kind of special sponsorship.

As far as Guan Zhuofan is concerned, it is not yet the time to turn his face with Li Hongzhang, especially since there is a Zeng Guofan standing behind Li Hongzhang, and he is a person who cannot afford to offend, so it is inconvenient for him to come forward to protect him, otherwise it will not only be easy to cause a frontal conflict, but also afraid of activating Li Hongzhang's suspicion and endangering the inner line of Huang Haiqing, who has been so hard to bury.

However, if you are looking for someone, you are looking for someone, why do you have to find Wu Tang, the governor of Caoyun stationed in Yangzhou? Regarding Yang Fang's question, Guan Zhuofan has a saying.

"Qi Weng, Wu Zhongxuan, I don't know if you have dealt with it?"

"Back then, because of the case of the Little Knife Club, I had a relationship with him." Yang Fang recalled, "At that time, he was still the commander of Qinghe County, and his official reputation seemed to be ordinary, and his official luck was not very good. It wasn't until the past two years that he suddenly became popular for some reason, and he was promoted to Jiangning's political envoy and signed as the governor. ”

"There's a reason for that, of course." Guan Zhuofan smiled and said, "Qi Weng, you just listen to it as an anecdote—"

It was when Wu Tang was the commander of Qinghe County, and one of his old friends, Hunan Taoist Liu Qiguang, passed away, and his eldest son returned to his hometown with a coffin. When the mourning boat arrived at the boundary of Qinghe County, it sent someone ashore to inform him. After Wu Tang received the letter, he immediately sent the chief to bring three hundred taels of silver as a gift to Liu Qiguang's son on the ship.

When he came to the wharf, he saw a mourning boat parked there, and when he came up to ask, if it was the spirit of a certain Taoist, he presented three hundred taels of silver as a sacrifice. However, it was the two sisters who received the money on the ship.

"That's not right," Yang Fang shook his head when he heard this, "How can the eldest son not come forward, but let his two younger sisters come forward?" It must have been sent by mistake. ”

"Sure enough, it was sent by mistake!" Guan Zhuofan said with a smile, "Wu Zhongxuan listened to Changsui's report, and also felt that something was wrong, so he sent someone to inquire again, it turned out that among the dozen or so boats on the dock, there were actually two mourning boats, no wonder Changsui was sent to the wrong place." ”

The corpse parked on this ship also happens to be a Taoist, but it is not Liu Qiguang of Lingpu Province in Hunan, but Huizheng of Anhui South Province in Anhui. His two daughters also returned to their hometown, and the boat stopped at the Qinghe wharf.

This made Wu Tang so angry that he fell to his feet, but the money has already been sent out, and it is a sacrifice again, how can he come back? First scolded the confused long-term follower, thought about it, and simply made a mistake, and sent a favor. So, the next day, he sealed another 300 taels of silver and personally sent it to Liu Qiguang's spirit boat, and then went to another funeral boat to worship Hui Zheng.

Hui Zheng's pair of daughters, supported by their mother, the boat went to Qinghe County, it was already entangled, and in the life of man and earth, there was really the despair of "calling the heavens and the earth, and the earth and the earth were not spiritual", and they were sitting opposite each other in the boat and crying for several days. Now this unknown Wu County Commander not only sent money, but also came to visit in person, and the righteousness reached such a point that the sisters were extremely grateful. The flag man has the tradition of the eldest daughter running the family, so as a sister, she treasured Wu Tang's name card in the makeup box, and said to her sister with tears: "You must remember this benefactor, if we can get rich in the future, we will definitely repay it!" ”

"What a story." Yang Fang sighed again and again when he heard it, "Wu Zhongxuan's move, although it is an unintentional beauty, but under the favor of God, there is such a blessing, no wonder the official luck is popular." ”

"The good fortune is not fake, but it is not the favor of God," Guan Zhuofan said with a smile, "I guess his famous card is still pressed in the Changchun Palace, under the makeup box of the Queen Mother." ”

Yang Fang was stunned at first, and then suddenly realized that the pair of sisters were the current Empress Dowager Cixi and King Fujin!

This time he was taken aback, and he didn't dare to speak, thinking that it was no wonder that Guan Zhuofan wanted to find Wu Tang to protect himself.

"Twenty thousand silver is not a decimal number," Guan Zhuofan knew that he understood, and said calmly, "But the words used to buy Wu Tang, I think it's worth it." ”

*(To be continued......)