Being in Shanghai, Wu Chaoyue, of course, did not know about the ridiculous and pathetic things that were happening in the capital, and he had never worried that he would be treated unfairly-not to mention that if Cixi was blowing the wind on his pillow, the foreigners would never agree to it--the Taiping army took Nanjing, and the economic and trade interests of European and American countries in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River were also threatened.

What worries Wu Chaoyue is the retaliation from the Taiping army, in the case of Wei Changhui's early death, no one dares to guarantee that the historical process will undergo major changes, the Taiping army did not immediately launch the Northern Expedition as in history, but chose to come in with heavy troops to find Wu Chaoyue desperately. However, it is not bad, the throat of Zhenjiang is still in the hands of the Qing army, and if the Taiping army wants to fight Shanghai, it must first take Zhenjiang, so that Wu Chaoyue will have a buffer -- but how much time this buffer can buy for Wu Chaoyue is a question that no one knows.

At the same time, when he returned to Shanghai, Wu Chaoyue learned that his comprador grandfather Wu Jianzhang had been planning one thing - borrowing troops from foreigners to pacify the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and had already started substantive negotiations with the British and French consuls on this matter. However, it was a pity for Wu Jianzhang that the British and French consuls did not dare to make their own decisions on such a big matter, and only agreed to convey Wu Jianzhang's request to China and wait for a reply from China. And although Wu Chaoyue was very disgusted with the comprador grandfather doing this, because of the money and food problem of the expansion of the regiment training, the comprador grandfather needed his full help, so Wu Chaoyue also wisely closed his mouth, did not object, did not support or mix, and let the comprador grandfather toss blindly.

After only one day of rest after returning to Shanghai, Wu Chaoyue immediately began to recruit and expand the army, but the population base increased sharply due to the large influx of refugees from the upper reaches of the war into Shanghai. Therefore, although Wu Chaoyue's recruitment conditions were as harsh as before, he still quickly recruited three thousand. Then, because he brought back 218 veterans, Wu Chaoyue saved a lot of effort in training, and he could rest assured and boldly leave the training to Huang Dasha, Deng Siyuan and others to take charge of, and free up his hands to purchase weapons and equipment and develop new weapons.

In fact, there is no need for Wu Chaoyue to worry about buying weapons and equipment, and the Western countries that see the money are afraid that Wu Chaoyue will not buy it. As soon as he heard that Wu Chaoyue was expanding his army, he rushed to send the list of weapons to Wu Chaoyue, but Wu Chaoyue was still very stubborn and chose to load the pin gun as the main rifle in the future. In addition to immediately selling Wu more than 1,600 firing pin guns, he also promised to make up the remaining part as soon as possible, and Ah Huawei also mysteriously gave Wu Chaoyue 500 rubber seals for free to help Wu Jun Lian Yong solve the headache of fire leakage in the breech of the firing pin gun. Wu Chaoyue was overjoyed when he saw it and asked, "The sealing ring was developed so quickly?" How about it, did your Prussian army do shooting tests? How well does the seal work? ”

"Wu, my good friend. I won't hide it from you. Ah Huawei said frankly: "When this rubber sealing ring was first used, the sealing effect was indeed very good, but the more shots, the worse the effect, and the average of every 26 shots was basically scrapped." So you must make your soldiers pay attention to the replacement, and you must also be mentally prepared to purchase in large quantities. ”

"Normal. Of course, it will not be very durable. ”

Wu Chaoyue didn't even blink an eyelid, and immediately decided to purchase 30,000 such rubber rings from Ah Huawei. Ah Huawei was even more overjoyed, patting his chest and promising to give Wu Chaoyue the best price. On the other hand, he took out another letter and handed it to Wu Chaoyue, and said: "Wu, this is a handwritten letter written to you by Dreiser, the inventor of our Prussian firing pin gun, and I must hand it over to you personally, please accept it." ”

"Mr. Dreiser's handwritten letter to me?" Wu Chaoyue was overjoyed at first, but after taking the letter and reading it carefully. Wu Chaoyue quickly smiled bitterly, handed the letter back to Ah Huawei, and said, "Dear Mr. Ah Huawei, I can barely deal with English, and I can't do anything when I encounter Prussian." Do me a favor and translate. ”

Ah Huawei was very happy to help translate, and Wu Chaoyue also realized that the purpose of Dreiser's letter to himself was mainly to thank him, thank him for helping him solve the problem of missing fire in the breech of the pin gun, which was also a headache for the Prussian army, and indirectly helped him win more orders for pin guns from the Prussian government. In addition, Dreiser also begged Wu Chaoyue to give him more similar advice to help him further improve the firing pin gun, and promised to repay Wu Chaoyue's help.

After listening to Ah Huawei's translation, Wu Chaoyue, who had long wanted to develop metal shell bullets, was a little hesitant, but considering that China's current degree of industrialization is too low, even if he made a copper-shell bullet, there would definitely be no way to produce it on a large scale; It was also considered that after helping Germany become strong quickly, it could further contain the old robbers such as John Bull, Gallic Chicken, and Russian Maozi. Wu Chaoyue gritted his teeth and made up his mind, picked up the pen and wrote a reply letter to Dreiser in English, suggesting that Dreiser develop metal bullets, and also drew a sketch of modern metal bullets, and handed it to Ah Huawei together with the letter, and commissioned to bring it back to China and hand it over to Dreiser.

In addition to the firing pin gun, Wu Chaoyue purchased a large number of revolvers and Mini guns from the Americans, and at the same time, in order to appease the British cattle, the world's largest robbers, Wu Chaoyue handed over orders such as metal forging presses and **** and picric acid to the British, whose prices were not the lowest, with tears in his eyes - now Wu Chaoyue really did not dare to offend the British. But Aliguo, who took advantage of it, still refused to be satisfied, and still forced Wu Chaoyue to order breech cannons and mortars from him, and Wu Chaoyue, whose army was still not large, really couldn't equip so many cannons, so he could only say truthfully to Aliguo: "Dear Mr. Aliguo, it's not that I don't like British weapons, it's that my current army size is limited, and I really don't need so many heavy artillery." And I don't think that your artillery has a significant advantage in technology, and the price is higher than that of other countries, which I really can't afford. ”

Ali Guo refused to give up, and said: "Wu, then I will make a concession, I have found a production factory for you in China for the grenades you told me last time, and I have also brought you five hundred samples, you must purchase at least five thousand from me!" ”

After that, Ali Guo also took out a few samples of grenades and handed them to Wu Chaoyue, but Wu Chaoyue was immediately overjoyed this time -- Ah Li Guo took out a sample of the grenade, which turned out to be a ring-type grenade that was fired by rubbing the glass sand with curly copper wire, and as long as the black powder contained in it was replaced with picric acid, it could be transformed into a powerful modern grenade. So Wu Chaoyue didn't hesitate. Immediately, he said, "I'll buy 50,000 pieces!" But you have to give me a seven-percent discount on the price! ”

"Wu, you are indeed our British's best Chinese friend!"

Seeing that the money was open, Ali Guo immediately changed his kind and smiling face, and hugged Wu Chaoyue with open arms, when Wu Chaoyue secretly scolded this snob, he suddenly remembered a big thing, and asked again: "Dear Mr. Ali Guo." I almost forgot something, I heard that you in the West have developed a touch shell fuse, can you buy some of this fuse for me? ”

"Touch-type shell fuses? What's that? How come I've never heard of it? ”

Wu Chaoyue didn't know whether this kind of fuze was invented in Europe in this era, so he roughly explained the function and principle of the touch fuse to Aliguo, and Ali Guo shook his head and said that he had never seen and never heard of it, but he still promised to help Wu Chaoyue find and order this kind of fuze. Wu Chaoyue thanked him, and by the way, he ordered a batch of timed fuses for flowering shells from Ali Guo just in case.

By the way. Because of this touch fuse, Ali Guo later made a special trouble with Wu Chaoyue - he grabbed Wu Chaoyue and asked where he had heard of this kind of fuze? When Wu Chaoyue was puzzled and asked the reason, Ali Guo gritted his teeth and told Wu Chaoyue that this kind of fuse was secretly studied by the British in the second half of last year, and it had just begun to equip the British army, so after Ali Guo sent people back to Britain to find this kind of fuse, it was immediately investigated by the British intelligence department. Wu Chaoyue smiled bitterly when he heard it, and he had no choice but to make a-stirring stick. Conveniently buckled the basin on the heads of the French, so that the British cow and the French chicken further deepened the existing contradictions.

Straight to the point. Although the expansion of armaments and the procurement of weapons were carried out smoothly, and the secret experiment of detonating picric acid with **** was also successful, during this period, the huge threat of the Taiping Army was still like a dark cloud, always hanging over the heads of Shanghai and Wu Chaoyue, so Wu Chaoyue was concerned about the situation in Jiangning and Zhenjiang all the time. What I am afraid of is that Yang Wending, who is not much smarter than Lu Jianying, will lose Zhenjiang, so that he will not even have time to train and prepare for war, so he must rush into battle.

After all, the sky has eyes, and soon, bad news will fly like snowflakes, first of all, the first one is that Yang Wending, a fool, once again proved that he is stupider than a pig. Put the strong city and do not defend it, in order to escape conveniently, under the pretext of blocking the Taiping army's eastward road, led the only 1,500 troops in Zhenjiang City to move to Shanzuitou, Caoyun Governor Yang Dianbang urged him to garrison Guazhou, but Yang Wending categorically refused, Zhenjiang City, which could have been defended, was empty, like a **** who had stripped off his clothes, waiting to be taken on by the Taiping Army at any time. And Yang Dianbang is not a good thing, he asked Yang Wending to guard Guazhou, but he himself did not dare to set foot in Guazhou, and at the same time, he did not even dare to defend Yangzhou, and ran to Huaiyin in northern Jiangsu for refuge early.

Fortunately, in order to escape back to Shanghai to seek protection if necessary, Yang Wending finally learned a little smarter this time, and did not force Wu Chaoyue to lead the army to reinforce Zhenjiang, and it was rare to stay on the front line.

The second bad news came from Xiang Rong and Qi Shan, the Taiping army had already captured Nanjing, and Xiang Rong, who was pursuing in the back, was still hiding in Anqing City, which was voluntarily abandoned by the Taiping army, and did not even play a role in the least restraint of the Taiping army. However, compared to Qi Shan, Xiang Rong is still powerful - Qi Shan's reinforcements are still in Hubei!

The third bad news made Wu Chaoyue the most worried, the Taiping army took the whole city of Jiangning on February 12, and on February 19, it divided more than 10,000 troops, led by the famous general Qin Rigang, took the Yangtze River waterway to the east to attack Zhenjiang, and the Yizheng in the upper reaches of Zhenjiang was taken by the Taiping army the next day, and the county abandoned the city and fled. Then it took only two days for the Taiping army to take Jinshan and Guazhou, the Jinshan garrison Mintai and the Guazhou garrison Fang Gang both fled without a fight, and Yang Wending slipped to Jiaoshan in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River in advance before he saw the shadow of the Taiping army.

On February 23, more than 200 pioneers of the Taiping army arrived at the foot of Zhenjiang City, and the defenders in the city opened four gates to flee for their lives, and the Taiping army commander drove into the city, and Zhenjiang fell.

When Wu Chaoyue received the news of the fall of Zhenjiang, it was already the morning of February 24, and when he heard the news, Wu Chaoyue, who was still counting the newly purchased weapons, also sat on the ammunition box, his face was gloomy and he didn't say a word for a long time, and all he was thinking about in his heart was how to gain time to train and prepare for war, and finally Wu Jianzhang sent someone to ask Wu Chaoyue to go to the city to meet. Wu Chaoyue stood up with a sad face, and went to discuss countermeasures with the comprador grandfather with a sad face.

As expected, Wu Jianzhang really consulted with Wu Chaoyue about the fall of Zhenjiang, and as soon as they met, he asked Wu Chaoyue: "Have you received the news, Changmao has taken Zhenjiang?" Long Mao hates you so much, will he come directly to Shanghai along the Yangtze River? ”

"I don't know." Wu Chaoyue replied truthfully: "But once the long hair side receives the news that I am expanding the armament war. It is likely that it will go all out to the east and not give me a chance to breathe. ”

Wu Jianzhang slammed his fist on the table, his old face was extremely gloomy, and it was rare for him to scold a foul word, "Pig! Yang Wending's old stupid pig! Why don't you think about whether you should stick to Zhenjiang and wait for reinforcements? Look at it, if Longhair continues to move eastward, this old immortal will definitely continue to run down, and maybe go directly to Shanghai. Let's protect him! ”

"Grandpa, how is the situation in Jiangyin?" Wu Chaoyue asked without much hope: "Zhenjiang was taken by Changmao, and the only hope of stopping Changmao is Jiangyin, what is the situation there?" How many troops are there? ”

"Jiangyin?" Wu Jianzhang, who had worked in the military preparation road, smiled bitterly and said: "A battalion of green battalions has an establishment of five hundred, and in fact, there can be three hundred soldiers and old men to Amitabha Buddha to garrison Li Tianchao." A well-known smoker, the opium from Shanghai passes through Jiangyin. You don't have to pay money, you just pay opium. ”

originally didn't hold out any hope, after listening to the comprador grandfather's answer, Wu Chaoyue was of course not disappointed, and what he was thinking about in his heart was whether he could think of any way to hold Jiangyin. Give yourself a little more time to prepare - Jiangyin is the narrowest military point on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and as long as there is a slightly reliable army to hold it, it will be difficult for the Taiping army to directly threaten Shanghai.

"Why didn't I train more soldiers and leave a reserve team behind?"

When Wu Chaoyue began to take regret medicine in his heart, someone suddenly came to report it outside the door. said that it was Liu Lichuan, the old lackey of the old Wu family, who asked to see him, Wu Jianzhang, who was annoyed in his heart, nodded casually, and then soon, Liu Lichuan strode in, and couldn't wait to shout from afar: "Uncle Shuang, good news, news sent by Wang Guochu, his people found Zhou Lichun's whereabouts in Qingpu, the **** hid in Dianshan Lake, and asked Chaoyue to give me an official document, and I will take someone to ......." ”

Speaking of which, Liu Lichuan finally saw that Wu Chaoyue was also in the room, and immediately rushed over and grabbed Wu Chaoyue's sleeve, and said: "Chaoyue, just right, quickly give me an official document, let me go to Dianshan Lake to clean up Zhou Lichun, Uncle Yuan will take care of that Luge for you this time, let you clean it up casually!" Grab his girl for you too, and let you whatever you want! ”

"What kind of official document do you have?" Wu Chaoyue didn't react for a while, and asked with some confusion: "If you want to fight in a group, can you just go by yourself?" What other official documents do you want from me? ”

"Transcendence, I found that you don't have me as Uncle Yuan in your eyes." Liu Lichuan was not happy to hear it, and reminded: "You forgot? Before, you gave me an official document and asked me to handle a group training of 200 people, and now I am your subordinate, and I send troops to cross the border to suppress thieves, don't you want you to give me an official document? ”

Without Liu Lichuan's reminder, Wu Chaoyue really forgot about it, but when Wu Chaoyue regretted it, Liu Lichuan couldn't wait to say: "Chaoyue, give Uncle Yuan this opportunity, don't just care about your own meritorious service, I also want to make some merit and get an official position." Don't worry, I'm sure, my Lian Yong is the same as your Lian Yong, they are all taught by foreigners, and my weapons and equipment are the same as your Lian Yong, they are all foreign guns, and I am absolutely sure of Zhou Lichun! ”

"Your training is the same as my training equipment?" Wu Chaoyue was taken aback.

"It's the same." Wu Jianzhang next to him interjected and said, "I bought it for your Uncle Yuan, or the arms dealer you introduced, have you forgotten these?" ”

Wu Chaoyue opened his mouth wide, then slapped his thigh hard, and cheered: "God, how did I forget all these things? I still have a reserve, I still have a reserve? ”

Cheering, Wu Chaoyue patted Liu Lichuan and said quickly: "Uncle Yuan, you don't need to go to Dianshan Lake, if you want to be rewarded for meritorious service, I will give you a better opportunity to make your Lian Yong ready to fight!" Also, tell your Lian Yong, I will first give you a military salary of 5,000 taels of silver, you were injured and died, and the pension is exactly the same as my Lian Yong! ”

When Liu Lichuan, who had been completely forgotten by Wu Chaoyue, was overjoyed and thanked him, Wu Chaoyue turned to Wu Jianzhang again and said: "Grandpa, ask the master to write a letter to Yang Wending immediately, suggesting that he move to Jiangyin, saying that we will immediately send him an elite Shanghai Lian Yong to help him resist the attack of Changmao, and hold Jiangyin with all his might, waiting for reinforcements!" If he is not willing to retreat to Jiangyin, he can do it, as long as he agrees with us to send troops to reinforce Jiangyin! ”

Wu Jianzhang's eyes rolled, and then he didn't even blink his eyelids, and immediately called his master to come in and write a letter. And Liu Lichuan next to him heard that something was wrong, and hurriedly asked in fear: "Transcendence, you said that you sent reinforcements to Jiangyin to help that Yang Wending resist Long Hair, wouldn't it mean that I practiced bravery?" ”

Wu Chaoyue smiled, smiled softly and kindly, took Liu Lichuan's hand and said with a smile: "Uncle Yuan, in fact, long hair is not difficult to fight at all, it is easier to beat them than you pick up a knife on the dock to cut people, I took more than 400 practice bravery, didn't I still kill hundreds of thousands of long hairs around?" (To be continued.) )