Xiaodaohui abandoned Jiading County and entered Suzhou Prefecture, which frightened Sun Hongyan, the prefect of Suzhou, and he hurriedly mobilized soldiers and horses and regimental training from all over Suzhou Prefecture, totaling more than 20,000 people to defend Suzhou.

The Little Knife Society originally wanted to seize the Weiji Foundation of Suzhou, but Li Weiguo would not allow it, and the Li Jiajun followed into Suzhou, forcing the Little Knife Society to give up its plan to attack Suzhou and make a detour to Changzhou.

Under the pretext of chasing down the remnants of the Little Knife Society, Li Weiguo waved his army all the way into Suzhou Prefecture, and implemented wartime military control over the counties of Suzhou Prefecture in the name of Su Songtai's military guards, incorporated troops from all over the country, and incorporated the entire Su Songtai into his own territory.

In this regard, Sun Hongyan, the prefect of Suzhou, could not object, he knew that he could not block the Little Knife Club with his own strength, and if he lost the city, his career would be over, and his life might not be guaranteed, so Sun Hongyan finally chose to acquiesce to Li Weiguo's behavior.

After Li Jiajun occupied Suzhou Mansion, he stopped in Wu County, and said that he rested on the spot and waited for supplies, in fact, Li Weiguo didn't want to chase the knife and chase too hard, forcing the other party's dog to jump over the wall and cause unnecessary casualties to Li Jiajun, anyway, Su Song Taisan has been controlled by Li Weiguo, and it takes time to digest it in a short time, and it is counterproductive to stretch his hand too long, and the abnormal state capital is no longer under Li Weiguo's control, even if it is occupied by the Knife Society, it has nothing to do with Li Weiguo.

Liu Lichuan led the knife club all the way to escape, seeing that Li Weiguo's garrison in Wu County did not move, he also breathed a sigh of relief, and quickly sent troops to Yanghu County, Changzhou Prefecture, and also learned from the Taiping army to coerce refugees to strengthen its strength, because he was worried about the pursuit of Li Jiajun, so he only stayed for a few days and quickly evacuated, entered Zhenjiang Mansion, transferred to Jiangning Mansion, and prepared to join the Taiping army in Jinling.

Li Weiguo did not pursue and ordered Li Jiajun to rest and recuperate in Suzhou Prefecture, on the one hand, he did wait for the supply of arms and materials sent from Hong Kong, but on the other hand, Li Jiajun's recent expansion rate has been too fast, and the strength of the army has increased sharply from 14,000 to 30,000, and the lack of firearms and personnel training is insufficient, and it is not suitable for combat.

Therefore, Li Weiguo trained the army in Wu County, the seat of Suzhou Prefecture.

Fortunately, Suzhou Mansion was extremely prosperous and was a major tax payer of the Qing Dynasty, and as soon as Li Weiguo came, he immediately took control of the Suzhou Treasury and taxes, and a total of six million taels of silver stopped being handed over to the state treasury and embezzled it to Li Jiajun as military expenses for the Xiaodao Society and the Taiping Army.

This was the case not only in Suzhou Prefecture, but also in Songjiang Prefecture and Taicang Zhili Prefecture under Li Weiguo's rule, and even in Liangguang, Fujian and Zhejiang, and Jiangxi Province of Liangjiang, as long as the silver handed over to the state treasury from these places passed through the Susongtai area, Li Weiguo intercepted it halfway on the grounds that the military budget was insufficient and the roads were occupied by the chaotic party, and all of them were misappropriated to Li Jiajun as military expenses.

Such a bold and reckless behavior, in peacetime, Emperor Xianfeng will immediately jump up and send troops to suppress Li Weiguo as a thief, but now is a time of war, extraordinary period, Emperor Xianfeng, who is far away in Beijing, does not understand the situation in the south, giving Li Weiguo room to operate, and withholding taxes from the imperial court as military expenses is also normal in Xianfeng's view, anyway, as long as Li Weiguo has been winning the battle and not defeating the battle, as for the rest, Xianfeng will turn a blind eye.

In the past, Li Weiguo used almost all the money to buy arms out of his own pocket, but now he is using this treasury to fill the hole, that is, to use the silver of the imperial court to help Li Weiguo support the Li family's army, and Li Weiguo's own silver is used to invest, make money with money, and further expand his financial resources.

During this period, Li Weiguo also paid attention to the war in the direction of Jinling.

Originally, it took less than a month for the Taiping army to attack Jinling in history, but now it has changed, Jinling held on for a month and still did not fall, the reason is not that the Taiping army is weak, but because the Taiping army has become stronger with advanced Western firearms provided by Li Weiguo, and it is not like in history to give up these two cities after beating Jiujiang and Anqing to attack Jinling with all their might, but chose to divide the troops to guard Jiujiang and Anqing, and the remaining forces to attack Jinling.

In this way, the main force of the Taiping army was divided into three parts, and it was not like in history to concentrate a million troops to quickly capture Jinling.

Li Weiguo knows that although the general direction of the history he is familiar with has not changed much, the details are changing.

In early May, Xiang Rong and Qi Shan each led more than 100,000 Qing troops to attack Jiujiang and Anqing, because both of them were frightened by the Taiping army, and they were afraid that the army would be questioned by the imperial court if they failed, so neither of them dared to lightly carry out the main decisive battle with the Taiping army, and the siege of Jiujiang and Anqing was unhurried.

The Taiping army gradually figured out Xiang Rong and Qishan's intentions and intentions in using troops, so they planted battle flags as suspicious soldiers, and secretly mobilized 300,000 troops to concentrate their forces to attack Jinling.

Lu Jianying, the governor of Liangjiang, gathered more than 50,000 troops from Liangjiang and three provinces to fight fiercely with the Taiping army outside Tongling City, and fled back to Jinling in defeat, and the Taiping army captured Tongling, Wuhu, Hezhou and other places all the way, and the 300,000 army enveloped 250,000 people, known as a million army, advancing by land and water, and attacking Jinling together.

At this time, Liu Lichuan also got in touch with Hong Xiuquan, and Hong Xiuquan agreed that Liu Lichuan would cancel the Ming Kingdom and join the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the two sides became the division of Dashengguan in Jinling on May 19.

In Wu County, after Li Weiguo learned the news of Lu Jianying's defeat in Tongling, he knew that there was not much left in Lu Jianying's army, and there were only more than 10,000 soldiers and horses in Jinling City, which could not stop the onslaught of the Taiping army.

At this time, the arms purchased by Li Weiguo and the British Hong Kong military had been transported back to Wu County by water, and the Li Jiajun had obtained equipment and ammunition supplies, and the time had come for them to send troops to Jinling.

On 15 May, when Liu Lichuan led the main force to Dashengguan to join the Taiping army, Xiaodaohui left Yanghu and Jintan with the front foot, and the Li Jiajun carried out a cavalry raid on the back foot, attacked it by surprise, and took Yanghu and Jintan in one fell swoop, opening the passage to Jinling.

On 20 May, the day after the Taiping Army and the Xiaodao Society met at Dashengguan, the Li Jiajun quickly arrived outside Jinling City and set up camp at Xiaolingwei.

Such a rapid march speed really surprised the generals of the Taiping Army and the Little Knife Society, especially the generals of the Little Knife Society, including Liu Lichuan, everyone was scared into a cold sweat, and they realized that they had not chased the Li family army all the way, it was not that people couldn't catch up, but they were deliberately releasing water, otherwise if the Li family army had shown a strong ability to march quickly at the beginning, I am afraid that the Little Knife Society would have been surrounded somewhere and completely wiped out by the Li family army.

Although the core generals of the Taiping Army have not yet fought with Li Jiajun head-on, they know that Li Jiajun will rush to Jinling to "exchange hostages", so they are not worried, after all, they have already communicated with Li Weiguo in private, and the two sides will not fight to the death, but will cooperate with each other on a certain period of time, and each will take what he needs.

Xiaolingwei Li Jiajun camp, Lu Jianying, the governor of Liangjiang, and Wu Liang, the prefect of Jiangning, appeared tremblingly in Li Weiguo's Chinese army tent, accompanied by the guards of the city gates of Jinling.

Lu Jianying's face was dark, he was very happy when he learned that Li Weiguo led an army of 30,000 to arrive in Jinling, he knew the power of Li Weiguo's foreign guns and artillery, and thought that with the Li family's army, Jinling was worry-free.

However, Li Weiguo soon gave Lu Jianying a hateful and loud mouth, Lu Jianying held a military meeting and asked Li Weiguo to go to the Liangjiang Governor's Mansion in Jinling, but Li Weiguo did not dump him at all, but directly ordered the guards of Jinling to go to the Xiaoling Wei Li Jiajun camp to discuss countermeasures against the enemy.

Lu Jianying waited in the Liangjiang Governor's Mansion for a long time, but none of the guards came to the meeting, and later learned that they all went to the Li Jiajun camp outside the city.

Lu Jianying had no choice, seeing that Li Weiguo didn't give him face, he had to come to the Xiaoling Wei camp in person to attend the meeting, after all, Jinling City had to rely on Li Weiguo, if Jinling was lost, Lu Jianying would definitely be a big crime of killing his head, this is a lesson from the past, the governor of Huguang lost Wuchang's family and committed suicide, so Lu Jianying knew that Li Weiguo deliberately embarrassed him, but he could only endure it.

Seeing Lu Jianying deflated, Li Weiguo was happy in his heart.

Old immortal, you have today!

Wait for Lao Tzu and see how Lao Tzu slowly cleans you up!

Li Weiguo was thinking about how to kill Lu Jianying, but he couldn't go too far in front of other Jinling civil and military officials.

"Jinling City can hold on for a month without breaking, thanks to the good command of the generals, this official was ordered by the emperor to bring 30,000 troops to reinforcements, as a guest army, it is natural for the guest to follow the master, what is the best way for the generals to break the enemy, only to come, this official fully cooperates!"

This is a nice remark, and it gives these civil and military officials enough face.

These civil and military officials felt comfortable, but they didn't dare to express themselves, because Lu Jianying still had a black face, so they had to ask Li Weiguo to make an idea.

Li Weiguo nodded, now he is the uncle, everyone opposes anything, so he decided: "The rebels are not enough trouble, this official has given Hong Xiuquan a war letter, and asked him to fight a decisive battle at Dasheng Pass tomorrow, you just have to guard the city, and when our army defeats the rebels and pursues the victory, the generals can lead the army to follow up, and we will recover the lost territory all the way and completely exterminate the rebels." ”

Li Weiguo was purely commanding, Lu Jianying was a dignified governor of Liangjiang and a feudal official, and he didn't have a chance to speak if he wanted to, so he was crushed to death by a fourth-grade petty official, which was really wronged.

Lu Jianying regretted it in his heart at the moment, he originally wanted it to be easier to kill Li Weiguo in the officialdom, so he gave Li Weiguo a Chongming County order to sit, but he didn't expect that it had only been more than a year, Li Weiguo turned over, Lu Jianying regretted his original decision, and his intestines were blue.

After Li Weiguo gave the order, he let everyone go back to the city, and before leaving, he stopped Lu Jianying and said with a smile: "Lord Lu, I heard that the old guys will prepare a good coffin for themselves, I think you should be buried at such an old age, I'm afraid you can't find a good coffin, but the official has a friend who opens a coffin, so I might as well introduce it to you!" ”

"You-you-you-" When Lu Jianying heard this, he was suddenly angry, trembling all over, pointing at Li Weiguo trembling and wanting to speak, but he couldn't say anything.

"Poof!"

Lu Jianying spurted out a mouthful of old blood and immediately fainted.