"Don't kill me, please don't kill me!" A soldier of the Eight Banners of the Qing Army hid in a dark corner, trembling and begging for mercy.

It's just that his voice sounded so helpless and lonely, and with him was nothing but corpses all over the place, and the smell of blood everywhere in the air.

This Eight Banners soldier suddenly felt a urge to urinate in the middle of the night, and no one wanted to get up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet on this cold day, but he drank too much water at night.

What made him even more depressed was that there was originally a dung bucket in the barracks, but tonight for some reason, everyone seemed to have forgotten to put the dung bucket outside into the barracks.

So, the soldier could only run outside to go to the toilet with a curse.

As a result, when he came back, he was dumbfounded, and all the Eight Banners soldiers in the entire barracks were killed, while there were more than thirty murderers with daggers standing in the room.

In an instant, the Eight Banners soldier was frightened stupidly, and those murderers didn't seem to expect anyone to be outside.

But fortunately, the first to react were those murderers, who took the lead in controlling the Eight Banners.

And this Eight Banners soldier was indeed hiding in the corner, trembling all over, muttering words begging for mercy.

A soldier took two steps forward, intending to deal with the Eight Banners who had almost escaped, they had no more time to deal with these people, and now, they were in a race against time.

However, one of the people next to him suddenly reached out and grabbed the soldier.

His eyes looked at the Eight Banners soldier with a thick murderous aura, even in the dark night when he couldn't see his fingers, the Eight Banners soldier still felt the killing intent on the other party's body.

"It's okay to stay alive, but you have to at least come up with something that will keep you alive, right? Otherwise, why do you think we should let you go? ”

"I ...... I don't have any money......" The Eight Banners soldier subconsciously responded.

But soon, he shook his head violently, this is the palace, these people dare to sneak into the palace in the middle of the night to kill the guards, for absolutely not money.

But this Eight Banners soldier couldn't think of what their purpose was for a while? But there is one thing that does not need to be thought about, no matter what the purpose of these people is, they will definitely be surrounded and suppressed by the other guards in the palace in the end, this is the palace, surrounded by several high walls, they can't escape.

Perhaps, this is the foundation of saving your life.

"I know that there is a secret passage to leave the palace, and I will use this secret passage in exchange for my life." The Eight Banners said their quid pro quo.

The words of the Eight Banners made the soldiers stunned suddenly, and said secretly?

In fact, they didn't think that there would be a secret passage in the palace, after all, this is the palace, and the emperor can't seal all the retreats for his own safety, and according to the experience of the past dynasties, where the palace is located, there must be one, or several secret passages leading to the outside of the city.

Didn't Emperor Jianwen Zhu Yunwen disappear here through a secret channel?

Therefore, since the occupation of the capital, Wang Sirui secretly ordered the troops to enter the palace to find the secret passage in the palace.

It's a pity that they searched secretly for two months, but in the end they still couldn't find the entrance to this secret passage, which makes it even more impossible to find the exit of the secret passage.

It is precisely for this reason that this plan of action will be named 'Operation Lightning', which is to quickly control the capital and the palace, so that Cixi and others will not have time to escape.

Because once Cixi and Guangxu escape from the palace, then Wang Sirui's plan will fail, which is not a consequence that Wang Sirui can bear, let alone the result he is willing to see.

"The secret passages in the palace don't even know about ordinary princes, how do you know?"

"Actually, not only the princes don't know, but even the emperor and the queen mother don't know, otherwise, why didn't they leave through the secret passage a few months ago?" The Eight Banners soldier said a little depressed.

Whatever, as long as he can live, what can he do if he tells this secret?

As for the secret passage, he didn't dare to enter it anyway, because there were very few people who knew this secret, and even fewer people who were qualified to enter.

After hundreds of years, it is not certain what this secret passage has become, and it is not certain that it has already collapsed, or that it has long been home to those wild animals.

As long as you can survive, you can trick these masters into the secret tunnel.

"This secret passage has existed for a long time, it was secretly built when the previous dynasty built the palace, and at that time my ancestor was one of the craftsmen who participated in the construction of this secret passage, and later the ancestor kept this secret, but it didn't take long for the ancestor and other craftsmen involved in the construction of the secret passage to be killed by those people. The entrance to this secret passage is very hidden, and it seems that only Emperor Jianwen walked through this secret passage alone, and even the later Emperor Yongle was also looking for this secret passage. The Eight Banners told their ancestors.

In fact, in order to keep it secret and deal with it later, most of the construction of the secret passages of the palace was handed over to those foreign craftsmen, and then the royal family sent people to supervise it.

Mainly because there is no difficulty in killing these foreigners, and their families do not dare to resist, and the early establishment of the Ming Dynasty is when the military is strong, as long as it does not arouse the anger of the Han people, what can you do if you kill a few foreigners?

"Say the entrance to the secret passage, spare you from death!"

"The entrance to the secret passage is in the ......," the Eight Banners soldier said where the entrance to the secret passage was located.

But after so many years, there have been countless expansions and constructions, and it is difficult to say whether the entrance to the secret passage is still there.

Moreover, this is only the information left by his ancestors, as for the specific location of the entrance to the secret passage, he is not clear, after all, this is the palace, a place where people are staring at even a word, he does not dare to look for the entrance of the secret passage.

"Do you know what your biggest mistake was?"

In the face of the other party's inquiry, the Eight Banners shook his head and recalled his previous words, as if there was no mistake.

"Then let you be a ghost, your biggest mistake is that you shouldn't tell that secret so easily, now, you have no value in existence." After the other party finished speaking, before the Eight Banners could react, a dagger slashed his throat.

Blood spurted out several meters away in an instant, staining the person standing in front of him with his blood.

At this moment, he seemed to suddenly understand that these people didn't care about the entrance of those secret passages at all, at this moment, he saw the other party's dress clearly, there was no braid, wasn't this exactly Wang Sirui's subordinates?

What will they do when they enter the palace? I'm afraid there's only one thing, right?

Life did not give the Eight Banners soldier much time to think about more problems, as the artery was cut, the life of the Eight Banners soon came to an end, his eyes were full of unwillingness, staring at the soldier who cut his throat.

"Tell the head about the secret passage, and we'll continue!" The leader gave an order to the soldiers beside him, and then one of them quickly left the group and went to inform the regimental commander, while the others gathered in the courtyard and rushed to the next target point together.

Anyway, they are also people who have been in the capital for a few months, and they are even more familiar with the layout of the palace, and they already know everything about where to garrison troops.

And those troops who were responsible for cleaning up the barracks did not waste the slightest time, and went straight to the barracks to take away the Qing troops who were still asleep.

'Smack......'

Despite the extra care, the gunfire in the palace eventually rang out.

The soldiers of the 6th Regiment were cleaning the eastern part of the palace when they happened to be bumped into by a patrolling palace guard.

Originally, the soldiers of the Sixth Regiment had already hidden, planning to wait for this patrol to pass before continuing the mission. But one of the soldiers in this escort suddenly felt a little urine, looked left and right to see that there was no one, and planned to run to the side to solve it.

After all, people have three urgency, as long as they don't go too far, and solve them with some flowers and plants, at night, the officer who leads the team will not say anything.

That is, the soldier found the soldiers of the sixth regiment hiding in the shadows, and with a loud roar, the soldiers of the sixth regiment leaked out.

At this point, an exchange of fire began between the two sides.

However, soon, this patrol of palace guards was annihilated by the soldiers of the six regiments in the shadows, but even if they were annihilated, it would not help, they had already leaked.

At this time, they had only just cleared about a third of the area, and there were many more areas that had not yet had time to be cleaned up.

Now that the sneak attack failed, they could only switch to the second plan, from sneak attack to strong attack.

The failure of the sneak attack seemed to have been expected, and the gunfire in the palace only made the soldiers of the fifth and sixth regiments a little annoyed, but they quickly reacted, they put down the dagger in their hands and held the steel gun behind them in their hands.

According to the tactics they had previously rehearsed, they each ran towards their respective goals, and this time, they did not choose to use daggers to solve the battle.

As long as the shadow of the enemy is seen in the line of sight, it will shoot directly with the gun.

The heavy machine guns were arranged in various traffic arteries, and for a time, the whole palace burst into gunfire.

Cixi, who was sleeping, was also awakened by the sudden gunshot, not only Cixi, but also the gunshots in the palace attracted the attention of the outside of the palace, but there was almost no reaction from outside the palace.

Because the entire capital, and the imperial palace, have the largest number of troops, the rest of the places have already settled the battle. And the mansions of those princes could not stop them, because they only had a small number of troops there.

"What's going on?" After hearing the gunshot, Cixi instantly sat up from the bed and asked loudly outside.

"Queen Mother, the slave doesn't know what's going on outside, but since there are gunshots, I'm afraid it won't be a trivial matter, and the slave begs the Queen Mother to move." Li Lianying stood aside in disheveled clothes and said.

Li Lianying, as a eunuch and a confidant of Cixi, so he lives with Cixi on weekdays, but it is just the next room, and when she heard the gunshots, Li Lianying didn't even have time to put on her clothes, so she quickly ran to Cixi's house to persuade Cixi to leave as soon as possible. (To be continued.) )