The dense gunfire finally stopped, the county seat of Lechang was already empty and everywhere, inside and outside the four city gates and on the streets, the corpses of dark blue homespun uniforms could be seen everywhere, and the blood was still flowing under the corpses, and a group of officers and soldiers in gray military uniforms began to walk down the city wall, and in a Sichuan voice command, they were divided into more than a dozen squads, and began to collect abandoned weapons on the ground, and removed a corpse with blurred flesh and blood.

Outside the city, northeast of the city, there are still gunshots and explosions.

Two battalions of the Guard Brigade Recruit Regiment that drove from Sichuan to Lechang and successfully defeated the Guizhou Army, under the leadership of the acting regiment commander Wang Shirong, chased for ten miles, caught up with the remnants of Huang Fusheng of the Guizhou Army Protector Army who escaped from Lechang at Dashengang, forced Huang Fusheng, who fled in a hurry, to have a strong man with a broken arm, and threw a company to block it, and most of the rest of the horses continued to flee to Rucheng, the headquarters of the Guizhou Army Protector Army.

A company of the Guizhou army that remained to resist suddenly showed amazing combat effectiveness, taking advantage of the favorable terrain at the foot of the mountain to launch a fearless resistance to the pursuing opponent.

Wang Shirong, who came on horseback, saw the charging brothers fall one by one, and hurriedly ordered the reconnaissance platoon to pick up two captured Makqin water-cooled heavy machine guns, quickly rushed to the commanding heights on the side of the road, and suppressed the stubborn enemy without automatic weapons with dense crossfire, and then personally led his brothers to launch a fierce attack, and in only ten minutes, he broke the will of the remnants of the enemy and completely eliminated more than 100 stubborn enemies, but at this time, Huang Fusheng, the commander of the Guizhou Army, and more than 1,800 Guizhou troops had fled without a trace. If he wanted to pursue again, he was already powerless, so he had to order his brothers to clean up the battlefield, search and rescue the dead and wounded brothers, and finally throw down more than 100 corpses of the Qianjun army and return to Lechang County.

Halfway through, the acting head of the regiment, Wang Shirong, had already calmed down, rode on his horse and glanced at a circle of high-spirited officers and soldiers, and broke out in a cold sweat for no reason.

By this time, Wang Shirong still couldn't figure out how the fight started at that time.

Think about it carefully, no matter how the military discipline of the Guizhou army stationed in Lechang for a long time is corrupt, how it bullies men and women and sells opium, how it arrogantly refuses to allow the headquarters to enter the city to rest, and whether it is whether the Guizhou army first provokes and beats the brothers in the headquarters and finally triggers a group fight between the two sides, and finally forms a life-and-death battle, but the Guizhou army is a revolutionary team after all, I heard that the commander of the Guizhou army, Huang Fusheng, is still a general that Generalissimo Sun Yat-sen admires very much, although the new regiment of the guard brigade belonging to the revolutionary camp won this battle, and won the beautiful scenery, But what next?

Thinking of this, Wang Shirong on horseback shuddered, a deep breath was not finished, more than ten war horses in front of him had galloped over, Wang Shirong hurriedly ordered to stop advancing, guard in place, and when he raised his head again, he immediately found that the person on the black war horse in front of him was actually Liu Bingxian, the minister of the headquarters whom he respected the most, and personally arranged himself and forty-nine brothers into the Sichuan Army Military Academy.

Almost at the same time, a fierce battle was also taking place in Dengjialing, east of Qianjiang City, Hubei, thousands of miles away, except that the scale of the battle was far greater than the conflict in Lechang, and it was Wang Zhanyuan's Wuhan Garrison Brigade of the Hubei Army and nearly 20,000 officers and soldiers of the 12th Brigade of the Fourth Division of the Sichuan Army who entered the battle.

The Fourth Division of the Sichuan Army, which announced that it was going to evacuate Qianjiang and head for Yichang, did not leave at all, or did not completely withdraw to the west as Xiao Yimin announced, in fact, the two brigades of Wang Jian's Fourth Division had captured Qianjiang City with an unstoppable momentum as early as 18 hours earlier.

By the time Xiao Yimin, commander-in-chief of the Sichuan Army, telegraphed to withdraw his troops, the two brigades of the Fourth Division had already completed all their combat tasks, and had packed up all the weapons and ammunition, military supplies, and looted wealth.

After 12 hours of rapid marching, Shi Xingchuan led his troops to Qianjiang to take over the defense, and Bao Jiqing, chief of the general staff of the Sichuan army, rushed to Qianjiang with him, and then summoned the generals of the Fourth Division.

At this moment, the squad of the 4th Division went out 30 kilometers east to reconnoitre, and sent fast horses to rush back to the urgent report:

Two regiments of the Hubei army plus a cavalry battalion came from the east, and from the equipment and attire, it is speculated that this unit is the first mixed brigade of the Hubei army under the direct jurisdiction of Wang Zhanyuan, the overseer of Hubei.

Bao Jiqing suddenly had a headache, without thinking too much, he knew that this was the troops sent by Wang Zhanyuan to reinforce Qianjiang, due to communication reasons and the successful blockade of the Fourth Division, the Hubei Army and the Beiyang Army in the direction of Wuhan and Xiaogan had no idea that Qianjiang, which had a brigade garrison and a local garrison, would fall so quickly.

For a while, old Jiang Shi Xingchuan couldn't advance or retreat.

You must know that the news that Shi Xingchuan gave up resistance and handed over Shashi and Jingmen to the Sichuan army has come out early, and Wang Zhanyuan, the Hubei overseer who has never been waiting to see Shi Xingchuan, will definitely not stop there, if the fourth division of the Sichuan army leaves it and evacuates Qianjiang, Shi Xingchuan and his five regimental subordinates who remain in Qianjiang will become victims of this conflict.

Faced with the bitter gourd face of his old friend Shi Xingchuan, Bao Jiqing quickly called Yichang and attached his own thoughts, Xiao Yimin received an urgent call from Bao Jiqing, weighed it with Wang Lingji and others, and immediately agreed to Bao Jiqing's battle plan that "based on the request of the allies and the current situation in Hubei, we should make persistent efforts to take the initiative to meet the enemy, and then achieve the ultimate goal of weakening the Hubei army".

It is precisely because of the rapid changes in the situation that Wang Jian, "the culprit who led his troops to capture Qianjiang without authorization", temporarily escaped, and under the order of Bao Jiqing, Wang Jian led his 11th Brigade of the Fourth Division to evacuate Qianjiang and return to the public security to recuperate; He Qiwu, chief of staff of the Fourth Division, led the 12th Brigade to set off overnight and rushed to the Dengjialing line at 9.5 kilometers east of the city to set up an ambush.

And so a great war began, without any plan or warning.

At 9 o'clock in the morning of the next day, the cavalry battalion of the 1st Mixed Brigade of the Hubei Army took the lead in discovering the blocking position located two kilometers west of Dengjialing, and because the Shixingchuan Division, which had been waiting for work at ease, did not put up any flag, the cavalry battalion, which was the vanguard, did not dare to rashly launch a charge, so it could only send a company to closely monitor the range of the machine guns of the blocking side, and sent a herald to report the main force that was coming later, and the rest of the troops dismounted in the town of Dengjialing to rest and wait for orders.

Wang Maoxian, the commander of the 1st Mixed Brigade of the Hubei Army, who led the infantry on a rapid march, received an urgent report, and after a brief analysis, he ordered the whole army to rush to Dengjialing Town and then stop the advance.

Wang Maosheng very arbitrarily believed that the troops blocking the front were the Qianjiang local garrison regiment, the purpose was to prevent the possible attack of the Sichuan army, as long as he gave an order, the garrison regiment would obediently give way, and under his command they would drive to Qianjiang together, even if the Sichuan army had withdrawn, he could still enjoy the battle of "recovering Qianjiang", and took a step back and said, rushing to more than 100 miles to rush here, and he couldn't withdraw without any benefit.

Wang Maoxian, a veteran who graduated from the Tianjin Martial Arts Academy, was an old-style soldier who couldn't keep up with the times, and soon paid the price of blood.

At 10:40 a.m., 5,000 officers and men of Wang Maoxian's 1st Mixed Brigade entered Dengjialing Town, which was the pre-battle assembly site he had planned.

The exhausted 5,000-Hubei officers and soldiers stayed in the small town to catch their breath, looting money and food, and driving the villagers to make fires and cook for the army.

Without waiting for Wang Maosheng to send a small group of cavalry to return, nearly 100 mortar shells flew out after Shi Xingchuan blocked a few dirt mountain packs behind the blocking position.

The whistling cannonballs covered Wang Maosheng and the three hundred cavalry gathered around him in a blink of an eye, and the violent explosions rang out violently, continuously, and in the smoke of gunpowder, the stumps and broken arms and broken weapons and harnesses flew everywhere, and the neighing war horses were blown up into the sky before they could speed up and escape.

The 120 mortar shells fired thousands of shells in three minutes wiped out more than 10 generals including Wang Maosheng and 300 cavalrymen in an instant.

The infantry in the town had not yet reacted, and the three regiments of the 12th Brigade of the Sichuan Army, which were ambushed two kilometers away from the north and south, had already approached rapidly in a zigzag shape, and the 12th Brigade had already blocked the retreat of the Hubei army.

The 5,000 Hubei troops, who were leaderless, were suddenly in chaos, the sound of gunfire and shouts resounded throughout the town, the frightened Hubei army units were completely out of control, countless officers and men fled in all directions like headless flies, and the officers received the news that the brigade commander and a cadre colonel had been blown up, and all of them were completely dispossessed, and the officers with the strong surname shouted that their subordinates would quickly break through the siege, and the weak-willed officers had already made up their minds to give up resistance in order to save their lives.

When the three regiments of the Shixing Chuan Division, which were unscathed, jumped into the trench and approached the explosion site, they were all shocked by the heavy artillery fire and merciless blows of the Sichuan army.

Walking through the dense craters, looking at the patches of incomplete charred black**, vomiting and exclamations rang out one after another, and the gunshots and explosions from the direction of the town were not as frightening as the hellish situation in front of them.

By the time the three regiments of Shixingchuan were pressed head-on, the battle in Dengjialing Town was nearing its end, and the roar of "surrender the gun and not kill" sounded, and the cavalry squads of the Sichuan army were still chasing and killing the desperately fleeing enemy, and the officers and soldiers of the First Mixed Brigade of the Hubei Army who had given up resistance and knelt down and raised their hands to surrender were everywhere inside and outside the town, and the eight artillery pieces that had worked hard for more than 100 miles had no chance to shoot a single shell, and they had already fallen into the hands of the Sichuan army, and even the 20,000 oceans that the quartermaster had buried in the chaos were ordered to be cut out by the fierce and vicious Sichuan army soldiers.

When the news reached the Yazhongtang of Qianjiang City County, Shi Xingchuan, who was playing Go with Bao Jiqing, knocked over the chess jar with his wrong hand, and stared at Bao Jiqing in disbelief with his bloodshot eyes.

Bao Jiqing raised his wrist and looked at his watch, and pointed to the chessboard as if he didn't care: "Go on!" ”

Shi Xingchuan finally put down the sweaty chess pieces in his hand: "I can be regarded as completely convinced of you, it seems that your Sichuan army is far more powerful than I imagined!" ”

"Don't pretend, I don't know what you're thinking? Don't worry, all the seizures in this battle are all yours, and I'll lead the team back when it's over, and the Qianjiang front line will depend on you, old man, alas...... In Chengdu, my eldest daughter is still waiting to get married, and I haven't been home for three months......"

"Wait! What if Wu Peifu comes over to fight for Qianjiang? ”

"Is it possible? I'm still looking forward to him coming, so that we don't have to go to him later. ”

"He's definitely coming!"

"Don't worry, he must at least settle the three towns of Wuhan to ensure the safety of the rear before he dares to come."

"It's over, it's all messed up now! It's all messed up......."

(To be continued)