In November, there were already sparse snowflakes in the sky, and it had been half a month since Li Xin came to Hangzhou, and the Pingbo fleet of the Three Guards Army and the Zheng family sailors were still in confrontation. On this day, the soldiers suddenly came in a hurry to report, and at the same time held a rush from Nanjing in front of Li Xin with both hands.

"General, Nanjing Express!"

Li Xin put down the official document in his hand, raised his eyes and saw the red feather at the seal of the urgent delivery, and the conventional rule of the summons in the Three Guards was that the red feather was the warning and the green feather was the good news. And Li Xin had never seen the use of red feathers in the previous express delivery, and when he saw it today, he thought that his eyes were dazzled and he saw the wrong color, but when he held the express in his hand, he confirmed that he was not mistaken.

While opening the seal, he was speculating about what went wrong, Mi Yan and others were in charge of Nanjing, and the rest of the parties were more restrained, so it was unlikely that something would go wrong. The situation in Jiangxi and the western part of Nanzhili has also stabilized, and the Huangmei thief has become the end of the crossbow, and there is no possibility of problems here.

Then only the left Jiangbei Gezuo Fifth Battalion may take the opportunity to cross the river, but the Yangtze River moat is not child's play, with the strength of the Gezuo Fifth Battalion, it is also a fool's dream to easily invade Jiangnan. Soon, Li Xin opened the official document and held it in his hand, only to look at it a few times, and his face suddenly changed.

He never expected that the place that went wrong was not the three possibilities he thought of, but another place that he thought was the most unlikely.

Shi Kefa's entire army was wiped out in Fujian, and he himself did not know whether he was alive or dead, and the Huai Wang's army revived. At the same time, the grenadier battalion under Zhang Shi's headquarters was defeated and is now in a state of disconnection. The report came from local officials in the southern part of Jiangxi on the border with Fujian, and because they did not dare to go deep into Fujian, the information they had detected was extremely limited. However, the news of the defeat of the two armies was real, and the king of Huai made a big show in the mountainous area of northwest Fujian, and even had a great momentum to return to Jiangxi.

Therefore, some local officials in Jiangxi asked Nanjing to send troops to help immediately.

Mi Yan's other letter was also in the urgent delivery, saying that the matter was not made public in Nanjing officialdom, and he was the only one who knew the news of Zhang Shi's disastrous defeat in Fujian. Because this incident was too shocking, he didn't dare to specialize, so he had to ask Li Xin how to deal with it.

After reading the letter, Li Xin rarely fell into contemplation, the Three Guards had not tasted defeat since their birth, and he was also full of confidence in the merger into Fujian, like almost all the soldiers of the Three Guards. But the news ruthlessly shattered their expectations.

At first, Li Xin wondered if the local magistrate's information was wrong, but soon there was a military report from the Raozhou government from Nanjing, and after repeated confirmation, it was confirmed that Fujian was defeated, and Shi Kefa and Zhang Shishi had lost their traces. The army stationed in Raozhou was unable to get in touch with it.

Due to the initial pacification of the locality, many prefectures and counties were unstable, and Raozhou Xingyuan also asked to send capable generals to sit in the town in case of accidents.

Li Xin immediately sent a letter to Nanjing, asking him to send an order to Cheng Mingjiu, who was stationed in the western prefecture and county of Nanzhili, to immediately lead his army into Jiangxi to stabilize the overall situation, and not to cause chaos in the rear again.

Just when Li Xin's brows were tightly locked, Niu Jinsong roared excitedly, and as soon as he entered the door, he immediately felt an unusual aura, and saw the red feathers on the seal of the fire paint on the table, and suddenly lost his voice: "What?" Has Nanjing changed? ”

Li Xin shook his head, and only pushed the two official documents from Nanjing Express over and let Niu Jinsong read them for himself. Niu Jinsong's literacy is limited, and he has the most headache to read through the official documents, but Li Da also came in as soon as he turned around, and handed over the official documents in his hand as if he was relieved.

"Mr. Li, read it through for me, something big has happened in Nanjing!"

Li Da is now Li Xin's cronies in the army, and he helps him deal with paperwork, so Niu Jinsong does not shy away from taboos and directly asks him to read through on his behalf. Li Da took the official document with a smile at first, but he was stunned after only blocking two lines.

"This, how is this possible?" Niu Jinsong was shocked to learn that Zhang Shi had been defeated and that he himself had disappeared with the grenadier battalion and had lost contact. You must know that the grenadier battalion is the elite of the elite of the Three Guards, and everyone is proud to join the grenadier battalion of the Three Guards, but how can they be so defeated by the Huai Wang rebels in Fujian?

"In the urgent delivery, Raozhou Xingyuan also briefly mentioned that Zhang Shi's department was in the Shaowu area, which coincided with continuous rain, and many soldiers were infected with dysentery and diarrhea, and the defeat may be related to this."

Li Da was calmer, and analyzed in a deep voice the reasons that might lead to the defeat!

After a long time, Niu Jinsong returned to normal, but he still kept denying it.

"They must have made a mistake, how could Zhang Junmen defeat the battle? Even if dysentery doesn't stop there, what is that rabble under the Huai King rebels......"

Niu Jinsong's understanding of dysentery is not profound, but Li Da has seen it when he was outside the Guan.

"The general must not despise dysentery, as the saying goes, a good man can't stand three splashes, as long as it is not good to delay for three or four days in a row, even the elite of the dragon and tiger will be pulled half to death, let alone fight to the death with the enemy."

And at this moment, Li Xin suddenly spoke.

"The Zheng family must also be involved in the defeat of Fujian this time, but it is a pity that our intelligence infiltration work has not yet touched Fujian, and the specific situation is unknown."

Li Xin's words made Niu Jinsong suddenly remember that he had come to report to Li Xin, but compared to Zhang Shi's defeat in Fujian, he was completely blind to this so-called good news.

However, Li Xin remembered the excitement when he came, and asked instead: "You rushed here, but the Pingbo fleet won again?" ”

Niu Jinsong replied unhurriedly: "Well, more than a dozen ships of goods were intercepted, and Wallace and He Bin both said that the results of these few days were enough for Zheng Zhilong to go crazy." ”

Wallace and He Bin have been at sea for a long time, familiar with the trade situation, the Pingbo fleet intercepted a total of nearly 100 cargo ships sent by Zheng Zhilong to Japan, roughly estimated, the merchants suffered losses because of this, the total silver should be millions of taels, the Zheng family, who has always been responsible for the safe trade on the sea, will inevitably cause dissatisfaction among Western merchants.

Because according to the secret agreement between the Zheng family and Western merchants, Western merchants could only trade with Zheng Zhilong's side, but not directly with the Japanese, if they wanted to obtain Japanese goods and silver, they could only change hands through Zheng Zhilong from the middle.

Therefore, as long as this situation continues, Zheng Zhilong will sooner or later be unable to withstand the huge pressure and act rashly.

In fact, Li Xin had already realized that there would be a battle between the Pingbo fleet and the Zheng family's naval division, so instead of finding the door himself, it was better to let the other party take the initiative to attack. However, Li Xin didn't want Zheng Zhilong to come to raid after he was fully prepared. As long as he is allowed to launch a hasty attack under the premise of insufficient preparation, the victory rate of the Pingbo fleet will rise to the maximum.

However, according to the previous plan, the ultimate goal of annihilating the Zheng family's naval division by naval battle was to wipe out the Zheng family's forces in Fujian and Guangdong. But the current defeat of Zhang Shi and Shi Kefa has made this plan confusing, how did they lose these two groups of men and horses, who are horns of each other, with a combined force of nearly 100,000 people?

These are all doubts that haunt Li Xinxin's head.

"Is there a reply to the official letter sent to the Fujian Political Envoy Division?"

Li Xin suddenly asked about this matter, and Li Da shook his head.

"No news!"

Li Xin did not believe that the political envoy of Fujian would be willing to submit to Zheng Zhilong's power and be monolithic. If the Fujian Political Envoy really has a disagreement with it, then it can be used, but now it seems that Zheng Zhilong's efforts in this regard are obviously far beyond his imagination. Otherwise, it would not have been possible for more than half a month to pass, and there would be no news from the Fujian Political Envoy.

"General, shrink the scope of activity of the Pingbo fleet, after the defeat of Fujian, the morale of the Zheng family sailors will definitely be greatly shaken, maybe it is possible to attack north at any time now."

Li Da suggested after some analysis. However, the difference is that Niu Jinsong thought further, "I'm afraid that after Shi Kefa's entire army is destroyed, there will be no army in southern Zhejiang to compete with these sons of bitches, general, we have to prepare early." ”

Li Xin pondered for a while before he said categorically: "This news is still rumored to evade actual evidence so far, and it must be kept secret until we get the news of Zhang Shi's complete defeat." This matter must not be disclosed to anyone except you and me. As for the Pingbo fleet and southern Zhejiang, everything is fine as usual. Zheng Zhilong did not dare to attack Zhejiang without a reasonable excuse. ”

Fujian Anping General Soldier Mansion, Zheng Zhilong was shocked by the sudden good news, he originally just had a little praise for the eldest son's strategy of combining fiction and reality, but judging from the results of Shao Wu's victory, Zheng Sen is indeed better than blue, he has never commanded large-scale land battles, but he defeated Shi Kefa and Li Xin's Three Guards in one battle. Since then, the myth of the invincibility of the Three Guards has been completely ended, and he can also integrate all forces in Fujian with peace of mind, so that they can serve the Zheng family obediently.

At this time, Zheng Hongkui, who had been dormant for a while, couldn't help but become active again, so he came to Zheng Zhilong's side again and persuaded Zheng Zhilong to take the opportunity to immediately send sailors to Zhejiang to escort merchant ships. Even if it is inappropriate to directly attack the inland of Zhejiang, it is necessary to pacify the sea area again, otherwise those Westerners will see that the Zheng family has been unable to settle the southeast sea area, and they may let their Zheng family directly trade with the Japanese people, and at that time, the situation of the Zheng family's dominance in the southeast sea will completely cease to exist. And the Zheng family's wealth will also be cut off because of this, once there is no financial way to enter, what will he do to maintain a huge private army? And what can you do to deter the pirates around you?

However, Zheng Zhilong still has to wait, he has to wait for Zheng Sen to come back, and then come up with an accurate idea.