At dawn, Batu, hidden in the valley, raised his telescope and looked at the hazy plain county; In the vast open space outside the tall city walls, several old men with white cloth towels were grazing sheep there, and the sheep moved smoothly in the direction of the lawn, and bleated from time to time.

At the gate of the city, several soldiers of the Civil Defense Regiment dozed off with Hanyangzao in their arms, completely ignoring the movement outside.

Suddenly, the old man tending the sheep gently raised the white cloth towel on his head, and Li Han, the commander of the reconnaissance battalion who was hiding in the grass in the distance, saw it through the telescope and immediately gestured to the back. At this time, the scout who was lying in ambush outside the city stood up and pulled out the flare gun in his arms, and the object Sky pulled the trigger.

Chirp! A long sound glided through the night sky, and the flare dragged the red tail flame towards the sky, emitting a blinding light.

The signal flare, followed by a tremor of earthquakes, woke up the Civil Defense Regiment soldier who was sleeping in the sentry post, rubbed his eyes and looked ahead.

At this time, a flare slowly rose in the air, and the originally dark front suddenly became like day, and the black area in front of him turned out to be rows of cavalry with no end in sight, and the sound of vibration just now was emitted by the galloping of ten thousand horses, and these cavalry were undoubtedly rushing towards him.

Syllable! Syllable! …… Sporadic gunfire rang out on the walls, but before they could be launched, the cavalrymen in the front row knocked them down from the walls with their rifles. Half an hour later, after a small number of officers and men put up symbolic resistance, most of them lost their guns and fled.

The originally strong city gate did not play its due role, and soon the city gate opened, and the cavalry wielding war swords rushed in.

In less than the middle of the night, the plain county town had completely changed, and the guards in khaki uniforms had not yet figured out what was going on, and they were shot. As soon as the county magistrate finished reading the official document and was about to go to bed, the phone with the ringing bell came from the city defense regiment.

"Hey, county magistrate? This is the city defense regiment, and the Northern Expeditionary Army is coming! The Northern Expeditionary Army called......" came an impatient and chaotic voice on the other end of the phone.

"What do you say? What Northern Expeditionary Army? Hey, hey! Say something! The county magistrate was over fifty years old, and he couldn't hear the words on the phone very clearly, but when he asked again, there was no one on the other side who answered, and instead of a chaotic burst of gunfire.

The county magistrate put on his clothes and stood up, when the butler ran in from outside and said, "Oh no! Sir, the Northern Expeditionary Army has entered, and now it has entered the city. ”

"What? Where did the Northern Expeditionary Army come from? "The county magistrate remembered the advance force of the Northern Expeditionary Army reported a few days ago, but he did not expect to launch an attack on the county seat of Pingyuan; Didn't they just go through here?

At the same time, the county magistrate was annoyed and said to the butler: "Go and wake up the lady and young master, and take some soft gold and silver and leave the north gate quickly." ”

The butler answered and went to prepare, and the county magistrate hurried back to the back room to change his clothes and carry a suitcase to prepare to go out, and it didn't take long for the housekeeper to find two big carriages, and it didn't take long for the two big carriages to flee in the direction of the north of the city.

Laid down the plain county town overnight, and there was not much difference from Batu's previous expectations; Although the Pingyuan county is located in a critical place, there are few garrisons, and the surrounding counties cannot echo in time, and the most important thing is that the defenders of the plain county have no sense of vigilance at all, and they are not prepared for the attack led by Batu.

A variety of factors have contributed to this myth of the capture, and Batu is naturally a little happy in his heart, now that tens of thousands of troops are encamped outside the city, and the troops have a place to be stationed. The battalions and platoon units found several bathhouses in the county town and began to boil water for bathing, and with the steaming water vapor, the cold and fatigue of the officers and men for a long time also evaporated little by little with the mist.

Batu's headquarters also moved from the tent in the wilderness to the original county office in Pingyuan County overnight, where there was a separate bathing place, and the secretary immediately asked people to pack up and prepare for Batu to take a bath, but Batu did not understand his kindness.

"Send a report to the headquarters of the Northern Expeditionary Army immediately" In the newly moved office, the communications unit had just set up the radio station when it received Batu's order, and the communications chief on duty hurriedly picked up the pen and paper in his hand to prepare for the record.

Batu exhaled slowly: "The headquarters of the Northern Expeditionary Army, our department chose to be stationed nearby due to multiple reasons such as the capture of the weather, and has now captured the plain county near Taihang, and wants to recuperate, and has been waiting to go north in the coming year, and will return to Sui, because Batu is incapable of losing the army, which will cause the Northern Expedition to be unsuccessful, Batu feels guilty in his heart. ”

After the chief of communication recorded it, he signaled to Batu that the recording was complete, and Batu waved his hand and said, "Go and generate electricity." ”

The telegram was soon sent to the headquarters of the Northern Expeditionary Army in Changsha, and Huang Ke, who had not closed his eyes for 60 consecutive hours, couldn't help frowning after reading it, it is a taboo for soldiers to go deep into a city alone, although the warlords in the hinterland of Taihang are divided, and the forces of all parties are complicated, but they are still regarded as a thorn in the side of the Northern Expeditionary Army, and they will definitely go all out to get rid of it.

In that case, Batu and the expeditionary force led by him would be very dangerous.

After thinking for a long time, Huang Ke replied to Batu with a telegram, which was still the same sentence he had written before: "The enemy advances and I retreat, the enemy is stationed and disturbs me, the enemy is tired and I fight, and the enemy retreats and I chase, I don't care about the gains and losses of one pool and one place, and only pay attention to preserving the vital force." ”

After replying to the message, Fourteen Tsai brought supper, two steamed buns, a bowl of millet porridge, and a plate of pickles; After Huang Ke had eaten briefly, he continued to review the message in front of him.

"Commander, take a break." Fourteen Tsai suggested.

Huang Ke didn't reply, he replied to the telegram in his hand and said, "Go and ask Yang Yibing if there is any information about the Japanese?" Jiang Xianyun and they are about to hit Shanghai, Japan, Britain, and France must have taken action, let him pay attention to collecting. ”

"Yes!" Fourteen turned around and went out, and closed the door. Huang Ke, who was left alone in the house, was never able to sleep with peace of mind, and the decisive battle on the battlefield of Wuhan that was about to take place a few days later kept him awake at night.

At this moment, Yang Yibing, who was thousands of miles away in Shanghai, also stayed awake all night, and unlike Huang Ke, he was staring at a freshly deciphered telegram and studying. This radio station is a radio station that the Reserve Cadres Department of the Ministry of National Defense focuses on monitoring, because this radio station is very likely to be Wang Jingwei's private secret radio station.

But the strange thing is that the message was sent from Guangzhou, and the place of receipt was in Shanghai, and the message was added with Morse code, but the message was just a simple sentence, "The color sent by the old cloth is not suitable, and the dye vat should be washed." ”

"Dye vat!" Yang Yibing believes that this must have some connection with the recent purge of the party, but what is the connection? Yang Yibing couldn't guess where would it be if he wanted to purge the party? Shanghai or Guangzhou? What does Lao Bu refer to? What does the dye vat refer to?

Yang Yibing didn't know what to do, he took a deep breath, and an invisible pressure surrounded his head.

Jingle bells! Yang Yibing, who was pondering, was woken up by the phone ringing, and he looked up to see that the phone ringing in front of him was the No. 1 phone, which showed that it was the No. 1 special line.

"Comrade Huang Ke, hello!" Because Huang Ke emphasized the importance of equality in non-military systems, Yang Yibing called him "comrade".

"Comrade Volunteers, haven't rested yet?" Huang Ke's slightly tired voice came from the phone.

Yang Yibing perked up: "Yes, Comrade Huang Ke." There's one thing I'm not sure about, and I'm about to report it to you. ”

"Wait a minute, I have something to tell you, please record it."

After Huang Ke finished speaking, Yang Yibing immediately took out a pen and paper from the table, and after getting ready, he conveyed his meaning to Huang Ke.

"The Northern Expeditionary Army's march into Shanghai will inevitably cause dissatisfaction in many countries, and may even interfere with the Northern Expedition by force; Fearing that it would cause trouble in Shanghai and other places, I am now paying close attention to the dynamics of the concessions of the embassies and consulates of many countries, especially the movement of Japanese troops......"

After saying so much in one breath, Huang Ke's voice looked a little tired, he coughed softly a few times, and Yang Yibing asked with concern.

"It's out of the way, I've had less rest these days, have you recorded what I said?" Huang Ke stopped coughing and asked.

"Yes, Comrade Huang Ke, I have already recorded it." After speaking, he repeated it to Huang Ke again. After listening to his retelling, Huang Ke expressed his approval.

"Very well, you can move on to what you want to report."

"Yes, we recently seized a telegram sent from there to Shanghai, the content is extremely grotesque, and I suspect it is related to the purge of the party that we have been tracking."

After listening to Yang Yibing's words, there was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment, and after coming over for a while, he said, "What is the content of the message?" Send it to me later, I'll call you in half an hour. ”

The original text of the telegram was quickly transferred to the desk of Huang Ke, the headquarters of the Northern Expeditionary Army, and after reading this telegram, Huang Ke could not sleep at all. Yang Yibing's guess was correct, and this telegram must have a close relationship with the upcoming clean-up action.

But he didn't know exactly how it would unfold, and he couldn't possibly know, even if he was the one who had crossed over. History has changed so much that even Jiang Zhongzheng, who advocated a clean party at that time, never appeared, and it is even more unpredictable how history will develop.

"We must stop the purging of the party!" Huang Ke knew that if that happened, it would most likely cause a civil war in China for many years, and it would cause China to fall for nearly half a century.

He can't afford to be a Chinese sinner. Huang Ke lit a cigarette to refresh himself, then picked up the phone in his hand and dialed the special line of the Reserve Cadre Department.

At this time, a large number of troops in Guangzhou, the core area of the new government, began to secretly move, and a bloody storm was about to begin.