"Fight with you!"

In desperation, a catcher shouted and rushed forward. The blade in his hand is only offensive but not defensive, and he wants to pull a person on his back. Although his knife slashed the volunteer in front of him, the rebel next to him also took the opportunity to stab him in the eye socket with a spear.

The death of this quick catcher was the prelude to the rebels' complete pacification of the resistance.

Several people fought in vain with the rebels, and without exception, they were killed by the rebels who were several times their size. After more than half of the remaining people were killed and wounded, the blood that had been mustered up before was finally destroyed by the killing and bloodshed, and they abandoned their weapons and chose to surrender. The red-eyed rebel soldiers couldn't hold back their hands, and stabbed two more to death one after another, only then did they stop their actions under Chen Wu's drinking. By this time, counting those clerks such as the secretary office, there were less than ten people still alive in the entire county government compound.

Bloody corpses could be seen everywhere on the ground, several of which belonged to rebel soldiers.

During the fierce battle before, many of the rebels did not feel it when they were nervous. Now that the battle has subsided, the tight string in my brain has loosened, and I smell the rich smell of blood, and I can't help but vomit it anymore. Compared with the pediatric department that attacked Nanjiazhuang and Huaizhuang on the road of the righteous army, the fighting in the county government compound can be regarded as a real battle. Only by experiencing such a scene first-hand can these unreformed rebels quickly mature and become qualified soldiers.

A quarter of an hour later, the county government compound was completely calm.

The rebels simply cleaned up the battlefield, seized the weapons of the survivors, searched them and escorted them to Chen Wu. There are a few of them, Chen Wu had dealt with them when he was doing tasks in "Empire", and they were somewhat familiar. But the most important one among them, Shen County Ling of Yicheng, did not see a shadow.

Could it be that he ran away when he saw that the situation was not good?

Chen Wu was a little surprised, if it was five years later, it would not be strange for an official to do this. But now that the county commander dares to escape, isn't he afraid of the empire's accountability?

It was the rebel soldier in charge of the search who told him the answer.

"Returning to the general, the county commander has hanged himself."

failed to escape, and saw that the county government compound was breached again, and the desperate county commander didn't have the courage to fight the thieves, so he committed suicide?

Chen Wu shook his head and didn't comment again, but ordered his subordinates to take these people down first and detain them separately. After that, he entered the backyard of the county government with Dian Yong.

The backyard of the county government is generally the place where the county order lives and works, such as the study.

In a small place like Yicheng, this can basically be considered the most important power core in the entire city. Chen Wu and Dian Yong came in all the way, and soon saw Shen Xian Ling hanging on the door beam, and he could vaguely see despair and unwillingness on his face. The two of them didn't stay here for long, only stopping for a few moments before passing past the corpse and entering the study to the east.

Although the county order is only the basic level of the imperial bureaucracy, the study of this Shen county order is quite decorated. On the bookshelf of purple bamboo wood, there are antiques and books, among which there are rare and unique books. There are also some calligraphy and paintings hanging on the surrounding walls, if they are placed in peacetime, these paintings alone are only afraid that they can be worth thousands of gold.

Although these things were within reach, they were not what Chen Wu wanted the most.

There are only two things he has drawn: the great seal of the county order and the key to the treasury!

The former is the county order seal that only the center of the empire can control and represents the power of Yicheng County. On weekdays, no matter what kind of official letter or notice, it needs to have this big seal to take effect. If it is lost, it will be extremely troublesome to reissue, not to mention, it will be severely reprimanded by the Imperial Center and even the Minister of the Interior, and even a major demerit. With it, Chen Wu was able to forge the official documents of the Yicheng County Order.

At this stage, this thing is not of much use to Chen Wu. But there is another thing that has a very important practical significance.

Treasury Key!

As a place to store the taxes of a county, the treasury is undoubtedly the most important. To open it, the treasurer and the prefectural commander must be present at the same time, each with a key, to open the door. Because the treasury is made of hard bluestone strips, the foundation is also extremely strong, and the gate is made of fine iron. If you don't have a key, it is very difficult to force open the storeroom by brute force.

However, after searching it again, there was no trace of either the county seal or the key to the treasury.

disappeared together, as well as the wife of the county order.

"There are only two possibilities." Chen Wu's face was a little disappointed, and he said, "Either he was hidden in some secret room by this county order; Either he was taken away from the family members who had been entrusted to him before hanging. ”

He instinctively thought it might be the latter.

Dian Yong looked very open, and while casually flipping through the ancient books on the shelves, he smiled and said: "Anyway, congratulations to General Shun for taking Yicheng." With 30,000 people in this city in hand, our Taiping Righteous Army can be expected to do great things. Even if you don't find the key to the treasury, it doesn't matter, so if you can't do it, you can force the door with a little more effort. The top priority at the moment is to completely quell the opposition forces in Yicheng. ”

"What General Dian said is very true."

Chen Wu nodded, sat down on the chair behind the desk, stretched his shoulders that were a little heavy from the chain mail, and closed his eyes to consider the current situation.

After the city defense battalion and the county government were captured, the government power in Yicheng had completely collapsed. The rest is nothing more than spontaneous resistance from the people out of fear. In the face of the rebel army that has closed the four gates, it is difficult to have any effect, it is nothing more than delaying time. Among them, there are only two that really have the potential to cause trouble for the rebels.

The first is to join up with the three cavalry of the official army that was missing, and rush to reinforce the strength of the Huai'an Chamber of Commerce in the county government.

Being able to easily break through the rebel army sent by Chen Wu to block the door, the strength of the Huai'an Chamber of Commerce branch can be seen. But after the dozen or so horsemen were wiped out, the power of the Chamber of Commerce had been greatly weakened, and there was nothing to fear.

The rest is the largest landlord and nobleman in Yicheng County, the Rong family.

Not counting the forces stationed in the manor outside, there are nearly 100 guards and house slaves in the Rong Mansion alone. The combat effectiveness of these people is not bad, and many of them are equipped with iron weapons. Because they had to protect a bunch of ladies and gold and silver antiques in the Rong Mansion, they didn't dare to kill them unscrupulously, but they could still do it by defending the mansion against the rebels. At the very least, the ordinary rebels who were staring at them in the past by the Chen Wu faction could not attack.

It's definitely a tough nut to crack.

Chen Wu was glad that the horse team of the Huai'an Chamber of Commerce did not go to the Rong family to help first. If the seventeen cavalry team gathered the thugs and house slaves of the Rong family, and Master Rong could send all the people out in one go, regardless of the wealth of the family, maybe it would really bring big trouble to the rebels. Even if it is suppressed in the end, I am afraid that there will be many more deaths and injuries.

But now......

The county government has been completely pacified, and the initiative is completely in the hands of the righteous army, but Chen Wu is not in a hurry.

Because there was already chaos in Yicheng, and it was already in the afternoon, he prioritized the target on the money bank and grain depot near the government of Kongzhì County. As for the Rongfu and the like, you can wait for the next day, when the civil strife in Yicheng is almost over, and then mobilize forces to calm them down one by one.

………

Before I knew it, it was five o'clock in the afternoon.

After an afternoon of fermentation, Yicheng, which was peaceful and peaceful in the past, became unprecedentedly chaotic due to the destruction of the city by the rebels. In addition to some of the rebels joining the looting, seeing that no government came forward to quell the rebellion, many local scoundrels in Yicheng no longer had any scruples and joined the ranks of smashing and looting. Once these locals who were familiar with the situation attacked, their efficiency was several times higher than that of the rebels. After all, the main combat strength of the rebel army was transferred by Chen Wu, and these local scoundrels were darker than the other.

For a while, the entire Yicheng seemed to have become a paradise for lawbreakers.

In the end, a group of splashes set fire to the house because they were resisted while grabbing something. The weather was dry, and the fire spread in an instant, and thick smoke billowed out. Even in the county office, Chen Wu could hear the cries coming from all over the city.

In this regard, not only did he not immediately send the rebels to suppress it, but he was a little happy to see it.

From the very beginning, Chen Wu did not have the idea of operating Yicheng as a base. On the contrary, it is necessary to turn tens of thousands of people here into displaced people, as was done in Nanjiazhuang and Huaizhuang. Because of this, someone has disrupted the original order in the city. Anyway, in the end, the people of Yicheng, who were robbed of all their food and property, and their houses were burned, had no choice but to join his rebel army obediently.

Moreover, this hatred also has those splashes to help carry it!