After sending Zhang Zhizhong away, Jin Zhao and Xie Jinyuan returned to the headquarters. Xie Jinyuan said worriedly, "I also feel that the principal will not agree to our conditions, should we lower the conditions." ”

Jin Zhao shook his head decisively and said, "These three conditions are our bottom line, and we must not let them go any longer." If the principal doesn't agree, then we'll have to continue fighting! ”

Jin Zhao walked quickly to the map on the wall, looked at it for a while, and then said, "Immediately telegraph to the Wuyi Mountain Reading Master and Junior Yue, and let them concentrate their forces and annihilate Wei Lihuang's troops as soon as possible at all costs!" In addition, inform the Wuyi Mountain Reading Division to block the reinforcements of the Central Army out of Fujian at all costs! ”

"Okay! I'll give the order right away! Xie Jinyuan nodded and said.

At this moment, a communications staff officer suddenly came over and reported loudly, "Report to the commander-in-chief, Commander-in-Chief Weng has called, our army has successfully recovered Zhangzhou, and Jiang Dingwen led his troops to withdraw to Xiamen!" ”

"Great!" Jin Zhao said excitedly, "Call back to Chief Weng immediately, and ask Chief Weng to transfer Wang Geng's division back to the northern front and prepare to attack Fuzhou." ”

"Do you really want to fight Fuzhou?" Xie Jinyuan asked in surprise. In Xie Jinyuan's view, Fuzhou City has thick walls, and the terrain is dangerous, easy to defend and difficult to attack, and there are more than 30,000 elite people of the Central Army stationed there, the 19th Route Army has no strength to capture Fuzhou at all, even if it is lucky to capture Fuzhou, it will inevitably suffer heavy losses, and the gains outweigh the losses.

Jin Zhao smiled and said, "Hehe, even if you don't fight, you have to make a show to scare Teacher Zhang and buy time for us to encircle and annihilate the Wei Lihuang Department." ”

Xie Jinyuan couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief, fortunately, this kid hadn't been carried away by the victory, Xie Jinyuan was really worried that Jin Zhao would be hot-headed for a while, and if he really attacked Fuzhou, it would be a big trouble.

After Zhang Zhizhong returned to Fuzhou, he immediately sent a telegram to Lao Chiang, reporting Jin Zhao's conditions to Lao Chiang, and saying that if the central government did not agree to their conditions, the 19th Route Army would definitely not stop attacking. After Lao Jiang got the news, he scolded angrily, Lao Jiang planned to give this Jin Zhao, who didn't know the height of the sky, a little bit of strength first, so he urged Chen Cheng to speed up the march.

At the same time, Zhang Zhizhong sent a telegram to Wei Lihuang, suggesting that Wei Lihuang lead his troops to break through in the direction of Fuzhou, and Zhang Zhizhong would send troops to respond. However, what Zhang Zhizhong did not expect was that early the next morning, the 19th Route Army bombed the position of the Central Army on Nantai Island, and Jin Zhao used hundreds of artillery pieces and more than 20 bombers to bomb the position of the Central Army on Nantai Island for half a day. (Note: Nantai Island is the largest island in the Minjiang River Basin, located in the current urban area of Fuzhou)

Jin Zhao's actions made Zhang Zhizhong hesitate, seeing that Jin Zhao really planned to attack Fuzhou, Zhang Zhizhong also got the news of the loss of Zhangzhou, Zhang Zhizhong judged that it was enough for Weng Zhaoyuan on the southern front to use only 20,000 troops at most to watch Jiang Dingwen in Xiamen, so the 19th Route Army on the southern front could completely draw out 20,000 troops to go north to Fuzhou, maybe this is Jin Zhao's confidence to dare to attack Fuzhou! After weighing it repeatedly, in the end, Zhang Zhizhong only sent one brigade of troops to the west to meet the besieged Wei Lihuang Department to break through.

Zhang Zhizhong sent troops to reinforce Wei Lihuang, but was soon detected by the reconnaissance plane of the 19th Route Army and reported to Jin Zhao in time. Jin Zhao could not send troops to block the attack, so he could only order the air force to dispatch and bomb along the way to delay the march of the Central Army. At the same time, he telegraphed Zhang Junsong and asked him to strengthen his vigilance.

However, it is said that after Zhang Junsong captured Shuikou and Gutian one after another, the number of troops under his command not only did not decrease, but increased a lot, and the total strength reached 15,000 (10,000 at the time of departure).

It turned out that Zhang Zhizhong Gutian released the troops and persuaded Zhao Yisheng to surrender. Zhang Zhizhong thought that it would not be a problem to incorporate Zhao Yi's division, so he telegraphed to Lao Jiang and requested the integration of Zhao Yi's division, but he received a call back from Lao Jiang and ordered Zhang Zhizhong to disarm Zhao Yi's division.

Lao Jiang's reason is also very sufficient, the war against Fujian has not yet ended, if this division is incorporated and put aside, and two divisions are still needed to guard it, how can this battle be fought? After Zhang Zhizhong received the order, although he was sad, he also thought that Lao Jiang's concerns were not unreasonable. There was no way, so I had to say to Zhao Yishou clearly, "Now the commission is calling, there is such an opinion, please surrender the gun, the soldiers will still be reorganized, and the officials will be placed separately, and they will definitely be given preferential treatment." If your soldiers are willing to be recruited, they can naturally be recruited, and if they are not willing to be recruited, they will be dismissed. ”

Zhao Yishou could only be forced to accept and ordered the officers and men of the division to surrender their weapons to the Central Army. The disarming of an entire division like this can be said to be the first time in all previous battles. Subsequently, Zhao Yibei and other senior generals were sent to Nanjing. Zhang Zhizhong felt ashamed of Zhao Yishou, and thought that Zhao Yishou was a frank person who knew the general situation, and specially promoted him to Lao Jiang. Judging from this matter, Zhang Zhizhong is still quite interesting, but Lao Jiang is not very interesting, for these miscellaneous generals, Lao Jiang has always been suspicious, Zhao Yibei and other senior generals arrived in Nanjing, Lao Jiang directly gave them a sum of money and sent them to go abroad for investigation.

And Zhao Yi's division totaled more than 6,000 people, all of whom stayed outside Gutian City, waiting to be disposed of. But then the battle on the front line took a sharp turn for the worse, and no one was in the mood to care about the affairs of the 6,000 prisoners of war, so these 6,000 people stayed outside Gutian City until Zhang Junsong led his troops to collect Gutian.

After Zhang Junsong learned of this, he unceremoniously incorporated all these people. Zhao's First Shoulder Division was subordinate to Tan Qixiu's Fifth Army, and Tan Qixiu was originally the deputy commander of the 78th Division, while many middle-level officers in the Fifth Army were from the 78th Division. And Zhang Junsong used to be the brigade commander of the 78th Division, and some of them were his old subordinates, plus the senior officers of Zhao Yisheng's division had been sent to Nanjing, so the integration was quite smooth.

As for the problem of weapons, it is easy to solve, all the weapons that were disarmed at the beginning were piled up in Gutian City, and they had not had time to transport them away, plus the Central Army also hoarded a batch of weapons and ammunition here, and a division armed with 6,000 people was more than enough, so Zhang Junsong easily expanded the 6,000 new army, and these people were already disappointed in the Central Army because they were imprisoned in Gutian for half a month, and they would not be excluded from continuing to fight with the Central Army at all.

Due to his outstanding achievements since the start of the war, Zhang Junsong was appointed commander of the Fifth Army and was responsible for the reconstruction of the Fifth Army. The two divisions under his command were reorganized into the 5th and 10th Divisions respectively. Ding Rongguang served as the commander of the Fifth Division, and Jin Zhao's right-hand man Tan Shaoping was promoted to the commander of the Tenth Division. (Ding Rongguang was captured by the Red Army in the Battle of Liancheng, and was released after the 19th Route Army signed an armistice agreement with the Red Army) (To be continued.) )