However, the Qing army's offensive ended there.

Soon after, the Huaxia army in Ningbo and Hangzhou gathered 5,000 men and marched quickly to the Shanghai area, where they engaged in a fierce battle with the 10,000 Qing troops outside the county seat, and finally eliminated most of the enemy, leaving only a small number of survivors to retreat to Suzhou.

Then, the Huaxia Army took over Shanghai County in an orderly manner, rewarded the gang leaders who participated in the uprising, incorporated their low-level personnel, integrated Zhou Lichun and other peasant forces, and put Shanghai under its control.

Chen Jinhua and Qin Rigang of the Heaven and Earth Society personally went to Shanghai to appease the members of the Little Knife Society, and then distributed a large number of documents, saying that Heaven and Earth would be responsible for the uprising in Shanghai, and trying to take the credit for the occupation of Shanghai on the Heaven and Earth Society.

In fact, after the uprising in Shanghai, the happiest were these two bigwigs of the Heaven and Earth Society.

After the uprising of the Huaxia Army, the Heaven and Earth Society has always been a little sad, as the largest gang in the world, the main promoter of the anti-Qing armed movement for hundreds of years, the strength is not as good as the two rising stars of the Mixed Yuan Sect and the Sanyuan Temple, and in terms of momentum and territory, it is not as good as the Guangxi Demon Sect that only raised troops later.

Although the Demon Sect started its army late, it occupied a province with a single army, and the momentum was huge, which was much more powerful than the Heaven and Earth Society, which only occupied two-thirds of the territory of Hainan Island.

Heaven and Earth will come out to take credit, and the members of the Rebellious Little Knife Society will indeed have various relationships with Heaven and Earth, and the Mixed Yuan Sect and the Three Yuan Sect will naturally not come out to discourage the enthusiasm of others, and they will highly appreciate the Heaven and Earth Society in various public occasions.

Of course, with the virtue of these two sects that have always pursued practical benefits, they will not cede the important place of Shanghai to the Tiandihui governance, but will only allow the Tiandihui to participate more in the governance of the local area in terms of policy.

With the concerted efforts of all parties, the area around Shanghai was quickly pacified, and it became the peripheral area of the Huaxia Army and the buffer zone for the Huaxia Army and the Qing Army in Jiangsu.

With the Shanghai uprising as an example, the benefits to the Huaxia army were varied, at least several states around Hangzhou quickly stabilized, and the population began to accept the reality of the Huaxia army replacing the Qing court more and more.

Under these circumstances, the Qing troops in Fujian and Zhejiang could hardly muster an army that could be put on the table, and they lost the ability to attack the Hangzhou area, and the first object of the Huaxia army to guard against it changed from the troops under the command of the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang to the Liangjiang troops from Suzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing, and other places in Jiangsu.

In order to further advance the front to the north and strengthen the role of the buffer zone, Li Xian, Wang Jiuxuan, Chen Jinhua and others discussed it, and decided to gather 20,000 troops to attack Suzhou.

To attack Suzhou, troops and ships can be transferred from the Wusong River and the Yangtze River, and Shanghai has become a large rear at this time, and the Huaxia Army can also gather more troops and attack Suzhou with more confidence.

Suzhou originally also had thousands of troops, plus reinforcements summoned from Changzhou, Nanjing and other places and local temporary recruits, the garrison reached 60,000 or 70,000 people, and in terms of the number of personnel, it was not at a disadvantage.

However, through the previous battles, the Huaxia army had a lot of experience in capturing this traditional city, using artillery to suppress the firepower on the city wall, and then sending sappers to dig tunnels at the base of the wall, burying explosives and exploding, and soon demolishing the relatively complete Suzhou city wall, and then quickly breaking into it with heavy troops.

The Qing soldiers defending the city saw that the situation was not good, most of them opened the city gate and fled, with the strong firepower of the Huaxia army, but the number of personnel was small, but they could not surround all the surroundings of Suzhou City, and could only watch most of the Qing soldiers open the city gate and escape, at most they could only cover up from the back to capture and eliminate as many enemy troops as possible.

Suzhou has always been a famous and prosperous city, and the Huaxia Army collected more than 10 million taels of money and materials from the Suzhou official treasury and officials' homes, and then hurriedly transported them back to their base areas by ships.

Although Suzhou itself has great military value and economic value, he felt that sending troops to garrison would only thin the small number of troops of the Huaxia army, so he only seized a large amount of money and materials in Suzhou, and immediately withdrew his troops, without the slightest intention of wasting troops stationed in Suzhou.

Anyway, after this battle, even if the Qing army reoccupied Suzhou, it would have to spend a lot of energy to regain its rule in Suzhou, and Shanghai, as the front line and buffer zone of the battle against the two rivers, would definitely be much more stable.

The money seized in this battle, according to the proportion of the troops, the mixed yuan sect got about four million, the three yuan guan also got four million, the other four divided about two million taels equally, and the rest was used as a mutual fund.

Afterwards, in order to commend the performance of the Xiaodao Society, a branch of the Tiandihui, in Shanghai, everyone unanimously agreed to give the Tiandihui an extra 1 million taels of silver as encouragement, and Chen Jinhua and Qin Rigang made a small fortune.

The seizure of Hangzhou was basically monopolized by the Mixed Yuan Sect, which was the first considerable income obtained by the Sanyuanguan and other sects since the Northern Expedition, and this battle alone was equivalent to a year's operating income in the base area before, which greatly relieved their financial pressure, and they could also come up with more resources when they carried out Fusang trade in the future.

Wang Jiuxuan and Yang Tianming proposed to continue to attack Changzhou or Nanjing, even if they did not occupy these two places for a long time, it would be a good thing to obtain a large amount of money in the city, which would save several sects from fighting for several years.

Li Xian thought about it carefully, and felt that the city wall of Nanjing was strong and not easy to attack, and the Huaxia army had recently gained too much territory, which required a lot of energy to consolidate and digest, so he vetoed this proposal.

"Anyway, these two cities won't run away on their own, we will put them there and wait until we are short of money to take them, which is much more cost-effective than spending too much money to attack now. Li Xian persuaded the generals who were too radical.

Wang Jiuxuan and the others were actually not completely convinced, but they knew that Li Xian had always been cautious in his grand strategy, especially after the battle between Jiulian Mountain and the Inhuman Palace, he paid more attention to steady and steady progress, advancing step by step, and it was unlikely that they would risk attacking these two big cities, so they could only agree unhappily in the end.

Of course, at this time, the navy will be transferred to Fusang to carry out trade with Fusang, and if it really wants to attack the cities in the Yangtze River valley, the water power will be greatly reduced, which is also a very important reason.

When the Huaxia army was steadily fighting, the soldiers and horses of the Guangxi Demon Sect under the leadership of Yang Xiuqing, the king of the Eastern France, came out one after another, marched all the way north from Guangxi, played triumphant songs, and also flowed to the Yangtze River valley, occupying many towns in Hunan and Jiangxi.

For a time, there was a lot of rumor in the area ruled by the Qing court, and the emperor and his ministers were worried, thinking that when the rebels on the east and west converged, it was the time when the vast area south of the Yangtze River fell into the hands of thieves.

And the reality is not exactly what they expected.

Li Xian had always been cautious in the use of troops, and after occupying the three prefecture capitals in northern Zhejiang, he also obtained the Songjiang Prefecture to which Shanghai County belonged, and then felt that the territory he occupied was already large enough, and then continued to expand the base area, in addition to making a greater noise, he could neither obtain more resources nor actual strategic value, so he began to shrink.