Shi Kefa, who was in Ningguo Mansion and was defeated by the rebels before, has been holding his breath and waiting for the rebels to be returned ten times as much as one day, and now most of the rebels have been defeated by the Three Guards and all fled west and south, how can this Shi Butang let go of this golden opportunity?

But after Shi Kefa was defeated and retreated to Ningguofu, the official army that was re-pulled up against the rebels who were in a hurry to escape was defeated in a battle, and was besieged by the rebel regiment in Shibi Mountain and could not escape, and the harmful Cheng Mingjiu had to drive his division to Ningguofu to rescue Shi Kefa. After the rebels saw the Three Guards chasing all the way, they somehow got the courage to return to the division to fight again, but they were beaten in disarray. Perhaps it was Shi Kefa's vulnerability that made the rebels think that the victory of the official army might be a fluke, but after the battle of Shibishan, they scattered and fled when they heard about the Three Guards.

After the siege was lifted, Shi Butang was ashamed, and after collecting the remnants, he followed the rebels all the way to Tianmu Mountain on the border of Nanzhili and Zhejiang, and was defeated again in the first battle. Fortunately, this time, Shi Butang's work has improved, and he was not bitten by the rebels.

What made Mi Yan smack his tongue was that this Shi Butang fully explained what it means to be defeated and defeated repeatedly, although there were some demoralized remnants of the defeated generals under his command, they still followed the rebels to death, and after a long time, the rebels did not dare to leave the area of Tianmu Mountain easily, for fear that if the Three Guards were brought again, there would be no good fruit to eat. It is precisely because of this that Cheng Mingjiu spent about seven days in Ningguo Mansion to help Shi Kefa relieve the siege, and the reason why Cheng Mingjiu did not make every effort to encircle and suppress the rebels entrenched in the area of Tianmu Mountain is mainly due to two reasons, one is that he has to spend a lot of experience to recover the lost land in Chizhou Mansion and Huizhou Mansion, and at the same time, he also has to set up a civil defense battalion to screen the officials and gentry who defect to the enemy. Because in the past, Cheng Mingjiu carried out military orders, and after he had an order, he let go of his hands and feet to fight. This time, however, it was very different from the past, and Li Xin's military order to Cheng Mingjiu was extremely vague, on the one hand, he wanted to attack the enemy, and on the other hand, he wanted to restore local law and order.

Naturally, there was no problem in attacking the enemy, but restoring local law and order gave Cheng Mingjiu a headache, so he pulled Mi Yan to help him plan in Chizhou Mansion for a long time, which was one of the reasons why Mi Yan and the Pingbo fleet delayed their return to Nanjing.

After Mi Yan concisely told Li Xin about Cheng Mingjiu's attack on the southwest of Nanzhili, he analyzed the situation in Zhejiang.

"The rebels have reached the northwest of Zhejiang, and that group of sub-officials should now be like ants on a hot pot."

Li Xin nodded and said: "I also received a letter from Xiong Mingyu the day before yesterday, saying that it was difficult to investigate and handle cases in Zhejiang, but fortunately, with Lu Jiu, he would not be killed by Zhejiang officials!" ”

Mi Yan was worried, "The stakes are high, life is at stake, if the officials in Zhejiang are forced to be anxious by Xiong Mingyu, they may do such crazy things." To tell the truth, I really have a heart for General Lu for a while, after all, he is deep in the tiger's den, if one of them loses his mind, he may have to catch the other party's way, and that Xiong Mingyu is a person with an unclear background, although now it is on the surface of us, but for a while, who can see clearly what is going on in this person's heart? ”

Speaking of this, Mi Yan exhaled a long breath, "It's okay now, the thieves are approaching Zhejiang, Hangzhou Mansion is only a hundred miles away from Tianmu Mountain, if the waterway dries up in winter, the cavalry can arrive." Under heavy external pressure, Xiong Mingyu and General Lu have become hot figures in Hangzhou at this moment, who would dare to harm them? ”

Mi Yan is right, Zhejiang is the most important link in Li Xin's southeast port to open up to the sea, and only when the four provinces of Nanzhili, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong reach an agreement will the opening of the port to the sea be of key significance. Fujian has a powerful clique of half-official and half-thief pirate merchants, while Zhejiang has a bureaucracy that is not far behind the southern Zhili. Li Xin's handling of Nanzhili is not enough for outsiders, in fact, Li Xin's cronies around him have also clearly seen the hardships and thorns in the past six months, and even participated in it themselves. If you follow this method of throwing a mouse, and finally grasp the situation after talking about an all-out struggle, I don't know how much time and energy it will take.

And time waits for no one, although Li Xin is on the riverbank, he has always been worried about the situation in the north. The Central Plains had been completely eroded, and the central court of the Ming Dynasty could directly control less than only Beizhili, Shanxi, and a part of northern Shandong.

The people's economy of Beizhili is the worst of the three provinces, after several times of building slaves and knocking on the customs, the heaviest suffering is Beizhili, the people are displaced, and countless people are ruined and killed. This was followed by two years of severe drought, with no crops in the fields and a huge wave of refugees flocking south of the Yellow River, which was one of the reasons why Li Zicheng, who had been wandering in the Central Plains for a generation, repeatedly suppressed it. Relatively speaking, the situation in Shanxi is much better, with the foundation left by Li Xin, the crops are covered with jade wheat and a firepower irrigation system as a guarantee of harvest, and industry and commerce have also made great progress under the green light of a year, and the tax and silver collected are dozens of times as much as in previous years. Therefore, Li Xin judged that Shanxi would become a lifesaver for the Beijing court. Especially after the north-south traffic of the Grand Canal was cut off, Shanxi became the single place with the greatest wealth in Beijing.

When the news of Zhu Youzhen's use of Lu Xiangsheng to regain both sides of the canal had just reached Nanjing, Li Xin had great confidence in this. However, the outcome of the war was far beyond human expectations. Since the Fifth Battalion of the Revolution Zuo seized the anointed land of Huainan and Huaibei, its strength has flourished, and it even faintly has the momentum of approaching Li Zicheng's momentum.

Lu Xiangsheng fought a tug-of-war with the 5th Battalion of Gezuo near Xuzhou for more than two months, and there was no size to advance.

This made Li Xin stunned, is this still the battle-hardened Lu Xiangsheng? He even faintly felt that this one of the few remaining loyal and capable ministers of the Ming Dynasty was a little worried. The emperor sitting in the Forbidden City has always been known for being suspicious and fickle, mean and unkind, and Lu Xiangsheng has not done anything for three or two months, but he is afraid that he will not be able to tolerate him under the resentment.

After the Pingbo fleet returned to Nanjing, the situation in Nanzhili and Jiangxi was completely pacified. At this time, Gao Shiming, the prison army who had been touring between Su Song and other mansions, also returned to Nanjing just right. He went south this time to give orders to the Huguang and Jiangxi regions, mainly against the rebellion of King Huai.

Now that the lost territories have been recovered one by one, King Huai and the rebels have also fled into the mountains, regardless of whether Gao Shiming has a finger to participate, when the credit that belongs to him will be solid, steady there, can't run away, and no one can take it away.

However, at this moment, Gao Shiming's mentality has changed considerably from when he just went south. When he first came to Nanjing, he was always cautious and showed a low profile everywhere, which also ushered in a good reputation for him. And Gao Shiming is also happy to be so, and it is easy to get a great achievement by playing in the mountains and rivers, so why not do it?

In Gao Shiming's view, Long Live Lord sent Lu Xiangsheng to recover the Grand Canal from Jining, Shandong to Yangzhou, and he definitely chose the most suitable person. Therefore, when he ventured to Nanjing by sea boat, he still had more than ninety percent confidence in recovering both sides of the canal and resuming north-south traffic within ten months. But as he traveled to Zhenjiang, Suzhou, Songjiang and other places for a long time, none of the news he got about the war in Jiangbei could make people happy. In this case, most of the time for the sightseeing is not interested, and the mind does not belong.

In the end, as the situation in Jiangbei continued to erode, Lu Xiangsheng could not advance an inch in Xuzhou, and he had no size. This makes Gao Shiming sit on pins and needles, in the final analysis, as a eunuch, he has a natural dependence on the emperor in the Forbidden City, no matter how beautiful the place outside the town is, the roots of people like them are in the Forbidden City, in the emperor's place. If once the connection with this root is severed, they are like kites with broken strings, and all the sources of power are lost, then who cares about a eunuch among the local civil and military officials?

It is this natural dependence on Beijing and the ever-present sense of crisis in his heart that makes Gao Shiming feel tortured like never before. At this moment, the news of the defeat of the rebels of Taiping Mansion by the Three Guards came, and at the same time, all the overt and covert means of Li Xin to clean up Wei Guogong were also passed on by secret agents one by one. Gao Shiming finally made up his mind and returned to Nanjing. He saw in the vacillating attitude of the officials in Nanjing something extremely obscure, and these obscure things were a sharp sword that cut off his natural connection with Beijing.

Therefore, after some consideration, he decided to test the attitude of the Nanjing officials towards him, and at the same time, the thigh of Li Xin, the marquis of Zhenqing, must be firmly embraced, after all, the two had an extremely pleasant cooperation experience in Taiyuan, and he also owned shares in the trading company that included almost all the Jin merchants. All in all, Li Xin in the rumors of the outside world is mean and unkind, which is very different from Li Xin in Gao Shiming's impression.

In Gao Shiming's eyes, Li Xin is still a person who misses and takes care of old feelings, and can even be said to be a little pedantic and indecisive. But these are not the temperaments that a hero should have, but they did not affect him step by step to the pinnacle of power. As long as Li Xin still cares about the old friendship, then his Gao Shiming's position in Jiangnan can at least be firmly maintained. At the same time, he was also glad that he was not too high-profile after getting this errand out of the two provinces in the south of the Yangtze River, but behaved with his tail between his legs. Although it is inevitable to make the eunuchs in the palace laugh, this kind of caution has produced a lot of positive effects for his clearance today.

After all, there was no quarrel with the officials in Nanjing, and those people would not have the heart to put themselves in a desperate situation. However, soon Gao Shiming's heart hung in the air, because Li Xin actually refused his request to see him under the pretext of euphemism.