The red sun hung high in the sky, and the wilderness was silent.
Suddenly, a man's shout came from a small path on the side of the official road.
"Stop!"
"Catch her quickly, don't let this little girl run away!"
After a while, a petite woman wearing a floral dress staggered out from the small path. The floral dress was covered with mud, and there was even a scratch on the knee where traces of blood could be faintly seen.
The young woman looked flustered. As she ran forward desperately, she turned her head to look behind her from time to time, as if there was a group of demons behind her.
The people following behind the young woman were naturally not demons, but three men. They were not old, and the oldest was only in his early forties. Judging from their appearance, they were dressed like farmers nearby.
The only special thing was that these farmers had white strips of cloth tied around their heads and arms.
"Ah ~ ~ ~"
Perhaps because she was too flustered, the young woman was careless and did not pay attention to the road under her feet. She tripped on a stone and staggered twice. In the end, she could not stand steadily and fell to the ground with a plop.
Seeing this, the men behind her were overjoyed.
"Haha, let's see how you can run now, little girl!"
As they spoke, the three of them sped up and were about to capture the young woman.
A look of despair immediately appeared in the woman's eyes. She was already prepared to accept her fate.
At this moment, a rhythmic sound of hooves suddenly came from the end of the official road. Hearing this, a strong desire to live burst forth in the woman's eyes again, and she shouted loudly, "Help!"
"Help!"
When the three men heard this, their expressions instantly became gloomy, and they immediately sped up, wanting to hurry and drag the woman into the small path that they had just come from.
Unexpectedly, the sound of hooves arrived in an instant.
They saw a group of well-equipped knights coming from the official road, and the leading knight was holding a golden dragon flag.
When the three men saw the golden dragon flag, their faces instantly turned pale.
Everyone in Shanhai City knew that the golden dragon flag represented the arrival of the Marquis.
"So f * cking unlucky!"
Seeing this, the three men were about to abandon the woman and flee into the forest while cursing. Unfortunately, at this moment, a sharp arrow pierced through the air and blocked their way.
The arrow was stuck three inches in front of them. Presumably, this was just a warning. If they dared to take another step forward, the arrows would greet them.
For a moment, the three men were so scared that they broke out in cold sweat, and their faces instantly turned pale.
At the end of the day, they were just ordinary farmers. What knowledge and courage did they have?
After a while, the leading knight arrived with his team. He looked down from above and shouted, "How dare you! How dare you abduct a civilian girl in broad daylight!"
One of the young men stood up and said, "Sir, sir, this woman is this lowly one's wife. She was disobedient and wanted to run away from home, so this lowly one caught her and brought her back."
"Oh?" Hearing this, the leading knight did not believe it. He turned to look at the woman who was begging for help and asked, "Is what he said true? Don't worry, we're the personal guards of the Marquis of Lian Province, we'll naturally seek justice for you. "
Hearing this, the woman's eyes lit up and she said miserably, "Sir, save me!"
"Speak!"
"This man is indeed my husband, but it's not that I'm disobedient. It's this damned bastard who wanted to use me as a sacrifice to be buried with the Heavenly King." The woman replied.
"Buried with the Heavenly King?" The knight frowned, "Tianjing will take care of the Heavenly King's funeral. What does it have to do with you?"
"This …" Hearing this, the woman was a little hesitant.
"If you want to live, tell me the truth!"
However, the knight felt that something was wrong, and his expression became stern.
Seeing this, the young woman disregarded the man's wink and said resolutely, "I dare not hide it from you, sir. When the Heavenly King passed away, the followers of the Holy Church spontaneously held a funeral for him. One of them was to choose a young woman as a sacrifice to be buried with the Heavenly King. "
Speaking of this, the woman's expression suddenly became sad and indignant. She pointed at the young man who just spoke and said, "This damned bastard, because there are no unmarried women in the village, he dared to target his wife. This woman had no choice but to escape from the village. "
"Ridiculous!"
Hearing this, the knight flew into a rage. He knew that this matter was unusual.
"Guards!"
"Here!"
"Tie them up, interrogate them properly, and then hand them over to the Marquis!"
"Yes, sir!"
Needless to say, this group of knights were members of the Divine Guard, the vanguard of the army.
When Ouyang Shuo received the news, he immediately ordered the army to temporarily stop advancing and reorganize on the spot. The three captured men, including the woman, were handed over to the Bureau of Military Intelligence for interrogation.
They were all ordinary people, so how could they withstand the torture of the Bureau of Military Intelligence? They all confessed in an instant.
Things were just as the woman said. Throughout Xunzhou County, when the followers of the God Worshipping Church learned that the Heavenly King Hong Xiuquan had passed away, they spontaneously offered sacrifices and sent the Heavenly King off.
This kind of behavior basically happened in the remote villages, so it was not noticed by the local authorities.
What shocked Ouyang Shuo even more was that according to their confessions, even some of the gentry and officials in the city secretly went to the villages to attend the funeral.
It seemed that although Hong Xiuquan had died, the God Worshipping Church that he founded had truly taken root in Xunzhou County and had a strong foundation of believers.
It would be difficult to eradicate it in a short period of time.
This was undoubtedly a very dangerous signal for the rule of Shanhai City. Even Ouyang Shuo did not expect the remnants of the church to be so rampant.
It seemed that he could not delay going to Tianjing City to oversee it.
Therefore, Ouyang Shuo immediately decided to leave a company of Divine Guards in charge of thoroughly investigating this matter. The army sped up and advanced towards Tianjing City.
In the battle of Gui Ping Pass, less than two thousand barbarian soldiers of the First Mountain Barbarian Independent Regiment led by Shi Hu survived. Excluding those who were seriously injured, there were less than one thousand five hundred people left.
And the Divine Guard also suffered heavy casualties in the battle of Gui Ping Pass.
Therefore, Ouyang Shuo simply merged all the surviving soldiers of the First Mountain Barbarian Independent Regiment into the Divine Guard, thus restoring the Divine Guard's establishment of three thousand people.
Although these barbarian soldiers had not undergone special combat training, they were definitely first-rate soldiers. Merging them into the Divine Guard would not weaken the Divine Guard's combat strength.
On the other hand, merging them into the Divine Guard was also the highest reward Ouyang Shuo could give these soldiers.
Of course, the temporary designation of "First Mountain Barbarian Independent Regiment" also disappeared. As for the young general Shi Hu, he was transferred to the Second Mountain Barbarian Independent Regiment and continued to hold the position of commander.
Ouyang Shuo did not mistreat the surrendered soldiers who had participated in the defense of Gui Ping Pass. He incorporated all of them into the Leopard Tao Corps led by Han Xin.
During the reorganization of Wuzhou County, the Leopard Tao Corps had a vacancy of over a thousand people. Coupled with the several battles before and after, although they had not been seriously injured, there were still normal casualties of five to six thousand people.
Therefore, even after the Taiping soldiers were reorganized, the Leopard Tao Corps still had a vacancy of a few thousand soldiers.
It was not only the Leopard Tao Corps. The Dragonxiang Corps, the imperial guard corps, and even the first city guard corps stationed at Mulan Fortress all had vacancies and urgently needed to be filled.
These vacancies were naturally made up of the surrendered soldiers of the Taiping Army.
In the battle of Mulan Fortress, they had captured more than one hundred and twenty thousand soldiers from the Southern Road Army. In the battle of Xunzhou County, the three armies had captured more than forty thousand local garrison troops.
They had defeated the Western Army led by Shi Dakai and captured more than ninety thousand people.
Finally, there were the one hundred thousand Taiping soldiers waiting to be reorganized in Tianjing City.
Altogether, there were more than three hundred and fifty thousand Taiping soldiers waiting to be reorganized. This did not include the prisoners of war that would appear later when Bai Qi led the Dragonxiang Corps to sweep through Zhen 'an County.
If Shanhai City wanted to defend its vast territory, it had to completely digest this batch of surrendered soldiers.
The head of the military affairs bureau, Du Ruhui, was already personally guarding Mulan Fortress. She was responsible for reorganizing the two hundred and fifty thousand Taiping soldiers detained in the fortress.
Her main task was to eliminate some seriously injured soldiers, including some soldiers with low combat ability. Secondly, with the cooperation of the Military Intelligence Bureau and the Black Guards, she had to dig out the malignant tumors in the army.
Among the three thousand surrendered soldiers at Gui Ping Pass, there were many die-hard followers of the Heavenly King. It was not difficult to imagine how many dangerous people were hidden among the hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
If they did not clean them up, how could they talk about reorganizing?
During this time, the interrogation experts of the three intelligence agencies, the Military Intelligence Bureau, the Black Snake Guards, and even the newly formed Mountain Sea Guards, almost all gathered in Mulan Fortress.
They would investigate the hundreds of thousands of surrendered soldiers one by one according to the clues.
There was no doubt that this would be a huge white operation, but they had to do so.
Even so, Ouyang Shuo could not guarantee that after this purge, the remaining soldiers were all trustworthy. There would definitely be some people hiding in the army.
As long as it did not affect the overall situation, Ouyang Shuo had the courage to boldly use this batch of surrendered soldiers.
Of course, according to the usual practice, this batch of surrendered soldiers would not exist in an organized system. Instead, they would all be disorganized and reorganized into the three major armies.
Some of the soldiers with relatively poor qualities would even be organized into the garrison divisions of various places. At the same time, the elite soldiers of the garrison division would be transferred to the field army.
Therefore, this would be a systematic reorganization project that involved all aspects of the army. It would take at least two to three months, or even longer, to really reorganize all the soldiers.
It was precisely because of this that Ouyang Shuo could not launch a war against Guilin County.
On the 30th of November, Ouyang Shuo led his troops to Tianjing City.
The fall of Guilin County caused the atmosphere in the city to become strange.
At this point, the ministers of the Heavenly State suddenly realized that there was actually someone in the southwest who could challenge Shanhai City. For a moment, undercurrents were surging in the city.
Fortunately, Yang Xiuqing had a strong will, and the situation was temporarily stabilized.
But the arrival of Ouyang Shuo forced this undercurrent to a dead end.
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