Even Senggelinqin could not defeat him, and he had long heard of Wu Chaoyue's great reputation. Gong Deshu sent the big flag He Ziqiu to lead his army to fight Wu Chaoyue. He said that he was intercepting Wu Chaoyue to the north. His real purpose was to legally and reasonably get rid of the burden of miscellaneous soldiers and facilitate the maneuvering and flexible cavalry and infantry elites to escape.

Before sending troops, Gong Deshu had already explained this to He Ziqiu clearly, asking him to escape with a small number of elite soldiers who were on the market after he was defeated, and don't worry about the pale and thin mobs that let them die.

Because of this, Gong Deshu, who learned that He Ziqiu's troops did not disintegrate after being defeated, had gathered into an army again. He was ready to escape, and he was inevitably confused. He did not understand why He Ziqiu, who had always been obedient, violated the order.

Fortunately, the answer was quickly revealed by the messenger sent by He Ziqiu. The messenger not only reported the news that Wu Chaoyue's army retreated to Xinye, but also introduced the situation that the Wu army soldiers' combat effectiveness was greatly reduced because the bullets were afraid of rain. Gong Deshu was shocked when he heard the news and asked: "Wu Gouguan's foreign gun is afraid of water? How do you know this situation?"

"He Daqi said that it was told by the generals of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom."

The messenger replied truthfully: "When Prime Minister Li's men came to help us train the army, He Daqi got along well with them. He heard about the situation of Wu Gouguan's demon soldiers. He knew that Wu Gouguan's bullets were wrapped in paper, and he was most afraid of fighting in the rain. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Li and his friends were not lucky. They never rained when they fought with Wu Gouguan. This time, He Daqi led his army to fight Wu Gouguan. It happened to be raining, so he mustered up the courage to rush. As a result, there were not many gunfires on Wu Gouguan's side, and they only dared to use weapons such as cannons, palms and thunder to fight us."

Gong Deshu still felt unbelievable, and after carefully asking about the battle between He Ziqiu and Wu Chaoyue, after careful consideration, Gong Deshu suddenly strode out of the thatched hut used as the temporary command center, rushed into the wind and rain to look up at the sky.

The continuous rainy sky made Gong Deshu shake, and the sad wind blew around with the white rain, making it messy mist, sometimes big and sometimes small, but there was no sign of stopping. After standing in the wind and rain for a long time despite the kindness of the guards, Gong Deshu suddenly made up his mind and shouted: "Send the order for the entire army to advance to Xinye and find Wu Gouguan to fight to the decisive battle!"

"General, is it too risky?" the left and right deputy asked in surprise: "I heard from the people of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom that Wu Gou Official is more than twice as powerful as Senggelinqin. Are we sure we will go to fight him in a decisive battle?"

"If it rains heavily, you will beat it. If it doesn't rain heavily, you won't beat it." Gong Deshu said coldly: "If it can be beaten, you will fight it. If it can't be beaten, you will still have time to run away."

In this way, before even the rumors about our monks took effect, Gong Deshu, who was able to seize the opportunity, took the real infantry and cavalry of the Nian Army to strode westward and rushed towards Xinye with great momentum. After the Qing army scouts investigated the enemy situation and reported it to the monks, our monks were of course overjoyed. While leading the main force of his troops to move to Tang County to shelter from the rain, he patiently waited for the opportunity to take action.

Let’s take a look at the situation on Wu Chaoyue’s side. Although the storm and rain in Nanyang area stopped on the night after winning the first battle with the Nian Army, the next morning was swaying again. I was secretly glad that my decision was wise, Wu Chaoyue certainly urged the army to march towards Xinye as soon as possible. However, the muddy road caused huge trouble for the Wu army soldiers carrying heavy artillery and a large amount of food and supplies, which seriously delayed the speed of the Wu army and gave the monk prince messenger the opportunity to send the letter to Xinye City first. Therefore, when the Wu army soldiers arrived at Xinye City in a difficult situation due to the wind and rain, they had to face the big problem of whether they could enter the city.

He could not afford to offend the monk prince, but also could not afford to offend the powerful governor Wu Chaoyue, and the Xinye County Magistrate Ni Zhengxun could only kneel down to Wu Chaoyue and hold the letter from the monk prince in both hands. He almost explained his dilemma with a crying voice, and told Wu Chaoyue that if the Wu army must enter the city, he would never stop it. At the very least, he would just throw his head away. At the same time, Ni Zhengxun also clearly told Wu Chaoyue that it was because of the war that Xinye City was already crowded. If the Wu army had to go to the city, he could only ask Wu Chaoyue to expel some of the people in the city first.

Although he was not angry about what the monk prince did, with the last glimmer of hope, Wu Chaoyue went to Xinye City to check the situation. It was not an exaggeration to find that what Ni Zhengxun said was full of people in the city. Affected by the war, a large number of people outside the city fled to the city to take refuge. There were at least 70,000 to 80,000 people in Xinye City, which originally had only more than 10,000 residents. Not to mention that there were still free houses in the city, even the eaves could not be inserted into the needle.

"We set up camps on the high ground outside the city. We came to Henan to suppress Nianzi, not to harm the people."

Several times he was looted by the Nian Army, and the city below had already been burned to a white land outside the city, and the city could not be stationed. Wu Chaoyue, who cherished his reputation, could only settle for the second best and chose to set up camps in the highlands outside the city. Fortunately, the Wu army soldiers were often brainwashed by the virtues that must protect the people when they were trained. Although they complained a little, they obeyed the orders unconditionally. However, the Qing cavalry complained so much, but they were also suppressed by Duolonga. At least there was no situation where the Qing soldiers forced to enter the city.

After the establishment of the camp, Wu Chaoyue, who did not believe in gods and Buddhas, certainly, it was rare to ask Gods and Buddhas to pray for less rain. He begged Gods and Buddhas to bless him less, even if it was already the flood season, there was no need for such a continuous rain all day long, right? However, what made Wu Chaoyue laugh and cry was that the gods in the past probably used to punish themselves for not offering sacrifices to him. The rain stopped in the second half of the night, and there was still a little sunshine the next morning. Then, just afternoon, it started raining again in the sky, and the rain was quite considerable.

Wu Chaoyue and the Wu army soldiers were speechless. The Wu army scout had just discovered that the main force of the Nian Army was approaching Xinye. The heavy rain that had been about to stop for a few days suddenly turned into continuous rain. The rain was not too heavy, but it was possible to quickly wet the paper buns in the hands of the Wu army soldiers. Wu Chaoyue was forced to helplessly and could only strengthen the camp defense quickly and dare not dream of taking the opportunity to wipe out the main force of the Nian Army.

From top to bottom, they were poor and were not dragged down by heavy weapons such as artillery. The Nian Army marched extremely fast in the continuous rain. It took only more than a day to run from Tang County to the suburbs of Xinye. They carefully set up camps on the east bank of Lishui, and set up camps more than 20 miles away from the Wu army. Then, Gong Deshu, who was famously resourceful, built several solid floating bridges on the river where the water had risen greatly, and sent a small group of infantry to cross the river. With the cover of rain, he launched several tentative attacks on the Wu army camp to test the impact of the continuous rain on the combat effectiveness of the Wu army.

At first glance, he saw Gong Deshu's intention, but he had no choice but to grit his teeth and use cannons to kill mosquitoes, use expensive weapons such as grenades and grenade launchers to deal with these small groups of enemies. At the same time, Duolona also led the cavalry several times to sweep away the small group of Nian Army that dared to cross the river to harass the river. What Wu Chaoyue did not expect was that the Wu army patrol sentry was attacked by the Nian Army that night, and one person was killed and the other was missing. When the battalion official reported the situation to Wu Chaoyue, Wu Chaoyue didn't care much at first, but after looking at the battalion official, Wu Chaoyue suddenly remembered a big event. The soldiers of the battalion official happened to be recruits who had never been on the battlefield!

…………

The sudden arrival of Wu army fleet also shocked Wu Chaoyue himself, because Wu Chaoyue had never ordered the navy to go north to reinforce the terrain and was not suitable, and the navy could not send any effect when it came. So after receiving the news that the Wu army's navy's new camp suddenly arrived at Xinye Wharf, Wu Chaoyue was speechless and immediately ran to the dock to find Bian Dongwu, the battalion officer of the Xinjian Navy Bang, to settle the score. As soon as he met, he roared: "Bian Dongwu, who gave you the order? He asked you to bring the navy to Xinye? What was the order I gave you when I left Xiangyang?"

"Shuo Tai Lord calmed down. It was Mr. Shao's order, he said that you were affected by the rain..."

Before Bian Dongwu could finish his words, a tall figure suddenly rushed out of the crowd of Wu army naval soldiers in the wind and rain, and rushed directly to Wu Chaoyue. It was too late for Wu Chaoyue's personal soldiers to draw their guns. The man had already spread his arms and gave Wu Chaoyue a bear hug, and roared out a series of English that Wu army soldiers could not understand at all.

"Dear Wu, I finally saw you again!"

The personal soldiers could not understand English, but Wu Chaoyue could understand it. After being frightened, Wu Chaoyue looked at the blonde and blue-eyed foreigner opposite him carefully. He immediately hugged him in surprise and cheered: "Brown, my American friend! Why are you here too?"

"Wu, I want to thank you. I've made a fortune this time!" Brown, who is straightforward, did not answer Wu Chaoyue's question at all, but just shouted: "Because of your outstanding performance on the battlefield, the carbine and Colt revolver I promoted are very popular. Whether it is the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom or your local army in China, they are all rushing to buy weapons from me. Even Colt's damn Grandet took the initiative to increase my salary this time, and I'm going to become a rich man!"

"What about those guns I want? Have you sold them to other people?"

Wu Chaoyue was shocked and asked quickly, but Brown still answered the question irrelevantly and shouted at Wu Chaoyue: "Wu, I want to introduce you to a new friend. He is my comrade-in-arms during the war in Mexico and my friend. This time I met him in Shanghai again and told him about you. He is very interested in you..."

"Brown, let's talk about weapons first!"

Wu Chaoyue was so anxious that he was almost crazy. However, the foreigners' style of speaking and doing things was to like to be self-centered. Immediately, a tall blond man stood in front of Wu Chaoyue, and gave Wu Chaoyue a hat-taking ceremony regardless of the rain. He spoke in a stiff Chinese: "I'm very happy to know you, respected governor Mr. Wu."

When Wu Chaoyue was forced to return the greeting, Brown pulled Wu Chaoyue and pointed at the foreigner, saying like a machine gun: "Wu, let me introduce you to him. His name is Wall, a graduate of Noliyou University, is a damn villain who wanders around the world. He is now unemployed and is very interested in working for you. I hope you can hire him, whether it is a military instructor or directly on the battlefield to fight..."

"No problem, no problem, I hire, hire, dear Mr. Wall, you are my subordinate now, and I will give you a salary that will definitely satisfy you!"

Wu Chaoyue was too lazy to use his brain anymore, but he kept nodding like a chicken pecking at rice, then grabbed Brown and shouted: "Brown, if you are still my friend, tell me immediately, how about I want those damn weapons?"

"When I passed by Tianjia Town, there was a man named Zeng Guofan who claimed to be your teacher. I must sell all my weapons." Brown replied: "He also said that he could introduce more customers to me..."

Before Brown could speak, Wu Chaoyue's face was soaked by the rain and his face was already pale...

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Chapter completed!