The work of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army going to Hubei for disaster relief had entered the track. The Staff Department and command organs at all levels had obtained the complete action plan. Because the People's Party's cultural popularization work was in place, at least commanders at all levels could read orders. Once culture, originally high above, entered the grassroots, its power was unparalleled. Not only in the general direction, but commanders even checked and counted various equipment against records. "A good memory is not as good as a rotten pen tip"; this was consistently propagated in the army. Being able to write and calculate had long been nothing strange; an army without culture had no combat effectiveness. Grandpa Mao said so, and Chen Ke carried out this guidance to the end firmly.

Since the troops could operate normally, He Zudao, as the supreme commander, was relaxed before dispatching troops. At this time, You Gou came to visit He Zudao. As soon as they met, You Gou asked urgently: "Zudao, do you think local production in Hanyang can be restored within two months this time going to Hubei?"

He Zudao smiled and replied: "I can't calculate this kind of thing; after all, disaster relief is the main focus. Moreover, once industrial production in the Wuhan area is restored, I will report this matter to the Central Committee immediately."

Hearing He Zudao's gentle, frank, yet neither humble nor arrogant reply, You Gou sighed, "Before when we didn't have designs on Hubei, our National Defense Science and Technology Commission (NDSTC) was okay. Now the people in the NDSTC are restless, wishing to take over Wuhan's industry fully tomorrow. Zudao, although work has to be done step by step, I still hope you can understand our urgent mood."

"Haha," He Zudao laughed, "Sister You Gou, we are also very anxious. There are tens of thousands of Hanyang-made rifles in the Hubei warehouses, not to mention bullets. Going to Wuhan this time, the troops left many weapons for the 106th Division; everyone is also waiting to change equipment upon arriving in Wuhan."

A few simple sentences had thoroughly exchanged and communicated the positions and thoughts of both sides. You Gou already knew there was no need to talk about work anymore. Looking up at He Zudao, the feeling of a frail youth was completely gone. Although he was still not tall, that kind of introversion, steadiness, and sincerity was definitely not the appearance of a teenager.

"Zudao, going to Wuhan this time, the work must be very hard. You take care." You Gou smiled.

"Sister You Gou, you take care too." Although He Zudao really wanted to say something else, the current situation was completely not the time to talk about private matters. Having done political work for so long, He Zudao knew very well what result would come from saying inappropriate words at an inappropriate time. No matter what thoughts he had in his heart, He Zudao controlled his emotions very effectively.

You Gou was a woman after all, and had instinctive sensitivity to this kind of emotional matter. She smiled and stepped forward to pat He Zudao's shoulder, "Zudao, you have really grown up. Our NDSTC is waiting here for your good news."

On September 13, 1908, He Zudao led the First Regiment of the 104th Division of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army to set off for Hubei.

The deaths of Cixi and Guangxu didn't calm China down. On the contrary, various forces that had once done a lot of superficial work for their own interests all began full-scale operations to fully utilize this opportunity of change.

The Hangzhou Guangfu Society commanded by Qiu Jin, counting only the number of people, was also a force that could be counted in China at this time. Sitting on a force of more than three thousand troops, influencing nearly ten thousand men and horses within a province, it could already count as a Viceroy, or at least a Prefectural level force. But the more than three thousand people of the Guangfu Society made no move in Hangzhou during this period. After the once imminent crisis passed, the Guangfu Society from top to bottom wanted to enjoy the rare relaxation.

The war ended temporarily, and Hangzhou, as a trading center, finally restored a little economic circulation. For the Guangfu Society, which hadn't seen realistic benefits for a long time, this was simply a good thing dropping from the sky. Although Qiu Jin had wisely requested not to rob, only allowing normal tax collection. To ensure the execution of these orders, Qiu Jin grasped this matter strictly. It couldn't be said there were no results, but it didn't take much time for Guangfu Society members to degenerate into the "tax collectors" they once detested extremely. Picking up the Manchu Qing's set of tricks, the Guangfu Society could be said to be driving a light carriage on a familiar road.

Qiu Jin's indignation at this could be imagined, but the gap between "harboring the ambition to cleanse the world" and "actually cleansing the world" was something Qiu Jin hadn't anticipated originally. Ideals, especially ideals lacking effective technical means support, were always beaten to smithereens after facing reality.

The fatal weakness of the Guangfu Society lacking governing concepts and political ability was exposed extremely clearly at this time. The People's Party's intelligence agency belonged to the People's Internal Affairs Committee. Their profession was only professional intelligence collection officers, not professional government affairs personnel. Even so, these intelligence personnel couldn't help expressing great regret for Qiu Jin's behavior in the intelligence reports.

"Facing complaints from numerous small vendors, besides setting up various daily patrols, Qiu Jin personally led people to patrol Hangzhou every day whenever she was free. But according to our observation, Qiu Jin has never established the vision of a police system, nor does she have cognition of a police system. Her motivation for action seems more like adherence to the traditional thinking of 'eliminating violence and pacifying the good', rather than aiming to establish effective management of Hangzhou. The result is that the bad elements quickly figured out the patrol patterns; they only implemented various small-scale bad incidents after the patrol team passed. On the other hand, the patrol team nitpicked various small matters. Because the Guangfu Society law enforcement personnel couldn't position themselves correctly, most personnel had the mentality of considering themselves 'Blue Sky Grand Lords' (upright officials). Not only did it not help solve the actual problems they found, but it intensified and expanded these actual problems instead. The result is that these meaningless actions pursuing 'absolute justice judgment' not only lowered the efficiency of patrols but even made the Hangzhou common people view the patrol team as another kind of trouble."

The comrade who wrote this report was named Li Tianxia. Because of this report, Li Tianxia was even specially noted by Chen Ke. Only then did he learn that Li Tianxia was a young talent highly regarded by Lin Shenhe, the current Vice Minister of Public Security of the Base Area. But Lin Shenhe dared not stop Qi Huishen from poaching people, so he was poached from the Ministry of Public Security to the People's Internal Affairs Committee. Chen Ke knew his authority wasn't suitable for forcibly transferring personnel posts over the Personnel Department. He had to stop his action at the level of "paying attention".

However, criticizing Qiu Jin's actions with Li Tianxia's report was undoubtedly incomplete. The reason Qiu Jin put her energy into Hangzhou's public security was that Qiu Jin's action of requesting Guangfu Society comrades from all over Zhejiang to come to Hangzhou failed completely. Guangfu Society members in various places either controlled local political power in various parts of Zhejiang or suffered heavy losses and were unable to fight again. No matter which reason, the result was perfunctory coping with the Guangfu Society Hangzhou Center controlled by Qiu Jin. No tearing of faces, nor any substantial aid actions. Even Qiu Jin's request for them to provide bullets received no reply from anyone.

Facing such a situation, Qiu Jin could only do her best. She hoped to "handle well" the immediate matters in Hangzhou, so that when Tao Chengzhang returned with a large amount of aid, the situation in Hangzhou at least hadn't deteriorated.

By the morning of October 1, Qiu Jin once again led people she trusted to patrol. Just about to go out, she saw someone rushing into the Hangzhou Governor's Yamen sweating profusely and panting. As soon as he entered the door, the man shouted out of breath: "Mr. Qiu, Qing troops are attacking."

Qiu Jin was startled. To monitor the movements of the Shanghai New Army, Qiu Jin had already sent several groups of scouts. But the one coming to report wasn't those scouts, but a sentry in the northwest direction of Hangzhou. The sentry's alert range was only twenty li.

"Where are the troops from?" Qiu Jin asked hurriedly.

Hearing the inquiry, the sentry's voice already had a crying tone, "Don't know. Those Qing troops looked to be over a thousand. We reported immediately after seeing them. Unexpectedly, those Qing troops ran extremely fast. Although we were three or four li ahead, the Qing troops started chasing after seeing us, and they caught up. Other brothers were killed by the Qing troops; I ran faster, only then did I make it back."

The sentry's report just reached here when gunshots rang out outside the North Gate of Hangzhou. Qiu Jin couldn't care about questioning the sentry anymore. She shouted to the comrades gathering around her: "Hurry and notify others, close the city gates. Also, let the Dare-to-Die Corps follow me to the North Gate."

The Dare-to-Die Corps was the core force of the Guangfu Society. When attacking Nanjing, the number once reached around a thousand. But after the Battle of Nanjing, the Dare-to-Die Corps either died in battle, were injured and didn't withdraw, or followed Xu Xilin to bring up the rear. The current backbone of the Dare-to-Die Corps was less than one hundred soldiers who were injured when attacking Hangzhou and had to stay in Hangzhou. The total number was only about four hundred.

Qiu Jin had always been very reassured about this team. At such a critical moment, only the Dare-to-Die Corps could implement defense before the Qing troops seized the North Gate.

It took more than ten minutes for the Dare-to-Die Corps to rush to the North Gate. However, the Qing troops didn't plan to seize the North Gate urgently. When Qiu Jin ascended the city wall, she saw the Qing troops begin to line up outside the moat of the North Gate. There were already more than three hundred Qing troops facing the North Gate directly, and more troops were running over from afar. The clothing of these Qing troops should be New Army, but it was quite different from the attire of the Shanghai Qing troops. Many of them, especially officers, wore blue long trench coats. Don't look down on just adding this trench coat; this Qing army team immediately appeared much more dashing, with a style completely overwhelming the Shanghai Qing troops.

The Guangfu Society personnel on the wall were pointing at the strangely dressed Qing troops when they saw a team of horses galloping over. Outside the range of the Guangfu Society, the horse team stopped. The person in the center raised a telescope to look towards the top of the wall. From the blue military uniform and the yellow bands all over the shoulders, chest, and cuffs, it could be seen that this person was a high official.

Qiu Jin also picked up a telescope and looked down. Perhaps because people holding telescopes were a minority in both queues, Qiu Jin saw in the lens barrel that the telescope of that Qing army high official was aimed right at her.

Duan Qirui saw a woman holding a telescope standing on the North Gate of Hangzhou, looking at him with a telescope. He put down the telescope and asked: "I heard there is a woman named Qiu Jin in the Guangfu Society rebel party, right?"

The officer following Duan Qirui immediately answered: "Commander Duan, there is indeed such a person. According to the news we heard from Shanghai, this woman inevitably holds a Japanese sword at the front line every time she fights; she is very brave."

"Japanese sword?" Duan Qirui did vaguely see something like a Japanese sword hanging at the waist of the woman opposite.

"Wait for the troops here to arrive fully, fire a few rounds first." Duan Qirui ordered.

"Lord Commander, actually if we could run a bit faster just now, we probably could have seized the North Gate." An officer said regretfully.

"Consider them lucky; we don't have many cavalry. Moreover, they ran four or five li first, didn't we almost catch up too." Duan Qirui didn't care too much about this kind of purely luck-based thing. The war with the People's Party gave Duan Qirui a profound lesson: any advantage that seemed easy to get often hid a dangerous trap.

In the war between the Beiyang Third Division and the People's Party, the Beiyang Army used troop strength several times the size of the enemy to try to eat up small groups of People's Party troops, and without exception, all fell into traps. In the last battle, the People's Party's water and land forces gathered, and Beiyang was already at a comprehensive disadvantage, let's not talk about that. But when the two sides lined up frontally for combat, the People's Party didn't take any advantage in two battles.

If they had advanced rashly with light troops just now, and the vanguard couldn't fight into the city but was blocked at the city gate instead. At this time, if Beiyang invested more troops for the attack, the city gate would become a meat grinder. The Beiyang Army simply couldn't withstand such losses now. So Duan Qirui chose the frontal attack method for attacking Hangzhou this time; he wanted to use the Beiyang Army's sufficient training and experience to overwhelm the rebels inside Hangzhou city.

It took a while for the troops to assemble. The Beiyang Third Division rebuilt in Xuzhou had nearly six thousand men. Duan Qirui brought out more than three thousand elites this time. However, one thousand of them split off to outflank the south of Hangzhou city. When Duan Qirui stormed the North City, this force would launch a surprise attack. So remaining in front of Duan Qirui were only more than two thousand men.

Duan Qirui rode his horse to the front of the team and stopped, "Brothers, before coming to Zhejiang this time, I asked everyone if you were willing to seek wealth in danger! At that time, brothers said you were absolutely not afraid of death. Now facing this Hangzhou city, I ask again, are you willing to seek this wealth!"

"Willing!" The officers and soldiers of the Beiyang Third Division shouted in unison.

Duan Qirui shouted loudly with a gloomy face: "Why attack Zhejiang? I can tell everyone now. After the Empress Dowager and the Emperor passed away, in this world of the Great Qing, the only place our Beiyang can intervene is Zhejiang. Those princes in the court just find our Beiyang Army unsightly and want to stop our supplies. Lord Yuan is in Henan, but that place Henan can only support the other three divisions. Our Third Division is in Jiangsu; how Jiangsu treats us, everyone knows very well. Letting us not starve to death, they feel they have given us great grace. Are you willing to suffer this bullshit anger?"

"Absolutely not suffering this bullshit anger!" The officers and soldiers of the Third Division shouted in unison. When in Beijing, these officers and soldiers ate well and drank well, living a comfortable life. But ever since the defeat, such good days were gone forever. This was also the reason why these more than three thousand people were willing to follow Duan Qirui thousands of li to Zhejiang.

"Brothers, Zhejiang is in the hands of these Guangfu Society rebels. If our Third Division wants to turn over, it won't work without military merit. Seeking revenge on the People's Party isn't for this moment. Now the main force of the Guangfu Society rebels is inside this Hangzhou city. I won't say any nonsense about loving the people like children. Capture this Hangzhou city, and brothers will absolutely not return empty-handed. I, Duan Qirui, guarantee everyone here, the things taken will all be given to brothers. I, Duan Qirui, won't take a single coin. Are you willing to gamble for this wealth?"

Since losing to the People's Party, when the Beiyang Third Division learned they could keep their lives, everyone felt very lucky. But after being released, the officers and soldiers knew they would have no future anymore. The court would absolutely not have a good face for a defeated army. Fortunately, Xuzhou was Lord Wang Shizhen's territory, so at least they didn't starve. But compared to the previous life of the Beiyang Third Division, such a life was worlds apart. So when Duan Qirui wanted to take everyone to raid Zhejiang, quite a few people were worried and didn't choose to participate. But more than half of the officers and soldiers finally chose to follow Duan Qirui on the expedition to Zhejiang.

After entering Zhejiang, the Third Division didn't encounter armed forces like the People's Party, and everyone's hearts in their throats slowly dropped back into their stomachs. And today when chasing those Guangfu Society scouts, everyone still ran leisurely, afraid of falling into an ambush. Unexpectedly, even so, they still almost annihilated the Guangfu Society scouts. This fact greatly encouraged the courage of the New Army.

Now hearing Duan Qirui's clear indication, the officers and soldiers roared in unison: "Willing!" "We are willing!"

The wealth of Jiangnan far exceeded the imagination of the Beiyang Army officers and soldiers. Not to mention the warm and humid climate, along the way the Beiyang Army marched hard, the patches of fertile fields on both sides of the road, and the clothing of the people by the roadside, obviously the area around Beijing city couldn't compare. Once Hangzhou city was taken, how many good things were inside the city naturally didn't need to be said. Moreover, Hangzhou city was in the hands of rebels; everyone didn't need to worry about so much after the battle. Plus Duan Qirui's guarantee, the Beiyang Army's morale was really a hundredfold.

"Good! Since everyone is willing, I won't say more. Start attacking the city!" Duan Qirui turned his back to Hangzhou city and issued the order.