The eyes of the masses are sharp, regardless of which camp they belong to. Wang Ziming was originally placed by Yuan Shikai beside Feng Guozhang. After Zhejiang Governor Zhu Rui was assassinated, Feng Guozhang simply arranged for Wang Ziming to take the position of Zhejiang Governor. Wang Ziming was quite greedy for power and position; even though he knew this was inappropriate, he still took office. Upon learning that the People's Party had easily breached the defense line set up by the Beiyang Army in Western Zhejiang, he decisively chose to flee. As someone who had been a governor, Wang Ziming was smart; he didn't choose to foolishly abandon the city and flee directly. Wang Ziming first arranged for his subordinates to strengthen the defenses, and he himself pretended to inspect various city walls, even punishing several squads for defensive loopholes caused by panic.

After putting on a full show of defending Hangzhou City to the death, Wang Ziming took his own subordinates out of the city for inspection. He didn't bring his wife and children, nor did he bring large boxes of belongings. Wang Ziming's personal guards only carried a few small bundles. He truly inspected the defenses outside the city, and Wang Ziming returned to the city again to arrange several military affairs. He showed his face multiple times before disappearing.

Wang Ziming was very clear that if he didn't do this and ran away directly, the result would be that the Beiyang Army in the entire Hangzhou City would immediately collapse. Collapse was sooner or later; the People's Party, capable of annihilating over a hundred thousand Japanese troops, could certainly easily crush Hangzhou's defenders. Since that was the case, from the perspective of Wang Ziming's interests, a Zhejiang full of defeated soldiers was even more dangerous. Rather than that, it was better to let the Beiyang Army defending Hangzhou become the People's Party's target, while Wang Ziming seized this opportunity to withdraw to Shanghai first.

Such decisiveness indeed bought time for Wang Ziming. The Beiyang Army, kept in the dark, indeed held on for less than twenty-four hours more. But after failing to find Wang Ziming multiple times, the Beiyang Army also realized what happened. The Beiyang Army in the east of the city was the first to choose to flee for their lives. The Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army facing these routed soldiers received the order: "Do not let a single one go."

Routed soldiers are more terrible than bandits. This matter, proven countless times in history, had also been encountered by the People's Party. Back then, after releasing the captured Beiyang 3rd Division, these Beiyang soldiers, who had no weapons in their hands, also turned into routed soldiers after marching, looting the common people around Xuzhou along the way. The purpose of the Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army entering Zhejiang was to eliminate the counter-revolutionaries in Zhejiang, not to let the flames of war poison Zhejiang. What's more, the hands of these Beiyang troops were stained with the blood of too many masses in Western Zhejiang.

"Fire!" The commanders on the front line all received the order. A fire net composed of machine guns and rifles instantly covered the Beiyang routed soldiers fleeing out of the city. The Beiyang Army originally thought that the People's Party did not have many troops outside the city. Soldiers dragging their guns thought they could escape by bypassing the People's Party's positions blocking the city gates. When they suddenly discovered a large number of Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army soldiers appearing from many places, bullets were already whistling towards them. Those running at the very front were knocked to the ground in patches. Those who died directly suffered less pain; the wailing of those who didn't die immediately scared the Beiyang soldiers behind them into screaming and turning around to run back into Hangzhou City.

The appearance of routed soldiers meant that the military organization inside the city had already collapsed. Some very lucky guys were not killed immediately, and the Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army immediately captured a very small number of lucky ones. After interrogation, the news that Zhejiang Governor Wang Ziming had privately fled shocked the comrades.

As the mastermind and one of the main executors of the April 12th Massacre, Wang Ziming occupied a position in the top three on the blacklist listed by the People's Party this time. This was an important figure who must be seen alive or dead. The routed soldiers didn't know much; they had no will to fight in the first place. After hearing that Hangzhou Governor Wang Ziming had already fled, everyone simply scattered in an uproar. As for when Wang Ziming ran, where he ran to, or where he had run, they naturally knew nothing. Even whether Wang Ziming had really fled, the routed soldiers couldn't be completely sure.

While tightening military deployment, the comrades on the front line also passed the latest situation to the headquarters.

Attacking Hangzhou was the 39th Army under the establishment of the 5th Field Army. Corps Commander Zhao Weiguang said: "Since we can't determine Wang Ziming's movements, let these routed soldiers determine who is still in the city first. Those inside the city absolutely cannot be allowed to run away."

Dealing with the Beiyang Army, there was no need to worry too much about troops in other places mobilizing for rescue. Plus, with air force reconnaissance, the Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army's 39th Army left no reserves at all, but dispatched all twenty thousand troops to completely surround Hangzhou City.

The battle in the east of the city alarmed troops in other areas, and the news quickly spread. Ji Ye, who was a liaison officer in the north of the city, soon received the news. Ji Ye rushed into the affiliated division headquarters, "Division Commander Liu, please suggest to the Corps Commander to immediately dispatch a search team to arrest Wang Ziming."

Division Commander Liu looked very serious, "Comrade Ji Ye, catching Wang Ziming is not just your personal wish, but also one of the missions of this war."

Hearing Division Commander Liu's words, Ji Ye breathed a sigh of relief. If she couldn't catch the executioner Wang Ziming, her heart could never be at peace. However, Division Commander Liu's next words surprised Ji Ye slightly. "Comrade Ji Ye, there is always a question of priority in things. The purpose of waging war is to win the war. Only after the war is won can the follow-up actions of arresting counter-revolutionaries take place. So I suggest you carefully consider the priority of this issue. Do not let personal thoughts affect the process of this war."

Ji Ye was also a smart comrade. She soon discovered that when she barged in, a discussion meeting was taking place inside the division headquarters. The staff officers and commissars whose normal work was interrupted by Ji Ye did not look at Ji Ye with malicious eyes, but a trace of blame was inevitable. "Ah! I'm sorry to disturb the comrades' work." Ji Ye couldn't help but blush.

The difficulty of the battle against the Southern Beiyang Army was not high. By the afternoon of that day, after the follow-up 40th Army troops followed up, the 39th Army, which had already deployed its attack positions, immediately launched an attack. The reorganized Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army had undergone large-scale personnel transfers and training. Experienced troops, besides supporting new troops with personnel, also put great effort into training.

Assault firepower composed of light machine guns, rifles, grenades, and accompanying artillery easily tore the enemy's defense line to shreds. The Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army paid only a very small price to storm the city wall and occupy key high grounds. Looking down from above, the troops saw the enemies rushing about like wolves in the gradually shrinking encirclement. They tried to find a road to escape, and every attempt to find one failed at the cost of several lives.

Large numbers of Beiyang troops subsequently surrendered. The spearhead troops divided Hangzhou City into pieces along the streets and bridges of Hangzhou. The nights in August were still short; at past eight in the evening, the sky had still not completely plunged into darkness. The Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army's combat camouflage uniforms and the Beiyang Army's all-blue military uniforms were extremely easy to distinguish. Looking down from above, one could see that wherever the red flag of the Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army pointed, the Beiyang troops, whose numbers were far greater than the Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army, threw down their weapons one after another and knelt to surrender.

Some Beiyang troops who continued to rush about like wolves also lost their will to fight. After seeing the Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army's troops, they turned their heads and ran. But there were more and more Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army soldiers inside Hangzhou City. After running back and forth for a while, surrounded by black muzzle openings and snow-bright bayonets, these guys also surrendered.

After losing Wang Ziming's command, the Beiyang Army basically couldn't talk about such a thing as morale anymore, and the battle proceeded extremely smoothly. After the sky went completely dark, the real resistance broke out at the assembly site defended to the death by the Zhejiang Assembly.

That bunch from the Zhejiang Assembly knew that the People's Party would absolutely not let them go. During the April 12th Massacre last year, the people of the Restoration Society's Western Zhejiang Branch were killed miserably, but the remaining group withdrew to the People's Party as an organizational unit. The assembly members were all clear that even if the People's Party let the people of the Zhejiang Assembly go, the Western Zhejiang Branch that killed its way back would not let the assembly members of the Zhejiang Assembly go. There were quite a few in the Zhejiang Assembly who had played with guns. They weren't good at leading troops to fight, but they still had the confidence that killing one was breaking even, and killing two was earning one in the end.

The order the troops received was to capture these reactionary ringleaders alive. Facing the desperate resistance of these people, it was not difficult to turn these counter-revolutionaries and the Zhejiang Assembly building completely into powder with devastating firepower. Under the circumstance that the war had already been won, the issue of capturing them alive should be considered more.

The attacking troops discussed it; trying to catch all these guys without one dying was not realistic. At the moment, they could only kill as few enemies as possible. After the troops readjusted their deployment, first one red and two green signal flares rose into the sky. Then, several dazzling new stars suddenly burst out in the sky. The flares, looking down from above, illuminated a huge area centered on the Zhejiang Assembly in the night as if it were day.

The heavy machine guns moved into position opened fire fiercely at the assembly's courtyard wall. Bullets punched bowl-sized deep pits in the courtyard wall, or simply penetrated the wall and hit directly inside the courtyard. Fragments of bricks and stones and gray dust took on the appearance of thick smoke in the air. The enemy firepower guarding the assembly site was instantly weakened to almost negligible. The attacking troops, wearing dust-proof goggles, began to crawl forward taking advantage of such a situation.

As the flares fell to the ground, the vicinity of the assembly recovered darkness slightly. Less than ten minutes later, several more flares rose into the sky again. The Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army's heavy machine guns continued to chisel fiercely on the wall. Several sections of the courtyard wall were forcefully cut off by bullets, swaying and falling towards the inside of the courtyard. With the rumbling sound of the walls falling to the ground, thicker smoke rose from inside the courtyard.

The heavy machine guns near those courtyard walls stopped firing. The soldiers who had already reached the vicinity of the courtyard walls took three steps as two and rushed to the person-high courtyard wall. The soldiers in front placed wooden ladders on the gaps, and the soldiers behind climbed over the wooden ladders and jumped into the courtyard.

Ji Ye had also followed the troops to the enemy's final stronghold at this time. Seeing the soldiers swarming in, she pulled out her pistol and wanted to rush inside too. The comrades on the front line saw from Ji Ye's neck-length short hair that she was a woman. Someone immediately grabbed Ji Ye. "Don't go!"

Ji Ye thought this was a comrade worrying about her safety. Before she could say some ruthless words about personally taking revenge even if she died, the comrade who held her said: "You are not from the unit, so don't go and disrupt the unit's order."

It turned out she was looked down upon! Ji Ye instantly felt a myriad of flames of anger. She was, at any rate, someone who had fought in Nanjing and withstood the attack of Wang Youhong's army of ten thousand together with hundreds of People's Party and Restoration Society warriors. Just then, the sound of charge bugles rang out almost simultaneously from all sides of the Zhejiang Assembly site! This was the order to attack. Every soldier immediately raised the weapon in their hands and charged towards the gaps where the enemy could no longer be seen.

The comrade holding Ji Ye paused slightly, let go of his hand, and charged forward with his unit. Delayed by half a step, Ji Ye also merged into the torrent composed of soldiers and launched a charge against the final fortress of the enemy's desperate resistance inside Hangzhou City.

Cai Yuanpei once thought he understood war, or at least thought he understood how to command a war. When the People's Party imposed real war upon Hangzhou City, Cai Yuanpei discovered that he actually didn't understand war at all. Cai Yuanpei knew "an army burning with righteous indignation is bound to win". After the Beiyang Army lost its highest commander, not only did it not show the posture of "sorrowful troops" under the unfavorable situation, but it collapsed entirely. The only ones in Hangzhou City who could be commanded were actually a group of assembly members, and the garrison troops locally in Hangzhou still under the control of the Restoration Society.

Cai Yuanpei also knew "speed is precious in war" and "move like a escaping rabbit, still like a virgin". When Hangzhou City was in a mess like a pot of porridge, the People's Party held their troops still, and no news could be found at all. Then the attack began simultaneously from all directions. Various news arrived one after another. The People's Party breached the North Gate, South Gate, East Gate, West Gate. The People's Party attacked into Hangzhou City. The speed of the war situation's changes was even faster than the imagination of the entire war situation Cai Yuanpei built in his mind. By the time Cai Yuanpei truly determined the war situation, the People's Party had already begun to besiege the Zhejiang Assembly.

The siege battle was even more beyond Cai Yuanpei's imagination. The new gadgets that illuminated the Zhejiang Assembly site like day radiated dazzling white light in the sky, so bright that the naked eye couldn't even look directly at them. The battle was not the blade-against-blade, spear-against-spear slaughter in imagination. The People's Party's firepower was not a battle line, but individual firepower points. At every point, the People's Party unleashed ammunition of terrible density. That was simply not an attack, but a storm composed of bullets.

Cai Yuanpei also went to the front line personally. Of course, at this time the straight-line distance between the "rear" and the front line was only over two hundred meters. The People's Party's circular attack turned the front, back, left, and right of the assembly into front lines. In the places where dense bullets reached, they could turn a person into a sieve, into fragments. Cai Yuanpei saw with his own eyes a brave assembly member who, because he accidentally exposed himself under the People's Party's concentrated fire, had his head, shoulders, arms, and upper body instantly turned into something like a ragged cloth amidst violent shaking. As if that wasn't flesh, but a pile of rotten mud. The assembly members and the participating garrison troops didn't dare to lift their heads, and then the People's Party suddenly swarmed in from the gaps in the collapsed walls.

Those guys from the Zhejiang Assembly who had dared to carry guns forward to fight desperately in despair, when the People's Party soldiers charged into the assembly courtyard shouting the slogan "Disarm and no killing", facing the black muzzle openings and the bayonets on the rifles that shone under the light above their heads as bright as day, those people raised their hands honestly and surrendered. As for those soldiers of the Garrison Command, they surrendered obediently while coughing and shouting "Sir, don't shoot".

All this was the reality that Cai Yuanpei saw with his own eyes and experienced personally. And all this made Cai Yuanpei feel a sense of unreality. The distance from the position where the People's Party launched the attack to the Zhejiang Assembly was such that if a prominent figure in Hangzhou put on airs slightly, the time spent on the road would greatly exceed the time of the People's Party's attack.

Those People's Party soldiers wearing strange clothes and wearing steel helmets fluently finished off all resisters and resolved the battle. If not for the fact that these people were shouting Chinese, Cai Yuanpei wouldn't even be able to associate them with Chinese people. As a great scholar, Cai Yuanpei was still willing to seek truth from facts. He was surprised to find that it was not until the People's Party's army appeared before his eyes that he understood he had never known he was fighting against such a powerful force before.

Before Cai Yuanpei could think much more, he saw a woman wearing a strange patterned military uniform and carrying a pistol appear in front of him. After identifying carefully, Cai Yuanpei finally recognized that this was Ji Ye, a capable general of the Western Zhejiang Branch.

Ji Ye shouted: "Surnamed Cai, the blood debt you owe has finally come to the time to be repaid!"

This voice was not too loud amidst a chaotic noise, and then Cai Yuanpei saw Ji Ye raise her pistol and want to shoot him, but was then pulled away by several People's Party soldiers. Unknown why, Ji Ye's action of wanting to kill him instead made Cai Yuanpei feel a burst of relief. This was the only person Cai Yuanpei considered familiar in this intense and strange night, and also the only matter Cai Yuanpei could understand and imagine with his reason.