After a night of silence, the next day, the weather cleared up. Yue Fei summoned Huang Zuo and the leader of Hanwanzi Village, Guo Tai, again and asked them to continue southward along Dongting Lake to sweep, attack, and surrender the water villages along the lake. Then he personally led 5,000 troops to follow them. At the same time, he also ordered Ma Gao and other generals to immediately go southward to the Yuanjiang River and the Shushui River, and march towards the Hunan area and the Xiangshui River by land to capture cities and territories.

On this day, Huang Zuo and others again surrendered two camps and broke through the two camps. Among them, the leader of another large camp, Yang Qin, also chose to surrender when he was caught off guard. At the same time, Wang Gui also defeated Chen Yang.

On the fourth day, Yue Fei, who had crossed the Yuan River, did not go to Chenyang City. Instead, he did not stop for a moment and ordered the entire army to mix with Huang Zuo, Yang Qin, Guo Tai and others, and attack the eight water forts between the Yuan River and the Shu River at the same time. He once again led Wang Gui in the front and marched towards Yiyang County on the bank of the Shu River, while he continued to supervise the army behind and kept advancing.

At this time, the Song army was able to ride horses, and Zhang Shuxiang was able to fulfill his promise and sit upright on his horse, advancing with Yue Fei's central army.

The Prime Minister had relaxed a lot at this time, but as news of the capture of water strongholds came one after another, Yue Fei once again spoke wildly:

"From this point of view, it won't take ten days, but seven or eight days to succeed. We can fight a decisive battle tomorrow or the day after tomorrow and defeat Zhong Xiang."

Zhang Jun had agreed not to speak first, so he just frowned when he heard this.

Yue Fei, of course, had to take care of his leader's mood, so he took the initiative to ride side by side and explained to Zhang Deyuan: "Zhong Xiang is originally from Dingzhou. He is currently in Yuanjiang (the name of the county, the location of the old mouth of Yuanjiang River, on the peninsula sandwiched between Dongting Lake and Chiting Lake, not the river water). He moves slowly. If he could not have noticed his actions the day before yesterday, he should have noticed his behavior yesterday, but there was no movement at all. This is something I did not expect. Therefore, if we can successfully sweep the eight strongholds today, Zhong Xiang will be in a desperate situation, and we can defeat him tomorrow!"

Zhang Jun finally showed his joy: "If we can capture Zhong Xiang, this battle will be a victory!"

Yue Fei shook his head repeatedly and seriously corrected:

"What you don't know, Prime Minister, is that even if we take on the bandit leader, we're only halfway there. We still have to see what Yang Yao does."

Zhang Jun didn't understand again, but he didn't dare to ask, so he turned around to look at Bi Jin behind him.

Bi Jin did not dare to delay and immediately stepped forward to act as a tour guide.

It turned out that Zhong Xiang was a shaman passed down from the ancestors of Dingzhou, known as the Great Sage Grandpa. He also set up a community near Dongting Lake, collecting money and grain in good years and helping the poor in bad years. His influence was huge, so he was a natural rebel leader, the kind that could not be shaken.

But to be honest, such a person, in essence, could not break away from the situational mentality of the gentry and the witch family... Therefore, when the rebellion was at its peak, its influence once affected more than a dozen state armies in Hunan and Hubei. But under that situation, he did not think about making progress, and only handed over all the front-line affairs to Yang Yao. Instead, he hurriedly proclaimed himself king in his hometown of Dingzhou, built a palace in Yuanjiang County, and selected a princess for his son Zhong Zhiyi. He wanted to find a woman with a special horoscope to carry on the family line, so that his family's foundation of the King of Chu could be passed down from generation to generation.

Therefore, there were actually two actual leaders of the Dongting Lake Rebellion, one was Zhong Xiang and the other was Yang Yao.

"Prime Minister, you don't know that when we first came to Hubei, we heard a joke." Bi Jin was young after all, and he was getting more and more familiar with Zhang Jun. After explaining Yang Yao's special leadership status, he kept talking. "It was said that Prime Minister Zhong had a large family, and after becoming king, he wanted the whole family to enjoy the good life together. The beds for the family to sleep on must be inlaid with gold and jade, but they couldn't get enough after conquering more than a dozen counties, so they always asked people to find them from the rebels everywhere... In the end, the rebels in Xiangyin were harassed by him so much that they had to recruit craftsmen, collect gold and jade, and build a batch of gold-inlaid jade beds for the King of Chu, and that was the end of the matter."

Bi Jin's words seemed to express his disdain for Zhong Xiang. However, when Zhang Jun heard this, he was not only unhappy, but also frowned, making the former embarrassed for a moment.

In this way, the vanguard of the Imperial Camp advanced towards Yuanjiang County in great strides. Good news came one after another along the way. First, under the mixed attack of Huang Zuo and other surrendered people in the front and the vanguard of the Imperial Camp in the back, the rebel water strongholds along the lake in Dingzhou could not hold on. Three of them surrendered and five were broken. As expected, only the isolated army, isolated city and isolated stronghold of Zhong Xiang in Yuanjiang remained in Dingzhou. Yue Fei's military progress fully met expectations.

But that was not all. As Yue Fei's troops entered Yuanjiang County, in the afternoon, Wang Gui suddenly received an even more exciting news:

While attacking Yiyang, the deputy commander of the imperial army suddenly discovered that Yang Yao was leading the main force of the rebels in the Xiang River Basin to cross the Zishui River from the lower reaches, apparently to rescue Dingzhou and Yuanjiang River. Wang Gui pretended not to know and continued to attack the city even though he had already controlled one of the city gates. When Yang Yao hurriedly led 7,000 to 8,000 troops to rescue Yiyang after crossing the river, Wang Gui turned around and met him. The two sides fought fiercely in the field. Yang Yao only held out for half an hour before his army was defeated and driven to Yuanjiang River by Wang Gui.

Just now they were saying that only by capturing Zhong Xiang and Yang Yao together could the rebellion be ended, and now Yang Yao has walked into the trap himself... Naturally, everyone was excited.

However, when Zhang Jun heard that the war situation at the front was beyond his expectations, he was not happy at all. Instead, his face became even uglier, as if he had other ideas in mind.

Soon, as Yue Fei did not take any emergency measures and only sent out messengers to order the troops from all locations to gather and encircle the enemy and not to advance without permission, the prime minister who had not spoken actively throughout the whole process finally could not bear it anymore.

The grass was green and the birds were singing. The waves of Dongting Lake were rippling slightly. Zhang Deyuan suddenly stopped his horse beside a reed marsh that was unknown how many acres wide. Then he called out to the other party:

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