Five days later, on July 28, Zeng Guofan arrived in Nanjing from Anqing. That night, Zeng Guofan first interrogated Li Xiucheng, before which he had communicated with Zhao Liewen and others, Zhao Liewen through the conversation with Li Xiucheng keenly realized that Li Xiucheng had the desire to survive, he reported this important information to Zeng Guofan.
When Li Xiucheng came in in wearing shackles, Zeng Guofan deliberately looked at the other party for a long time, pretended to be very kind, and then said in a pitiful tone: "Are you Li Xiucheng, you are also a good man." pity! Pity!" Then he said, "Ren Jieye, if you don't meet your confidant early, so be it." Lee was suddenly touched and said to be crying. At this time, the stubbornness he was clinging to finally dissipated. Zeng Guofan ordered Li Xiucheng to be removed from handcuffs and shackles, treated him, and placed in a confinement room.
Then the two had a long conversation, zeng Guoquan beat to death and could not figure out why Li Xiucheng, who had been unsmooth before, was so cooperative in front of the eldest brother, there were questions and answers, everything was known, and the two were completely judged before.
In fact, Li Xiucheng did not buy Zeng Guoquan's battle, first, he tortured him to extract confessions, Li Xiucheng ate soft and did not eat hard, the more you want to find a sense of achievement and superiority in me, the more you do not cooperate with you, second, as a loser, in the strict sense, he is not counted as Zeng Guoquan's prisoner, but two greedy villagers have exploited the void, so Li Xiucheng does not agree in his heart that Zeng Guoquan defeated him.
But Zeng Guofan pushed his heart, a sentence "do not meet the confidant early" made him suddenly think of all kinds of distrust encountered in the kingdom of heaven and the difficulties of the Hong brothers, instantly broke the defense, survival is instinctive, such as meeting the confidant and the lord is more hopeful, so Li Xiucheng is willing to cooperate with Zeng Guofan.
Two days later, Lee began writing a confession. "Confession" is meant to be a narrative to the authorities. By the way, it was originally a neutral word, not a pejorative one. However, since the founding of the People's Republic of China, new Chinese historians have renamed "Li Xiucheng's Confessions" to "Li Xiucheng's Autobiography" or "Li Xiucheng's Self-Description" to show that they stand in the position of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. In fact, although Li Xiucheng wrote that there were individual actions, in the enemy's cell, many of the words were insincere, deliberately distorted, and flattered, and could not be regarded as personal autobiographies or self-statements, but could only be counted as "confessions." The "confessor" is confessed by the interrogator also.
Li Xiucheng's confession wrote about the beginning and end of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, important figures and his main activities, and the so-called "Ten Mistakes of the Heavenly Dynasty" and other failure factors. After Zeng Guofan's second conversation, he wrote another "Ten Points for Surrender".
Li Xiucheng's confession was written very carefully and conscientiously, and in order to preserve the confession for the interrogators, he also worked using words to make sentences. It was written for ten consecutive days, up to 50,000 or 60,000 words, which attracted the attention and discussion of people at that time and in later generations. After Li Xiucheng was captured, he thought that his identity like his was bullied and insulted, and he would undoubtedly be killed. Unexpectedly, Zeng Guofan was very kind to him, went to his shackles, treated him with courtesy, which was very unexpected, so in the confession, he touted the Zeng brothers everywhere, whenever he mentioned them, he showed the emotion of gratitude to Dade everywhere, and it was not uncommon for him to be flattered, and when mentioning the Xiang Army, he also praised them, saying that they were steady and brave. And in order to show his extraordinary, but also everywhere slandered non-Xiang military departments, such as the Huai Army, the old Xiang camp and the green camp, etc., he said that it was worthless, and after Li Hongzhang read the deleted version of the public release, he was angry and angry, and also vented to Zeng Guoquan, which means why he did not delete the words that slandered him.
Li Xiucheng said a lot of such things, and he was also quite numb, but what he did not expect was that his opponent was Zeng Guofan, a veteran of the officialdom who had been through the world for a long time and had experienced politics, and after a little thought, he had already understood Li Xiucheng's ulterior motives, Li Xiucheng was really too naïve, and he did not consider that the more he flattered and poured ecstasy into ecstasy, it was counterproductive, especially the widely circulated words of his persuasion to Zeng Guofan to become emperor, which had committed Zeng's great taboo, and Zeng Guofan would next consider how to deal with Li Xiucheng reasonably.