Take the warehouse back to the end of the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 160 War is approaching
On the Guanzhong Road in the Sanqin land, there is a county called Pinyang County.

This county is located in the center of Xi'an and Weinan prefectures.Located in the place of the Four Wars, this is also the hometown of Wang Jian, the god of war in the Qin Dynasty.

Since the sixth year of Tianqi, Pinyang County has been dry.Throughout the year, it hardly rains a few times.

Because of the drought, the land cultivated by farmers is basically useless.

At the beginning, many gentry gave porridge to refugees.But as time went by, these kind gentry couldn't afford it either.

In the general environment of the late Ming Dynasty, there were still too few good gentry.Most of them are vicious people who, in the name of helping refugees, force those self-cultivating farmers to sell their fields to them at extremely low prices.

Then, they sell the food needed by the refugees to these refugees at a high price.

From time to time, like a white wolf with an empty glove, the land was taken out of the hands of the refugees.

Those refugees who were hungry and cold and had no way to survive flocked to the county town at once.

But the county magistrate turned a blind eye and closed the city gate tightly in fear of being a bandit.

The gentry in the county went up to the tower, looked at the wailing refugees outside the city, even drank and had fun, and wrote poems and poems with the tragic events in the world.

"Bastards, these bastards don't want us in at all. They want to starve us to death." A skinny man in his thirties looked at the gentry and county magistrates who were drinking and having fun on the top of the city, and gritted his teeth. creak.

"Hey, hasn't it been like this from ancient times to the present? Who has seen us mud legs? That is to say, the master of the temple can live a little more comfortably at that time. At that time, the weather was good and the harvest was good. All year round Save a lot of money, in addition to paying taxes, you can also cut off a few catties of meat and a few catties of wine."

An old man over half a century old with gray hair and wrinkled face showed happy memories.

A war horse came slowly from the north of the county seat, and a tall man sat on the horse.

Behind him followed a dozen tall and strong young men.

"Uncle, look outside the county town, there are all refugees." Li Guo pointed to the refugees lying on the ground outside the city wall and moat, and said slowly to Li Zicheng who was directly in front of him.

Li Zicheng nodded, "These refugees are not refugees, they will be our soldiers from now on."

Li Zicheng waved the whip in his hand and hurried towards the county seat.

The followers behind him also followed closely behind Li Zicheng.

Since Li Zicheng participated in the mutiny, he changed his name to Li Zicheng.

And these entourages behind him were exactly the soldiers under him when he was in Ganzhou at that time.

Not long after the Ganzhou mutiny took place, it was surrounded and suppressed by the imperial court.And Li Zicheng and others were chased by officers and soldiers and ran around in Gansu.In desperation, Li Zicheng led his troops towards Shaanxi.

Li Zicheng had already come to Shaanxi years ago. He originally planned to join a certain gangster, but before he could seek refuge, the gangster was recruited by the court.

Li Zicheng, who heard the news, had no choice but to give up the idea and hid in Shaanxi for a while.

Although the thief was recruited, Li Zicheng never thought about joining the army from the beginning to the end.

From the point of view of joining the army in Ganzhou, soldiers not only cannot eat a full meal, but also have to endure the enslavement of the superior every day.

In Li Zicheng's view, being a soldier is not as good as rebelling.Anyway, they are trying to survive with their heads pinned to their waistbands, so it would be better to live comfortably as a thief.At least the thieves don't have so many constraints, they can do whatever they want, and go wherever they want.

During those days in hiding, Li Zicheng was always waiting for an opportunity.He didn't think that these rogues would surrender to the imperial court peacefully, and he firmly believed that there would be a day when these rogues would reappear.

Hard work pays off, Li Zicheng waited not long, and the thieves recruited by the court rebelled again.

As a result, his mind became active, and he wanted to find a relatively hard mountain to take refuge in.

But now he has nothing but a dozen or so hands.And which of those well-known leaders has thousands or tens of thousands of subordinates?

If Li Zicheng went to defect like this, he would definitely not be valued by them.Li Zicheng, who has a strong desire to be strong and competitive, is not reconciled to being a small soldier, so he thinks about where to do it again, first to improve his strength, and second to make his name famous.

"Uncle, why did you choose this place? It's too close to Xi'an Mansion, and Xi'an Mansion is Hong Chengchou's lair. If we make trouble here, wouldn't the soldiers and horses of Xi'an Mansion arrive in no time?" Li Guo Guo rode on the horse and looked at Li Zicheng suspiciously.

Pinyang County is only a hundred or twenty miles away from Xi'an Mansion, so Li Guo's worries are not unreasonable.

Li Zicheng said: "We came from Gansu, we haven't made our own name yet, and no one in Jianghu knows who we are. Our incident in Pinyang County is to make our name famous.

Remember, it doesn't matter whether you can conquer the city or not, the most important thing is to make our name known.Let the entire Guanzhong area know our name.Now the whole of northern Shaanxi has become a mess, and we can't squeeze in.We might as well give him Hong Chengchou a big fight in the hinterland of this pass. "

With that said, Li Zicheng whipped his horse's whip directly on the horse's ass, and hurried towards the county seat.

The county magistrate was sitting at the top of the city drinking wine with the gentry when he suddenly saw a cloud of smoke coming from the north.

"What's that?" The county magistrate pointed to the cloud of smoke and called a soldier guarding the city over.

The soldiers stood on the watchtower, looking in the direction of the smoke and dust.

"My lord, I can't see clearly. These people seem to be wearing the clothes of the Ming army." The soldier shouted at the county magistrate.

The reason why Li Zicheng and others wore official uniforms was precisely because it was convenient for them to do business.

Along the way, Li Zicheng did not know how many checkpoints he encountered.If it weren't for the clothes on his body, Li Zicheng might have been taken down long ago.

Li Zicheng stopped in front of the refugees and shouted to them: "Are you hungry?"

Many refugees lying half dead on the ground looked at Li Zicheng with puzzled faces. What do these people do?Why do you ask us if we are hungry?Isn't this nonsense?If you're not hungry, can you lie here?
Li Zicheng looked at the silent crowd, and said again: "I am not an official army of the imperial court, but a rebel army. Let me ask you a question now, are you hungry? Do you want to eat?"

Standing on the top of the city and watching all this, the county magistrate yelled in his heart that it was not good. Although this group of people were wearing Ming army clothes, they definitely were not Ming army.If they were the Ming army, why did they go directly to the refugees and encourage them.

This is a bunch of thieves!
The county magistrate was in a cold sweat, and he hurriedly shouted to the soldiers beside him: "Hurry up and send the soldiers to the city wall, these people are probably thieves!"

Seeing this, the gentry who were drinking and having fun on the top of the city ran down from the top of the city in a hurry, heading for their homes.

Half an hour later, under the extreme instigation of Li Zicheng and others, the breathing of the refugees lying on the ground gradually became rougher.

I don't know who shouted first, "We are almost starving to death, those gentry are still drinking on the top of the city, let's fight them!"

As soon as this remark came out, countless people responded.

"Fight with them, fight with them, we want to eat, we want to eat!"

Li Zicheng looked at these excited refugees, nodded, then drew out the long knife at his waist, pointed at the city wall, and shouted: "Go into the city!"

All of a sudden, countless hungry refugees rushed towards the city wall of the county with blind eyes.

……

After several days of conscription, all the soldiers Zhao Wen needed had been recruited.

And the school field in Longmen Fort couldn't accommodate so many personnel training for a while, so Zhao Wen built another school field in the outer city.

Today, there is a tense atmosphere in the air in the entire Longmen Fort.

Especially in ironworks, almost all the steel produced every day is used to make weapons and armor.

Except for Li Xiaoying and Hai Lanzhu, everyone in Longmen Castle was extremely busy.

The cement factory in Xuanzhen has been working overtime these days to produce cement. Most of the cement produced is bought by Hong Chengchou to strengthen the walls of Xi'an Mansion, Yulin Town and several other important cities.

"My lord, we have made more than 4000 sets of armor now, should we continue to make it now?" Liu Wenzhong followed Zhao Wen, looked at the extremely busy steel factory, and asked slowly.

Zhao Wen let out a long breath and said, "Fight, why not make them. At least [-] sets of these armors need to be made, so where are they now?"

"[-] sets? Why are there so many?" Liu Wenzhong looked at Zhao Wen suspiciously.

Zhao Wen walked on the path in the iron and steel plant, watching furnace after furnace of molten iron flow out of the blast furnace.

"My goal is an army of one hundred thousand, do you think these armors are enough?"

"A [-] army? My lord, we have to eat every bite. With our current financial and material resources, we simply can't support so many soldiers." Liu Wenzhong sighed.

Raising soldiers is different from managing the people. If you manage the people, you only need to give them a piece of land and food seeds, and they can support themselves.

The soldiers are different. If you want the soldiers to maintain sufficient combat effectiveness, they must be trained continuously.

It is impossible for soldiers to farm the land, and it will consume a lot of money during training. It takes a lot of money and food to feed an army of [-].

In Daming, the silver and grain consumed by an ordinary soldier throughout the year can at least support a family of four, not to mention that Zhao Wen's [-] army is a serious [-] elite soldiers.Even for today's imperial court, it would be difficult to support a hundred thousand elite soldiers, let alone a small Longmen Fort?

Zhao Wen turned around and looked at Liu Wenzhong, "Jiannu broke through the Xifeng Pass and entered the land of Gyeonggi. By then, how many unowned lands do you think will be there?"

"What does your lord mean to say, let Jiannu wreak havoc in the capital for a while, and then we come out to clean up the mess? By the way, get these lands into our hands and let the people cultivate them?"

"That's right, that's what I mean. Of course, the people in the capital can't be massacred by the slaves. These people are our best soldiers and the main force in growing food. At that time, we also have to Send troops to rob people with Jiannu. You know, what Jiannu likes to do most is to rob people."

Liu Wenzhong couldn't help nodding after listening to Zhao Wen's words.

"Although we have to do the same thing as building slaves, it's just that we don't rob people to enslave them, but we rob people to make them our fresh blood."

Zhao Wen looked at Liu Wenzhong and said slowly.

As time passed day by day, the atmosphere in the entire Longmen Fort became more and more tense.

The quilt factory in Longmen Castle has also stopped producing other things at this time, and is fully used to produce medical supplies such as bandages.

The raw materials needed by this quilt factory were bought by Zhao Wen from Shanxi merchants. After all, there is no cotton planted near Longmen Fort.

In the outer city of Longmen Fort, there are still several brewing workshops opened by businessmen, but they are now requisitioned by Zhao Wen to produce alcohol.

It is not difficult to produce alcohol, it is nothing more than processing alcohol with insufficient alcohol content through distillation.

Zhao Wen is also quite familiar with this. After Zhao Wen's simple transformation, several simple production lines for alcohol production were built.

At the same time, Zhao Wen also gathered the military doctors in the general and explained to them in detail how to suture the wound and simply treat the injury.

Although these things are very common in later generations, they are shocked as heavenly beings in this era.

"My lord, my lord, there is an urgent military situation!" Zhao Wen had just finished class for those military doctors, and before he even walked out of the classroom, he heard Zhao Daniu's muffled shout.

Zhao Wen came out of the classroom, looked at the anxious Zhao Daniu, and quickly asked, "What's the military emergency?"

Zhao Daniu did not come alone, beside him stood a man from Horqin wearing a robe who came from Horqin.

Zhao Daniu pointed to the man, and said to Zhao Wen, "My lord, this is a personal guard of Borzigit Khan from the Horqin Department, and he is here to deliver an urgent military message."

The man saluted Zhao Wen, and hastily removed a bamboo tube-shaped thing from his neck.

Zhao Wen took the bamboo tube, checked the sealant on the bamboo tube, and then slowly opened the bamboo tube.

Zhao Wen took out a piece of kraft paper from inside and examined it carefully.

After a few breaths, Zhao Wen stuffed the kraft paper back into the bamboo tube, and said to Zhao Daniu with a solemn face: "Let everyone gather, there is a big event!"

"Yes!" Zhao Daniu cupped his hands at Zhao Wengong, and then went out.

　Thank you 111 for the reward, thank you for your support, thank you everyone! ! !
　　
　
(End of this chapter)