Daming kill

Chapter 28
Xiangyang's geographical location is very tricky.

It borders the Han River in the north, the Yanggu Mountain in the south, and the inflection point of the Han River in the east. Only the land in the west can pass normally, which is a typical example of being easy to defend but difficult to attack.

Xiangyang City is roughly square, but it is not facing the true north, but tilted about 30 degrees to the left.

The reason for this feature may be that the west wall of Xiangyang undertakes the most important task of land defense, and it must form a right angle with the Han River flowing obliquely to the northeast to optimize the defense.

From the map, the Hanshui River from the northwest began to arch obliquely upwards when it reached Xiangyang, and then made a super large inward bend and then meandered south. This large turn is a bit like a right angle Bloated a big bag.

This big round bag has a large area, about 20 square kilometers, and the terrain is high and roughly flat.The bottom of Dabao, which is the southeast entrance, is blocked by a small mountain composed of Yanggu Mountain and Xian Mountain, making the land in the entire big turnaround a roughly closed place, and the flat road exit is naturally only to the west. and south along the river.

The land passage to the south is very narrow and long due to the long Xianshan Mountain running north-south along the Han River and adjacent to the river, and there are many shallows, which is a taboo for military strategists.

Xiangyang City was built on the widest westward land passage along the river, covering an area of ​​about 2.5 square kilometers, and almost completely blocked this passage. The southeast corner of the city is only a few hundred meters away from the northeast corner of Yanggu Mountain. , In fact, it is equivalent to sealing off this passage, and it also makes the land in the entire big bag relatively safer.

Then, to the west of Xiangyang is Yanggu Mountain and Wanshan Mountain, and then there are endless mountains that are difficult to reach, which further optimizes Xiangyang's overall defense posture.

It is all of these that have made Xiangyang an eternal city and a strategic support for defending the north.

Because of leaving the city, Li Ping established a basic concept of Xiangyang's geography for the first time, and he could only leave the city from the west.

However, after returning from the mountainous area in the west, which was dozens of miles away, Li Ping was not in a hurry to enter the city through the west gate. Instead, he led his soldiers and horses along the northern edge of Yanggu Mountain to the south of Xiangyang City.

He was going to a place, a new garrison.

It is impossible for the small area in Xiangyang City to accommodate his current large number of troops.Maybe it's okay to squeeze hard, but the army must have a place to train besides living, so he can only find another spacious place to garrison for himself.

Then the place where the army is stationed cannot be too far away from Zhao Jin, nor can it violate the general principle of stationing troops in Xiangyang, so it can only be the suburbs of Xiangyang.

Because the total area of ​​Xiangyang City is only 2.5 square kilometers, after more than 200 years of relatively peaceful development in the Ming Dynasty, the city has long been unable to accommodate the growing population, and naturally it is impossible to accommodate more troops.

At this time, Xiangyang City was like most cities at this time. A large number of chaotic dwellings eventually emerged outside the city. Even its most famous Iron Buddha Temple was located outside the west gate, and some permanent military camps were built as a matter of course. Out of town.

In fact, the largest permanent military camp in Xiangyang was built at the innermost corner of the Han River in the east of Xiangyang City, covering a large and safe area.

Therefore, it is not a problem for Li Ping to choose the southern suburb of the city inside the big turnaround.

The reason why I want to come to the south of the city is that there is an almost half-ruined house near the Yanggu Mountain, which is some distance from the south gate, and more importantly, it is still a land without owner.

Li Ping ordered Ma Yong to come back early to find this place with the people they rescued, and mobilized the soldiers and horses who stayed at home to occupy it in advance. He is now here to inspect and accept it.

As soon as he arrived, Li Ping fell in love with him, and Ma Yong did not disappoint him again.

This half-ruined land is composed of several adjacent houses, which should be the settlements of several wealthy households. It is backed by a small hill with many branches of Yanggu Mountain, with a total area of ​​about tens of acres.

It was destroyed during Zhang Xianzhong's capture of Xiangyang last year. It is a little remote and it is said that this disaster was caused by the guidance of the local poor. In addition to being slaughtered and looted, it was also burned and looted. Not only were there few houses left, Even the courtyard walls are mostly incomplete.

The original owners here either died or fled and never came back, because some refugees and people occupied the place afterwards.

Thanks to Zuo Liangyu's crazy orders, almost all the refugees and common people occupying this place have escaped these days, which allowed Li Ping to take advantage of it.

Although there are few buildings that can live in, Li Ping still likes it very much. What he needs is enough land and freedom.Otherwise, if these houses were still largely intact and the damage was not particularly severe, so many nobles in Xiangyang City would have already taken possession of them.

It's just a bit uncomfortable to rebuild again, and it's working with the ruins again, but thinking about the small and pitiful place in the city that is not much different from a refugee camp, the future here is more worth looking forward to, and the sheep that are close at hand There is still enough wood on Kushan.

But after hastily arranging the basic construction matters, Li Ping hurried back to the city with a few people. There was still a lot of follow-up work to be done, such as food and a large number of left-behind personnel.

But the more important thing is that he needs to communicate with Zhao Jin face to face. Such an important decision can't just be informed by someone, and he still doesn't know Zhao Jin's attitude.

But as soon as he returned to the city, Li Ping immediately found out how timely and correct his decision was, because Zhao Jin was distressed by the serious disproportion between the area of ​​the residence and the demand.Their originally small and empty camp was miraculously filled with all kinds of strange dwellings, and it was as chaotic as a crowded grocery market.

Although he had heard about it in advance, what he saw with his own eyes still surprised Li Ping.

Of course, Zhao Jin couldn't be idle for more than ten days. In addition to putting part of his energy on walking on the opposite side, he also thought of a lot of crooked ideas, and went out to the nearest city a few times, successfully expanding the number of hundreds of people. There are more than ten people, and now the total number has reached about 400.

But with so many people plus the more than 200 people left behind by Li Ping, and some troops from Li Shengcai and others, it's no wonder it didn't crowd into a sea of ​​chaos.

Then, as far as Li Ping knew, Shi Ming and Wang Chengwu had already moved out. If those two guys were there, there would really be trouble here.

Shi Ming and Wang Chengwu came back right after Li Ping left, and they brought back nearly 1500 people, as well as a lot of food and livestock.

No one knows how they did it, and they are not interested in talking about it at all. They just know that the more than 100 people they brought disappeared and injured a lot. Their experience is not simple.

And it is very puzzling that among the more than 1500 of them, more than 400 are young women, and they don't know why they are so idle.

What's even more interesting is that after they came back, they only distributed dozens of old, weak, sick and disabled to Liu Shixiong and his wife, who were honest and honest at home. As for Li Shengcai, they didn't get any dividends.

Moreover, the distribution between Shi Ming and Wang Chengwu was also very disparate. Not only did Shi Ming occupy all the women, but Wang Chengwu only got about 1000 of the more than 300 young and old men, but it seemed that Wang Chengwu did not have any dissatisfaction.

But no matter what, if so many people return to their palm-sized place, it will undoubtedly be a disaster.

Therefore, they only entered the city with a small number of people at first, and Wang Chengwu stayed outside the city temporarily with most of them.

After briefly understanding the situation with Zhao Jin, Liu Shixiong, Li Shengcai and others, Shi Ming became very interested in the intersection of Li Ping and Huang Chengdong, and immediately went to the slaughtered street to check the situation.

At that time, most of the street and the alleys on both sides were still empty, and only a small part of the place facing the street seemed to be occupied by the dignitaries in the city.

After exploring the empty and dark alley, Shi Ming suddenly made a crazy move.He quickly left the city and brought in all the people from outside the city, and then very rudely occupied all the vacant places on this street.

Zhao Jin was shocked by Shi Ming's reckless behavior.

He is very clear that it is not a trivial matter to set up a private camp in a strategic city like Xiangyang without the Supreme Order. This is often regarded as a challenge to Shangfeng's authority. In this era, it may be lost. head!

But when he knew it was too late, Shi Ming had already finished his work, and the night was coming, the city gate was closed, and it was too late to make amends.

Apart from being uneasy, Zhao Jin could only pray for a miracle to happen.

As a result, a miracle really happened.

So far, everything has been calm, even if Zhao Jin went to Zuo Menggeng's house more frequently, he still didn't hear anything about it.

Shi Ming, who was a little scared by Zhao Jin's statement, quickly became lively again. It is said that Liu Shixiong and Liu Shengcai also planned to move there in two days. too much.

But Zhao Lanyue didn't plan to go, she and Gao Lei would stay.

Nominally, she is taken care of by Zhao Jin, which is how Zhao Jin's name of loyal protector comes from.If she also ran over, it would be easy to be intimidating, and it might cause real trouble. After all, this is an era that pays great attention to the order of honor and inferiority.

Regarding Li Ping's plan to leave the single pass, Zhao Jin did not express any surprises, the reality can only be like this, and Li Ping's choice of a new location is also relatively safe, so Zhao Jin is also the first to Ma Yong and others. action has given some support.

In the future, there will be only Zhao Jin and Song Baolai in their initial camp, and this will basically become an independent camp for the guerrilla Zhao Jin, and the land conflict will be effectively resolved. After all, Song Baolai has few people under his command.

That's right, Song Baolai is now the weakest.

After Li Ping entered the mountain, Song Baolai, who was lonely and monotonous, basically took the initiative to help Zhao Jin, but Zhao Jin often went alone to make friends and didn't pay much attention to him.

Later, Song Baolai simply concentrated on building the camp in the camp. At present, the 800 people here are able to live here safely. It is more than half of his credit, but his own soldiers are still only those 8 people.

You know, even Li Shengcai has hundreds of people under his command.

Although this guy went out with Shi Ming for two days and came back by himself inexplicably, he also brought back dozens of men, women, children, and children belonging to him, and after he came back, this kid continued to toss around, and he also got the total number of people. With a number of more than 100, it is considered small and has some strength, at least it is much better than Liu Shixiong and his wife who rely on Shi Ming's help and have never achieved anything.

Then, when Li Ping counted the troops, he found that he had more people.

When he went to the mountains to collect food and soldiers, some residents from the city and suburbs came to vote. These people were mainly relatives and old friends of the Liusan neighbors he rescued last time. His reward for doing good deeds is really quite good. quick.

It is estimated that those people were also frightened. Anyway, Li Ping has more than 100 more people.

Li Ping roughly estimated that there were more than 500 of his men, including young and strong, and more than 400 women, craftsmen, old and weak. It's a big problem again.

In this way, their newly established six summaries and one bodyguard team have basically formed a new pattern, and I am afraid that there will be no major changes in a short time.

After Zuo Liangyu's armies have been frenziedly recruiting strong men during this period, there is basically no pure land in the entire Xiangyang area, and almost all the people who can be recruited have been recruited. There are already clusters of camps gathered around Xiangyang and Fancheng , It may not be easy to recruit soldiers again.

After Zhao Jin had a brief exchange with Li Ping, he also rushed to report to Zuo Menggeng. He planned to report that his tribe had reached 4000. Of course, he made a false report, in order to take the role of a guerrilla. And it shouldn't be a problem.

These days, Zhao Jin spent a lot of time circling around the top all day long. Although he spent a lot of money, he achieved great results. He unexpectedly got Zuo Menggeng's allocation of food, grass and ordnance.

Although there are not many things or even worth mentioning, this represents a kind of recognition. Coupled with their current total strength, this guerrilla should be stable.

With people, the most important thing left is to eat.

And this problem does not seem to be very prominent at present, because the rice in Xiangyang is about to mature.It is now the end of July in the Gregorian calendar, and the early rice is about to mature.

Although the weather at the beginning of the year was warm and mild, which caused the rice to mature late, and there was a drought and less rain, but the legend of "the lake is ripe and the world is full" is not true. Although the rice production in Xiangyang is far from the past, But it is not a problem to solve the urgent need.

In particular, Xiangyang not only grows rice, it is also the largest wheat-producing area in Huguang, and the planting area of ​​wheat even exceeds that of rice.The wheat was just harvested more than two months ago, and it was the time when ordinary people had surplus food in their homes.

Zuo Liangyu completed the expansion of manpower before the very critical time node, and also possessed the strength of a new round of looting.

(End of this chapter)