Empire

The sun was shining brightly, the air was filled with heat waves, and a cavalry team was slowly marching along the bumpy official road.

"Damn, the sun is too strong, my skin is almost sunburned."

Zhang Bao, who was sitting on his horse, wiped the sweat off his head with his sleeves and couldn't help cursing.

"There is no water in the ditch. I am afraid it is another severe drought."

Wang Hu, who was walking side by side with Zhang Bao, looked away from a barren field not far from the official road, looking worried.

Although Wang Hu had grown from a farmer to an officer of the Qinghe Army, he naturally understood the suffering of farmers. In such dry weather, crops would not survive without water.

"Who says it's not? I don't know how many more people will flee."Zhang Bao also sighed.

The weather was extremely hot, and the officers and soldiers of the Ninth Battalion could have rested in the camp outside the provincial capital.

But they received a military order from the commander-in-chief Zhang Dayuan the day before yesterday, which was to send their Ninth Battalion out to collect food.

Now the number of their entire Qinghe Army has snowballed to more than 200,000 people. Soldiers are mixed with the elderly, the weak, women and children. Every day, people eat and horses chew, and the food consumption is very high.

They could have relied on the strategy of fighting to support the war, and relied on seizing military rations from the hands of the dynasty army to make up for the shortage.

But now the dynasty army has confronted their army on the front line of Qingyang Prefecture, and Wang The army of the Qing Dynasty neither attacked nor retreated, just wasting time. As time went by, the food pressure of the Qinghe Army increased sharply.

Faced with the problem of food shortage, the commander Zhang Dayuan was also overwhelmed, so he had to send out grain collection teams to various places to collect food and grass.

However, the months of war in Qinghe Province caused many places to become a scorched earth, and many towns and villages were empty, making it extremely difficult to collect food.

Chen Ziang burned down the deputy marshal's mansion because of a fire. Although the commander Zhang Dayuan did not make it public, he also found an accusation that he was ineffective in putting out the fire. He directly removed the post of lieutenant general and deputy chief of military supplies, and demoted him to battalion commander again. Although Zhang Dayuan hoped that his deputy commander Xu Fu and Chen Ziang would fight each other so that he could reap the benefits.

But in the current situation, if the internal fighting continues, it will cause big problems.

Therefore, Zhang Dayuan also sent Chen Ziang out to collect grain this time to prevent him from staying in the capital and being at odds with the deputy commander Xu Fu, who knows what kind of trouble he might cause.

Chen Ziang is now quite low-key. He is now sure that Zhang Dayuan has planted spies beside him.

Since Zhang Dayuan sent him out to collect grain, he directly and resolutely executed the order and led his troops out.

Moreover, they seized a lot of military horses. They While training the troops, he tried to organize the Ninth Battalion into an elite force that could fight both on foot and on horseback.

Since the area near the capital had been swept by other grain-collecting teams, not even a grain of food could be found, so they had to go to farther and more remote places.

They walked for several days in a row, but most of the villages they saw were in ruins, and the people had already fled, so there was no food at all. Without finding a single grain of food, they had no way to go back and report, so they could only continue searching everywhere.

The sun was scorching overhead, and facing the sweaty soldiers, Chen Ziang couldn't help but sigh.

"Pass on my military order to go to the woods on the left to rest."

Marching in such a hot day would cause heatstroke, so Chen Ziang had to order the troops to stop and rest.

After hearing Chen Ziang's order, the soldiers who had drooped their heads cheered and rode their horses straight to the shade of the woods.

Compared to the original method of tying them to horseback, most of the soldiers are now able to ride horses.

Although they can ride on horseback without falling off, there is still a big gap if they want to fight on horseback. But even so, Chen Ziang is very pleased.

In this era of cold weapons, cavalry units are exactly like tank units in later generations. As long as they are used well on the battlefield, they can completely crush the enemy. Moreover, the role of cavalry units is not only to charge into battle on the battlefield, their high mobility is also what Chen Ziang values the most.

Not only can they make long-distance raids, but they can also cut off the enemy's food supply, shield the battlefield, and scout the enemy.

As long as there are cavalry units in an army, they will be able to learn more about the surrounding situation. Otherwise, they will be in the dark and may not even know they are being ambushed.

Chen Ziang and his ninth battalion's grain-collecting team was divided into several groups. He led one group, and Li Lang, Yang Zhong, Lin Yu and others also led some of their own people in order to expand the scope of the search.

Chen Ziang and his group had only more than a thousand soldiers on horseback, and at this moment they all rushed to the shady woods.

"The first hundred-man team is responsible for the alert!"

There is no need for Chen Ziang to give orders personally, and the deputy battalion commander Zhang Bao has already shouted and started to arrange the alert. This has become a habit.

Chen Ziang compiled some regulations in their ninth battalion. Although it seems complicated, many soldiers find it difficult to accept it at the beginning.

But Chen Ziang didn't care so much, and forcibly organized the soldiers and officers to study. Through this forced indoctrination method, some rules were engraved into their minds.

If they are camping in the wild, the location of the camp needs to be selected according to the standards of the regulations, and light and dark sentries, mobile sentries and patrols are indispensable.

Although doing these things seems to be a bit redundant, in Chen Ziang's view, it's not wrong to be careful.

Although it is just a simple rest now, the deputy battalion commander Zhang Bao still sent a hundred-man team to be responsible for the surrounding alert.

The brothers of a hundred-man team quickly divided into ten alert groups and spread out around.

Chen Ziang also arrived at the woods surrounded by Zhang Bao and others, turned over and dismounted, away from the scorching sun, and immediately felt much better

"Sir, drink some water."

As soon as Chen Ziang found a stone under the shade of a tree to sit down, Li Changqing handed him the water bag.

Chen Ziang was not polite, he unscrewed the water bag, tilted his neck and took a big sip of cold water, and immediately felt much more comfortable.

"What is the name of the mountain range ahead?"

Chen Ziang put down the kettle and looked at a mountain range running east-west not far away, asking

"Sir, there is no mark on the map."

A centurion from the army took out the map he was carrying and looked at it for a long time but couldn't find it.

"Ask if anyone knows the name of the mountain, and mark it on the map."

""Yes!"

The map of the Far East Dynasty had a lot of errors, and only marked some important cities, roads and mountains.

Chen Ziang not only ordered the scouts to carry charcoal pencils and straw paper at all times to depict some terrain, but he also practiced this, that is, to draw more detailed maps.

However, Chen Ziang did not complete this task personally, but handed the map drawing to the military generals to train their drawing and map reading skills. After all, they were all reserve officers.

When Chen Ziang and his men were resting, suddenly there was a noisy sound in the distance, and the soldiers in charge of vigilance detained two people in coarse cloth clothes.