Chapter 185: Agriculture must be scaled up, the enemy is coming from the south

Early in the morning, the edge of this medium-sized spiritual grass ranch was already crowded with people and noisy.

The Renaissance Army has recently increased its military and civilian strength to nearly 300,000. Except for half of the Five Divine Beast Legion who are performing combat missions and more than 10,000 soldiers who are going out to fight in rotation, all the military and civilians have gathered here.

“Dong dong…”

“Didi da da…”

Along the lakeside, at the forefront of the bustling crowd, the sounds of gongs, drums and suonas were deafening, and the scene was extremely lively.

Today is the day when the Fuxing Army officially starts its spring ploughing this year. It is the most important event for the entire Fuxing Army to participate in, and it cannot be treated too solemnly.

In order to preserve this medium-quality spiritual grass pasture as well as possible, before the spring ploughing fire, Li Dingguo had ordered that all arable land be reclaimed near the spiritual grass pasture and extend outward to the other side of the spiritual grass pasture.

He had also ordered people to dig out a large isolation zone in advance to prevent the fire from spreading to the spiritual grass ranch.

The first batch of land to be reclaimed after the burning is about one million acres.

Currently, the number of soldiers and civilians in the Renaissance Army is not large, only less than 300,000.

With millions of acres of farmland, the various crops produced are enough for all the soldiers and civilians to eat, and they have no intention of selling them anyway.

As the soldiers of the logistics camp held torches and ignited large areas of the land that needed to be burned, the fire spread rapidly.

Once a wildfire reaches a certain scale, it will burn very quickly with the help of wind.

In the large area burned by the fire, more than 200,000 people who had been prepared in advance drove tens of thousands of oxen pulling plows, lined up in a row, and began a massive collective reclamation of land!
The Fuxing Army destroyed so many Tatar tribes one after another and harvested a large number of cattle. It was not difficult to select tens of thousands of oxen from them and tame them.

In this bustling scene, the busiest people are not the soldiers and civilians responsible for reclaiming the fields, but the various craftsmen in the craftsman camp who number tens of thousands.

They were responsible for building a large number of canals according to the planning on the blueprints, and for creating and placing a large number of water wheels along the banks of the Daling Lake to meet the irrigation needs of various crops.

This is a large-scale farm planting and breeding model personally formulated by Li Dingguo, which requires large-scale infrastructure construction.

Li Dingguo, who came from the Earth in the 21st century in his previous life, knew very well how great the advantages of the planting and breeding models of large-scale farms were.

This not only saves a lot of manpower and material resources, but also greatly improves farming efficiency.

The small peasant economy has poor disaster resistance and can easily lead to the abandonment of farmland. This will greatly restrict the Fusion Army’s ability to achieve self-sufficiency in grain and crops, and a food crisis will easily occur.

Unified planning, unified planting and breeding will make management very convenient in the future, and the planting and breeding proportions of various crops and poultry in each large farm can be adjusted at any time according to the actual situation each year to achieve stable and effective returns.

The main reason why Li Dingguo chose to do this was because people’s hearts are unpredictable and selfish.

Even though the nearly 300,000 soldiers and civilians now are grateful to the soldiers of the Fuxing Army, once the small peasant economy is implemented, over time, various conflicts will quickly erupt due to conflicts of interest.

Therefore, from the very beginning, Li Dingguo had to prevent the small peasant economy from growing within his sphere of influence.

This is to prevent the internal situation from becoming chaotic in the future, with large amounts of land left barren, causing huge waste and causing people to become distracted.

More than twenty large treasure ships were docked at the river bank that was designated as the area for reclaimed farmland. Warriors and soldiers unloaded large quantities of various building materials from the ships to supply them to tens of thousands of craftsmen.

These bluestones, trees and other materials were collected by these warriors and soldiers who took the treasure ship to all directions along the Jialu River.

Canals of all sizes marked on the planning drawings were quickly dug out and then built by more than ten thousand craftsmen using bluestone blocks of various specifications.

These skilled craftsmen even built stone arch bridges of various sizes at designated locations to prevent the extensive canals from obstructing land transportation.

There is strength in numbers, and this is now demonstrated to the fullest.

According to the military’s plan, all work on building large water wheels, constructing canals and clearing land must be completed on time within half a month.

This is to avoid affecting the subsequent sowing of various crops and delaying the farming season.

In the past few months after the Chinese New Year, the soldiers of the five major legions have been continuing their rotation operations.

Although Li Dingguo, Hongmei and Xiao Douya seldom led the team into battle in person during this period, they did not interrupt the Fuxing Army’s repeated victories.

The fundamental reason is that after the leaders of the Renaissance Army and some outstanding and talented generals shared the dozen level four earth dragon crocodiles two months ago, three generals who were stuck at the peak of the third level of martial arts finally broke through to the early fourth level of martial arts Qi Refining Realm.

These three talented generals were Cao Yongxiang, Wei Jinfan and Tang Huai.

Among them, Tang Huai was able to stand out and achieve a breakthrough ahead of most of the talented generals, which was most unexpected to everyone.

The deputy commander of the Qilin Legion used to give people the impression that he was just an intelligence genius. He was one of the very few geniuses in the army who had mastered the art of concealment and breath-concealing to perfection.

Who would have thought that he would come from behind and become a sensation without making any noise.

With the three newly-appointed Qi Refining Realm generals of the Renaissance Army in charge, the small and medium-sized Tatar tribes along the Jialu River that had not yet been wiped out, few of which had Qi Refining Realm masters, could not withstand the sudden mass charge of the soldiers.

As for those Tatar tribes that were ruled by masters of Qi Refining Realm, Li Dingguo, Hongmei and Xiao Douya launched several joint attacks. They easily used the surprise attack launched by the military killing formation and the attacking magical powers of the formation to wipe them out.

These battles were also the only times that Li Dingguo, Xiao Douya, and Hongmei personally led troops to attack after the New Year. …

Li Dingguo did not personally participate in this vigorous round of land reclamation and farming activities.

He simply handed over the planning and construction drawings he had drawn himself, as well as the relevant explanatory documents, to Hongmei, and listened to some reports and opinions from time to time and provided timely guidance.

Thanks to his planning and guidance with a vision that transcended this time, various infrastructure construction and spring plowing and sowing work proceeded exceptionally smoothly and in an orderly manner.

That morning, he looked at the newly arrived Minister of Intelligence Wei Jinfan, took the urgent military intelligence she had just received, and immediately began to check it.

“Humph!”

After a while, after reviewing the intelligence, Li Dingguo snorted coldly and said to Wei Jinfan, “Has the intelligence been verified to be true?”

He confirmed to Wei Jinfan with some surprise.

“Commander-in-chief, this time the intelligence is solid!”

Wei Jinfan reported with a serious expression, “This is the urgent military information brought back by He Guang, the most capable deputy director of the intelligence department among the three intelligence teams I sent to the interior of the country. He Guang personally rode on the demon wolf leader Lao Hei and traveled day and night to bring back this urgent military information.”

“The enemy coming north this time is not the Shanxi merchants, nor the Ming border troops, but the alliance of wealthy southern merchants who have been extremely active in the border area recently.”

“For some reason, they suddenly mobilized a large armed fleet as if they had gone crazy, planning to sail north along the Jialu River to launch a surprise attack on our army!”

“He Guang made careful observations in secret and took action together with Lu Yanni, the leader of another intelligence team, and obtained specific intelligence through some covert means.”

“In the past three months, many caravans from the Southern Merchant Alliance that were traveling outside the borders of Qin and Jin provinces have disappeared without a trace.”

“But there are many clues pointing to our Renaissance Army, which made these wealthy southern merchants mistakenly believe that it was our Renaissance Army that did it.”

“In their anger, they mobilized a large armed fleet to attack from the north!”

“Their intention is very clear. They want to march straight in along the Jialu River, find our base outside the pass, and wipe us out completely in one fell swoop!”

Wei Jinfan’s face was ashen, and he was shaking with anger. He said hatefully, “If nothing unexpected happens, these acts of framing others must have been done by the big Shanxi merchants and the various Tatar tribes outside the Great Wall. They left some clues at the scene to point the finger at us.”

“Ha ha……”

She sneered grimly and said, “The major Shanxi merchants who are the masterminds of the conspiracy behind the scenes are too despicable. They actually want to kill three birds with one stone!”

“By doing this, they not only hit their competitors’ trade lines, causing them to suffer heavy losses, but also made a fortune and continued to monopolize trade with the Tartars outside the Great Wall.”

“We can also use the retaliation actions launched by the Southern Merchant Alliance to make us enemies with those Southern Merchants and engage in a fierce fight!”

“No matter which side wins, it will be a good opportunity for them to reap the benefits.”

“Today’s big Shanxi merchants are drinking tea and chatting while waiting to see the show!”

She also couldn’t have imagined that these big Shanxi merchants would use such despicable means.

Originally, the soldiers of the Fuxing Army had made corresponding plans and were ready to deal with the retaliatory actions launched by the Tartars and the Shanxi merchants at any time.

As a result, now, neither the revenge actions of the Tartars nor the Shanxi merchants have come, but instead they have encountered a very powerful opponent: the northward movement of the Southern Merchants Alliance of the Ming Dynasty!
Intelligence from multiple sources has indicated that the wealthy merchant alliance in the south of the Ming Dynasty is the direct descendants of the bigwigs and officials in the Ming Dynasty court.

As for the Shanxi merchants who often paid them large amounts of various goods as tribute, they were at best just children of concubines.

The military power of these great southern merchants of the Ming Dynasty might not be as strong as those of the Tartars and the great Shanxi merchants, but their foundation and financial resources were far beyond the reach of the Tartars outside the Great Wall and the ten great Shanxi merchants.

At this time, most of the wealth of the Ming Dynasty was concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in the south and north of the Yangtze River. There were countless wealthy families and powerful clans who were rich enough to rival a country.

“Commander-in-chief, intelligence shows that the large armed fleet they dispatched this time includes one high-quality treasure ship, nine medium-quality treasure ships, and twenty-eight low-quality treasure ships!”

“There are more than 8,000 servants and guards mobilized from various wealthy southern merchant families, not to mention the even greater number of boatmen and sailors!”

“Among the three enemy battalions formed by family guards, there is one chief general who is at the late fourth level of martial arts, six deputy generals at the middle fourth level of martial arts, and thirty generals at the early fourth level of martial arts!”

“The rest are all servants and guards in the Body Refining Realm, among whom there are more than 300 warriors with the third level of Body Refining Realm!”

“We have already found out that the enemy commander leading this large fleet northward is from the Duke of Wei’s Mansion in the southern capital of the Ming Dynasty. He is a servant leader of the Xu family named Cai Yihu.”

“He is the leader of the caravan sent by Duke Wei to the northwest border of Ming Dynasty to be in charge of trade outside the Great Wall.”

As Wei Jinfan finished speaking, Li Dingguo’s face became even gloomier.

He did not speak immediately, but frowned slightly and sat in the big wooden chair thinking.

A thick murderous aura began to emanate from Li Dingguo, causing Wei Jinfan, who was standing beside him, to feel a chill all over.

(End of this chapter)