As March enters, the whole Xingpingli becomes busier and busier.
When it was time to plant seedlings in the fields, men, women, old and young all went to the fields. Not only did Liu Chengzu's frontier troops also go to the fields to be busy.
This scene does not mean pastoral pastoral. Next month is a good day for fertilizing. Every household will pick out the decomposed manure from the backyard manure pit. Applying one acre of land can stink for two to three miles.
For the border troops, picking manure and fertilizing was done by everyone in Yuhebao earlier, but in Xingpingli, even the armor was taken off and hidden by Liu Chengzu, and even the casual clothes looked like a big boss.
After much hesitation, they could only arrange for them to run to the river to fetch water.
Speaking of which, frontier soldiers generally prefer to carry water or help in the fields. Otherwise, they will be assigned to buy materials from the mines in Fucheng and rural areas - that work is boring and highly dangerous.
In early March, Chengyun took Tian Shoujing to the east mine to buy bricks. The miners there and the refugees rebelled, and the fires in the brick kilns were all put out. Someone almost shot Chengyun to death with a cold arrow.
In the end, I didn't buy any bricks, so I just brought two miners back from there and ran to the west end of the village to build more brick kilns.
Even if there is no danger, if you go out for three to five days and eat dry food and dip it in soybean paste all day long, your mouth will taste dizzy.
It's different when you help in the village. The leeks in the field grow taller right away. After you're done, you can chop a handful of them and pull out the radish roots. Then you can eat fried balls with soybeans when you get back. Not to mention that there are villagers who prepare them for the busy farming season.
Millet rice.
And they also discovered their neighbors.
It’s not strange to have neighbors, but it’s very difficult to meet neighbors in disaster years. The water flow of Panlong River, which flows from north-west to south-east, further decreases during the irrigation season. It’s obvious that someone is irrigating upstream, and it seems that there are still many people there.
Quite a few.
Liu Chengzong led several riders to ride up the river. After walking for several miles, he suddenly realized that the Black Dragon King Temple Mountain was not an isolated island on earth.
Within twenty miles of the upper reaches, there are seven villages scattered to the west and east of the river. They can still rely on this river to irrigate their fields, and disaster years will not have much impact on them.
There are still people alive in the places guarding the river. Many new fields have been cultivated on both sides of the river. People have abandoned the fertile fields in the past and reclaimed nearby wild lands for the convenience of irrigation. Even the mountains have been opened up.
In peacetime, it would have been a wasteland that could not be reclaimed by people for fifty years or three generations, but now it is being taken care of in an orderly manner.
Several villages were not very enthusiastic towards them. Four villages built fences. When they saw Liu Chengzong and the other cavalrymen in the fields from a distance, they rushed towards the village. The young men held hunting crossbows and shouted with sticks to drive them away.
The other three villages were brave and willing to exchange a few words, but they all had the same meaning: there is no food in this place, regardless of whether they are soldiers, civilians or bandits, please go elsewhere.
"With just such an invitation, the situation in several villages was almost the same, and they were trying to undermine each other."
Liu Chengzong, who returned to Xingpingli to join his brother, couldn't stop laughing when he mentioned the incident: "There is a village called Dingjiazhan on the other side of the Beihe River. There are more than fifty households. The person in charge is called Mr. Ding. He has no other abilities and has eight children.
My name is Dingzhuang Eight Wolves."
"Eight wolves killed the tax collector when harvesting summer grain last year. The whole village has been living for several days now, and they are afraid that the officers and soldiers will attack them. Brother Lu of Laomiao Village in Hedong told me about them. There are also seventy or eighty households in Laomiao Village in Hedong.
The two Lu brothers are in charge."
"The two Zhuangzi are incompatible with water and fire. They often fought over fighting for water and blocking rivers decades ago. Brother Lu thought I was a soldier and asked me to go to Dingjia station to collect grain. I just used the same trick."
Liu Chengzu on the side frowned when he heard this: "We who are downstream haven't led anyone to fight yet, what are they fighting for?"
Eh?
Liu Chengzong thought about it, and it was like this. These two villages blocked the river upstream and cut off the water. We in Xingpingli downstream had not brought the young people to fight with them, but they started fighting first.
"Today, even if we speak openly and guard this river, all the villages in each township are just poor people with half a way to survive, and they actually want to kill each other first."
"You are so virtuous," Liu Chengzu said with emotion, and then asked: "If more than a hundred households cannot work together, it will be of little use. How are the other villages doing?"
Liu Chengzong shook his head and said: "There is also Songjiagou, which is a bit far away. I didn't go there to see it, but the situation is similar. There are five brothers who are called the Five Tigers. At this time, who has the most boys has the final say, except for them.
The northernmost paper mill.”
"Paper mill...I seem to have heard of this." Liu Chengzu thought for a moment after hearing this: "Whoever makes paper in the upstream spring is named Wang or something else?"
"My surname is Shi, and the merchant's name is Shi Jiazhi. It's a very elegant name."
"Don't worry about his name. He's good at making paper. He uses bamboo to make paper. I'll take people to buy some bamboo tomorrow and the rest of the crossbows can be made."
After Liu Chengyun was almost shot to death by a cold arrow in a brick kiln, the Xingpingli elder once again realized that the situation was beyond control.
After firming up their determination to set up a walled city to train tribesmen for self-defense, Liu Chengzong's proposal for all-people formation of troops was also accepted by the tribesmen.
However, in the end, the formation method of all-people soldiers was not according to his idea. Twelve teams were organized into five teams of young men, four teams of healthy women, three teams of boys, and one team of machine soldiers.
Brother Liu Chengzu made a better suggestion. The 488 men, women, and children who could go into battle in Xingpingli, together with the border troops, were organized into three teams: front, middle and rear.
The strong men are in the front team, the strong women and young people are in the middle team, and the old, weak, women and children are in the back team.
In fact, they are the combat team, the reserve team and the baggage team.
Set the rules: the front team will practice every other day, the middle team will practice on three days, and the rear team will practice once every five days.
The military training day was divided into four subjects by Liu Chengzong, two subjects in the morning and two subjects in the afternoon, namely order formation, military law regulations, elementary literacy and weapon usage.
When farming is busy, practice in the two subjects will be suspended in the morning.
Before the city wall is built, improving military capabilities is not something that can be done overnight, but strengthening organizational capabilities is urgent.
When the villagers start a war, the thieves will definitely come to their doorsteps. Not to mention killing the thieves, if they have the ability to organize, they will at least have the possibility of defense.
Liu Chengzong, who had been in the frontier army for more than a year, knew very well the quality of the Xingpingli Minzhuang who had just been reorganized into the army.
Fifty well-fed border troops could beat hundreds of Bai Yingzi's men into flight, but the same thing happened on the other side. Thieves who had seen blood could also use half the force to kill the new minzhuang until the blood flowed like a river.
What's more, they don't even have enough weapons to arm the front line. They only have fourteen decent armors. Any casualties will severely dampen the enthusiasm of the villagers to join the people.
Among two to three hundred people, four, five or even seven or eight casualties are just a grain of sand, but if carried on an individual's body, a grain of sand is like a mountain.
It is a mountain that no family can bear.
On the outskirts of the village, the two brothers carefully finalized the matter of buying bamboo strips from the Panlongchuan Quanyan Paper Shop in the north. They accidentally chatted a little late. When dusk came, they saw Shiliu trotting out. The little bald head was shiny and he called out:
: "Guardian, Brother Shizi, the master has asked you to go back. There is a guest at home, and he is an adult from Fucheng."
"Master Fucheng, where did you, a hairy-faced little thief, hear this?"
Liu Chengzong smiled and patted Shiliu's little head. This kid looked smart. He was asked by his father to work as an errand boy. After cleaning up, he looked much cleaner: "How can adults have the time to come here?"
"He is really a high-ranking official in Fucheng. He told me that Wang Zuogao is attacking Yaozhou."