Weird Three Kingdoms

Chapter 3579: Zutian Mutual Assistance

In the Gu Shui camp, inside the cavalry tent.

"The key to advancing into the Central Plains is not the city, but the food."

Fei Qian said slowly.

Zhang Liao was a little stunned, but quickly nodded to show his understanding.

Military food supply is the key to victory in war.

This is not a profound question, but many front-line generals will forget about this during the battle. When the quartermaster reports that there is a shortage of food and grass, they will kill the quartermaster and use his head to appease the soldiers.

Is the general too stupid?

Obviously not.

Therefore, during military operations, poor supply of military rations is actually the norm in war. Commanders like Fei Qian who start planning military rations before the war and suppress the intensity of the war are rare.

In the Han Dynasty, the storage system of the pre-Qin period was inherited and developed, and the layout of granaries was closely integrated with military strategy. For example, Fei Qian, now in Guanzhong and Beidi, expanded the granaries with the original Ganquan Warehouse as the core, and stored nearly one million shi of grain, which was directly used to supply the army.

In the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was another granary as famous as Ganquan Granary, and that was Ao Granary...

But now Ao Cang is mostly empty, and not even a mouse can be seen.

"Shi Yuan will follow the army, in addition to participating in military affairs..." Fei Qian looked at Pang Tong, "The first priority is to move the army to Luoyang."

"Relocation to Luoyang?" Zhang Liao glanced at Pang Tong and roughly understood something. No wonder Pang Tong did not stay in Guanzhong, but followed all the way to Heluo. It turned out that he wanted to cultivate land in Heluo.

"But now that Luoyang has not been conquered, this farming..." Zhang Liao said hesitantly, "Isn't it too... too hasty?"

Military farming is not a rare thing. After all, this policy has been in place since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. However, even though Heluo has not been completely taken, Fei Qian is going to start military farming here...

This operation made Zhang Liao a little confused.

Indeed, if the military farming is successful, it can achieve the goal of "fighting to support the war", and it can also save the time and cost of transportation and transshipment, and reduce the pressure on food and fodder.

But what if it fails?

Fei Qian smiled and said, "So Wenyuan should think about how to attack if he advances, and how to defend if he retreats."

Zhang Liao took a breath.

Well, you are the boss and you have the final say.

Previously, the most common requirement was whether we could capture a certain city or conquer a certain pass. Now, not only do we have to plan how to attack, but we also have to plan how to defend. This is almost double the difficulty...

Zhang Liao thought for a long time, then asked: "May I ask, lord, when will we attack Shandong?"

Fei Qian said with a smile: "Only after we conquer Heluo in April can we plant late rice, station civilians and soldiers, and march into the Central Plains after the autumn harvest."

"The Miao people come out of Guanzhong, and the people come out of Hedong." Pang Tong added, "The harvest of one season can save us from three conscriptions. This is a blessing for the people."

It is better to agree on it in advance than to call a timeout when the time comes.

Although Fei Qian built a transportation network in Guanzhong in the north, repaired and restored the water transport network on the Wei River, and constructed a military food supply system suitable for large-scale wars, it does not mean that he can support the war indefinitely, nor can he throw the limited food and grass in Guanzhong and Hedong into the bottomless pit of Shandong Central Plains.

If the tempo of war is not controlled and limited, planned steps are not taken, excessive conquests will lead to the decline of the civilian economy, such as the situation in the last years of Emperor Wu's reign when "the whole country was depleted and people began to eat each other again". At that time, the excellent logistical support of the Hussars will be unbalanced...

The logistics support for the Hussars is a double-edged sword.

Zhang Liao bowed solemnly, "I understand!"

……

……

March of the spring of the tenth year of Taixing.

In the Heluo area, wormwood weeds are as thick as spears.

Xu Sanlang stood on the hill leaning on a wooden plow, and saw that the hundreds of miles of flat fields on the east bank of the Luo River had turned to scorched earth. The remnants of crops and wheat straw that had been burned during the battle between Fei and Cao were still stuck diagonally between the cracked ridges.

A few skinny crows flew across the sky and landed on the ruins, pecking at something...

If possible, he would also like to become a bird, fly freely, and his hometown would be where he lands.

His hometown has been destroyed.

Ruined more than once.

When he thinks things can't get any worse, fate shows him that there is no worst, only worse.

In the past, he had great faith in the Han Dynasty's court. He thought that the Han Dynasty was so great and its officials were so noble that they would not even deceive an ordinary citizen like him who had nothing but the four walls of his home.

He asked the officials who came to collect taxes, and those officials always told him with certainty that the situation has indeed been more difficult in the past few years, but things will be better next year!

Xu Sanlang believed it, but instead of waiting for a better year, he waited for war and death.

Not only people died, but also the land.

When he returned to the place he was familiar with, everything became unfamiliar, including those people...

His neighbors, friends, and even his family had all died in the war, and he didn't recognize anyone who was left alive.

Why didn't he die?

He didn't know either.

He just knew that he survived.

To live, you must eat.

If you want to eat, you have to farm.

Xu Sanlang sighed, picked up a wooden plow and dealt with the weeds in the fields.

After an unknown amount of time, Xu Sanlang seemed to hear someone calling him.

"Father-in-law..."

"Father-in-law!"

Xu Sanlang didn't straighten his back, he just turned his face to the side and looked at him with his eyes slanted.

This posture is obviously not very elegant and may even make people feel impolite.

But who can, after bending over to weed for an hour or two, quickly straighten up, hold their back high and talk to people with a smile, and, except for holding a hoe or shovel, their face, body and hands are clean, without even a spot of sweat on their face?

If it really happened, then were they treating officials as fools, or were they treating other people as idiots?

Xu Sanlang didn’t know either. He just knew that he couldn’t straighten his back and could only look at it with his eyes sideways.

"Father, are you from this place?"

A man in a coarse linen shortsleeve was squatting at the edge of the field, with other people behind him. They looked like officials, but not quite.

Judging from the appearance, those who can be followed by such a group of people are most likely officials.

But looking at his clothes and the small bronze plow in his hand, he looks like a farmer in the fields.

In Xu Sanlang's impression, officials are always white and fat, with a big belly protruding forward, like a pregnant woman.

For a while, Xu Sanlang envied that kind of belly, because that kind of belly meant that he didn't have to bend over, and didn't have to face the sky with his back. But now, looking at the man squatting in the field, Xu Sanlang couldn't confirm it for a moment, "I am the third son of the Xu family..."

Xu Sanlang used the wooden plow to support his body and straightened up little by little. He felt the muscles around his waist trembling, groaning, and making painful sounds. Even his voice trembled a little, "I don't know... Your Excellency... is..."

"My name is Zao Zhi. I am under the order of the Cavalry to supervise the farming in Heluo." The visitor said with a smile, stopping Xu Sanlang from kneeling forward. "Just now I saw you sighing over the wasteland. May I ask what was the annual output of this place in the past?"

"During the Yonghan era, this kind of fertile land could yield 200 hu of millet per year... But after the Zhongping era..." Xu Sanlang suddenly felt his eyes burning, and he lowered his head to stare at the weeds growing all over the ground. "Xiliang burned the granaries, and later the people were relocated. Last year, Cao's army came again... Look at this soil, it's already rotten..."

Zaozhi went down to the field, squatted on the ground and grabbed a handful of soil, and fine brown particles fell from between his fingers.

"It's really bad..."

Good soil must have some stickiness, but now the soil is obviously sandy. Zao Zhi turned around and told the agricultural scholar who was accompanying him, "Write this down, and have someone send some fertilizer tomorrow to pad the fields in this area."

The Bachelor of Agriculture took note of it.

"Mr. Xu," Zaozhi pointed to some weeds in the field that had not been completely removed and said, "These weeds consume the most soil energy. We need to dig deep to get rid of their roots."

Xu Sanlang smiled bitterly, "I know that too...but..."

Zao Zhi was stunned for a moment, his eyes fell on the wooden plow in Xu Sanlang's hand, his brows slightly frowned, and he reached out and handed his bronze plow to Xu Sanlang, "Don't you have a tool that suits you? Then use this one of mine first."

"How can this be done?" Xu Sanlang waved his hands repeatedly.

"Okay, okay!" Zaozhi smiled. Seeing that Xu Sanlang didn't take it, he simply put it on the field and then walked up the ridge. "Just let me lend it to you first. You can return it to me after the autumn harvest!"

……

……

Heluo, Valley City.

This was originally a town of moderate size, but it was almost destroyed during the war.

The government office in Gucheng was almost completely burned down. Zao Zhi and others simply cleared a piece of open space in the middle of the government office courtyard and built a temporary shed as a temporary base for commanding the military farming.

Some people wanted to persuade Zao Zhi to renovate the government office, but Zao Zhi refused.

Zao Zhi thought that now was not the time to renovate the government office.

In Zao Zhi's opinion, whether a place is good or bad is not determined by how beautiful and prosperous the government office is, but by whether the people living in the fields have smiles on their faces.

Therefore, even in the simple straw hut built here, the principle of making the best use of resources is still adhered to.

Even the rags used to fill the gaps in the straw hut and block the cold wind were made from tattered military flags left behind when Cao's army was defeated.

A few strands of hemp rope hung from the broken corners of the flag, swaying in the night wind.

On the wooden shelf in the corner of the thatched hut, there were piles of bamboo slips that Zao Zhi brought from Guanzhong. The rope of the top volume, "Fan Sheng Zhi Shu", had been worn out and the edges were frayed. There were withered and yellowed weeds sandwiched between the pages. It was not known whether it was used as a specimen or as a mark.

Zao Zhi untied his muddy leggings, revealing his calves that were scratched by thorns from walking in the fields during the day.

Zao Zhi had become accustomed to these tiny wounds. He simply washed them with water and let the blood seep out of the wounds and drip down his legs. However, since the wounds were not big, some of the blood coagulated after flowing out, forming long and short marks.

After a while, the agricultural scholars who received Zao Zhi's call came back one after another and reported to Zao Zhi about their trips to investigate the surrounding farmland.

The condition of most of the fields is very poor.

This is the case with farmland. Without farmers tending the fields day and night, weeds will easily grow. Unless you wait until autumn and winter to turn the weeds into the soil for fertilization, if you plant crops at this time, the weeds will inevitably compete for nutrients and the crops will not grow well.

In addition to the problem of overgrown weeds, most of the water conservancy equipment is no longer usable. Some wells have even been knocked over and buried. Even if they are dug up again, there is no telling what is at the bottom of the well. There may be only sand or corpses.

Zaozhi listened and took notes, his brows furrowed.

Before coming to Heluo, Zao Zhi had anticipated that there would be many problems in Heluo, but he did not expect that there would be so many problems...

Zaozhi reached out from the bag beside him and took out a few bamboo tubes with labels on them. He then poured the soil in the tubes onto the table and waved to the agricultural scholars, "Come and see, what is this?"

An agronomist stepped forward, fiddled with the poured soil, then suddenly his eyes widened and he took a breath of cold air.

The other agricultural scholars were also stunned when they saw what was pulled out, and then someone shouted, "These are locust eggs!"

In the dry gravel soil, some of the more slender eggs were exposed on the table...

Zao Zhi looked at the eggs with a heavy face, "These were found on the bank of Luo River... These were found to the north of Yi River..."

Zaozhi said, stood up, walked to the map beside him, circled a few places where locusts were found on the map with a piece of charcoal, then turned around and said, "Look... did you find anything?"

The distribution of locusts is basically concentrated in the west of Henan Yin, that is, in the area between Luoyang and Hangu Pass.

Zao Zhi was not surprised by this, because even if Cao's army had not come, this area had become an invisible isolation zone, and not many people lived here. As a result, the plants and animals in nature regained new territories as humans retreated.

Now to restore these lands, we must not only fight against plants, but also against these animals...

Zao Zhi drew a circle at the tributary of Luoshui River, "Let me tell you something simple first... There was a flood here before, and there is still a lot of silt on the river bank, which can be used as fertilizer. Tomorrow, Chen Sanlang will gather people and dispatch 200 people to dig the silt."

An agricultural scholar stood up and responded.

"Also, today we found a farmer who didn't recognize poisonous grass and died after eating it by mistake," Zaozhi said another thing, "Everyone, when you go on patrol tomorrow, bring some edible and inedible wild vegetables with you to teach the farmers how to identify them... He finally survived, but he was poisoned to death after eating a bite of wild vegetables... Oh..."

The other agricultural bachelors also agreed.

Zaozhi talked about a few more easily solved problems, and then returned to the problem of locusts, "Now that spring is getting warmer and the rain is increasing, in a dozen days or maybe a few days, the locusts will break out of the ground... Do you have any solutions?"

"Plow the land!"

An agricultural scholar blurted out.

Indeed, this method has been proven to be effective, and some locusts that lay eggs in the fields will not only not become a locust plague if they encounter deep plowing, but will even become nutrients for the soil.

The prerequisite is to plow deeply and thoroughly.

So when the agronomist proposed this solution, he was immediately opposed by others.

"It's so big, there's so much land, how are you going to plow it?"

"It's impossible! Even if we can spare some manpower, what about other places? We need people everywhere now. It's impossible!"

"But now the insect plague is imminent, it's like putting out a fire! The insects start to stir during the Waking of Insects, and maybe in a few days the eggs will hatch, and then they'll crawl everywhere, and we won't be able to stop them!"

"No! The order given to us by the Cavalry is to replant the crops in March, but we don't have any extra manpower now!"

"If we don't get rid of the locusts, what's the point of planting crops? When the locusts become a plague, the crops we plant will just become food for them!"

"Wait...if we don't use strong men, how about using the old and weak?"

"The elderly and weak? The elderly and weak have to be busy too! And there are fewer elderly and weak people now! How can there be so many elderly and weak people?"

Zaozhi listened with a frown on his face.

Of course, this problem, no matter how difficult it is, must be solved.

Although the order given to him by the cavalry was only to cultivate the land and plant crops, Zao Zhi also felt that he had the responsibility to solve the related agricultural issues. Otherwise, if he was like those Shandong officials, he would only do one thing ordered by the superiors and not do anything else. Wouldn't it be simple? If someone asked about it, he would just say that it was not within his authority.

But here lies the problem...

One is the short time. No one can guarantee when the locusts will hatch, but it should be around April, so at most it will be a month, or even shorter. To deal with all the places where the locusts have eggs in such a short time is undoubtedly a huge project.

Another problem is that the task is heavy and there is a shortage of manpower.

The farmers who migrated to Heluo now were basically transferred from Hedong. The reason why they were not all rushed in was that Heluo was not strong enough at the moment, and Heluo was still fighting and could not bring too much trouble to the front line, so the overall speed of migration was controlled, but this also brought about the problem of manpower.

If we mobilize manpower from Guanzhong, it will be a hassle. We need food and drink, and we need to ask the farmers in Guanzhong to give up their own farmland to help the refugees in Heluo resume production...

Even if the farmers in Guanzhong have such awareness, does that mean that the farmlands and crops in Guanzhong don't need to be taken care of by those farmers?

Therefore, Zao Zhi was now in a dilemma. He tried to think of a solution, but it didn't work. He also tried to think of a strategy, but it was still difficult. Just when Zao Zhi was frowning, he suddenly heard a soldier on duty shouting in the distance, "The great Han cavalry general is here! Go out to meet him quickly!"

Zao Zhi was stunned. Fei Qian is here?

what!

Does Fei Qian have any good ideas?

Zao Zhi immediately stood up and led a group of agricultural scholars out of the dilapidated government office. As soon as they reached the street corner, they saw a group of people coming from a distance, and the cavalry general Fei Qian was among them...