My younger brother Lü Fengxian

Chapter 119: Troops are ready
In early June, all the people in Jiuyuanting learned from Lu Yi that the Xianbei might move south, so they responded to Lu Yi's call and promised to move to Luwu with their families after the autumn harvest to guard against a possible invasion by the Xianbei.

In order to accommodate his servants, servants, refugees and the common people, Lu Yi immediately ordered Zhang Jia to speed up the construction of Luwu.

In mid-June, good news came one after another. Not only was the third wall of Luwu successfully completed, but Cheng Lian also returned to Jiuyuan Pavilion with the one hundred young female slaves redeemed from the Zhen family.

Lu Yi immediately gathered these female slaves together and temporarily took over the work of looking after the farmland from the remaining dozens of servants. He asked all the servants and young and strong refugees to go to the Luwu construction site to help, and did his utmost to speed up the construction of Luwu.

When the single servants and servants in training learned that these female slaves were specially redeemed by Lu Yi and that he was going to reward them with marriages according to their performance and merits, they all burst into great enthusiasm for training and work, fearing that the girls they selected would be rewarded to others by Lu Yi if they did not perform well.

Lu Yi also started a new round of recruitment plan at Jiuyuan Pavilion.

This time, he planned to expand his team to a full 800 people at one time.

The 300 missing guys will all be recruited from Jiuyuan Pavilion first. If there are still vacancies, other heroes and veterans will continue to recommend them.

After several busy days, Lu Yi successfully recruited more than 200 new guys at Jiuyuan Pavilion.

These people were the only young and strong men left in Jiuyuan Pavilion. Even if Lu Yi lowered some of the standards, there were no more suitable candidates.

Therefore, Lu Yi asked another hundred Renxia men to return home. According to the old rule, an old man could recommend a new man.

By the end of June, when one hundred old men returned to Jiuyuan Pavilion with one hundred new men, the four walls of Luwu were finally completed, and the second phase of the construction plan was completed ahead of schedule.

Not only did Luwu finally possess the most basic defensive capabilities.

The first phase of his military construction plan was also successfully completed.

Eight hundred people was the optimal number he arrived at after calculating the current situation.

The number of people is too small to form a military advantage and is of no use.

But there were too many people and he couldn't afford to support them.

The formation of a cavalry buddy requires three stages: recruitment, equipment and maintenance.

During the recruitment phase, each newly signed contracted buddy Lu Yi needs to spend 3400 coins as resettlement fee.

During the equipment stage after recruitment, each servant was allocated a mare worth 10,000 coins, weapons, bows, arrows, clothes and other supplies worth 5,000 coins.

For the two stages of recruitment and equipment alone, Lu Yi would need to spend nearly 20,000 coins in total.

This is because Lu Yi has a stable channel to purchase horses at a low price.

Otherwise, it would cost at least 30,000 yuan as a base.

After the men join the team, the monthly rations for men and horses, monthly wages, combat rewards, and maintenance expenses for weapons, equipment, clothing, etc., will cost each man at least two thousand coins per month, which is more than thirty thousand coins a year.

This means that it would cost Lü Yi 1600 million coins just to build a cavalry team of men from scratch!

Another 400 million coins would be enough to purchase a county magistrate's post in a remote area from Xiyuan!

The annual cost of maintaining them is at least 2400 million coins. With such a huge sum of money, one can easily choose the position of county governor anywhere even in the richest Central Plains region!

The caravan could obtain a maximum of 800 horses from the Hunye tribe each month, half of them male and half female.

The price of a male or female horse is about 2300 yuan, which is about million yuan. However, the cost of the goods, million yuan, the food of the caravan, more than million yuan, and the money that is regularly distributed to Huang Yi must be deducted from this.

After that, Lu Yi also needs to share 30% with Zhang.

In the end, all he could actually get was about 10 million yuan in profit from each business trip.

This is still a perfect state where everything goes smoothly and there are no disturbances at all.

Even so, Lu Yi still needed to divert a considerable portion of the funds to build Luwu and purchase food.

Moreover, the caravans could not successfully go out of the border to trade every month.

Excluding extreme sandstorms and winter, in theory, a caravan can only go out of the border 8 to 9 times a year.

After deducting some normal losses, Lu Yi could theoretically earn 80 to 90 million yuan a year through traveling for business.

Although it seems like a lot, don't forget that this gold-devouring beast, Luwu, cost Lu Yi a full 50 million coins. In addition, Lu Yi also bribed officials of all ranks in Jiuyuan County, purchased 300 hectares of land, redeemed 500 servants and 100 female slaves, took in 2,000 refugees, young, strong, old and weak, as well as the cost of purchasing the qualification of filial piety and incorruptibility. None of these were cheap.

If it were not for the support of the spoils obtained after the destruction of the Zhade tribe, as well as Zhang's dowry of tens of millions and the horses donated by Hexutuo for free, Lu Yi's economy would have collapsed long ago.

Where is the spare money to maintain the army?

Therefore, eight hundred people are the limit of cavalry that Lu Yi’s forces can support this year!
As for expanding more cavalry, that must be based on the fact that Lu Yi can defeat the Zhongshan smuggling group and successfully avoid the possible invasion of the Xianbei this winter.

If we can successfully overcome these two difficulties, there will naturally be a bright future ahead.

If they cannot, especially cannot survive the invasion of the Xianbei people, then all will be over and it will end in regret.

But no matter what, now that Luwu has surrounded him and has sufficient troops, Lu Yi can finally relax temporarily.

He ordered Zhang Jia to continue staying in Jiuheli and start the third phase, the construction of the interior of the tower, warehouse, etc.

He immediately took the B-Team led by Cheng Lian, Hou Cheng and Hao Meng to Mayi, preparing to replace the A-Team led by Gao Shun, Song Xian and Wei Xu.

Coincidentally, just as Lu Yi arrived in Mayi, Gao Shun and others also returned to Mayi from outside the Great Wall.

There was a little trouble on the way this time, as they were attacked by a group of horse bandits consisting of more than one hundred people.

This group of horse bandits was composed of wandering Hu people and some Han slaves who escaped from the tribe. They roamed the vast grassland all day long, struggling to survive in the cracks between the forces of the major tribes, and therefore did not miss any opportunity to plunder.

When they saw Commander Gao Shun's caravan, they were immediately attracted by the big fat fish consisting of one hundred baggage carts and rushed forward to plunder.

All the caravans on the grassland were organized by the Han people, and these Hu people and the Han slaves who had been assimilated into the Hu people were not afraid of the Han caravans on the grassland at all, even though Gao Shun had more people than them.

Even if they think they cannot win, they can always escape by relying on their skilled horsemanship and familiarity with the terrain, right?

But fate dealt them a heavy blow.

Unfortunately, not only were the 200 soldiers from Bingzhou under Commander Gao Shun as skilled in horsemanship as the Hu people, but Qin Han, who was with the team, was also familiar with the terrain, leaving them with nowhere to hide.

……

(End of this chapter)