After the summer harvest, Li Qi returned to Shanbei and watched Wuzhou and Ulzhou to supervise the progress of several key construction projects.

The bumper harvest of summer grain in the Northern Tang Dynasty suddenly reduced the pressure on logistics supply, and suddenly made people feel much more relaxed.

With money and food, Li Qi naturally remembered the construction in Shanbei.

The Metropolitan Water Superintendent will be an official of the Supervision and Construction Division. The craftsmen of the workpiece and the Li family manor with experience in building cities and dams have been sent to various places, scattered everywhere in Shanbei and Yunshuo, making Li Qi feel that the available manpower under his command is extremely tight. Relying solely on the workshops on the manor to train skilled craftsmen is no longer enough. Moreover, most of these craftsmen are uneducated, and it is particularly difficult to accept new things.

The most important thing is Shanbei, where there is a lack of fortifications such as castles, and the Khitan threat is real and will get worse. In contrast, because the Northern Tang Army was guarding the dangerous pass, Li Siyuan's threat was much smaller.

The effective way for the farming people to defend themselves against the steppe peoples was to build cities, and repairing and transforming the earth was what the Chinese people were best at.

It's just that building the Great Wall in the Ming Dynasty was a bit too extravagant.

With the money to repair such a magnificent border wall, it is better to start a few major wars to completely eliminate the troubles of the northern tribes on the border.

Li Qi chose the location of the first fort he built in Zhangjiakou, which is still a mountain nest and pasture.

However, it was not the location of Zhangyuan Castle in later generations, but further south, built outside the mountain pass.

He felt that the mountain nest where the ancient city of Zhangyuan was located in later generations seemed to be able to build a huge reservoir.

The craftsmen of the construction department and the royal estate were familiar with many of the new construction equipment of the estate, such as the boom, the rotating crane with the wooden pulley block device, the simple pulley tamping machine that could be operated by two people, and the large number of woodworking machines and tools, which greatly improved the progress of the entire construction and dam repair.

The banks of the Daqing River Valley, which were originally desolate, have now been turned into a large construction site, and a barrage dam is being built at the pass of the Daqing River Valley in the northern part of this mountain nest. Outside the south entrance of the mountain nest, a city made of rammed loess has begun to take shape.

In ancient times, the city was actually built to enclose a huge courtyard wall with an earthen wall that was more than one zhang wide and two zhang high, and reserved several city gates on the wall. The water of the Daqing River runs through the city, which can be used to irrigate the agricultural land in the city and provide a steady stream of water for the moats.

The style of the fort is naturally European-style fortress.

Due to the application of a large number of homemade construction equipment, the efficiency of transporting earthwork has increased several times, and the progress of ramming the city wall is naturally much faster.

The Eighth Army of Shanbei was originally mostly owned by the grassland tribes, and it was only in the Tang Dynasty that it was collected into the Central Plains. At this time, there were many herders, and there were more farmers in Ulzhou, Fuzhou and Ruzhou, and almost all of them were pastures from Xinzhou to the north, which had not been developed.

In contrast, Li Qi was more concerned about the security of the north, and now no one will understand how harmful the Khitan would be to China if it developed. What he had to do was to take precautions, limit the space for the Khitans to expand to the south and west, and at least to slow down the speed of the other party's expansion.

The newly built Huai'an Huairong Fort City, Yangmen Fort City (later Wanquan County) and Zhangyuan Octagonal City have begun to ram the foundation, pouring the foundation with concrete and bluestone, and the people who built the city have been incorporated into the garrison and stationed in the newly built barracks in the city. Li Qi also planned to build several dams along the Nanyang and Yang rivers to provide irrigation for the farmland of the three cantonments in the north. However, since the land has not yet been cleared, the population of the three border cities built is small, and they lack some necessary vitality.

The development of northern land should adopt the method of pasture before farming, and the development of agricultural land needs to be limited, and sufficient mountain forest land and pasture must be retained.

This is a frontier land, and the Khitan iron cavalry may break in at any time to plunder.

This is also the main reason why Li Qi first built Zhangyuan, Yangmen Fort and Huairong Fort at the northern mountain pass. After the construction of Zhangyuan Octagonal City, Yangmen Fort and Huairong Fort City, the Khitans did not capture these three cities that held the valley, so they easily did not dare to go south and enter the southern basin.

Li Qi believed that the Xi, Khitan, Zubu, Tuyuhun, and Turkic tribal churches in Shanbei were farming and cultivating land to settle down and farm, and it was a way for them to quickly become naturalized.

These steppe people are wild and untamable, and they can't farm, so it is not easy to teach them to farm.

Farming is a good way to kill the wild, and with the fetters of the land, people will have a lot of scruples when doing things. As for disobedience, if you put them into the military household, you will naturally learn to obey very quickly. If there is no one to manage them, Li Qi does not think that these guys with a loose nature and no skills can live well in such a harsh living environment as Hermes-Epitek, and there is a high probability that they will become criminals......

The so-called fairness and justice is impossible, anyway, Li Qi knows very well that if he manages these savage steppe people in the way of treating the domesticated Han people, the insurance will eventually cause an uncontrollable mess. To treat them, you have to use strict management methods, like taming a fierce horse, and it will not be honest if you don't put two grinding discs on them......

The steppe military households recruited by these three forts worked very hard, that is, they did not pay food, as long as it was the day of payment, they would not be seen in the next few days, and a bunch of people asked for leave.

Then, outside the door of the tavern outside the city, you can probably see them lying on the ground when they are drunk.

The Fan army in the Northern Tang Army was almost all of this virtue, so there could be no day of pay.

Seeing this, Li Qi had no choice but to stipulate that the salaries of the soldiers under his command could only be received by their families and wives when they were paid, otherwise they would not be paid......

Li Qi never expected these garrisons under his command to behave like elite on the battlefield. He has always used this army as a kind of box army similar to the Song Dynasty, which is actually equivalent to the long-term cheap labor hired by his own family. You can build cities, plow land, mine, and work in workshops, and many of them have been trained to be qualified craftsmen, but they will be almost at war.

As for the treatment, it is impossible to make a special difference, and he cannot make an exception to the monthly salary of 200 yuan for each soldier in the army. The only way to do this is to "reward" a meal of meat every three days, which is something that other Jin armies can't do. In addition, when working, some "hardship expenses" will be subsidized.

The garrisons around Taiyuan are now living a little richer, because Li Qi will arrange the soldiers and even the families of the officers to work in the newly opened manors or workshops in the camp, although the labor is hard, but the women and children in the family sometimes even earn more than those soldiers, and Li Qi always seems to be able to find enough work for these old and weak soldiers, women and children to do.

The income in the family was high, and the life was relatively stable and rich, and the soldiers behaved very tamely, and there was trouble in the barracks. Except for the daily morning exercises, these garrisons did not conduct much military training, and labor was their main task, except in the leisure time of the year. However, Li Jiqi does not think that these people under him are weak, because they are usually full, they can eat meat every three or two days, and they are at least not bad in terms of physical strength.

Anyway, it was much stronger than the town army he had seen.

When it comes to the battlefield, how can there be so many skills to show, and everyone is almost physically strong.