An Jinquan quickly sent 1,000 recruited people to Li Qi, and the follow-up recruited laborers were still being sent one after another.

Li Qi chose the location of the first fort he built at the foot of Baleng Mountain, that is, the location of the victorious fort city in later generations, stuck at the mountain pass leading from Yunzhou to Beidi. In addition, at the confluence of the Yuma River and the muddy water, it seems that a huge reservoir could be built into a mountain nest there.

The craftsmen who came with the caravan were familiar with many of the construction equipment of the Jinyang Royal Manor, such as the boom, the rotating crane with a wooden pulley set device, the simple pulley tamping machine that could be operated by two people, and a large number of woodworking machinery and tools, which greatly improved the progress of the entire city construction and dam repair.

The banks of the former desolate Muddy Water (Royal River) valley have now been turned into a large construction site, and a barrage dam is being built in the southern part of the pass, such as the confluence of the Muddy River Valley Pass and the Yuma River. At the foot of Baleng Mountain, a city made of rammed loess has been rammed and 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. For example, the reservoir formed after the muddy water barrage is located on the east side of the fort city, which can not only be used to irrigate the agricultural land in the city, but also provide a steady stream of water for the moats.

Inspired by the European castle method in his memory, Li Qi transformed the traditional square city into an eight-sided fortress shape, which had no dead spots for shooting, and the archers were able to prevent the enemy from climbing up from the side walls more effectively, making it more defensive.

In this era, there was no technical content in building a city wall on the grassland, that is, it was built with loess rammed, with bricks on the outside, and it was possible to add lime and hay stalks to the loess to increase the strength. Li Qi can still give some guidance on the construction of dams, and to build city walls, it is obvious that the craftsmen in the army have much more experience.

In the past, there was no good way to ram the city wall, this loess was carried by the soldiers by manpower, and it was picked up from both sides, which was not only laborious and laborious, but also because of the local restrictions of construction, the efficiency was naturally greatly reduced. Even if hundreds of people carry people on their shoulders, they can't repair a few feet of the city wall every day.

Now, after erecting more than a dozen tall pulley hangers next to it, only three or four people pull the ropes, and the large wicker basket containing hundreds of catties of loess can be easily hoisted to the head of the city. Today, more than a dozen lots are being built together, and the speed of building the wall is amazingly fast, three or four times as fast as before.

Thanks to the use of many homemade wooden equipment, the efficiency of transporting earthwork has increased several times, and the progress of ramming the city wall has naturally been much faster.

The land of Yunzhou was originally mostly owned by the grassland tribes, and in the Tang Dynasty, it was also mainly used to house the attached grassland tribes. At this time, there were many herdsmen, and there were slightly more farmers in Shuozhou and Mayi, and almost all of them were pastures from Yunzhou to the north, and they were not developed.

Li Qi was not too concerned about the war in the south, but more concerned about the security of the north, and now no one would 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.

Originally, there were very few people in Yunzhou, but because of this year's disaster, they were plundered by the Khitans again, and the population was even smaller. After completing the statistics, Li Qi found that the total population of the three prefectures under his jurisdiction was now less than 7,000 households, of which seventy percent were grassland tribes in the north.

Population is a big problem, and if there are no people, it is useless to build a fortress no matter how tall and strong it is.

More than 50,000 horses of woolen cloth, linen and silk were exchanged for one-fifth in just ten days, and the most popular commodity among the herdsmen was knives, whether long or short, which were the favorite of the herdsmen who had to fight wild beasts on the grassland from time to time. Li Qi's butler, Zhang Gan, smiled on his slightly obese face, and in another camp, there were already piles of cowhides, sheepskins, and mountain-like wool.

New pastures are slowly taking shape.

At present, more than 1,000 cattle and tens of thousands of sheep grazing in the surrounding area have been replaced by new owners, and they have been placed on both sides of the Yuhe River and the Yuma River for grazing.

The steel knives sold by the caravan were the original stocks of weapons in Jinyang Jian and Taiyuan Mansion, and Li Qi no longer looked down on the weapons and armor that the original runners had hoarded, so he transported these stocks to the grassland to sell. Although these things are not made of the best steel, they are indeed steel products, although they are the kind of "forged steel" that is repeatedly hammered with pig iron and wrought iron, and the quality is still much stronger than that of iron. Shepherds are not stupid, and they still know the quality of their goods. It turned out that I didn't count it in my heart, but after comparison, I will know it.

In less than a month's effort, the area around the Imperial River of the Eight Ridge Fort City under construction was originally densely forested, and the green river valley area has been cut down into a large area of bare, and even the trees in the grassland area have been cut down a lot.

Li Qi watched a large group of people take the big band saw newly made by Jinyang Supervisor, and easily put down the big trees that had grown for dozens or hundreds of years, and sometimes wondered if he had made a big mistake.

The voluntary tree-planting movement of later generations was a good tradition, and he felt it was necessary to pick up this tradition and carry it forward in ancient times. Now that the tree planting season has passed, Li Qi has to order someone to build a nursery, cultivate the seedlings first, and then plant them when autumn comes.

As for the reclamation, he planned to plant pasture grass first, and adopt the method of pasture first and then farming.

This proved in later generations to be the most suitable way of development in the frontier reclamation.

Standing on the top of a hill and looking out at the grasslands, sometimes you feel like you're sailing on a steamer on the sea, and the vast grasslands are as vast as the sea. Especially in spring, the endless green spreads along the land, and there is no end in sight.

At this time, on the steppe, a group of cavalry was hurrying over.

Li Qi was drawing a map in the tent when Wu Luan walked in with a strong grassland man. After he saw Li Qi, he obviously froze for a moment, and then stroked his chest with his right hand and bowed down and said, "Minister Zhang Mujin greets Your Majesty!" ”

Li Qi raised his head, Wu Luan walked up to him, leaned down and whispered: "Zhang Mujin, the assassin of Huanzhou, is also the leader of the Yunzhou Turkic Department. ”

Twenty-six-year-old Zhang Mujin was already the Assassin of Huanzhou, inheriting his father's position, the leader of the Turkic Department of Lingyunzhou and the Assassin of Huanzhou. Li Keyong was very gentle with the Yunzhou Turks, who also came out of the Turks, and settled them in the Yunshuo area, especially the Daihai area in the north of Huanzhou. The Jin army had three horse farms, all of which were located within the Turkic territory of Huanzhou.

Although Zhang Mujin's name is a Chinese name at first glance, after seeing Li Qi, this guy used the etiquette of the grassland.

For this guy who speaks standard Chinese, Li Qi is ready to train him to be a nobleman.