Hearing Li Xuan's question, Liu Bagou immediately said: "Back to Your Majesty, there are at least 100 soldiers working hard to close the gap, and the minister thinks that this gap can be closed within an hour!" ”

Although Liu Bagou spoke with confidence, there was a lot of worry in his words!

And this worry was heard by Li Xuan, and he immediately said, "What's the matter? Could it be that there is still something that cannot be done? ”

At this time, without waiting for Liu Bagou to answer, Fang Dongquan on the side said with a hurry: "This gap is not a big problem, we can completely plug it in an hour at most, but according to those village elders, the water level of this river will continue to rise!" ”

At this time, Liu Bagou also said: "Yes, last night's heavy rain was not only limited to our Huangzhu Mountain, but also a large area in the upper reaches of the heavy rain, those village elders said that according to the situation in previous years, this water level may continue to rise by at least three feet, and this flood will last at least more than a day before it can completely recede, and the ministers are worried that this embankment will not last so long!" ”

Hearing this, Li Xuan turned his gaze back to the embankments in front of him, these embankments were built by the subjects of the Tang Dynasty last winter in order to develop more fields on both sides of the Huangzhu River, because the time was relatively hurried, so although the embankment built was high, it was not strong enough.

After all, the quality of such hastily built earthen dams is limited, and it is naturally a problem to cope with some small-scale floods, even if there is a major flood, but as long as it does not last too long, it can be sustained.

However, a flood of this magnitude, and such a long duration, is unsustainable, and these earthen embankments will naturally become loose after being soaked in water for a long time, and eventually evolve into a burst of embankments.

It's the same as the dike gap that has now appeared!

"And what is your strategy for dealing with it?" Li Xuan immediately asked: "This embankment can't collapse no matter what, otherwise, half of the heaven and earth we have reclaimed will be ravaged by floods!" ”

Liu Bagou said: "Your Majesty, rest assured, the minister has mobilized all the young and strong people to go up to the embankment, arrange people to patrol, and once the danger is discovered, immediately organize people to strengthen and block it!" ”

As he spoke, Liu Bagou pointed to the embankment on both sides of the bank, and there were several people patrolling the embankment at each distance, and there were people holding copper drums at intervals.

Then Liu Bagou said: "In addition to plugging the gap here, we are also arranging manpower to hoard earth, rocks and trees in some more dangerous areas for backup!" ”

As he pointed out, Li Xuan also saw that after several sections of the embankment, there were numerous bamboo baskets piled together, filled with stones and earth, and wooden stakes piled up next to them.

Seeing this, Li Xuan nodded, this Liu Bagou still made a lot of preparations for flood control, otherwise it would not have been possible to complete so many hours in just one morning, those earth, stones and wooden stakes should have been prepared in advance in the past two days.

"It's so good, now that I've made perfect preparations, I'm sure I'll be able to survive this flood!" Li Xuan looked left and right at the large circle of people around him, and immediately said: "Okay, I won't bother you, all Aiqing will be busy, I will go back after taking a look!" ”

Li Xuan didn't have the idea of staying on the embankment, because he knew that going up to the embankment would not only not provide much help, but would hinder his hands and feet, which made Liu Bagou and Fang Dongquan have more scruples about organizing flood control work.

After all, the embankment is more dangerous now, and I don't know when a certain section of the embankment under our feet will burst, which will not only be dangerous at that time, but will also hinder Liu Bagou's work.

So after sending Liu Bagou and them to work on their own, he simply walked on the embankment for a while, and after making the appearance of fighting the flood himself, he took the guards down the embankment.

However, instead of returning to the 'palace', he stayed in a wooden house on higher ground behind the embankment.

The flood was raging in front of him, and the second section of the embankment could collapse at any time, how could he return to the palace with peace of mind, anyway, this place was far away from the embankment, and unless the flood rose another three or four meters, otherwise the flood would not reach this place at all.

At the same time, staying away from the embankment can also avoid interfering with Liu Bagou and Fang Dongquan's command of the flood control work!

Time passed little by little, with the efforts of hundreds of soldiers and civilians, the gap several meters wide was finally blocked, but this still did not make the flood-fighting soldiers and civilians on the embankment relax much, because at this time, a section of the embankment has begun to appear dangerous, the embankment has been continuously impacted by the flood, and it has become extremely weak, and it may burst at any time.

At this time, Liu Bagou hurriedly arranged for at least hundreds of people to go to reinforcement urgently!

Seeing that everyone on the embankment was busy green, Li Xuan in the back was also anxious, but now he was powerless, so he could only pray to carry the flood this time.

If the embankment collapses completely, then there is not much harm to the casualties, after all, this Huangzhu River is not a big river, the flood is not big or urgent, even if it is flooded, it is only one or two meters high.

But it will be devastating to the farmland near both sides of the Huangzhu River.

Since the Tang Dynasty took Huangzhushan as its base camp last year, the population has increased rapidly, and the demand for food is also increasing, and the land that has been reclaimed is naturally increasing.

At the beginning, it was okay, they could open up land and farm at the foot of the mountain far away from the Huangzhu River, but the relatively high places at the foot of the mountain were not large, and they were soon cleared, and the remaining large small plains were on both sides of the Huangzhu River, and the terrain was relatively low.

That's why last winter when the land was cleared, a dam was built along both sides of the Huangzhu River, just in case.

But there will be so much rain at the turn of spring and summer this year, and the flood caused by a heavy rainstorm will make the water level of the Huangzhu River so much higher.

If the dikes on both sides of the Huangzhu River collapse, at least a third of the farmland will be completely submerged.

What does this mean, this means that when the summer harvest comes, Huangzhushan will directly reduce production by one-third, and then thousands of people in Huangzhushan will face a food crisis in the second half of the year.

And this situation is unbearable for the current Tang Dynasty, and it is also unbearable for Li Xuan.

Last year's food crisis in the Tang Dynasty made Li Xuan anxious, and later he took the risk of grabbing Fengjiazhuang to solve the food crisis, and he didn't want to come again.

Now there is no second Fengjiazhuang outside the mountain, there is a group of powerful bandits in the mountain, this is not a secret, many villages outside the mountain know, many villages have to protect themselves.

And more importantly, in order to prevent the puppet Tang thief army from obtaining grain from outside the mountain, the Ming army was strictly armed, and during the autumn harvest last year, in order to prevent the puppet Tang thief army from going out of the mountain to loot grain on a large scale, the Ming army was deployed at various points on the edge of the mountain early.

Then, when the autumn harvest was still in progress, a large number of people were sent to the nearby villages to collect grain, and the grain was concentrated in Longhua Town.

On the one hand, this is to reserve and supply more food for the Ming army to eat, and on the other hand, it is to prevent the puppet Tang thief army from obtaining these grains.

It's a pity that in addition to the ones that have been used up by the Ming army and those that have been robbed by the bandits in Huangzhushan, the rest of the grain and grass piled up in the granary were burned by the puppet Tang thief army.

forced Su Jiakang to transfer grain from Zhengtai County, otherwise, the nearly 2,000 Ming troops stationed in Longhua Town and the surrounding area, as well as the ordinary townspeople in Longhua Town, would have to go hungry.

Nowadays, if you want to get a large amount of grain near the mountain, you can't just rely on looting ordinary villagers, because they don't have any food of their own, and it is impossible to store a large amount of grain like Fengjiazhuang at the beginning. The only feasible way is to grab grain from the Ming army, or even directly attack Longhua Town or Zhengtai County.

However, then there would be a situation that the bandits of Huangzhushan had been trying to avoid, that is, to avoid the situation from getting worse, thus attracting more Ming troops.

If we do not want to encounter a food crisis in the second half of this year, which will lead to all kinds of passive situations, then today's levees must be defended.

The specific flood fighting work was led by military generals such as Liu Bagou and even Fang Dongquan, and Li Xuan did not have to worry about it, what he could do was to ensure the logistics support of the flood fighting personnel in the rear.

Immediately, he said to Wang Wenhua beside him: "Pass the order, open the official warehouse today, but all the soldiers and civilians who participate in the flood fight and rescue can eat openly, not coarse grain, use polished rice." In addition, let people slaughter a few pigs, chickens and ducks, etc., so that the soldiers and civilians fighting the flood must be fed! ”

Saying that, he paused for a moment and continued: "Also, you and Mr. Qian are discussing boiling ginger soup and other decoctions to prevent cold, and now it is still raining, so you can't let the flood-fighting soldiers and civilians fall ill on a large scale!" ”

This is blown by the wind and rain, and has to be soaked in the water to resist the flood, it is easy to appear a large area of cold and cold, there is no cold medicine in these years, if this is infected with a cold, a bad but will kill people.

When Wang Wenhua went down, Li Xuan continued to pay attention to the situation on the embankment, and then worried about what would come, and when it was close to noon, a large flood peak came upstream, and this flood directly increased the water level of the embankment by more than one meter.

This made the already somewhat crumbling levee no longer bearable, and in less than an hour, there were three gaps in a row.

Although Fang Dongquan and Butcher Chen in front of them had already taken the lead in the flood fight, and Butcher Chen even jumped into the water to drive wooden stakes to plug the gap, but this still failed to quickly plug the gap in a short time, and by the time they plugged the gap in the afternoon, the farmland behind the embankment had already turned into a flood.

Seeing that the large area of farmland in front of him was completely submerged, Li Xuan didn't speak for most of the day, and finally sighed and got up to leave to return to the palace, no one knew that on the way back to the palace, Li Xuan was already planning how to start the next war against the Ming army.

The destruction of farmland is a disaster that cannot be stopped by manpower, but the food crisis can be solved by manpower.

Since God ruined Datang's farmland without giving face, he can only use Datang's knives and guns to get food for the people of Datang!