In order to meet the bandits who didn't know where to run, the broken and small war machine of the Tang Dynasty was running rapidly.

However, although the speed of mobilization for the war this time was quite fast, as soon as the battle plan was decided in the morning, at noon, a forward force of about 50 men composed of various arms had already set off, and by the afternoon, the brigade had already urgently assembled and was ready to go.

The reason why the speed can be so fast is because the Tang Dynasty has always faced a huge threat to the Ming army, and the Ming army in Longhua Town and Zhengtai County has always been regarded as a big danger by the monarchs and ministers of the Tang Dynasty, and they are ready to guard against the Ming army entering the mountain at any time, so it can be said that Huangzhu Mountain has always maintained a state of combat readiness, so the mobilization speed is quite fast.

Secondly, it is because today's Tang Dynasty division is no longer the half-bandit and half-civilian army of the past, and if you want to fight a war, you have to gather people first, and then train for a few days before you can form a preliminary formation, and then you can talk about going to war.

Although the number of today's Tang Dynasty is much smaller than before, and now it is only more than 300 people, but these people are all completely professional troops, with a complete and fixed establishment, and they do not have to do farm work on weekdays, but maintain a state of training.

Therefore, as soon as an order is issued, it can be assembled and fought.

The only thing that is still a little troublesome is the time it takes to prepare the logistics, especially the dry food.

After all, in addition to conventional food such as rice, in order to facilitate marching and even fighting, the troops will prepare a large amount of dry food that can be eaten directly without cooking without a fire.

But this time they were fighting at home, and it was not expected to take long, so they didn't prepare any dry food, just took rice and set off.

The pace of military mobilization was extremely rapid, starting with preparations in the morning, with the vanguard setting out at noon, and then the main force in the afternoon, less than a day before and after.

This time, Li Xuan did not go on a personal expedition like the last time, after all, the enemy he faced this time was just a group of bandits. It was not the main force of the Ming army, and it was not necessary for Li Xuan to drive the expedition to boost morale.

In this operation, Fang Dongquan served as the commander, Wang Danxu served as the deputy commander, and the rest of the generals cooperated, and the candidate for supervising the army was still Qian Mengjiu, the secretary of the military department.

Originally, Li Xuan planned to let Wang Danxu be the commander-in-chief, after all, compared to others, Wang Danxu, the former commander of the Guards, knows more and is good at line operations, but Wang Danxu is a small character among the many generals of the Tang Dynasty, and many people will not be convinced if he is the commander.

Therefore, Li Xuan still chose to let Fang Dongquan serve as the commander.

But fortunately, since the formation of the professional army, Fang Dongquan and Huang Xueren and a few of them have seen that the standing army is gone, and the future combat mode will be the kind of combat mode of the previous guards, so in order to maintain their power, they will more or less take the initiative to learn the tactics of the guards.

If they were to take the army to fight against the Ming army, Li Xuan would still be a little worried, but just let them take the army to deal with a group of bandits, then Li Xuan could still rest assured.

It's a big deal, it's a military training!

Any famous general needs to be sharpened by constantly accumulating combat experience, and with more combat experience, it is not impossible for Fang Dongquan and Chen Butcher, the bandit leaders, to become qualified generals.

If they really can't support the wall in the future, there will be more than a dozen young officers of the former Guards who were personally taught by Li Xuan behind them.

Li Xuan was so hard to be a kindergarten teacher during this time, not just to hand over a few students who can add, subtract, multiply and divide, but to teach a group of qualified officers who can understand basic astronomy and geography and other scientific knowledge.

Otherwise, Li Xuan would not have specifically selected these more than ten people from the young officers of the original Guards.

After Fang Dongquan and Wang Danxu set off with their people, Huangzhushan returned to its previous calm, what should people do, at most they just talked about a few more words.

Since the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, it has been a constant war, from last year to now, there have been seven or eight wars, it is not an exaggeration to say that it is a small war in January and a big war in March.

In addition, they are bandits, and they often go out to loot or something on weekdays, so those old and weak women and children in Huangzhushan are completely accustomed to their men and sons going out with weapons, and even many people will still think that this time, their men and sons can bring back more loot.

In the palace, Dong Yunyun sat next to Li Xuan, and when she saw Li Xuan bowing her head and pondering, she immediately said, "Are you worried?" ”

"Worried?" Li Xuan was a little puzzled why she asked, "What are you worried about?" ”

"I'm worried about the soldiers who went on the expedition!" Dong Yunyun said: "They went out to fight again, aren't you worried?" ”

Li Xuan smiled and shook his head: "What am I worried about?" It's just a group of bandits, and there are only a few young people who can fight in it, Fang Dongquan and them will take people out, there will be no risk, at most, they should be able to win a big victory in three or four days! ”

"And what are you thinking?" Dong Yunyun brought a peeled loquat to Li Xuan's mouth, and said at the same time: "It's been this afternoon, you don't talk much!" ”

Li Xuan directly opened his mouth to swallow the loquat, and after taking two bites, he spit out the loquat core, and then said: "It's okay, there have been a lot of things recently, and some things haven't figured out how to do it specifically!" ”

Dong Yunyun didn't know what Li Xuan was talking about, but she didn't ask in detail, she just sighed, and then said: "Don't think about it so much, the boat will naturally go straight to the bridge!" ”

Li Xuan nodded, what she said was good.

The contemplation he had just now was indeed not worried about Fang Dongquan and them, because Fang Dongquan and the others would be sure to go out to fight the bandits this time, and the worst case would be that they failed to catch a large number of prisoners.

The reason why Li Xuan pondered was because he thought that there were obviously many bandit gangs in this big mountain, and if he could recover all the bandit gangs on a larger scale, maybe his Tang Dynasty would be able to increase the population of several thousand people.

But if it is more than a hundred miles, the intelligence is different, I don't know where there are other bandit dens, not to mention, and it takes too much time to go back and forth.

It is already May now, although there is still a period of time before the summer busy time, but this period of time is a very valuable training and reorganization time for the Tang Dynasty Royal Division, Li Xuan needs this time to train the new army that has just been formed, so that he can lead the army to 'collect grain' at the summer harvest.

However, Li Xuan was also a little hesitant, because it was very important to absorb the population as much as possible and improve his strength, and it could even be said that it was the foundation for the Tang Dynasty to continue to fight against the Ming army.

Conscripting other bandit dens to capture the population and train the whole army is like a fish and a bear's paw, and you can't have both.

Li Xuan thought about it all day and didn't come up with a clue, so he simply didn't want to, and when Fang Dongquan and them came back, maybe he would be able to get some information about other bandits' dens from those bandits, so that he could judge whether to send troops to recruit other bandit dens in the end, so as to increase the population of the Tang Dynasty and get more soldiers.

For the next two days, the people in Huangzhu Mountain were still calm and leisurely, and people seemed to forget that their husbands, sons, and fathers were fighting outside, and they were very calm about all this, and lived a peaceful life.

However, Li Xuan in the palace was able to get reports from the front-line army every day, and the report on the first day was very simple, saying how many miles he had walked, and he had not encountered any accidents.

The next day, it was said that they had arrived at the predetermined ambush site, and had begun to deploy troops to ambush, waiting for the gang of bandits to collide with themselves.

However, the report on the third day said that the bandits did not appear as expected, but stopped about ten miles away.

This made Li Xuan a little worried, why didn't he act according to the script!

Did the bandits sense something, so they didn't continue to step forward and enter the ambush circle.

When Li Xuan was worried, Fang Dongquan and the others were also a little confused, you must know that the spies of Huangzhushan had secretly monitored this gang of bandits all the way, but since they arrived at a small valley ten miles away yesterday and set up camp, they had not moved for two consecutive days.

"What are they doing?" Fang Dongquan couldn't understand it, and Huang Xueren didn't understand it either, and they all showed puzzled looks.

At this time, Butcher Chen said: "Otherwise, let's not wait, just go over, anyway, it's only ten miles, let's go faster, we don't need an hour." ”

However, Wang Danxu shook his head and said: "No, as soon as we move, they will definitely find us, and when the time comes, they will directly run away from us to arrest people?" ”

Wang Danxu's words also made Butcher Chen difficult to refute!

This time, they went out on an expedition and defeated the enemy, which was not a victory, only if they captured a large number of prisoners, if the other party ran away directly because of their rash actions, then the previous efforts would be wasted.

"So what do we do now? You can't just keep waiting! Butcher Chen said: "Otherwise, I will bring a small striker, if they come, then I will not move, if they want to run, then I will bring someone to stop them first!" ”

Fang Dongquan said: "This method is okay, but there are more people going here, they will find out, but there are fewer people going, I'm afraid they won't be able to stop it when the time comes!" ”

Butcher Chen said disapprerovantly: "No more, just give me twenty people!" ”

At this time, Huang Xueren and Wang Danxu also looked at Butcher Chen, and then Huang Xueren nodded and said, "I think it's okay!" ”

Fang Dongquan also said: "Since this is the case, then Lao Chen, you will take twenty people over first, if they don't run, you should not move first, if they want to run, you will drag them!" ”

After some deliberation, Butcher Chen set out with a small army of twenty men composed of sword and shield soldiers, musketeers, and spearmen.

At the same time, in a small valley ten miles away, Master Li Zhai had just finished listening to the report of his subordinates, and his face was gloomy and terrible at this time!