Jingzikou is a small and narrow fault-type basin between mountains and rivers, carrying mountains, down to rapids, Danshui waterway and Shangyu land, all passing through Jingzikou, since ancient times it has been a place where soldiers must fight, and it was also a prosperous place for trade in the previous dynasties.

The basin is about 123 miles long along the Danshui River, and there are 1 to 2 miles deep on both sides.

Although most of the buildings were destroyed by the war, and they are all traces of burning, the ruins can still show the prosperity of this ancient town in the early and middle dynasties, and even the ruins of two wooden bridges can be seen in the town.

The waterway of the Danjiang River in Jingzikou is very narrow, but it is also fifty or sixty steps wide, and the water flow is turbulent.

Although it is said to be the outpost defense line to guard against the soldiers and horses in the Liang State Pass, the battalion of soldiers and horses stationed in it has not been formed, and only more than 300 veterans are stationed at Jingzikou.

The guard general Zhang Bao is an old pawn in Xiangzhou, almost fifty years old, with a dark old face like old root bark, in the heavy snow and cold winter, the generals are stationed in the ruined city, revealing the faint coldness of the big knife sheath.

Even if Han Qian is a close confidant of the third prince Yang Yuanpu, before the Dragon Bird Army enters Xiangzhou and the defense is readjusted, Zhang Bao, as a general of Xiangzhou, does not need to look at Han Qian's face, let alone look at Han Qian's horse.

As a guest general, Han Qian led dozens of men and horses to settle in a ruined building on the north bank of Danshui, and he couldn't even enter the fortress city defended by the garrison; Zhang Bao only sent his deputy out of the fort to check Han Qian's letter, and he didn't mean to personally feast Han Qian in the fort and win over the relationship.

Han Qian and Zhang Bao are also at peace, after all, whether the three princes can control the defense along the Danshui line, and whether they can lead the Dragon Bird Army to enter the depths of the Qinling Mountains along the Danshui, still depends on the results of Li Zhihe's negotiations with Du Chongtao.

In the early stage, they still had to draw the terrain along the line more accurately, find out the distribution of the rogue bandits at the southeast foot of the Qinling Mountains, and at the same time keep an eye on the movements of the Liang army stationed in the old city of Wuguan dozens of miles away.

The southern foot of Funiu Mountain, the southeast foot of the Qinling Mountains all belong to the jurisdiction of Dengzhou, there were three counties, the three counties recorded 16,700 households, although not as good as Xinye, Wancheng, Fangcheng is located in the depth of the Nanyang Basin and other counties, compared with Xuzhou, but can also be called prosperous.

After all, the area occupied by the three counties of Dunxi may not be a quarter of that of Xuzhou.

After decades of war, only one hundred and two hundred households in the Nanyang Basin remained, and the counties and towns of the three counties of Dengxi located on the military arteries were also bulldozed and crippled, but the population that deviated from the key places where soldiers fought against each other such as the Shangyu Ancient Road and the population hidden in the depths of the Qinling Mountains may be much more than imagined after preliminary investigation and investigation.

The ruined house where Han Qian lived, the beams and pillars still had burn marks, and half of the house had collapsed, temporarily sheltering from the cold wind with reed mats, but there were still snowflakes floating in through the cracks.

"Not counting the mountains controlled by the Liang army, there may be as many as forty or fifty thousand displaced people hidden between the Shang Mountains!" Tian Cheng was also extremely surprised when he read the summarized intelligence information.

Han Qian didn't have too many surprises.

Nanyang is just the north and south, especially in the late period of the previous dynasty, there will be a big war in three or five years, and there will be a small war in three or five months.

The Nanyang Basin is surrounded by Qinling, Tongbai Mountain, Funiu Mountain, and Daba Mountain, all of which are thousands of miles longitudinal and horizontal, with deep mountains and dense forests, even if it is difficult to survive, it is also the last resort choice for the displaced people to escape and hide.

In fact, in Zhai Xinping's memory, if the world had not interfered, the Xiangdeng area would have been sparsely populated and suffered greatly from bandits for decades, until the situation of the division of the princes finally calmed down, and when the newly unified dynasty really decided to solve the banditry in the Dengxiang area, it once recruited four or five hundred thousand mountain people from the surrounding mountains and fields to move into the plains to reclaim fields and settle down.

Therefore, Fan Dahei and Lin Haizheng investigated that there were 40,000 or 50,000 fugitives hidden in the depths of the mountains of the three counties of Dengxi, Han Qian was not surprised at all, and even felt that the investigation work was not done enough.

Although there are a lot of displaced people in the deep mountains and old forests at the southeastern foot of the Qinling Mountains, and they can even organize a dragon bird army, these displaced people are either the remnants of the defeated soldiers who fled into the deep mountains and old forests after Deng Xiang's successive wars in recent decades, or they are controlled by these remnants of defeated generals.

They built a strong cottage in the deep mountains and old forests with no road, half-farming, half-banditry, unruly, and Han Qian never had the luxury of waiting for the third prince Yang Yuanpu to come over, and a paper order could make them rush over to join them.

Who knew that Liang Chu's war on the Western Front would not subside for a while and a half, and who would be willing to run out as cannon fodder?

What he can do now is to find out as much as possible the size and distribution of cottages along the Danjiang waterway, and the rest will have to wait for the main force of the Dragon Bird Army to come over before deciding.

Of course, if you really want to do this, Han Qian feels that you also need to focus on taking into account the attitude of the head snake, Deng Xiang's defense envoy, and Xiangzhou assassin Du Chongtao.

Even if Du Chongtao is a niece and son-in-law who is deeply trusted by Emperor Tianyou at this time, a cousin-in-law of the third prince, and a general with the same name as Zhang Ben, he has been conscientious and conscientious over the years, and he has made great contributions to the Great Chu Kai State, and he has been diligent in guarding Deng Xiang for the past two years, but Han Qian knows that since the end of the previous dynasty, to the division of the world by Chu, Liang, Jin, and Shu, there are really few generals and martial artists, and there are really few people who are good things.

Otherwise, the world in which he lived would not have been rated as one of the three most chaotic periods in thousands of years of history after a thousand years.

At present, the three kingdoms of Liang, Jin, and Chu have just been established, and the three emperors have not yet died, and they can barely control those unruly generals and martial artists, so that although the crusade between the three emperors is not continuous, it is also a period of relative calm for more than a hundred years.

Du Chongtao, as the founding general of the same name as Li Yu and Zhang Peng, has served as the assassin of Xiangzhou and the defense envoy of Deng Xiang for two years, but in his official letter to Jinling, there is no mention of the information that a large number of escapees are hidden in the mountains around Nanyang Basin City.

Although Du Chongtao sat in Deng Xiang, rebuilt Xiangcheng in the past two years, and appeased the displaced people and rewarded farmers between Dahong Mountain and Hanshui, and his limited energy was focused on consolidating the defense line at the south entrance of the Nanyang Basin, he did not notice at all that a large number of fugitives were hidden among the mountains in the central and northern parts of the Nanyang Basin, and Han Qian would not believe it.

Perhaps it was Emperor Tianyou's frequent impulse to reduce the general's military power in recent years, so that Du Chongtao should be vigilant, rather than rushing to incorporate a large number of fugitives into Xiangzhou, causing Emperor Tianyou's jealousy, it is better to slowly figure it out.

No one is a fuel-efficient lamp.

"You go down and rest, tomorrow you will go to Shaoxi Mountain, Blind Xiongyu to keep an eye on the movements of the Liang army over there, and report anything abnormal at any time." Han Qian took a cursory look at the information collected in recent days, and asked Fan Dahei and Lin Haizheng to go down to rest first, leaving only Tian Cheng, Zhao Wuji, and Xi Ying, who disguised themselves as men and followed him when they left Jinling, to stay by his side to talk about things.

At the beginning of the money shop, there were still many things to do in the workshop years ago, Han Qian left Zhao Ting'er in Jinling to be in charge of these things this time, and Gao Shao also stayed in Jinling to be in charge of the Zifang and responsible for the central contact.

Fan Dahei and Lin Haizheng were in charge of the barracks, the chazifang, the craftsman and other things at the beginning, and suddenly became ordinary leaders under the barracks and under the jurisdiction of Tiancheng, and the complexity of their feelings can be imagined.

However, the scouts they led were all veterans selected by Han Qian from the military government, and they did not accept their jurisdiction for a few days, so they followed Han Qian west into Xuzhou, and some of them were personally trained by Han Qian for several months.

"Zhang Bao led a battalion of veterans to settle in Jingzikou for more than a year, and also made three or four hundred displaced people gather in Jingzikou to cultivate, you go to see Zhang Bao tomorrow, and say that we will hire more than 100 people to tidy up the remnants of the town." Han Qian said to Tian Cheng.

Although the Xiangzhou army used the remnant city to build a fortress in Jingzikou, it could only accommodate three or four hundred soldiers to garrison, and even if the main force of the Longque Army was not all stationed over, it was not possible for three or five hundred soldiers to resist the Guanzhong soldiers and horses of the Liang State from moving south from Wuguan.

Considering the need for long-term garrison, Jingzikou still needs to build a larger-scale defense wall.

Han Qian did not have the power to directly recruit the people on a large scale, but since he had already come, a lot of preparations had to be done immediately, and he planned to take care of the guard Zhang Bao first, hire some people from Jingzikou to work, and clean up the dilapidated town first.

"I have already arrived at Jingzikou, there will be no war in a short time, in a few days, Yang Qin will send the first batch of Xi disciples to Yingzhou, you take someone to pick up this group of teenagers, and train them between the mountains and rivers first." Han Qian instructed Zhao Yuanji again.

The money shop was just booming, and it only raised less than 2 million yuan in half a month, which was still quite far from the original plan of 30 million yuan, but once the loan was promoted, as long as the money shop could pay the money normally, with the greedy nature of people, the funds raised would snowball bigger and bigger.

Therefore, in the first half of October, the scale of loan raising was further expanded.

It's just that these funds were still misappropriated by Han Qian, and they first filled the deficit of Zuo Si like a bottomless pit.

Of course, the redemption of the Xi family's children is also in full swing, and the cost is quite a lot.

Although the dignified young and middle-aged slaves and maids have a high market price of 30,000 or 40,000 yuan in Xuzhou, Han Qian has to directly redeem the potential Xi teenagers for strict training in the early stage, and at this time, he must avoid alarming the four surnames too early, and he can't openly go to the cottage where the Xi children are slaves and directly name and buy the Xi children, so he can only secretly bribe the middleman to do things, and the ransom cost is difficult to control.

At present, the ransom of sixteen Xi teenagers costs millions of dollars, which is one of the largest expenses of the current Zuo Division.

However, these Xi teenagers, and the five people selected by Zhao Wuji before, will not be included in the list of the military room for the time being, and will not let more people, or even Tian Cheng and Gao Shao know about this, except that they are in charge of the military room and the chazi room at this time, it is not without a sense of shock.