While improving technology and building new factories, military expansion did not stop.

For Chen Xian, the more territory he occupies, the more people he can gain, and the more troops he can gain on this basis, the stronger his ability to protect himself will be when the real crisis comes.

About three months after the capture of Huojianan's Zhuangzi, Chen Xian's army began to attack frequently, successively capturing Hejiazhuang, the throat of the Yiyuan to Laiwu Plain, as well as two other Zhuangzi of the Huo family.

After occupying these three Zhuangzi, the population controlled by Chen Xian increased by nearly 10,000, bringing the population controlled by Chen Xian to more than 30,000.

This time, Chen Xian did not personally lead the troops, but was led by Yang Miaozhen.

Compared with Chen Xian's methods, Yang Miaozhen's methods are much more cruel, except for He Jiazhuang, the three Zhuangzi surrendered without a fight, saving their lives, and the other two Zhuangzi of the Huo family resisted a little, and after breaking the city, the Huo family was ordered by Yang Miaozhen to hang them all!

Regarding Yang Miaozhen's approach, Chen Xian hesitated for a while, and then acquiesced.

Time waits for no one, and in order to control the new population as quickly as possible, and quickly convert the new population into capital, rather than into cost, it is necessary to cut through the chaos quickly.

Yang Miaozhen's approach is actually just a normal operation in this era, and it is not particularly cruel, but Chen Xian has not been able to convince himself before.

This acquiescence is a huge change for Chen Xian, and this era has finally begun to change his personality!

……

After the completion of the occupation, Chen Xian replaced the population of these three Zhuangzi and the population of Yiyuan partially, and these newly acquired populations needed at least half a year of ideological education before they could be gradually transformed into their own strength.

When migrating the population, Chen Xian also screened out all the scholars in the population.

He deported all of them from the country.

In Chen Xian's eyes, if the illiterate poor are blank paper, then these scholars have already been smeared with waste paper, and it is more difficult to transform the minds of these readers who have been smeared than to transform ten illiterates, Chen Xian does not have so much idle work, and these people stay in his territory and cannot be reformed by thought, then it will become a cancer and poison the results of Chen Xian's ideological transformation.

Therefore, Chen Xian did not want old-fashioned scholars to exist in his territory, at least in the early days.

Fortunately, in this era of alien rule, the number of scholars in northern China has been very scarce, and in the absence of support from the imperial court, for most families in this era, reading is definitely a luxury, so in Chen Xian's occupation area, even if there are scholars, most of them are the children of local landlords Haoqiang, these people have already been expelled or ordered to be hanged by Yang Miaozhen, and the few remaining fish that slipped through the net were directly expelled after Chen Xian was screened out, and did not cause too much waves.

……

By the time Chen Xian's ironworks were completed, it had already been half a year after he occupied Huojianan Zhuangzi.

Double happiness is that Zhao Qufei finally came back from Dongping Mansion City, and with him came back Bai Shijie, as well as hundreds of fine war horses, more than a dozen of the best stallions and hundreds of high-quality stallions.

After receiving the news, Chen Xian immediately sent more than 2,000 sets of high-quality armor to Chen's shop in the county seat.

At the beginning, when Chen Xian dealt with the Bai family, Zhao Qufei was not implicated.

Originally, according to Chen Xian's policy, this Zhao Qufei family was going to be expelled from Yiyuan, but this guy was very clever and even took refuge in Yang Yuanwai and became Yang Yuanwai's mastermind.

Because Yang Yuanwai and the children of the Yang family have also studied, with the situation at that time, Chen Xian could not expel the Yang family, he still needed this family, since he could not expel the Yang family, it didn't matter if there was one more Zhao Qufei, so this person has stayed in Dongzhuangzi since then.

This time, in order to get in touch with Wanyan Chengtao, Chen Xian asked Zhao Qufei from Yang Yuanwai, and said that Zhao Qufei would go to Dongping Mansion for him with a heavy reward, and find a way to get in touch with Wanyan Chengtao.

Chen Xian is also sick and rushed to the doctor, the upper-class people he knows in the Jin Kingdom, except for Wan Yan Pingtao, there is no second one at all, in fact, it is a bit far-fetched to say that Chen Xian knows Wan Yan Pingtao, they are just on the hostile battlefield, and they have just taken a picture from afar.

However, through the contact on the battlefield and some information from the Bai family that the intelligence team probed, Chen Xian analyzed that this Wanyan Pingtao should be a visionary figure.

If Wanyan Pingtao is smart and calm enough, then he should be able to see that the trading plan proposed by Chen Xian will be of great benefit to both parties.

Chen Xian hired Zhao Qufei in order to use his relationship in officialdom to try to contact Yan Pingtao.

Zhao Qufei did not disappoint Chen Xian, and after going for more than two months, he finally brought back good news, just in time for Chen Xian's productivity to increase significantly.

In order to convey Chen Xian's intentions to Wan Yan Chengtao, Zhao Qufei bribed a fierce man under Wan Yan Chengtao through his former colleagues, and only then did he send Chen Xian's handwritten letter to Wan Yan Chengtao.

After Yan Chengtao read Chen Xian's letter, he didn't hesitate for too long, and sent Bai Shijie to follow Zhao to Laiwu and contact Chen Xian.

About half a year ago, Genghis Khan severed his tribute to the Jin state, and the two countries entered a state of tension.

The Jin people are not ignorant of the rise of the Mongols, the Mongols have never stopped plundering the Jin border in recent years, as early as the Zhangzong period, the Jin people built a boundary trench on the northwest border, just to defend against the increasingly powerful Mongols.

Therefore, when the Mongol Great Khan showed hostility towards the Jin state, the Jin people immediately strengthened their defenses against the Mongolian steppe.

Wanyan Pingtao was also transferred to Changzhou in the north of the central capital for this reason.

In the past six months, the cavalry under Wanyan Pingtao repeatedly clashed with the Mongol reconnaissance cavalry, and the results of the confrontation were frustrating.

The Mongolian cavalry was far braver, better at shooting, and more aggressive than the "Warrior Army" under Wanyan Pingtao, and the bows they used were far stronger than the six-bucket bows commonly used by the Warriors.

The two sides fought each other, and there was no three or five times the numerical advantage, and the troops under his command did not dare to confront the Mongol scouts head-on, even if they had a numerical advantage of three or five times, they often suffered defeats.

On the other hand, the Jin army itself, because of the decline of its own cavalry, had to rely on the cavalry of the Qi army, these foreign cavalry were half-hearted, and the Khitans and Mongols who were originally dependent on the Jin State on the border were leaving one after another and joining the command of Genghis Khan.

The infantry units of the Jin State, mostly composed of Han Chinese, were poorly equipped and poorly trained, and it was better to expect them to hold back the Mongol cavalry than to expect the sow to come up from the tree.

Although Yan Pingtao has been desperately reorganizing his arms for more than a year, his efforts seem so pale and powerless under the general trend, compared to the long border between Jinmeng and Mongolia, there are only four or five thousand people, which is completely a drop in the bucket.

Wanyan Pingtao soon had to realize that on the steppe, relying on unreliable armies, it was difficult for the Jin people to compete with the Mongols.

When he realized that the grassland was undefendable, Wanyan Pingtao naturally thought that the two large pastures with more than 100,000 horses in the northern grassland of Changzhou might soon no longer belong to the Jin country.

It was precisely because he realized this that when he saw Chen Xian's proposal to exchange armor and weapons for horses, Wan Yan Pingtao was immediately moved.