Jiuli Pass, also known as Huangxian Pass, south of Suizhou Yingshan County, north of Guangzhou Luoshan County, and the west side of the Wusheng Pass (Wuyang Pass), Pingjing Pass, and called Yiyang Sanguan, is in addition to the Nanyang Basin, the second largest passage between Jingxiang and the Central Plains.

Huangxian Pass is sandwiched between two mountains, Tiancheng Canyon, the two ends are narrow and narrow, the middle is wide, easy to defend and difficult to attack, it is the place where the soldiers of the past dynasties must fight.

At the beginning of February, dozens of cavalry gathered in several carriages and slowly marched through the Huangxian Pass Gorge.

Yao Xishui sat in the carriage, opened the curtain of the carriage, and looked at the mountains on both sides covered with ice and snow, and there was no sign of melting for the time being.

"In front of you is the Lingshan camp, and the eldest brother and Li Xiu are in the Lingshan camp at this time."

Li Qian reined in the horse, waited for the carriage to drive closer, turned sideways, and said to Yao Xishui through the window.

Huangxian Guancheng belongs to Yingshan County, has been located in the hinterland of Dachu for a long time, not to mention the disrepair, limited by the steep cliffs on both sides, the Guancheng is very narrow, more than 100 houses, stationed in more than 1,000 elites is the limit.

Li Zhihe led his troops out of Tongbai Mountain, but failed to capture Luoshan City, which was 100 miles away from Huangxian Pass in the north and heavily defended by troops, so he built a camp city at the north entrance of Huangxian Pass Gorge and at the foot of Meihua Mountain, at the foot of Meihua Mountain, according to the early Lingshan Village, so as to use Yiyang City 40 miles away to the west as horns, and condescendingly peeked into the waterways and coastal areas of the upper reaches of the Huai River.

Yao Xishui called the parking horse team, she and the spring thirteen niang and the maid Ye Feiying lifted the curtain, at this time can already see the end of the post road, the looming rammed earth city wall of the camp city, the yellow-brown earth city, especially conspicuous under the snow and ice; In the valleys on both sides, you can also see the newly opened mountain roads leading in all directions.

The mountainous areas in Yiyang and Luoshan are rich in coal and iron, and Li Zhihe recruited a large number of people from the interior to work hard to mine coal and iron in the mountains, and built smelting and casting workshops in Yiyang and Lingshan, which was regarded as the initial success in less than a year.

Seeing everything in front of him, Yao Xishui felt a lot of emotion in his heart.

Once upon a time, the resources secretly controlled by the Late Red Mansion and the Marquis of Xinchang Mansion were not known to be many times that of the Han family's father and son, but at this time, they were suppressed by the Tangyi army, and one of the main reasons was that they had not been able to grasp a stable foundation place.

Although they took over Qiuhu Mountain from Han Qian in the early days, they also managed well, maintaining nearly 3,000 craftsmen at the largest, but they were destroyed in one fell swoop when the Jinling Incident occurred. In the future, even if some engineers and craftsmen survived, but because they were seized power by Han Qian, most of these people chose to move to Xuzhou with their families after the Jinling Incident.

After the war, at the insistence of Shen Yang, it was finally the supervisor who took over Qiuhu Mountain.

And after the destruction of the Right Shenwu Army, the blow was even greater.

After Emperor Yanyou ascended the throne, Li Pu, the Duke of Changguo, devoted a large amount of resources at his disposal to the construction of the Right Shenwu Army.

In terms of cavalry alone, in addition to having an independent cavalry capital, the Right Shenwu Army also has more than 6,000 additional military horses.

However, in the end, the Right Shenwu Army, which was once the most powerful of the forbidden army, only Li Xiu and Li Qi led more than a thousand generals to escape from Zhongli City, and even the thousands of war horses they brought back were shamelessly intercepted by Han Qian.

At present, the elite of the three forbidden armies of the Zuowu Guard, the Zuo Longque Army and the Zuo Shenwu Army combined, there are no more than 5,000 military horses, and it is difficult to form an independent cavalry unit.

Although they can barely be said to have pocketed the Xiangdeng and Deng Prefectures at this time, these prefectures have been the most fiercely destroyed by the war in the past hundred years, and during the Jingxiang War only a few years ago, nearly 200,000 people were slaughtered and plundered by the Liang army.

Although after the Jingxiang War, Emperor Tianyou forcibly requisitioned a number of households from Tan'e and other prefectures to fill the two places of Dengjun, but by the end of last year, the Xiangbei Metropolitan Defense Mission was officially established, and the total number of registered households in the five prefectures was only 120,000 households and more than 700,000 people.

The devastation of the war has caused the population of these five states to be reduced by more than 70 percent over the past few decades, rather than a slight increase.

You must know that in the middle of the previous dynasty, there were 1230,000 households and nearly one million residents in the Nanyang Basin alone.

No matter how vigilant and vigilant Yao Xishui is about Tangyi in his heart, he has to admit that he has learned too much from the Han family father and son over the years, and his understanding of the population is much deeper than the so-called Wenchen military generals in the world.

After Li Zhihe became the defense envoy of the capital, he focused on suppressing local wealthy households, recuperating with the people's livelihood, and alleviating the oppression of the poor at the bottom.

Even if you don't count the power and influence of the court, it seems that the Xiangbei Metropolitan Defense Mansion controls five prefectures, less than 800,000 Dingkou, and nearly 50,000 soldiers, which is stronger than the three prefectures controlled by the Tangyi Prefecture, about 600,000 Dingkou, and 30,000 Zhengchu, but Yao Xishui knows in his heart that Xiangbei is already at a disadvantage.

There are only more than 4,000 soldiers in Tangyi, which seems to be a small scale, but the Chishan Society under the control of Han Qian has more than 300 large and small merchant ships, and it has also used the bulk material trade such as cloth iron tea, tung oil, porcelain and other materials produced in Xuzhou and Tangyi, and its tentacles have reached into various prefectures and counties in Dachu, and more than 5,000 shipwrights and sailors are all old departments of the Zuoguang German Army, which is really a semi-armed force that cannot be ignored.

Because Tangyi has relatively abundant financial resources, even if Huaidong and Shouwangfu are vigilant, they can no longer prevent Han Qian from using money and grain to cultivate new fields and build houses in Tangyi, and sell them to households and displaced people who have lost or lost little land in Jiangnan at a price far below cost.

And there is Chishan will secretly help, and even directly bypass the supervision of the state and county, and directly transport the low-level poor and slaves to move into Tangyi, even if the ordinary state and county are aware of it, but who will obstruct the powerful Han family and the Qianyang Hou Mansion?

Although it is not as exaggerated as last year, Tangyi has about two to three thousand new people every month.

In this regard, Xiangbei is far from being compared.

The Weaving Bureau, which supplied fabrics and silk to the palace and collected weaving tribute from the local government, and had the right to monitor the world for the Jishou Palace, naturally had more power than the Chishan Society, which had no official status.

And Yao Xishui and Chun Thirteen Niang, as weaving envoys and deputy envoys, received the official titles of the fourth product and the fourth product, acted on the orders of the Queen Mother, and the power was above the local state thorn history.

However, the Weaving Bureau only had two or three hundred people available outside the imperial city, and it was mainly used to spy on intelligence in various places, and it was not capable of helping Xiangbei recruit displaced people on a large scale.

In the Xiangbei Prefectures, every copper coin and every grain of rice that can be squeezed out at present must be used to improve the armor of the generals, and there is no spare energy to reclaim wasteland and build cantonments on a larger scale.

It is also sad to say that in the past year, they even had to squeeze out a limited amount of money and food, and purchased more than 100,000 pieces of cotton cloth and millions of catties of lint from the Chishan Society to improve the nearly 50,000 generals of the Zuo Longqi Army, the Zuo Wu Guard Army, and the Zuo Shenwu Army

to improve the field combat ability of soldiers and horses in the cold season.

This time the chaos in Heshuo and the disturbance of the Liang State may be the biggest opportunity for them to suppress Tangyi in one fell swoop and gain an advantage again, right?

It's just that how can they better seize this opportunity instead of making Tangyi fishermen profitable?

Thinking of this, Yao Xishui had a headache.

After the battle of Wujinling, the Weaving Bureau sent more elite spies, pretending to be hunters and medicine farmers, to sneak into the depths of Huaiyang Mountain.

By this time last winter, the Tangyi army had launched riots among the low-level poor in the upper valleys of the Baishui River, Guan River, and Bailu River, as well as the plank roads between the upper valleys of the Baishui River and the Yanzi River.

Not to mention their more than a dozen elite spies, even if the Shouzhou army has already been aware, but in the cold winter when the snow covers the mountains, they have no problem with the Tangyi army.

Once the Liang army suffered a heavy setback on the northern front or the situation reversed, forcing the Shouzhou army to shrink the defensive line again, no matter how you look at it, the Tangyi army took advantage of the situation to go out of Huaiyang Mountain, which had more geographical advantages.

How can I divert Han Qian's attention?

Yao Xishui didn't have a good plan to think about for a while, thinking that after meeting the eldest brother, maybe they would have good ideas, right?

…………

…………

Yao Xishui and the others had just entered the Lingshan camp, and the carriage and horse team had not yet arrived at the tooth tent, and through the car window, they saw Feng Yi looking at him with a ghostly head, frowning slightly, and asked Li Qi: "Why is he here?" ”

Li Zhen was previously sent by Li Zhihe to Lishan County on business, and it happened that Yao Xishui and Chun Shisanniang came over, so they walked with them, and left the Lingshan camp for two or three days, but they didn't know that Feng Yi would be here at this time.

Seeing Yao Xishui revealing half of her beautiful face from the carriage, Feng Yi greeted him with a salivating face and saluted: "Master Yao weaving, I haven't seen you for a while, but Feng Yi misses it so much." ”

Although Feng Yi has a cheerful temperament and is not as diligent as others, Tangyi has any important contact with the outside world, and he is mostly moving around.

And the outside world also recognized that he could represent Han Qian's opinions.

Seeing Feng Yi in the Lingshan camp, Yao Xishui subconsciously guessed that Han Qian had something urgent to find the eldest brother.

Feng Yi also just arrived at the Lingshan camp, not much earlier than Yao Xishui, and he hadn't seen Li Zhihe yet, but he didn't play any dumb riddles with Yao Xishui, and accompanied them to Li Zhihe's tooth tent, and said as he walked: "Is the envoy of Yao Palace very curious why I came to Luoshan without anything?" There are too many spies sent by the Weaving Bureau to Huaiyang Mountain during this time, and Yao Gong makes you no longer restrain yourself at this time, or don't tell us about it, if you hurt anyone by mistake, everyone's face is not good-looking. I came here this time, because we caught more than a dozen suspicious characters in the deep mountains in the upper reaches of the Guan River, the Bailu River, and the Baishui River, and specially sent them over to ask Li Du's defense envoy to identify one or two, so as to save the generals who were loyal to our Great Chu from being killed by mistake......"

"Hmph......" Yao Xishui snorted softly, now nearly half of the population on the northern slope of Huaiyang Mountain is under the control of the Tangyi Army, and when Han Qian was in Xuzhou, the ability to control and investigate the mountainous area is extremely high, which also makes it more and more difficult for the secret agents of the Weaving Bureau to infiltrate Huaiyang Mountain.

In the face of Feng Yi's secret threat, Yao Xishui was very unhappy in his heart, but he couldn't help but rescue the dozen or so people who fell into Tangyi's hands, but he kept silent with a cold face.