Guo Rong, Feng Yi, Tian Cheng, Guo Ke, Zhao Wuji and others quickly called someone to find them.

Before they entered the courtyard, they were still discussing the progress of the construction of the Huazhujian (Peak) plank road.

This is also the most important work in the entire Huaiyang Theater in the near future, and Feng Yi and Guo have to personally rush to the construction site of Huazhujian every once in a while to see the progress.

The reason for building a plank road on the cliff is very simple, that is, to dig a hole in the steep stone cliff, insert a wooden stake flat, and then lay a thick board on the wooden stake to form a trestle bridge to connect the road on both sides that are cut off by the steep cliff.

In this way, you can avoid climbing over steep cliffs, you can go directly to the cliffs, and more importantly, the carriages and horses can pass through, creating convenient conditions for the transportation of bulk materials.

However, the peaks and ridges around Huazhujian and Tanyang Peaks are the watersheds of the South Huaishui River and the Baishui River, which flows into the Huai River to the north and is one of the main tributaries of the upper reaches of the Huai River.

In this area, it is necessary to build a road, open up the passage of the upper valley of the Nanqishui River and the Baishui River, either open the mountain, or drill the rock, or both, the difficulty and the scale of the project are not slightly lower than the construction of the Xuefeng Mountain Post Road in the Qin and Han dynasties.

Of course, it must be repaired, even if it is a thousand years earlier, the world has the ability to build this plank road, after all, there is no technical difficulty on the whole.

During the Qin and Han dynasties, the five-foot post road that ran through the entire southwest of the country, with a total length of more than thousands of miles, and the Xuefeng Mountain Post Road was only a very small part of it.

If it were someone else, perhaps they would rather be willing to fight out of Wujin Ridge first, defeat the enemy troops along Anfengzhai, and then enter the mountains along the river valley in the south of Huozhou after capturing the southern area of Huozhou, and never think of digging a plank road connecting the northeast slope and the north slope of Huaiyang Mountain in a dangerous place at any cost.

However, Han Qian was willing to do so.

Han Qian operated Xuzhou, and twice widened and renovated the Xuefeng Mountain Post Road on a large scale, opening the passage from Xuzhou to the states in the upper reaches of the Xiangjiang River; In order to strengthen the land connection between the counties in Xuzhou, roads are built in Qianyang, Linjiang, Chenzhong, Zhijiang, Quyang and other places almost non-stop every year.

After the civil rebellion in Sizhou, on the steep slope of the southern foot of Wuling Mountain, a post road was opened up from Hujian Pass to the Wuchuan River Valley of the Qianjiang River, ensuring that the cloth iron of Xuzhou could bypass the hinterland of Sizhou controlled by the Yang family, and directly lead to Sichuan and Shu through the Qianjiang River, and also ensure that the well salt of the Wuchuan River Valley was continuously transported into Xuzhou.

The ability of the Tangyi army to build bridges and open roads is definitely no worse than that of marching and fighting, and it has trained a group of experienced road and bridge engineers, has a large number of skilled craftsmen, deliberated dozens of ways to build roads and bridges, and has also developed a number of special tools and equipment.

Can the strength or weakness of a soldier be reflected only in the charge?

Hundreds of generals who were transferred by Han Qian from Xuzhou were engaged in construction in the flat areas such as East Lake and Wushou, or they were still very unaccustomed to operating in Huaiyang Mountain, and there was a feeling of being at home like a fish in water.

In the past three months, thousands of heavy soldiers and craftsmen have been requisitioned to build a nearly 30-mile-long post road in the upper reaches of the Yanzi River on the side near Huaiyang County, leaving the last ten miles to open up the connection with the upper valley of the Baishui River; Even now, it is possible to transport some armor, armor, weapons and wounded medicine and other materials on a small scale into the hinterland of the northern slope to reinforce the Hornan Task Force.

The advantage of building this post road can also strengthen the communication between the thirty or forty villages and nearly 10,000 people in the dangerous mountainous areas in the upper reaches of the Yanzi River and the outside world, and it is also convenient to eliminate the two bandits who occupy these dangerous mountains as nests.

Feng Yi, Guo Ke, Tian Cheng, Guo Rong and others are more eager to see the Huazhu Peak plank road can be repaired as soon as possible.

At present, the defense line of the eastern flank of the Shouzhou army is fully contracted, and in the north of Huaiyang Mountain, the main soldiers and horses are gathered in Anfeng Village, blocking the upper valley of the Nanqishui River, and the Tangyi army can be blocked, and the defense is relatively easy, but on the northern slope of Huaiyang Mountain, there are four or five large streams and rivers passing through the territory of Huozhou and leading directly to the Huai River.

Once the Huazhufeng plank road is completed, the Tangyi army will open the passage to the northern slope of Huaiyang Mountain, and the Shouzhou army will defend four or five river valley passages out of the northern slope on the periphery of the northern slope, so as not to let the elite Tangyi soldiers enter the hinterland of Huozhou and drink the Huai River.

This means that they may not need to send troops to launch large-scale battles in the future, and they may directly drag down the Shouzhou army.

With the delay of time, the situation in Huaixi developed more favorable to the Tangyi army.

As long as Li Zhihe was a little more effective on the Western Front, Tian Cheng, Feng Yi, and others felt that it would not be an unimaginable prospect to completely expel the Shouzhou Army from the south bank of the Huai River within three to five years.

After all, after they controlled the northeast and north slopes of Huaiyang Mountain, Huozhou, Shouzhou, and Haozhou, which were controlled by the Shouzhou Army, could be said to be in no danger to defend.

"What's the matter, the adults brought us here?" Guo Rong asked as he walked in.

As the chief secretary, he was in charge of the capital department, and his actual functions and powers were similar to those of the secretary, except that the specifications of the embassy were slightly lower than those of the defense embassy and the jiedu embassy, and there was no secretary in charge, and only a bookkeeper and the main bookkeeper were in charge of confidential documents and drafting letters.

Han Qian told everyone about the letter that had just come back from Dingzhou and Wang Jun's many speculations, and said to Guo with special emphasis:

"If there is such a thing as Wang Yuankui's defection to the Mengwu people, so that the Mengwu people will drive straight into and attack the two states of Wei and Bo from the two states of Hengding, what kind of alarm will the Liang army and the hinterland of the Liang State have, and how it will affect the situation on both sides of the Huai River, the Military Intelligence Staff Department should come up with a corresponding deduction and response plan as soon as possible......

It does not mean that Wang Yuankui will definitely defect to the Mughu, but once this incident happens, it will not only cause earth-shaking changes to the power structure north of the Yellow River, but will also directly affect the development of the situation in the Jianghuai region.

This will be very different from the development of the situation in Jianghuai that they judged before, and at the same time, their response plan will also be greatly changed, or they will need to increase corresponding countermeasures, so as not to be rushed at that time.

"We still have to be prepared for the possibility of Liang Guo losing the two states of Wei Bo, especially as Mrs. Jun said, the late Red Mansion and Wang Jingrong, an internal official of the Chengde Army, have secretly colluded for many years, and Li Zhihe may have secretly prepared in Yiyangji, and if we are careless, we may have to sit back and watch the entire upper reaches of the Huai River fall under Li Zhihe's control...... Feng Yu said in a deep voice.

It is already early February, the land is about to completely unfreeze, and both sides have relatively strong naval forces, and it will be difficult to attack and attack the Huze area controlled by the other side.

After February and March, spring sowing is the busy season, and before the rainy season, digging ditches and building roads is much more convenient than in the cold winter.

According to the established plan, Tangyi will release a considerable part of the baggage troops from the defense block, expand the reclamation, and continue to build and improve the water and land passages and dredging canals in the front defense village and the hinterland of the inner line.

However, if we were to extrapolate the development of the Jianghuai situation from the situation that the northern region of Liang would be attacked by the Mengwu Iron Cavalry, they would not only not be able to relax their military preparations, but even further strengthen their military preparations, so that they could seize the opportunity of expansion by taking advantage of the chaos in the northern part of Liang State.

"Since the Jinling Rebellion, the Shouzhou army generals are in an embarrassing situation, even if the Liang army is helped, it has not been able to improve too much, the reason why there is still not a weak combat effectiveness, or Xu Mingzhen has accumulated a lot of prestige in Shouzhou, and there are many cronies who support him," Guo Rong said, "But in the battle of Wujinling, Xu Mingzhen's descendants were extremely tragic casualties, which will inevitably directly affect his control of the Shouzhou army, regardless of whether there will be turmoil in the north, especially when the Huazhu Peak plank road is about to be completed, we should maintain stronger military oppression on the Shouzhou army!" ”

Guo Rong was originally a descendant of Anning Palace, and he knew the situation inside Anning Palace and the Xu family very well.

At least before Han Qian, a strong army was more likely to win over the loyalty of a small number of elite descendants, and then use the elite of the descendant line and the strict military discipline to maintain a larger scale of soldiers and horses.

Since the secession of feudal towns in the middle and late dynasties of the former dynasty, the importance of the Ya army in the feudal towns has never been overlooked.

And continued to the founding of the Liang, Shu, Jin, and Chu countries, basically constantly strengthened the status of the guards and the forbidden army, and then used the guards and the elite of the forbidden army to control the state, county and local soldiers.

Xu Mingzhen's rule of Shouzhou has not fundamentally departed from this model.

When Han Qian went deep into Huaiyang Mountain alone, the reason why the government and the opposition were so nervous was that to put it bluntly, the world's view of Tangyi soldiers had not fundamentally changed, and they did not distinguish Tangyi soldiers from other elite and strong troops.

The government and the opposition are still worried that the elite of Han Qian's descendants will suffer too heavy casualties, or the entire army will be wiped out, which will directly lead to the collapse of the entire Tangyi defense line.

When Xu Mingzhen attacked Wujinling last year, although in the month-long tug-of-war of attrition in the early stage, his descendants did not go to the battlefield and fight for consumption, but the ice dam hit the enemy camp, but Xu Mingzhen's descendants did not escape the catastrophe.

And Han Qian led the raid soldiers and horses to send reinforcements at the outskirts of Anfeng Village, and Xu Mingzhen led the soldiers and horses who rushed to the outside of Anfeng Village for reinforcements as soon as possible, mainly the elite of his guards and cavalry, which also suffered heavy losses.

The two tragic blows before and after were added together, and the elite of the lineage that Xu Mingzhen could directly control had dropped to an extremely low level, and he still had to mainly gather in Anfeng Village to prevent Han Qian from making any moves in the mountains.

In fact, this also means that Xu Mingzhen's control over the Shouzhou Army, which seems to have 90,000 soldiers and horses, has actually secretly dropped to a very low level.

Regardless of whether the situation in the north is right or wrong, there will be unexpected turmoil, Guo Rong advocated maintaining a stronger military confrontation and oppression against the Shouzhou army, and he believed that if the confrontation continued, the Shouzhou army would have a large-scale mutiny, flee, and even choose to serve the imperial court again......

It is said that those who are good at fighting have no outstanding achievements, and the Tangyi control army has advantages in all aspects, so it should use this kind of advantage to crush and disintegrate the Shouzhou army, so as to achieve the goal of surrendering the enemy without a fight.

"In addition to Yiyang, the Military Intelligence Staff Department will also transfer several more groups of scouts to the north in the near future, entering the front line of Weizhou and Bozhou, and keeping an eye on the changes in the war situation north of the Yellow River. Whether Emperor Zhu Yu of Liang was wary of the Cheng German army and the soldiers and horses of the Mongol people in Youtan and other states, as well as whether the deployment of troops and horses of the Liang army in the Hanoi prefectures and Wei Bo could cope with the worst-case situation, and even the choice of Zhang Wenli, the defense envoy of Zhao Yidu, would have a great impact on the situation in the north," Han Qian said. ”

For example, last year, so many engineers and craftsmen were dispatched to build plank roads in the deep mountains of the western part of Huaiyang County, and many construction tasks to be carried out in Donghu, Liyang, Longtan and other places came to a standstill.

And if the plan is to be adjusted this time, it is very likely that it will involve the rationing of thirty or forty thousand strong men, and the impact on Tangyi will be even greater.

At present, Tangyi is not a field army that can get the unreserved support of the imperial court, in addition to considering the military confrontation with the Shouzhou army, but also considering the complex entanglement with the imperial court, and internal forces such as Huaidong, Wanhonglou, and Zheng, the problem has become more complicated and dangerous......

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