Ever since the terrifying Homo erectus came down from the tree and learned how to use fire, they have evolved rapidly in the direction of breaking away from the food chain – having no natural predators, and having natural predators of all other animals.

But more than a decade of war has left naked apes north of the Yangtze River in such a miserable situation that they don't have the time and leisure to exterminate other species when the farming season is busy. But when the farming is not working, they have wars with other humans to fight, or squat at home for the winter, and they don't have the spare energy to hunt.

The winter was too cold, and there was not enough food to keep out the cold clothing, and no one dared to leave the house for a long time to stay in the field to blow the wind.

Therefore, there are no naked apes in the mountains, and the tiger is called the king.

Just near Juzhou, Xu Shiyang knows that there are a large number of wild dogs, wild wolves (these two animals are essentially the same), wild boars, bears and even tigers and other ferocious wild animals.

When farming is busy, these animals are a great threat to livestock and farmers working on the edge of the safe perimeter of the dock fort. Travelers and caravans also had to gather dozens of men before they dared to hit the road.

However, now that Xu Shiyang's militia wore warm clothes, bellied food and hunting equipment, the good days of these wild creatures came to an end.

The 15th Tun militia was a group of 2 to 300 people, and they were commanded by the Xie Zhen and Xie Bao brothers, and they were also supported by the reconnaissance team of the new army (this unit focused on cold weapon combat, so it did not stay in the dock fort to train, but participated in the winter hunting operation).

As soon as the terrifying Homo erectus exerted its strength, except for their own kind, the other animals had no resistance at all, and this winter, the militia hunting party even swept to the west of Fulai Mountain, and returned to the division several times with the other militia members of the dock fort who remained in the bandit cottage.

They hunted back more than 200 wild wolves (and wild dogs), more than 50 deer, nearly 1,000 hares and pheasants, more than 20 wild boars, 3 blind bears and 1 tiger.

By the way, more than 100 Maodong homeless people were found in some abandoned villages.

Xu Shiyang was pleasantly surprised to find that through the primitive military training of hunting, his militia's combat effectiveness had improved a lot (at least the reconnaissance team's archery performance had improved significantly).

Moreover, the large amount of prey made the food he spent in advance not only not lose money, but even had a large surplus.

The diligent work of the reconnaissance team and the militia set a good example for the new army to stay in 15 tun for training, and in the winter, these 90 off-duty soldiers received extra meat replenishment every day - every night, Xu Shiyang would personally beat the most popular wolf meat soup soaked in sorghum rice into everyone's bowl, and then eat and live with them, and train together.

Adequate nutrition naturally needs to be matched with a harsh training plan, in the first month after the training, all the new army soldiers except the reconnaissance team, the first training content is the queue, ten days later to increase the formation of marching and other mobile subjects, and then the team suspended training, everyone spent a peaceful and prosperous Spring Festival in the dock fort - Xu Shiyang took Zhao Shan and Rong Mama to Ertun to celebrate the festival with his father, Erniang and younger brother.

On the tenth day of January, Xu Shiyang returned from Ertun, and all departments in the fifteenth tun began to work busily again.

The recruits underwent 10 days of restorative training, and then added combat subjects – including assassination training for pikemen, loading training for firearms men, and so on.

Coupled with the queues, marches and other subjects that have been retained, the soldiers of the new army train for more than 4 hours a day,

This kind of high-intensity training lasted until February of the 11th year of Jianxing, and the soldiers of the New Army survived this tiring period with their own resilience and adequate diet.

Including Xu Shiyang, all 90 people have been fully trained, and the firearms soldiers, mainly composed of half-grown children, have been raised a little taller, and their original bean sprouts-like bodies have become much stronger.

The pikemen composed of adults also faded from their original expressions of honesty and cunning, and became wooden under the education of military sticks, and once they formed a formation, more than 50 people could advance and retreat together like a machine.

Although it still lacks actual combat testing, it is at least superficially bluffing enough, and it looks like it is similar to the early modern phalanx.

On the 10th day of February, the last hunting party returned to Fort Dock.

With the sorghum planting to begin in March, the happy hunt had to end there, and Xu Shiyang gave the ordinary militia a few days off to rest and prepare for the most important farm work for the Wubao people.

In addition, Xu Shiyang also needs to restore the two dock forts in the west as planned, and about two-thirds of the population will have to pack their bags and go to their destination before ploughing.

They needed a few days to restore the walls of the two dock forts (although they didn't need to be fully restored for the time being, only to repair the holes), and they also needed to divide the fields for their own cultivation, and the time was very short.

As for the new army, the daily intensive training has also begun to slow down - because the food is disappearing at a visible rate, and there is not much wild hunt left, and in the absence of new prey, it is necessary to kill the chickens, ducks, pigs and sheep raised in the dock fort to replenish the nutrition of the soldiers.

Of course, Xu Shiyang is reluctant to do this, not to mention that training this kind of thing can't always be high-pressure, one relaxation is the king.

The training of the new army has entered a state of three-day training, the canteen has canceled the extra meals for them, and the food supply has returned to the standards of all levels issued by Xu Shiyang a few months ago.

In the year that followed, the soldiers of the Forces nouvelles often missed the hard and tiring life of the training camp (of course, mainly the food during the training camp).

After the implementation of the three-day training system, the soldiers of the new army had two days off every three days, and Xu Shiyang allowed the soldiers with families to go home for reunions during this period, and others could not be idle and have nothing to do, which was easy to cause some unnecessary disputes (they were all men with strong blood and strength and nowhere to go).

Therefore, Xu Shiyang learned from the practice of PLA, and asked the soldiers to build a pigsty, raise a few piglets in it, and open a few vegetable depressions around the barracks, so that in winter, the time to improve the food can be longer.

The rest of the time was used by Xu Shiyang to carry out cultural education.

He hoped that these 100 soldiers would become the seeds of the future army, so all of them must have the minimum ability to execute tactics (especially the malleable firearms soldiers), Xu Shiyang took advantage of this time to give the soldiers of the new army some simple Chinese characters and his own invention (plagiarism) numbers, while promoting some simple nationalist ideas to the soldiers.

For example, Xu Shiyang would tell some stories to the soldiers in his cultural class, and in addition to the routine greetings to the relatives of the Tartar women, he now added a faint contempt for the Tartar men.

Xu Shiyang told the soldiers of the New Army that the Tartars were very powerful, but they were not powerful in the human sense, they were more like a group of wild boars, bears and blind people or tigers, and they were powerful in the sense of beasts.

We've killed a lot of Tartars in the last year, and we've killed wild boars, wild bears, and tigers, so we're actually better than Tartars.

As long as we are not afraid of them and then train hard, we will definitely be able to defeat the Tartars.