Thanks to the vast grasslands and plateaus in the south of the Central Plains, the horses in the Central Plains are extremely abundant, and the Xu, Song, Wei, Zhao, Zhi, and Jin are all big countries that raise horses, and the price of horses has always been relatively cheap, and the transactions are very frequent, so that the vassal states are so extravagant that they dispatch tens of thousands of horses for transporting infantry. But being able to afford a horse doesn't mean you can afford it.

After the 50,000 war horses of the Liang army were borrowed, the Xian army had more than 90,000 horses of various types, and 60,000 were drawn out to form 30,000 cavalry, each with two war horses, which were alternately ridden to reduce the burden of horses and at the same time, the daily marching speed would be greatly improved.

Although the Black Turban Army has a large number of cavalry, the density of horses is not as good as that of the Xian Army, and not all of them are military horses, half of them are miscellaneous horses with uneven quality and different endurance and physical strength, and they cannot achieve the basic unity of performance. It can barely deal with the infantry army, and the high-intensity cavalry charge, even if there is a numerical advantage, it is difficult to have a chance of winning in the face of the 30,000 Xian army with higher mobility.

The Milong River is wider than the Yongxing River, and the passage of large warships is unimpeded, the Black Turban Army has been in trouble for less than a year, there are few large warships, and the small warships have not even had time to build and launch.

With 10,000 sailors following the cavalry, another 10,000 sailors were on standby at the Yongxing River, waiting for the first sailor to return to unload the goods, and the second navy division carried military supplies to continue the relay. In this way, relying on the river, the sailor as the platform, and the cavalry as the vanguard, theoretically, as long as the supply is appropriate, it can expand and strike in any direction without restrictions.

Zhao Xun was worried that the attack along the river would easily be found by the Black Turban Army, and then set a trap. This is not impossible, but extremely probable. The strategy of the Black Turban Army is not under Luo Songting, Uncle Guang and others, sooner or later they will find out about this situation, but it will only be sooner or later.

Before that, there was plenty of time to train the cavalry of the Xian army, and when the Black Turban Army reacted and calculated the Xian army, the Black Turban Army had to transfer men and horses from the Yongxing River defense line, which could not only reduce the pressure on the east bank of the Yongxing River, but also take the opportunity to annihilate this traitor in the movement war.

Since the Black Turban Army wants to eat meat, they also have to risk this head being bitten off.

The chances of war are all equal, there is no absolute fairness, and there is no absolute disadvantage, 30,000 highly mobile cavalry is hard to beat 670,000 miscellaneous cavalry, the odds of victory cannot be said to be very great, but heavy damage is still possible. In the same way, I can't eat you in one bite, I can eat it in one bite, piecemeal and accumulation.

"Zhao Shuai, if the Black Turban Army really wants to set up an ambush, it is bound to draw troops from the banks of the Yongxing River, and it is impossible to transfer troops from other places. At that time, our army will have a chance to breathe, and the Black Turban Army will be tired of dealing with our harassment, so it will be a good deal for our army. When the new city is completed and put into operation, our army will be able to deploy more troops to defend elsewhere, and between the advantages of one and the other, our army will have a better chance of winning. ”

"Well, it's not true, but in this case, you and General Ye Xin will be surrounded and intercepted by the Black Turban Army, so you have to be prepared."

"Please rest assured that Zhao Shuai will never be brave unless it is a last resort. It's really not good, it's just to protect the people and horses and retreat into the warship, anyway, the war horse of Liang Guo is also borrowed, and it is his luck to return it to Liang Guo, if he doesn't pay it back, Antaihou can only admit it. ”

"Hehaha......" Zhao Xun laughed: "That's right, anyway, it's no different from not, so be it." You said earlier that the black scarf was used for military poisoning, what is the reason for this? ”

"Zhao Shuai, the last general remembers that he talked to Zhao Shuai about the azur mine at the end of last year, does Zhao Shuai still remember?"

"You mean, the Black Turban Army used azurite as poison and scattered it into the paddy fields?"

"Yes, now it is a foregone conclusion that more than 10 million acres of grain fields in Beihai County will be cut off, and even winter grain will be gone. In this way, our army's food and grass may become a big problem, and the people's food and clothing are the most important things. This is the sinister part of the Black Turban Army, and I hope Zhao Shuai will investigate it. ”

"Thief!" Zhao Xun slapped his palm on the case and gritted his teeth and said: "It is extremely difficult for General Wei to get 1.5 million stone of grain from Liang State, and he doesn't want to be wiped out by the Black Turban Army overnight, which is really hateful." ”

"Now, the poisonous water has seeped into the soil, and I am afraid that it will not be able to be cultivated for a year. It is imperative to organize manpower to open up wasteland for farming, especially in Dongjun, Suidang, Dongyuan, and Jiangdong County. How much can be made up, and the other shortfalls can only be found to find another way. ”

"But in addition to the Jin State and the Wei Kingdom, the following countries are short of grain and grass, and the Central Plains is even more lacking. Liang Guo has already sold 1.5 million stone grain and grass to you, even if you have surplus grain, you can't borrow it anymore. You can't let the king open his mouth to borrow grain from the king of Jin. Zhao Xun worried.

"This ...... I'm afraid that the king of Jin won't borrow it. The general has no clue about this matter, so he can only send troops to fight to support the war, and he can grab as much as he can, and this is not the case at the moment. ”

Borrowing grain between nations is the first taboo, because I have lent you, I will have less grain and grass this year, in case you don't come up next year, the year after next, and if I have any natural and man-made disasters, who will I go to reason?

Moreover, it is easy to borrow grain and it is difficult to repay debts, because due to the limitation of productivity, the borrowed grain can not be repaid in full in the second year, but in installments over several years, so as to ensure the smooth transition of society and prevent social turmoil caused by debt repayment.

At present, the Central Plains is in turmoil, and the affected countries are not rich, and even if they have food, most of them will not borrow it. The only two great countries of Jin and Wei that have not been affected, the Jin Kingdom will not borrow, unless the King of Xian takes out the cash, and the King of Xian is almost poor as pants, where can he get real money, or he will exchange the actual benefits, such as steelmaking, Xihuan is bound to extort the King of Xian as much as possible.

As for the defense of the country, he will not be willing to borrow grain, so he can only buy it with real money, and copper money is not to be discussed. In this way, the problem is back to square one, and there is still no money.

The other four small countries in the West Sea have limited national strength, and the country is a superior state, and they still have to pay tribute every year, where can they still have the spare strength to lend grain to the Xianguo for disaster relief.

In addition to more than 400,000 stones for building cities, more than 1 million stones of grain and grass can be used for military supplies and other expenses. This grain and grass was originally intended for the captives to settle down and settle down, but now they are not even enough for disaster relief.

In addition to Dingyang and Guangxin, Beihai County are richer, and the official warehouse has more than a year's accumulated grain, the rest of the cities can barely maintain food and clothing, even if Dingyang and Guangxin all open warehouses, they will not be able to support more than one million people in Beihai County for a year. For this reason, it is necessary to get at least another million stones, or even more than two million stones, and receive some relief from other counties, so that we can barely survive the summer harvest next year.

After resting in Zhao Xun's camp for a night, on the morning of the second day, Bailiyan rushed to the station to arrange defense. After Yang Dun led the craftsmen to the south, all the ordnance stocks in the deserted village were equipped to the troops, and a batch of chain mail and ordnance were manufactured in Wang Dependent Village one after another, barely equipped with a thousand pieces of chain mail and 400 steel blades.

This part of the equipment is concentrated on equipping the Sikong Nanbaotao battalion for the purpose of attacking fortifications, and the foundation of Lu Gao's Longwu battalion is part of the Guangxin Army and a thousand forbidden troops, and the tactics are used to group charges, and they can't be changed.

Bai Liyan (Wei Xian) got four hundred crossbows from Zhao Xun and equipped Lu Gao's Longwu Battalion, so that when charging and killing, he used crossbows to release arrows, even if the accuracy was unsatisfactory, but it was much less difficult than using bows and arrows.

The cavalry battalion will not be changed for the time being, and it is still led by Bai Liyan himself, which is convenient for adjusting tactics and implementing his tactical purpose, so as to avoid deviations in the transmission and distribution, and mistakes in the tactical coordination of lower-level generals, resulting in heavy casualties.

In the afternoon, he rushed to Wang's Village, where Yang Dun was guarding outside the improvised earthen blast furnace with Xiong Tuo, Shangguan Zhao, and Qi Mo, waiting for the molten steel to come out.

The refractory mud is made of clay, clay, kaolin and other soils, so that it can withstand the high temperature of more than 2,300 degrees of coke burned under the furnace and 26,700 degrees without collapsing.

At the same time, it also plays the role of molten iron insulation, so that the molten iron is maintained at the required temperature, if it is a coal-burning molten iron furnace, the high temperature of more than 2,000 degrees will inevitably cause the molten steel to burn through the furnace, resulting in a major accident of collapse and explosion.

When the molten iron is baked, it is first introduced into the molten iron ladle with a capacity of 100 catties, and then the hot iron ladle is poured into the mold by four strong men, so that the reciprocating operation, a furnace of 300 catties of molten iron can be injected into the mold in a short time and cast into the desired shape.

The earthen blast furnace in front of you can melt more than 500 catties of iron at a time, Bailiyan design at the beginning of the preliminary demonstration and exploration, with the current technical strength, the blast furnace in front of a smelting can not exceed 500 catties at most, more than 500 catties of blast furnace structure can not withstand it, the important thing is that the pressure in the furnace is too much, it is easy to cause molten iron explosion. Only allowed more than 300 catties to be refined, out of safety considerations.

The principle of molten iron explosion is actually very simple, the closer to the bottom of the furnace, the higher the temperature of the molten iron, on the contrary, the temperature of the molten iron floating on the surface of the molten iron is at least twenty or thirty degrees lower than the temperature of the molten iron at the bottom of the furnace, or even dozens of degrees.

In this way, the impurities in the molten iron at the bottom of the furnace are vaporized to produce gas to float upward, and the upper molten iron has low temperature and poor fluidity, when the gas floats upward and encounters resistance, the lower gas is still rising upward, and when a large amount of gas can not be floated and discharged, the result is to cause the explosion of molten iron.

The boilers of modern steelmaking are semi-sealed industrial steelmaking furnaces, with sensors and pressure indication systems, which can accelerate the gas to float by adjusting the furnace temperature, or human intervention to help the gas discharge, so modern steelmaking boilers are less than tens of tons, hundreds of thousands of tons, and even tens of thousands of tons per day.

When I heard that Bailiyan could smelt three to five hundred catties of molten steel at a time, Qi Mo, Xiong Tuo, Shangguan Zhao and other masters of the Ligong School thought it was a joke at first glance, until Yang Dun, Liu family father and son and others worked together to build the first earthen blast furnace and smelt two hundred catties of molten iron, and they believed it to be true.

Nowadays, smelting, tin, lead and other metals, the smelting furnace can be moved to hundreds of kilograms, but iron, as little as dozens of kilograms, more than 100 kilograms of molten iron, can refine 500 kilograms is already a rare blast furnace, seven or eight hundred kilograms or even a thousand kilograms of smelting furnace is extremely high smelting technology, only by a few people mastered.

The melting point of iron is much higher, in the molten liquid state, the fluidity of iron is very poor, steel is worse than pure iron, and it is viscous, the furnace pressure is also greater, the risk is higher, copper, tin, lead due to the low melting point, good fluidity, more safety redundancy. At the same time, the corrosion of metal liquid on the furnace wall is more serious than that of copper, tin and lead, and the larger the furnace, the higher the pressure and the higher the temperature, the faster the corrosion.

Due to the current technical conditions and the limited scientific understanding, smelting is basically based on experience, and there are no quantifiable indicators and inspection methods, such as metallographic testing, physical and chemical testing, etc., so smelting relies on experience and previous accumulated data.

Under blind operation, the greater the amount of blast furnace melting, the greater the danger.