After a day's rest, the migratory team continued southward, and after three days, finally entered the Helan Mountains. These days, Liu Jing also began to take Sha Qianli and Su Heluo to train cavalry together, and the originally scattered cavalry team has gradually begun to look a little bit.

The first thing you do when you enter the mountains is to find a place to live. Bai Lijian handed over the matter to the Han people who came with the tribe. They are the most adept at finding suitable farming settlements. The herdsmen of the Helanda tribe temporarily set up camp in a wooded area.

A dozen experienced Han Chinese searched for dozens of miles around the camp for three days, and finally brought back a lot of useful information.

Helan Mountain is almost a north-south mountain range, the northern mountain range is full of mountains, the terrain is high, and most of them are rocky mountains, and there is little vegetation on the mountain, which is not suitable for habitation. The southern mountain range is relatively gentle, and there are many ravines between the mountains, and there are plenty of water in the ravines, and there are even depressions in many places, which are very suitable for living. There are no less than three places of residence that the Han people are very fond of. At the same time, it also brought bad news, there are traces of a large number of people living in this mountain.

Considering that the place of residence should not only meet the requirements of the Han people, but also meet the requirements of the herdsmen for grazing, and now it is necessary to take into account the defense, so Bai Lijian and Liu Jing personally ran to the three settlements, and finally chose the most suitable one for defense among the three.

The place chosen by Bailijian is actually not the most suitable place to live, and the living conditions of the other two places are even better than the one chosen. Those two places not only have living water passing through, but also a lot of sloping land, the land is fertile, and the vegetation is lush, whether it is for building houses or grazing animals. But both places have a drawback, that is, the terrain is too gentle for effective defense.

On the contrary, the place chosen by Bailijian is higher and has a very favorable terrain.

It is an east-west valley with long and narrow ends and two wide depressions in the middle, which are gourd-shaped. There is a section of slope on the north and south sides of the depression, and then it is blocked by peaks hundreds of meters high, and it is very difficult to go up and down. In the middle of the lower depression there is a small pond, and a spring flows down the hill into the pond and then flows eastward along the valley depression.

Although the water here is not very abundant, there is no danger of water shortage in the short term. Herders can set up tents on the slopes of the hills, or they can dig holes in the mountains on both sides, and only need to build a wall at the entrance to fully protect them, and ordinary thieves cannot covet this place.

The most peculiar thing is that the other two places found by the Han people are not far from here, and if they can carve a passage in the high mountains, it will be even closer.

Finding such a good place, Bai Lijian was in a good mood, arranged for everyone to have a good meal, and then devoted himself to the construction of the camp.

Bailijian assigned tasks to everyone, trying to make sure that no one was idle.

The first is the cavalry squad, which is divided into thirty sentry sentries and divided into ten squads to reconnoiter the surrounding environment, and report as soon as anyone else is found. The remaining twenty men served as a reserve force to defend the camp.

Then there were the thirty-two cavalrymen who were captured, twenty of these people chose to surrender, and the other twelve were diehards, and Bai Lijian had to drag them to work as coolies, to dig stones in the mountains, and they were not even given tools, but they could only be stoned. As for the twenty people who surrendered, Bailijian arranged for them to go to the wood, and the wood needed to build the camp would be very large.

The surrendered cavalry went along with half of the strong men in the camp. There is a lot of wood in this Helan Mountain, so you don't need to go far to cut a lot of wood.

The other half of the laborers were responsible for setting up the tents, and because Su and Luo were completely destroyed, the military tents he left behind naturally became the property of the tribe. Until the camp is built, everyone still needs to live in tents.

The task of the women was to take care of the tribal cattle, sheep and horses, not only by building fences for the cattle and sheep, but also by preparing forage for the cattle and sheep. Until the safety of the surrounding environment is fully guaranteed, the cattle and sheep here will be kept in captivity and will not go out to graze for the time being.

The children followed behind the adults, collecting grass and dry firewood at the same time, in short, there was not a single idler in the entire camp, even the four Han slaves around Bai Lijian were sent out, and Bai Lijian became the leader of the children.

Bailijian values these children very much, so he will mingle with them whenever he has the opportunity, teach them some daily knowledge through practice from time to time, and instill in them some advanced ideas by the way, establish his own prestige, and pull them into his camp. He believes that these children will be the backbone of his dreams in the future.

In the evening, the people who went out came back one after another. Bai Lijian, who was standing on a high place and watching all this, was full of joy in his heart, and roughly counted it, there were already more than 300 people, and these were his self-made achievements.

Among the more than 300 people, the proportion of men is the highest, with more than 150 people, of which about 120 are strong laborers. The proportion of women is in the middle, eighty or ninety, and the rest are children, fifty or sixty.

According to the family distribution, everyone chose a tent that had been set up and went in to rest. Bai Lijian discussed things with Liu Jing in his tent.

According to the report of the outgoing sentinels, there are indeed traces of a large number of people's actions in this Helan Mountain, and one of them also captured a woodcutter who chopped wood, and learned from his mouth that in this Helan Mountain, there are dozens of forces of all sizes.

Among these forces, there are Hu horse bandits, Han bandits, and Hu and Han cottages. These people can do anything to survive. Therefore, the various forces here are also constantly fighting each other and tilting against each other.

According to the woodcutter's confession, almost all of these large and small forces were located at the southern end of Helan Mountain, where the mountains were gentle, habitable, and rich in prey, and suitable for farming, making them the first choice for living. The location chosen by Bailijian is in the north-central part of Helan Mountain, the environment is relatively harsh, and it has to face the grassland tribes who occasionally come to hunt.

Bai Lijian and Liu Jing roughly calculated, the number of these forces confessed by the woodcutter alone added up to nearly 10,000 people, not including the part he didn't know. This is a very powerful force, and it is necessary not only to be vigilant at all times, but also to take them for your own use when necessary to strengthen yourself.

Among these forces, there are two most powerful forces, one is the horse bandit headed by the Hu people, called the night does not collect, and the other is the cottage with the Han people as the main body, called the flag village, because there is a Chinese character flag in the village and gets its name.