In the west of Xiyang City, on the city wall, Yuwen Wenzheng and Changshi Ren Chong raised their eyes and looked into the distance, in the northwest direction of them is a mountain, at the foot of the mountain there is a dock wall surrounded by a large paddy field, that is the territory of the Bazhou Haoqiang Tian clan.

"Is the whole mountain Tian's?" Yu Wenwen took out the clairvoyant mirror and asked while looking at it, he had been to this dragon head mountain (in the twenty-first century), and now he learned that the whole mountain was a family's eyes.

This mountain is the only peak by the river, standing on the top of the mountain, you can have a panoramic view of the surrounding scenery, the Yangtze River flows from northwest to southeast, in the Bazhou boundary around a 'C' shape, and this dragon head mountain is just at the apex of the arc, he feels that if you build a villa on the top of the mountain, it is really a beautiful river-view mansion.

"Exactly, not only that, but even the lakes." Ren Chong pointed to the north, and Yuwen Wen followed the direction he pointed to, only to see a few sparkling places on the edge of the dock fort, with mountains, rivers and large areas of fertile fields, this is really the pastoral life of local tyrants.

"The Tian family is so powerful, could it be that the big lakes outside the city are his family's property?" Yu Wenwen thought of a key problem, there is a big lake outside Xiyang City, which is also the breeding base in his planning, as the so-called relying on the mountains to eat the mountains, relying on the water to draft the water to catch fish in the Yangtze River is still troublesome, if you can get a net in the lake, it will be much easier.

"It's not true, but not everyone can go down to the lake to catch a lot of fish." After Ren Chong finished speaking, he saw that the corners of Yu Wenwen's mouth were hooked, and he was afraid that he would have 'bad thoughts', so he hurriedly added: "The Tian family is not unreasonable."

Yu Wenwen was noncommittal when he heard this, he likes to reason with people the most, 'convince people with reason', nearly 3,000 people under his command want to eat meat, if anyone dares to let them have no meat to eat, then it is more appropriate to reason with people with knives and guns or something.

Looking at Tian's territory with a clairvoyant mirror, his brows gradually tightened: This covers an area of thousands of acres and has a lake, and there is no shortage of food and meat (fish), according to this estimate, the number of private soldiers raised by the Tian family is probably quite a lot.

Not to mention anything else, if there was no caretaker of such a large family business, I am afraid that it would have been divided up a long time ago.

Hearing Yuwen Wen ask how big the scale of Tian's trilogy is. Ren Chong shook his head and said he couldn't tell. It was someone's territory, and he had no way to verify it as a state adjutant. It's not just the trilogy, but even how many tenants are under the Tian family.

"How is Tian doing?" Yu Wenwen is most concerned about this, such a powerful and powerful cat is really unable to sleep well by his side, Ren Chong said that now the sect leader of the Tian clan, Tian Zongguang, is a slippery head and knows how to advance and retreat.

At the end of the first year of the elephant, the Great Zhou sent an army to attack the Jiangbei and Huainan regions of the Chen State, and the Anzhou governor Yu Wenliang led the army to conquer the Jiangbei states.

In June last year, the Chen army took advantage of the main force of the Anzhou army to attack Xiangzhou and cross the river to the north, and it was also this Tian Zongguang who sent troops to help defend the city, so that the Chen army knew the difficulty and retreated.

"It's an old fox." Yu Wenwen looked at a field at the foot of the mountain again. When he came to Xiyang at the beginning of this year, he heard about the Tian family, but the focus was on the city at that time, so he didn't come to the city to overlook the scenery of Longtou Mountain.

Ren Chong said that there is not only one old fox in Bazhou, the fox surnamed Tian is in the northwest of Xiyang, and there is also a fox surnamed Lu in the east of Xiyang.

Seeing Yu Wenwen ask Ren Chong nodded and said yes, Xiyang Man, also known as Wushui Man or Xiyang Wushui Man, most of them have the surnames of Tian, Xiang and Lu, and they have been moved to Jiangbei to open up wasteland since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and have been continuously developing for nearly a thousand years and fighting with the regimes of previous dynasties, and now they have been integrated into the life of the Han people.

Five waters: Ba Shui, Qi Shui, Xi Shui, Chiting Shui, Xigui Shui, this is the general name of the five Jiangbei tributaries east of the confluence of the Jiang and Han in the Southern Dynasties, because it was in the territory of ancient Xiyang County, so it is called Xiyang Wushui, and the Ba Man who lives in this area is called Wushuiman.

Xiyangman developed northward with Xiyang as the center. The states of Jiangbei have long been at the war between the northern and southern courts, and the control of the two sides over the states and counties is relatively weak, so there is a living space for the Xiyang barbarians, from the two Jin Dynasty to the present, which has lasted hundreds of years, after a long cycle of rebellion, crusade, surrender, rebellion, and crusade. Xiyangman has been living with Han people for a long time, and has gradually assimilated and integrated.

They are a descendant of the ancient Ba people, it is said to be the descendants of Yujun Man, with the surnames of Tian, Xiang and Lu in the majority, after hundreds of years of expanding the living space, its range of activities is north to the upper reaches of Wushui (Dabie Mountain to Tongbai Mountain) and even Yiyang Sanguan line, west to the boundary of Dahong Mountain and Anzhou.

"These two old foxes in Xiyang are used to seeing the wind and rudder, and the states in Jiangbei were still in Qidi, and when Zhou Jiong, the commander of the Chen army, attacked Bazhou, these two showed goodwill."

"Later, Tian Longsheng, the assassin of Dingzhou, rebelled and led the six states of Jiangbei to surrender, and they also changed their flags, and after Zhou Jiong marched north again and defeated Tian Longsheng, these people changed their flags again."

Yuwenwen heard what Ren Chong said, and Zhou Jiong, the coach of the Chen Army, remembered Zhou Faming who he met in Hengzhou a few days ago, and the father of this Wednesday Lang and the current Hengzhou Assassin Zhou Erlang is Zhou Jiong.

"When the head of Yuwen comes to attack, these two families are also obedient, as long as they can keep their family business, it doesn't matter whether the court on their heads is south or north." Ren Chong made a summary, what he meant was that although the Tian and Lu families looked a little obstructive around Xiyang, they were basically aware of current affairs.

Their family business is in Jiangbei and they can't move away, as long as the strength of Anzhou's side is still there, then the other party will not have any intention of colluding with foreign enemies, after all, the Chen army in Jiangnan can still be withdrawn, but if they want to withdraw, the fields and real estate will all be lost.

Lu lived on the east bank of the mouth of the Yangtze River, Yuwen Wen and Ren Chong rode out of Xiyang City with their retinue and galloped eastward, and walked about 20 miles to Bakou - Ba Shui enters the mouth of the Yangtze River - and saw a small city opposite Ba Shui.

"At the beginning of the year, when the official came to Xiyang, he also went to the river to check the situation of the Bazhou navy, and now it seems that there are a lot of ships where the Lu family lives?" Yu Wenwen looked at the city by the river opposite and sighed with emotion.

The broken ships of the Bazhou Navy are outrageous, and now Ren Chong said that there are many boats moored in the riverside water village in the small city where the Lu family lives, and it seems that the scale is much larger.

"This place was called the Five Barbarian City in ancient times, it is rumored that in the Spring and Autumn Period, the Chu State migrated the Ba people to Jiangbei, and they landed in this Bahe City, and after thousands of years, Xiyang was the center and expanded to the north."

After Ren Chong finished speaking, he looked around and added mysteriously: "As the so-called draught by water, this Lu clan has a boat in his hand, so he naturally wants to do some business with the south." ”

"It's not just about buying and selling, the land around here is also remembered that there is also a big lake in the east of Bahe City, so it has also become his family's property?" Yuwen Wen sneered, and when he saw Ren Chong nodding, he sighed, the so-called Zhanshan Guze has finally seen it with his own eyes now.

The Tian and Lu families occupy a large number of fields, mountains, forests and lakes, and accept countless tenants and residents, but they do not have to pay taxes or serve as conscripts, and they hold thousands of private soldiers in their hands.

Dock fort wall, or fort dock, dock base, dock wall, later generations generally called camp, village, is a special historical conditions mainly to the family as the core, blood as the link and the establishment of a kind of local organization.

It is not only an economic organization, but also a self-defense organization, but also an autonomous organization, because it wants to defend itself, so it is necessary to build military facilities such as barriers, whenever the grassroots organizations of the war-torn court cannot operate normally to maintain social order, the grassroots society in the township in the past is often replaced by special organizations such as this dock fort.

Once the dock fort is formed, it will take a lot of effort to break it up, if the world is decided, then the imperial court can oppress the castle lord with its strength, but now the situation is unstable at this time, and not many state officials have the energy and ability to deal with the dock fort.

Yu Wenwen doesn't like this dock fort, the owner of the fort can do anything for his own interests, to put it mildly, it is a cancer, to say that it is a seizure, the number of households in Bazhou is less than 20,000, it is a small state, and the originally small population and fertile land are occupied by these dock forts, so there are fewer resources left for the state and county.

In this era, the Yangtze River basin was also highly developed in the Sanwu area (Wujun, Wuxing, and Huiji) in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and many places in Hubei and Hunan, where the lakes were wide and ripe and the world was full, were undeveloped, and the swamps were full of serious floods, and if you wanted to raise troops, you could only find a way to raise troops in the developed territory.

According to the calculation of five households raising a full-time soldier, Bazhou is full of 15,000 households, and there are only 3,000 full-time soldiers who can afford to raise them, and now Yuwenwen has brought 3,000 soldiers to Bazhou to take office, and gradually has to 'bear the cost of raising soldiers', according to Bazhou's current ability to raise troops, it is barely strong, but if it encounters floods, droughts or other natural disasters, it will lead to food shortages.

Cutting off people's wealth is like killing his parents, he wants to raise soldiers, so those who occupy a lot of land and population resources will inevitably become a thorn in the side, if the tiger's mouth is snatched from the food, then he, the new assassin, will also be regarded as an enemy by the heroes, and the contradictions between the two sides will break out sooner or later.

"Ren Changshi, the new army of this official is behind, why don't you go into the camp and visit it together?" Yuwen Wen said to Ren Chong, his new army was stationed in the eastern suburbs of Xiyang City, and Fang Cai and his party had already passed by when they came out of the city to Ba Shui's edge, and they had just seen two strong strengths, which made Yu Wenwen a little discouraged, so he had to give himself a boost now.

The new barracks was built at a suitable address when he came to Xiyang at the beginning of this year to inspect the site, and there was strong support from the Huangzhou Governor's Office, so this barracks was a camp wall repaired with bricks and stones, with a ditch outside and an arrow tower behind the camp wall.

If the dock forts of Tian and Qi are fortresses, then the military camp built by Yuwenwen is a fortress, a fortress to defend Xiyang City, if it weren't for the lack of artillery, he really wanted to build the military camp according to the shape of the fortress.

A group of people came to the front of the barracks, the soldiers guarding the gate were all dressed in vigilance, and several people stepped forward to ask for the camp voucher and explain the intention, they all recognized Yu Wenwen and a group of comrades who acted as guards, but they still had to inquire according to the procedure and send someone to communicate the main general in the camp.

Ren Chong looked at the soldiers in front of him whose demeanor was obviously different from the state soldiers, and he noticed that the sentries on the arrow towers on both sides of the gate were also taking bows and arrows, as if they were facing a great enemy.

A moment later, a herald hurried to the Yuanmen, and after he showed a token, the guards moved the horses blocking the Yuanmen, and at the same time stepped forward to inform Yuwenwen and the others that they could enter the camp.

"Ren Changshi, please!"

"Yuwen envoy, please." (To be continued.) )