When Xiong Wencan was busy after taking office, Xiao Tianjian's side was also very busy, and after the first war, the Xingtian Army was newly captured in three counties, and the territory of these three counties was connected with the original Yongning Lu clan, so that in less than half a year, the Xingtian Army formed an actual control area in western Henan that was nearly 300 miles long from north to south and nearly 400 miles long from east to west.

To the north, the Xingtian Army directly threatened the security of Luoyang in Yichuan County, almost making Luoyang Mansion an enclave hanging in the circle of influence of the Xingtian Army, and to the east, it approached Ruzhou, which could leap into the Yuzhong Plain at any time, and to the south, it threatened Nanyang, Runingfu, Gwangju and other state capitals, posing a great oppression to the Henan government.

Moreover, when the Xingtian Army broke through Ruyang County, it obtained tens of thousands of stones of grain in Ruyang County, a considerable part of which belonged to King Fu of Luoyang, and a considerable amount of weapons and armor were captured, which was enough for the Xingtian Army to last for a considerable period of time.

At the same time, the Xingtian Army also captured a large number of officers and soldiers, and many homeless people came to vote when they heard the news, which also made the Xingtian Army obtain a large number of human resources, so Xiao Tianjian had to stop a little, digest these gains, reorganize the new army, and expand the combat power as quickly as possible.

Based on Xiao Tianjian's observation of the future situation, he did not dare to be fluttering because of the current temporary victory, but under Niu Jinxing's reminder, he had a clearer understanding of the situation.

Since Niu Jinxing defected to Xiao Tianjian, he has also done his best to give advice to the Xingtianjun, on the one hand, he has taken over a considerable part of the affairs related to civil affairs, and on the other hand, he has also recruited many unambitious scholars for Xiao Tianjian in the local area to serve in the Xingtianjun.

Niu Venus is still relatively famous in the western part of Henan, familiar with civil affairs, astronomy, geography, and is also quite familiar with the art of war of Sun Wu, not to say that he is all-rounder, at least he is also very talented, his refuge has a considerable impact on many local scholars, in the late Ming Dynasty because of the relationship between the party, it is difficult for Henan scholars to enter the official career, most of the official positions are obtained by Jiangnan scholars, so that it is difficult for northern scholars to get ahead, many scholars have also seen this, it can be said that such a situation has long been full of complaints, plus in the troubled times, Many scholars have gone bankrupt in their own families, not to mention continuing to study in order to seek an official position, and even supporting their families has become a very difficult thing.

What's more, after Xiao Tianjian broke through these counties, he also captured some low-level officials, for these officials who already had considerable experience in managing local areas, Xiao Tianjian did not treat them too harshly, but just asked them to stay in office and continue to assist Xingtianjun in handling some civil affairs matters. After less blame-shifting, the efficiency of doing things is more than ten times higher than that of doing things in the government before.

And the local gentry, Xiao Tianjian also listened to Niu Jinxing's advice again, treated them differently, and only chose some of the most powerful gentry who were serious on the evil side or the powerful to attack, publicize their crimes, send troops to suppress them, confiscate their family property, confiscate their fields, and behead the people who are deeply responsible, and for the smaller gentry, as long as there are no great evil people in the local area, the Xingtianjun will treat them leniently, and will not harm or forcibly exploit them, so that Niu Jinxing and those officials who remain in office will appease them. Reassure them, and the newly acquired land will stabilize quite quickly.

At this time, it was the beginning of the spring season, and the newly acquired counties should not only distribute the fields confiscated by the Xingtian Army as quickly as possible, but also recruit displaced people to cultivate, restore agricultural production in the areas under their jurisdiction as soon as possible, catch up with the spring sowing season, and restore the local self-sufficiency as soon as possible, so as to lay a good foundation for the next action.

At the same time, it is the construction of the Xingtian Army led by Xiao Tianjian, after all, with the expansion of their current territory, they must have more soldiers to defend, and at the same time, they also have to deal with the retaliation of the government and the imperial court that is likely to come in an instant, so it is the only choice to expand their military strength in a short period of time.

There is absolutely no problem with the source of soldiers in this regard, there are a large number of displaced people in all counties, and there are also many officers and soldiers who have defected, among these people who can survive in this troubled era, they are basically young and strong, for the resettlement of these people, Niu Jinxing opposes Xiao Tianjian's previous arrangement, his opinion is that the land cannot be directly distributed to these displaced people so cheaply, if they want to obtain land, they can also, that is, they can do things for the Xingtian Army first, and after accumulating merits, they can only be granted to the land, In this way, it is avoided that because someone can easily get the land, they are unwilling to become soldiers and work for the Xingtian Army.

After listening to this, Xiao Tianjian thought that what Niu Jinxing said was extremely true, even if he adopted his opinion, he immediately changed the previous method of distributing land, stipulating that all the land confiscated by the Xingtian Army would be temporarily returned to the public, and if the displaced people wanted to get the land, they must first have a strong man join the Xingtian Army as a soldier, and their family members could temporarily obtain the right to foster care of the land, and once the soldier made meritorious service in the army, the land could be officially transferred to the name of their family, and the greater the military merit, the more land they obtained, so as to stimulate the fighting spirit and morale of the soldiers.

In addition, Xiao Tianjian also ordered people to use gold, silver, copper, and iron to recruit craftsmen in Ruyang County in different proportions to cast a batch of medals, and officially launched the medal system of the Xingtian Army, which is called the Xingtian Medal, and awarded soldiers with different levels of medals with different merits in recognition of their military achievements.

Anyone who receives the medal can receive different preferential treatment in the jurisdiction of the Xingtian Army in the future, and even stipulates that officials of the non-Xingtian Army system must automatically avoid and salute the generals who wear medals when they see them, so as to stimulate the sense of honor of the generals and improve the status of the soldiers.

The military discipline of the Ming Dynasty was corrupted, in fact, there was a reason, many criminals were sent to the army as soldiers, so that the army was filled with all kinds of criminals, like such an army, it is naturally impossible to be respected by people, the status of the soldiers is low, it is naturally understandable, call them Qiu Ba are polite, if anyone is related to the soldier, they are embarrassed to greet people on the street, expecting such an army to establish a sense of honor, it is simply impossible, That's why Xiao Tianjian thought of the medal system, which was to improve the status of the people in the jurisdiction of the Xingtian Army, so that the people in the jurisdiction would change their previous attitude of looking down on soldiers, so that the soldiers would have a sense of honor, and they felt that being a soldier was a way to improve their social status, and would not be like the Ming army, which was basically regarded as a thief.

Of course, after the medal is issued, it is not impossible to take it back, and once a soldier seriously violates military discipline, he can deprive them of the medal and make him return the medal, but as long as he does not make a mistake, after the soldier of the Punishment Army quits the army one day, he can take the medal home and keep it forever as a family heirloom.

As soon as the news came out, there was a boom in the Xingtian Army, and all the soldiers and generals were gearing up to work hard, preparing to go into battle in the future, how to fight hard, and get back one such medal.

And the medal system is just a small episode, after taking these three counties, Xiao Tianjian once again announced the expansion of the army, the original two, three, four and teaching battalions, expanded on the spot, each divided into two, supplemented recruits expanded into eight new battalions, from the ordinary soldiers to promote a group of elite soldiers as the commander and even the chief, as the backbone of the new battalion, in order to ensure combat effectiveness, almost a veteran is responsible for bringing a recruit, although in a short period of time, the combat effectiveness of each battalion will be reduced, but it will not take long, These barracks can then be restored to their former combat strength.

In addition to the war barracks, all counties and townships also began to implement the system of protecting chiefs on the spot, setting up local township barracks, and building local armed forces within the jurisdiction of the Xingtian Army with the township barracks as the mainstay, and responsible for defending the localities, so as not to contain the main combat strength of the core of the Xingtian Army.

After such a busy work, the strength of the Xingtian Army in western Henan soared rapidly, the war battalions alone were expanded to eight, the strength of the force was close to 10,000, plus a few new battalions of temporary auxiliaries, once something happened, nearly 20,000 soldiers and generals who could participate in the war could be mobilized, in addition, in the five counties actually controlled by the Xingtian Army, it also quickly set up more than a dozen township barracks with the chief system as the core, although these township barracks could not be used for field battles, but they could still be used to defend the village and fort.

But the problems brought about by the expansion also followed, although after the Xingtian Army entered Henan, several battles were won, and a lot of weapons were captured, but the number of armor seized was quite limited, so that almost everyone in the original war camp had armor, but now only nearly half of the people have armor, so that the defense ability of the war camp has been weakened a lot, and then it has affected the combat effectiveness of the Xingtian Army to a certain extent, but this is also a matter of no way, after all, the foundation of the Xingtian Army is still too thin, although they have a large iron yard and craftsman camp in Yangcheng, Shanxi, But after all, the production capacity is limited, and the existing production capacity is basically focused on building weapons, and it has not been possible to build armor on a large scale and equip it for use in the army, and the existing armor is basically based on capture, and I want to equip all the generals with armor, not to mention the Xingtian Army, even the official army does not have such an ability.

The other is the problem of weapons, the proportion of equipment in the four battalions has reached about 40 percent, and the training battalion has even reached about 50 percent, but once expanded, the proportion of musket equipment in the eight battalions has dropped to about 20 percent, which has greatly reduced the long-distance lethality of the Xingtian Army.

After the year, although the craftsman battalion in Shanxi's hometown opened full horsepower production and continued to expand production capacity, the number of self-made firearms produced by the top brain could not exceed 700 per month, and the negative impact was that the quality of the newly made self-made firearms began to decline to a certain extent, and the firing rate was not even as high as the firering rate of the self-generated firearms made years ago, and there was even an accident of exploding the chamber during normal loading and firing, forcing Xiao Tianjian to send someone back to Shanxi to pass the order and strictly investigate the reasons for the decline in quality. On the premise that the quality cannot be guaranteed, the production quantity shall not be expanded.

At the end of February, the ice on the surface of the Yellow River in the Luoyang section began to break, and because of the melting ice on the river, it was temporarily impossible to cross the Yellow River on foot and transfer materials to Henan, and because there was too much ice on the river, the water of the Yellow River rose sharply, so that ships could not pass on the river, basically cutting off the supply of materials from Shanxi to Henan, especially the supply of weapons.

Fortunately, Lushi County has begun to produce iron a few years ago, and has established a new craftsman battalion to start producing weapons, which slightly satisfies the weapons and equipment of some of the army, but it is limited to the production of various cold weapons.

Therefore, he could only arm the eight battalions first, equip all the weapons on hand into the battalions, and the eliminated weapons could arm the new battalions and the township battalions, and he could only do this in a short time.

However, the problem of equipment did not affect the morale of the army, and after the reorganization, all battalions began to enter the high-level training of troops, and all battalions with the old and the new were all leaping forward to carry out large-scale training activities, and under the relatively sufficient food supply, the enthusiasm of the soldiers and generals of the battalions for training was very high, and they spared no effort to carry out the drills, and with the addition of one-on-one methods of old and new, the transformation of the troop formation was basically completed in less than a month. As a result, the eight battalions of the Xingtian Army quickly had the ability to go into battle.

However, Xiao Tianjian's good life was limited to this, and by mid-March, all kinds of unfavorable news began to pour in, and the detailed works dispatched by the intelligence system to various places were sent to the camp in Ruyang County, where Xiao Tianjian was temporarily stationed.

(Present a 4,000-word chapter, please check it!) ）