Regarding Fan Tianyu's request that he must send elite soldiers as guards, Chen Yue naturally agreed. Then Chen Yue made another request, when the caravan returned, he must purchase at least two hundred high-grade war horses for Bluestone Fort, and Chen Yue was willing to buy them at the market price. Regarding Chen Yue's request, Fan Tianyu thought about it for a while and readily agreed. For the Ming army to buy war horses, this is the export caravan can safely enter and exit the Great Wall must be an exchange, whether it is the Ming army in Xuanfu Datong, or the Ming army in Shanhaiguan, a large number of war horses in the army are like this.

And the market price given by Chen Yue is even more attractive, in the winter grassland, a tea brick can be exchanged for a war horse, pulled to the Beijing Division, a high-grade war horse can be sold for more than 100 taels of silver, even on the front line of the Great Wall, a high-grade war horse is worth 60 taels of silver. Two hundred war horses, this is a very big business, where does Fan Tianyu have a reason to refuse? As for whether you can get war horses, you don't have to worry about this, every winter, the Mongolians will dispose of the excess war horses, cattle and sheep, in the cold winter they simply do not have enough forage to feed, every winter, there will be countless cattle, sheep and horses frozen to death and starved to death.

Fan Tianyu's movements were very fast, and in just more than ten days, a large number of goods gathered from all over the country to Qingshikou, forming a caravan of 100 people, sixty or seventy mules and horses, and forty or fifty carts, and the carts were loaded with all kinds of goods. Starting from Qingshikou, it only takes a few low hills to the north to enter the boundless grassland, and due to the Mantar several times from here, a mountain road large enough to drive a carriage has long been formed, which is why Fan Tianyu chose to go out from here to do business with the Mongols. If you only talk about the quality of the road, it is more advantageous than Zhangjiakou.

Chen Yue sent more than a dozen nights led by Liu Neng, as well as more than a dozen personal guards led by Yu Feng, to join the Fan family's caravan as guards. The thirty people all took off their military uniforms and armor, changed into thick sheepskin jackets, and rode war horses to be fully armed, and the degree of elite and fierce made Fan Tianyu extremely satisfied. Liu Neng can speak and be good at dealing with people, Yu Feng has read books and can write and draw, and he will be responsible for drawing maps all the way to the Mongolian tribes.

The caravan set out on October 3, passed through the side wall of Qingshikou, and entered the vast grassland. Standing on the side wall, looking at the back of the vanishing caravan, Chen Yue shook his head, at this moment he deeply felt the weakness of his strength, it was almost the winter of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, after the flash, there would be a drastic change in Shenzhou, Jiashen Tianchang, Li Chuang invaded Beijing, Wu Sangui descended to the Qing Dynasty to seduce the Mantars into the customs, and the land of Shenzhou fell into the bloody in a blink of an eye, sinking for nearly three hundred years. If possible, Chen Yue really hopes that he can change all this, but with only his current strength, what can he do?

"My lord, two months ago, Bai Guangen, the chief soldier of Jizhou, went to Shaanxi on the order of the imperial court to encircle and suppress Li Chuang's thieves with Inspector Sun. Yuan Keli reported to Chen Yue what had happened recently.

In May, the imperial court ordered Sun Chuanting to supervise the military affairs of Henan and Sichuan, and then he was promoted to the secretary of the military department, renamed the superintendent, and supervised the military affairs of Shanxi, Huguang, Guizhou, Jiangnan and Beibei, and was responsible for launching a general attack on Li Chuang's thieves in the Central Plains of Henan. Chongzhen had already made up his mind to exterminate the thieves as soon as possible, and for this reason, he mobilized the border troops of the northern ministries, Bai Guangen Make, and Liu Zeqing Gaojie and other departments, plus Zuo Liangyu of Wuchang, and the two or three hundred thousand troops were all under the command of Sun Chuanting, hoping to destroy Li Chuang in one fell swoop.

This kind of behavior is already a bit desperate, because except for Wu Sangui of Shanhaiguan who cannot be transferred, Tang Tong of Xuanfu Datong, and Chen Yue of Jizhen and other border troops, Chongzhen almost handed over all the elites to Sun Chuanting. If Li Chuang can be defeated, it is fine, if it fails again, then the Ming Dynasty will no longer have the forces that can be maneuvered, and the north and south of the Yellow River will only be left to Li Chuang.

"If you can destroy Li Chuang in one fell swoop this time, the situation is still promising!" Wang Yin sighed, but he didn't even have the confidence to speak. Now that Li Chuang has swept the entire Henan, the two important towns of Luoyang and Kaifeng have been broken by him, and he has hundreds of thousands of troops in his hands, how can it be light?

"Hopeless!" Chen Yue shook his head and said, only he knows that soon there will be news that Sun Chuanting was killed in battle and that tens of thousands of troops were defeated by the invading army, Da Ming, it has reached the last moment!

"What shall we do?" Yuan Keli changed his course, if the situation continued to deteriorate, there were not many options left for the Xishan Army.

"What else can I do? Recruit soldiers, build ordnance, train your army as soon as possible, and increase your strength a little if you can! Wang Yin sighed, at present, the Xishan army is only 2,000 people, if it can be expanded to 20,000 people, then it will be much calmer, but how can it be so easy to expand the army.

"I'm going to send people to persuade mountain people from all over the country to go down the mountain, and send people everywhere to persuade military households to join our Xishan Army!" Yuan Keli hurriedly went, on the front line of the Great Wall in the north, Xuanfu Datong Jizhou, hundreds of thousands of military households on the nine sides, although they all have their own main generals, but as long as the temptation is in place, there will still be many people willing to defect.

"My lord, it's time to prepare for the expedition to the grassland!" Wang Yin said to Chen Yue, even if Yuan Keli recruited a large number of military households, but there was no food and no salary, what would he use to raise the army? Now the whole north is extremely short of grain, and now the Jin merchants have raised the price of grain to eight taels of silver and one stone, and the grain in the south of the Yangtze River cannot be transported, and the output in the north has been reduced year after year, and there is no harvest in many places, and many times even if there is money, you can't buy grain! If you want to solve the problem of military rations, you can only hit the Mongols with the idea!

The Mongol tribes are scattered across hundreds of miles of grasslands, and if they want to run for hundreds of miles in this cold winter, they can't do it without adequate preparation. The dry food and drinking water for the march, the forage for the war horses, and the winter clothes worn by the soldiers must all be prepared properly, and the slightest carelessness in the winter grassland will be the end of the annihilation of the whole army. Fighting a war has never been easy.

"These have Lao Hengshan Gong!" Chen Yue arched his hand and said, Wang Yin was Zhou Yanru's first staff member, and he was very familiar with military affairs, and Chen Yue was very relieved to hand over these matters to him. As for Chen Yue himself, he is responsible for training the army, in order to enhance the combat power of the army as much as possible!

Soon it was the end of October, the cold wind was blowing from the plateau, the whole land was depressed, the river water in the valley was covered with a thick layer of ice, and the whole north was completely winter. At this time, Liu Neng and Yu Feng were sitting in the thick tent of the Mongolians at the moment, surrounding the fire, eating fragrant roast mutton, drinking cheese, and watching the Mongolian girls singing and dancing.