Just when the situation fell silent, a voice suddenly came out: "I support Patriarch Mu's uprising." When everyone present heard this, they all turned their heads to look, only to see a middle-aged man in red clothes with a long beard sitting on the left side of Mu Ming's head standing up and speaking. Then, he said: "What Patriarch Mu just said is very true, in the past, when we traded with Han merchants, we often lowered the prices of the mountain goods and ores we traded, and when we purchased cloth, ironware and salt from them, the prices were often extremely high, and a lot of profits were earned by those merchants. The most hateful thing is that those Han officials often ask for bribes from me and all of you here in the name of paying tribute to the court. In addition, the children of some Han officials often came to the village to harass, collect grain, distribute and levy it. I can't stand this anymore, so I just do the opposite and drive the Han people out of this land! After saying that, he first looked sad, then his face turned blue with anger, his eyes were red, and his fists were clenched, as if he wanted to eat people. It turned out to be Huang Cheng, the head of the Huang family who has always had a good relationship with Mu Ming.

After a while, the leaders of several small clans also rose up and agreed: "Patriarch Huang said it well! We are the warriors of the mountains, how can we be subject to the weak Han people! "Yes, we will fight to the death with the Han people." Suddenly, the hall was filled with voices of approval and rebellion, and the sound resounded throughout the hall.

Seeing that the rebellion was about to be finalized and put into practice, a voice suddenly sounded: "I don't agree with the rebellion." ”

Everyone followed the sound and looked at it, only to see a young man in a white robe with a rather handsome face shouting on the right side of the lower head. When everyone heard this, they all looked sideways at him, and several older patriarchs also scolded loudly: "Meng Kang, our elders are talking, what is the matter with you kid?" Don't stop yet! ”

The young man ignored this, glanced at everyone, and continued slowly: "In the past, when the Mongols were there, everyone's life was even more difficult than now, because although the Han officials were greedy, they did not kill our people and take away our property at will. If the Mongols were there, would they have treated us like this? If we had not traded with the Han merchants, our people would not have access to salt and iron. Ladies and gentlemen, please think about what our lives would be like without salt and iron. Besides, as soon as the war began, it was our people who died the most. Don't we feel a little bit about that? The Han people have a saying: "Soldiers, the major affairs of the country, the place of death and life, and the way of survival, must not be ignored." "Now, whether it is population or financial resources, we are not as good as the Ming Dynasty, if we raise troops like this, in the face of the hundreds of thousands of troops of the Ming Dynasty, we will not only have no chance of winning, but will increase casualties. In doing so, we are tantamount to using our mantis arm as a car, and we can only end up as a laughing stock. So I don't think you can go to war at this time, and I'm not going to be part of it. ”

When Mu Ming heard this, he was furious. Pointing at Meng Kang and scolding: "Meng Kang, you, you bastard...... dared to collude with the Han people to rebel against the clan, and I was angry. After speaking, I heard him shout: "Come on, take this bastard down and put him in prison!" As soon as the words fell, two guards stepped forward, one of them grabbed Meng Kang's arm and tied him back. Seeing this, several old Cheng patriarchs who were good friends with Meng Kang's father just wanted to speak out to stop Mu Ming. Because Meng Kang's father was also the patriarch of a large clan, several people were worried that doing so would offend Meng Kang's father and be unfavorable to themselves, but they were afraid of Mu Ming's obscenity, so they had to sigh: "The Yi people are unlucky, and the Yi people are unlucky." "It turned out that these were all local officials of the local Yi people's departments.

The words were divided into two ends, just when the patriarchs, heads and other local officials of the various tribes of the Yi people gathered to plot a rebellion. In the school field near Xingyi Fort, Duan Xingzheng was leading his subordinates to conduct daily training. After more than two months of training, the soldiers have changed: from a rabble that began as a loose and neglected training, to a team that can enforce prohibitions and train hard. Both the mental outlook and combat capability have been greatly improved. Although Duan Xing believes that the current combat strength of the soldiers under his command is not enough to fight, it is a big change compared to the laxity of the soldiers of the other hundred households here and the state of not having the slightest vigilance against the war. Duan Xing couldn't help but smile when he saw all this, he had reason to believe that if he persevered like this, he would definitely be able to train all the soldiers participating in the war in this hundred households into elites who could win battles. At present, according to Duan Xing's instructions, the soldiers are conducting offensive and defensive tactical drills in groups of more than ten people and three or five people.

At one end of the school field, a confrontation between the groups was about to begin, and only a war drum was heard, and the two teams of non-commissioned officers who had already been in place in advance began to move: on one side, ten pikemen, led by a small flag officer, were holding spears and lining up in a loose formation to advance to the opposite side. These pikemen are followed by two archers, fingers on strings, ready to shoot a deadly arrow at their opponents. On the opposite side of them, there was only another small flag and five soldiers, each of whom held a shield in his left hand and a white wooden hammer in his right hand, and were waiting for the battle, and the expression on his face was calm and resolute, as if he did not pay any attention to the ten spearmen on the other side. I only heard Duan Xing's order: "The exercise begins!" The little flag leading the team on the left shouted: "Attack!" The ten pikemen raised their spears and rushed to the opposite side.

At this time, I saw the little flag take a step forward and shouted, "Array!" At the same time, he took out the command flag and waved it down. At this time, the position of the five soldiers changed, faintly forming a formation.

It's too late, it's too soon. By this time, the ten pikemen were less than fifty paces away, and the little flag who led the group ordered to stop. At the same time, the two archers who followed also stopped, and fired two sharp arrows with a cold glow in the opposite direction.

I only heard two sounds of "dangdang" on the ground, and saw the arrow shot on the shield and was bounced to the ground, which startled the small flag leading the team on the left, and immediately ordered the spearman to step forward to assassinate him, but before he could get closer, he was violently knocked out and fell to the ground with a "plop". Before he could stand up, he suddenly felt a heart-piercing pain in his shoulder, and he couldn't help but get up.

When the little flag picked up his head with difficulty, he saw only a masked face looking at him with a mocking, disdainful look. Seeing this scene, he felt a hot pain on his face, but the strong fighting spirit made him endure the sharp pain in his shoulder, and stood up with the knife hanging from his waist to support his body, at this time, the small flag on the opposite side spoke: "Lao Zheng, good job!" Hearing this, Xiao Qi, who had been knocked down before, looked back and saw that his previous opponent had taken off his mask and came to himself to help himself up. At this time, Duan Xing also reported the results of the exercise that had just ended: "After ruling, the defender won this exercise!" ”

It turned out that this was a specially conducted exercise conducted by Duan Xing in order to test the training results of his army and the combat skills of his soldiers, and the scene that happened just now was a subject in this exercise, called "Offensive and Defensive Tactical Drill When the Enemy is Strong and We Are Weak." From this exercise, Duan Xing saw the progress of the troops, as well as the various shortcomings and existing problems exposed by the troops under the specific battlefield environment. In the past three months, Duan Xing has organized and strengthened the training of his non-commissioned officers and soldiers, and on the other hand, he has used the military knowledge he had learned in his previous life to teach several small banners under his command advanced combat concepts that far surpass those of this era. Under his words and deeds, several Xiaoqi quickly understood it and remembered it.

In order to better improve the training and command level of his officers and soldiers, Duan Xing took advantage of the training to personally mobilize several artisan households living in the military fort and the young people in the nearby villages, and made use of the abundant trees, bamboos and other materials near the military fort and the garrison to make equipment similar to those used in various military training and exercises in later generations, and personally led the craftsmen to clear weeds and level the land in the school grounds. It took nearly three months to transform the long-abandoned school field into a large-scale multi-functional training ground. Due to the lack of funds at the beginning, Duan Xing had to go around and borrow money from all the landlords and wealthy families in the vicinity to pay for the wages and expenses of all the craftsmen and young people who participated in the construction of the training ground. When he saw the numbers that had been statistically sorted, Duan Xing was taken aback by the results in front of him. In addition to being surprised, he also had an unforgettable understanding of the phrase "if you don't know how expensive firewood and rice are not at home". Fortunately, there were still some savings before the Baihu Institute, and Duan Xing's father, Duan Cheng'an, had always had a good relationship with the surrounding villages when he was alive, so Duan Xing's process of borrowing money was quite smooth. After nearly a month of hard work, Duan Xing finally got the money together. There is no way, the military rations distributed are simply not enough, otherwise why would it be so. Duan Xing thought.

In addition to training, Duan Xing also actively went deep into the soldiers to understand and improve their lives. As early as shortly after Duan Xing selected personnel for training for the first time, during a training session, two non-commissioned officers fainted in the middle of training due to physical exhaustion. Later, Duan Xing saw it and was very surprised, and while directing the people present to carry them to the house to rest, he ordered someone to ride a horse quickly to ask for a doctor. Knowing that it was because of the shortage of military rations, Duan Xing was very worried. Since then, Duan Xing has mobilized more than 100 soldiers and their families who were forced to retire due to disability and old age in the fort to build terraced fields on the gentle slopes around Xingyi Fort to open up wasteland, and at the same time divert water into ponds in low-lying areas for fish farming and lotus planting, and collect lotus seeds to sell to subsidize the daily expenses in the fort. Even in the mountains and hills that are not suitable for farming, Duan Xing also let people plant all kinds of trees on them, and at first the officers and non-commissioned officers under his command did not understand, and Duan Xing explained and persuaded them one by one to make this measure continue. In it, Duan Xing made full use of the knowledge of later generations to carry out production according to local conditions. Two or three months later, Duan Xing's measures finally began to bear fruit, and the food problem of the soldiers was solved.

Soon after Duan Xing put the two major problems that plagued the survival and development of his army, training and food, a new problem arose.