On the eleventh day, the vanguard and the two armies officially set out. The mighty 25,000 people, carrying nearly 10,000 cars, marched to the north with flags covering the sky with smoke and dust.

For the safety of the way, Li Duozuo, the head of the march, personally led 5,000 elite soldiers to open the road along the way. These 5,000 soldiers are not new soldiers, and the source of soldiers is not ordinary farmers, slaves and vagrants, but mercenaries from the three guards and five prefectures.

Each army has three guards and five mansions, respectively, the pro-mansion, the Xun Yi Mansion, the Yi Mansion and the Yi Mansion, they are the elite soldiers and horses directly under the marching chief, the source of the soldiers is the children of the military attache family, many of them have their parents are the middle and low-level officers in the army, and they have practiced martial arts with their fathers since they were young and have been educated in the army. Zhao Teamzheng has two sons, both of whom are mercenaries of the Sanwei and Five Mansions, and his family can be called a military family.

In addition, there is another important source of soldiers in Sanwei Wufu - the veterans who have won military merits in the war.

It can be seen that the Sanwei Wufu is composed of a group of high-level mercenaries, and the quality of the soldiers is much higher than that of ordinary soldiers, who are the mainstay and representatives of outstanding combat effectiveness in the field army of the Tang Dynasty. Of course, their treatment in all aspects is also much higher than that of an ordinary new recruit like Xue Shao.

So along the way, Niu Ben and others, who pushed the grain cart hard with a pair of feet, were very envious of those elite soldiers of the three guards and five mansions who were running around on horses and wearing armor.

Team Zhao is encouraging these recruits to work hard, and when they win the battle and get the lord, you can also enter the Sanwei and Wufu Mansions to ride horses and wear armor, and even become an officer like me!

Niu Ben and the others were suddenly full of enthusiasm and morale, and began to work hard and move forward desperately with the dream of three guards and five mansions and officers.

Xue Shao thought to himself, Datang's military merit reward system is indeed praised, and it can stimulate the fighting spirit and competitiveness of soldiers. Many people from humble backgrounds want to improve their lives, improve their status, and even change the fate of their children and grandchildren by joining the army and killing the enemy.

Xue Shao now understands the root of "Tang Shangwu".

The march was very hard, with heavy physical and heavy daily labor, and had to brave the wind, rain, food and wind to sleep in the open.

On the seventeenth day after the departure, the army had traveled more than 700 miles and arrived at the territory of the Metropolitan Governor's Mansion of Bingzhou. For the grain and grass baggage team, this marching speed is already very fast. Because it was an emergency to counter the rebellion, the army had to speed up.

Bingzhou is already relatively close to the front line, here is the northern capital of the Tang Dynasty and the land of Longxing of Li Tang, overseeing the military and defense of the north.

Before becoming the crown prince, Li Zhi was the king of Jin and the governor of the state, and Li Tao served as the governor of the governor of the state, and Shi was his deputy, directly managing the military and political defense of the northern half of the Tang Dynasty.

The current governor of Bingzhou is the crown prince Li Xian, and the actual highest official here is the governor of Bingzhou, and Shi is Li Chongyi, the prince of the state of Qian. At the same time, he is also the chief of the Shan Yudao march who oversees the logistics of the Northern Expedition, that is, the second person after Pei Xingjian. Of the 300,000 troops of the Northern Expedition, 100,000 will also come from the Metropolitan Governor's Office.

When the army came here, the sergeants' physical strength was almost on the verge of exhaustion, and even the horses had collectively lost weight. Li Duozuo ordered a three-day rest. And the governor Shi Li Chongyi went out of the city to reward the army, and sent a large amount of mutton and rice wine, and the sergeants were very happy.

But for Xue Shao, this is not a family that does not get together - Li Chongyi is the father of Li Shangdan, the general of Yulinwei, and the grandfather of Li Xiantong!

Li Chongyi is over 70 years old and still very healthy. He personally rode a horse and led the army and the people out of the city to reward the army, walked around in the army, comforted the soldiers, asked for warmth, personally delivered wine and meat, and tossed him all day without seeing him rest. The whole army was full of good feelings about this and governor's history.

Xue Shao now understands that Li Xiantong's father and son are so confident. As the cousin of Emperor Li Zhi, Li Chongyi has always helped him guard the northern capital and the state and take care of the military and defense affairs of half of the northern country, undoubtedly relying on him as a confidant and arm.

Li Shangdan was able to get Li Zhi's trust and reuse, and he dared to be so tough in front of the queen, more than half of the reason was because he had a tough father. Moreover, Li Chongyi is nominally a direct subordinate of the crown prince Li Xian, and Li Xiantong directly took refuge in the East Palace after losing power, which is also reasonable.

Xue Shao secretly said in his heart, it seems that Wu Zetian wants to solve the fierce rivalry of Li Shangdan's father and son, unless he brings down Li Chongyi. But at the moment, it's an almost impossible task for her. Li Zhi would never allow anyone to cut off one of his arms. The Metropolitan Governor's Mansion of the Prefecture governs half of the rivers and mountains north of the Yellow River in the Tang Dynasty, and the hundreds of thousands of troops under Li Chongyi are not vegetarians!

Now, Li Xiantong and I have become mortal enemies. Their family is so powerful, I really have to be careful.

The three-day rest gave the soldiers a rare rest, and even had the opportunity to sleep for two nights, and the food was also very good, they could eat two dry meals a day, and a few pieces of mutton could be seen in the bowl, and there were even fresh vegetables sent by Li Chongyi from Bingzhou. There was no corruption in the wine sent by the state, and it was all distributed to the guards in batches.

After nearly a month of recruit experience, Xue Shao felt that he had completely changed. In his previous life, he had been trained hard in the army, and he had endured all kinds of hardships, and hardships were nothing to him. But Xue Shao's understanding of the Tang Dynasty army is unprecedentedly deep. If it was said that in the past, he had a vague understanding of the army of the Tang Dynasty through two layers of skin, but now, Xue Shao has faded those two layers of skin.

In contrast, Zuo Fengchenwei, who stayed before, is really not called an army, at most it can be called "a group of bodyguards".

Maybe the quality of Fengchenwei's soldiers is very good, but they are all pampered and freshly clothed and angry, and they have not suffered much, so they can't talk about how hard they are.

Now these recruits who are on fire with Xue Shao, after a month of hard training, all of them are naked, and they can be super first-class, and they can endure hardships and work, and they dare to work hard. When I first enlisted in the army, I couldn't straighten my waist and some people cried, but now I can jump up and down with a big food bag on my shoulder. Under the command of the captain of the team, they all roared wildly, and the fire pit dared to jump down. If you go to the battlefield and go through the test of life and death, I believe that these recruits will be even more bullish!

Those boys in Zuo Fengchen's guard may be powerful alone, but they will definitely not be able to fight these field expeditionary forces who eat hardships as food.

The army still needs to be tempered!

Xue Shao came to study and practice, and he never thought of being in the limelight among this group of recruits. But he still unconsciously stood out.

First of all, Xue Shao is a cultural person, and he is the best among a group of illiterate people. Moreover, his military quality is not ordinarily outstanding, and even the captains of those teams are proud of themselves. There are several veterans known as "cattle people" in the Sanwei and Wufu Mansions, and Xue Shao has fought a few battles, and all of them have been very convinced, and many people have begun to take the initiative to ask him for advice on his military and police fighting skills.

It is gold that always has to shine, and there is a recruit named "Chengyu" in this new army who is very hairy, and it has become a matter known to the whole army. Team Zhao valued Xue Shao many times in private conversations with him, and taught him some of his military experience in person, which benefited Xue Shao a lot.

Team Zhao gave advice to Xue Shao and asked him to work hard to become a "Yue Qi". Cavalry is the most precious and high-end type of troops in the era of cold weapons, and Yue Cavalry is the elite of cavalry. Team Zhao was very appreciative of Xue Shao's excellent military qualities, but what he said the most was that it was best for Xue Shao to find an opportunity to become a civilian in the army, and to become a strategist like marching management and recording to join the army.

Zhao Teamzheng's vision is very poisonous, he thinks that Xue Shao is just a recruiter engaged in logistics is too wasteful of talents. It is a talent, and he should be there where he is needed most. He has never been jealous of his abilities, on the contrary, he has always placed great emphasis on motivating and cultivating Xue Shao. The soldiers he brought out are promising, which is not only a valuable wealth of contacts for a grassroots officer like Zhao Team, but also a supreme glory.

He stayed with Xue Shao all day long, and Niu Ben learned a lot from him. In addition to his excellent fighting kung fu, he even knew a few words. It's like a piece of stubborn iron and a magnet stuck together for a long time, and it will also have magnetism. Unconsciously, the quality of Niu Ben's soldiers has been greatly improved. Soon, he received more attention and training.

Team Zhao thinks that Niu Ben is a natural fierce general. But for Niu Ben, it is another way of training. Team Zhao is sending several veterans to "beat" Niu Ben every day, beating him more and more every time. Beat and beat, and those veterans can't beat Niu Ben together. This fierce man who rushed to eat mixed food was famous among the recruits on the first day for stealing military rations and being whipped, and now he is even more famous in the army, but because he has a fierce man's courage and hard kung fu.

Xue Shao and Niu Ben stood out among the 25,000 recruits.

Xue Shao believes that the glorious tradition of martial arts and the simple military style of the Tang army are indeed a fertile soil for cultivating talents. This makes the generals of the Tang Dynasty come out from generation to generation, and many grassroots generals have emerged among them. The most typical representatives are the current prime minister Liu Renliang and the former Tang Dynasty God of War Xue Rengui.

Because of Team Zhao's appreciation, the team gave Xue Shao a lot of convenience, and the pen, ink, paper, and inkstone, which were originally only for officers, privately let Xue Shao use a lot.

Over the course of a month, Xue Shao wrote down seven thick marching notes. Many of the contents of "The Mirror of the Six Armies" and "The Forty-six Tips of the Art of War", which he memorized before his death, became real knowledge and experience, and precipitated in Xue Shao's mind.

On the morning of the third day of the army's rest, just after breakfast, Team Zhao called Xue Shao and Niu Ben together and said that they would take them to a place.

The two didn't ask much, and followed Team Zhao to the front of the Chinese army general who was in charge of the march.

"General Li, the commander of the march, wants to see you, go in by yourself." Team Zhao said.

Niu Ben looked at the two rows of Chinese army guards in front of him with dazzling armor and bright robes, and was very envious, and the sixteen big army drums in front of the tent and the neat flags, regimental cards and golden horns made him feel a natural coercion and did not dare to look casually.

Xue Shao saw an acquaintance, Guo Yuanzhen, among the guards in front of the tent.

Those who can guard the front of the main general of the Chinese army are all honor guards such as halberders, division ranks, and lieutenant marquis, and they are the henchmen and guards of the main general. Guo Yuanzhen is very tall and stands out among the guards. Compared with a month ago, Guo Yuanzhen's atmosphere also seems to be a different person, full of energy and awe-inspiring majesty, obviously not the troublesome county lieutenant who was a junior at the age of eighteen but ran to mix with the underworld.

The army really refines people.

Xue Shao and Guo Yuanzhen didn't talk, just exchanged glances, and then entered the tent with Niu Ben.

Li Duozuo sat in the general's tent in armor and read a military book, and there were three or four civilian scholars on the left and right who were busy on the desk. After the two went in to pay homage, Li Duozuo glanced at the two of them, and said neither indifferently nor enthusiastically: "I heard that the two of you are the best among the recruits in this period. Ben will intend to give you a new test, dare you accept it? ”

"Dare!" The two of them agreed loudly without thinking.

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