With the current development speed of Wu Duyan, I am afraid that the number of people will exceed 10,000 in the first month, but it is difficult to say how far he can go in the end.

However, Li Qingyuan didn't plan to look still, just taking advantage of this opportunity, Li Qingyuan planned to attack the target that he had planned for a long time.

Li Qingyuan aimed at Shanyang Town, Zhending Prefecture, which was once a large county at its most prosperous time, and was destroyed in the war in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, but gradually prospered again because of the rich coal and iron resources nearby.

The scale of its iron smelting is comparable to that of Handan Mining Town, and this time Li Qingyuan plans to destroy this place by taking advantage of Wu Duyan's division.

Therefore, when Wu Duyan was wreaking havoc around Quanhe Town, Li Qingyuan took the three musket battalions and the sharpshooter battalion, all of them, as well as the newly trained soldiers of the Tianli Society, to the crow's side.

Coupled with the fact that the team of the Heavenly Council here has about 1,500 people participating in the operation this time, it should be enough to control a town.

It's not that Li Qingyuan doesn't want to send more people, but if there are too many people, it's not like Wu Duyan's subordinates, and now Li Qingyuan's people and weapons are eight different from Wu Duyan, and the only thing that is not the same is the range of the weapon.

However, this small problem cannot be discovered by those who are not careful, and there is nothing if it is found, at most it is thought that it is Wu Duyan's new troops.

The troops rested in the crow's cave for a day and quietly descended the mountain the next day, Shanyang Town was more than sixty miles southwest of Quanhe Town, because of Wu Duyan's relationship, the militia here became very vigilant, even during the day, only half of the city gate was opened, and a fence was set up.

Therefore, it is basically impossible to make a surprise attack, and as the first strong offensive operation commanded by Li Qingyuan, including himself, he was very nervous.

The troops marched for a day to twenty miles outside the town, waited all night, and began to attack the town of Shanyang at dawn the next day.

Even though the troops were very careful, they were still found two miles away from the town, and after being discovered, Li Qingyuan did not let the soldiers rush to rush to that time, but prepared in an orderly manner.

When they reached the bottom of the city three hundred meters, the troops began to repair, and one battalion was divided to block the other city gate, and the others were preparing here, and the village soldiers on the city wall were also nervously dangling there with bows, arrows, knives and guns.

Li Qingyuan looked at the city wall and waved his hand: "Order the first battalion to suppress the city wall, and the demoman prepares!" ”

The first battalion of muskets began to march slowly towards the city wall, and when they reached a hundred paces, they stopped, and the villagers on the city wall saw the soldiers in the formation shoot their bows and arrows because of nervousness.

The bow and arrow shot out of sixty or seventy meters crookedly, which did not affect the shooting of the musket battalion at all, and as the musket fired, only the sound of the musket battalion was left on the entire battlefield.

The villagers had no experience in dealing with this type of demolition, and could only throw stones at the approach of the demolition team, but as soon as they looked up, they would be hit by muskets.

The demolition team approached the city wall, lit the explosive pack, and quickly withdrew, and with a loud bang, the city wall collapsed, and the musket battalion continued to shoot at the gap in the wall, killing the villagers who tried to plug the gap.

When the first battalion entered the city walls, the village soldiers collapsed, and the troops began to enter the city to impose martial law on the whole town, and the first step in entering the city was to rescue the slave miners, most of whom had voluntarily sold themselves or had been deceived into working as miners.

There is no personal freedom, and they can only stay in the mine every day, and after these people are rescued, they will follow Li Qingyuan with all their hearts.

With these people taking the lead, about one-third of the remaining miners also joined Li Qingyuan's side.

After a day of recruitment and reorganization, Li Qingyuan increased by more than 1,000 people, and after the first step was completed, he began to deal with the bullies in the town, the city walls were broken, and these courtyards did not need explosive bags.

This time the situation was not urgent, everyone had the experience of interrogation again, and in one day of interrogation, two or three hundred thousand taels of gold and silver alone were found, and in addition to gold and silver, the rest were steel and blacksmiths.

How can there be hundreds of blacksmiths in a large steelmaking town, and Li Qingyuan is employing people, no matter what democracy is or not, as long as it is a blacksmith, all of them will be caught on the mountain.

There were more than 10,000 miners, smelters, craftsmen and merchants in the entire Shanyang Town, and Li Qingyuan recruited more than 1,000 recruits and captured more than 400 blacksmiths, who were guarded by a battalion of soldiers and went up the mountain.

When they went up the mountain, they were also asked to carry more than 100 catties of iron on their backs, and Li Qingyuan got 200,000 catties of iron on this trip, and after the public trial meeting on the third day, hundreds of people joined.

Li Qingyuan took this transport brigade of 2,000 people to carry five trips before carrying all the useful things to the crow's cottage.

And if you want to carry it back to the nest, you have to come little by little.

When Li Qingyuan withdrew from Shanyang Town, he took almost one-fifth of the entire town's population with him.

Of course, in addition to the harvest taken away, Li Qingyuan also arranged several merchants in the town, and these people will continue to provide Li Qingyuan with materials and intelligence.

With this harvest, Li Qingyuan felt that he could even take down the mine town directly, so that he really didn't have to worry about the lack of blacksmiths.

However, even if the new arrival of more than 400 blacksmiths is enough for Li Qingyuan to use, the rifled flintlock pistol does not need to expand the manufacturing scale for the time being, and with this batch of blacksmiths, Li Qingyuan's plan to produce a smoothbore gun for Wu Duyan and the cannon he has been trying to make can finally start.

The flintlock pistol produced for Wu Duyan was one-third larger than the caliber of the bird gun, and the firing range was farther than the bird gun, reaching one hundred and fifty paces, and this musket was excellent even if it was placed in Europe of the same era.

In the past, Li Qingyuan was afraid that Wu Duyan would not be able to insist on making him a new gun, but now that there are more blacksmiths, this problem is no longer a problem.

Without rifling, the time to make muskets was shortened to two days, and Li Qingyuan arranged for 100 groups to produce smoothbore guns, which could produce 1,500 guns a month.

Coupled with the short guns, Li Qingyuan can produce 2,000 muskets for Wu Duyan in a month, such a strong support, if it can't be developed, then Li Qingyuan will be too disappointed in him.

At present, both sides are still in the stage of accumulating strength, Wu Duyan is desperately pulling people in, while the Qing army in Zhending Mansion is desperately accumulating materials, intending to encircle and suppress Wu Duyan.

After the year, with Wu Duyan going down the mountain, the mountain closure efforts in various places have been increased, and the mountain people must not go down the mountain to buy more than one pound of salt, and the purchase of iron tools can only be two kinds of iron pots for kitchen knives, and they are not allowed to carry more than ten catties of grain up the mountain.

The restriction of salt and iron as a necessity of life, coupled with the food embargo, suddenly everyone's life was not easy.

Fortunately, Li Qingyuan was prepared in advance, and the impact on them was not great, but Wu Duyan was profitable, and many small groups of bandits simply took refuge in Wu Duyan after they couldn't stand it, these old bandits are not recruits who can be compared, after Wu Duyan took refuge with these people, the whole team became a little fiercer.