Luzhou, a few miles away from Hushi County in the middle of Shibao Mountain, a zhang Qinghu Sanniang stood quietly on the hillside and looked down, a red leather armor tightly wrapped the graceful arc, and a cyan cloak was draped over her shoulders, flying gently with the spring breeze, the whole picture looked so beautiful and moving.

Behind Hu Sanniang, her brother Hu Cheng and hundreds of bandits dressed in cloth and armed with Pu knives stood behind her.

"Sanniang, I heard that Su Dingfang and his brothers have purchased a large number of ordnance in Yongzhou, and they will pass through Shawan today, and the northern Bazhai led by Fang Jie came to invite us to go and rob that batch of ordnance together, why don't you go?"

Standing silently on the hill for a long time, until the spring was about to rise in mid-air, Hu Cheng on the side finally couldn't help but speak.

Luzhou was barren after the large-scale invasion of Prince Su Haoge, more than 2 million people in the state fled, died, and at the beginning of Sima Yu led the troops to repel Haoge, the remnants of the people in Luzhou were less than 200,000 people.

The barren Luzhou has also become a natural buffer between Sima Yu and Haoge in Yongzhou.

With the passage of time, Luzhou, which had enjoyed peace for a long time, slowly became a place where strong men could not escape, suffering from no source of income, many people began to set up camp on several major roads in the central part of Luzhou, committing robbers, and robbing passing caravans and pedestrians.

From north to south, there are a total of thirteen villages, and Hu Sanniang's Xigang Village is one of them, and there are thousands of bandits under his command.

Hu Sanniang and Hu Cheng, two siblings, came to this world before the rise of Liangshan, originally born in Lezhou, which was led by Prince Su Haoge, but fled to Luzhou due to the tyranny of the Qing army.

With the two sun and moon double knives in the hands of Hu Sanniang, and its beautiful appearance, it quickly established a very high prestige among the homeless people in Luzhou, and pulled up the banner to establish Xigangzhai, which is one of the thirteen villages in Luzhou.

Due to the remoteness of the region, the thirteen villages in Luzhou are quite strong, and life is not easy.

However, this situation has changed since the first year of the opening of the emperor, Su Dingfang and Gao Chong, who were defeated by Sima Yu in the battle for hegemony in Yongzhou, came to Luzhou, and once again played the banner of Tang Qi after gaining a foothold in Jinlong Town, and successively had several Xianbei tribes and Wuhuan tribes defeated by Huaguo to vote, and their strength gradually became stronger.

Su Dingfang's 10,000 well-trained Tang cavalry quickly became the most powerful military force in the entire Luzhou.

Since the second half of the first year of Kaihuang, Su Dingfang has led troops to invade the north several times, and invaded the two states of Le and Gong under the rule of Prince Hao Ge of Su, and returned victoriously, capturing countless ordnance and materials.

After having these ordnance materials, Su Dingfang's strength became stronger and stronger, and the thirteen villages in Luzhou did not dare to provoke him.

This time, according to the news from Beiguo Village, where Fang Jie is located, Su Dingfang purchased more than 10,000 sets of sophisticated equipment from the hands of Chinese merchants to equip his Tang cavalry, and Fang Jie, who got the news, united with Bazhai in the north and gathered a total of nearly 40,000 troops to prepare to ambush Su Dingfang in Shawan.

Hu Cheng didn't understand why Hu Sanniang refused Fang Jie's invitation, for Thirteen Villages, it would be a great thing to be able to take the opportunity to weaken Su Dingfang's strength.

"Brother, you think things are too simple, do you really think that only Su Dingfang and Gao Zhong can rise so quickly? You must know which of the Xianbei, Wuhuan, Nanman, Shanyue, Qiang, Xiongnu and other tribes that appeared in Yongzhou was not ordered by Emperor Wu Sima Yu, how could these tribes alone come to Su Dingfang? If it is said that there is no help from China, I will never believe it. Fang Jie: The reason why they didn't dare to do anything to them before was probably because of this reason. Now it is suddenly started, there must be something strange behind this, and it is better for our small Xigangzhai not to get involved in it."

Hu Sanniang was noncommittal about Hu Cheng's words, but looked at the foot of the mountain with a thoughtful expression.

As Hu Sanniang speculated, Su Dingfang and Gao Zhong were indeed personally sent by Sima Yu to Ji'an County to invite them out of the mountain.

This is not because Hu Sanniang is so intelligent, but this fact is too obvious.

In the past year or so, since Sima Yu proclaimed the emperor and established the state of China, there was no war in the four states in the country, and with the establishment of the five towns of the military office, the central five armies also returned to the Gyeonggi area one after another. Taking advantage of this rare opportunity for the gathering of large armies, Sima Yu accelerated the pace of using the Junior Barbarian Order, the Intermediate Barbarian Order, and the Senior Barbarian Order, and conquered a large number of tribes with the strength of the five armies.

Use the Junior Barbarian Order to mobilize the Wa and Xianbei tribes, the Intermediate Barbarian Order to mobilize the Wuhuan, Shanyue, and Qiang tribes, and the Advanced Barbarian Order to mobilize the Southern Barbarian and Xiongnu tribes.

Among the seven barbarian tribes, the population of the Wa tribe is about 3,000, the population of the Xianbei tribe is between 5,000 and 7,000, the population of the Wuhuan tribe is about 20,000, the population of the Shanyue tribe is between 30,000 and 40,000, the population of the Qiang tribe is around 80,000, the population of the Nanban tribe is about 110,000, and the population of the Xiongnu tribe is between 180,000 and 200,000.

Sima Yu of all tribes was dispatched, but especially the Xianbei tribe and the Qiang tribe, which had the largest population in the primary barbarian order and the intermediate barbarian order.

In more than a year, the remaining more than 800 primary barbarian orders in the treasury system have been consumed, and more than 100 intermediate barbarian orders have been used, only 30 high-level barbarian orders have been consumed because the damage of one battle is too high.

After the use of these barbarian orders, the population in China ushered in an explosive increase, with the Xianbei people increasing by more than 4.8 million, the Wuhuan people by 100,000, the Shanyue people by 400,000, the Qiang people with the most, exceeding 7.2 million, the Southern Barbarians by 600,000, and the Xiongnu by 4.14 million, with a total increase of 17.24 million people, making the population of Huaguo exceed 32 million.

Of course, the price paid by the Central Fifth Army was not shallow, with a total loss of more than 200,000 soldiers before and after.

Moreover, these increased tribal populations of various ethnic groups are mainly distributed to Gongzhou, Kuizhou, Jinzhou and other places, making the population almost completely saturated.

With such a huge scale of population migration, how could the surrounding forces not know about it, even the reckless forces in the thirteen villages of Luzhou in the remote area have long heard of it, and the reputation of Sima Yu's barbarian co-king has spread thousands of miles away.

Therefore, at the beginning of inviting out the two brothers Su Dingfang and Gao Chong, Sima Yu did not have the luxury of expecting to be able to hide from everyone, and the reason why he developed Su Dingfang's strength in this way was that he did not want to stimulate local forces such as Thirteen Villages, so as not to attract the attention of the major forces in the north.

"So what do we do now?" Hu Cheng frowned, spread his hands and said a little impatiently.

Hu Sanniang's words are clear to him, and it is precisely because he is clear that he agrees to weaken Su Dingfang's strength with Fang Jie and other northern Bazhai, and continue to let Su Dingfang's strength grow, and unifying Luzhou will become an inevitable situation, which Hu Cheng does not want to see.

Rather be the head of the chicken, not the tail of the phoenix!

"How it was originally and how it is now, wait and see what happens!"

Glancing at her brother, Hu Sanniang said in a light tone, making it unpredictable what she was thinking.