Because Shilou County is not very far away from Qinglongdu, and Hong Chengchou led the army to the north this time, he did not carry much rations, except for the more than a dozen light artillery pieces brought by the Shaanxi army, such as the Tiger Squat Cannon and the Zhankou General Cannon, there was no baggage to slow down the speed, so he set off in the morning and arrived at the ferry port of Qinglongdu in the afternoon. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

This Qinglongdu is not a ferry on the Yellow River, but the last crossing of the Lishi River (later called Sanchuan River) before it flows into the Yellow River from east to west.

And to the north of this ferry port is Liulinbao (the seat of Liulin County in later generations).

In the final analysis, this Qinglongdu is just a wharf outside the south gate of Liulinbao.

Hong Chengchou led a large group of men and horses to build a pontoon bridge in the afternoon of the same day, crossed the Qinglongdu, and then set up camp outside the south gate of Liulinbao.

This Liulin Fort, which belongs to Xiwei, the town of Dusi, Shanxi, is the location of a thousand households.

Because it is the first stop for the thieves in northern Shaanxi to cross the Yellow River and enter Shanxi, since the beginning of the year, after the thieves fled to Jin, the damage to Liulinbao has been more serious, and the original guards and military households have long been missing.

The once prosperous ferry market has also become a ruined wall, and the people who used to be bustling in the past are not a single one.

Previously, Pei Shize of Zhenxi Camp had stationed in Liulin Fort with his men, but he was soon smoked out by the stench emitted by the rotting corpses of people and animals all over it.

This time, Hong Chengchou came to Liulinbao with more than 3,000 elite men and horses from Fubiao, Shaanxi, to use it as a rear base for his attack on Ningxiang.

So on the second day, on the one hand, Hong Chengchou sent Li Wenyun and Zhong Dewu to lead men and horses across the river to spy in the direction of Ningxiang, and on the other hand, he had to order his subordinates to brave the scorching heat, cover their mouths and noses, and endure the stench, enter the fort, and clean up the Liulin Fort within a radius of several miles.

From morning to afternoon, within four or five hours, Wang Chengen, the chief soldier of Shaanxi, led 3,000 officers and soldiers of Shaanxi Fubiao, and everyone started to clean up more than 3,000 highly corrupted human and animal corpses from the streets and alleys, corners and rooms in Liulin Fort.

In the evening, Hong Chengchou ordered to clean up the rotting corpses outside the north gate of Liulinbao, gather them, and dig a pit to bury them deeply.

As a civil commander who was born as a jinshi, Hong Chengchou is well aware of the dangers and dangers of the epidemic of disease service.

If these animal corpses are not disposed of, they will be allowed to rot and grow maggots, once there is an epidemic of disease and labor, not to mention that this Liulin Fort cannot be stationed at all, even the officers and troops under his command must hide as far away as possible.

Fortunately, two days later, the people and horses were safe, and the stench in Liulinbao City was also dispersed, and on the morning of the third day after arriving at Liulinbao, Hong Chengchou's troops entered Liulinbao.

Although the Liulin Fort was dilapidated at this time, it was better to camp overnight in the fort than to spend the night inside the wooden fence outside the fort.

Anyway, the city wall of Liulinbao is also a tall and thick earth and stone building!

In the afternoon of the day of the stationing in Liulinbao, a patrol team sent to the bank of the Yellow River rushed into Liulinbao with cheers.

The first batch of grain transport teams sent by Ma Maocai have arrived at the wharf on the other side of the Yellow River!

And the reason why the patrol posts under Hong Chengchou's command were so elated was because on the day they entered Liulin Fort, the part of the dry food carried by Hong Chengchou's troops had been exhausted.

If it weren't for the fact that Hong Chengchou, Wang Chengen and others had always governed the army harshly, and the soldiers recruited by the standard camp were all ordinary poor peasants, otherwise, even if they were all locked up in Liulin Fort, it would be difficult for the soldiers and horses under their command to still honestly renovate any city like now.

On the evening of 19 May, the first batch of 1,500 quintals of military rations crossed the relatively gentle surface of the Yellow River from Shaanxi on the other side of Liulinbao on countless sheepskin rafts and arrived safely in Shanxi.

At the same time, Hong Chengchou also met with Ma Maocai, who escorted the military rations to Liulin Fort, and Bi Lieying, the guard under Ma Maocai, and Bi Lieying, the sentinel.

Since he was ordered to serve in Yansui Town, he has hardly interfered in any specific military affairs of Yansui Town, and according to the emperor's will, he has devoted all his energy to the reclamation of Ganquanyu Tun, which is seventy miles southeast of Yan'an Fucheng.

This place, which was called Nanniwan in later generations, is indeed a treasure land of feng shui hidden in the mountains of northern Shaanxi.

Due to the civil unrest in northern Shaanxi, Ma Maocai's cause of recruiting people for reclamation went very smoothly.

Not only did he move all of his huge population of three relatives, six ancestors and nine ethnic groups in Ansai County into Ganquanyu, but in a year and a half, he also recruited more than 4,300 households of displaced people from northern Shaanxi, totaling more than 22,000 people.

By April of the second year of Chongzhen's reign, Ma Mao had already led these poor peasants in northern Shaanxi who had entered Ganquanyu to reclaim more than 120,000 mu of fertile farmland in Ganquanyu, where water sources were abundant and the terrain was gentle, but overgrown with weeds and shrubs.

In later generations, the army that reclaimed in Nanniwan had reclaimed nearly 300,000 mu of farmland, and Ma Mao was naturally incomparable with the famous General Wang, but even with the existing scale of reclamation in Ganquanyu, it was enough to grow a large amount of life-saving grain.

In particular, Ma Maocai resolutely stopped the demands of the old farmers in northern Shaanxi who had moved to Ganquanyu to insist on planting millet and sorghum, and instead comprehensively promoted the cultivation of high-yield sweet potatoes, potatoes and corn.

At the same time, although the core area of Ganquanyu has the conditions for planting a single season of rice, in order to increase grain production, Ma Maocai still resisted the urge to plant rice in northern Shaanxi.

Now in the Ganquanyu reclamation area in the second year of Chongzhen, the spring ploughing has been successfully completed, and Ma Maocai is taking a section of the standard battalion of the supervising army under his command to supervise the newly recruited large number of people to find and mine the fierce fire oil urgently needed by the Arsenal in the Yanchang and Yanchuan areas.

Therefore, the envoy sent by Hong Chengchou to Yan'an Mansion to ask for Ma Maocai met Ma Maocai's team as soon as he arrived in Yanchang, and soon met Ma Maocai himself.

Ma Maocai, who was born in Ansai County, northern Shaanxi, is very aware of the dangers of thieves and homeless people in northern Shaanxi, so he is very sober-minded, and does not have the kind of stinky problem that most civil officials in this era have nothing to do with themselves.

Hearing that Hong Chengchou, the governor of Shaanxi, led the Shaanxi army to suppress the thieves in Shanxi and was so short of food that it was impossible to launch a continuous attack on the thieves, Ma Mao immediately agreed to provide a batch of grain and grass for the front line of the thieves.

5,000 quintals is not a small amount, but for today's Ganquanyu Reclamation District, it can still be scraped together.

In this way, Ma Mao put down the fierce fire oil mining business at hand and quickly rushed back to Ganquanyu to mobilize grain and grass materials.

Due to limited capacity, it could only be delivered in phases, and the first batch of materials was finally delivered to Wubao four days later, crossing the Yellow River.

And taking advantage of the rain a few days ago, there was just plenty of water in the Lishi River, and the grain delivery team went directly east along the Lishi River, and in the evening, finally sent 1,500 quintals of coarse grain to Qinglongdu outside Liulinbao.

Along with the first batch of grain and grass, there were also 500 rudimentary versions of fierce fire oil bombs produced by Ganquanyu himself.

After Ma Maocai collected the fierce fire oil in Yanchang and other places, he crossed the mountains and mountains, traveled thousands of miles, and sent it to the Tongzhou Military Institute, and after simple heating and refining and precipitation, the impurities were removed, and the lighter and more violent fire oil was extracted, and then poured into the clay pot to seal it to make a fierce fire oil bomb.

The process is very simple and has no technical content.

Therefore, when the fierce fire oil bombs of the Armament Institute were finalized and mass-produced, Ma Mao was soon allowed to make his own fierce fire oil bombs in Ganquanyu and Yanchang and other places, which were used to solve the supply problem of fierce fire oil bombs to the border armies of Yansui Town and even the towns under the jurisdiction of the governor of the three sides.

After all, it was too time-consuming and labor-intensive to send the fierce fire oil produced in Yanchang County, Yan'an Prefecture, northern Shaanxi Province, to the Beijing Division over the mountains and mountains, and to the fierce fire oil factory of the Tongzhou Armed Forces Institute for processing and refining, and then to make fierce fire oil bombs, and then send them back to the towns and border armies under the jurisdiction of the trilateral governor in the northwest for thousands of miles.

This time, when Hong Chengchou met with He Xueyong, the garrison under Ma Maocai, and Bi Lieying, the sentinel Qianzong, he heard from them that Ma Maocai considered that the Shaanxi army Fubiao might attack Yongning Prefecture City and Ningxiang County, so he also specially presented a batch of self-made fierce fire bombs to the Shaanxi army Fubiao, and he was overjoyed at the moment.

He Xueyong and Bi Lieying took a group of men and horses from the Yansui Town Supervision Army Standard Battalion under Ma Maocai, and left Liulinbao early the next morning with the receipt issued by the governor of Shaanxi and the letter from Hong Chengchou, and crossed the river to return to Shaanxi on a sheepskin raft.

The governor of Shaanxi, Hong Chengchou, and the general soldier Wang Chengen, only left a few hundred people to guard the rear base of Liulinbao, and then took the main force of 3,000 people, as well as the first batch of military rations and fierce fire bombs sent by Ma Maocai, and began to slowly march towards the state city of Yongning Prefecture, dozens of miles away.