Just after Yama Shojing commanded the Hida Expeditionary Army to break the sister path, the Hida coalition army of the Uchijima family.

Li Xiao said goodbye to Changjing, Shanxian County, and proposed that he would lead the army back to Shengang City.

Li Xiao's request surprised Changjing, Shanxian County, and in yesterday's battle, Li Xiao led the left-wing army to defeat the Hida Hao clan coalition army, laying the foundation for the victory of the entire battle.

In terms of military exploits, Li Xiao can be described as a well-deserved achievement.

At present, the overall situation of Hida has been decided, as long as Sakurato City is breached, the sister Xiaolu family can be completely wiped out, if the sister Xiaolu family is destroyed, the remaining inner island family will also be lonely, and the only thing waiting for them is the fate of subjugation.

But it was at this time when he was picking peaches and sharing the fruits of victory that Li Xiao offered to lead his troops back to Shengang City at this time, which was quite puzzling.

Shan County Changjing is a kind person, and he assured Li Xiao that in this decisive battle to break the great merit of the Hida coalition army, he will definitely go to the letter to Lord Xuan and let him reward Li Xiao.

After hearing this, Li Xiao didn't care, and then said something righteous and stern, to the effect that I am fighting for my Takeda family to dominate the world, and I don't ask for a reward.

At first, everyone thought that Li Xiao was humble.

As a result, on the same day, Li Xiao led his two hundred standing reserves back to Kamioka Castle, and Jiangma Huisheng also said goodbye and returned to Suwa Castle on the plateau with his three hundred troops.

Only then did everyone believe it, and Changjing of Shan County was in awe of Li Xiao's approach, while Kiso Yoshimasa was secretly happy because of the lack of Li Xiao's share.

On the way back to Shengang City with Li Xiao's army, Shima Shengmeng, Shigang Yiyu and others were also puzzled and expressed their confusion about Li Xiao's move.

Li Xiao didn't explain this, he just laughed secretly in his stomach, they didn't understand, this is where the strength of the traverser lies.

It was precisely because Li Xiao knew that in history, the Takeda family's plan to attack Hida was affected by Uesugi Kenshin's fifth expedition to Kawanakajima, so he failed to achieve full success, resulting in the abandonment of the results of the previous hard battle, so Li Xiao withdrew his troops in advance.

Although for the Takeda family, this expedition to Hida was a halfway trip, it was a great gain for Li Xiao.

The biggest gain is that the power of the two wealthy families of Hida, the sister Xiaolu family and the Uchijima family, has been hit hard after this battle, and its strength has been greatly weakened.

According to Li Xiao's prediction, after this battle, the sister Xiaolu family, the Uchijima family, and the soldiers were not to mention the loss, and in order to prepare for this life-and-death battle, almost all the peasants and soldiers in their territory were mobilized, whether they were defeated or defeated, this year's agriculture was almost all slack, so within this year, it was impossible for these two families to send troops to fight again.

And if they want to restore their pre-war vitality, it will take at least two to three years for the two families.

This means that Li Xiao will be able to do his best if he sends troops to Vietnam within this year, and he will have no worries at all.

If it were a different situation, if it weren't for Li Xiao's prediction that Uesugi Kenshin had sent troops to Kawanakajima, then the sister Xiaolu family and the Uchijima family would have been eradicated by the Takeda family after this battle.

Although at that time, Li Xiao can obtain a large fief in Hida by virtue of his military exploits, according to the previous agreement, Takeda Shingen will also let the Kiso family share this achievement, but the Kiso family will inevitably intervene in Hida's forces.

This is equivalent to being regarded by Li Xiao as his family's one-acre and three-point land of the Hida Country, and being inserted horizontally.

Moreover, with the current bad relationship between Li Xiao and the Kiso family, it would be very bad if the other party's forces went deep into Hida and spied out the information of their own Shengang Silver Mountain.

Now Shengang Silver Mountain is equivalent to a seventy or eighty thousand stone high Zhixing Land for Li Xiao, if he wants to pay the price of revealing the secrets of Shengang Silver Mountain for the sake of a barren land that is only a few thousand stone high, it will be too much to do.

After all, now the Kamioka Silver Mountain is still nominally in the hands of the Eima family, and the stone height is more or less a secret to others, so even though the sister Koji family and the Uchijima family know a little about the Kamioka Silver Mountain, they don't want to leak this secret and reveal it to Takeda Shingen.

Such a consequence is only to strengthen the strength of the Takeda family in vain.

And if Kiso Yoshimasa knows, the situation will be very different, Kiso Yoshimasa, a birdman, wants to keep Li Xiao a secret, it's a dream.

Therefore, this battle in Sakura Cave City was very satisfactory to Li Xiao.

And now the reason why Li Xiao hurried back to Shengang City was to prepare for the use of troops against Vietnam.

On the second day of the battle of Sakura Cave City, Li Xiao led his two hundred standing reserves and returned to Shengang City.

After Li Xiao returned to the city, he first listened to the governor of Chang'an, who is now the governor of Shengang Ginzan, and learned about the recent development of the castle town.

Under the renovation of Ōzo Chang'an, the merchant craftsman's town, the town-town shops, and the residential area have been built to an approximate scale, and the longhouses for the newly added 300 permanent residences have also been repaired.

The castle town was first built for the administration of the castle lord and the samurai residence, and in ordinary castle towns, the proportion of samurai accounted for 50% of the population.

After this arrival, the separation of special soldiers and peasants and the establishment of a standing army led to a larger population and a larger scale in the castle town.

In the case of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, in the 20th year of Tensho, even in 1592, there were more than 20,000 people in the standing reserve, and the standing reserves were also stationed in the castle towns.

For example, there are 500 people in the town of Li Xiao Shenoka, and nearly 1,000 people, including their families, have also moved into the town and lived with them.

Combined with the 500 people stationed in Kamioka Ginzan Mountain, the total population of Kamioka Town reached more than 2,000.

The population of 2,000 or 3,000 is basically the average number in terms of the population size of the castle town in the mid-16th century, and most of the castle towns with more than 10,000 at that time were distributed in the densely populated, but there were also in other regions, but there were not many.

At that time, the larger castle towns, such as Ichijo Valley Town, Sakata Town, and Odawara Town, had a population of more than 10,000.

Even after Oda Nobunaga's residence, Azuchi Castle, the population of the castle town was about 2,000 samurai and 7,000 merchants, and the population barely hovered at 10,000.

The town of Edo, which was later known as the million-dollar town, now has a population of just over 100 households.

At present, in Kamioka Town, more than 2,000 people are required to eat, wear, live, and travel, as well as various industries, which is a big potential business opportunity.

For daily necessities such as rice houses, oil houses, and salt houses, shrewd businessmen like Shioya Akizhen have already taken the lead in grabbing points in Kamioka Town.

Li Xiao is convinced that as for the other Wufu houses, Dagongya, Gongye houses, and Kyoya houses, when the conditions are ripe in the future, they will also be able to land in the town of Kamioka.

And Shioya Qiuzhen promised Li Xiao to rebuild the street from Chengsheng City to Kamioka City, and the repair has also been completed.

Now on this channel, Li Xiao mined the ash blowing silver from the Shengang Silver Mountain, and exchanged it for a large amount of Yongle Tongbao, military rations, salt, and designated materials through secret methods, and at the same time, it also entered Shengang City one after another.

Except for a large part of the money invested in the establishment and use of the standing reserve, the rest was invested by Li Xiao in the development of the city's lower town.

Seeing that his castle town was booming, Li Xiao had a sense of expectation for the future, because the increase in the population of castle town meant the prosperity of commerce.

Under the prosperity of commerce, it also means that the taxes collected by Li Xiao from the castle town have increased, becoming the third income in addition to farmland taxes and mines.

At the end of the Warring States period, because of the importance of commerce and the rise of mines by the Oda family, many daimyo families followed suit, no longer regarding the annual tribute of land as their main income, but instead increased commercial development.

In the case of the Anto family of Mutsu Province alone, in the year of the Battle of Sekigahara, the income from the land other than the annual tribute exceeded the income from the annual tribute.

The castle town of Kamiokande Castle in front of Li Xiao has not yet taken shape, but it can be expected that it will develop in the future, and it will become an important passage for the Takeda family to enter Vietnam.

As long as the Takeda family continues to carry out the three-way plan to attack Echigo, then Kamiokanomachi will be an important transit point, and business opportunities will continue to increase in the future.

However, the disadvantages of Kamioka no Town are also very obvious, such as the fact that there are only seven months of trade in a year, and the inaccessibility of roads is a further restriction on the continued expansion of the castle town.

However, according to the expectation and estimation of Li Xiao from the Great Treasury Chang'an, this time next year, the town of Shenokan will bring Li Xiao a lot of commercial benefits.

After listening to the report of the Great Tibetan Chang'an, Li Xiao was very satisfied with the development of the territory.

In addition to the current situation, the Great Treasury Chang'an also put forward two ideas, one is to reclaim new fields, because the current development of the castle town, the population is increasing, and gradually the local food supply in Hida is no longer enough.

And if from Echichu, Shinano transported grain to Hida. Then because of the consumption of the journey, the price of food will rise.

To a large extent, this restricts the development of the existing economic prosperity.

Therefore, Chang'an proposed that in the middle of next year, farmers should be encouraged to improve water conservancy and reclaim new fields to increase the supply of local food in Hida.

At the same time, the increase of Xintian can also improve the stone height under Li Xiao's leadership, which can be regarded as killing two birds with one stone.

However, Li Xiao has another view on this, because considering the highland climate and mountainous terrain of Hida, the development of rice, wheat and other grain reclamation is not too promising.

On the other hand, if it is potatoes, corn and other food crops, it is not only cold-tolerant, but also suitable for cultivation in mountainous areas where the land is poor.

Based on Li Xiao's experience of seeing the starting point YY farming, in the late Ming Dynasty, potatoes and corn had been introduced to China by the Spaniards, and by the time of the Qing Dynasty, these two crops, as well as sweet potatoes, supported the population expansion of China later.

But now for Li Xiao, Feida is a mountainous area, because the news is blocked, it is still a big problem to find the Spaniards and the Ming people to introduce potatoes and corn.

Li Xiao's next step is to send a group of ninjas to contact this matter and see if he can contact the Spaniards.

Then Chang'an put forward a second idea to Li Xiao, which was to implement a monopoly on salt trading in the town of Kamioka.

The meaning of the Ōzo Chang's proposal was that all salt goods entering Hida Province from Kamioka no Machi could only be bought and sold in Kamioka no Machi.

In this way, Kamioka no Town will become the salt distribution center of the entire Hida country, and most people in Hida Province who want to buy salt can only use Kamioka Castle as a route, which will not only increase tax revenue, but also further increase the prosperity of the castle town.

Salt is definitely a strategic material with a monopoly surname for Hida, a mountainous landlocked country.

Therefore, in Kamiokande City, such a major thoroughfare, monopolizing the salt industry is definitely a big profit.

Historically, Oda Nobunaga has also done this.

After he built Azuchi Castle, in order to increase the commercial income of Azuchi-no-cho, he made a mandatory rule that only horses within the domain could be bought and sold in Azuchi-no-cho.

Li Xiao shook his head when he heard this, the idea of the Great Tibetan Chang'an was very good, but it did not take into account the specific reality.

At present, the salt industry in Hida Country is mainly monopolized by Shioya Akisada. In this era when the Rakuza market was not implemented, merchants such as Shioya Akisada had a lot of power, which was equivalent to monopolizing the entire salt industry in Hida.

If it is really necessary to enforce the salt trade in Kamioka no Town, as proposed by the Great Treasury Chang'an, it will definitely touch the fundamental interests of Shioya Akisada.

At that time, Shioya Qiuzhen is likely to turn against Li Xiao, and if he is angry, he will impose a salt embargo on Hida Country.

Then the price of salt in Li Xiaoling's territory has skyrocketed, and the leaders are likely to rise up to riot, and it will be difficult for him, the lord, to do it at that time.

In addition, Shioya Akizhen has another choice, that is, not to pass through Kamiokanda Castle, but to change to the territory of the current sister Koji family, and the same is true for transporting salt from Echichu to Hida.

The only thing he had to do was to take a long detour, but Li Xiao couldn't earn a penny, and he suffered a big loss.

Seeing that his two opinions had not been passed by Li Xiao, Dazang Chang'an looked quite frustrated.

But Li Xiao immediately comforted Chang'an, although his opinion did not pass here, but his two ideas did give him a good inspiration.

In particular, the second idea, the implementation of a monopoly on the salt industry, may not work now, but if Li Xiao can capture the Saito family's castle in the future, the situation will be different at this time.

Capturing Chengsheng City means that Li Xiao has gained a stronghold in Yue, and Yuezhong is close to the sea, and there must be more than one local salt merchant in Yanwu Qiuzhen.

At that time, Li Xiao will be able to contact other Vietnamese and Chinese salt merchants without going through Yanwu Qiuzhen, and can break the monopoly of the other party and implement free market trade.

And at this time, Li Xiao already had two Hida in Chengsheng City and Shengang City, and the strongholds of the entrance and exit roads in Yuezhong.

At that time, Yanwu Qiuzhen wanted to take a detour to transport salt, so he went to the mountains and then detoured dozens of miles of mountain roads.

In this way, Li Xiao's plan to implement the forced salt trade in Chang'an is fully certain.

And this forced salt trade is only the first step, Li Xiao thought of a more far-reaching thing, it is the famous Takeda family salt cut incident.

Historically, because of Takeda Yoshinobu's rebellion, Takeda Shingen's intention to attack the Imagawa family was revealed in advance.

Therefore, the Imagawa family united with the Hojo family to impose a salt embargo on the Takeda family on the grounds that Takeda Shingen had destroyed the Koshojun Triple Alliance.

This move caused the price of salt within the Takeda family, which is located in a landlocked mountainous country, to skyrocket.

Li Xiao foresaw this situation in history, and it was through the monopoly of the salt industry that he hoarded salt.

As soon as the salt crisis within the Takeda family appeared, he could immediately transport the salt to Shinano and Kai.

In this way, you can not only achieve Li Xiao's reputation when he is in danger, but also take this opportunity to earn him a fortune, why not do it.

The only pity is that the good story of Uesugi Kenshin's 'giving salt to the enemy' in history seems to be about to be lost.

Thinking of this, Li Xiao unconsciously showed a smile on his face, the plan is very good, but the premise of this plan is that the city of Yuezhong must be captured as a prerequisite.

(To be continued)