In history, whether it is population or economic aggregate, the Ming Dynasty is far superior to the Houjin, but why did the Houjin be allowed to lie down? Zhu Youzhen has also asked himself this question countless times.

Of course, the reasons for this are complex, including political, economic, military, and even climatic aspects. But through the experience since the crossing, Zhu Youzhen has at least summed up one of them, that is, the distribution of resources is extremely uneven!

Take this grain, for example. It stands to reason that Shaanxi has just experienced a major earthquake, and the people have suffered heavy casualties, and it is at a time when there is a shortage of green and yellow, so the imperial court should open a warehouse for relief. However, the granary in Xi'an did not have a few grains of grain, and it was impossible to provide relief at all because it had to ensure the priority supply of officers and soldiers. As the saying goes, "the big river has water and the small river is full", but the big river of the imperial court has long been dry.

So is it with the great river, but what about the little one? The three major merchant gangs obviously controlled a large amount of rice shipped from the south, but they hoarded Juqi and sat on the ground to raise prices. The price of rice in Xi'an has risen to more than seven taels of silver per stone, and there is a trend of continuing to rise, which has long exceeded the tolerance of ordinary people.

As for those wealthy families, they don't care much about the price of rice. One is that they themselves have a lot of fertile land, so they don't have to worry about food at all; Second, the family is more or less involved in business, and can obtain relatively rich profits, and no matter how high the price of rice is, it can be afforded. Some wealthy families still stock up on grain at home, even if hundreds of people can't eat it for more than ten years.

The peasant households in the surrounding counties have a hard time getting some grain all year round, but they are often plundered by bandits entrenched in the mountains. If you can barely survive in a good year, but in a year like this year, even making ends meet has become a problem. As the saying goes, people take food as the sky, and they can't even eat, so do you care about this and that? Therefore, when the thieves come, they can coerce so many people, and eventually become a spark in the prairie fire.

Of course, Zhu Youzhen wants to solve this situation. But he was only a vassal king, not an emperor yet, and he had no power in his hands. Therefore, he has nothing to do with the wealthy, and the behavior of merchants to raise the price of rice can only be restricted through business wars.

But for those bandits who are robbers, Zhu Youzhen doesn't need to be so polite. In the battle of Ziyun Mountain, the captured materials were like charcoal in the snow for Qin Wangzhuang, and it also gave Zhu Youzhen a taste of the sweetness of fighting to feed the war. So he continued to sift through the information provided by Lin Youkun to find the next target.

While he was concentrating on the information, the conversation of the two women passing by him inadvertently drifted into his ears.

Both of these women were rescued by him from Ziyun Mountain, and now work in the laundry bureau in Qinwangzhuang. It turned out that in order to strengthen the sanitation work, Zhu Youjian set up a laundry bureau, stipulating that all Tuan Yong and workers must change their clothes every day, otherwise they will be deducted from the moon.

There is no resistance to this regulation, who doesn't want to wear clean clothes and don't have to do it yourself?

To this end, Zhu Youzhen hired dozens of new women to specialize in laundry. Although he increased his monthly expenditure by hundreds of taels for this reason, when he thought that because of the improvement of sanitary conditions, the unpleasant plague could be avoided, Zhu Youzhen still felt that the money was well spent.

In these days, there are no washing machines, dozens of people wash more than 1,000 pieces of clothes, and each person has to wash dozens of pieces on average, so the workload can be imagined. But these women were ravaged by bandits every day and lived an inhuman life; At this time, there is food, work to do, and monthly silver, everyone is happy, and no matter how heavy the work is, it is never too tired.

At this time, one of them said: "Sister, I listen to your accent, it seems to be from Shimenling?" I have a sister who married into a nearby village, I don't know what happens over there? ”

Another said: "Nian Cheng is good, and there is a lot of food that has been beaten down, but eighty percent of it has been robbed by bandits!" In the first two years, Shimenling was occupied by a group of strongmen, and they went down the mountain to fight the autumn wind across the mountain. Later, I heard that they were gathering more and more, and there were almost 2,000 of them. My father was afraid that I would be robbed by the bandits, so he asked me to go to my aunt's house in Zhuoyu Village to avoid the limelight. I didn't expect that Zhuoyu Village was not very peaceful, I hid and hid, but in the end I still let the bandits grab Ziyun Mountain. If it weren't for the Jingyang Shang Gang to save his life, I'm afraid that this son would have died a long time ago! ”

Zhu Youzhen's heart moved when he heard this, so he stopped the two and asked, "Where is Shimenling?" ”

The two of them had only met Zhu Youzhen once, and they couldn't remember it after a long time, but they weren't afraid of him, and said generously: "Little brother, Shimenling, like Ziyun Mountain, is also in Lantian County. Because the road up the mountain is very steep, there is a large section of stone walls on both sides, like two doors about to close, so it is called 'Shimenling'. ”

"How are the bandits up there?" Zhu Youzhen asked thoughtfully.

"Isn't it? Every time they go down the mountain to rob, they use knives and guns, which is terrifying! ”

"Do they have a bird gun or a bow and arrow?" Zhu Youzhen hurriedly asked.

The woman tilted her head and thought, "Isn't that one of those long tubes that smoke?" I haven't seen that. There don't seem to be bows and arrows, they only have knives and guns. After saying that, he walked away with a smile.

Zhu Youzhen's train of thought suddenly penetrated: Yes! Why not target this Shimenling? First of all, it is also in Lantian County, not far from Jingyang; And the last time the militia had already fought in Ziyun Mountain, the terrain of Shimen Ridge and Ziyun Mountain should be relatively similar.

And more importantly, it's a large bandit den. If there are more people, there will inevitably be more grain, and if such a large village is laid, the food problem in Qinwangzhuang will be greatly alleviated.

If it had been placed ten days ago, Zhu Youzhen would certainly not dare to touch such a big cottage. Not to mention anything else, the militia is only 500 people, so it is obviously outnumbered.

But now it's different, with sixty birds, Zhu Youzhen's confidence has immediately increased a lot. Through the past few days of training, the newly trained bird guns have mastered the essentials of bird guns.

Moreover, Zhu Youzhen's training focus was not on the word "quasi", but on the main requirement to be fast. Because the bird gun is actually an arquebus, each time it is fired, it must first be loaded with ammunition from the front chamber inside, and then a firerope soaked in oil must be stuffed to ignite the arquebus from the outside. Wait for the flame to crawl into the chamber of the gun and ignite the firing charge before the shot can be released.

As early as in the previous battle of Quang Ninh, Zhu Youzhen realized the shortcomings of the bird gun. But firearms are firearms after all, and the lethality is still there. As long as the gun can be skillful and slightly increase the firing speed, the power is still much greater than that of a bow and arrow.

Of course, the characteristics of the bird gun itself have already determined that no matter how much it is improved, it will not be able to reach the rate of fire of the flintlock pistol. However, in the case of a relatively large number and a relatively narrow battlefield, the bird gun is still quite a terrible weapon.

Listening to what the two women said, although there were many bandits on Shimenling, they did not have any advanced equipment. Zhu Youzhen was overjoyed in his heart, and he was already planning to eat this piece of fat.

But he didn't dare to make a big decision, so he made a decision with a casual pat on his head, but first found Xie Yong, Li Dingguo and others from the militia group to hold a meeting to analyze the enemy situation.

When the two men heard that there was another battle to be fought, they were very excited. Especially Li Dingguo, since the last time he outwitted Ziyun Mountain, he has been even more confident and resolutely asks to take the lead again. But they can't say exactly what the enemy is.

Zhu Youzhen secretly thought that it was time to dispatch the special service team. Anyway, during this time, the business war in Xi'an City was in a state of stalemate, and no one could help anyone for the time being. And after that large-scale "rogue annihilation war", no one dares to come to the door to make trouble anymore. These special service members are the elite of the elite, how can they be too idle.

So he sent someone to inform Yan Ling and asked them to go to the vicinity of Shimenling to reconnoiter the enemy's situation first.

While waiting for a reply, Zhu Youzhen stepped up the training of bird gunners on the one hand, and began to expand the army on the other hand. The 500 members of the militia are too few, and there are 100 people left last time, which shows that the troops are insufficient, so it is only a matter of time before the army is expanded. This time, it happened to be preparing for Shimenling to recruit newcomers first.

This time, Zhu Youjian was still assessed according to the previous standards, but the number of people who passed the assessment increased greatly. Because last time, many people were stuck in the last exam "writing", and after they went back, they made up their minds to go to night school to learn to write seriously after finishing work every night, and now they have made obvious progress.

After selection, 200 people stood out and became the fresh blood of the militia group. But this time the difference is that several thirteen or fourteen-year-olds also passed the test. They were still studying in Qinwangzhuang Primary School before, and now they are about to carry a gun when they put down their schoolbags, which caused a burst of ridicule from Lao Tuanyong.

Zhu Youzhen disagreed. Because first of all, "the children of the poor are in charge of the house early", these teenagers have long begun to do the same physical work as adults, and they have not fallen behind at all, and they have also been squeezed into the militia group only after defeating adult opponents through layers of selection.

Second, Zhu Youzhen did not want Tuanyong to fall into traditional hand-to-hand combat, but wanted to establish a new type of unit based on firearms. Although these young boys are very smart, they are extremely clever, and one of them is from a family of hunters, and once used a bird gun to hunt. At this time, picking up the bird gun, he is familiar with the road, and he can play more neatly than those old group braves. Zhu Youzhen was overjoyed, so he asked them to also serve as bird guns.

Two days later, Xie Sheng brought information about Shimenling. It turned out that the two women were really right, there are more than 2,200 bandits in Shimenling, divided into three villages, front, middle and back, which are located on different hills.

Among them, the most dangerous terrain of Zhongzhai is personally led by the owner of the big village, "Golden Eye Eagle"; The front village is led by the second village master "Pangolin", and the back house is led by the third village master "Sai Zhang Fei". There are about 500 people in the front and back villages, and more than 1,000 people in the middle villages.

Due to the large range of Shimenling, the distance between these three cottages is quite far, and there are at least three mountains between the front village and the middle village. Moreover, Yan Ling also caught a bandit "tongue" and interrogated the situation on the mountain in detail, which also confirmed that the bandits did not have firearms.

At this point, Zhu Youzhen had completely made up his mind, so he immediately gathered the militia and marched to Shimenling!