In Zhoujiabao in Yanchang County, Zhang Chu was thinking about the current situation on the map. The official map of the Ming Dynasty was not available to Zhang Chu, and the rest of the security team knew nothing about the map. There was no way, Zhang Chu could only draw a map of the surrounding environment of Yanchang County by himself, the map has an irreplaceable role in the war, even if it costs a lot of strength, it must be obtained. In order to reduce his burden, Zhang Chu pulled Zhang Guo, Li Qiang, and the children of the Junior Military Academy into this work. Zhang Chu taught them the mapping knowledge he had learned in junior high school while drawing, and by marking the situation of Yang Liu and their caravan on the map little by little, and constantly improving, a simple map could already make Zhang Chu have a general impression of the surrounding environment.

Zhang Guo, Li Qiang and the other orphans have been with Zhang Chu all this time after joining the Junior Military Academy, and with sufficient food, coupled with the half-day military training that Zhang Chu requested, the children have now become stronger, and they are cleaned up neatly, and they all look energetic. At this time, the children were building a sand table on the side of the house, and when they saw Zhang Chu thinking about the problem, they all consciously stopped talking.

In order to grasp more information and listen to intelligence, Zhang Chu not only often sent people to the surrounding areas, but also selected smart and capable members of the security team to form a special task force a long time ago, and took money to Yanchang County and the surrounding towns where officials and soldiers were stationed to open shops, and cooperated with Yangliu's caravan to purchase supplies and monitor the movements of officials and soldiers. This time, Zhang Chu's previous attention to intelligence work had an effect, and the people in Yan'an Mansion two days ago sent back the news that the governor had ordered Chen Qiang's Qianhu to send troops to attack the security army. Chen Qiang's 1,000 households should have been able to dispatch about 500 people, and he was very brave in quelling the civil unrest in several counties around Yan'an Prefecture.

Zhang Chu was well aware of the grim situation of the security team at this time. The current number of fighters in the security team is only more than 300 people, the number of which is far less than that of this group of officers and soldiers, and their own foundation in Yanchang County is not stable, the poor are still waiting, the rich are full of hatred for the security team, and some landlords still have families in their hands, it is difficult to say that these people will not stab the security forces in the back when they are weak. Although the official army of Ma Baihu in Yanchang County has been eliminated, if Ma Zhixian receives an order from above to suppress the bandits, if he gathers the officials and the families of the wealthy households in the city to attack the security army, it will also pose a great threat. When the security forces retreat, the various forces will come together, and the situation of the security forces will be even more difficult. If they were forced to retreat deep into the mountains, they would lose their existing coal mines, iron mines, and factories, and the entire security team would go hungry.

In order to cope with this difficulty, Zhang Chu ordered the fighters of the security team to assemble in Zhoujiapu, and the other personnel retreated into the valleys of Chaoyangtun and Qiaojiagou to prepare for transfer at any time, and the main leaders of the security team went to Zhoujiabao to discuss countermeasures.

Ma Zhi County knew that the disaster was imminent after Zhoujiabao was breached, and Zhou Lianming had dealings with Ma Zhi County before, and he was still very influential among the rich families in Yanchang County, especially Zhou Lianming's younger brother who was the imperial historian could not afford to offend. That damn Wu Baihu really lied about his war exploits, saying that he would defeat the thieves. But the thieves turned around and captured Zhoujiabao.

Ma Zhixian had no choice but to take out the silver and make some dots, but in the end, Zhou Lianqi was ruthlessly involved. The big guy who received the money in the court still had a conscience, and said a few good words for Ma Zhixian in front of the emperor, which saved Ma Zhixian's black yarn hat. However, the Holy Lord still strictly ordered him to strengthen the suppression of bandits, and asked him to prepare food and salary, and soon he would send troops to Yanchang County to suppress bandits. Ma Zhixian secretly complained, he knew that the official army was not much stronger than the bandits. But there was no choice but to send officials to collect taxes everywhere, but the officials were persuaded to come back as soon as they left the city. It turned out that several officials had not yet entered the village not far from the city, and someone rang the gong, and then a man who claimed to be the chief of the security received them, followed by a few people who were said to be members of the village militia, all with knives and guns in their hands. Of course, the officials did not do it, but looking at the swords and guns in the hands of the other party, they could only stalemate there, but after a while, they heard the sound of horses' hooves, and four or five thieves on horseback and knives entered the village, and looked at the officials with knives. The horse thieves did not embarrass the servants, but only took the weapons they carried, saying that it was not safe to carry them on the road. Then the officials were sent out of the village, and the officials fled all the way back to the city, no matter how much Ma Zhixian coerced and lured them to collect taxes.

Ma Zhi County could only barely collect some money and grain by apportioning it to the rich households in the city, but when he thought about it, he had to give it to the officers and soldiers who came to suppress the bandits, and he was very unhappy. So he sprinkled his anger on Wu Baihu's body, and wrote letters many times to order him to take immediate action to eliminate the bandits. Wu Baihu replied that the food and salary were not even, and the soldiers had no intention of fighting again, so he asked Mazhi County to allocate food and salary again. Ma Zhixian said that he would not do anything about giving money to Wu Baihu again. So he used the dismissal investigation to scare him, but Wu Baihu hid in the military camp outside the city and did not return to the city, and no longer answered his threats, and Ma Zhixian had no way to deal with him. Yesterday, Wu Baihu suddenly wrote a letter, and even took the initiative to say that he wanted to lead a team to suppress bandits, this is really the sun coming out of the west, before Ma Zhixian could figure it out, someone came early this morning to report that Wu Baihu's team outside the city had set up camp and left, could he really lead troops to suppress bandits.

Wu Baihu's team did drive away, but they did not go to suppress the bandits, but joined up with Zhang Chu and them to prepare to meet the officers and troops who were about to arrive.

The main leaders of the security team gathered in the hall of Zhou Lianming's house, and Zhang Chu briefly introduced the current situation to everyone. Then I hope that everyone will also express their opinions and see what countermeasures the security team should take to fight the invading enemy and protect themselves.

Everyone was silent for a while after hearing this, the people of the security team used to naturally fight back when they were cornered, and only then killed the bandits to fight Zhuangbao, but now let everyone sit down and think about how to deal with it, one by one, frowning, I don't know where to start. In the end, there were many discussions, but there was no final result. Zhang Chu listened quietly, and finally summed up that their thoughts were nothing more than two kinds: one was to take people to hide in the mountains or go to other counties. The other is to fight a battle with the enemy, but how to fight and what the consequences will be after the fight are not clear for a while.

The first method is not adopted by Zhang Chu. Zhang Chu knew that the main reason for the failure of the peasant uprising at the end of the Ming Dynasty in the original history was that there was no foundation, and the rebel army wandered around, captured one place and ate up one place, and then coerced more displaced people to kill the next place, and when they encountered officers and soldiers with strong combat effectiveness, the leader of the rebel army led the backbone of them to leave the old and weak and fled, and the old and weak were killed by the officers and soldiers to receive merit, and the leaders of the rebel army recruited new teams elsewhere, not only did they fail to succeed, but in fact brought greater disasters to the people.

Zhang Chu came to the end of the Ming Dynasty when this person ate people from a happy life without worrying about food and clothing, everything he saw with his own eyes shocked him too much, how could there be such suffering in the world. So Zhang Chu always wanted to change all this, to reduce the suffering in the world, not to increase it.

Everyone was talking about it, and they all turned their heads to look at Zhang Chu, wanting to hear his opinion.

Zhang Chu stood up and walked to the middle of the crowd and said: "Escape is not a way, for the enemy, we can only bravely meet it, in order to keep all that we have, all the people of the security team should have the spirit of courage and sacrifice, we must stand in Yanchang County and take root." Now let's just think about how to defeat the enemy in front of us. ”