Although Taiping Dao suffered heavy losses due to the defeat of the army, due to the intervention of insolence, it really saved a lot of reserve personnel. In addition, the arrogant ambition who has been bombarded by countless network information in later generations as the leader, against other scattered rebel armies, it really has an overwhelming crushing advantage from the inside out, from soldiers to generals, from organization to logistics!

Therefore, in the fourth year of Zhongping, Wang Fen, who had already taken good care of Jizhou after the war, mentioned the original rebels in the "Shangshu" sent to the Son of Heaven, and the content changed:

"Under the coercion and annexation, most of the thieves are subordinate, and they are more communicative. It is rampant in Zhongshan, Changshan, Zhaojun, Shangdang, Hanoi valleys, the number of millions, called Taihang thieves. ”

In this battle for power, the leaders of the rebel army, such as Yu Gen, Qingniujiao, Zhangba, Pinghan, Daji, Sili, Pengzai, Li Damu, and Ku Da, died or fled one after another in the hands of the arrogant "Tai Xing Army".

Of course, even the Taixing army, which has absolute superiority, is not possible without paying the corresponding price in this process of unification accompanied by bloodshed and strategy.

For Zhang Mao, the most painful loss for him was that in the confrontation with a rebel army that called himself "Si Li", the original "military advisor" Wang Guo was killed. In order to avenge Wang Guo, in a fit of rage, he refused the surrender of the "Si Li" Qu Shuai, and killed all the 114 core personnel under the "Si Li"!

The remaining Black Mountain, Huanglong, Bai Bo, Zuo Xiao, Liu Shi, Zhang Baiqi, Zuo Mao, Fuyun, Feiyan, Baique, Yang Feng, Yu Poison, Wulu, Bai Huan, Zhenggu and other departments also had to be headed by the "Taixing Army" in name or in fact.

After three years of arduous campaigning, Zhang Qi became the master of the entire Taihang Mountain area, at least in form. The number of mountain people under his direct rule reached 300,000. And the number of people who nominally belong to the "Taixing Army" is also about 400,000. The "many to millions" mentioned in Wang Fen's "Shangshu" in Jizhou Assassin Shi is not entirely an empty word.

However, due to the limitations of the geographical environment, the resources that the 300,000 mountain people who sound like a lot can provide to the arrogant "Tai Marching Army" are extremely limited. In fact, if there were no food and materials from outside the mountainous area, a steady stream of input into the Taihang Mountains, the thousands of Taixing troops under the command of Zhang Qiang would all starve to death in the vast mountains.

No way. If the environment of Taihang Mountain was suitable and could support people, the Han court would have carried out large-scale development activities long ago. If it weren't for the local government, there would not have been enough money and food in the mountainous areas, and they would not have tolerated all kinds of thieves and thieves to openly or semi-openly occupy these important military sites.

Therefore, in the face of such a reality, Zhang Qiang had to admit that his original idea was too hasty. If he hadn't been looking forward to the great changes in the Han family a year later, he would have found a way to rush out of the Taihang Mountains and grab money, grain, and land.

However, arrogance is a traverser after all. After carrying out the primitive accumulation of military affairs, he also found time to complete the third major task -- the development of science and technology -- in a few years.

Don't get me wrong. Insolence would never have built muskets, artillery, or steam engines. Although, he dreamed of making these things. But he also needs to be able to make it!

You can't expect a person who writes down the recipe of black powder as "sulfuric acid, nitric acid, and charcoal" to lead people into the age of hot weapons, right?

This is the little sorrow of liberal arts students and webworms.

However, in terms of scientific and technological development, Zhang Qi is not useless after all. At the very least, he knows where technology is going to go.

When he stayed in Julu City, Zhang Mad considered his future development needs, and through the relationship between Zhang Jiaoyi's son Zhang Yan, he recruited a group of highly skilled craftsmen. Among these craftsmen, Zhang was pleasantly surprised to find that there were people who had mastered a full set of papermaking techniques.

Although the current Han Dynasty still uses wooden bamboo slips as the main carrier of writing. However, in fact, as early as 100 years ago, a strong man invented the academic weapon of "papermaking".

It is not known who the inventor of "papermaking" really is. However, during the period of Emperor Han He, the eunuch Cai Lun summarized the original papermaking techniques, improved them, and created the famous "Caihou Paper" manufacturing method.

However, due to the political struggles in the Han court over the years and the artificial secrecy of papermaking technology, even in the late Han Dynasty, paper was still a writing instrument used by only a few people. At least, the Han court still used cheap wooden slabs and expensive silk to write official documents.

Therefore, when Zhang Qiang found out that there was such a talent in his hands, the excitement was only slightly worse than the joy he felt when he heard that his wife Xiaoyu was pregnant.

Then, with a stroke of the pen, more than a dozen craftsmen of various colors were mobilized to devote themselves to the production and improvement of papermaking technology. And the creativity of his craftsmen did not disappoint him. In the fourth year of Zhongping, the paper made in Taihang Mountain not only improved the quality compared with "Caihou paper", but also reduced the cost a lot.

With the production of paper, another important invention in history also appeared rapidly under the full impetus of insolence. That is:

-- Engraving printing.

In fact, Zhang Qiao's initial idea was to engage in movable type printing. However, the sadness of being a liberal arts student is that he knows almost nothing about the details of movable type printing. The movable type printing technology that has been developed is not only not good in terms of printing quality, but also in high cost.

After the craftsman made a comparison, he was frustrated to find that for him, the most suitable printing technique at present was actually the low-tech engraving printing technique.

Oh, by the way, in addition to two cultural inventions, there are two other applications of insolence, which do not make him completely disgrace the face of the traverser. That is: the development and use of coal, and the guidance of the hygiene habits of the soldiers under them.

Coal was called "shini" at the time. Taihang Mountain is located at the junction of Shanxi and Hebei in later generations, and this kind of road minerals are not everywhere, at least not rare.

With Zhang Qi's guiding use of coal, the Taixing army felt a certain convenience up and down. After all, after mixing some dirt with some dirt, the calorific value of this thing is still much higher than that of wood or something.

Although, there is no shortage of trees and firewood in the mountains.

In contrast, another instruction on the hygiene habits of soldiers is much more effective than the promotion of "coal burning".

The social upheaval that emerged at the end of the Han Dynasty led to a sharp decline in the population. It is said that according to some historical sources, before the Yellow Turban Rebellion in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, the total population of the country was almost 50 or 60 million. However, when it came to the time of "three points to the Jin", the Eastern Jin Dynasty court counted the number of the country's population, but it was only more than 8 million.

Maybe it's some exaggeration, some hidden, like "hidden household" or something. But one thing is clear: during the Three Kingdoms period, the number of unnatural deaths of the Han people was too much!

In this, of course, various natural disasters and ** are at work, but the spread of epidemics is also an important reason for the huge threat. For example, among the heroes of the Three Kingdoms, there are many people who die of regrettable illness at the age of thirty or forty when they are in the prime of life. Among the famous personalities, such as:

Zhou Yu, 36 years old, died of illness.

Chen Deng, 39 years old, died of illness.

Li Dian, 36 years old, died of illness.

Cao Pi, forty years old, died of illness.

Cao Rui, 36 years old, died of illness.

Cao Chong, thirteen years old, died of illness.

…………

These talents, who died young, all belonged to the upper echelons of society at that time, and their living conditions were relatively good compared with ordinary people. However, even so, it is inevitable that one by one will die of illness. The longevity of the people at the bottom at that time can be seen.

Because the momentum of various epidemics is too fierce, this directly promotes a major outbreak in the history of Chinese medicine. It is conceivable that if it were not for the death of two-thirds of the relatives in the family, Zhang Zhongjing, a generation of medical saints, might not have left the promising career of Taishou and returned to his hometown to study medicine.

As a traverser, he may not be able to prescribe any effective prescriptions. However, he still knows some common sense of hygiene in modern life.

Therefore, with the help of the name of "Nanhua Old Immortal", long before participating in the Battle of Changshe, Zhang Qiang asked his subordinates to abide by the rules such as "water should be boiled and drunk", "wash hands before and after meals", and "no and urine everywhere", a total of sixteen. Since then, there has been no widespread attrition of his subordinates due to the epidemic.

When Zhang Qi entered the Taihang Mountain, he naturally forcibly extended these proven effective health and epidemic prevention methods to the entire area under his rule. In this way, although there was some trouble at the beginning, it actually allowed him to manage the epidemic in the area, and miraculously alleviated it.

Compared with the great plague that occurred in Jizhou after the Great War, which caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, the epidemic in the area ruled by Insolence only caused the deaths of a few thousand.

As a result, the people who were originally suspicious of the "guidance of the immortals" who had been arrogant all enthusiastically believed that their leader was indeed a real person who accepted the mandate of heaven. Zhang Qi was able to achieve superficial unity in the rugged and difficult Taihang Mountains, and these rumors of Shinto Taoism were also indispensable.

ps: Thanks to the mystery man. , Horror, and the reward of two book friends. Originally, writing this book was already quite frustrating, and it was just a habitual insistence. But with your support, my mood has improved a lot.