"Boom ......"

The sound of shells, the splash of rubble, the collapse of earth. But this cannon sound like a series of thunderstorms did not suppress the brave shouts of the soldiers.

The battle for Yichang began. Zhang Zhongkui waited in Puziling for half a month, and a batch of emergency supplies brought from Hanzhong by pack horses and wagons finally arrived in the army, and then the Qin army launched an offensive a few days before the Chinese New Year.

This year's Yichang is undoubtedly a snowless winter, or the entire Sichuan-Shaanxi-Hubei border area is snowless this year. The only time in the winter was there one heavy snowfall in October, and then there were no more snowflakes. Otherwise, Zhang Zhongkui launched an offensive in winter, and the difficult Cheng dù would have risen in a straight line.

"Blow up that fire point for me! Blow it up for me—"

In a mountainside depression, more than a dozen Qin soldiers lay down here, and an officer at the head looked at the epaulettes and was a captain. In mountain offensive and defensive warfare, the battlefield area is small and the investment of troops is limited, and a captain squadron leader is already the supreme commander of the invested troops.

Now the captain was yelling at a sergeant major who was two positions behind him. The sergeant was in his mid-thirties, and carried a thick wooden barrel in the crook of his right arm. The barrel was supposed to be behind him, but the momentum of the charge was blocked by a heavy machine gun in a wood-and-stone pillbox on the top of the hill, and the sergeant major turned the barrel from his back to the crook of his right arm. Because of the height, the barrels were shot by bullets, so they lay down in this pothole. Everyone in the city is going to be doomed.

When the sergeant major heard the captain's shout, he immediately unscrewed the lid of the barrel, which contained a new type of rocket. The size of the rocket has changed slightly from the previous one. That is, the arrow-feather cross-control surface and tail on the bullet body have shrunk a lot, but the former has increased from one group to two. It can still ensure that the trajectory is stable. This is the latest type of rocket of the Qin army. The explosives contained were all picric acid or TNT, which was synthesized in small and medium-sized quantities in the real yàn room, and the overall weight was only forty catties.

Twenty pounds of propellant. Ten pounds of explosives, three pounds of shells, and seven pounds of live warheads!

The new type of rocket has been promoted from the single type of blasting stage to the armor-piercing stage. The seven-pound live warhead can ensure that it can easily break through half the thickness of the masonry bunker.

The sergeant major pulled out a folding stand from a box around his waist, opened it and stood a meter away from his right hand, and then quickly threw three grenades forward, the explosion of flames mixed with dust obscured the view of the section in front of the pothole. Taking advantage of this gap, the sergeant major quickly set up the barrel containing the rocket on the stand, and then adjusted the direction of the rocket slightly. With a pull on an iron ring at the end of the rocket, the man quickly rolled away from the rocket launch carrier. Everyone in the pothole was as far away from the rocket launch bracket as possible at this moment.

A fiery snake more than a meter long erupted from the tail end of the barrel, with a sharp whistling, and the rocket flew faster than a hundred meters like lightning, accurately hitting the fortress on the mountain.

The loud roar of the heavy machine gun came to an abrupt halt, and the captain leapt to his feet, with the bayonet in his hand, and rushed to the top of the hill with a shout......

It was just an inconspicuous battle in the Qin army's mountain fortifications.

The thirty-mile mountain road is too long and too far, and there are many mountains. Even if the Qing army was defeated again and again, as long as there were mountains, they had a foothold, although the resistance of the Qing army became weaker and weaker. And Zhang Zhongkui still knows. Li Changle's real virtue is the two mountains near the Yichang Plain, the Qing army has been building those two mountains with all its strength these days, and Li Changle has the only batch of reinforced concrete in his hands. They were all reinforced on these two hills. In addition, there are eight 54mm mountain guns that have been pushed up the hill with great difficulty.

Compared with the two mountains that Li Changle managed with his heart, the mountains and mountains that the Qin army has captured now. That is the 'cannon fodder' used to delay time and consume the Qin army's sharp energy.

"Brother, give my brother a good time. Help......"

The battle is over. The Qin army's medics and soldiers were cleaning up the battlefield. An eighteen or nineteen-year-old soldier was looking at a non-commissioned officer lying in a pool of blood in front of him in a panic.

"Big brother, you hurt ...... You don't necessarily want to die, you, don't think about it......" The little soldier was about to cry.

"Brother, the two brothers are gone, and they are a waste when they go home. Twenty acres of land with one life, it's worth it. There are still two cubs in my brother's house, and I can't break it. You're going to do my brother a favor......"

The non-commissioned officer's eyes were very clear, he was not confused by the pain, he knew what he was talking about, he was bent on begging for death!

Since the reorganization of the Qin army in the spring of this year and the establishment of a 'division' level system, the treatment of the Qin army has also been uniformly updated. There are new regulations on the treatment of the bereaved families of fallen soldiers and veterans.

All Qin officers and soldiers, after retiring, can be divided into a minimum of ten acres of fertile land and a maximum of 1,000 acres of fertile land [Soldiers to Marshals] according to their rank and contribution [Troop Meritorious Service Table Xiàn]. Seriously injured and disabled officers and soldiers, taking the soldiers with the lowest rank and the largest number as examples, can be given land ranging from 10 to 30 acres according to the number of disabled soldiers.

The minimum land limit for a non-commissioned officer is 20 acres of land, and his legs are no longer good, which is an absolute severe disability, and he can get about 40 acres of land after being discharged from the army. But if he dies on the battlefield, twice as much as a soldier's pension, it will be sixty acres of fertile land. The land obtained by the bereaved family of a soldier killed in battle is 30 acres, and the minimum for non-commissioned officers is 60 acres. The gap of 20 acres of land in the middle made I don't know how many low-level officers and soldiers of the Qin army would rather die on the battlefield than go back to their hometowns as cripples.

It must be said that Liu Xian formulated such a regulation, that is, there is a very dark scheming. He was forcing the officers and soldiers at the grassroots level to fight the enemy for him fearlessly and fearlessly. The battles of the regular army of the Qin army since its reorganization have clearly shown that the number of dead soldiers and the number of disabled soldiers in the army are rapidly reversing, the former is increasing, and the latter is decreasing in a straight line!

The Qin army swept through the southern country, and the confiscated massive land will be the biggest reliance for the implementation of this policy. At the same time, Liu Xian is also preparing for the future development of the northeast and northwest, both of which have a vast world! And close to Lao Maozi, the people need a large number of people with combat experience to be the backbone of the immigrant group.

Many officers and soldiers of the Qin army who will be discharged from the army in the future will be the best immigrants.

And Liu Xian's eyes are not only in the northeast and northwest, but also in Southeast Asia in the south and Australia further south, which are his goals.

The military made such a retirement policy, but it did not say that the land would be divided among the places of origin of the officers and soldiers.

This scene between the non-commissioned officer and the soldier is not only happening today, let alone the last scene!

……

Just when Zhang Zhongkui was fighting in Yichang, Liu Xian, who had been in Nanjing for a month, had already come to Shanghai at this time.

During Liu Xian's month in Nanjing, in addition to communicating with Hangzhou repeatedly, he met with the merchants and gentry in southern Jiangsu, and then made preliminary regulations on the reform of salt administration.

The disadvantages of the late Qing salt politics have reached the point where it is difficult to return. Liu Xian simply smashed all the bottles and cans! Anyway, that's what he did when he was in Guangxi.

In mid-December, Xinqin released a trial draft of the Salt Law. The "Salt Law" includes 7 chapters and 39 articles, including general provisions, farm property, warehouses, farm prices, taxation, salt authorities, and supplementary provisions. The first chapter of the opening chapter stipulates that the general policy of salt affairs is: "Salt shall be taxed on the spot, and the people shall buy and sell it freely, and no one shall monopolize it." In the "Supplementary Provisions", it is clearly stipulated: "As of the date of implementation of this Law, all laws and regulations based on one of the systems of attracting merchants, contracting merchants, official transportation and official sales, and other similar systems shall be repealed."

Then there is the stipulation of the price of salt, under the rule of the new Qin, the price of salt shall not exceed one-third of a catty.

A silver dollar is ten jiao, and one dime is ten. In contrast, even if the highest price of salt in Xinqin is one pound and three cents, converted into copper, one pound of salt does not exceed 30 Wen. In the past, the price of salt in southern Jiangsu was rarely lower than 60 wen a catty. This is still a place that relies on the salt farm, and in Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu and other places, the price of salt will be higher.

Liu Xian opened a modern salt factory in Guangxi, and the salt produced could be sold back into Sichuan and Jiangnan, the origin of Chinese salt, which shows how high the price of salt was in the late Qing Dynasty. The Xinqin Salt Farm, which uses the achievements of modern industry, not only produces high quality salt, but also does not exceed a penny per catty of salt. The Lianghuai salt field is now also being renovated, and it will be fully put into production in the first month of the year, and the ex-factory price of salt stipulated by Liu Xian is one cent, which is an absolute profiteering.

The ex-factory price of salt was only three times the difference between the maximum selling price, and if it was in the late Qing Dynasty, such a regulation would have compensated the salt merchants to death. But now there is no more money under the rule of the new Qin, and the cost of merchants marketing the world has been reduced too much. Therefore, Liu Xian only controlled the salt farm, only stipulated the maximum price, and did not care about anything else, and he had already obtained the biggest piece of cake.

It is foreseeable that the salt produced by the Qin Army's salt farm, these snow-white salts will inevitably be transported to the north. Liu Xian doesn't care. Anyway, he firmly believes that he will definitely be able to visit the Forbidden City in Beijing next winter.

……

Liu Xian arrived in Shanghai on the battleship Fubo. Before arriving in Shanghai, none of the ministers and consul generals in Shanghai heard the news. This is very different from the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which had a cumbersome system and was ventilated everywhere.

The night was dark, and much of the city was shrouded in darkness. But in the past, the Shanghai Dao Yamen, which would have sunk into the darkness of the night, bloomed with dazzling brilliance tonight.

A wind lantern illuminates the entire yamen and the surrounding 100 meters as if it were daytime.

Because tonight there's going to be a formal dinner here. The banquet was mainly attended by envoys from various countries in China, foreign bank executives, and Chinese businessmen, and it was Liu Xian himself who presided over the dinner.

This is a very common thing in Europe. But in China, for many Chinese businessmen, it is really a blessing and honor for them to be able to participate in a state banquet presided over by the emperor. (To be continued......) R1292