"Naturally, there is a loss of face for the capital." Liu Kezhuang said slowly: "But first, there is no need to alarm the government of Yuanzhou, second, it can ensure the personal safety of the military division, and third, it is the best choice politically to end the matter by the most low-key means." ”

Wang Deng shook his head and said: "Don't say Mr. Qianfu, Dutong is this kind of character, he would rather go to Yuanzhou with the Xiangyang army to kill all the thieves, and he will never bow to the kidnappers." ”

"Then, there are two strategies to choose from." Liu Kezhuang sighed: "The middle strategy is that all the governors will write a letter to the governor of Yuanzhou and the local ministers, and the local officials will come forward to solve this matter. This is not an official document under the imperial court, but Dutong is a hot figure in Jinghu, and Yuanzhou and other second-class states and counties will not easily refute Dutong's face. ”

"Here's a way." Zheng Yunming said: "Arresting thieves is originally a matter for the local government. It is not too much for me to write a letter to talk to Yuan Zhou Zhizhou about this matter. ”

Yang Yu snorted and said, "I'm afraid that Yuan Zhou will cover up his subordinates, and he won't even care about the face of the commander." ”

"If that's the case, then there's only a way to go." Liu Kezhuang lowered his voice: "Choose a confidant, choose fifty fine people, and disguise yourself as a merchant who goes to Pingxiang to purchase lacquerware." Infiltrate the territory of Pingxiang to save people. ”

Yang Luo's eyes lit up, and he immediately said, "I can go!" ”

"What are you messing with!" Zheng Yunming waved his hand: "This is a matter of the rivers and lakes, so naturally I want to find people from the rivers and lakes!" ”

He said to Ren Xiongwei under the steps: "Go and invite Shi Wenhu to come over to discuss matters!" Ren Xiongwei was ordered to leave quickly, and soon brought Shi Wenhu back.

Zheng Yunming described the story to Shi Wenhu in detail, and asked, "How sure can Shi Zhuangshi be when he went to save people this time?" ”

Shi Wenhu walked back and forth in the hall a few times, smashed his right palm with his left hand, and said: "I don't dare to say that I am ten percent sure, but I believe that with the group of straw bags of Yuanzhou officers and soldiers, it should not be difficult to rescue the White Army Division." ”

"That's it." Zheng Yunming took out a general order: "I will only call you the generals under my account, as long as you can rescue the military division." ”

Shi Wenhu smiled: "It's just to save people, it's not to fight, if there are too many, it's in the way, so it's just me and Brother Ren Xiongwei." As little as ten days, as much as half a month, the custody can receive the military division back. ”

After saying that, he patted Ren Xiongwei's shoulder, turned around and strode away.

Yang Luo looked at the figures of the two in the distance, and said casually: "Can this stone strong man believe it?" Otherwise, I'll take a team."

When he raised his eyes, Wang Deng and Liu Kezhuang turned their faces to the side in unison, obviously unwilling to speak for him. Zheng Yunming's face was slightly gloomy, and he shouted: "I only know that Lu Dao does these clever things, and I will honestly go to the construction site to supervise the construction tomorrow, even if it is a military advisor who is now locked up in the thief's den, I must hope that you will finish this matter well instead of saving people!" ”

Yang was stunned for a moment: "What is so important?" ”

"Don't worry, wait for Lu and Ge to arrive and explain to everyone." Zheng Yunming sat back in his position, a few soldiers on the side set up a long table, and Zheng Xian took a large drawing and spread it out on the table.

Yang Luo stood aside and looked at the drawing with the corner of his eye, which neatly carried the words of the whole map of Xiangyang City Defense Additions and Reconstructions.

What intrigued him was not only the content of the drawings, but also the ink on them.

It was also black ink, but it was not ink, and he ignored Zheng Yunming watching from the side, walked up and touched the drawing, and the place he touched was painted, and black ink was left on his fingers.

"It's graphite." Zheng Yunming smiled and took out a pen from the pen holder in the hall and threw it to Yang Luo, it was not a brush, but a black graphite sandwiched between two flat bamboo boards.

"It's a graphite pen." Zheng Yunming held up a graphite pen and said: "Although the awl is easy to use, writing and painting is its strength, and it is inevitable that it is not accurate enough to draw maps and engineering drawings, so I thought that it would be better if I could draw with a pen with a hard pen." After trying many materials, I found that the pen made by mixing graphite powder and pure clay in proportion and pressing it into a small stick, and then clamping it with bamboo and wood on both sides is the most convenient to use. A while ago, taking advantage of a little free time in the army, I asked the craftsmen to rush to make a batch and send it, and you can see that the map drawn in this way is not much neater than the brush map. ”

"It's really neat." Lu Xunzhi's voice suddenly came from behind Yang Xuan, and the two respected commanders had just rushed back from the Yamen of the Control Envoy. Lu Xunzhi stepped forward and carefully looked at the map: "Although the officials are only adding fortifications, there are a lot of places to be repaired, how can funds and manpower be guaranteed for such a huge project?" ”

"Have you forgotten that there is a bigger yamen in Xiangyang City than the Establishment Envoy?" Zheng Yunming said: "General Wei Xianggong has been raising for so many days, and he has only gotten a little better in the past few days. Although the Governor's Mansion has spent a lot of money, there is still a certain amount of savings in the treasury, and the Minister of Residence has discussed with the Governor's Envoy to prepare to allocate 1 million taels from the Governor's Mansion treasury, which is more than enough to supplement and renovate the Xiangyang Mansion. ”

"As for the manpower to rebuild the city, there is no shortage of it." Zheng Yunming raised his head from the map and asked Wang Deng, "How many prisoners were captured alive in Fushui last time?" ”

"There were seven or eight thousand people in all, and except for more than two hundred leaders who were imprisoned, the rest were locked up in tents built temporarily in the south of the city." Wang Deng said: "This is not the end, just now came the good news, Wandu Tong succeeded in suppressing the thieves in Yunmengze, won a great victory, and captured the leader of the thief army and 5,000 soldiers. According to the previous agreement between him and the general, the five thousand captives would be sent to Xiangyang later. ”

Wan Wensheng is naturally not a cheap character, and his characteristic of using soldiers is fast. Unlike Zheng Yunming, who deliberately marched with great fanfare and then used tricks, Wan Wensheng first stationed in Yingzhou for a few days, standing still, and waiting for Yun Mengze's thieves to relax their vigilance and then rushed to Yun Mengze with 3,000 elite soldiers in three directions. The thieves were completely unguarded, and they were defeated by the officers and soldiers before they could even get off the boat and escape from the water.

"With these free laborers," Zheng Yunming said with a smile, "why worry that the additional project in Xiangyang cannot be completed?" ”

Although saying this is inevitably a little disrespectful to the people of Jinghu, who have suffered from the war, but thanks to the thieves who swarmed up after the war, Zheng Yunming has a lot of cheap manpower available. The Central Plains' method of dealing with prisoners has never been to give priority to slaughter, and it is the common way of thinking in the Central Plains to treat prisoners that the strong are registered as soldiers, and the old and weak are returned to the people. As far as Zheng Yunming, who is diligently striving to build an army with pure ideology and strict discipline, he has no intention of adding these soldiers whose combat effectiveness is not strong at all and whose discipline is extremely loose into his army. Their only use is to be used as people.

This was already a benevolent method for the soldiers who surrendered, and the order given to Zheng Yunming by the envoy after the war and the opinions of Ge Huai, Wang Deng, Zhu Sheng and others were all about killing all the captives who surrendered. Their reasons are surprisingly unanimous: "At this time when the turmoil in Jinghu is resting, we have to use a little Hades to set an example." "To put it bluntly, it is to show those guys who are still about to move, what kind of deterrent measures Da Song can come up with in the face of rebellious thieves.

Zheng Yunming insisted on his position of not killing prisoners. "What's the use of killing and surrendering? No one wants to end up with Li Guang in the future. Li Guang failed to become a marquis in his life, and finally ended up killing himself, and people in this era thought that he killed 800 Qiang prisoners of war and injured Yin De. Zheng Yunming took advantage of this to support his position of not killing prisoners of war.

And his insistence on not killing prisoners was not entirely out of the higher moral requirements of later generations, but also out of his own urgent need for free labor.

If you want to survive the next wave of Mongol attacks, you must have strong walls to rely on. In this era when cold weapons are king, well-built walls are an insurmountable obstacle. Whether it is the Battle of Xiangyang on another plane, or the history of Constantinople, a huge fortress city that already exists on the main plane, this has been proven repeatedly.

Zheng Yunming gathered everyone in front of the Xiangyang reconstruction project drawings and slowly laid out his overall transformation plan.

The first is to set up more than a dozen brick kilns around Xiangyang, and use the coal transported from downstream to fire a large number of green bricks. In the Tang and Song dynasties, there were very few cities that were completely covered with bricks, and even if they did, they were only wrapped with a layer of masonry. There is no problem in dealing with the current siege equipment, but Zheng Yunming clearly knows that one day the city defense of Xiangyang will have to withstand the test of returning to the artillery, and if it passes this big test, the life span of the Great Song Dynasty may be extended by several decades.

The measures used to deal with the return artillery are simple to say, but it is not easy to do, that is, the entire Xiangyang city is under the protection of double wall bricks, and the two-layer wall brick wrapped in the city wall can not only defend against the direct hit of the return artillery, but also can resist the enemy's excavation attack on the city wall, and in the previous Mengjin War, the Mongols dug holes in the city wall more than once.

First, a wide strip of bluestone was laid at the foot of the city wall several feet high as a stepping foot, and two layers of green bricks were stacked on top of it, and they were coated with mortar for bonding. Zheng Yunming once thought of using primitive concrete as a binder, and the forts built of these concrete were so strong that even the primary artillery two or three hundred years later could not be resisted. However, the main composition of these original concrete is volcanic ash, which can be found everywhere in the Italian peninsula and is rare in Jinghu, and Zheng Yunming is completely impossible to make. He had to continue to use traditional Chinese mortar to bond the city bricks, but fortunately, the craftsmen in Xiangyang were not bad at their skills, and the prepared mortar used to bond the city bricks could still be tightly jointed, and it was difficult to poke the knives and guns.

The construction of the outer wall, the carriage and horse paths, and the horse-faced fortifications on the city wall, and then the construction of pheasant moats on the outer wall and the female wall on the inner side are all doorways that local craftsmen are proficient in, and Zheng Yunming does not interfere in the slightest.