Li Yun is leisurely playing his wishful thinking in Luzhou, looking forward to his "beautiful" future, but Qian Yuanshan is so busy that he doesn't even have time for his honeymoon. Since the crossing team decided to take advantage of Wang Kunjun's assassination incident to shift the spearhead of the next attack from Houshu to Southern Tang, as the supreme governor of the Jinghu region, he and Zeng Linzhi have hardly had a day of rest, and all their time has been devoted to preparing for the upcoming southern expedition.

Among all the preparations was to build a ship and build a large number of warships. Because the previous plan was three to four years later, after the unification of Later Shu and the Southern Han Dynasty was completed, and then the Southern Tang Dynasty, the largest separatist force south of the Yangtze River, so although after the pacification of Jinghu, Qian Yuanshan and Zeng Zhilin began to build ships, but the construction progress was limited to three years, and now it will be completed in less than a year, and the urgency of its production schedule requirements and the large workload can be imagined. In order to be able to complete the shipbuilding task on time, Qian Yuanshan and Zeng Zhilin gathered all the shipbuilders they could find in the Jinghu area into the dock group from Yuezhou to Jiangling Mansion, and worked day and night to build them. On the other hand, they also submitted an application to the committee, hoping that the committee could recruit shipbuilding experts from other areas in the Houzhou region and send them to the dockyard group from Yuezhou to Jiangling, so as to speed up the progress of shipbuilding and complete all kinds of ships needed for the southern expedition before the end of the year.

As for the applications of Qian and Zeng, the committee naturally fully supports them. Wang Kunjun, Zhang Weixin and others sent official letters to the prefectures and counties under their rule, asking all localities to immediately gather skilled craftsmen who know how to build ships and send them to Yuezhou as soon as possible to participate in the construction of ships for the Southern Expedition. At the same time, in order to increase the enthusiasm of the craftsmen, it was also specially noted in this "recruitment" document that all shipbuilders who were recruited to help in Yuezhou would be given generous rewards by the imperial court, and would be responsible for providing the travel expenses on the way to Yuezhou, and would never let everyone work hard in vain. Seeing that the former forced labor, which was purely obligatory and wasted effort, had become a profitable job, those people who had a skill in shipbuilding naturally would not let it go. In particular, as the news came out that some of the resolute craftsmen reported to the yamen of the prefecture and county to which they belonged, and immediately received half of their wages from the officials in charge of the conscription as settling-in money and travel expenses, those craftsmen who were still waiting and watching immediately dispelled their worries and rushed to the local government yamen to register. In just three months, nearly 5,000 shipbuilders from all over the territory of Houzhou gathered in the dockyard group from Yuezhou to Jiangling, bringing the total number of craftsmen involved in the construction of ships there to 10,000. In addition, the committee also suspended the construction of some naval warships, and directly ordered the mobilization of some technical backbones from the Dagu Shipyard of the Beiping Army to immediately set off for Yuezhou to assist the craftsmen there in building ships, which can be regarded as relieving the urgent needs of Qian Yuanshan and Zeng Zhilin.

Because the battle line along the Jinghu River is too long and the road is inconvenient, which is not conducive to pacifying the south of the Yangtze River, crossing the river at multiple points on the Yangtze River and attacking from multiple roads is the most appropriate tactic, so erecting a pontoon bridge on the Yangtze River has become an inevitable choice. However, the problem of manpower shortage is only needed to solve the problem of building ships, and the construction of super pontoon bridges that can cross the river is more technically difficult.

Although as early as the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Gongsun Shu, who was in Sichuan, built a cross-river pontoon bridge in Jingmen and Huya (near Yichang) in order to block the attack of the Han army. Moreover, in the history of the previous life, when Zhao Kuangyin sent troops to conquer the Southern Tang Dynasty, he also successively erected large pontoon bridges in Shipaikou and Quarry Rock for the Southern Expeditionary Army to cross the river. In the era when the people lived before the crossing was carried out, the PLA boat and bridge troops could erect a mechanized pontoon bridge on the Yangtze River that could pass through armored troops within a few dozen minutes. But now, none of the people in the crossing team, including the brothers who served in the army in their previous lives, know how to erect pontoon bridges, and there are no modern mechanized pontoon bridges available in their hands. Second, the reason why the Song army was able to cross the river along the pontoon bridge in the previous life was due to the fact that Fan Ruoshui, who knew the hydrological data of the Yangtze River well and personally drove the boat to the quarry rock and carried out many measurements, brought the map to the project, and guided the construction of the pontoon bridge. And now there are still six years before Fan Ruoshui joined the Song Dynasty in his previous life, and at this time he is still making unremitting efforts for his fame, and it has not yet reached the time when his career is hopeless, and he angrily rises up to rebel against the Tang Dynasty and join the Song Dynasty - now it may be called the heart of betraying the Tang Dynasty and joining the Zhou. It can be said that even if someone is sent to find this Fan Ruoshui, I am afraid that he will not be able to play such an important role as in his previous life. What's more, unlike the pontoon bridge erected by Fan Ruoshui in the previous life, which only needed to meet the needs of the Song army's infantry cavalry and each of the conventional baggage vehicles of only one or two thousand catties, at most two or three thousand catties, the pontoon bridge erected by the crossing team this time also needs to carry all kinds of artillery that is much heavier than the infantry cavalry and conventional baggage vehicles, especially the 105mm howitzer weighing more than 5,000 jin and the 130mm siege gun weighing more than 8,000 jin.

However, as the saying goes, "without Zhang Butcher, you still don't eat hairy pigs". Although they have no experience and no professional skills, the crossing team does not intend to give up the best tactics of building bridges and crossing rivers, breaking through at multiple points, and attacking from multiple points. Lacking professional skills, the crossing team committee issued an order in the name of the imperial court to recruit craftsmen who could build pontoon bridges under the rule of the Later Zhou Dynasty, and let them conduct research and experiments together with members of the military department, science and technology department, logistics department and other departments of the crossing team. At the same time, according to the records in the history books, Zhang Weixin explained the design concept of Fan Ruoshui in the previous life to build a giant yellow and black dragon boat as the bridge pier and a giant bamboo raft as the bridge deck to his brothers and craftsmen for their reference and reference; In the absence of corresponding hydrological data, on the one hand, the crossing team committee consulted fishermen and boat bosses who have grown along the river all year round and knew the river situation well, and on the other hand, they sent officials who understand water conservancy to Qiyang, Shipaikou, Quarry Rock and other places where the river is planned to be crossed, and with the assistance of the local "dark feather", they conducted on-the-spot investigation and measurement of the relevant river sections to grasp first-hand information. In addition, in order to ensure the supply of various construction materials, the crossing team also ordered the recruitment of a large number of young and strong laborers in the land of Jinghu in the name of the Later Zhou court, which was not conducive to the stability of the region, considering that Jinghu was a newly established land, and that the local rebellion had just been quelled, and that a large number of conscripted servants were not conducive to the stability of the region. On the other hand, the committee also transferred tens of thousands of Khitan prisoners who had been serving hard labor in the Beiping Army and sent them to Jinghu, where they were assigned to the Hunan Provincial Pacification and Control Embassy, and went up the mountain to cut down big trees and giant bamboos together with the local recruits.

After nearly half a year of research, design, testing, and construction, a giant pontoon bridge composed of hundreds of giant boats and thousands of giant bamboo rafts, nearly 1,500 meters long, and capable of carrying the largest mass of the "Flying Dragon Army" 130mm siege cannon full set of vehicles and equipment, was finally completed at the end of November and early December of the lunar calendar in the first year of Jianlong.

At the same time, under the unified command and arrangement of the committee and the relevant functional departments, a large amount of grain, grass, military supplies, and combat equipment were secretly transported in advance in batches to various places where the attack started for storage, so that they could be used by all walks of life in combat.

On the 10th day of the twelfth month of the lunar calendar in the first year of Jianlong, with the transportation and storage of all the grain, grass, military materials, and combat equipment required by all walks of life, and with the southern expeditionary fleet composed of 46 warships of various types drawn from the "Flying Dragon Army" navy arrived at the north shore of the Yangtze River estuary near an uninhabited island near Tongzhou, and with the completion of the assembly of men and horses from all walks of life in the southern expedition, the battle of the southern Zhou expedition to the south of the Yangtze River can be described as "everything is ready, only the east wind is owed".