Zhao Xueqi hid a truth from Shi Dayong, that is, he was not coerced into being a thief, but voluntarily following a thief.

Zhao Xueqi is indeed a native of Wuqiao, and he does have a reputation for showing talent, but he is a restless reader. often boasts that he is a person who rules the world through the world, and one day he may be able to be a material for slaughter. It's a pity that the cruel truth has made him nearly forty years old, but he is still a poor talent with no hope on the road to the imperial examination.

Therefore, the heavy snow in Wuqiao not only changed the fate of the Dongjiang Liao soldiers led by Kong Youde, but also changed the fate of Zhao Xueqi, a poor talent in the same town.

When the rebels appeared at home, Zhao Xueqi said to his wife, "The husband should have a meal of wine and food, how can he have coarse tea and light rice every day!" Then he left his wife and went out to the thief.

As the first scholar to return to obedience, and he is also a talent, Zhao Xueqi's arrival made Chen Shi, who has always respected scholars, overjoyed.

There is no shortage of scholars who were captured by him, and there is even one who is from a prominent background, but without exception, these people have refused Chen's coercion, and they have never contributed to the rebels, and they can't do anything about them whether they are soft or hard.

Chen sometimes did not kill these scholars because of this, but continued to raise them in the camp, learning from Liu Bei every day, hoping to impress these scholars to serve him. However, these scholars are as hard-hearted as eating a scale, and they are always unmoved.

Chen sometimes tried his best, both soft and hard, and there was no way to take these readers. Therefore, compared with these stubborn readers, Zhao Xueqi's submission is more and more prominent, in line with the purpose of buying horse bones, Chen sometimes trusts Zhao Xueqi, almost to the point of obeying his words.

Zhao Xueqi is also worthy of his life ambitions, and he still has some ability. After he saw that Kong You's German army had an uprising, he did not do anything actively, but burned and looted everywhere, and he did not plan for the future at all. Therefore, Xiang Chen sometimes said that he wanted Kong Dashuai to learn from Emperor Hongwu, accumulate grain, build a high wall, find a stable base to slow down the development, and wait for the situation in the Central Plains to change greatly before moving north.

After his suggestion was forwarded to Kong Youde by Chen Shi, Kong Youde, Li Jiucheng and others all agreed, so they took the opportunity of Sun Yuanhua, the governor of Denglai, to lead his troops to the east, hoping to seize Denglai as a base. And Zhao Xueqi also relied on this advice to be impressed by Chen Shi, and people often refer to him as "Mr. Zhao".

It's a pity that Chen is sometimes a Haikou after all, and he is still his own set in his bones, and he did not follow Zhao Xueqi's advice to attack Shang County and uproot the Beijing camp, but led his troops to attack Haixing County, which has wealth but no strategic value

When the fighting on the other side of the river was fierce, Zhao Xueqi in the town had already known that because he didn't know how many people from the official army came, he didn't dare to leave the town easily until the sound of guns on the other side stopped.

After learning that the general was defeated by the official army, the rebels in the town suddenly panicked, and the people panicked, and many people said that the Shahe River would definitely not be able to hold, and now they should go east to Dengzhou to find the main force of the commander before the official army crossed the river, and if it was too late, it would be too late.

At first, Zhao Xueqi also wanted to go east, but when he thought that as soon as Shahe was lost, Kong Jun would lose his way to retreat, and he would be blocked by the official army in Denglai, a small place, and it would be difficult to do anything in the future.

Continuing to rebel with an army that has no future is by no means the choice of Zhao Xueqi, a smart man. After weighing the pros and cons, he will pull the general Qi Sanbao aside, and first intimidate him, saying how powerful the officers and troops are, and the general's thousands of soldiers and horses were annihilated by them in half an hour, which shows that this time there are more officers and troops than the last Beijing camp and can still fight. Even if they fled to Denglai to find Kong Dashuai, they couldn't escape the encirclement and suppression of the official army.

Yu Qi went to the dark, it is better to go anyway, and take everyone to join the official army, no matter how bad it is, it can always save everyone's lives. If God had eyes, maybe he could get a half-official position.

Qi Sanbao is a person who has no opinions, he obeyed Mr. Zhao when he saw that the general was there, and praised him as the reincarnation of Zhuge , therefore, in Qi Sanbao's opinion, what Mr. Zhao said must be reasonable, otherwise the general would not value him so much. Now that the general is not here, there are only so many people in the town, and there are many officers and soldiers, this battle is categorically unfought. Mr. Zhao said anyway, then anyway, anyway, everywhere is to be a soldier to eat food, and it is much better to be an officer than a rebel.

Most of the rebels who stayed in the town were young and strong people who were coerced by the Kong army from all over Beizhili after the Wuqiao Incident, so naturally they could not talk about any sense of belonging to the rebels. And they are all children of crops who have never read books, and they have no opinions. Therefore, as soon as Zhao Xueqi and Qi Sanbao said what they meant anyway, the rebels immediately agreed.

But whether the officials and the army will accept them anyway, and whether they will settle accounts after the autumn, everyone is still uncertain. It was already dark, and no one knew what was going on the other side. So, this is what the people of Shahe said.

Zhao Xueqi wanted to use the name of the army to probe the tone of the officers and soldiers on the other side, if the other party refused to accept them anyway, then he could only flee to Dengzhou overnight

In fact, there were no more people in Shahe Town, and the original households, including more than 2,000 people with the old and the young, were slaughtered by Li Jiucheng and others as early as when Kong Youde led the army to pass by.

Later, Chen was sometimes ordered to guard the Shahe River, bringing with him hundreds of captive Beizhili women, and there were more than 100 young men in the town who specialized in doing chores and hard labor for the rebels, all of whom were farmers and ordinary people in the Beizhili area.

As soon as Qi Sanbao went back and promised the officials and soldiers to allow them to do so anyway, all the rebels in the town honestly went to the river to re-encamp. The women rebels didn't dare to take them, and they all stayed in the town.

Under the supervision of Jiang Wanli's 200 soldiers, Qi Sanbao and his subordinates were very peaceful, and they were not uncomfortable with the sudden transformation from a rebel army to an official army, but they were all complacent. Especially when they saw that all the brothers who followed Chen and sometimes fought in Haixing County on the other side had become prisoners of the official army, they all gloated.

Here, Li Dashan and Shao Wu led people to forcibly divide the captives into several groups, and the torches were everywhere, illuminating the wilderness as if it were day.

In order to prevent accidents in the process of picking people, Cao Bianjiao led the wolf cavalry to occupy a small slope and wait. Although the captives were in a commotion, the reason why the heroes did not suffer the immediate losses was still known, and when they saw that the cavalry of the official army was staring at them, they naturally did not dare to make trouble.

Peng Dazhui and his group of horse thieves were ordered by Shi Dayong to assist in the picking. After seeing that the Liao army defeated thousands of rebels with hundreds of cavalry, the horse thieves were even more convinced. There were already a few horse thieves who privately said to Peng Sihai that this Liao army was so capable of fighting, it was better to do it with them, so as not to hide in Tibet, and worry about being suppressed by officers and soldiers at any time with their heads in their heads

According to Shi Dayong's request, the Jinzhou army began to select those who were physically strong from the group of captives, but most of the captives looked the same, and in terms of physique alone, there would be no more than 100 captives who could meet the standard of physical strength.

In recent years, the natural disasters in Beizhili are not as few as in the west, the people are generally malnourished, and most of the young and strong people come from ordinary families, and they don't eat well, so they naturally can't talk about how strong they are.

But in this way, it is a big difference from the thousand people asked by Shi Dayong, how should this person choose?

Shao Wu and they have no idea, the last is still Li Dashan has an idea, the experience of being a bandit in his early years gave him a way to distinguish the strength of a person, that is, to pick a face that looks ruddy, no matter what their height and shape, they are all counted as strong people.

Shi Dayong also agrees with this method of selecting people, theoretically speaking, these young people of Beizhili were captured by the rebels for a long time, and before that, most people's physique was the same, and there was no difference. But after joining the rebels, they will be taken captive with the rebels, eating wine and drinking meat, and this nutrition will definitely come up. Therefore, whether the complexion is ruddy or not has become the best criterion to distinguish the time sequence of young and strong thieves, and it is also the best way to distinguish the strength and weakness among them.

Wherever you are, the fiercer will always eat better than the weaker, and this has been almost a truth for thousands of years.

Under this standard, more than 700 people were quickly selected to come out, and then, among the remaining people, they picked the thick cocoon on their hands, and this cocoon thickness did not refer to the cocoon sharpened by holding the hoe, but referring to the cocoon sharpened by holding the knife.

They are all soldiers, and it is easy to distinguish whether the calluses on a person's hand are caused by holding a knife or a hoe.

There will be mistakes, but they are rare.

In this way, after half an hour of busy work, a thousand "strong" rebels were selected one by one.

The remaining more than 40 Dongjiang Liao soldiers are all included, and those who have been bandits and thieves have also been wiped out, who made their faces too ruddy and their hands too thick calluses.

The captives had their own ideas about what the officers and soldiers were going to pick for them. After seeing that the official army allowed the rebels in the town to do so, most of the captives thought that the official army was going to choose strong soldiers and horses to expand their troops, as if the rebels had coerced them in the first place.

Therefore, in the process of picking people, most of the captives behaved quite cooperatively. But there are also some people who smell the danger signals, especially when they see that some people in the officers and soldiers suddenly walk up to the frozen sand river to observe back and forth, and poke something here and there from time to time, this uneasiness is even stronger.

However, there were officers and soldiers with swords and guns all around, and there were cavalry eyeing them not far away, and if the captives who smelled the danger wanted to resist, they had to ask those officers and soldiers if they agreed to the swords.

The subordinates were busy picking people, and Shi Dayong took Guo Yicha to take a look at the terrain, according to Qi Sanbao, there was a bridge on the Liusha River, but after Kong Youde's army passed, the bridge was demolished for the pursuit of the defense officer army. Later, when Chen sometimes took them to the Shahe River, he wanted to rebuild the bridge, but then he found another bridge three miles downstream, so he abandoned the plan to rebuild the bridge, and in the future, he would cross the Shahe River downstream. Later, the weather was suddenly cold, and the quicksand river froze, and at first the ice was not thick, but after two days, the ice was so thick that people could walk and horses, so they even saved the downstream of the detour.

Qi Sanbao's statement explained Shi Dayong's confusion, and he initially thought that Chen sometimes stationed the main force on this side of the river, and left only a few soldiers and horses in the town, in order to fight against the water.

After observing the broken bridge for a while, Shi Dayong beat his horse and walked to the middle of the river. In the middle of the river, Song Qingzheng led people to smash ice there.