In the face of Yonghong's questioning, Chu He smiled slightly: "As the so-called food in hand is not panicked, we don't have much arable land in Tianshui County, most of the people are engaged in mining and iron smelting, there are very few farmers, and the output of rice and grain is insufficient. ”

In fact, Tianshui County is not short of grain, and the mountainous areas are just suitable for growing sweet potatoes, and the reserves of sweet potatoes are extremely large.

Of course, it was impossible for Chu He to say it in front of everyone, and then said: "General Yong, pay attention, what Chu said is that he can take out 20,000 steel armor, not 20,000 steel soldiers." ”

"I believe you all know that I am always the elite of the army, all of whom have cultivated the Golden Bell Jar, and their bodies are strong, and whether there is steel armor to protect their bodies, it does not have much impact on combat power, and these 20,000 sets of steel armor can be transferred directly from the army and given to you. ”

Chu He also figured it out, although the steel armor is sharp, it is not always effective, this time with the Shu army, the water war is difficult to avoid, in this case, it is more suitable not to wear steel armor than to wear steel armor.

When the words fell, everyone couldn't help but show envy, what Chang Dingjun was really terrible about was the golden bell jar.

The real backbone of all armies is still ordinary strong soldiers, and among the millions of troops, at least 800,000 are soldiers who have not practiced any martial arts.

These ordinary soldiers, even if they were given steel armor and steel soldiers, would not help, they could not even afford steel equipment with a total weight of two or three hundred catties.

The Standing Army is different, the whole army cultivates the golden bell jar, and the effect is quite amazing, most of the ordinary soldiers have trained into a golden bell jar, regardless of the defensive power, speed and strength have been greatly improved, making the strength of the whole army extremely terrifying.

With the help of steel soldiers and steel armor, almost everyone is a second-grade martial artist's combat power.

Gao Di's eyes flickered for a moment, and he suddenly asked, "How much rice grain can be exchanged for a set of steel soldiers?"

Chu He immediately said: "Three thousand stones of rice grain for a set!"

This figure is quite fair, even if the rice grain has risen to five or six taels of silver a stone, the price of steel armor has not decreased because of the large-scale manufacturing of Chu He, but has become more and more expensive.

The guys who were still shouting that there was a shortage of rice and food and materials were silent, and it didn't take long for them to compete for the quota of 20,000 sets of steel armor, and even Zhang Jiao gritted his teeth and reported the figure of 2,000.

As a result, these 20,000 sets of steel armor brought 60 million stone of rice grain to Chu He, including a large number of miscellaneous grains.

The figure of 60 million stone sounds huge, but now that there are more than 6 million people under the rule of Chu He, if they do not engage in any grain cultivation, 60 million stone and rice grain alone will only be enough for Tianshui County to consume for two years.

One hand to deliver the other hand to deliver the grain, for this reason Chu He also specially sent soldiers and horses to the canyon outside the gourd valley, took off the armor hidden in the caves on both sides of the canyon and dug it out, and took out a lot of ordinary steel armor from the army, finally enough 20,000.

After the meeting, Chu He did not have a moment of leisure, and every day he had to meet with many generals and strategists, process a large number of military reports and documents, and issue various orders.

Judging from the situation of the Shu army, in ten days at most, a big war will break out.

Chu He has a lot to prepare.

It is extremely troublesome to transport a huge amount of rice and grain back to Tianshui County, even if it is by water, dozens of huge ships need to be transferred from Tianshui County.

Chu He said that the people of Tianshui County are basically engaged in the production of armor and weapons, and they did not deceive Meng Shu and others, after all, sweet potatoes are rough and do not need so many farmers to take care of them, and the most important thing now is the production of armor and weapons, as well as the manufacture of various ordnance and equipment.

One of the most important is the manufacture of warships.

On the side of Pinghaiwei, with the support of the Chu River headquarters, hundreds of scorpion-tailed tiger air cavalry rushed to the battlefield of Julang Island, which had completely subdued the maritime pirates and included Julang Island in the scope of Tianshui County's rule.

After capturing Julang Island, Ping Haiwei instantly had hundreds of large sea ships in his hands, and in addition, the three shipyards on Julang Island were also integrated by Qin Shengnan, as long as they were slightly transformed, the sea ships could become warships, and the shipyards could also directly manufacture warships.

Another piece of good news came from Chu Wu and Xiang Xiong, Aoki Wei and Jiang Wuwei actually found a very large scale copper wood forest.

These copper woods were originally ordinary teak trees, but they grew on a huge copper mine, absorbing the metal copper for many years, mutating into copper wood, which is extremely hard and heavy.

The nearby indigenous tribes used these copper and wood as weapons, and made wooden shields, wooden armor and wooden guns, which could even be compared with iron weapons, bringing a lot of threats to the two soldiers.

After Chu Wu and Xiang Xiong learned the news, they immediately captured the copper wood forest at any cost, and then drove the indigenous people of Tou Cheng to cut down the huge copper wood, quickly send it to Tianshui County, and then transport it to the shipyard to use these copper wood to make warships.

Now there are 300,000 employees of the shipyard, the efficiency of full operation is amazing, one after another giant ships continue to fall into the water for sea trials.

Due to the super strong material of copper and wood, coupled with the accumulation of previous experience, the shipyard can now make a super warship of 30,000 materials, which is even one-third larger than the largest dragon roar giant ship of the Shu army.

On the side of Julang Island, there are as many as five super warships with 30,000 materials, and there are more than 100,000 warships with other materials, but there are very few people who know this news, and even the generals such as Phoenix Yu, Chu Mu, Chu Shi, and Gongchuan are not very clear.

In order to transport grain, Chu He transferred 30 10,000-material warships and more than 100 thousand-level sea ships from Julang Island and Tianshui County's estuary shipyard this time.

With such a large fleet, it can transport millions of stone of rice and grain at a time, and when other anti-Shu armies prepare rice and grain one after another, the fleet can basically transport all the rice and grain back to Tianshui County and Julang Island.

In order to ensure that nothing is lost, Chu He also gritted his teeth and sent five hundred scorpion-tailed tiger air cavalry to escort him.

This batch of grain is very important, once the anti-Shu army forcibly requisitioned the young and strong and collected rice grain, there will be countless people in southern Xinjiang fleeing to various places, Tianshui County can only receive a large number of refugees if it reserves enough rice grain, so that the population of Tianshui County will grow explosively in a short period of time.

Exchanging armor for rice and grain was part of the Chu River's plan, and it was first proposed by Guo Pu, the former governor of Qinzhou.

The endurance of the people is extremely amazing, and they will not leave their hometowns unless they have to, and the Chu River is definitely pulling wages from the bottom of the kettle and falling into the well, and the consequences will never be slighter than Zhuge Liang's flood, and there will definitely be millions or even tens of millions of people who will die under the ruthless scheme of Guo Pu.

Doing so is of great significance for Tianshui County to gain an advantage in this war.

As long as there is enough rice and grain, there is no problem in accommodating 100 million people in the land controlled by the Chu River.

The people in southern Xinjiang can't survive, and knowing that Tianshui County distributes rice and grain to collect refugees, there will definitely be countless refugees rushing to Tianshui County with their families.

At the same time, even if the Shu army fully crosses the Tongtian River, as long as the Chu River continues to accumulate warships and expand the size of the air force, it can blockade the Tongtian River when necessary and cut off the supply of the Shu army.

When countless Shu troops enter the land of southern Xinjiang, they will tragically discover that the vast Nanzhong is already thousands of miles away, and there is no material replenishment at all!

If you want to confront the incomparably powerful Shu army, it is the only feasible plan to clear the wilderness and block the enemy's supplies!

In order to allow countless people in southern Xinjiang to move to Tianshui County, Chu He also set up hundreds of supply points along the road, and sent people to various places to secretly publicize the news.

At the same time, the forces lurking in the various armies also secretly operated, and once the battle was lost, they would try to contact the various units of the anti-Shu army and persuade them to take refuge under the command of Chu He.

Even Meng Huo, Zhang Jiao and others did not have much confidence in this battle, not to mention the ordinary generals and soldiers below, as long as the Changding army could withstand the soldiers of the Shu army, giving everyone the confidence to resist, coupled with coercion and temptation, Chu He's plan had a considerable chance of success.

The leaders of the anti-Shu armies had no time to pay attention to the various small movements of the Chu River, because the fleet of the Shu army had already reached the south bank and could launch the most fierce offensive at any time.

The Ma Zhong Department in Hulu Valley was defeated by the anti-Shu army ten days ago.

Although at the last moment, Ma Zhong decisively ordered the materials to be burned, but after the heavy flood, the earth was damp, and the anti-Shu army chose to launch an attack during the heavy rain, even if Ma Zhong ignited the rice and grain with fierce fire oil, he only burned one-tenth of the materials and ordnance.

When the Shu army knew that they were used as bait by Zhuge Liang, all the soldiers and generals were abandoned by Dashu, and most of the Shu army had no will to fight, so they all put down their weapons and surrendered, and even Ma Zhong's order to set fire to the materials was not implemented, and they also helped extinguish all kinds of ordnance and materials that had been ignited.

Ma Zhong, the general of the Shu army, had an incomparably complicated look in his eyes, and did not choose to surrender, after a long sigh, he ordered his soldiers to give up resistance and surrender, and then drew out his sword and horizontal sword to kill himself.

Of the more than 200,000 Shu troops, as many as 1890,000 surrendered.

Although Chu He did not participate in the division of the spoils of war, the hundreds of thousands of Shu troops made his eyes extremely hot.

The reason why the Changding army did not participate in the attack on Ma Zhongbu was also to prepare for receiving these elite Shu troops.

From the point of view of war, the winner is the king, the loser is the villain, even if the Changding army joins the attacking troops, the Shu army will honestly surrender, but from an emotional point of view, the Changding army does not slaughter the Shu army with his own hands, and it is naturally much easier to subdue this army.

The Southern Barbarian Army and others also did not intend to compete with the Chu River for the surrender of Shu.

As soon as he came, he was about to fight with the Shu army, and he included the surrendered army in the army, and he didn't know if it could be relied on, one was not good, it was very possible for the surrendered army to rebel again, and even if he really received the surrendered troops, he could only use it as coolies.

Second, the Changding army didn't want a large amount of supplies from Ma Zhongbu, and Ma Zhongbu was also trapped in the Hulu Valley by the Chu River, so they were embarrassed to let the Chu River have no gain at all, and when the Chu River proposed to exchange armor and weapons for prisoners of war, they also handed over nearly 200,000 troops to the Chu River.

For this reason, Chu He paid another 5,000 sets of steel armor, which is equivalent to forty surrenders to the army for one set of steel armor.

Others don't dare to use these troops, but Chu He is different, and the power of brainwashing and education is not something that anyone can resist.

Even if they are not needed in the battle with Dashu for the time being, they can be scattered and assigned to Chuwu and Xiang Xiongbu in the Western Regions, as well as Pinghaiwei on Julang Island, and then recall Tianshui County when the brainwashing reaches a certain level.

These hundreds of thousands of soldiers are all real elite troops.

In order to make Chu He more convinced that the Shu army was preparing to attack the Chu River base camp from Nanhua Mountain, Zhuge Liang did not hesitate to send the sword army and the dreadnought army.

The quality of these two armies is no worse than the old four guards of Chu He, the number is quite large, as long as the loyalty education is implemented, and then armed with steel soldiers, the combat power of the Changding army can be doubled in an instant!

When more refugees enter Tianshui County, Chu He has enough capital to use these veterans as a skeleton to rapidly expand the army and carry out military discipline education for a period of time, so that he can be pulled on the battlefield to compete with the Shu army.

The accumulation of the Chu River has actually reached an astonishing point.

Except for the real core figure of Chang Dingjun, the rest of the people didn't know that in fact, Chang Dingjun was already extremely terrifying at this time.

In the eyes of outsiders, the small territory of Tianshui County in the Chu River does not govern many people, and the output of rice and grain is negligible, even if a large amount of rice grain is exchanged from other people, it can only barely maintain the needs of Tianshui County.

In addition, the output of the military arsenal in Changding Township, Tianshui County, is also limited to a certain extent, and the armor produced is basically taken out to arm itself and exchanged with various armies.

But they won't know how amazing the yield of sweet potatoes is, and they won't know what the conversion rate of iron into steel is, let alone the abyss, there are two large steel yards and weapons yards that work day and night, and there are three large shipyards and a newly built arsenal on Julang Island!

Nearly 200 billion stone of rice grain and sweet potato reserves, hundreds of millions of taels of silver, tens of millions of taels of gold, as well as a large number of refined Mithril Essence Gold equipment, countless medicinal materials and Cheng Dan, more than 100,000 steel armor, hundreds of huge ships and countless ships and so on.

It can be said that now in this incomparably vast southern Xinjiang, one-third of all kinds of materials and rice grains are hidden in Tianshui County.

Once the right time comes, the potential and accumulation of Tianshui County will definitely make the world look sideways, even if it is Zhuge Liang, don't want to compete with the Chu River in this southern frontier!

There is no possibility for the Chu River to escape from this real tough battle, and if the banner of the Chu River is not really erected and the name of the Chu River is raised, it will be difficult for the defeated anti-Shu army to vote.

Therefore, more than 100,000 Changding troops, as well as 3,000 scorpion tail wing tiger cavalry, all concentrated on the side of Yongzhou Qingyun Road, with a strong lineup of banners, and hundreds of thousands of troops divided into three parts, respectively by Chu He, Huang Zhong and Long He as the main generals, ready for battle.

Not far away, is the huge army of the Southern Barbarian Army, Meng Huo, the Southern Barbarian King, sits in Yongchang City, once the Shu army lands from Yongzhou, it will be attacked by the Changding Army and the Southern Barbarian Army!

The Yellow Turban Army and the Three-State Coalition Army, the main force is stationed in Qizhou, and the four million troops echo the Southern Barbarian Army and the Changding Army from afar.