ps. I don't have enough time, so I uploaded it first, and I'll modify it later

Chapter 52: Flooding

Last time, Buqiu sent ten small teams to escape from the city, including his two sons. Liu Hou sent a team to pursue these Soochow squads, and as a result, six were eliminated and four were escaped.

This is the fourth day of the rainstorm, and the rain is gradually getting lighter. The first three days of the typhoon were continuous heavy rain, and from the fourth day, the rain became lighter and intermittent, and the day was already sunny for some time.

Liu Hou also took advantage of this rare opportunity to go out for a walk and inspect the camps to see what problems needed to be solved.

He saw that the morale of the battalions was relatively low, the musketeers were better, well-trained, and did not suffer many losses, and the morale was as usual, followed by the rattan armor soldiers.

However, the morale of the Yu belly troops who originally belonged to Zhu Bao was very low, and in this siege, they took the lead, and under the desperate resistance of the Eastern Wu army, they suffered heavy losses. In just half a day, more than 3,000 people of the first echelon of 5,000 people were lost, and the first echelon was basically disabled.

If it weren't for the sudden arrival of the storm, the remaining more than a thousand people would soon be reimbursed, and at that time, Liu Hou would have to catch up with the second echelon to the city wall.

In the face of such a brutal battle, in the face of such a large battle loss rate, the entire fish belly army was in a panic. They were afraid that as soon as the sky cleared, it would be their turn to go to the front to die.

No one wants to die, especially this poorly trained fish belly unit, their discipline and obedience are still very poor, and in this case, the troops are faintly showing signs of instability.

After Liu Hou learned about these situations, he returned to the big tent and asked someone to invite Fei Yi and Zhu Bao to come over and discuss how to solve these problems.

However, before the two of them could come, the soldiers came to report that the military police who were responsible for interrogating the fugitives from Soochow asked to see them. Liu Hou had no choice but to let the gendarmes who asked to see him come in first.

The gendarme who came in was Huang Xu, who had won the first place in the archery competition before, and Liu Hou admired his miraculous archery skills, so he transferred him and let him serve as a deputy general in the gendarmerie battalion.

The gendarmerie is actually a supervising team and military judges, who usually do not participate in the battle against the enemy, but only picket the military law and atmosphere in the troops, and the battle is to supervise the war, cut and kill deserters, etc.

After Huang Xu finished saluting, he told Liu Hou the purpose of his arrival: it turned out that when the Eastern Wu escape detachment that was being pursued before, the Shu army captured some people, and these people were uniformly handed over to the gendarmerie for interrogation. Huang Xu happened to be the chief officer in charge of the interrogation, and now that the interrogation results came out, he felt that the situation was serious, and hurriedly ran to report to Liu Hou.

During their interrogation, they found out that a person was Buqi's youngest son Bu Xie, according to the accompanying Dongwu soldiers, Bu Qi's eldest son Bu Xie also escaped from the city, but he was not captured by the Shu army in another fugitive team.

Originally, the escape of Bu Qi's two sons was not a big deal, but what made Huang Xu feel that the big thing was that he found a letter from Bu Xian. This letter is naturally Bu Qi's last letter to Sun Quan.

The letter expressed Buqi's loyalty to Sun Quan, and expressed his determination to sacrifice his body to drag down the Lingnan Shu army at the expense of this remnant. What shocked Liu Hou the most was that Bu Qi actually mentioned in the letter the weakness of the Shu army's firearms unit and hot air balloons.

It turned out that a few days ago, when the storm began, the hot air balloon was blown away by the strong wind, and when it was blown crooked, it was inferred that these monsters floating in the sky of the Shu army were afraid of the wind. From the rain again, the Shu army retreated, and it was inferred that the firearms troops of the Shu army were also afraid of wind and rain.

From this point of view, he studied ways to restrain the firearms and air units of the Shu army.

There is not a single sentence in the letter about finding a way out for the two sons and asking Sun Quan to take care of his sons. The whole letter is about official affairs, in addition to listing his own speculation about the weakness of the Shu army, there is also an analysis of the general situation of the world, and some suggestions on the Wu-Shu relationship and the Wu-Wei relationship.

There are not only the construction of the strategic direction of the Eastern Wu Dynasty, but also the construction of some people's livelihood, which shows that this Buqi is indeed a talented person. Seeing Liu Houqi's surprise, he was very curious about this step, and he couldn't wait to recruit him to his subordinates.

But from this letter, Liu Hou also saw that Bu Qi was a very loyal person, and it was estimated that it would be difficult to recruit such a person.

From Huang Xu's narration, Liu Hou learned that there were two such letters, which were placed on Buqi's two sons, and now the younger son was arrested, but the eldest son escaped. Liu Hou was also secretly anxious in his heart, everything else was easy to say, but the analysis of the weaknesses of the firearms unit and the hot air balloon unit in this letter could not be ignored.

Once Sun Quan gets this letter and comes up with a targeted way to deal with it, it is estimated that the combat difficulty of his own troops will increase a lot in the future. And Liu Hou is a person who is most afraid of trouble, and if he can avoid unnecessary trouble, Liu Hou will try to avoid it.

However, the Bu Xie had already escaped from the field of vision of the Shu army's tracking team, and they could not be found for a while, so Liu Hou couldn't, so he had to send three messengers to hurry up to the three checkpoints on the Nanling Ancient Road, tell them the situation, and let them pay attention to arresting these teams, and never let them escape from Lingnan.

After dealing with this matter, Liu Hou instructed Huang Xu to be kind to Bu Xuan. He hoped that he could use this step to lower his steps in the future. Waiting for Huang Xu to leave as promised, Fei Yi and Zhu Bao came to Liu Hou's big tent one after another.

General Liu Hou told these two about the demoralization of the lieutenant general, and asked them to come up with ideas to see if there was a good way to improve morale and eliminate the instability of the troops.

Zhu Baoti yì increased their salaries. At present, these fish belly troops only have 500 yuan per month, while the rattan armor soldiers have the same money, and the musketeers are the best, with two yuan of silver per month. This is also one reason why the musketeers are always in high spirits.

Fei Yitiyì promoted these fish belly troops to official combat units, after all, these people have done a good job during this period of time, besieging Panyu City, although they did not make meritorious contributions, but there was no defection, which shows that their loyalty is not a big problem.

And the last time they stormed Panyu City, the first echelon suffered heavy casualties, and their loyalty and courage were even more loyal.

Hearing this, Liu Hou disagreed, these people were just forced by the butcher's knife of the gendarmerie behind them, if they fled backwards, they would die, and there was still a chance of life if they rushed forward, they had no choice but to rush forward.

Liu Hou summarized the opinions of the two and found that they were very similar to those in a best-selling book he had read before.

In that best-selling book, it was said that when a new official takes office, there are three fires, and when a new official takes office, if he wants to win the hearts of employees, he can generally do three things: the first fire, increase their salaries. You've just taken office, and there's a lot where you need their support. Raising salaries in exchange for support is one of the common means used by new officials to take office;

Second, improve the company's working environment. For example, decoration, so that everyone has a good office environment, the mood is naturally comfortable, and the work will naturally be harder;

Third, if some people are promoted, these people will naturally be grateful to you and see you as a benefactor.

Zhu Bao's opinion is the first fire mentioned here, to raise everyone's salary.

And Fei Yi's mention yì is the third fire, promotion, but he means to promote everyone, not just a few people.

Although this promotion is very small, it is only promoted from the fish belly unit to the official soldier, but I believe that it can also make all the soldiers grateful to Dade, although it may not necessarily be loyal to themselves, but it is still possible to improve morale and increase everyone's sense of belonging.

Thinking that there was a theoretical basis for this, Liu Hou agreed with Zhu Bao and Fei Yi's proposal, and promoted this unit to a formal combat unit under his command, and the nature of the end was the rattan armor soldiers, and the treatment was the same as the rattan armor soldiers, which was a consistent monthly payment.

However, it just so happened that Liu Hou brought over the rattan armor of the 15,000 wisteria armor army stationed on the Nanling Ancient Road and used it just in time for this newly formed army.

This army originally had 20,000 people, and Zhu Bao sacrificed some of them in the trebuchet battle with Panyu City in the early stage, plus more than 3,000 sacrifices in the storming of Panyu City a few days ago, and now there are only about 15,000 left.

In this way, the vine armor army quickly recovered to 30,000 troops, of course, the combat effectiveness is far inferior to the original vine armor army, this point is not urgent, it needs to go through a long period of training and real combat tempering, in order to make them become an invincible and invincible iron army again.

Sure enough, as soon as this order was announced, the entire barracks of the fish belly troops were boiling, and the previous gloomy feelings were swept away. All the soldiers were screaming with excitement, and many were raising their hands in cheers.

Liu Hou was also very happy, it seemed that although these people were originally his enemies and prisoners he had captured, they did not have much loyalty to the object of their original allegiance. The reason why they are unhappy is not because they miss their old master and don't want to be loyal to Liu Hou, but because their treatment is too poor and their status is too low.

Now that the treatment and status have been raised, Liu Hou has already obtained their allegiance, although the foundation of this allegiance is still very weak, but I believe that over time, they will be able to return to their hearts and become Liu Hou's loyal warriors.

Since he had paid a big price, Liu Hou was not polite to them, he ordered to go down, pay a month's full salary in advance, boost their morale, and then start harsh training for them.

Liu Hou transferred all the veterans of the Tengjia Army and adopted the method of one belt and one belt to conduct surprise special training for the recruits, so as to raise the training process of the recruits in the shortest possible time.

The results of one-on-one training are of course good, and the combat effectiveness and discipline of the entire vine armor army are gradually rising, and I believe that the vine armor army will soon be able to recover to the level it was at its peak.

Seeing the gratifying changes in the army, Liu Hou was in a good mood, his anxious feelings were alleviated, and he also had the heart to find a woman. No, after a few days of intermittent rain, the weather finally cleared up completely on this day, and he finally remembered Zhou Xue who was left in the barracks, and personally went to her military tent, wanting to invite her out to play.

"Don't go!" After hearing Liu Hou's request to play, Zhou Xue simply and clearly refused.

"Uh......" Liu Hou was very helpless, this guy also said that he was here to serve the pillow seat, this has the appearance of serving the pillow seat, and he didn't even want to go out to play together, Niu 13 baked like this, is he here to be a concubine or a master?

Zhou Xue has not had a good time these days, since Liu Hou told her that last time, her heart is also very anxious, she is really suspicious of the orthodoxy of Dongwu and Xishu, and she has doubts about Sun Quan and Liu Hou's righteousness, so by extension, she has doubts about what she has done before.

In professional terms, she now has problems in her perception of the world, her outlook on life and the world is deviant, she begins to doubt life, feels confused about the future, and her thinking is confused......

"Well, if you don't like to go out into the wilderness, fly butterflies, fly kites, or whatever, then come with me to the camp. I'll show you my Hundred Battles Lion. Liu Hou saw that Zhou Xue refused to accompany him to play, so he thought about going back to patrol the camp.

As the commander in chief of the first army, he has to patrol the camp every day, so that he can find problems in time, eliminate some hidden dangers in advance, and make his soldiers more attentive when they see them every day.

Zhou Xue was going to continue to refuse, but later heard that she was going to patrol the camp and go to see the troops of the Shu army, and her heart began to be lively, she also wanted to see what secrets this army of Shu had secrets, why its combat effectiveness was so strong, and why Uncle Bu was afraid of this army, and he didn't even dare to confront it head-on.