Chapter 19: Mountain Bandits
After these days of mining, a total of 1,300 square kilometers of arable land has been added, which will be cleared this winter. Although there is not much food obtained from farming, it is a way to obtain food in a stable way for a long time.
After this last period of searching, this area within the detection range of the system is completely free of any magical beasts, so the way to obtain resources through hunting is coming to an end. In the same way, the large and small stone mountains in this area have been cleared, and all that remains is to wait for the people to carry the stones.
In the past three months, a total of 300,000 tons of grain have been harvested from the 1,000 square kilometers of fields under normal cultivation, and more than 1 million tons of grain have been harvested from the 200 square kilometers of high-speed land. Although the quantity of these foods is small, it can be provided forever and is a renewable resource.
After redistributing the work of the people, Zheng Feng set off with the heroes and soldiers to the outskirts of the mountain, which was the first time Zheng Feng left his lair since he came to this world.
This time they can be said to have poured out of the nest, except for the Tibetan horse who is still collecting nutrients from those tree roots, all the heroes set off, and everyone wants to see what the bandits in this world are like.
According to the reconnaissance of these days, the eastern side of this mountain, from the southernmost coast to the terminal of the cross-cutting cliff in the north, is a total of 1,000 kilometers. The outer part of the mountain, about 50 kilometers wide, is made up of large and small undulating mountains, and further into the interior of the mountain, the terrain is relatively flat, but the elevation of the inner mountain is at least a thousand meters higher than the plains outside the mountain.
With such a terrain, this mountain is basically a plateau, and those mountain bandits are distributed between the plateau and the plain, between the mountains and mountains. And the closer to the outside, the more mountain bandits are distributed.
Therefore, Zheng Feng's plan is to divide the heroes into two groups, one team to the south and one team to the north, first to clear out the bandits close to the inside of the mountain, and then turn around, from the north and south ends to the middle, to clear out those mountain bandits on the periphery.
The purpose of this is to avoid being discovered by people outside the mountains as much as possible. Near the interior of the mountain, the distribution of mountain bandits is relatively sparse, and it is not easy to be found by outsiders by killing these guys.
It was more than a hundred kilometers from the central station to the mountainous part of the periphery, and it took two days of marching, so on the first day they camped in the wilderness. Zheng Feng has never had the experience of spending the night in the deep mountains and old forests in this kind of winter, although he is now also a third-level physical fitness, but he feels a little cold and not so cold, and there are so many heroes around, there is no need to worry about safety, but Zheng Feng still has insomnia all night.
On the march the next day, Zheng Feng was lying on Xiao Jin's back and snoring all day, if it weren't for the two demon butlers who had been following him, this guy wouldn't know how many times he would have fallen off the horse.
Finally arrived at a small station built on the periphery, although the living conditions were still very poor, Zheng Feng still rested for a night, and only on the morning of the third day did he begin to discuss the matter of suppressing bandits with everyone.
This small garrison consisted of tents summoned by the attendants, and in the center of the garrison there was a warehouse, all of which together had a thousand tents that could hold twenty thousand soldiers. There are six such small stations, at the edge of the range, at a distance of 100 kilometers from each other.
The generals took the soldiers out to search, and they went for many days, and they had to collect so many corpses of demonic beasts, it was indeed necessary to have some places where they could be stationed and rest, and the corpses of those demonic beasts could also be put into the warehouse nearby. The resources for building military tents are all wood and stone, which is the most scarce, but the number of attendants is limited, so the scale of these small garrisons is not large.
After a brief discussion with everyone in the morning, the heroes began to act, according to the previous plan, Bai Qi Wang Jian and Wukong group, Xiang Yu Han Xin and Feiying group, each with 20,000 troops and 10,000 processing soldiers.
Bai Qi and Wang Jian led 10,000 infantry, 10,000 archers, and 10,000 sappers to the south, Overlord and Han Xin led the same team to the north, and Wukong and Feiying served as scouts for these two groups. With the speed of these two guys, it is also very easy to travel thousands of miles a day, and they act as scouts, so they can completely save the time and distance of these two teams searching.
If there is no need to search, the generals can go straight to the cottage of those mountain bandits, and after clearing one place, they will go straight to the next place. And the work of collecting resources was left by the sappers to complete. Each of these two teams brought two waiters, and when they encountered a relatively large cottage, they summoned a warehouse to carry them nearby.
Based on the normal marching speed of these teams of fifty kilometers per day, the total length of a thousand kilometers, they are each responsible for half, back and forth, that is, twenty days. Even if you have to stop and count the loot, add twice the time, and it should be done in two months.
Therefore, Zheng Feng's plan is to start fighting the idea of Allah's kingdom outside after the spring sowing next year. However, in the near future, it is still mainly to suppress bandits, but those mountain bandits do not need to be eliminated, he only needs to eliminate more than 100,000 to achieve his goal. Therefore, Zheng Feng planned to send two lobbyists out to find out which of these mountain bandits had relatively few bad deeds.
After all, not all bandits are extremely evil, and some of them are forced to go to Liangshan, if you can determine that some bandits are not too bad, then it is okay to give them a way out.
Although everyone will be divided into two groups in this crackdown on banditry, as the first official military operation in this world, it is still very commemorative, so the first target to be exterminated must also be chosen.
Previously, the two lobbyists had been hanging out for more than half a year, and although they had been to many places, they had spent the longest time in this mountainous outskirts. After all, they are natives who have just begun to come into contact with this world, and lobbyists also have to adapt to the way people in this world communicate first.
During the time the two lobbyists spent the night in the small villages outside, they heard some legends about the mountain bandits. Although they had not received a specific task to inquire about the news of the mountain bandits at that time, out of professionalism, these two still inquired a lot about this information. And even if they didn't deliberately inquire about the news of the mountain bandits, some of the more famous mountain bandits would still know, among them, the biggest ones were the four big bandits, and they happened to have four completely different styles of behavior.
One of them is a typical example of a good bandit, they just live in the mountains by themselves, cultivate some crops by themselves, and basically do not go out of the mountains. Only in some bad harvest years will they come out and grab some grain. After all, it is in the mountains that are not suitable for farming, and there are still a lot of bad harvests, but they generally only rob those big landlords, and they only rob grain, and rarely hurt people, so they are known as good bandits by folklore.
The other gang is just the opposite, belonging to the most heinous examples, they burn and loot everywhere, and there are more than one or two legends of slaughtering villages. Like this kind of pure wicked, naturally there is nothing to say, it must be exterminated, and it can be regarded as eliminating harm for the people.
This group of extremely heinous bandits is relatively close to the end of the cliff in the north, so Zheng Feng will arrange for the overlord's group to go to the north. Xiang Yu in history is a famous butcher, just in Xiang Yu's book, there are several massacres in Xiangcheng, Chengyang, Xin'an, Xianyang and Poqi, either slaughtering the city or killing prisoners of war.
Compared with Xiang Yu, when the so-called tyrannical Qin ruled the world, there was no record of slaughtering the city, which shows how strong Xiang Yu's murderous nature is. Although this embodied overlord is not the Xiang Yu in history, the fierceness of this overlord is still obvious. Sending him to the north is precisely what it means to counter violence with violence.
According to legend, the mountain bandits in the north are more fierce, probably because they are closer to the middle of the continent, where war is frequent. The mountain bandits in the south are relatively honest, and it is likely that some people who have taken refuge have fled to the sparsely populated mountainous areas in the south.
Therefore, Zheng Feng sent Wukong to the south to be a scout, and he could first sneak into those cottages to see the situation before deciding whether to exterminate them. And with Flying Shadow's cool personality, he couldn't do this kind of thing, so Flying Shadow was sent to the north as a scout, and their group was basically focused on extermination.
The murderous reputation of killing God Bai is not small, but he is partnered with the more stable Wang Qian, and Wukong will take the first step to distinguish the good from the bad, so the group to the south should have some living mouths, and the representative of the good bandit is also in the middle of the south.
The remaining third big bandit is quite special, according to the news Zhang Yi heard, it can be judged that this group of mountain bandits is the regular army of the original Andas Kingdom at all, and it is a die-hard faction of the original royal family. Not only did they have neat clothing and weapons, but they also regularly attacked the official facilities of Allah's kingdom, and sometimes they even attacked some traveling officials without stealing anything.
With such an obvious hostile attitude towards the official family, coupled with the fact that they were a new mountain bandit force in this year, it would be strange if it weren't for the army of the original kingdom. However, for this team, Zheng Feng has not yet thought about how to deal with it, so he plans to put this group of people to the end to deal with it.