Zhuge Liang and Zhang Xi nominally came to Hanzhong to inspect the place, but in fact, these two people came to Hanzhong to make various preparations in advance for Liu Bei's upcoming Second Northern Expedition.

When they came to Hanzhong this time, Zhuge Liang and Zhang Xi had no plans to go back to Chengdu.

The Northern Expedition soldiers launched and grain and grass reserves, this does not need Zhang Xi and Zhuge Liang to worry about, there is a group of people in Chengdu who are in charge of this matter, as long as Liu Bei officially issued an edict on the Northern Expedition, then the grain, grass and soldiers will be continuously transported to Hanzhong.

As for strategic planning, Pang Tong and Fa Zheng also made suggestions to Liu Bei, and Zhuge Liang and Zhang Xi don't need to worry too much, those two are better at military level than Zhuge Liang and Zhang Xi.

Therefore, Zhuge Liang and Zhang Xi temporarily put aside the affairs of the court and came to Hanzhong in advance to prepare.

Zhuge Liang, Zhang Xi, and Huang Quan discussed together for a long time, and under Huang Quan's detailed introduction, Zhuge Liang and Zhang Xi basically understood the current military and political situation in Hanzhong, and then carried out a simple division of labor.

Huang Quan is still the Taishou of Hanzhong, and he still has to preside over the daily government affairs of Hanzhong, but he needs to adjust the focus of his work and coordinate the counties in Hanzhong to cooperate with Zhuge Liang in the preparations before the Northern Expedition.

Zhuge Liang officially became the leader of Hanzhong as the commander of the Zhongshu Order, fully responsible for the preparation of the Northern Expedition in Hanzhong, concentrating on the preparation and mobilization of logistics materials, docking with the decrees of Chengdu, and making timely adjustments according to the changes in the decrees of Chengdu, so as to prepare for the upcoming Northern Expedition.

And Zhang Xi is mainly responsible for military affairs.

One is to establish a large enough camp in Hanzhong to prepare for the army to enter Hanzhong.

The other is to inspect the repair of the city defense in various parts of Hanzhong, the speed of the replacement of ordnance in each county, the convocation and training of county soldiers, and so on.

The first thing is relatively simple, now there is a pre-degree department in Hanzhong, this matter Zhang Xi directly threw Yang Yi, let Yang Yi make a plan, and then stamped the big seal of the military department, Zhuge Liang stamped the big seal of the Chinese book, and sent it directly to Chengdu to the emperor Liu Bei for approval, as long as Liu Bei approved and agreed, Shangshu Province can directly coordinate the household department and the Ministry of Industry to allocate funds and launch the people's conscription to build a military camp.

That is, it takes less than a month to go back and forth.

The second thing is the most important.

There are now a total of 23,000 registered soldiers in Hanzhong, of which 13,000 are stationed in the fortress at the Baochuan crossing to defend the Baochuan crossing, and the remaining 10,000 are county soldiers, who are basically placed in various counties, and now they need to be gathered and trained.

And the arsenal and ordnance in Hanzhong is also a focus of Zhang Xi's inspection.

After the end of the last Northern Expedition, because of the particularity of Hanzhong as the advance base of the Northern Expedition, the last time the troops were withdrawn, they did not bring all the weapons and armor in the Hanzhong arsenal back to Chengdu.

And now that two years have passed, Zhang Xi must have to take stock and inspect these armor and armor to find out how many armor and armor there are, and how many of them are no longer usable and have to be replaced.

These two things don't seem too difficult to see, but they are very tedious.

Needless to say, even if Zhang Xi was to arrange thirty assistants to count these arsenal ordnance armor, it would take at least more than a month to complete the inventory, not to mention that he had to find out the ordnance and armor that could not be used to replace them, which was a job that required patience.

And it was quite troublesome to summon the county soldiers to Nanzheng for training.

Summoning soldiers is just a matter of military orders, but after these soldiers are gathered, Zhang Xi needs to supervise the training of soldiers every day, formulate a training plan for soldiers, and observe the training effect.

Zhuge Liang and Huang Quan both have this ability, but the problem is that they can't be busy with their own affairs, so how can they have time to help Zhang Xi train soldiers.

Therefore, Zhang Xi thought about it, so it was better to do the third thing first.

And the third thing is to inspect the situation of the Baochuan crossing where Chen Zhi is stationed, and obtain first-hand strategic information for the Northern Expedition.

In the last Northern Expedition, Liu Beijun mastered the camp at the Baochuan Road crossing and established a temporary defense, making it clear that he wanted to use this passage to reach Guanzhong.

And Cao Wei is not a fool, the Bao ramp crossing has been opened, as long as he is not brainless, he will definitely take strict precautions against the Bao ramp.

Zhang Xi, as the secretary of the Ministry of War, has seen a lot of documents passed by Chen Zhi, telling about the situation of the Baochuan crossing. When Cao Ren presided over the military administration of Chang'an, under Chen Zhi's nose, he established many camps and Wu forts on the mountains and plains on the periphery of the Baochuan crossing.

Cao Ren's idea was probably to block the Bao Chute with a large number of Wu forts and camps, once Liu Bei's army came out of the Bao Chute Road, these camps and Wu Forts could serve as a warning, and at the same time buy a certain amount of time for Cao's army to assemble.

It's kind of a warning.

But this information was transmitted to Zhang Xi by Chen Zhi through documents, and Zhang Xi only learned about the real situation, Zhang Xi didn't go to see it on the spot, and he really didn't feel at ease.

And now that Cao Ren has passed away, whether the newly appointed Cao Zhen, the governor of Cao Wei and Yongliang, will adopt this set of strategies, also needs Zhang Xi to go to the field to observe before he can draw conclusions.

This time Liu Bei suddenly wanted to go on the Northern Expedition, in fact, it was not a very good time, and it was difficult for this Northern Expedition to be the same as last time. The pressure on grain and grass logistics is too great to support it at all.

Therefore, it is always good to have more information and learn more about the movements of the Cao army.

Based on this consideration, after Zhang Xi divided labor with Zhuge Liang, the first thing he did was to cross the Bao Slope Road and go to Chen to see the situation.

As soon as he arrived at the entrance of Hanzhong to the Bao Slope Road, Zhang Xi was a little dumbfounded.

This slope seems to be a little different from what I thought.

Among the five roads that cross the Qinling Mountains, the Bao Slope Road is actually not the best road to take.

The best way to take is the Qishan Road, but the Qishan Road leads to Longyou, strictly speaking, bypassing the Qinling Mountains, and now the northern part of Yongzhou and Liangzhou have been taken, and even the Longshan Road has been occupied, so the Qishan Road has lost its strategic role.

There are two roads left that are still easy to take, one is Chencang Road, and the other is Bao Slope Road.

The reason why Chencang Road can't be walked is that the Chencang Road Pass is still under Cao Wei's control, and that place is notoriously easy to defend and difficult to attack, and it is not easy to fight.

Therefore, in Liu Bei's control, although it was steep, it was still barely able to transport soldiers, grain, grass and ordnance, and it became Liu Bei's first choice when he went out of the customs.

For this reason, when Zhang Xi had just taken over the Ministry of War, he wrote an excerpt to Zhongshu Province, asking for strengthening the defense of the Bao ramp crossing and repairing the Bao ramp, one of which is very important - the cement produced in Qi County is transferred, and the cement is used to repair the Bao ramp.

Isn't it a pity that cement, a dual-use weapon, is not used to build roads?!

Zhang Xi clearly remembered that for this matter, Zhuge Liang specially talked to Zhang Xi about the details of the construction, and then personally approved it and handed it over to Liu Bei, and Liu Bei directly sent it to Shangshu Province for implementation.

This is military, and no one dares to be sloppy.

Therefore, when Zhang Xi came to the Bao ramp crossing, he thought that he could see a new and widened Bao ramp road poured with cement, but in fact it was not.

What Zhang Xi saw was still an ordinary rammed earth road.

It can be seen that this road has been renovated, but it is only a tamping of the road surface and the reinforcement of the plank road, and the wide cement road that Zhang Xi thinks has not appeared.

This Zhang Xi can't understand anymore. In these years, even military facilities have dared to cut corners?!

But in this matter, Zhang Xi really couldn't find the person in charge for a while.

Zhang Xi asked the local county order, and the county order said that he had indeed received a military order to repair the Bao Slope Road, but General Chen at the Bao Slope crossing re-ordered to suspend the construction of the road, and even transferred all the cement originally used to repair the Bao Slope to the Bao Slope crossing.

If this matter were replaced by someone else, Zhang Xi would probably be so annoyed that he would cut people, but Chen Zhi, Zhang Xi believed that the old general would do things, and it must be his reason.

Zhang Xi once worked with Chen Zhi and knew his character and personality, not the kind of general who was arrogant and domineering and didn't know what was important.

Yang Opera commented on Zhao Yun and Chen Zhi in "Praise of Ji Han Fuchen", and used the comment of "conquering the south and conquering the west".

Chen Zhi is the general of Ji Han Zhengxi in history, but in this time and space, Liu Bei does not have the intention of establishing a permanent general of the four expeditions, even if he uses it, it is estimated that it is also a temporary official position, and it is unlikely to be permanent, so the current Chen Zhi is not a general of Zhengxi.

But Chen Zhi's character Yang Xi is absolutely not wrong, "Zhongke", "loyalty" refers to loyalty, this does not need to be asked, Chen Zhi is Liu Bei's head of the Qu Clan, one of the first people to follow Liu Bei, his loyalty, there is no doubt about it.

And "gram" is about defeating the enemy. If a general of the unified army does not even carry out military orders, how can he be called a victory over the enemy?!

Therefore, as soon as Zhang Xi heard that Chen Zhi asked for this, there must be his reasons.

This reason is that Zhang Xi can only know after passing through the Bao Slope and arriving at the exit of the Guanzhong Praise Slope and seeing Chen arrive.

Putting this doubt in mind for the time being, Zhang Xi continued to hurry with the guards, passing through the Bao ramp that could be walked but was not very easy to walk, and after about ten days, he finally came to the Bao ramp crossing.

Then Zhang Xi was shocked.

Zhang Xi wondered if he had crossed over again. Travel back in time to medieval Europe.

How come there are castles everywhere on the top of the surrounding hills?!

Take a closer look. It's not a European-style castle, the architectural style is completely different, these buildings are built on the hill or the stone fort next to the main road, which is completely Chinese-style camp.

However, these camps are all made of stone.

Now Zhang Xi understands, why did Chen Zhi transfer all the cement to build the ramp here, is he co-authoring to build a large-scale stone castle complex? !

But isn't this a bit too much?!

We don't want to fight World War II, and Cao Wei on the other side doesn't have aircraft artillery. Is it worth building a stone fortress?!

(End of chapter)