In mid-April, armed caravans set out south. The Yibo area here is a bitter cold place, and from March to October every year, the mountains are impassable due to heavy snowfall, and the time for doing business is actually only more than half a year.

For the first time in business after its establishment, Boss Qian attaches great importance to it. This time, he and Qian Laosan took three companies to the Fan District, and Qian Laosan took one company to stay in Qianjiazhai.

On the Thunderbolt side, in addition to serving as the military backbone of the platoon leader of the armed caravan, only a few personnel from the trading company were sent to accompany them.

Such an arrangement by the top level of the Thunderbolt Army reflects the full trust in the Qian family, in Ouyang Xuan's words

"Don't use people who are suspicious, don't doubt people", since we have chosen cooperation, we must fully delegate power. Of course, in order to ensure the safety of this trip, Ouyang Xuan added four light tiger squat cannons and a large number of old-fashioned grenades to the armed caravan, and the firepower was equipped with standard equipment to chase the Thunderbolt Army field battalion, which was even much stronger than the teaching company.

In this way, the combat strength of these three companies said that the bandits did not dare to provoke, and even faced the officers and troops along the way and the Tusi army had the power to protect themselves.

The joint caravan not only took away all the mules and horses in Qianjiazhai, but also rented a lot of ponies at a high price from another private salt merchant in Qiongzhou.

A caravan of 300 people and more than 200 mules and horses marched forward on the mountain road, which was a mile long, and it was very spectacular.

After the training of Cao Ergou and Dong Hu, and the elite of the Thunderbolt Army as the backbone, the marching queue was orderly and orderly.

Without mules, horses and goods, the team was more like an army than a caravan. The caravan carried a large variety of goods, all of which were in demand in the Tibetan area, and the bulk goods were salt, iron farm tools, porcelain, and silk were the most.

Boss Qian was going to Yazhou to sell some of the salt and iron farming tools carried by the caravan first, and then buy a large amount of tea locally to go to Jiezhou and Yanzhou in the Tibetan region, and buy mules and horses urgently needed by the Thunderbolt army locally, which was also Ouyang Xuan's special explanation, and if possible, he would go deep into the grassland to buy horses.

There are many forest pastures in the two prefectures of Diao and Yan, and there are a large number of cattle and horses, but the horses here can only be used as foot animals, and war horses can only be bought on the grassland.

Li Gongzi was originally the squad leader of the eighth squad of the reconnaissance company of the internal guard battalion, and this time he accompanied him as the platoon commander of the first company of the armed caravan, and his and his companions were tasked with collecting intelligence in addition to their defense duties.

Along the way, Li Gongzi silently wrote down everything he saw, and wrote down the important information in crooked words and put it in his close-fitting clothes.

Li Gongzi is extremely clever, and after a period of literacy classes in night school, although his writing is not very fluent, he can still remember the situation in general, which is also due to Ouyang Xuan's implementation of simplified Chinese characters.

This simplified Chinese characters are much less difficult to write than traditional Chinese characters, which is very suitable for literacy education, and even won the support of an old pedant like Rudezhi.

In line with the principle of pragmatism, Ouyang Xuan also vigorously promoted Arabic numerals to keep counts, which were much more convenient than square Chinese characters, and were now widely used under the Thunderbolt Army.

The Perak Army's reconnaissance and espionage personnel especially liked to simplify the characters and Arabic numerals, which were used to record information quickly and could not be understood by the enemy.

After Yazhou Baizhang County, Mingshan County is Yazhou City, and then before is Lizhou and Diao, Yan two states, although these states belong to Chengdu Fu Road, but they are all Han Yi Fan mixed places.

The Han people in Baizhang and Mingshan counties are the majority, mostly living in the flat land of the river valley and the shallow mountains, and the Yi people mostly live in the high mountains and dense forests.

When you arrive in Yazhou City, half of the Han people live in the city, and the Yi people mostly live in the countryside. Lizhou is already the main body of the people of Yibo, Han people account for a minority, to the two prefectures of Diao, Yan is a mixture of Yibo, Han people are very few.

The two prefectures of Jieyan are the prefectures of Jiaomi, and the officials are all local Yibo chieftains, who only obey the rule of the imperial court on the surface.

More than ten years ago, the Mongols invaded Dali and tried to invade Chengdu, but were defeated by Yu Xing, the prefect of Jiading Prefecture, who led his men and Banzhou soldiers.

The Yibo tribes in these states rebelled impermanently, and most of them surrendered to the Mongols at this time, but seeing that the Mongols were repelled by the Song army, they resubmitted to the imperial court.

Yu Xing did not punish these capricious wall grasses, and did not even reprimand the chiefs who acted as the leading party, but tried his best to win them over.

This made the heads of the various Tusi departments see through the internal strength of the imperial court, and they did not pay more and more attention to the orders of the government, and only submitted to the imperial court on the surface in order to buy salt and iron tea from the Han land.

The influence of the imperial court declined, and the Mongols returned north, and the various tribes, deprived of external pressure, were mired in endless infighting, resulting in banditry and poor trade routes.

It's just that although these Yibo tribes do not obey the orders of the government and are extremely xenophobic, they are generally not too exclusive to caravans.

Because the arrival of the caravan meant road money and luxury goods for the Tusi head, and it was a necessity for ordinary people to produce life, the overall itinerary of the armed caravan was quite smooth except for some minor troubles in the early stage.

Of course, the reasons behind this also include the gifts that Boss Qian gave to the Tusi leaders along the way, and also the combat power of the armed caravans that are not inferior to the regular army.

The so-called small troubles are actually bandits. Since passing through Yazhou City, the armed caravan has encountered bandits almost every day, most of these bandits are only following and spying, only two groups of bandits have launched a sneak attack by virtue of the familiar terrain and the large number of people, but as soon as the grenade sounds, they are all scattered.

This made Boss Qian full of confidence and at the same time, his admiration for Ouyang Xuan deepened. He has been in business for more than 20 years, and he has been tortured by bandits for more than 20 years.

If he is unlucky enough to encounter a large number of bandits, not to mention the loss of goods, it is not uncommon for his men to be killed and taken into slavery, and there are forty or fifty of his men who have been killed and taken captive over the years.

The caravan was mainly the same people, but after the transformation of the Thunderbolt Army, it had a new look, and its combat effectiveness had increased several times, which made the bandits along the way invincible, and also dispelled the idea of forced buying and selling by the Tusi leaders along the way.

Of course, in addition to the increase in combat power due to the availability of sufficient firearms, the more important thing is the dozens of squad and platoon leaders.

Ouyang Xuan once told him that qualified grassroots officers were the core of a team, and they could transform a group of rabble into powerful elites, but he was still skeptical at that time.

Now it turns out a phrase that has been circulating among the Thunderbolts

"What Brother Xuan said is correct" Boss Qian used to travel most of the time only to Lizhou, a few times to Diao, Yanzhou, and only a few times to move forward.

Further ahead of Jiezhou and Yanzhou is the road leading to the alpine grassland, and the nearest grassland is only ten days away from Diao and Yanzhou.

The road became more difficult and dangerous, the population was sparse, the bandits became more and more ferocious, and of course the profits of trade were also very high, especially salt, tea, and ironware.

Salt is a necessity for humans and animals, and it is needless to say that it is important to people, and it is also necessary for the growth of cattle and horses. Because of the dietary structure, tea is a necessity on the grassland.

There is basically no smelting industry in the alpine grassland, not to mention the lack of daily iron tools, and even the iron pot for cooking rice.

However, the bitter cold here is not a barren place, rich in valuable medicinal herbs, furs, meat, and horses that are desperately needed by the Thunderbolt army.

Therefore, Boss Qian did not stop after arriving in Lizhou, he was going to the grassland to buy horses this time.