If you sit back and ignore the dammed lake of Widow's Cliff, it will surely become the sword of Damox hanging over the plains of western Sichuan. Since April, more and more rain has fallen in Weimao Prefecture and the upstream areas, and the area of the dammed lake has expanded by about half in the past half month. If there is a continuous rainstorm, the dammed lake is very likely to overflow or even burst. During this time, Huang Dagen has organized several blastings, which have widened the channel for the water to drain down a lot, but there is still a large amount of water in the lake. During this time, Huang Dagen asked Li Shuang to bring in a lot of gunpowder, preparing to blow up the dam in one fell swoop and completely eliminate this potential safety hazard.

Just when Huang Dagen was about to make a move, Ouyang Xuan sent a letter. He told Huang Dagen not to blast the dammed lake at once to prevent flooding caused by excessive water discharge. At the moment, it is only necessary to blast in small batches to control the water level to continue to rise. In fact, the most important reason for not being in a hurry to eliminate the dammed lake was that Ouyang Xuan was inconvenient to put forward in the letter. He planned to carry out large-scale blasting after the summer grain harvest, and use the flood peak formed by the huge water body of the dammed lake to break away the water barrier of the Mongolian army in the river in one fell swoop.

After the water level rose in the spring, the Thunderbolt army completely suppressed the water army in Pengshan City. When the dammed lake at Widow's Cliff was formed, the water level of the Jinma River also dropped sharply due to the sudden decrease in the amount of water coming upstream, even much lower than in the dry season in winter, and even caused the Perak gunboats to run aground, so naturally the suppression operation had to be suspended. The Jinma River is the main stream of the Minjiang River, and the water from the upstream has decreased, and the water of the Minjiang River in the Pengshan section has naturally subsided a lot. Because the Mongolian army did not dredge this section of the river and even set up water barriers, many places could even catch fish with bare hands. Seeing that the water level had dropped, the Mongol garrison took the opportunity to add a number of water barriers in the river in an attempt to prevent the Perak army from moving south again.

A few days later, the river suddenly swelled again, and the rapid flow not only washed away nearly half of the newly erected water barriers, but also washed away many people who could not escape, and even Mongolian soldiers who caught fish were buried in the water. The reason for the sudden rise of the river was that Huang Dagen blasted the dammed lake at the Widow's Cliff. Due to the small amount of gunpowder, the flood was also small, and did not completely destroy the water barrier of the Mongol army, as did the subsequent blasting, so that the heavy gunboats of the Perak army were still unable to move south to Pengshan City. These artificial floods made Ouyang Xuan's mind flash of inspiration, and he decided to create a big flood peak to completely destroy the water barrier in the river of Pengshan City by the Mongols. It's just that the wheat harvest is still half a month away, and you have to wait until after the wheat harvest to do it.

After last year's autumn harvest, the Perak Army began a large-scale reclamation campaign, planting a total of 3 million mu of crops in the plains and another 200,000 mu in the hilly and mountainous areas. The grain in the plains mainly consists of 2 million mu of wheat and 500,000 mu of broad beans, and the other 500,000 mu is barley, peas and other crops. This planting structure was suggested by Ouyang Xuan, who was in the countryside when he was a child, and he had to help his parents farm during his busy farming time, and he was generally clear about the sowing and harvesting time of crops. This planting structure can maximize the use of light and heat resources in the western Sichuan Plain, and realize the rotation of rice-wheat crops to achieve double cropping in one year.

Although wheat has suffered from a winter drought this year, several timely rains after spring have improved the moisture and the growth is still good. Although the output will not be bumper harvest, it will be a normal year. Most of the broad bean fields were harvested as early as March and sprinkled with rice seeds. In fact, at the time of harvest, the broad beans had just blossomed and set fruit, far from the ripening season. However, the main purpose of growing broad beans is not to harvest the seeds, but to use their stems and leaves to raise horses, cattle, mules and other livestock, which are important assets for industry, agriculture and commerce. Unlike the traditional impression that these animals only eat grass, they actually need a lot of food to feed. If they are simply allowed to nibble on wild grass, they will be emaciated and even die, even if they are tolerant of rough feeding. There are now more than 10,000 large livestock in the Perak military area, which need a huge amount of feed every day, and the newly flowering and fruitful broad bean seedlings and barley are excellent feed, and can even replace some beans.

In addition to providing feed for livestock, the most important reason for growing broad beans is to give rice the best growing season. The rice is planted at the end of March, and the wheat is harvested in May. There is an overlap in the timing of the cultivation of these two most important foods. Harvesting broad beans ahead of time and implementing a two-stage rice planting method is the perfect solution to this problem. That is, rice seeds are sown in the field of broad beans harvested in advance, and the rice seedlings are transplanted after the wheat is harvested. In addition to human consumption, sorghum, soybeans, wheat and other dry crops grown in mountainous areas can also be used to brew alcohol, which is an important chemical and medical material.

"The people regard food as the sky", the top level of this Thunderbolt army is either a member of the original grain collection team or a farmer, so they naturally know the importance of grain. Fighting a war is fighting logistics, and the most important material in logistics is food, so in order to prepare for the most important work of the summer harvest, the Perak Army held a joint meeting of the military and the government to discuss and prepare. Unlike the usual brief, the meeting was very long, but in fact there were only two things agreed upon: one was to organize manpower and tools, and the other was to protect the fruits of labor and prevent the Mongolian army from coming to grab food.

It was customary to work during the harvest season, with the exception of the arsenal and the guards, all of the Perak Army's men were required to work. The top leaders of the Thunderbolt Army are even more pioneers, in addition to the older Lu Dezhi and the disabled Li Shuang, even Ouyang Xuan has to participate in the summer harvest. This summer harvest is different from the past, not only to collect grain, but also to plant rice seedlings, and to move supplies from rivers and low-lying areas to higher places, which is a very heavy task. Regarding the new transportation task, Ouyang Xuan said vaguely, only talking about preventing summer floods.

Speeding up the preparation of labor tools and granaries such as harvesting and drying are trivials. It was not a complicated task to assign all the factories, mines, businesses, and soldiers to the various cantonment sites to help with the summer harvest. What gave Li Shuang a headache was the distribution of mules and horses. At present, there are more than 3,000 horses and mules and donkeys in various units of the Perak Army, and according to the decision of the joint military-government meeting, only 2,000 horses will be retained in the army system, and the rest will be allocated to factories, mines, and other production departments. The reason for this is that having more horses does not mean that they are strong, because equestrianism is not something that can be practiced in a day. The army is not a productive sector, and too much occupation will cause a waste of animal power and squeeze economic development. These selected horses, mules and donkeys are urgently needed by various industries, and they naturally want to distribute more, which makes Li Shuang extremely embarrassed.

Recently, the Mongolian army has repeatedly suffered heavy losses from the Thunderbolt army, and according to its habit of retribution, it is inevitable that it will not give up. Moreover, due to the Mongolian army's blind burning, killing, looting, and rampant expropriation, the population in the area occupied by the Mongolian army in Chengdu has fled seriously, and the crops are not only small in area, but also not in good condition, and Liu Heima's is very likely to come to grab grain. The strength of the Xinjin City Naval Army is strong, the Mongolian army does not dare to go north or cross the river at all, and a series of forts in the Changqiu Mountain area have been completed, the Mongolian army wants to cross this hill and then cross the Pujiang River to attack the hinterland of the Perak army, it is obviously unrealistic, the Mongolian army is most likely to attack the direction is still the east of the Guankou Village to the Jiangyuan City line. Therefore, the military and political conference decided to transfer the field brigade back to Chongqing Mansion to garrison in preparation for the Mongol army's attack.