It's the end of June. In the past two months, the internal affairs of the Perak Army have been progressing in an orderly manner. Judging from the external situation, there are not many waves. Since the defeat of Pengshan Meizhou, the arrogance of the Mongolian army has been greatly reduced, and even the frequency of harassment of the Thunderbolt army by the rangers has been greatly reduced. After Dong Hu handed over Meizhou to the Jiading Army, he also led the special brigade back to Pujiang County, and brought back more than 1,000 captured bandits. The Jiading army once demanded that these bandits be returned to Meizhou City on the grounds that these bandits were the people of Meizhou, but Dong Hu categorically refused. It took the boss's effort to catch these treacherous villains, and to send them back to Meizhou would not be a return to the mountain. In his opinion, the Qiongzhou mine is where they should go.

In his reply, Yu Xing agreed with the Thunderbolt Army to return the city of Meizhou and keep the city of Pengshan. In his opinion, Pengshan City is small and there has just been a plague, and the population has long since fled. After taking over by himself, not only will he not be able to collect taxes, but he will also have to spend a lot of manpower and money to restore his vitality. Moreover, the city is on the only way to the south with the Mongol army, and it will inevitably be attacked continuously. The Perak army occupied Pengshan, just in time to help Jiading and Meizhou block the attack of the Mongol army. As for Ouyang Xuan's right to handle the affairs of Yibo on the Sichuan side, although he wanted to throw out this burden, he didn't want to offend Cao Zhizhou because of this, but just told Ouyang Xuan that he would truthfully report the situation to the top, and the imperial court would decide the matter.

This time, the messenger of Jiading Mansion was a member of the "Firefox", and he brought a secret letter from Su San'er. The letter was about the battle in Diaoyu City, and Yu Xing did not mention this kind of military intelligence to Ouyang Xuan. In the letter, Su San'er told Ouyang Xuan that in May, Lü Wende led his naval army to break through the blockade of the Mongolian general Niulin, break through the floating beam of the Mongolian army in Fuzhou (now Fuling City, Chongqing), and enter the besieged city of Chongqing to comfort the army and people in Sichuan. In June, Lü Wende led a fleet north to try to rescue the Diaoyu City, a hundred miles northwest of Chongqing. At the beginning of the march, the Mongol army was defeated and retreated. Later, Meng Ge ordered the Han army Marquis Shi Tianze to lead the army to resist, Shi took advantage of the favorable terrain occupied by the Mongolian army upstream, and attacked Lü Wende's army downstream, plus the bow and crossbow and platoon artillery bombardment on both sides of the river, Lü's army was not supported, and after losing more than 100 warships, he was forced to retreat to Chongqing.

Although the Mongol army repelled the Song army reinforcements, there was no way to take Diaoyu City. The Mongolian soldiers lived in the north and could not adapt to the hot and humid weather of Hezhou, so that the men and horses fell ill one after another, and the epidemic epidemic in the camp caused the morale to be low. Tens of thousands of Mongol troops stationed under Diaoyu City for several months, although they suffered heavy casualties, but no progress was made, not only several generals were killed in the battle, but even Wang Dechen, the forward general on whom Meng Ge relied very much, was also killed by artillery fire. On the other hand, under the leadership of Wang Jian, the morale of the soldiers and civilians in Diaoyu City was high, and the offensive and defensive advances and retreats were quite orderly, and they even went out of the city several times to attack the camp of the Mongolian army at night, making the Mongolian army unable to sleep at night.

The news of the caravan was mixed. The good news is that Weimao's road to the grassland in the direction of Songzhou has been opened again. The Weimao officials who received the money did not just take the money and do nothing, they first asked the Perak Army miners to blast the rocks on the road of Widow's Cliff, and then organized a large number of laborers to clean up the road, and finally restored the road that had been blocked for months. As soon as the road was opened, the caravans of the Perak army took to the road with large quantities of tea, porcelain, salt, iron products, and other household goods, which were urgently needed in the grasslands north of Songzhou.

In addition to the grasslands north of Songzhou, the Perak caravan also opened up a trade route in the direction of Weizhou with the help of the two states of Weimao. Three hundred miles west from Weizhou, one can reach another grassland in the Tibetan region, which is wider than the grasslands north of Songzhou, and the demand for Han goods is greater, but the road is more difficult. But this is not a problem at all for the caravan, after all, the more difficult the road, the more profitable it is. What's more, in this vast grassland, there are also large livestock such as horses that the Perak army craves. Although the Thunderbolt army was now not short of war horses, it could be resold to the Song army in Chongqing, Luzhou and Xuzhou, and the profits were extremely huge. These Song troops could have purchased war horses from Dali, but since the Mongol army occupied Dali, the source was cut off. As for cattle, mules, donkeys and other large livestock, they are good helpers in industry, mining and agriculture, and can greatly improve production efficiency.

On the trade route to Lizhou and Jiemen Pass, trade between the two places has not yet resumed due to Cao Zhizhou's order to close the border. It's just that Qian Bao has sent someone to get in touch with Ze Yang and other merchants in the Fan District through the small road, and checked the list of needs of both sides, and only needs to wait for the checkpoint to be passed, and a large-scale transaction can be made.

The bad news comes from the Yiren tribe in the southeast of Jiading Province. Because he heard that there were copper and fire mines in the territory of Mahu Ministry, Boss Qian sent a caravan to go. Although he was mentally prepared for the danger of this new trade route, he did not expect such danger. There were more than 100 caravans going to Mahubu, including more than 70 guards in two platoons, and they were not only armed with muskets and grenades, but also light artillery. As soon as they entered the Yi area, the bandits here swarmed in waves, and they were too much to kill. Although a large number of bandits were killed and wounded, they also lost more than 20 people, which can be described as heavy casualties.

After finally arriving at Mahubu, I found that although there are many copper mines and nitrate ores here, there are not many finished products. Although the profit of the rest of the goods is amazing, the trading volume is too small. Because the ammunition was almost exhausted when it came, the caravan did not dare to return the same way, so it had no choice but to detour to Xuzhou and return to Qiongzhou by water. The painful experience of this trip taught the Perak Army that it is almost impossible to do business with the Yi area at the moment, and it is not realistic to open mines there. Copper is a scarce thing, it can be minted into coins, if it can be developed, Yu Xing, who is closer to Yi District, will naturally not let go of this piece of fat.

In addition to Yi District, Boss Qian also sent three caravans in the direction of Dali. These caravans were mainly used to scout commercial routes and prepare for large-scale trades. However, not long after two of the caravans entered the territory of Dali, they returned due to the activities of the Mongol cavalry. After the Mongol army destroyed the Dali Kingdom, although its control over its territory was not strong, its control over the border areas of the Southern Song Dynasty was more strict because of the help of the Dali soldiers. Therefore, only one caravan of the Thunderbolt Army went deep into Dali to find the copper source in Ouyang Xuan's mouth, but now it has been more than two months since departure, and there is no news.

Temporarily out of news, there is also the messenger team that went to Lin'an. After reaching Luzhou by water, they were unable to continue due to the fighting, so they had to go to Banzhou to prepare for a bypass to Hubei. A little over a month ago, the Courier Team had sent someone back with a letter. The letter stated that they had arrived in Banzhou, and that they had visited the Banzhou authorities with an official letter from the Yongkang Army, and that they had been entrenched for several days. It's just that they didn't see the leader Yang Wen, who was fighting the Mongol army under Lu Wende with the Banzhou soldiers at that time, and it was the young lord Yang Bangxian who met them.

Yang Bangxian also heard about the deeds of the Perak Army, and after seeing the power of the firearms carried by the messenger team, he also became interested in firearms. He was even more surprised to hear that the power of the Thunderbolt artillery could cause the earth to collapse, and immediately decided to send a caravan to Chongqing Mansion to negotiate the purchase. The messenger team, led by the Yang guide, continued to go in the direction of Lin'an.