As the most important war resource in the era of cold weapons, the role of war horses cannot be overstated, even in the Thunderbolt Army, its status is only ranked after firearms. The continuation of the Song-Mongolian War basically depleted the war horses of the Song army, and the war horses of the Mongolian army were also consumed a lot. The civil war between Kublai Khan and Ali Buge was a large-scale cavalry battle, and the loss of war horses was even greater, so that the cavalry under Kublai Khan, whose territory was dominated by the Han land in Monan, also had a shortage of war horses. Under these circumstances, the Mongol army had stricter control over the horses in the occupied Fan area and Dali, making it more difficult to trade horses. It's just that as long as there is enough profit, there are still people in these two places who risk killing their heads and stealing their homes to sell war horses to the Thunderbolt army, but the price is extremely high, and the quantity is a drop in the bucket.

Faced with the embarrassing situation of lack of war horses, Ouyang Xuan was also anxious. He understood that if it was only defensive, the current Thunderbolt army would be more than enough, but to defeat the Mongol army in the upcoming offensive battle, it would largely depend on the duel between the cavalry of the two sides. Even with their superior firepower, the Thunderbolt infantry would still be passive under the attack of highly mobile cavalry, while the navy, despite its overwhelming advantage, was confined to the river and could not penetrate deep inland. After inspecting the defense line along the river, he proposed at the joint meeting of the Perak army that war horses should be purchased at any cost, which was unanimously supported by the military, but made Li Shuang and other government affairs personnel sad faces. Although there is no shortage of money to buy horses at the moment, there is no market for it. It is said that the horses and other large livestock of the Perak Army are carefully cared for, and they are served with good food and drink, for fear of illness or injury.

As we entered June, the Thunderbolts' efforts to purchase horses paid off. The first breakthrough was made in the direction of the two states of Weimao, to be precise, in the grasslands north of Songzhou. After Ouyang Xuan signed the order to agree to attack, Shi Zhongshu immediately led his army to Songzhou and launched an attack on the Mongolian army according to the predetermined battle plan. Led by local guides, the Perak troops bypassed the trail to the valley where the Mongols were stationed north of Songzhou and launched a surprise attack by night. Under the superior strength and firearms of the Perak army, the 400 Mongol soldiers in the valley were either killed or captured, and only a few escaped. Most of the mounts of these Mongol soldiers were captured by the Thunderbolts, with the exception of a few who were killed. Before the battle, Shi Zhongshu told his soldiers that the Mongol soldiers could escape, but the horses must not escape.

The raid on the Mongol army in Songzhou was quite troublesome. According to the plan, the Perak soldiers disguised as merchants successfully captured the city gate, but the Fan soldiers who were supposed to capture the inner fort of the Mongol army in the city failed. These soldiers failed to attack the inner fort at night, but were chased by the Mongol soldiers in the city, killing and wounding dozens of people, and the rest fled in all directions. You must know that there are 500 soldiers in Songzhou City, which is five times the number of Mongolian troops in the city. If it weren't for the fact that the alleys in the city were not conducive to the galloping of cavalry, if it weren't for the fact that the Mongol army was not good at night fighting, if it weren't for the thunderbolt army that rushed in and repelled the Mongol army with firearms, God knows if these soldiers would have been slaughtered. These Mongols were surrounded in the inner fort and put up a stubborn resistance, inflicting more than 20 casualties on the Perak army. Enraged, the Thunderbolts bombarded the inner fort with artillery and blasted the inner fort with a large amount of gunpowder, which broke the Mongol army's will to resist and forced it to surrender. Seeing that his brothers had suffered heavy casualties, and seeing that many horses had died, Shi Zhongshu was angry and ordered the captives to cut off their fingers and index fingers, and sell them all to the steppe tribes as slaves.

In addition to the more than 400 war horses captured, the capture of Songzhou also allowed the Thunderbolt army to purchase a large number of war horses. The grassland north of Songzhou is vast, bordering the Hehuang Valley to the north and even the Kunlun Mountains to the west, although this Tibetan homeland has been under Mongol rule, but because the territory is very vast, the rule of the Mongol army here is only symbolic, and many tribes are driven by interests to secretly sell horses to the Thunderbolt army. For the steppe tribes, politics was illusory, survival was the first priority, and the Thunderbolts had the much-needed industrial goods such as tea, grain, and ironware. Previously, because the Mongolian army was stuck in the choke point of Songzhou, the two sides had to smuggle from remote and dangerous paths, and the transaction volume was very limited. After the Thunderbolts occupied Songzhou, the tribes came to trade after hearing the news, so that the Thunderbolt caravans not only purchased nearly a thousand horses, but also made a lot of profits through trade.

There is also progress in the purchase of horses from the direction of Dali. Since the Thunderbolt Army withdrew management and technical personnel from the Dongchuan County Copper Mine and took away the core equipment and materials, the copper mining in Dongchuan County has come to a standstill, which has made the Wuman tribe who previously wanted to monopolize the interests of the copper mine dumbfounded. They found that they could not mine without the Thunderbolts, and even if they were forced to start work, the yield would not be enough to cover the cost. The Wuman tribe already had a pro-Mongolian faction and a pro-Banzhou faction, and when the two factions were arguing, several tribal leaders of the pro-Mongolian faction happened to die at this time. As a result, the pro-Banju faction, which advocated re-cooperating with the Thunderbolts, gained the upper hand again.

It's just that it's easy to tear up the treaty, but it's hard to restart it. Yang Wen proposed to the representatives sent by the Wuman tribe to Banzhou that in order to re-cooperate in the development of copper mines, it was necessary to show sincerity - to sell 500 war horses to the Thunderbolt army. Only dwarf horses in Dongchuan County do not produce war horses at all, and there are war horses to sell in the Wuman tribe? Yang Wen also asked the Wuman tribe to help smuggle war horses. This war horse belongs to controlled materials, and if you don't do it, you will lose your head, where is it easy to trade? It's just that the profits from copper mining in the past few months have made the Wuban leader taste the sweetness, and he is willing to give up. In the face of huge profits, they had to agree to secretly help smuggle horses. With the help of the Wuman tribes, especially the new annexed army, the Nanyang Company acquired more than 400 war horses in just two months, and the total number of war horses purchased in the early stage reached more than 700. Although the number of these Dali horses is not as good as that of the arrow furnace and the direction of Songzhou, the quality of the war horses is much higher.

As one of the most loyal allies of the Thunderbolt Army, Ze Yan of the Arrow Furnace has been sparing no effort to help buy large livestock, including war horses, so much so that the price of livestock in the surrounding area has been raised a lot. Supposedly, the increase in prices is a good thing for herders, but it has caused dissatisfaction and jealousy among many tribal leaders. On the one hand, when the price was high, they could not annex the livestock and pastures of ordinary herders at a low price, and on the other hand, the growing power of the archery furnace also caused them to panic. At the beginning of May, seven of these tribes united and organized more than 2,000 people to attack the arrow furnace, but they were ambushed by Zelang and the armed caravan of the Perak army, and were surrounded in a valley and could not retreat, and after running out of ammunition and food, all of them were taken prisoner, and more than 700 horses also fell into the hands of the Perak army. Zelang took advantage of the situation to counterattack and annex these seven tribes, and in order to repay the support of the armed caravan of the Perak Army, Zelang forcibly recruited 300 war horses from these seven tribes, and handed over 1,000 to the caravan. Of course, the Thunderbolt army did not take these war horses in vain, but brought a lot of food, tea, iron tools and other materials. Ze Hao needed these supplies to win the hearts and minds of the newly annexed tribes.

After unremitting efforts, by the end of June, the Thunderbolts had more than 8,000 horses. It's just that the batch of war horses purchased by Dali State was not transported to western Sichuan, but still parked on the bank of the Chishui River in Banzhou. Because Liu Cheng openly surrendered, Luzhou and Xuzhou under his rule have become two mountains on the road from Banzhou to western Sichuan.