Lao Guo wants to dispel the concerns of the surrendered horse thieves by treating them equally, so that they can believe in the imperial court and believe that as long as they reform themselves, they can get the opportunity to be a new person.

The same time limit, the same barbecue horse meat breakfast, the Tang soldiers and the surrendered horse thieves eat in different moods, after all, the Tang soldiers won the battle, and their hearts are very happy, and many of the horse thieves are injured, no one can predict what life will be like after surrendering, in addition, the horse meat that everyone is eating is the horse thieves' former horses, and they are also the comrades of the horse thieves.

In this battle, the horse thieves suffered quite a lot of casualties, and at the same time, the horses ridden by the horse thieves suffered greater losses, more than 500 good war horses, less than 200 intact, even if the lightly injured horses were added, they were only in their early 200s, and the remaining more than 300 horses were seriously injured and killed, and for horses, as long as the leg injuries were serious, then, it was basically wasted, and there was no other use except for making horse meat for consumption.

A good adult horse can have at least a few hundred catties of meat, five or six hundred catties are normal, even if it is cooked and roasted, it should have two or three hundred catties, and there are only more than two hundred horse thieves who surrendered, one horse is enough to make their breakfast, there are many officers and soldiers, that is, three or five horses, and the horse thieves lost more than three hundred horses this time, and the amount that can be consumed in this meal is very small, and there are still a large number of horse corpses left.

However, such a good horse meat, it must not be wasted, not a single bit can be left, it must be packed and taken away, Lao Guo has 8,000 soldiers, if it is used to improve the food for these soldiers, ten horses are consumed every day, so that each soldier can eat half a catty of horse meat, which is enough for the soldiers to consume for more than a month.

But the anti-corrosion technology must be in place, although it is relatively cold weather at the moment, it is difficult to keep fresh horse meat for too long, if it spoils, it is easy to eat bad stomach.

Salting or drying is a good preservative, so that it can be maintained for at least several months, although pickled products are not good for the body, but people in this era do not know about this matter, no one will think that pickled products are not good for the body, this seems to be the most common means of preserving videos.

The horse thieves who surrender will not be idle, and they must be given labor work, and the work consumes a lot of physical strength, and they must eat meat, and this horse meat can also be divided into a part of these horse thieves, so that they can work harder.

The time for two sticks of incense is still relatively abundant, which allows officers and soldiers and surrendered horse thieves to eat roast horse meat more calmly, and many piles of bonfires are lit, a bonfire can meet the needs of a dozen people, and dozens of bonfires can meet the needs of everyone.

Eating while barbecue, this feeling is still quite comfortable, these horse thieves usually eat and drink like this, but they eat basically mutton, almost never eat horse meat, Xiazhou is close to the grassland, mutton is naturally more common, the nomads on the grassland have excess cattle and sheep, they will choose to sell to merchants, and merchants buy nomadic cattle and sheep, naturally first to transport to Xiazhou, and then, through Xiazhou to the capital and other places, there are also some nomadic people who raise cattle and sheep, will drive their cattle and sheep to Xiazhou City to sell, This can be more rewarded, but sometimes the losses are even greater because of horse thieves on the road.

The surrendered horse thieves are all eating barbecue, and the officers and soldiers need to eat in batches, at least many soldiers must be on duty, and someone must be responsible for the duty outside the city and the search inside the city, so as not to escape from the net, or there is a very low probability of horse thieves raiding here.

Because he slept too late last night, Li An also got up late, and only got up after the horse thieves and officers and soldiers had eaten almost enough, and he was woken up by the smell of fragrant horse meat.

"Fragrant, so fragrant!"

Li An searched for the taste, walked outside the tent, and saw the guards who were roasting horse meat to eat.

"Li Shilang."

The guards hurriedly greeted each other.

"What a delicious meal! This smell is horse meat, good horse meat. ”

Li An said, and also picked up the dagger to cut the fresh flesh on the horse's corpse.

Then squatting and eating the meat with the soldiers.

When I set off, I didn't bring much cooking utensils, so it was a little difficult to make complex dishes, but horse meat is really delicious, just eat horse meat.

As soon as Li An squatted down, a soldier immediately brought a small bench to Li An, and the accompanying man directly sent all the seasonings over.

Horse meat is roasted directly on the bonfire, it is easy to bake, and the outside is baked, and the inside may not be cooked, so that the mushy and raw barbecue meat, the taste is naturally poor, and by brushing a layer of oil on the horse meat, the horse meat can be heated more evenly when grilling, so that the outer layer of meat is not easy to be roasted, and the inner layer of meat is also easier to cook, so that the horse meat is more delicious, of course, in addition to the oil, there are many seasonings that can increase the taste, such as peppers from the Americas, Datang's local pepper, as well as some liquid condiments, etc., the addition of these seasonings will inevitably make the horse meat more delicious.

Ang Lee is very skillful in using these spices to make food, while the soldiers around him watch quietly, the horse meat in their hands and the horse meat roasted by Ang Lee, you can feel the difference when you smell it.

"Come, these are all for you, roast meat with these spices, it will taste better."

After Li An roasted the meat, he naturally had to send it to Li Hanlu, and the excess seasoning was given to the guards.

After Li had eaten and drunk enough, Li An and all the horses under his command left the hidden place and came to the west gate of the old Baicheng to join Lao Guo's soldiers and horses.

At this time, the soldiers under Lao Guo's command were urging the surrendered horse thieves to work, asking them to go to the city to clean up the corpses of the dead horse thieves, and pull all these corpses outside the city to bury them to avoid a terrible plague.

After the horse thieves have eaten and drunk enough, there is no reason not to work, they are divided into more than a dozen groups, each group of a dozen horse thieves, so that they can be more efficient when working, there are no vehicles, the transportation of horse thieves mainly depends on horses, that is, the uninjured horses that capture horse thieves, a horse can drag at least two horse thief corpses at a time, and the horse thief soldiers themselves can also transport the horse thief corpse, but two people are required to be responsible for transporting a corpse.

These jobs could have been done by officers and soldiers, but after all, these were dirty, tiring, and disgusting jobs, so it was naturally more appropriate to hand them over to the horse thieves who had just surrendered, so as to sharpen the temperament of the horse thieves and facilitate the transformation of the horse thieves into qualified people.

"Hurry up, everyone, finish your work early and rest early."

A troop of horse thieves needs to be guarded by five or six soldiers to prevent them from stealing and slipping, or even more trouble if they run away, and the soldiers don't work, they just watch the horse thieves who work.

"Lao Guo, it's all done!"

Ang Lee walked over to say hello.

"Haha! Last night, a total of 222 horse thieves were captured, and the annihilated horse thieves have not yet been counted, and now the corpses are being moved, and we will know when the transportation is finished. ”

Lao Guo said happily.

The result of this battle was not small, and he seemed very excited, even if it was just a sip of soup, his credit was not small.

"Oh, two hundred and twenty-two, all two! What a coincidence! ”

Ang Lee said with a smile.

"I tried these surrendered guys last night, and they got the location of more than a dozen horse thieves' nests at once, and the sky black manpower is also limited, so for the time being, only two hundred elites were sent to the main horse thief lair, and now they have occupied it, and they have captured a lot!"

Lao Guo said excitedly, and took out the map he had drawn.

This map is Lao Guo through the trial of horse thieves, from the mouth of the horse thieves after repeated verification, with his own abstract thinking to draw the map, although the accuracy is not very high, but not much worse, just with this map, you can find out all the nests of horse thieves, and this map has been copied more than a dozen, in order to hand over to the commanders under their command, let them divide their troops to solve these scattered nests.

"Old fellow, there are quite a few nests of horse thieves! There are more than a dozen. ”

Ang Lee looked at the map and spoke.

"These are only the main nests, the nests where three or five people, seven or eight people live temporarily, are not counted, if you count these, there are hundreds of nests."

Lao Guo said.

The so-called nest of three or five people, in fact, is the observation post near the intersection, horse thieves in order to resist the encirclement and suppression of officers and soldiers, there must be a complete set of intelligence system, around the nest in the mountains, there must be a large number of spies, these spies will be hidden in the intersection with a good field of vision, in order to facilitate the view of the surrounding every move, and if you are tired, there must be a place to rest, several people take turns to monitor the surrounding situation, so, the location of these monitoring points must have a house that can rest and eat, these are also small nests!

The surrendered horse thieves didn't work very hard, but because of their large numbers, the progress of cleaning up the corpses was still very fast, and the corpses that were already cold were neatly placed on the edge of the pit.

While counting the number of people, the officers and soldiers threw the corpses of the horse thieves into a large pit, and after a large pit was filled with 100 people, the officers and soldiers drove thirty horse thieves to be responsible for burying the large pit.

A large pit has just been buried, and a large pit next to it is also full, and the horse thieves continue to be responsible for burying it, there are four such large pits, but there are not so many corpses of horse thieves, but it is always right to prepare more.

After the third pit was buried, there were not many remaining horse thieves, only thirty-seven when counted, that is to say, the number of horse thieves who were annihilated was three hundred and thirty-seven, and two hundred and twenty-two surrendered, a total of five hundred and fifty-nine enemies were destroyed, and another fifty or sixty escaped.

After all the horse thieves were buried, the tired horse thieves had a chance to rest, and they sat on the ground, looking at the sky in a sluggish spirit, and some of them looked around, as if they were looking for a way out, but it was obviously impossible to escape.

At this moment, there was a heavy sound of horses' hooves in the distance, and two thousand cavalry arrived, at this time, Lao Guo had already arranged it last night, with these reinforced soldiers and horses, he could attack everywhere and destroy all the horse thieves' nests.

After the officers and soldiers arrived, Lao Guo first distributed the drawings to them, and asked them to divide the troops to take down the nest of these horse thieves according to the annotation of the drawings, two thousand soldiers and horses are divided into five groups, a group of four hundred cavalry, each group is responsible for two or three nests, and the task will be completed in one day.

After arranging two thousand soldiers and horses, Lao Guo walked to Li An's side and said: "Li Shilang, let's go to the horse thief's main lair to have a look, listen to the report of the subordinates, there is a big box found there, there are many letters in it, it seems that it should be the correspondence between the leader of the horse thieves and the internal officials, maybe there are letters from Xia Prefecture officials, these letters are the best evidence of the crime, I must go there in person." ”

Li An nodded and said, "That's right, these letters are very important, but the less people know about this matter, the better, if you startle the snake, it will be troublesome." ”

It is naturally a good thing to be able to obtain these correspondence, but if the court officials who have colluded with the horse thieves know that these letters have fallen into the hands of Lao Guo, they will definitely make preparations in advance, which will cause great trouble in removing these moths, and may even be bitten back.

This kind of thing has not happened in history, and it happens very frequently, and in later film and television dramas, such plots appear even more frequently.

For example, an upright official obtains evidence that a corrupt official has done evil, but this matter is known to the corrupt official in advance, so the corrupt official unites his party and higher officials to design and frame the corrupt official, so that the corrupt official enters the prison inexplicably, or sends evil forces to arrest the family of the corrupt official, so as to threaten the corrupt official, so that the clean official is in a dilemma, and falls into a bad situation of loyalty and filial piety.

Lao Guo's official position is not big, and it is not small, but there are more officials with official positions than Lao Guo, and there are more favored ministers than Lao Guo, if some favored ministers in the imperial court really want to rectify Lao Guo, it can also be done, whether the officials who may exist in Xiazhou and collude with horse thieves have a court background, whether there is a big official backstage in the capital, collusion with horse thieves, whether there is an instruction of these big people, the possibility of these situations seems to be unlikely, but it cannot be completely ruled out, and once such a thing occurs, Lao Guo will be more dangerous, Therefore, it is better not to leak this news.