Tens of millions of acres of fertile land in Beihai County were poisoned by alkaline copper carbonate, and all of them were out of production, and there were already signs of famine in March.

Beihai County is a relatively wealthy county in Xianguo, and the people's self-kept grain is harvested from the autumn grain, which can be maintained until the autumn of the next year, and the food can be eaten for three or four months a year, but not all families have sufficient rations.

Especially in the New Year's War, prices soared, the basic civilian resources were rising, the depreciation rate of money exceeded the price of grain, and the surplus grain in the hands of the people depreciated accordingly, unable to exchange for more materials, but had to pay more food, and the food on hand would naturally not be enough to eat.

At the same time, the current commodity economy and economic and financial economy are underdeveloped, and grain also bears more economic and financial functions and other social functions, so after the grain is put into storage, it is not only used to raise soldiers, people's husbands, officials and magnates, craftsmen, female workers, livestock, and even idlers, but also for daily external expenditures to make up for the lack of fiscal money.

Coupled with the loss of private use for feed, winemaking, and storage, it is difficult for the grain collected by taxes to have a surplus in wartime.

At present, the daily grain and grass required for disaster relief in Beihai County should be supported until winter at most, and then the military rations in the ballast warehouses must be transferred from other counties.

Six or seven months before next year's summer harvest, more than one million people in Beihai County will not have enough to eat, the combat strength of the Xian army will be reduced by at least half, and the shortage of one or two million stone grain and grass is only a conservative estimate.

Due to the extinction of production in Beihai County, the economic operation of all grains as the core will come to a standstill, and a lot of grain will be needed indirectly.

This is only the grain and grass needed for disaster relief, not counting the salaries of civil officials and magnates at all levels that have been discontinued, the grain and forage for feeding horses, the tens of thousands of craftsmen, and the rations and salaries of hundreds of thousands of people who have been transported and transported from production.

It is not difficult to understand that Zhao Xun plans to send troops to a decisive battle, he has taken a fancy to the summer and autumn grains of nearly millions of acres in the western county of the capital county occupied by the Black Turban Army.

The discord within the Black Turban Army, as well as the large number of horses captured in Shao Ping's First World War, there is no problem for the Xian Army to forcibly arm 1340,000 infantry who can ride horses in a short period of time, and they will fight with all their might, at least the chances of victory on the books are very great. Now that Ye Xin and Bai Liyan are opposed, Zhao Xun has to re-examine the timing of the decisive battle.

In fact, Ye Xin does not advocate a decisive battle, most of them are afraid of the Divine Power Heavenly King, Shao Ping's first battle has never been the rhythm of the Xian Army, and it is mostly a fluke in luck to be able to win.

Bailiyan (Wei Xian) did not advocate fighting, first, he did not know the depth of the combat readiness of the Black Turban Army, even if the Xian Army won the battle, the Black Turban Army deployed more than 500,000 people in the Xian State after all, and the Liang Army and the Jin Army categorically would not fight for the Xian Army.

Even if the Xian army won the battle and killed him 108,000, the total number of the Black Turban Army was still much larger than that of the Xian army, and it was not necessarily possible to take the capital county and Xijun in one go.

Second, this time the Lei Cheng Jin army released water, Zhao Xun didn't notice it at all, so that the Black Turban Army was able to transfer 50,000 people from the front line of Gubai and Ikeda to the south, otherwise it would be impossible for Zhao Xun to transfer 110,000 people from the front of the Yongxing River.

The Jin army released water at a critical moment, in case the Xian army crossed the river for a decisive battle, and the Jin army stabbed it in the back again, wouldn't it dig its own grave.

"Zhao Shuai, it is necessary to investigate the matter of the Jin army in Leicheng thoroughly, otherwise our army will fight a decisive battle rashly, and there will be no guarantee behind him, please think twice." Baili Yan Road.

"The king has sent a secret letter to inform Ben Shuai of this matter, and the old gentleman did not expect this matter in advance, you recently chose time to go to Chenling to investigate this matter, and Ben Shuai ordered Ye Dadu Governor Ye to go to the Jin army camp to negotiate with Wei Han, and they must give an explanation!"

"The last general obeys!"

Wei Han's rank is two ranks lower than Zhao Xun, Zhao Xun went to Wei Han before, so that the Jin army could send troops to move to the Yongxing River and share the pressure of the Xian army, but Wei Han refused, but Zhao Xun's identity was also lost.

This time, Ye Xin went to see Wei Han with Yu Wei after the big victory, even though he was two ranks lower than Wei Han, but his waist was tougher than Wei Han.

The position in the army is of course important, and the amount of military merit is the capital to serve the public, and you Wei Han also led 30,000 people to cross the river, to kill 20,000 or 30,000 traitors, bring back 60,000 or 70,000 donkeys and horses, and take back 80,000 or 90,000 people.

This time, the Jin army did nothing in Leicheng, openly betraying friendly troops, the Xian army is justifiable, if the Jin army does not give an explanation, once such a scandal comes out, the Jin army will lose face, and even lose prestige.

It was already the middle of the night after leaving Zhao Xun's camp, and Ye Xin followed aside and asked:

"General Wei, do you know who the old gentleman mentioned by Zhao Shuai is?"

"Oh, it's a matter of secrecy, the king has issued a gag order, and it is not allowed to be passed on, so the last general can't say it."

"I see, the governor of Bendu has resigned, and General Wei has rested earlier."

"Well, the Governor walks slowly."

Baili Yan saluted and watched Ye Xin's back disappear into the night.

That night, he rested in the camp for the night, and the next morning, he went to the workshop in the west of the city to inspect the progress of the two months.

Within two months, more than 20,000 skilled craftsmen from Xianguo were mobilized to build hundreds of metallurgy, forging, mold, textile and other workshops, and more than 20 waterwheel workshops and nearly 40 windmill workshops were erected on both sides of the Guantang Canal outside Yongxing City.

Of course, the quality of skilled craftsmen is not complimentary, this is a broad concept. For example, the mason is called a craftsman, so are the weavers of straw shoes, the apprentices are also apprentices, and the female looms are also craftsmen, but all the individuals who are engaged in non-agricultural production products in the current production process are all craftsmen.

Seven waterwheel workshops were built in the city one after another, which were specially used for forging steel, and if it were not for the shortage of coal in Xianguo, the transportation was extremely inconvenient, and the molten iron smelting could not keep up, it would not have produced only three or two thousand steel weapons in two months, at least five times more than that.

Bai Liyan took the crossbow and a sketch drawn by hand two days ago to find the master Lu Gao and negotiate with him on the plan to improve the crossbow.

Lu Gao's Longwu battalion was equipped with 500 crossbows when he left in April, and the cavalry used it just right, the technical requirements were much lower than those of the archers, and it was easy to operate, but the biggest drawback was that it was very troublesome to load.

The loading of the crossbow arrows requires the arrows to be stuck into the rail slots, so that the crossbow arrows will not fall out when the infantry movement is hanging and waiting to be attacked.

The hand crossbow used by the cavalry is extremely bumpy in the process of loading crossbow arrows, and after winding, it is often not easy to load the crossbow arrows in place at one time, so the firing efficiency is not high, especially in the middle distance pursuit, while riding a horse, it is extremely inconvenient to load crossbow arrows at the same time.

Bailiyan wanted to create a new type of crossbow with a modern magazine structure, which would then be automatically fed with each winding.

Lu Gao and Liu Dan are both masters of the Ligong faction and the machine, proficient in all the mainstream mechanical structures at the moment, and the magazine structure provided by Bailiyan is quite novel, which coincides with a kind of repeater that the Ligong faction conceived and developed a hundred years ago.

"Two masters, can the hand crossbow that Wei mentioned by Wei that can be loaded with crossbow arrows from below just by winding?"

"Well, this picture is very exquisite, don't hide it from General Wei, in the early years, my faction also thought about creating a crossbow that can be loaded with arrows on its own, and after several efforts, only ten crossbows were made, and the structure of the general's arrow box is quite wonderful, only relying on the reed can supply arrows from below, and then press the tenon to automatically fall off, can be repeatedly loaded into the arrow box, it is indeed very convenient.

It's just that after this winding, the crossbow arrow is loaded into the crossbow groove, and it still needs to be studied with Senior Brother Liu, I'm afraid it's not a day or two work, and I don't know when the general will need this crossbow? Lu Gao asked.

"Naturally, the sooner the better, but there is no rush at the moment, after the soldiers and horses are reorganized, Wei will personally study this crossbow with you, so as to build it as soon as possible and equip our army."

Bai Liyan only provided drawings for ammunition supply, and the structure of feeding ammunition through the winding was too complicated, and he was helpless, and modern guns either adopted a hand-pulled bolt structure to pull and shoot one shot at a time. Or it can take semi-automatic, fully automatic, and rely on the air conduction locking re-entry spring structure to automatically feed the bomb.

Obviously, it is impossible for the hand crossbow to use the automatic feeding structure of the air conduction locking re-entry spring, so it can only use the measure of hand-pulling the winding and driving the structure of the crossbow machine, imitating the hand-pulled bolt dynamic feeding method, so that the arrow magazine can be fed. This is also much faster than the last string, reloading once, for cavalry combat, one arrow misses, ten arrows can't kill you.

The ten-repeating crossbow developed by the Ligong faction back then is actually a honeycomb launcher with ten strings, each string can be hung with ten crossbow arrows, and it can fire a hundred crossbow arrows at the same time, or ten crossbow arrows in a row, which can also be regarded as a repeating crossbow.

Due to the complexity of the technology, the slow reloading, the expensive manufacturing, the fatigue of the material and the damage caused by fatigue, and the more lethal is that the longer the range of this honeycomb crossbow, the larger the volume, and the need to be preloaded.

The honeycomb crossbow that can be pulled by a horse has a range of only 123 paces, and the honeycomb crossbow with a range of more than 250 paces must be disassembled and transported in two wagons.

Bailiyan relied on the principle of metal reed feeding, which greatly expanded the vision of the children of the masters of the Ligong School such as Lu Gao and Liu Dan.

Carefully putting away the drawings, Lu Gao said:

"General Wei, Lu has something to ask for, I wonder if General Wei can be accommodating?"

"Master Lu, but it doesn't hurt to say it."

"I agree with all of you brothers and sisters that General Wei's innovative cartography method is a precedent for ancient and modern times, a collection of past dynasties, which can be called a classic, and should be passed down to future generations, if it is lost, it would be a pity."

"Oh, it turned out to be for this matter, this matter Wei can also be considered, but at the moment everything is complicated, I don't know if I can delay some time to make a plan, Wei intends to open a school in Yongxing City, teaching medicine, craftsmanship, martial arts, art of war, and even astronomy and geography.

The interests need to be exchanged, and the Ligong faction has obtained at least a dozen precedent technologies including coking, steelmaking, high-temperature furnaces, holding furnaces, cold forging, steel-cladning, high and low temperature quenching, multi-media quenching, carburizing, etc., and it is so easy to take away other technologies.

As the saying goes, if you are poor, you will think about change, and if you can't use the Banggong faction to improve engineering technology and enhance national defense and productivity, you will lose a lot of money.