130 Tranquility before the storm

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The Cai family members on the seats on both sides of the Cai family's lobby looked at Cai Tianyuan's appearance of eating people at this time, and who dared to speak there, all of them drooped their heads and made no sound.

"This evil bandit surnamed Li must be eradicated as soon as possible, third brother, how are you contacting Liu Qianhu of Suiyang Health Center? Let them come and exterminate this evil bandit as soon as possible, we will feed him thousands of taels of silver, but it will not be in vain. ”

Cai Tianyuan looked at Cai Xuanguang on the seat on one side and said in a cold tone.

"Yes, father, don't worry, I have already discussed with Liu Qianhu, now that the weather is gradually getting warmer, winter is about to pass, Liu Qianhu has promised to bring troops to suppress the bandits next month."

Cai Xuanguang stood up and replied respectfully.

"Well, since Liu Qianhu is about to bring troops over, we must also be ready here, boss, you will let the account office pay more money next month, after Liu Qianhu brings the troops here, look for good wine and good meat, who is like us now!"

"Yes, father, I know." A middle-aged man in his early thirties, led by the left, agreed.

"Father, what are we going to do in those coal and iron mines in the county? Now that the bandits are gone, do you want to find miners to start work again, after all, if you don't delay a day, you will lose a lot of silver! ”

The housekeeper of the Cai family, who was standing on Cai Tianyuan's side, suggested to Cai Tianyuan at this time.

"Hmph, you still plan to continue to send people to mine, and then when you finish digging, you will be robbed by those bandits, before the bandits surnamed Li are completely eliminated, all the coal and iron mines outside our county will be temporarily closed."

Cai Tianyuan snorted coldly, said angrily, and then showed a painful look on his face, I am afraid that these dozen or so coal and iron mines will be suspended for at least a month, how much silver will he have to lose!

All this is because of this group of bandits surnamed Li, if it weren't for him, their Cai family would have lost so many manpower and treasures one after another! This group of bandits surnamed Li must not be spared.

"Third child, about the news that Zhao Jie's officers and soldiers were brutally slaughtered by bandits, can you go to the prefect of Kaifeng to report it secretly? This matter has to be explained to the prefect.

Zhao Jie's group of officers and soldiers was ambushed by bandits, and it had nothing to do with our Cai family, it was the bandits who were so frustrated that they even dared to ambush the officers and soldiers of the imperial court. ”

Before, Zhao Jie, one hundred and thirty daring court officers and soldiers, was ambushed in the south of Yongcheng County, and all of them were killed and their heads were cut off, which really scared Cai Tianyuan.

Of course, the Cai family knew that this group of officers and soldiers was a subordinate of the Kaifeng prefect, and this time was not the time to curry favor with the Kaifeng prefect, so the Cai family sent a fast horse as soon as possible to inform the Kaifeng prefect Yin Tianxing of the news with the government first.

"Yes, the child has already sent a fast horse to Kaifeng to inform the prefect, there is no news yet."

"Well, from now on, I announce that in the next six months, the main task of our Cai family is to completely exterminate this evil bandit surnamed Li."

Cai Tianyuan stood up and gritted his teeth and said, he really hated Li Zixiao, a bandit, and made their Cai family lose so much silver, but as long as they can eradicate this big trouble, everything is worth it.

……………………………………………………

In the next half month, Li Zixiao's men and horses crisscrossed the entire territory of Yongcheng County, and no one dared to stop them, and all the coal and iron mines of the poor Cai family were looted.

What is surprising is that the Cai family was silent, allowing all the mines outside their county to be looted, and did not send anyone to the mine to start work, as if they had confessed.

At the same time, a large number of Liujia coal and iron mines were also attacked, which made the Liu family angry, and soon as the Cai family took the initiative to contact the Liu family, the two families soon reached the same front to deal with the bandits.

They are raising supplies, and they are waiting for Liu Qianhu from the Suiyang Guard Station to bring troops over, and they can completely clear out this evil bandit.

And in the past half a month, Li Zixiao has been staying in the cottage to rectify the soldiers and horses, training soldiers, and they also know that there will be a big war soon.

Whether it is the Cai family or they ambush and kill the group of officers and soldiers, the government will no longer sit idly by and watch him as a bandit, it is estimated that after the beginning of spring, the officers and soldiers encircled and suppressed by the government will come.

So since this period of time, Li Zixiao has not asked Li Zixiao to recruit homeless people, but has devoted himself to training the recruits who have just joined the cottage, so that they can integrate into the cottage as soon as possible and form combat effectiveness.

Li Zixiao still has a good idea of his control ability at this time, and now he has nearly 600 subordinates, which is far beyond the limit of the strength that he and his henchmen can control.

If there are more people, I am afraid that he will not be able to effectively control these subordinates, so he needs to spare some time to integrate these men and horses under his command.

If a person has a large number of soldiers, but he cannot effectively control these people, then no matter how many people there are, it will be in vain, and he can only be scattered into a mess, and he will not be able to exert any combat effectiveness at all.

Li Zixiao needs time to integrate the structure of his team, promote a group of veterans who follow him, serve as grassroots officers and soldiers, and strengthen his control over the people under him.

What's more, there are so many people in the cottage now, and the food consumption of people eating horses and chewing every day is a big number.

Although there is still a lot of grain storage in the cottage, it can't stand him from squandering it so much, and at this time, these nearly 600 people have reached the limit that their cottage can bear!

Lancers are the easiest to train, they don't need to be too individual, but rather focus on teamwork, repeating and advancing in formation, changing formations, and stabbing accurately.

The training of sword and shield soldiers is more complicated, but because Li Zixiao only emphasizes team combat, he does not have high requirements for individual martial arts, and more requirements are for mutual cover and cooperation.

Therefore, the training of these sword and shield soldiers is simpler, and it is a few of the simplest and most effective slashing actions over and over again, repeating one action hundreds or thousands of times a day.

In this way, even if these people are pigs, they can form instinctive reflexes with such repeated practice, let alone people.

Therefore, compared to the training of pikemen, although the training effect of their sword and shield soldiers is slower, there is no need to worry too much about the speed of progress! /

At this time, the entire White Snake Village has become a large training ground, and the shouting and killing have not stopped all day long, and the shouting and scolding of the officers are even more mixed with it.

After having the reward and punishment measures for military training, the upsurge of military training in the cottage has been higher and higher, and Li Zixiao has tried every means to introduce various incentive measures to mobilize the enthusiasm of his subordinates for military training.

At the same time, in addition to training soldiers, Li Zixiao also led a group of heavy soldiers to reinforce the wall of the cottage again, making it taller and stronger.

A few arrow towers were built in several dangerous places to monitor the movement outside the mountain, because according to Li Zixiao's prediction, they would soon win a vicious battle in the cottage, which would be a battle whether they could completely gain a foothold in Yongcheng County.

As Zhou Dazhu, Wei Hong and Liu Chong led the team to sweep all the mines outside Caijia County and returned to the cottage, Li Zixiao handed over the training to them, but he turned his attention to the manufacture of cottage weapons.

Because of the rapid expansion of the troops under his command, the shortage of weapons became more and more serious, except for the three teams of soldiers who were all equipped with spears, broadswords and shields at this time, the rest of the heavy soldiers did not have enough weapons for them at all.

Now most of those recruits are still training with bamboo spears cut from bamboo, you can't let them go to the battlefield and kill the enemy with those bamboo guns.

Therefore, it is imperative for Li Zixiao to solve the problem of weapons in hand for his subordinates as soon as possible.

After Li Zixiao handed over the training to Zhou Dazhu and them, he went to several blacksmith shops in the cottage to inspect the blacksmiths' construction of weapons.

As for the iron materials for building weapons, the last thing they have on hand now is coal, and as for the iron materials, this time they sold iron ore at a low price and set up a merchant who deals in iron materials in this area in Xiayi County.

As a result, a lot of iron materials were bought at high prices from this merchant channel, although the Ming government's system of controlling iron materials was very strict.

But with the collapse of the system in various places at the end of the Ming Dynasty, those black-hearted businessmen who only wanted to make money did not dare to do things without them.

Reselling iron is so profitable, of course they won't let go of such a lucrative business, so as long as Li Zixiao can afford it, he can still buy iron if he wants to!

There will be some impurities such as sulfur in the coal, which will seep into the iron when smelting molten iron, which will of course affect the quality of the weapon to a certain extent.

On the contrary, the use of charcoal will be less of these impurities, and the quality of the weapons will naturally be much better.

However, Li Zixiao is not good at iron-making, this kind of thing can only be left to these insiders to do, he just came to check it out.

After this period of fighting, Li Zixiao found that there were some problems with the gun head they were using at the moment.

That is, when the head of the spear pierces the human body or something solid, the tip of the spear they use is often bent or broken, which greatly affects the effectiveness of their battle.

At the same time, the lethality of these ordinary gun heads is still not satisfactory to Li Zixiao, these ordinary gun heads are flat, piercing into the human body, if it is not a stabbing point, after pulling it out, the wound is in the shape of a long strip, which is convenient for the healing of the wound.

This reminded Li Zixiao of a very vicious weapon in later generations - the Mitsubishi Army Thorn.

After thinking about it for a while, Li Zixiao used a hardwood and a sharp dagger to cut a model similar to the Mitsubishi military thorn and showed it to several blacksmiths to see.

In fact, the long thorns in Li Zixiao's hand that he used to throw are actually very similar to a miniature version of the Mitsubishi Army Thorns, and he also opened a simple blood groove on them, but these small long thorns are much simpler to make.

"Can you make a new head based on the type of tip I've sharpened?" Li Zixiao cut out a spear head similar to a Mitsubishi military thorn, handed it to several blacksmiths, and then asked.

These blacksmiths came over to watch, and nodded one after another: "If you go back to the big boss, it should be no problem for the small ones to make such a spear."

It's just that this kind of gun head takes some man-hours compared to ordinary gun heads, like ordinary gun heads, our shop can make two or three per person a day, but to make such a triangular gun head, I'm afraid we can make one per person a day is a little reluctant. ”

The spear head that Li Zixiao cut out is a three-edged thorn, about a foot long, and there is a blood groove between each two edges.

At the end of the tip, there are also two raised winglets, which can effectively prevent the tip from penetrating too deep into the body and making it difficult to pull out.

Such a three-edged thorn is loaded with the barrel of a spear and turned into a long spear, which can be held in the hand as a short blade without being mounted on the spear, which is really a sharp weapon for killing.

After the triangular thorn penetrates the human body, the wound caused by it is similar to a laceration, and the wound is triangular or square, which is difficult to stop bleeding.

According to Li Zixiao's idea, in the future, he will not only equip pikemen with this three-edged spearhead, but also the sword and shield soldiers and musketeers with this three-edged military thorn.

After all, the assassination action is faster than the chopping action, walking in a straight line, and the speed will be faster, and the speed of fighting with the enemy on the battlefield can often determine the life and death of the enemy in an instant.

And the lethality of the direct stab is obviously much greater than that of the slash, so Li Zixiao thought in his heart that if he had his own stable territory in the future, he would build more of this kind of three-edged military thorn and let his subordinates equip it.

You must know that with the medical level of this era, as well as the body's own resistance, as long as you take such a three-edged military stab, even if you don't hit the vital point of the body, it will cause a lot of bleeding from the wound, and it is estimated that the possibility of the injured enemy surviving is extremely small.

"Can you only build one per person per day? It's really too slow, so let's do your best to build those ordinary guns first, and then you can build those new guns after the number of builds is enough for our copycat recruits.

When building, try to make the quenching process a little better, make the gun head harder, and even if it is a little slower, it doesn't hurt, you just have to rest assured that it will be! ”

After Li Zixiao pondered for a while, he instructed a few blacksmiths. Several blacksmiths hurriedly bowed down one after another to receive the order, and began to prepare for the start of work.

Li Zixiao didn't rush to let these blacksmiths build a three-edged spearhead, after all, he heard that the speed of creating this new spearhead was too slow, and nearly half of his current staff did not have weapons to use.

He can't wait for the officers and soldiers to come over to encircle and suppress his cottage, his subordinates still have weapons to use, although the three-edged gun head is good, but now Li Zixiao's demand for the quantity of weapons is greater than the quality.

After Li Zixiao inspected the blacksmith shop, he rushed to Li Langzhong's pharmacy, and it was obvious that Li Zixiao was very concerned about the medical level of the cottage.

Especially after they attacked Lin Jiabao this time, more than a dozen wounded soldiers appeared under him, and these wounded soldiers had all recovered from their injuries after Li Langzhong's treatment in the past half a month.

These veterans who have been injured and seen blood are all treasures, these veterans will become the core of the combat power of his team, and all Li Zixiao attaches great importance to the medical team in charge of Li Langzhong.