More than two months have passed in a flash, and news has continued to come back from the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and since late October, the migrated eastern people have continued to enter Sichuan through Kuimen. The scale of this relocation is extremely large, the Ming army has never had this kind of experience of large-scale migration, and there are many problems on the way to the migration, thanks to Li Xinghan and Ren Tang, a few of them are not afraid of tigers, dare to think and dare to do. The Ming army regarded these people who were willing to come to Sichuan as future companions rather than slaves, and attached great importance to food and accommodation along the way. Deng Ming also did not relocate such a large number of people at one time, so he could only let the army take care of it themselves. Just remember to carefully record the problems that arise, the measures that come up with on the fly, and the results.

During this time, Deng Ming has been working on new student textbooks. In his opinion, the most important basic education in addition to language is algebra, geometry and logic. Deng Ming had made up some in the past, but this time, while he had time, he tried to recall some knowledge he had read and seen in the past every day.

At the end of August, the army sent several Britons from Chongming Island. These people were all adventurers from the East, and although they claimed to be merchants, Deng Ming felt that they were actually hooligans who took risks. There was a big difference between the English of this era and what Deng Ming had learned, and Deng Ming, who was only a little fur, had no ability to communicate in foreign languages with these Englishmen, but this did not prevent Deng Ming from calling the algebraic formulas, logical syllogisms, and Arabic numerals he remembered as translations. Deng Ming claimed that these things were brought by the Englishmen and translated from their books—although Deng Ming suspected that the British businessmen were well educated, and that they might all be semi-literate people with no proper education.

The formulas that Deng Ming could recall were all fragmentary, and he was not sure whether they were correct or not. If these things were signed with his name, they would most likely be worshiped by many people, but if they were sent by a few Britons of unknown origin, they would undoubtedly be questioned, and the mistakes would be easier to single out, and it would not make Deng Ming blush. However, when piecing together these textbooks, Deng Ming also asked people to find all the books and materials on the three disciplines of algebra, geometry and logic.

Although Deng Ming was compiling textbooks for District 51, he often lived in Xuzhou, because in addition to writing textbooks, he also needed to help jewelry stores design jewelry patterns that could be processed and sold to the Qing army in Chongqing. Deng Ming theoretically held full power in western Sichuan, but Deng Ming had not been involved in too much government and military affairs in the past two months; the prefects and yamen in Chengdu and Xuzhou had adapted to the work mode in which Deng Ming was not in front of him, and the bank managed by Xiong Lan, the tax bureau managed by Qin Xiucai, and the college taught by Chen Zuocai had been operating independently and normally without Deng Ming's interference for a long time.

……

There were now more than 30,000 Qing troops in Chongqing, and Li Guoying, the governor of Sichuan and Shaanxi, was not in the city at this time. And after learning that the defense of Chongqing was finally won, Beijing was greatly relieved, and it was regarded as putting the hanging heart back in its stomach. Soon, Beijing issued an edict to the whole world to inform the whole world that the Qing army had won a great victory in Chongqing, and at the same time began to dispatch troops to prepare to suppress the Yu Qi uprising in Shandong -- after Yu Qi issued a call, the responders were all over the Jiaodong Peninsula, and for a time the military and political officials in Shandong were overwhelmed and kept asking Beijing for help. Those who responded to the seven rebels attacked Fuxian and fought fiercely with the Qing army for months. However, Yu Qi, the initiator, took the main force of his subordinates to entrench in his hometown, neither attacking the surrounding cities, nor coming out to lead the rebel army in Shandong.

The Qing army in Shandong judged that although Yu Qi called for an uprising, he himself still hoped to make the Qing court aware of his appeal as he did in the early years of Shunzhi, and then pardon and recruit him. However, unlike the five years of Shunzhi, the political and military pressure faced by the Qing court now is far less than when it first entered the customs. Beijing instructed the Jinan government to first make every effort to suppress the rebels outside Yuqi, while at the same time raising food and raising troops. The Qing court never considered recruiting Qi again, and it was only because of the fierce battle in Chongqing that it did not go all out to exterminate him. If Li Guoying's entire army is destroyed, then there is a high probability that the camp will return to Guanzhong - in any case, the camp that refuses to compromise will be much more dangerous than the rabble Yu Qi. If this was the case, the Qing court would have to immediately send reinforcements to Xi'an and consider recruiting Yu Qi to put an end to the chaos in Shandong.

While Beijing awaited the outcome in Chongqing, the Shandong side reported that the situation was becoming more and more stable, and that the insurgents in Shandong, although numerous, were limited in their threat to Qing rule and were being broken by the Qing army. And the strongest Yu Qi headquarters, at present, the Qing army in Shandong still has not begun to attack, so that Yu Qi can have a fluke mentality, disappoint the people who followed Yu Qi's uprising and leave Germany with him, and wait for the arrival of Beijing's reinforcements to eliminate them in one fell swoop.

After confirming the victory in Chongqing, Beijing did not need to send troops to Xi'an for the time being to prevent the camp from returning to Guanzhong, and finally made up its mind to settle the Shandong Yuqi, and transferred the troops that had been prepared to be sent to Xi'an from Shanxi and Henan to the east, and sent the Manchurian Eight Banners to supervise the war, and rushed to Shandong in October. Although Yu Qi defended himself in danger, Jinan had almost wiped out the rest of the insurgents, and Beijing estimated that Yu Qi would be completely wiped out within half a year and his forces would be uprooted.

As for Li Guoying's request to withdraw his troops, Beijing refused without thinking about it, and at the same time sent an envoy to Chongqing to tell Li Guoying that this was an exciting victory, and that many heroes and powerful people who were secretly eager to try it had temporarily put away the idea of making trouble because of this victory -- Beijing was not wrong about this, at least Yang Qilong stopped the incident and continued to hibernate because he heard that Li Guoying had won a great victory in Chongqing and defeated 200,000 Ming troops -- Yang Qilong did not know the relationship between the Kuidong Army and the Western Sichuan Army. In his opinion, this means that there will be repeated wars in Sichuan, and Deng Ming's previous victory may be short-lived, just like Li Dingguo's victory in Hengyang.

In order to calm the people's minds and eliminate the undercurrents within the government and the opposition and the Eight Banners, Beijing hoped that Li Guoying would continue to hold out in Chongqing and make every effort to win more victories, preferably to completely pacify Sichuan for the imperial court.

After Li Guoying received the holy decree, he immediately told the envoy that this was impossible. The Qing army in Chongqing once had the strategic initiative over Dongchuan and Xichuan, but after the defeat of Ertan, it was only a logistical problem that prevented the Qing army in Chongqing from advancing, not the strength of the enemy; However, after Xionglanwan County repeated and Gao Mingzhan failed to attack Chengdu, the Qing army and the Ming army entered a period of strategic stalemate, attacking and defending each other; With the fiasco of the battles of Jiangjin and Qijiang, the Qing army in Chongqing has lost the strategic initiative in western Sichuan; After the disastrous defeat in the battles of Zhongxian and Wanxian last year, the Qing army was passively beaten in both directions.

Li Guoying bluntly told the envoy that this victory only allowed the Qing army not to be completely annihilated in Chongqing, and he desperately won such a victory, and he only wanted to fight for a chance for the Qing army in Chongqing to withdraw its troops safely. Li Guoying took the envoy on a tour of Chongqing's dilapidated city defenses, and recounted how vulnerable the city walls were in the face of the Ming army's new siege weapons. In the end, he led the envoy to the head of the city, so that he could witness the busy Ming army boats on the Sichuan River.

"How many reinforcements does the governor think the imperial court can send to hold Chongqing and counterattack Zhongxian, at least restore the situation to the situation before the battle of Zhongxian?" The messenger asked. Although he saw all this, the envoy still told Li Guoying that it was impossible for the imperial court to agree to withdraw troops from Chongqing.

"It's not a matter of reinforcements, but it depends on the warships, a large number of warships, and at the same time, the full cooperation of Huguang is also needed. The key to the battle in Sichuan was the sailor. When 80,000 Wei troops boarded ships and went downstream, the lord of Wu had to open the gate of Jiangning to surrender. When the Song Dynasty attacked Sichuan, the lord of Shu thought that it was difficult for Shu to go to the blue sky, but the Song army came by boat like Zhang Fei back then, and 200,000 Song troops approached Chengdu by boat, and Sichuan was pacified in a blink of an eye. Now Deng Ming's ships are so numerous that they can carry hundreds of thousands, 200,000 troops, and Huguang and Liangjiang say that they have nothing but boats, and the same is true here in Chongqing - so this battle cannot be fought! If you want to pacify Sichuan, you must build a water division in Wuchang, as long as the water division of the imperial court is stronger than the thieves in western Sichuan, even Hanzhong is useless in the hands of Deng Ming; And if there is no water master, even if we occupy Xuzhou, we will be driven back by him. The envoy's question made Li Guoying shake his head.

After this conversation, the envoy returned to Beijing. In September, Beijing reiterated that Chongqing must ensure, and that the imperial court was willing to send more reinforcements to Chongqing after the Shandong rebellion had been resolved. The edict repeatedly encouraged Li Guoying, asking him to make persistent efforts, use Chongqing to consume Deng Ming's troops, and find a fighter plane to give him the final fatal blow.

After seeing this edict, Li Guoying wrote a letter asking to enter Beijing to play a duet. In early October, Beijing agreed to Li Guoying's request to arrange the defense of Chongqing and return to Beijing at a later date.

A month ago, on October 5, Li Guoying hurriedly left Chongqing with his guards and went to Beijing to appeal to the Empress Dowager and the auxiliary ministers in person, and handed over the specific matters here to Gao Mingzhan.

Wang Mingde's troops were stationed at Jintangmen, and a few sentries at the city gate were boringly counting the Ming ships passing on the river, and a melodious trumpet floated from under the city: "Rags - sell!" ”

A few western Sichuan businessmen holding signs that read "Recycle Waste" hung outside the Jintang Gate, constantly soliciting business. The defenders of Chongqing had long received orders that no one was allowed to provoke these vendors, and after Li Guoying left, these vendors were even more unscrupulous in their dealings in front of the city gate of Chongqing.

A soldier of the Green Battalion walked up to the vendor, emptied a cloth pocket, and poured out a few stabs, a trigger that had obviously been removed from a firecracker, a piece of lead bullet, and even a pair of cowhide boots that should have belonged to the officer, and looked like they were all new. These things obviously would not be the private property of a soldier, and he was wearing the uniform of the Green Battalion, and it was impossible for him to own the parts of the firecracker.

"Five pounds of scrap iron, two pounds of scrap lead, and two tattered leather boots." However, the merchant who collected the tatters turned a blind eye to this, and his voice seemed to be chanting: "This brother, do you want to Shunzhi Tongbao or an IOU?" ”

"An IOU." Now the defenders of Chongqing also knew that such IOUs were better than copper coins when buying tobacco and wine, or clothes and cloth shoes from merchants in western Sichuan.

After making a few orders, another soldier of the Green Battalion sneaked up next to the vendor, suggesting that the vendor go with him.

"One broken saddle, ten pounds of waste (horseshoe) iron." This had been seen many times, two vendors got up and let the Green Battalion soldier lead the way, and one of them had completed another deal before leaving. Anyway, they won't carry money with them, and they won't go too far, and their safety is still guaranteed. Besides, these western Sichuan traders have also undergone military training, and several of them are veterans.

After following the soldier of the Green Battalion to a small hill, he saw that there were several other big men there, and the man who had come to sell stabbing strips and lead bullets was among them—he had brought them with him just now to ask for directions by throwing stones. There was something covered with cloth at the feet of the Green Battalion soldiers. As the western Sichuan vendors approached, the Green Battalion soldiers who took the lead jumped over and jerked off the cloth, revealing the metallic sheen underneath.

"How? Good stuff, right? With a smug smile on his face, the big man pointed at the tiger squat cannon and asked, "How much is this guy worth?" ”

"Scrap brass - you have to weigh it to know."

"It's a cannon! It's a cannon! The Green Battalion soldier cried out in a hurry. In order to steal this thing, the few people present took a big risk. There was also a leather bag next to the cannon, and the soldiers of the Green Battalion hurriedly opened it and showed the contents to the vendors: "There are also oil cans, cannonballs, and a full set here." ”

The leftovers in Chongqing's abandoned houses were basically cleaned and sold by the generals by hand, and the soldiers of the Green Battalion could only pick up some remnants. It's good that the Ming army traders didn't come to the door before, but since the traders came to the door, the soldiers of the Green Battalion have bought all kinds of condiments and luxury goods from them, not to mention anything else, the Sichuan salt alone is stronger than the coarse salt mixed with sand and soil rationed by the Green Battalion. In the past few days, when Sichuan merchants passed by, they even put on display such good things as dried fish, bacon, and salted duck eggs, which made people's mouths flow -- these delicacies were not seen by many soldiers of the Chongqing Green Battalion during the Chinese New Year, but their military salaries were simply not enough to buy them.

Yesterday, when the chief was chatting, he said that Sichuan merchants had brought a kind of Chengdu dried yak called "Zhang Fei beef", and that delicious chili pepper was added to it. These soldiers of the Green Battalion were itchy and unbearable to listen to, and they couldn't sleep at night when they discussed these delicious foods, and finally everyone turned their hearts and went to steal the things of the Han Eight Banners.

After the accomplice went to sell the stabbing strips and other bits and pieces, they first observed for a long time to confirm that these Ming army traders did not go to the informant, and then they mustered up the courage to sell the cannon.

"Only scrap copper, not cannons." The vendor said unhurriedly, still in the same singing tone.