Kuang Taiping stood in place for a while. After leaving the army, he felt as if he had been cut off from social ties all of a sudden, and his comrades-in-arms who had retired from the army left one after another, going their separate ways, and today, the last acquaintance and best friend, An Yichen, also broke up.

The veterans who went to Mianzhu were still greeting each other, Kuang Taiping came to his senses, bent down, picked up his big burden of drumming, shouldered it, and walked towards the place that the gendarmes had pointed out to him earlier. At this time, Kuang Taiping suddenly regretted a little, wondering if it was a mistake for him to choose to settle near Jiangyou, if he chose Mianzhu like most of his retired companions, then he could have left by car with his comrades just now.

Walking slowly to the end of the station, another black-clothed gendarme greeted him, and looked Kuang Taiping up and down: "Are you going to Jiangyou?" ”

"Yes." Kuang Taiping nodded and unloaded the burden from his shoulders again.

"Name, rank." The gendarme asked, holding out his hand for a discharge certificate.

"Kuang Taiping, sergeant, sir." Kuang Taiping replied loudly, since he has been discharged from the army, no matter how low the rank of the gendarme on the other side is, it is higher than himself, right?

"Don't dare to be, if you don't retire, I should call you an officer." The gendarme replied. He carefully checked his identification, and when he returned it to Kuang Taiping, he stood up and saluted, offering his personal respect to the retired standing non-commissioned officer: "Officer. ”

Jiangyou belongs to Long'an Province, and Zitong, which is not far from it, already belongs to the territory of Baoning Province. Jiangyou and the important towns of northern Sichuan, Baoning and Guangyuan, are similar to the three corners of an equilateral triangle, and the distance to these two places is much closer than to Chengdu. Now that the Long'an Mansion has been completely abandoned, and there is no sign of human activity in the whole province, the restoration of control over this place can not only provide an early warning to Chengdu Prefecture, but also become a bridgehead for the Ming army to attack in the future, so that the Ming army in western Sichuan can go out of the Sword Pavilion, attack Guangyuan and Baoning, and completely cut off the shipping of the Jialing River -- as early as the first battle of Chongqing, Deng Ming used to scare Li Guoying in this way. But at that time, both sides knew that if the Ming army really carried out such an operation, it would be an unsuccessful and benevolent attack; However, after the Ming army had residents in Jiangyou, the threat to the Jialing River was no longer empty words but real, and the time for the Ming army to attack could be greatly extended, and even if it failed, there was no need to worry about retreating.

Nearly 7,000 of the more than 10,000 veterans accepted the compensation agreement, but only 300 chose Jiangyou, which is almost the most courageous and skilled group of veterans. The imperial government also reviewed these people who volunteered to go to Jiangyou, and finally rejected the applications of more than 100 of them, and persuaded them to choose an area closer to Chengdu to settle down.

Kuang Taiping was one of the more than 190 people who passed the examination, and they would become the first batch of immigrants from the empire to Longan and Boryeong - at first, there were people in the capital who advocated stationing troops in Jiangyou first, and then relocating immigrants according to the situation, but Deng Ming did not agree to this step. Even a small army, isolated in the Longan and Boryeong areas, will add a heavy logistical burden to Chengdu; Moreover, the purpose of this army is still very unclear, the Ming army has no intention of going out of the Sword Pavilion Northern Expedition now, and the threat in this direction is not great, and the standing army is useless here except to play the role of a sentry, and maybe it will degenerate into a cantonment army over time. Moreover, Deng Ming insisted that the mere stationing of troops could not be called a national territory, at least not a normal national territory, and that only the people living and living on it could be called a territory, so that the regime could take root in this land.

These immigrants would become the eyes of the Kawanishi group in the north, and their development would make subsequent immigrants safer, so not only were the personnel carefully selected, but the imperial government also invested a lot of resources to ensure that they could establish themselves in the local area and obtain food self-sufficiency as soon as possible.

The gendarmes helped Kuang Taiping carry his baggage and came to the rest place prepared for the Jiangyou immigrants. There were only three big men sitting there, and after seeing Kuang Taiping, the three of them greeted them.

"Sima begged!" The big man who walked in the front stretched out his hand to Kuang Taiping, who looked a few years older than Kuang Taiping, with a short sword hanging on each side of his waist: "First class soldier." ”

Due to Deng Ming's exemplary role, the handshake ceremony was also popular in the Sichuan army, and the people who would make this action were veterans nine times out of ten.

Kuang Taiping shook the hand that was sent over tightly, reported his life and military rank, and two people from the other side also stepped forward to report their homes, one of them was a private, and the other was a sergeant. Like Kuang Taiping, they all made many military exploits, had medals and awards, and they all rode horses.

"The war horses that the prince ordered for you have already sent troops to transport them, and you can get them from the gendarmes when you arrive in Jiangyou. Also, the cattle and other things that were given to you will be delivered over these two days. When they got to know each other, the gendarme gave a brief account of the situation and reconfirmed: "Are you really going to leave at once?" Are you sure you don't need any more training? ”

"No need." The four replied in unison.

For these immigrants who went to Jiangyou, Deng Ming also arranged for the instructors of the standing army to give them the final training before immigration, the content of which was of course not how to farm, but how to drive cars, how to use firearms, and make projectiles, but if the immigrants had already mastered the necessary skills, they could not participate in the training course.

"Well, you are the second group to set off, and five people have already set off in groups at noon yesterday." The gendarme looked up at the sky: "Wait until noon, if no one comes, you can go together." If someone comes again in the afternoon, let him wait for tomorrow's team. ”

Everyone received a cart with a horse, and three people helped Kuang Taiping carry his baggage into the car.

"It's so heavy, how many swords do you have?" Sima Qiudao asked with a smile.

"Two swords, three broadswords, two sabers, and armor...... "The Sichuan army has been fighting in the east and west again and again, and now the big sword and spear are very rich in western Sichuan, and even armor is not a rare thing. Kuang Taiping said as he unwrapped his baggage and put his weapon in his car. As he loaded the car, he ordered some of the things that had been placed in the car: tents, bedding, firewood, rice and noodles to eat on the road, and firewood knives. He nodded in satisfaction and continued to lay out his weapon: a musket, another one, then a third, a box of pellets and a keg of gunpowder.

"Burmese goods?" Sima Qiudao asked, looking at the three muskets.

"yes." Kuang Taiping nodded again. He spent all of his money on weapons. When Deng Ming came back from Burma, he brought thousands of Western-style firecrackers and handed them over to the ironware store for sale.

Putting the weapons neatly in the car, covering them with cloth and tying ropes, Kuang Taiping breathed a sigh of relief, and the next thing was to wait, and he could set off as soon as noon arrived. The gendarmes said that the road leading to Jiangyou was marked with road signs, and that there would be patrols and repairs by rangers -- Deng Ming hoped that in the future, there would be more veterans who would continue to run along this road to the north and completely put northern Sichuan in the hands of the empire.

"Come out," a companion beckoned, and then four young women came out, one of whom was the first to walk up to the big man who had greeted them. The man pointed to Kuang Taiping and introduced to his wife: "This is Brother Kuang, our future neighbor." ”

"Why did you choose Jiangyou?" Seeing that Kuang Taiping had already packed up, another companion asked. There was also a woman beside him - this was his wife, a Burmese girl whom he had begged from the Burmese conquests with his settling-in money, and who was not yet proficient in Chinese.

"For three hundred and fifty acres of land." Kuang Taiping replied without thinking. He saw two other women standing beside Sima Qiudao on the left and right, and couldn't help but praise in his heart: This lucky guy.

"I don't know if there's a lot of flat land?" The first woman to come over said with some concern.

"The land is good, there is a lot of flat land, I heard that there is a river, we settled by the river first. The forest is full of animals, there is meat to eat, and there are fish in the river. Kuang Taiping replied immediately.

"Brother Kuang has been to Jiangyou?" The eyes of the other three suddenly lit up. One of the three of them is from Hubei, the other is from Jiangxi, and Sima Qiudao is originally from Anqing Mansion in Jiangnan, and they don't know anything about Jiangyou.

"I've been." Kuang Taiping's speech is relatively concise, and the other party does not ask him, and he generally does not like to take the initiative to explain.

"Brother Kuang's accent doesn't sound like a Sichuan person," Sima Qiudao asked with some confusion, but he was not very sure of his judgment: "Brother Kuang was Senator Wang's subordinate before?" ”

Senator Wang in Sima Qiudaokou was the general of the Ming army who was previously stationed in Jiangyou.

"Or did you meet Senator Lee when you were passing by?" Another big man asked. This person refers to the generals of the Ming army who were previously stationed in the Sword Pavilion. Deng Ming once used the strategy of exhausting soldiers to drag down Gao Mingzhan, and the whole battle was widely spread among the Sichuan army.

When these two people asked, they were a little strange in their hearts, now the best shops and the largest commercial houses around Chengdu are almost all run by these old Sichuan soldiers, it is hard to imagine that an old Sichuan army will actually go to Jiangyou to open up wasteland, and this old Sichuan army seems to have not yet married, or alone.

"I haven't met Senator Wang or Senator Li," Kuang Taiping shook his head this time: "The last time I followed Governor Gao across Jiangyou, they had already run back to the capital. ”

The three big men were stunned for a moment, and suddenly laughed wildly together, Sima Qiudao laughed so much that tears splashed out, and he slapped his thigh desperately: "Brother, I heard that you were so hungry that time." ”

Kuang Taiping didn't say anything, just nodded slightly.