Volume 2: The King's Way Chapter 171 The Mouth is Coming
During the month after retaking Feicheng, most of Huainan, including Shouchun in the north, Shucheng in the southwest, and Zhongli in the east, had returned to the control of the General's Mansion.
But at this moment, Bai Tu received a piece of news that was hard to define as "good news" or "bad news"...
The news came from the area stationed in Luling County, which was the southern part of the former Yuzhang County, and is now under the charge of Huaiyue Lieutenant General Gao Shun.
After Gao Shun took office, he devoted himself to the "Huai Yue" affairs and achieved fruitful results.
After his armor was upgraded to gold and jade, Gao Shun, who had been stuck at the limit of "eight hundred" for being the commander of the Xianzhen Camp, began to improve steadily again.
If there had not been the "White Rabbit Effect", Gao Shun would probably have been executed by Cao Cao after Lu Bu's defeat in Xuzhou before he was promoted to Jinyu.
But now Gao Shun has brought the Xianzhen Camp to an unprecedented new height.
Originally, the southern part of Yuzhang was just a "territory on the map" for the Han Dynasty. The actual control was very weak, the Han people were sparsely populated, and the county towns were scattered...
Zhou Shang's post as the prefect of Luling was just a token of Bai Tu's attitude, and he had not actually taken office. Gao Shun, the "General of the Central Army of Huai Yue", was basically in charge of all Luling affairs - although the area was not small, there was actually not much to do in normal times because of the sparse population.
The main responsibility is to "embrace the Yue", or to put it more bluntly, to guard against the Shanyue causing chaos!
The Shanyue people in other areas of Jiangdong are mostly Han people who are evading taxes. Even if they have ancient Yue blood, they have been assimilated into Han culture for a long time. It’s just that some of them have lived in the mountains for several generations, so they are a little wilder than ordinary people.
In addition, copper and iron ores are easily available in the mountains of the Eastern Wu region, so the Shanyue people usually forge their own weapons and armor to resist the imperial court. They serve the people in times of peace and become bandits in times of chaos.
The Shanyue people of Luling truly have ancient Yue blood, are the most isolated from the Han people, and are the most unruly and difficult to tame.
Historically, during the Three Kingdoms period, when the Shanyue in other areas of Eastern Wu were almost completely suppressed , Luling still set up a separate "Luling Southern Commandery" to be in charge of pacifying the Shanyue, which could be said to be the most stubborn part.
After Gao Shun came to Luling County, he first devoted himself to military training and increased the number of the Xianzhen Camp to 1,600 - it may seem like a small number, but you have to know... this 1,600 Xianzhen Camp does not need a second living person to command!
Moreover, Gao Shun also specially communicated with the local mountain people and trained them to fight in the mountains. Even if all the Shanyue people were soldiers, except for the few large villages that built the "Ancient Yue City" in the mountains, no village could defeat Gao Shun alone.
After all, the "everyone is a soldier" of the ordinary Shanyue people only means "if they are provoked, even the old and the children will dare to take up swords and go into battle". Although they have more military power because they engage in more fishing and hunting than agricultural civilizations, they are fundamentally different from the "everyone is a soldier" of the nomadic peoples who were once powerful in history.
Only the ancient Yue cities in the southernmost part, which the Shanyue people called "holy cities", could be considered as truly "everyone is a soldier".
In the view of Bai Tu, Lu Su and others, the so-called Ancient Yue City was just a super-large mountain stronghold with "Yue Ji".
It’s just that Yue Ji, like the nomadic peoples in the north, has the ability to “become barbarians” - which corresponds to Cheng Ji’s “training”.
The city concubines were those who extracted manpower and formed soldiers into synthetic concubines, while the Yue concubines and several other exotic concubines in the north could directly “transform barbarians” into barbarian soldiers, truly making everyone a soldier.
From a war perspective, these barbarian princesses are better at it than the city princesses who draw on some manpower. However... the tribesmen who transform into barbarian soldiers will also eat more, even to the point where they cannot feed themselves by farming independently, and thus fall into a vicious cycle of "the stronger you are, the more resources you can grab", "the stronger you are, the more you consume", and "the more you consume, the more you want to grab resources".
Without the stability of the City Princess Civilization, they always use the City Princess Civilization as a pre-collapse damage transfer...
Of course, the Shanyue were much weaker than the several tribes in the north, and were not internally unified. Most of the Shanyue were highly assimilated into the Han culture, combining fishing, hunting and farming, and were not all barbarians.
The leader of an ordinary Shanyue tribe is generally called "Shuai" or "Dashuai", and the stronghold of "Dashuai" is usually larger.
Only the leaders of the mountain strongholds with Yue Ji were called "Zongshuai". These mountain strongholds were the strongest and the farthest away from the Han settlements. Gao Shun would not easily provoke them before he made up his mind and prepared to wipe them out.
After becoming familiar with and adapting to the mountain warfare tactics, Gao Shun started with a few of the most active mountain strongholds.
The Xianzhen Camp, with absolutely stable morale and absolute obedience to orders, was better at small-scale mountain conflicts than the Shanyue people, and taught the Shanyue generals a lesson.
The Shanyue people realized that the new Huaiyue General was not someone to be trifled with, and as a result, Luling County enjoyed some peace and stability - at least no Shanyue dared to openly attack the county town.
However, this spring and summer, whether it was because the Shanyue had a small harvest or they simply wanted to take advantage of the conflict between Jiangdong and Huainan to get some free money, their activities gradually became more active.
There were even cases of mountain strongholds forming alliances and attacking county towns!
Of course… this isn’t all bad news.
According to the battle report, Gao Shun has won a "small wave of consecutive victories" - ten battles in a row.
After each battle, Gao Shun could obtain thousands or even tens of thousands of "captives". After all, when he captured a mountain stronghold, he would also bring along the women and children of the stronghold...
Bai Tu also gave instructions on how to treat the Shanyue captives. It was still necessary to follow the "old rules" and draw manpower locally. Overdrawing ten times at a time would basically break the effect of "transforming them into barbarians". After that, they could be forced to cultivate land in Luling. However, after the overdraft, their strength would be relatively weak, but their appetite would also drop to normal levels.
Moreover, most of the Shanyue that Gao Shun faced were purely manpower-based, and there were not many Shanyue soldiers who had “become barbarians”…
Bai Tu also instructed Gao Shun that when dealing with these captives who had not been "converted to barbarism", he could just overdraft them five times.
Anyway, considering that Luling is vast and sparsely populated, there is no need to worry about the lack of wasteland. It is just that it is relatively scattered , difficult to cultivate, and the harvest is also poor.
However, before the farming can yield any harvest, we can only consume the food and grass to feed them...
That’s right, this is bad news - now Bai Tu even suspects that these people came here on purpose to eat his food!
After a series of consecutive victories, Gao Shun had already gained a total of 100,000 people.
This is actually the secret of Sun Quan always being able to get out 100,000 people - if he is short of soldiers, he will go and fight the Shanyue, and then recruit all the young and strong men he gets...
Especially after the Battle of Chibi, in the middle period of the Three Kingdoms period, Shanyue brought not only trouble to Dongwu, but also abundant sources of troops like wild monster spawning points.
It’s only in the middle and late stages when only the tough bones are left that it becomes really painful.
However, for Bai Tu now, he just wants to ask those Shanyue chiefs and marshals - you are sending people to eat my food, right?
One hundred thousand people is still within Bai Tu's capacity. Although there is little grain in Luling, there is grain in Yuzhang. Due to the far distance, Yuzhang has not been asked to transfer grain to the north.
But...if these 100,000 people are just the beginning, then the relief grain stored in Poyang County may have to be transferred southwards first!
As a result, Bai Tu’s already tight food situation became even worse, and there was even a risk of the “food chain” being broken and direct “bankruptcy” .
"Shan Yue... really gave me a difficult problem! I shouldn't have been so anxious to take it back to Hefei." Bai Tu rubbed his temples with a headache.
Hefei Ji, who was standing next to him, turned her head and looked at him expressionlessly.
By not rushing to retake Hefei, Bai Tu could let Yuan Shu continue to maintain Hefei instead of taking away all the food and grass. After all, Yuan Shu was also waiting for a few rains, and Hefei would become the important military town again.
In addition, Bai Tu could even take advantage of the transactions with the private nobles and continue to exchange rock sugar for food from Yuan Shu!
Now even the Hefei line has changed hands, and Yuan Shu has also tightened his defense line. There is basically no chance to buy food from Yuan Shu anymore.
After hesitating for a long time, Bai Tu finally "wrote" a Chengji email to Gan Ning, who was far away in Kuaiji building a ship.
The above is a guide to the "banging" fishing method, which includes detailed descriptions of the timing of knocking the bang and the techniques of pulling the net. As long as Gan Ning can go out to sea, I believe... he will be able to reap a rich harvest.
"Knocking on a bang" is a cruel method of catching yellow croaker, which first appeared after the founding of the People's Republic of China. It takes advantage of the fact that the yellow croaker's otoliths are extremely sensitive to sounds of a certain frequency. Fishing boats will knock on a special wooden drum underwater, and then they can easily cast nets to catch a large number of yellow croakers.
After the banging became popular, in just a few years the price of yellow croaker dropped below that of rice - poor people who could not afford to eat had to eat fish to survive.
However, the consequences are also serious. Even if a large mesh is used, the small yellow croakers will die soon due to damage to the otoliths. It can be said that this is a truly extinct fishing for yellow croakers.
Therefore, "knocking bangs" was banned by the authorities soon after it appeared. However, due to some natural disasters and man-made disasters that followed, it was banned repeatedly until the reform and opening up, when it was completely banned. However, even after two or three decades, the growth of the yellow croaker population has not fully recovered.
It was for this reason that Bai Tu did not want to give out the strategy of "knocking the bang" at the beginning. He would rather delay for a few more years, develop slowly and stockpile food.
But now seeing that people are starving, Bai Tu has no choice but to let the yellow croakers suffer for the time being.
Yellow croaker, which is cheaper than rice, was caught to the point of extinction over a period of more than 10 to 20 years. The marine ecology should be more stable now. We should get through the current difficulties and find ways to make up for it in the future...
"Pang Tong's salt field can also be reclaimed. The fish from Gan Ning's side can be caught and exchanged for food with the local people if possible. If not... they can be pickled into salted fish on the spot and transported to the inland. They can also be used as an additional ingredient in relief food." Bai Tu thought so and contacted Pang Tong again.
At this time, Pang Tong had already accumulated nearly two million stones of sea salt, and the "magic" was about to begin. By then, he could also extort some grain from the noble families who wanted to be agents for the official salt...
After pulling out a lot of his own hair, Bai Tu felt that the amount of relief food should be able to "dynamically balance supply and demand", but his heart became even heavier - now Bai Tu was just "squeezing" out food by pulling out his hair, it was hard to imagine... how many people had starved to death in history when there was no White Rabbit Effect!
