Chapter 3 Dilemma

The spring drought in Shanxi is actually more severe than Xiao Tianjian and others expected, which also temporarily disrupted the pace of Xing Tianjun's continued expansion, making the whole Xing Tianjun's expansion operation have to be postponed.

Based on the consideration of occupying one place, operating one place, and consolidating one place, Xiao Tianjian decided to work steadily, first completely consolidating the foundation of his current base, and then seeking greater power space.

And with his understanding of history, he has a helpless feeling about the current situation. Although he has gained a firm foothold in Yangcheng at present, with his strength and the strength of all kinds of rebels, he is still not mature to shake the almost rotten tree of Daming.

And there are not many people who have the ability in Daming at present. Not to mention far away, there is Hong Chengchou sitting on the three sides of Shaanxi in the west. Now there is a Sun Chuanting sitting in Shaanxi, Lu Xiangsheng in the southeast, and hundreds of thousands of officers and soldiers gathered in the hinterland of the Central Plains. Daming's qi and blood are far from being exhausted, and through Taiyuan. Xiao Tianjian also saw from the reports collected for him that all kinds of rebels have turned to war in various places in the past year. At present, all kinds of rebels have not undergone qualitative changes because of this year's vertical and horizontal battles. They are still in their own camps. They are not in a way. They have not formed a climate performance at all, which has been adjusted in the imperial court. After his subordinates, after Lu Xiangsheng's governor, Henan and other provincial military affairs, the Rebels began to be untenable in Henan. They were repeatedly defeated against Lu Xiangsheng. First, several volunteers, known as hundreds of thousands of troops, gathered under the city of Chuzhou to besiege Chuzhou. As a result, they were killed by thousands of Guanning iron riders led by Lu Xiangsheng and fled, and even the battalions were destroyed. He was chased and killed by Lu Xiangsheng for 50 miles. Zhu Longqiao to Guanshan all the way to fill the ditch, and the water did not flow. Then he was overtaken by Lu Xiangsheng again in Zhuxian Town. He killed a man and turned over. He had to run all the way to Nanyang, so that he was gradually forced back to Shaanxi by Lu Xiangsheng.

And through the performance of the road volunteers such as Gao Yingxiang and Li Zicheng during the Spring Festival, Xiao Tianjian gradually felt that if it continued like this, Gao Yingxiang's doomsday would not be far away. After the Spring Festival, Gao Yingxiang and Li Zicheng also had Man Tianxing, Mixed Heaven King, Chuangtian and others to lead their own troops back to Shaanxi, which was also him. Their actions gave Xing Tianjun a rare opportunity to breathe, which made Hong Chengchou have to slow down his attack on his Xing Tianjun again and turn back to deal with their rebels.

And this time, Hong Chengchou and Sun Chuanting joined hands. With Xiao Tianjian's understanding of Gao Yingxiang, I'm afraid that Gao Yingxiang will be more and less lucky this time. However, Xiao Tianjian is just a hunch now. After all, his appearance has more or less affected the development of history, and I don't know whether it will affect Gao Yingxiang's fate. However, judging from the various information he has received so far, his influence on the whole historical development has not reached such an earth-shaking extent. As for Gao Yingxiang's life and death, he is not very concerned about it.

But at the same time, he also knows that with his current strength, if he wants to intervene in Henan and Shaanxi to occupy the land, it is estimated that he is still weak, so what he has to do now is to lay the foundation of the south of Shanxi and wait for the opportunity to seek more living space.

Compared with other righteous forces, although Xing Tianjun has suffered several consecutive defeats in Shanxi this year, after all, the main activity area of Xing Tianjun is limited to several counties in the southeast corner of Shanxi. For the court, the threat of Xing Tianjun is still far from it. There is a stronger threat of Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong.

Therefore, although the court was unfavorable because of many times, Chongzhen did not condemn Hong Chengchou and Wu Yu for this. It was just a strict reprimand. Even Zuo Guangxian, Xu Dingguo, Hu Dawei and other generals who fled this defeat did not be arrested for the crime, but just reprimanded them. Fan, let it continue to be used, and make contributions.

Even Hu Dawei was defeated twice, and thousands of soldiers were damaged. Later, he was seriously injured because of his strength. He was not guilty, but also praised by Chongzhen.

In this way, Shanxi has temporarily stabilized. With the emergence of the great famine, each of them became busy.

This time, the famine in Shanxi is quite fierce. From Jinbei to Jinzhong, after the beginning of spring, there has been no rain. Some of the food finally planted can't survive at all. Coupled with the drought and pests in the first few years, there is no surplus of food in the hands of the people. Suddenly, it shows a scene of hungry people everywhere. .

A large number of people had to abandon their homes and embark on the road to escape from the famine, so that there was a large-scale wave of displaced people in Shanxi. Originally, which was a relatively stable area in Jinzhong, it was immediately flooded by the displaced people. The hungry and anxious people did not care so much. In order to eat, they could not care about anything. Suddenly, Shanxi There was a large share of riots on the ground.

In order to survive, these exiles robbed and cut the path, besieged Fujiazhuang Fort, and attacked the county's grain depot. From April, such incidents occurred one after another in all over Shanxi, making the government everywhere panic and flew to the desk of Wu Gong in Taiyuan Prefecture like a snowflakes.

For this reason, Wu Xiong can't take care of Xing Tianjun's affairs. These things alone have kept him busy. All day long, he will constantly suppress the disturbances of the exiles in various places, so that Shanxi will no longer be able to fight with Xing Tianjun again in a short time.

In this way, Hong Chengchou and Sun Chuanting were busy dealing with the righteous army in Shaanxi, while Wu Jing was busy dealing with the famine in Shanxi. On the contrary, Xing Tianjun, who had attracted a lot of attention, became a matter that had been temporarily put on hold.

This also made Xiao Tianjian breathe a sigh of relief. Taking this opportunity, in the occupied jurisdiction, he reorganized the soldiers and horses, while vigorously pioneering and dredging irrigation channels to divert water to resist drought.

After nearly half a month of vigorously sweeping the various departments of the Xingtian Army, the small number of defeated soldiers left in the area controlled by the Xingtian Army were either defeated, or forced to escape from the mountains under pressure and surrendered to the Xingtian Army, so that this chaos was controlled in a relatively short time.

In the territory under the jurisdiction of the Xingtian Army, the people have basically been wholeheartedly belonging to the Xingtian Army, so if these defeated soldiers want to stay here, there is no room for them to survive. In addition, the Baochang township soldiers system promoted by the Xingtian Army within their jurisdiction, all townships and villages have set up their own township soldiers, making Those scattered soldiers can't survive at all. They are either killed or expelled. In the end, the rest of them have to be captured honestly. They are collected by Xing Tianjun. Those who should be killed, those who should be dismissed and resettled, those who are willing to go home, those who are willing to stay and work with Xing Tianjun, and choose the essence. The collection that a strong and honest person should collect.

As for some of the remaining rich people who fell to the government in this war, Xing Tianjun did not be polite to them this time. He found out a family and directly destroyed the family. His original land was immediately allocated to the people, and basically cleaned up the hostile forces in the territory. Of course, it can't be said that there was no manslaughter by mistake, but for the sake of root, Xiao Tianjian came down cold-blooded this time. As long as he had some doubts, he would immediately remove it. Although he killed a group of people unjustly, the benefits outweighed the disadvantages for them to firmly control this area in the future.

At the same time, the excavation and dredging work of irrigation canals in various places was immediately carried out vigorously. Fortunately, there are many rivers running through the area controlled by Xing Tianjun, and most of the fertile fields are concentrated on both sides of the river. There is no shortage of water. Fu Deming's civil officials were ordered to go to various places and jointly convene all townships with the chiefs. The people of each village divide the irrigation canal into townships and villages for responsibility. The chief security officer supervises the construction, and then connects the whole irrigation canal. After working for a month and a half, the irrigation canals in various places have basically restored the function of irrigating farmland.

In addition, Xiao Tianjian also ordered some villages with no water to attract water. Baochang led people to dig deep wells on the spot to ensure water for people and animals, and ordered the carpenters in the engineering battalion and the craftsmen of Shuangfengzhai to concentrate on building a batch of water trucks and transporting them to various places for drought-resistant irrigation.

In this way, in mid-April, most of the farmland under the jurisdiction of Xing Tianjun solved the problem of drought resistance, and basically planted grain into the farmland.

Moreover, Mr. Chen personally brought a group of skilled rice fields to grow those stored sweet potatoes, distributed sweet potato seedlings to a large number of farmers for cultivation, and planted a large area of sweet potato fields. With this thing, as long as it can be successfully harvested, at least in this year, the grain problem of Xing Tianjun can be greatly improved. It has eased.

However, there are also many problems that come with it. After a large number of exiles learned the news that the Xingtian Army was sitting in the south of Jin, they began to pour into the control area of the Xingtian Army and sought the shelter of the Xingtian Army in order to seek a mouthful of food within the jurisdiction of the Xing Tianjun, so that after entering April of the ninth year of Chongzhen, The population has shown a trend of explosive growth.

The remaining Yutians were also quickly assigned, making it impossible for Xing Tianjun to accept the placement of more exiles into their jurisdiction.

When these exiles came, they were all poor and innocent. Just to solve their problem of eating, Fu Deming, a civil service official, was so worried that he almost lost his hair and had to find Xiao Tianjian to ask Xiao Tianjian for help.

After seeing Fu Deming, Xiao Tianjian couldn't help but be shocked by the embarrassment of Fu Deming. After not seeing Fu Deming in just half a month, Fu Deming actually lost a lot of weight. His whole body was almost out of shape, and his long shirt hung loosely on him, feeling as if a wind could Blow him down.

So Xiao Tianjian quickly let Fu Deming into the house and immediately arranged someone to prepare food for Fu Deming and asked him to speak while eating.

Fu Deming was not polite to Xiao Tianjian. He also knew that Xiao Tianjian usually had no airs, so he picked up his chopsticks and chewed it. Xiao Tianjian hurriedly poured him a bowl of water and asked him to drink and eat. Fu Deming said to Xiao Tianjian while eating, "General, recently poured into our jurisdiction. There are more and more exiles in China. If it goes on like this, I'm afraid we really can't stand it! Now it is still during the spring famine everywhere. To feed so many people, the little food in our hands has long been insufficient! The general still has to find a way for the humble position in this matter! If not, then you can only watch these people starve to death!"

Xiao Tianjian nodded and said, "Eat slowly, just talk while eating!" It seems that Mr. Fu has worked hard recently! You should also pay attention to your health. In case you are tired, I will lose a big helper!"