Li Su and Guoyuan's immigration team only started in Dazhong in April, preparing to plant summer wheat and cotton in the Lintao area. In addition, although the local land is fertile, some fields have been converted from pastures to cultivated land.

The first year of planting and tillage is more troublesome. After the crops are sown, the extra work needs to be taken care of, and the labor intensity is also relatively strong, and the corresponding busy farming time will be longer. It is estimated that it will be good to start busy in mid-April, and it will be good to be able to slack farming by mid-June.

Don’t think this matter is so troublesome. This is already very good. It depends entirely on the fertile nature of Lintao itself.

If you change to some places without foundation to open up land, there are almost no harvest in the first year. Some of them only plant a line of beans and a little harvested. If you can get half of the harvest of ripe fields in the second year, it is good, but 70% or 80% in the third year, it will be considered completely ripe fields in the future. If you encounter bad terrain and there are many trees and stones in the fields, you have to work extra.

According to this time progress, the immigrants brought by Li Su could not have freed up their hands to help provide labor force before Guan Yu and Ma Chao's expedition to the west.

Guan Yu and his team will definitely launch military operations in mid-to-late May at the latest. The northwest region is bitter and cold, and there are few months of suitable military operations in the year. If the battle is not over in September, it will not be delayed if it encounters the extreme weather of "Hu Tian and August" that "Snow will be flying in August".

If it weren't for the lack of food and not wanting to eat too much of his own military ration, Guan Yu would have wanted to do it in April - but who told the dispatch of troops in April? It took too long before the local wheat, barley and sorghum in Xiliang to mature, so he could not harvest the enemy's food while fighting.

Found that the plan could not keep up with the changes and the labor required for war preparations was a bit short of, so Li Su certainly would not wait.

One day in late April, after the military farming work on Guoyuan was on track, Li Su himself immediately set off from Dazhong and headed north for nearly a hundred miles, entering Lintao County, which borders Longxi and Tianshui. At the same time, he sent a courier from Kuang Yu and Ma Chao to come to Lintao to discuss preparations for the western expedition.

Guan Yu and Ma Chao's main combat troops were not in a hurry to enter Lintao, the starting position, because the reason was the same: It is not easy to transport grain. People on the front line should eat more, and the rear would have to transport several more bites. Therefore, in the non-war state, Guan Yu and Ma Chao's soldiers were left in Tianshui Ji County to train and eat food, and even some were left in Hanzhong, and they would gather after the war was about to be fought.

Anyway, even if there are less than 10,000 troops left in Lintao City, I am not afraid that the Xiliang rebels will counterattack Lintao from the north of Jincheng County. If they dare to come, Li Su will definitely be happy and begging for it: we are all mentally prepared to travel thousands of miles to chase, but the enemy is willing to take the initiative to walk this section of the road and come to my door to kill me?

If that happens, even if Li Su only has a few thousand people on hand, even if the Lintao city is not strong, it will be fine if Li Su will defend the county town for one or two months. At that time, Guan Yu and Ma Chao will be able to gather a large army in just over ten days, and then come to rescue Lintao again. Guo Si will not be completely destroyed under the city wall?

As long as Guo Si does not have ten kilograms of cerebral thrombosis, he will definitely not be able to do such a thing.

Guan Yu did not delay at all. It only took five days to send a messenger to Guan Yu. On April 28th, the three northwest heroes met in Lintao City to discuss how to deal with Guo Si in the next stage.

Li Su also took this opportunity to allow Guan Yu to recruit farmers who had already been slack in Tianshui County and Longxi County as the governor of Liangzhou to perform labor service and help log wood to build some equipment. (Only the emigrants brought by Li Su were still busy in May, and the locals were already slack in the farming industry because of early spring plowing)

However, the three of them haven't seen each other for a long time, and they will definitely not talk about the military matter immediately as soon as they meet. Guan Yu must have pulled Li Su to examine the strategy. Guan Yu knew very well how toxic Li Su's vision was and how good the control of the grand strategy was. It would be useless to ask.

"Boya, you have been here for several days and you should have understood everything?" Guan Yu laid the groundwork first, unifying the understanding between the two sides so as not to talk to each other for a while.

Li Su: "I have heard of it for a little while, so I can talk about it, so as not to know what I know is not the latest situation."

Guan Yu gave Ma Chao an eye and signaled to explain. Ma Chao's understanding of the situation is the latest, and it is all first-hand information. Who has been responsible for sending cavalry scouts to investigate harassment recently?

Ma Chao is now only one of the five Northern Army Clans. He also wants to take advantage of this time to pacify the Northwest and become a miscellaneous general. Moreover, pacifying the Northwest is also to rescue his father who has been driven to the depths of Dunhuang and even the Qilian Mountains. Therefore, Ma Chao is very active both in public and private areas.

Ma Chao bowed and replied respectfully: "As early as last winter, after Guo Si gained a foothold, he used his kindness and power to join forces with Han Sui to keep warm. Han Sui also realized that he would be attacked by the king's army within one or two years, and did not want to fight with Guo Si anymore. He nominally surrendered to Guo Si. Han Sui was still stationed in Jincheng County, the main force was stationed in the county seat of Jincheng County, and was forced to hand over a deposit of grain and the newly plundered surplus grain from the people, and handed over to Guo Si to help Guo Si maintain his army's expenses.

As for Guo Si himself, he now stationed troops in Wuwei County and Guzang County. If we attacked from Zuli County, which borders Anding and Tianshui, and used this section of the Yellow River waterway. Then we don’t have to attack Han Sui first when we attacked, and we can directly reach Guo Si. But from Fengyin and northwest, at least 270 or 80 miles are grasslands and Gobi, and there is no waterway to go. Even if there are some small rivers and inner lakes, they are all bound to ships.

Therefore, after General Guan discussed with me, he now planned to attack from Lintao along the Tao River, first seize Jincheng, and then arrive at Cangsong County along the Langshui from Jincheng. Although he could not directly reach Guzang, he was only a few dozen miles away from Guzang. General Guan always thought that it was not a big problem to take down Jincheng and Guzang. Last year, how did Guo Si expel my father and how would we expel Guo Si this year.

I was afraid that after Guo Si lost Guzang, he would flee thousands of miles along the Hexi Corridor. At that time, there would be no water to transport grain at all. I could only rely on cavalry to drive cattle and sheep to march, eat mutton and chase water and plants."

After Ma Chao roughly explained their tendency to attack route, Li Su raised his hand and signaled him to wait first, and interjected and asked: "By the way, when it comes to Lingzun, General Ma is okay now? Han Sui and Guo Si, how many soldiers and horses are there now?"

Ma Chao showed a look of pain. After all, Ma Chao still has feelings for his father now and has no grudges and entanglements. He thought for a while and sighed:

"My father was attacked by Zhang Xiu and Jia Xu at the end of the previous year, before the king's northern expedition, and lost Wuwei County and fled to Zhangye west. There were many barbarian kings in Zhangye, and his father was not allowed to take power there. He could only live as a guest general and rest as the King of Qiang. Fortunately, Zhang Xiu had no strength to advance westward at that time, so he stopped after occupying Wuwei.

Later, in the late spring and early summer of last year, Zhang Xiu was also defeated in Jingyuan. Guo Si led his troops to flee to the northwest, and instead occupied Zhang Xiu's nest. Jia Xu also defected to Guo Si to help Guo Si take over Wuwei. Last autumn, after Guo Si gained a foothold in Wuwei, in order to expand the territory of raising troops, he plundered military supplies in more places and continued to move westward. His father could not stay in Zhangye anymore. Some local Qiang chiefs from Zhangye were also killed in the attack of Guo Si. His father first fled to Jiuquan County, but later there were fewer troops and horses, so he could not afford to support him. I guess he just found a river valley with water and grass in the Qilian Mountains south of Jiuquan to occupy it.

My father was in Jiuquan and finally sent me a messenger, but I was not in Tianshui at that time, but in Chang'an. That was last autumn. But the disaster in Guanzhong was at its worst. The king sent all the main troops to various places for food. The king told me personally that he could not send troops to rescue me. He asked me to forgive me and wrote back to him that my father would try his best to protect the backbone of the family's direct troops and horses, and if other territory was lost, it would be lost. My father was in despair after he received the letter. "

As mentioned earlier, there are many edge folded valleys on the northern foot of the Qilian Mountains. Most of the valleys are melting water on the snowy mountains of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau or small rivers flowing out of the plateau. The Qiang people occupy such a valley, farming, sheeping sheep and making leather coats, and survive for generations.

Ma Teng was in this position and was basically no different from a Qiang tribe chief who occupied the river valley to farm. If the power had not been removed so weakly, the cost of chasing him was far higher than the profit, Guo Si would not have let him go.

When Ma Chao talked about his father's dilemma, he was inevitably a little sad and distracted. He forgot to continue answering the second half of the question. Guan Yu was still careful. He knew that Li Su had asked about the enemy's military strength just now, so he took the initiative to answer the topic and helped Ma Chao answer:

"Boya, the current enemy troops are in this way. Han Sui's name always has tens of thousands of elderly thieves, probably 50,000 or 60,000, but they are all **, deserters, and the Qiang people are mainly poor. In fact, there will be no more than 20,000 experienced soldiers. After all, the Han people with household registration in Jincheng County are only more than 80,000. How could they raise soldiers and raise 50,000 or 60,000? It's almost the same to get 40,000 people back to farm and herd sheep, otherwise they would have starved to death.

However, Guo Si should have a lot of troops. After the Battle of Jingyuan last year, he withdrew more than 40,000 troops, which were the regular troops that were the real Western Liang army when the imperial court was controlled. In addition to the remnants of Jia Xu and Zhang Xiu who were later collected, Li Jue's remnants who fled northwest after the Battle of Jingyuan, there must be a total of 50,000 people, all of which had been bloody, and at least 20,000 of them were elite soldiers who had already joined the army when Dong Zhuo entered Beijing, and that was the veterans who fought for five years. The remaining 30,000 people should be shorter than three years of service.

Considering the population and grain reserves of Wuwei County and Zhangye County, I estimate that Guo Si's 50,000 people would not be able to remain in combat. Some people must be divided into farming and farming, at least they should be subsidized for military needs. Otherwise, they would definitely not be able to support the local households and tax payments. Now, the entire Liangzhou, Hexi County, Jincheng and Xiping, have a total of only 500,000 Han people, as well as an unknown number of Qiang tribes. How can the people who pay taxes alone raise so many soldiers in Han Sui and Guo Si?"

(Note: It is estimated that there should be more than one million people in Liangzhou at the end of the Han Dynasty, but there are indeed few Han people. Qiang tribes do not have household registration and do not pay taxes)

Li Su looked at the map, analyzed Guan Yu and Ma Chao's rhetoric, and felt that Guan Yu's attack direction was correct. The local population was so small and poor, because food was difficult for the enemy. The crops in the enemy-occupied area could only be said to be to solve some of the military supplies, and it was necessary to attack along the route as convenient as possible in the river transportation.

Even if we have to fight Han Sui first and then Guo Si, and fight another tough battle, it is still a good deal.
Chapter completed!