After successfully returning to the county barracks that were still under construction, Zeng Kai of course reported what he saw and heard in Wulian City to his boss Chen Can, especially carefully introduced various details he found. For example, the officers in Wulian County Temple used water to deceive himself by pretending to be wine, Zhang Zhi deliberately filled his room with wine and food, and deliberately made the room light particularly dim and endured coughing, and the people cried outside the county temple gate, begging for food, etc.

Needless to say, after listening to Zeng Kai's report, Chen Can immediately laughed and said happily: "I didn't expect that Zhang Zhi's son was helpless to do so. He had no choice but to force the food in the city to the army. He was worried that he would be unable to support him. He even wanted to make a swollen face and pretend that he was full of fighting spirit and sufficient food, and wanted to struggle to death, and finally took a gamble."

"The prefect, my subordinates believe that Zhang Zhi's son should have only one purpose in such a pretentious manner."

Zeng Kai said: "That is to deceive us into thinking that the city has enough food and grass, and we cannot trap his rebels with the tactic of long-term siege, forcing us to adopt the tactic of strong attacks on the front and break the city as soon as possible. Then, like the two previous battles against the city, we should first use the strong city to weaken our troops and attack our morale, and then suddenly send troops to counterattack, creating a miracle of defeating the strong with the weak. Please check this carefully and never fall into the traitor's plan."

"Of course, how could this official be deceived by such a sub-scheming?" Chen Can said with a confident smile: "We must not be anxious in this battle. We can only be the deep ditch and high acreage to be on guard first, blocking Zhang Zhi's road to collecting grain from the city, and then we have to persist in the city and run out of food and grass, and Zhang Zhi's thief army will be destroyed without fighting."

Zeng Kai deeply agreed. At that moment, Chen Can also make up his mind and ordered the soldiers of Ke County to make every effort to build and strengthen the camps, so that they do not have to rush to build siege weapons and open up siege roads. They are determined to confront Wu Lian Han army for a long time and use the "weakness" of the Han army's shortage of food and supplies to waste the Han army to death.

To Chen Can's surprise, his right-hand man in military affairs, and his Qu general Liu Huan, who had been stationed in the heavy grain production area of ​​Xi County for a long time, all opposed his decision and advised him: "Prefect, our army has come from afar, and it is difficult to transport food and grass. The best way is to launch an attack as soon as possible, and use our advantages in terms of number of troops and overall combat effectiveness to quickly seize the Wulian small city and eliminate the Zhang Zhi thief army. Otherwise, once we are dragged by Zhang Zhi's thief army to the point where the veterans of the teacher are tired and the food and grass are insufficient, we are afraid that there will be danger in the reverse direction."

"Why are the two generals so anxious?" Chen Can asked in confusion: "Didn't you see it? Zhang Zhi's son had been struggling to death before, and had already built the Wulian city like an iron barrel. He forced the city to attack the city. Even if we succeed, we would definitely suffer heavy casualties?"

"Also." Chen Can added: "Don't collect autumn grains and harvest them soon. We can collect grain supplies on the spot. What are the difficulties in transporting grains and grass?"

"Don't worry, the prefect is not as difficult to attack as I imagined."

Liu Huan pointed out from a military perspective: "The generals carefully learned about the enemy situation from our soldiers who participated in the last Wulian siege battle. They discovered an important situation, that is, Wulian small city is too poor and has severely lack of crossbows and stitches. When defending the city, they can only rely on sheephead stones as the main weapon. Sheephead stones are enough to deal with flying ladder siege. However, once they encounter ladder trucks, siege weapons such as rushing cars and siege cars are destined to be useless."

"It's not just that there are insufficient bows and crossbows and single weapons for defending the city, but there are also a fatal weakness of the thief, which is that the soldiers are mixed with fish and dragons, there are too many new recruits in surrendered soldiers, and the real core backbone is only the old county soldiers with two garrison teams. The combat effectiveness is not particularly reliable. Such an army is okay to fight a smooth battle, but once a hard battle and a fierce battle and attrition war, hidden dangers will surely break out one by one."

"So we can completely seize this weakness of Zhang Zhi's thief army and chase and fight hard. While building a large number of ladders that cannot be destroyed by sheephead stones, we can quickly fill the moat and open the road, destroy the deer antlers and horses and bamboo thorns to open the road that goes straight to the city of Wulian, and then use large siege weapons to attack the city head-on. We will surely quickly take down Wulian and pacify Zhang Zhi's thief army."

After Liu Huan talked from a military perspective, Wang You, who had been guarding the granary of Jingke for a long time, also said: "The prefect, the general, also felt that the tactic of siege and cut off food. The reason was no different. It is absolutely impossible to collect grain on the spot in just one sentence. In addition, Zhang Zhi was eager to jump over the wall. In order to deceive the people, the collection of grain was reduced to 30% of the land tax. If the people do not collect the people, they must refuse to pay full amount of food to us on this ground. If we want to obtain food, it is very likely that it will be forced to collect by force."

"The Wulian grain production area is in the Mawei area to the south, which is quite far away from the county town. If we want to collect food and grass through force, we will definitely send a large number of troops to go south and force the people who were bewitched by Zhang Zhi's son to pay the food. This move not only takes a long time, but also destined to restrain our large number of troops and give Zhang Zhi's son the opportunity to take the opportunity to counterattack."

"So our best way." Wang You, who is good at marching grain, concluded: "It should be time to prepare to attack the city and use the grain around Wulian County to obtain on-site supplies, so that we do not have to worry about food and grass problems for a certain period of time. Then, as long as we take down Wulian County, capture and kill Zhang Zhi's son, and collect food and grass in Wulian County, the problem of collecting Wulian County will no longer exist."

Not to mention, after listening to Wang You and Liu Huan's analysis, Chen Can was really a little shaken for a while. However, considering that the food in Wu Lian City was almost out of stock and the number of soldiers who were killed and injured by forcibly siege, Chen Can still choose to be stubborn and shook his head and said, "Two generals, although you are reasonable, don't forget that Zhang Zhi'er didn't have time to harvest autumn grain into the warehouse. Wu Lian is famous for having little grain in poverty. How long can the stock of grain in the city last? So it's better to put the siege of the city first and cut off food. This won't take long, and Zhang Zhi'er will definitely destroy without fighting."

"Prince, do you think about it again?" Liu Huan advised unwillingly: "Wu Lian produces good bamboo. The ladder trucks and rushers made of bamboo are both light and strong. Zhang Zhi'er does not have enough tincture rockets to set fire to burn our siege weapons. It is very easy for us to attack Wu Lian head-on."

"Wouldn't it be easier to starve the thief army in the city to death?" Chen Can asked with a smile, and in the end he still refused Liu Huan and Wang You's kind advice, and made up his mind to trap the Han army with the tactic of cutting off food.

Of course, by common sense, Chen Can's decision was also very correct. In Wulian, who was so poor that he could not lay eggs, how much grain could he have in stock? Especially now, the Wulian Han army has not had time to harvest autumn grain into the warehouse.

In this way, because the Wulian Han army was about to lose food, and with the premise of being very sure of attacking the front, the troops of the Jingke County led by Chen Can still choose the tactic of siegeing the city and leaving food. While building a solid camp in deep ditches and high bases, they were preparing to confront the Han army for a long time, and at the same time they divided the manpower to contact the powerful and wealthy families in Wulian townships, and asked them to organize their men to harvest autumn grain as soon as possible, and then send the grain to the city and hand it over to the soldiers of the Jingke County.

This is of course cheaper for the Han soldiers in Wulian City. In order to save money, they became increasingly valuable brown rice staple food, and to buy military morale and ensure the calories of the soldiers, Zhang Zhi, who had been stingy for a long time, finally plucked his feathers. With a wave of his hand, he increased the number of instant noodles provided to the Han soldiers to eight packs per person per day, and all of them were medium-grade instant noodles with oil, vegetables and some meat stars, which made the Han soldiers finally realize their dream of eating instant noodles every day.

While the instant noodles are basically full, the Han army soldiers have temporarily gotten rid of the high-intensity military training that they must conduct every day. They don’t have to go out for exercises and run every day. They practice formation from morning to night. They just need to practice chopping and stabbing on the streets and walls of the city. The physical consumption is greatly reduced. Therefore, the morale of the Han army soldiers is not affected by the large reduction in staple food, but on the contrary has become even higher.

After all, in this era, even ordinary small and medium-sized landlords could not live a good life of eating a lot of fine white flour every day. Naturally, it goes without saying that they are almost all Han soldiers from poor people.

It was also at this time that Wu Lian Wenwu and the Han army soldiers began to admire Zhang Zhi's far-sightedness and understood Zhang Zhi's good intentions in storing a large amount of dried wild vegetables and yellow vegetables before - in the absence of fresh vegetables, what else can be as delicious as cooking dried wild vegetables? Especially when some Han army soldiers finally started to get tired of instant noodles.

The people in Wulian City also benefited. Considering the impact of the war, the day the county soldiers arrived at Wulian City, Zhang Zhi had already sent someone to post a list, announcing that all land taxes and captive taxes in Wulian were exempted from the surrounding people, so that the surrounding people who fled into the city to take refuge were allowed to live a peaceful life.

At the same time, Zhang Zhi announced extremely generously that he would distribute three packs of medium-grade instant noodles with oil, salt and meat stars to each of the people in Wulian City every day, so that even the people who are unable to work do not have to worry about food. Therefore, the people in Wulian City are still very stable. On the contrary, many people hope that the county soldiers can siege the city for a long time so that they can receive more instant noodles distributed by the Wulian Han army.

As for the food issue after the war, let alone the Han army had a policy of replacing wood with instant noodles to benefit the people, but the supplies and equipment needed by the Han army after the crazy expansion of the army had already provided enough jobs for Wulian people to help the Han army build armor, can it be exchanged for food for picking salt and boiling salt and woven cloth?

Wu Lian, who is supported by instant noodles, has a lot of confidence. He not only dares to confront the county soldiers for a long time, but also hopes to confront the county soldiers for a long time. However, the soldiers of Jiu Ke County are different. As time goes by, the food brought by the army decreases day by day, and the food supply problem of the soldiers for Jiu Ke County soldiers is gradually exposed, especially when the powerful people in Wu Lian are no longer willing to support the county soldiers, this problem has gradually accumulated and become a huge hidden danger.

Although Chen Can and the soldiers of Jingke County spent a lot of effort to advise and lobby and lobby the powerful and wealthy families in Wulian who actually hold grassroots power, as the autumn grain harvesting work in Wulian township gradually began, the bad news continued to fly to Chen Can like snowflakes. The poor people who hoped to have a full meal in the coming year would cheat and insist that the Wulian County Temple had actually reduced their land tax to 30%. Unless the soldiers of Jingke County agreed to their implementation of this clause, they would not pay a single grain of food.

The powerful and wealthy households who held a large amount of land in their hands also cheated on each other, complaining that because of Zhang Zhi's bewitching the people, they claimed with mercy that they had used a large amount of timber to pay the land tax, and also asked the soldiers of the Jingke County to collect grain according to Zhang Zhi's policy, and at the same time, they quietly transferred the grain to welcome the forced collection of the soldiers of the Jingke County. As a result, without the cooperation of these local snakes, the soldiers of the Jingke who went to the countryside to raise grain would of course return empty-handed, and they could not collect any grain when the autumn grain had already begun to be harvested.

In this way, there were only two options left before Chen Can. One was to quickly capture Wulian County, annihilate Wulian Han army, and then free up his hands to calmly deal with these unruly people who refused to pay grain and taxes; the other was to divide the troops in the last battle and dispatch troops to the countryside to collect grain by force, so that the soldiers of the Jinke County had enough food to completely trap the Wulian Han army, who was about to lose food.

When discussing how to choose, the decision-making level of the Xike County soldiers was not unified. Considering that the siege was too heavy and the Han army could not even harvest a piece of autumn grain into the warehouse, they hoped to take down Wulian City at the minimum cost. Zeng Kai and Su Ding, who had been demoted to Qu General, both advocated collecting grain by force to ensure that the county soldiers could confront the Han army for a long time.

Liu Huan and Wang You still advocated priority siege in the city, and suggested that Chen Can not pay attention to the unlucky people who refused to pay grain for the time being. They temporarily maintained military supplies by relying on the autumn grain around Wulian County, which had already earned income. Then, they used the strength and combat effectiveness of the county soldiers to attack and seize the Wulian small city. This not only prevented the risk of division of troops, but also calmly dealt with the unlucky people after dealing with Zhang Zhi.

In fact, Chen Can, who is very talented, thought carefully for a long time before asking Liu Huan and Wang You: "General Liu, General Wang, if we adopt the tactic of frontal attack, how much time do you think we will take and how much cost, and then we can ensure that we will take down Wuliancheng?"

"This..." Liu Huan replied hesitantly: "Report to the prefect, no one can tell. The key is to rely on Zhang Zhi's thief army's determination to resist. If they insist on resisting stubbornly, we will definitely have to spend a lot of money to take down Wulian City. However, if the Zhang Zhi's thief army's morale is weak and the soldiers are discontinued, we will definitely be able to take down Wulian County easily."

"Then what do you think of Zhang Zhi's thief army's determination to resist?" Chen Can asked again, saying, "Don't you know that we have blocked Zhang Zhi's thief army in the city for half a month. Not only did Wulian the local soldiers and people surrender, but even the soldiers of the Jingke County who were forced to surrender to Zhang Zhi's thief army did not find an opportunity to quietly surrender?"

"The last general is also wondering about this." Liu Huan replied helplessly: "In theory, Zhang Zhi's thief army has reached this point. It should have been a long time since the common people's soldiers quietly left the city to surrender. Why hasn't this happened yet?"

"Eighty-mostly, Zhang Zhi's son followed the crazy thieves and distributed the women in the city to the soldiers to buy the morale of the army." Su Ding rushed to say: "There are still some beautiful women in Wulian City."

No one paid attention to Su Ding, who was famously lustful, and Wang You just reminded carefully: "Prince, if you are determined to divide troops and collect grain, the partial army leaves the camp, I am afraid that Zhang Zhi's son will take the opportunity to attack and fight us to the death."

"Does we need to be afraid?" Chen Can sneered and said, "Did you forget that after the division of troops, the initiative to launch a decisive battle is still in our hands?"

Wang You and Liu Huan looked at each other, then nodded quickly and said, "The prefect is wise and considers it more thoroughly than us. It's good. We have built the camp strong enough these days. Even if Zhang Zhi's child takes the risk of fighting, whether to fight will be the final battle, the initiative is still in our hands."

"Now don't worry about the problem after the division of troops, right?" Chen Can asked again with a smile, saying, "After we took the initiative to divide the troops, Zhang Zhi'er may bet on his own and risk going out of the city to fight us to the death, but we have a strong camp to defend, and whether to fight or not is still up to us!"

"If you are sure, we will fight Zhang Zhi's thief army head-on, kill his main force in the field, reduce our pressure on siege, and even make sure not to be restrained in one battle! If you are not sure, we will not be able to defend the camp and wait for the partial army to collect grain and return, and then we will waste Zhang Zhi's thief army alive!"

"The prefect's wonderful plan!" Zeng Kai quickly complimented: "If we act like this, we can not only ensure the supply of food and grass, but also have the effect of luring the enemy. It is of course best to be able to directly defeat the enemy in the field. If we feel that we are not sure, we will firmly guard the camp and see if Zhang Zhi dares to attack our solid camp!"

Liu Huan and Wang You were also persuaded and nodded immediately together. Su Ding couldn't wait and said, "Prefect, let the general lead the side troops to the south to collect grain."

"You? No, do you think you didn't offend enough of Wu Lian people last time?" Chen Can snorted coldly, and then said, "Wang You, you have been responsible for collecting and transporting grain in Xi County for many years. Leave this matter to you and bring your troops to the headquarters."

Wang You quickly agreed and asked when he would leave. Chen Can immediately replied: "Let go tomorrow morning, go openly and with great fanfare, and then see how Zhang Zhi's child chooses!"

In this way, under Chen Can's arrangement, on the morning of the next day, Wang You led the county soldiers of four garrisons to force the Wulian ragtag people to pay food according to the rules. Outside the southern gate of Wulian County, the size of the county soldiers' troops suddenly reduced to more than 1,500 people in fifteen garrisons, which was almost the same as the Wulian Han army, which was organized into fourteen garrisons.

Of course, this situation was quickly reported to the decision-making level of Wulian Han Army. As a result, Fu Gong, Zhao Quan and others were of course very happy when they heard this, and they all said to Zhang Zhi: "Ming Court, you have been caught by you. The county soldiers have indeed divided their troops to conquer grain. We should seize this opportunity to send troops and fight to the death with Chen Can!"

"The Ming court is rare to have a fighter opportunity." Wu Ma, who was very familiar with the situation of the county soldiers, also said: "The army of the county was divided by Chen Can. The county was the most wealthy county in our country. The soldiers had the best weapons and equipment. Chen Can sent them away, which was equivalent to cutting off one of his arms. At this time, the situation would be much more beneficial to us."

"Don't be too happy too early." Zhang Zhi said calmly: "Don't forget that the county soldiers have established a strong enough camp outside the city. This means that even if we are determined to go out of the city to fight, the initiative is still in the hands of the county soldiers. If they refuse to fight, it will be destined to be difficult for us to take down their camp, whether it is a strong attack or a sneak attack. Especially with so many new recruits, we have almost no experience in fighting tough battles."

"Mingting, what should I do?" Fu Gong asked.

"Let me think about it carefully." Zhang Zhi replied: "Consider whether you should take a gamble, and how to ensure you have a chance to fight the county soldiers!"

After weighing the pros and cons of the long period of time, Zhang Zhi decided to take a risk to take a bet. The reason was that he finally managed to get the county soldiers divided their troops on their own. How could he miss such a chance of decisive battle? Moreover, even if the Han army could use the instant noodles as a golden finger to consume the county soldiers, the county soldiers who were not injured might make a comeback at any time. It is very likely that the elite troops under Huo Yi's command came to help with the battle. At that time, the Han army would have no chance of winning.
Chapter completed!