On the morning of the tenth day after returning to White Hoof Ridge, Han Qian awoke very early. Dawn had not yet fully broken, and the light inside the room was even dimmer. In the study converted from an abandoned ancestral hall, he lit an oil lamp to read a secret letter that had just arrived from Xuzhou the previous day.

To prevent the news and whereabouts of his departure from Xuzhou from leaking, all secret letters were written in cipher and transmitted through multiple layers before needing to be translated for reading.

This secret letter had only been translated overnight by Xi Ren the previous night.

All was well in Xuzhou. The imperial edict and decrees regarding the alliance between Chu and Shu had also been copied and transmitted to Xuzhou.

The trade terms for the two Shu regions along the Qianjiang passage—on Great Chu’s side, the specific arrangements were to be executed by the Wuchuan Salt and Iron Bureau, which was nominally under the jurisdiction of the Hunan Transport Commissioner but currently actually controlled by Xuzhou.

The Yuzhou side had also dispatched officials to further discuss coordination matters between both parties.

Xuzhou was also further intensifying repairs on the Caojing Ridge post road, which should be widened to the standard of a five-foot road before year’s end, barely allowing the passage of carts and horses.

All of this meant Xuzhou’s expenditure of money and grain was extremely large. In the short term, they could only squeeze out limited additional funds and grain to support the Chishan Association’s development.

The most critical piece of news was that in Wuchuan, they had successfully drilled a small-mouth well to a depth of thirty zhang.

The existing salt wells in Sichuan and Shu were all large-mouth shallow wells.

This was mainly due to the technical limitations of drilling in this era.

The deepest salt well was thirty zhang deep, but its mouth diameter exceeded sixty to seventy zhang, showing just how enormous these so-called large-mouth shallow wells were.

Not to mention anything else—just digging such a deep salt well with such a large circumference, how much manpower and material resources would it consume?

Not to mention the later maintenance.

Wuchuan currently had two salt wells and two newly discovered brine springs, all located within a mountain ridge on the east side of the Qianjiang River. This indicated that beneath this mountain ridge with its complete geological structure, there must be abundant salt ore or brine resources.

However, the problem was that in Wuchuan County, the brine that flowed through rock fissures to shallow surface layers above bedrock, and even directly flowed out to the surface forming brine springs, was extremely limited.

This made it appear that Wuchuan’s well salt resources were quite limited, but actually it was only that with current drilling technology, they couldn’t extract more brine.

To extract brine on a larger scale required improving drilling technology.

Directly penetrating rock layers, using small-mouth deep wells to directly extract brine resources located beneath bedrock and deep within rock layers.

Of course, Han Qian only provided the drilling concept from later generations of using percussion impact to break rock.

This concept didn’t contain any epoch-making technological content, but under this concept, developing handy tools and figuring out a complete set of drilling and extraction supporting technologies—that was what Chen Jitang leading the Engineers’ Academy had to do.

The preliminary research alone consumed three to four months. It wasn’t until early April that they officially went to the mountains of Wuchuan to conduct field drilling experiments.

Currently, using one and a half months’ time, they had successfully drilled a hundred-meter-deep small-mouth well in the mountains on the east bank of the Qianjiang River, breaking through the depth limit of contemporary large-mouth wells. Even if they hadn’t yet surveyed new underground brine, this was still a quite remarkable achievement.

If this technology were transmitted to Shu Kingdom, Han Qian believed that Shu Kingdom’s well salt production, based on existing manpower, could at least increase by one or two times within three to five years, perhaps even more.

“What’s this about that has you so excited?”

Xi Ren got up slightly later. Pushing open the door, she saw Han Qian standing by the window with a smile on his face and asked.

“The secret letter you translated last night—don’t you know that Chen Jitang successfully drilled a hundred-meter-deep well in Wuchuan?” Han Qian asked.

“What’s so remarkable about that? Haven’t they still not dug up new brine springs? Expending such great manpower and material resources—very likely it’s all wasted effort,” Xi Ren said.

Xi Ren knew the Engineers’ Academy had gathered people and expended tremendous effort in Wuchuan to drill a thirty-zhang-deep small-mouth well, yet hadn’t successfully extracted brine. She felt regretful about it, but hadn’t thought deeply about what the continuously perfected drilling technology behind this practice represented.

This gap in perspective and insight—even for Xi Ren—couldn’t be compensated for by personal intelligence and talent.

“How could it be wasted effort?”

People in his dream memories remembered that during the Song and Ming periods, the people of Sichuan and Shu used small-bore deep wells to extract not only brine and natural gas from underground, but had even extracted petroleum in the Bazhong and southern Sichuan regions!

Just as Han Qian was about to have a good chat with Xi Ren about the significance of this new drilling technology, He Liufeng and Lin Sheng knocked on the door and entered.

Lin Sheng reported:

“After nightfall yesterday, a group of forces infiltrated the forest west of White Hoof Ridge, but they lay in ambush in the forest all night without any movement. We didn’t dare alert the enemy, and we still don’t know exactly how many people have infiltrated. However, it didn’t rain last night. I’m now dispatching people to circle around to the northwest to search—we should be able to judge approximately from the footprints they left behind…”

Even using telescopes, they could observe unusual activity in the western forest across from them and see some vague human figures, but to confirm the specific number of ambush forces, the simplest and most direct method would be to directly send troops to kill into the forest and conduct a probing attack on this group of ambush forces.

However, if they didn’t want to alert the enemy, then as long as they could find the route they used to infiltrate, they could also judge approximately from the traces they left behind.

Feng Liao had just received the news as well. Entering with Guo Rong, Feng Yi, and Kong Xirong, he said: “They didn’t launch a sneak attack last night and continued lurking in the forest—clearly they still want to take advantage of the night to transfer more personnel over, then catch us completely off guard in one blow.”

“Don’t send people out to search. Act as if we know nothing. Since these people are determined to only dare sneak attack us, there’s actually nothing to fear. What I fear now is if they attack head-on from the northern and southern openings in full formation!” Han Qian said.

Feng Liao and the others thought about it and agreed.

Han Qian gave further instructions to Lin Sheng and He Liufeng, who were specifically responsible for camp construction and defense: “Tight inside, loose outside for the camp. Don’t make any extra movements, wait until tonight. Except for key personnel, don’t issue advance warnings to ordinary association members and their families, lest people become anxious and afraid to sleep at night. When we truly need to face the enemy, if everyone is listless, we’ll have fallen into the enemy’s trap.”

Han Qian thought that if this enemy force ambushed in the forest west of White Hoof Ridge had even more personnel infiltrating tonight for the rendezvous, then when they launched their assault, it would be at least in the latter half of the night or after dawn tomorrow.

“Shouldn’t Your Excellency evacuate first? If enemy forces truly assault in, with chaos everywhere, we fear there might be a mishap,” Lin Sheng said.

“If I don’t even have this much courage, the enemy would truly look down on me,” Han Qian waved his hand, telling Lin Sheng and He Liufeng to do what they needed to do and not waste words urging him to leave. He said, “If the enemy is merely determined to sneak attack from the west, the camp here won’t descend into chaos.”

Unless absolutely necessary, Han Qian wouldn’t have Kong Xirong lead the guard forces into battle to kill enemies. This was to prevent his whereabouts from leaking and to avoid attracting larger-scale attention at this time. But the guard forces must remain at White Hoof Ridge just in case—how could they escort him away at this critical juncture?

……

……

During the day, the camp methodically strengthened defensive measures on the northern and southern sides.

Because White Hoof Ridge’s mountain body was narrow, stable streams and rivers couldn’t form in the mountains, but there were still natural dry gullies formed by rainwater during rainstorm seasons flowing and scouring along valley terrain.

The villagers who previously lived at White Hoof Ridge had also dug channels between the dry gullies and the eastern lake marshes. On one hand, they could draw lake water to irrigate farmland on both sides; on the other hand, during rainstorm seasons, they could timely channel mountain torrents from the dry gullies and mountain-base channels into the lake for drainage.

Even from the remaining houses, one could see that before the war, a small number of villagers still lived in the fishing village on the east side of White Hoof Ridge. But they mainly made their living from fishing, and the channels and other water conservancy facilities at the mountain base on the east side had long fallen into disrepair.

This was also a microcosm of the Jianghuai region’s population sharply declining over a dozen years.

Like Shiliang County, which was mainly located on lake and marsh plains, during the previous dynasty’s prosperous era its population thrived at nearly one hundred thousand. However, before the Jinling Incident, the population had declined to less than twenty thousand—inferior even to remote mountain counties like Jinhe County in Sizhou.

Over these days, the camp had concentrated manpower to clear out abandoned channels on both northern and southern sides, drawing in lake water.

This sealed off the land connections between the northern and southern sides and the outside world—access was only possible through two simple drawbridges.

On the eastern side, besides the extremely dense reed marshes, the lake shore was both wide and shallow. Even flat-bottomed shallow boats could hardly approach.

These past two days, Lin Sheng, He Liufeng, and the others had also organized manpower to drive a row of wooden stakes into the dry gully halfway up the eastern slope, then fill one side of the stakes with earth and stone, planning to build a simple earthen dam five or six feet high.

When it rained, accumulated rainwater could not only irrigate the slopes on both sides but would also pose a threat to any large-scale enemy forces wanting to kill their way into the camp from below the dam.

Subsequently, besides watchtowers, they would also build protective walls along the dry gullies and channels to further improve the defensive system. They would build a trestle road through the shallow silted lake shore, extending to deep water to facilitate the passage of boats.

This way, the Chishan Association’s foothold base here could gradually be perfected.

The day quickly passed. As the sky darkened, with cloudy weather, the full moon only revealed a corner beneath the covering of dark clouds. Heaven and earth barely had enough light to make out objects.

Han Qian also went up the mountain after dark, crouching in the forest, using his telescope to observe the western forest.

That forest extended out from the mountain base for approximately two to three li in depth. Further west were also abandoned fields, with several small-scale refugee gathering camps whose lit bonfires were clearly visible at night.

If not for the telescope faintly showing shadowy figures of troops transferring toward the western forest from the northwest direction, relying on the naked eye alone would make it very difficult to detect the slightest abnormality in such night conditions.

“The newly arrived batch of forces clusters around thirty-some warhorses, yet we hear absolutely no sound of horse neighing transmitted—perhaps they’re elite direct forces from Anning Palace or Huaidong,” He Liufeng said with furrowed brows, leaning over.

The refugee forces that Anning Palace and Huaidong secretly controlled could both possibly launch surprise attacks on them, but before actual contact, they couldn’t even figure out whether this enemy force intending to sneak attack them came from Anning Palace or Huaidong.

Of course, seeing that this enemy force lurking in the forest was more cautious than they had anticipated, Han Qian and his group were more inclined to believe these were personnel dispatched by Huaidong. Particularly this small force now infiltrating toward the western forest was even more likely to be elite direct forces dispatched by Huaidong directly from Chuzhou…