The Xi clan had successively suffered persecution from Ma Yuanheng, the former Prefect of Xuzhou, and Feng Changyu, the Magistrate of Qianyang County. The elite tribal soldiers of those years were almost completely annihilated, leaving only Xi Chang and sixty to seventy other surrendered troops, along with nearly four thousand elderly, weak, sick, and disabled Xi clan members, who were ultimately sold by Feng Changyu as slaves to southwestern Hunan and the old commanderies of central Qian.

That was in the sixth year of Tianyou. At that time, Xi Fa’er and Xi Cheng were only sixteen years old, and Xi Ren was merely eleven. They could not possibly forget the hatred of their clan’s destruction and the loss of their families.

During the process of being sold, the Xi clan members’ circumstances were extremely miserable. Many died of old age, illness, or even torture by their new masters. At this time, perhaps only two thousand clan members could still draw breath.

Even though the hatred of their clan’s destruction was hard to extinguish in their hearts, Xi Chang and Xi Fa’er had already despaired of restoring their clan.

Xi Chang and Xi Fa’er had initially been sold to different places. Their chance encounter on the road was already a pleasant surprise—the most celebratory event in their years of miserable slave life. However, even so, even though they saw quite a few Xi clan descendants being gathered and sent to Canglang, they merely assumed this was the beginning of another period of enslavement. Who could have imagined they would suddenly see the dawn of clan restoration that set their hearts ablaze?

Whether for their personal interests or for the Xi clan’s restoration, Xi Chang and Xi Fa’er accepted Han Qian’s words completely and without reservation—even if Xi Cheng’s death wasn’t entirely as Han Qian described, why would Xi Chang and Xi Fa’er split hairs over such details?

“Xi Chang and Xi Fa’er are willing to heed the Lord’s commands and follow you unto death. If we violate this oath, may the mountain spirits abandon us,” Xi Chang and Xi Fa’er said. Only now did they realize that their father-son reunion was entirely Han Qian’s arrangement. This alone was enough to make them feel deeply grateful to Han Qian. They immediately prostrated themselves and kowtowed to swear their oath.

“I wish to build a new Canglang City atop the ruins of Junxian. I need a garrison force. I will assign sixty men for you father and son to command. For all matters, you will report to Tian Cheng—I hope you won’t disappoint me,” Han Qian said.

The elite scouts under the Left Office’s Military Bureau couldn’t be wasted on daily camp guard duty, but the camp here absolutely couldn’t be left undefended either.

More importantly, the able-bodied men the Xi clan members could gather were already extremely limited. They needed to be organized and trained immediately to become a basic combat force under his control.

The people left behind by the four clans, Han Qian would use as civilian laborers. Although among the sixty men left by Feng Xuan and Yang Qin, only twenty were Xi clan members, the others were all slaves who had been ransomed. As long as rewards and punishments were clearly defined, they could still be used.

However, given the language, customs, and conflicts between native and immigrant registrations, Han Qian currently needed to use Xi Chang and Xi Fa’er as squad leaders to command this slave soldier force. Moreover, as long as Xi Chang, Xi Fa’er, and others could truly serve him, and with Xi Ren—the Xi clan’s nominal female chieftain—present, this nominally slave soldier force wouldn’t have excessively low morale.

Currently, this military force was temporarily organized at sixty men. When Yang Qin and Feng Xuan led the fleet over again, the numbers could expand to over a hundred. At a certain point, they could reciprocally supplement the manpower shortage of the boat gang and the four clans’ fleet. After all, these people were nominally borrowed from the boat gang and fleet.

The problem was that as the Left Office continued to expand, the forces requiring support grew increasingly large. The Left Office’s military resources would become increasingly depleted. In addition, he still needed to fully support Li Zhigao’s establishment in the three counties west of Deng—Canglang City could to some extent be said to be built for Li Zhigao. How long the money shop’s scheme could be maintained, Han Qian’s heart was becoming somewhat uncertain.

Han Qian kept Xi Chang and Xi Fa’er in the main tent to talk, deliberating over the narrative for the slave soldiers below.

They temporarily couldn’t publicize the matter of Xi clan restoration, yet they needed to inspire the slave soldiers’ morale for Han Qian’s use, making the narrative quite important. Additionally, they needed to thoroughly consider the special characteristics of training this slave soldier force. Han Qian didn’t have many elite troops to control all affairs, so the slave soldiers would temporarily be organized under the Military Bureau commanded by Tian Cheng for unified training and command.

After Tian Cheng led Xi Chang and Xi Fa’er away to arrange the training of slave soldiers and distribution of arms and armor, Han Qian summoned the veteran master craftsman Zheng Tong from the workshop.

Zheng Tong and nine other master craftsmen, along with over seventy craftsmen, had arrived at Xiangzhou by boat with the Dragon Sparrow Army’s main force this time.

Even considering that after reaching Xiangzhou they could conscript locally or have Du Chongtao’s side uniformly allocate a batch of civilian laborers, the Dragon Sparrow Army’s seven thousand soldiers included about six thousand five hundred proper combat troops, with over five hundred logistics and supply personnel. These mainly consisted of various craftsmen to ensure the Dragon Sparrow Army’s needs for building fortifications, trenches, manufacturing war equipment, repairing arms and armor, and even treating injuries and illnesses.

Even when Han Qian departed from Jinling, Xinchang Marquis Li Pu and the others still hadn’t decided to promote the establishment of a new Junzhou. However, Han Qian had additionally transferred a hundred craftsmen from the workshop for his own use, so he wouldn’t be restricted by the petty officials under Zhou Yuan’s command making things difficult.

Zheng Tong had only been at Canglang for a few days. After several master craftsmen discussed it, they came up with a plan for city construction.

When Zheng Tong entered the main tent, his opinion was very clear: with only three to four hundred able-bodied laborers available and without enough mules and horses to match, even if they rebuilt an earthen city wall according to the scale of the old Junxian city, it would take roughly ten years to complete.

Though Zheng Tong couldn’t be called proficient in mathematics, his experience was seasoned. Not only had he represented the Left Office in participating in the construction of the Taowu military prefecture’s earthen city and outpost compounds, but all the large and small buildings in the workshop had him as the chief builder. He had previously overseen the construction of fortified strongholds, so his estimates of project scope wouldn’t deviate much.

The ruins of Junxian were located at the confluence of the Han River and Dan River. In summer and autumn, rainfall was abundant, and mountain floods occasionally erupted, rushing down from the mountain ridges into the Dan River or Han River. Building with rammed earth had extremely high requirements and couldn’t save much manpower.

If they followed Han Qian’s requirements—mixing lime mortar, bamboo strips, and grass clippings into the rammed clay—the wall’s solidity would certainly be higher, but the required manpower and money would be even more wasteful.

The able-bodied laborers currently assembled at Canglang clearly fell far short of city construction needs. However, Han Qian’s previous methods could only proceed gradually. It was impossible to immediately make these strongholds feel secure enough to dispatch all their able-bodied laborers to work under the Left Office’s command.

If all these people were detained, wouldn’t these strongholds be idiots?

As for the current defensive situation in the Nanyang Basin, money and provisions were actually easier to discuss. Du Chongtao was unlikely to additionally allocate able-bodied civilian laborers to support the Dragon Sparrow Army in building a city here.

On one hand, Xiangzhou already had a small fortress on the southern bank. On the other hand, along the entire Deng Xiang defense line, which location didn’t need to conscript able-bodied civilian laborers to strengthen fortifications?

Even if the Dragon Sparrow Army could obtain some able-bodied civilian laborers, they first had to guarantee Li Zhigao’s fortification needs at Jingzikou and other locations.

At this time, never mind ten years to build an encircling wall—even delaying two or three months, Han Qian felt the situation would be unbearable.

Small detachments of Liang army scouts had already appeared in the wilderness north of Fancheng. They temporarily didn’t dare infiltrate the mountain ridges on both flanks, but this was only temporary. As long as a Liang army main force entered the Nanyang Basin and intimidated the Deng Xiang forces from acting rashly, the small elite Liang scout detachments would inevitably spread to both flanks.

If the Left Office wanted to establish itself at Canglang without the protection of city walls, how could they resist harassment from Liang army scouts?

In this way, the plan proposed by Zheng Tong and the other master craftsmen couldn’t be adopted at all.

Han Qian led Xi Ren, Zheng Tong, and others out of the main tent and saw three to four hundred people in the camp clearing broken walls and rubble.

Most of the buildings within the old Junxian city had rammed earth walls. Even if they hadn’t been completely destroyed in previous warfare, after ten or even dozens of years without repairs or maintenance, exposed to wind and rain, they had all become incomplete, crumbling dangerous walls that could collapse at any moment, requiring demolition and clearing before reconstruction.

At this time, one could also see that a large number of Junxian’s buildings had excavated mud trenches with stones laid as foundations, then rammed earth walls built atop the stone foundations. Though not comparable to masonry construction from bottom to top, this was still quite sophisticated.

Han Qian carefully examined the ruins of the old Junxian city. This city, destroyed in warfare during the late previous dynasty, had already abandoned the traditional ward compound architecture within the city in favor of a crisscrossing street and alley structure.

In the higher terrain of the northeastern section, where the prefectural, provincial, and county government offices were located, the thoroughfares were quite spacious. However, in the southwestern section closest to the Han River and Dan River, where the terrain was low-lying and mainly consisted of poor people’s dwellings, the alleys were quite narrow. Some alley remnants were perhaps not even one pace wide—never mind allowing carts and horses to pass, even a single person walking through would feel extremely confined.

When they previously selected the camp location, they mainly chose the higher-terrain northeastern section. Now, pressed by circumstances and needing to build an enclosure in the fastest possible time, Han Qian realized their previous focus had been wrong.

“We should first build a small enclosure in the southwest,” Han Qian gathered Zheng Tong and the other master craftsmen and said. “This area is all poor people’s dwellings with narrow alleys. But look—if we clear away the debris in this area, the remnant wall foundations on both sides of the alleys, plus the alley itself, amount to about five feet wide, which happens to be the width of earthen walls we need for the early-stage enclosure.”

Han Qian’s plan was to select two alleys a hundred paces apart, use the remnant wall foundations on both sides of the alleys as a base for wall construction, and first build an enclosure a hundred paces square to meet early-stage needs for resisting harassment by Liang army scouts.

Under current conditions, while the strongholds’ wariness hadn’t dissipated, to more fully utilize the strongholds’ manpower, Han Qian would dispatch master craftsmen to two nearby strongholds with relatively moderate attitudes to help them build lime kilns and instruct them in firing lime. Then the Left Office would purchase lime from them, thus saving the manpower needed for mining limestone and firing lime.

Even the required coal, iron materials, stone materials, and timber could adopt this method—cooperating with strongholds that had stream connections.