Yun Puzi and the green-robed elder stood atop Thunder Peace Peak, curious to see how Han Qian would resolve this crisis. Over the following days, the third batch of over five hundred personnel departing from Xuzhou proceeded eastward. Under the leadership of Feng Liao, Ji Xiyao, and others, they arrived at Maoshan and East Lu Mountain in successive waves to join with the Chishan Army.
Among this third batch of five hundred, only a hundred were junior military officers drawn from the provincial battalions.
Xuzhou operated under a recruitment system, with its military officer corps formed from the foundation of household troops’ descendants and elite scouts from the Left Bureau along with their offspring—this formed the bedrock of Xuzhou’s military potential.
Having already transferred over four hundred military officers from Xuzhou in successive deployments, it was impossible to continue endlessly draining Xuzhou’s military potential. Otherwise, the powerful clans surrounding Xuzhou who watched with predatory eyes might no longer maintain their current docile and compliant appearance.
Of the five hundred in this third batch, nearly a hundred were master craftsmen and artisans, each with specialized skills among the various trades. Additionally, the sources of the remaining nearly three hundred were rather complex.
Among these were migrants who had been lured to Xuzhou years ago by the gold rush fever, a considerable number were servants who had migrated west with the Feng family back then, some were members of the Feng clan, and a portion were tribal settlement slaves from the four clans who had been forcibly relocated down from the mountains to settle in Linjiang, Zhongfang and other counties, as well as non-native civilians from Xuzhou.
These people all shared a common characteristic: beyond being roughly literate and capable of simple writing and reading, they had participated in Xuzhou’s large-scale projects over recent years—building river embankments, developing water conservancy, opening roads, cultivating new fields, and constructing garrison fortresses. Particularly during the implementation of field tax reforms and the integration of native and guest household registers, they had all been involved and received certain training. Through this process, they had acquired certain capabilities and experience in grassroots organizational leadership.
When Emperor Tianyou established his rule over the Huaihe region, why did he have to compromise with the aristocratic clans?
Beyond the fact that a considerable portion of the Jianghuai Army’s main forces came directly from aristocratic clans represented by the Xu clan, another major reason was that he himself had not formed a system for cultivating and selecting civil officials. Without compromising with the aristocratic clans, the political reach of the Great Chu regime could not smoothly extend down to the provincial and county levels, much less penetrate to the grassroots level of districts and townships.
The reason Han Qian and his father had been able to implement new policies in Xuzhou such as land reform and the integration of native and guest household registers—beyond the major prerequisite of having already completely shattered the native clans’ resistance through military force—was directly related to their ability to appoint a group of clerks capable of deeply penetrating the grassroots to advance the reform work. In this regard, the Feng clan’s servants had also contributed a large number of personnel.
Han Qian’s conscription of servants into military service and his daring to form grudges and enmities with the aristocratic clans—his main reliance, beyond being able to organize young and able-bodied servants into the Chishan Army using veteran soldiers and military officers, also lay in this.
Only with sufficient grassroots clerks who could lead the elderly, weak, women and children to disperse for provisions would they not become an increasingly unbearable burden on the Chishan Army, and would not turn the Chishan Army into a meat bun surrounded by various warlords.
Beyond incorporating able-bodied youth as regular military forces, the Chishan Army also mobilized the women and young boys from Taowu Settlement who had long been accustomed to semi-military management over recent years, organizing them into women’s battalions and youth battalions to strengthen the establishment and maintenance of internal order.
All of this created the necessary conditions for dispersed foraging.
This was also the solution to breaking the impasse that the green-robed elder had told Yun Puzi was right before his eyes, yet which he himself could not perceive.
The destination for dispersed foraging was not the Huzhou-Hangzhou plain south of Lake Tai, nor the Ningxi plain west of Jinling at Dangtu and Caishi, but rather the Fuyu Mountains (Tianmu Mountains) in eastern Xuanzhou.
Dangtu and Caishi were located in the heartland of the Southern Court Forbidden Army and Shouzhou Army. The Huzhou-Hangzhou plain south of Lake Tai was dominated by aristocratic clan forces headed by Huzhou Regional Commander Huang Hua. For dispersed foraging, how many troops would need to be assigned to protect each group of dispersed elderly, weak, women and children in order to successfully obtain stable and sufficient grain from the localities?
The Fuyu Mountains spanned across the five provinces of Xuan, She, Hang, Hu and Qu, stretching one hundred fifty li from north to south and three hundred li from east to west. Further west lay the equally massive Yishan (Huangshan) mountain range. To the north lay the Jieling Mountains (Yili Hills), predominantly hilly terrain and equally precipitous. This area was over a hundred times larger than the small Maoshan range.
The Chuzhou Army urgently wanted to expand its forces in the short term and control the eastern provinces of Changzhou and Suzhou, unwilling to hastily divide forces southward to confront the Chishan Army. Meanwhile, the Xuanzhou forces wanted to be indifferent neighbors, hoping even more to lure the Chishan Army eastward into Huzhou.
Taking advantage of the current situation, Han Qian first established two fortified settlements on the western and southwestern foothills of the Jieling Mountains, then organized the elderly, weak, women and children to circle around from the southwestern foothills of the Jieling Mountains. But before entering Huzhou territory, they turned south in groups of two to three hundred or three to five hundred women and children, taking small mountain paths and treacherous routes, trekking through mountains and fording waters to disperse deep into the Fuyu Mountains.
This was another form of using mountains as fortifications.
The prerequisite for doing this was that after extracting the able-bodied young servants, each group of mainly one to two hundred or even three to five hundred elderly, weak, women and children, after separating from the main forces, had to maintain a certain capacity for self-protection, maintain certain abilities for self-reliance and utilizing all favorable conditions to organize production and self-rescue, and also have considerable binding force to avoid excessively intense confrontation and conflict with the local villagers.
This was absolutely impossible for ordinary migrant armies.
The extremely massive contingents of women and children in migrant armies had dispersed grassroots organization—they were pure migrants who could only follow the main forces in wandering everywhere, not daring to disperse at all.
Wherever they went, besides causing severe damage to local production like locust swarms, they themselves, due to being excessively bloated and massive, were easily taken advantage of by small elite military forces.
But the Chishan Army was different.
Beyond transferring a batch of civil officials from Xuzhou with leaders for each dispersed group of women and children, there were also ten to thirty or forty members from Taowu Settlement’s women’s battalions and youth battalions, ensuring that each group dispersing into the mountains could maintain certain self-protection capabilities and organizational capacity. They could also maintain close contact with the main forces, rather than being clumps of sand that could lose control at any moment or be cast away without care.
Currently, the women and children were mainly dispersing into the northern foothill mountainous areas of the Fuyu Mountains, which belonged respectively to Huzhou and Xuanzhou territory. Han Qian led the Chishan Army’s main forces remaining outside the mountains, primarily keeping watch on the main forces of the Huzhou and Xuanzhou armies, drawing these provincial forces’ attention to prevent them from daring to divide forces to enter the mountains for suppression campaigns, thus resolving the greatest threat faced by the elderly, weak, women and children.
Simultaneously, over a thousand elite troops had been divided in advance, forming dozens of elite small teams penetrating deep into the Fuyu Mountains to warn and suppress some stubborn forces in the mountains, assisting the women and children dispersing into the mountains to establish footholds.
Deep in the Fuyu Mountains, although arable land was extremely scarce and grain that could be requisitioned was extremely limited, during the summer and autumn seasons in this region of abundant rainfall and mild climate, the vast mountain forests could provide food sources for sustenance that were far more abundant than the thoroughly developed plains over the past thousand-plus years.
Just like in the mountainous areas around Jingxiang, tens of thousands of mountain settlement people hiding in deep mountain forests to avoid warfare lived extremely harsh lives, but at least they had endured.
More importantly, once the elderly, weak, women and children dispersed into the Fuyu Mountains and the protective pressure on the Chishan Army’s main forces greatly decreased, their range of activity could become broader and more flexible. They could free up their hands to go to more distant places and regions to collect grain and transport it into the mountains to supplement the insufficient provisions for the women and children.
Because the grain collection area became extremely broad, no longer limited to one county or even one province, but rather collecting provisions from the five provinces of Hu, Hang, Xuan, She and Qu surrounding the Fuyu Mountains.
This way, the grain pressure borne by each locality was greatly reduced, resistance would be substantially weakened, and there might even be possibilities for peaceful trade!
When Han Qian dispatched elite troops to purchase three to five thousand shi of grain from a county at reasonable grain prices, or even temporarily taking goods on credit in the name of Yueyang or directly in the name of the Chishan Army for three to five thousand shi of grain, the possibility of being refused would be far lower than requisitioning two to three hundred thousand shi of grain from one county and completely draining a county’s grain reserves.
The prerequisite for all this was breaking away from the aristocratic clans—the grassroots organizational capacity over nearly three hundred thousand elderly, weak, women and children had to penetrate to the level of organizing groups of one to two hundred people.
Purely from the perspective of convenient communication with Yueyang and Xuzhou, it might have been better for Han Qian to have the Chishan Army and the women and children enter the Jiuhua Mountains or Yishan Mountains between Chizhou and Shezhou.
The ridges of the Jiuhua Mountains extended directly to press against the southern bank of the Yangtze River, with the southwest extending into the Dongting Lake plain.
However, Han Qian avoided this area—beyond not wanting to help the Chuzhou Army restrain the forces of Anning Palace, another reason was that after the Chishan Army’s absorption, Jinling City and its surroundings still had a population of up to seven hundred thousand, plus over one hundred thousand troops from the Southern Court Forbidden Army and the southward-crossing Shouzhou Army.
If he had the elderly, weak, women and children disperse and retreat into the Jiuhua and Yishan Mountains while leading the Chishan Army’s main forces to remain southwest of Jinling, he would only compress the remaining large population inward toward Jinling City, much less leaving greater space for Jinling City to continue evacuating starving people to the outer areas.
Regardless of how others viewed him, his core objective this time was to evacuate the crowded population of Jinling, which was now entering famine, and break the Chuzhou Army’s siege strategy.
The preliminary preparations were relatively slow, but to prevent the Chuzhou Army and Xuan-Huzhou forces from reacting in time, the actual organization of the women and children’s leapfrog dispersed transfer was extremely fast. In approximately five days, over two hundred thousand women and children evacuated from the extended hilly areas south of Maoshan directly into the northern foothill mountainous areas of the Fuyu Mountains.
Afterward, the Chishan Army’s First Corps garrisoned at the northern and central foothills of Maoshan—now expanded to a scale of nine thousand and the Chishan Army’s most elite combat force—also abandoned all the defensive fortifications they had labored to build over these two months within a single day, rapidly contracting to the southwestern foothills of the Jieling Mountains, giving the Chuzhou Army no opportunity to engage.
When Marquis Xinchang Li Pu received the intelligence, he could hardly believe this reality. He hastily led over a hundred cavalrymen to rush to Azure Dragon Ridge, the former main garrison of the Chishan Army’s First Corps at the northern foothills of Maoshan.
Looking at the chaotic, abandoned defensive fortifications below the ridge crest without a single soldier remaining, Marquis Xinchang Li Pu wanted to cry but had no tears, his spine turning cold: That bastard Han Qian had withdrawn all his troops without leaving a single soldier!
With the Chishan Army leaving not a single soldier and completely contracting to the southwestern foothills of the Jieling Mountains a hundred li away—possibly even contracting further from the southwestern foothills of the Jieling Mountains toward the east of Langxi County—Shuishui City, which he was defending, was like a soft and beautiful maiden who had suddenly been stripped of all her garments and thrown into a pile of men who had endured years of deprivation and were filled with hungry desire…