After Guo Duanduo completed his designated peace negotiation tasks in Jinling and East Lake successively, he arrived in Shouspring in early December. He temporarily stayed in Shouspring to coordinate the transfer of reinforcement supplies.
Although across from Shouspring lay Yingzhou, controlled by Xu Mingzhen, the Sha-Ying River (Ying River), which led to Xuzhou, northern Ruzhou, and connected to Yingzhou territory through the tributary Jialu River (Honggou Ditch) before joining the Yellow River, had its confluence with the Huai River right within Yingzhou territory across from Shouspring.
Six to seven million jin of grain and other supplies each month—water transport by ships was always the most effortless and labor-saving method.
Otherwise, it would require conscripting at least ten thousand civilian laborers, ten thousand mules and horses with corresponding carts constantly traveling back and forth, plus conscripting large numbers of laborers to ensure the post roads and highways remained clear along the route, which would be a tremendous waste of people’s resources and wealth.
Tang Yi’s lending of reinforcement supplies was extremely important for the current He-Huai Allied Army’s operations on the western flank, and it involved transit through Qiao and Ying prefectures.
Additionally, with the peace treaty established between Liang and Chu, some Liang troops from Guanzhong would return east from Liangzhou aboard Chishan Association merchant ships, with Shouspring designated as a transfer point.
As a ministerial-level official of the Liang state, Guo Duanduo naturally had to temporarily remain in Shouspring to supervise various matters during this difficult time to prevent any mishaps.
On the Tang Yi side, coordination with Guo Duanduo was mainly handled by Tian Cheng, who concurrently held the position of Shouzhou Inspector, along with Wang Zhe and other military intelligence staff officials specifically responsible for affairs in the Central Plains, He-Shuo, and other northern regions.
Since the Qin and Han dynasties, Shouspring had held extremely important strategic position and military value, located at a vital crossroads of water and land transportation, with natural terrain favorable for defense, plus fertile soil and abundant products—it had always been a core area contested by various parties during major upheavals in the Central Plains.
After the previous dynasty excavated the Eastern Grand Canal on a large scale, while the Yuxi River (Rusu River) connecting Chao Lake to the Yangtze River and waterways like the Anfeng Canal seriously silted up, the strategic position of Shouspring and western Huai region diminished somewhat.
Looking at the entire Jiang-Huai and He-Huai territories from an overall perspective, the water transport core between He-Huai and Jiang-Huai still centered on the Eastern waterway mainly consisting of the Han Ditch (Shanyang Canal), but from Tang Yi or western Huai’s perspective, this waterway connecting Jiang-Huai through Yuxi River via Chao Lake and the Fei River ditches could be called western Huai’s lifeline.
Over these three to four years, Han Qian had spared no effort dredging and widening the Yuxi River waterway. After repairing the Anfeng Canal at the beginning of the year, continuous dredging of the Anfeng Canal and the two-hundred-plus li waterway where the Fei River connected to Chao Lake had not stopped, but rather continued as an ongoing project, broken down and assigned to county and township officials along the banks for continued execution.
Han Qian wanted to further develop Yuxi River, Chao Lake, and the Fei River into the core waterway connecting Jiang-Huai, so that East Lake could surpass Yangzhou in strategic geographical position.
As the northern mouth of this core waterway, Shouspring’s future importance in Tang Yi’s territory went without saying.
Of course, before this, Shouspring had been the seat of Emperor Tianyou when he served as Huainan Military Commissioner in earlier years, and afterward had always been the seat and government office of Xu Mingzhen as Shouzhou Military Commissioner.
The Shouspring city walls were grand and spacious. The outer city, also called the郭城 (Guo city or outer wall), had a circumference of thirteen li, with walls built of rammed earth.
When the Shouzhou army withdrew, nearly sixty thousand civilians all lived within the outer city, cultivating nearly four hundred thousand mu of fields inside and outside the outer city.
The inner city, also called the子城 (citadel or inner fortress), had a circumference of four li, with walls covered in brick and stone, tall and precipitously steep, with deep moats outside the walls—truly impregnable as a fortress of gold.
Shouspring city backed against Mount Bagong to the north, with the North Fei River flowing around the city from the east. Multiple canals diverted water into the outer city for irrigating fields and daily use within. Inside and outside the outer city, six solid garrison fortresses were also built.
Going north from Shouspring city for more than twenty li, on the northern foothills of Mount Bagong, lay the strategic natural barrier of the middle Huai River—Xiashi Mountain (Xiashi Pass), known as the First Gorge of the Huai River.
The Huai River flowed from west to east, and upon reaching the western foothills of Mount Bagong, was blocked by the mountain terrain and turned northwest, passing through Xiashi Mountain before continuing eastward.
The mighty Huai River, flowing through this Xiashi Pass section, was compressed by the rocky cliffs on both banks to its narrowest point of only seventy zhang wide, so that during summer and autumn when the upper Huai River flooded each year, the narrow Xiashi Pass could not discharge water in time, often forming large flood retention zones in the upstream regions on both banks, severely harming agricultural production.
Xu Mingzhen had built two solid garrison fortresses on each side of Xiashi Mountain, while also constructing a garrison fortress on the gentle slope facing the Huai River at the western foothills of Mount Bagong to protect the narrow passage between East Xiashi and Shouspring, preventing enemy forces from forcibly crossing the Huai River from the opposite bank. Fengtai city was located only twelve or thirteen li east of Xiashi Pass.
Such a dense cluster of fortifications—most having existed for thousands of years, with Emperor Tianyou and Xu Mingzhen mainly just renovating and strengthening them on the remnants or ruins—combined with the special geographical positions and terrain of Xiashi Pass, Mount Bagong, the Huai River, the North Fei River east of the city, and Wabu Marsh, constituted Shouspring’s unique and formidable defensive system that was easy to defend and difficult to attack.
Before establishing their states, Liang and Chu had frequently fought on both sides of the Huai River. Over more than thirty years, Liang forces had crossed the river southward from western Huai multiple times, but not once had they successfully torn through Shouspring’s complete defensive system.
Had Xu Mingzhen not voluntarily withdrawn from Shouspring city this time, Han Qian could only first capture Huoqiu and Fengtai, then occupy Mount Bagong, cut off contact between Shouspring city and Xiashi Pass, and then lay siege to the troops and civilians in the city.
Otherwise, to directly storm Shouspring city, the Tang Yi army would have suffered countless casualties.
Inside and outside Shouspring, streets and alleys crisscrossed, residences were orderly, shops along the streets were numerous and displayed dazzling arrays of goods. Within the outer city also sat dozens of various workshop factories, large and small.
Shouspring had long been the economic, political, military, and cultural center of western Huai.
Currently, besides stationing over eight thousand cavalry, infantry, and naval forces in Shouspring, Tang Yi had also transferred over a thousand master craftsmen, artisans, and their families to Shouspring to restore the workshop factory production focused mainly on weapons and armor. It was also determined that after the new year, besides Qianyang, Chenzhong, and East Lake, the fourth comprehensive academy would be established in Shouspring.
Besides Inspector Tian Cheng, the provincial chief administrator, military advisor, various staff officers, and the Shouspring county magistrate were all capable officials personally selected by Han Qian. Considering that Xu Mingzhen was not so honest, Wang Zhe temporarily stationed in Shouspring, with one long-term task being to identify among Shouspring’s sixty thousand civilians how many were secret agents that Xu Mingzhen had covertly dispatched to lurk there.
After the East Lake embankment, Tang Yi’s new large-scale water conservancy project—the Longchi Mountain Lake Reservoir—would also begin construction after the new year on the northern foothills of Longchi Mountain southwest of Shouspring city.
Southwest of Shouspring city, located west of the North Fei River in the Longchi Mountain area at the border between western Shouzhou and Huozhou, were the remaining ranges of the Huaiyang Mountains.
There, peaks and ridges crisscrossed in confusion. Particularly the east, south, and west sides had higher terrain, while the north side was low-lying, sloping toward the Huai River. During summer and autumn rainy seasons, mountain floods erupted, forming severe flood disasters in the Huai riverside regions, destroying roads, buildings, and fields.
When the rainy season passed, or when rainfall during the rainy season was insufficient, because the North Fei River and streams originating from deep in the Huaiyang Mountains were blocked by the continuous peaks and ridges of Longchi Mountain and other ranges, irrigation could not reach there, frequently resulting in drought conditions.
In the thousand li of fertile fields in western Huai, only this area between Shou and Huo prefectures remained extremely impoverished even during peaceful times. Post roads and highways south of the Huai River also avoided this region when being constructed.
The Works Ministry planned to build embankment dikes in the low-lying areas at the northern foothills of Longchi Mountain, collecting stream water from the upstream peaks and ridges into a large artificial lake dammed before the embankment to regulate water resources during dry and rainy seasons on the north side, enabling cultivation and irrigation of hundreds of thousands of mu of fields, effectively controlling the frequently occurring flood and drought disasters there, while also ensuring cultivation and abundant harvests of existing farmland on the western flank of Shouspring city.
Of course, this was still the first step in Han Qian’s plan to govern Shouzhou on a large scale. The flood retention difficulty at Xiashi Pass on the Huai River had been left over since ancient times from the period of Great Yu controlling floods—legend said Xiashi Pass was split open by Great Yu with one axe stroke.
This was not without solution. By excavating flood diversion waterways on the south side of Mount Bagong, upper Huai River waters could be directed into Wabu Marsh downstream of the North Fei River, then flow from Wabu Marsh into the downstream Huai River waterway.
However, to form sufficient flood diversion scale, this section of the flood diversion canal, estimated at fifty to sixty li, had an excavation engineering volume that was too enormous by contemporary standards. Han Qian would not consider this problem for the time being, preferring to continue reinforcing the embankment based on the southern dike that Xu Mingzhen had built in earlier years, discharging retained floodwaters northward toward Yingzhou.
Xu Mingzhen could not be called malicious in this—the long southern Huai embankment was still built under Xu Mingzhen’s supervision after he became Shouzhou Military Commissioner. Unless they wanted to comprehensively consider flood discharge problems on both north and south banks in the future, then consider excavating flood diversion waterways.
After recovering Shouspring, Huoqiu, and Fengtai, Tang Yi did not establish new counties in the previously vacant buffer zone with the Shouzhou army, but adapted to local conditions by opening over twenty large refugee camps, having already received over seventy thousand elderly, weak, women, and children fleeing famine from the north bank—the vast majority of able-bodied men had been forcibly conscripted along the way by the He-Huai Liang army or Shouzhou army—centrally providing food, shelter, and the most basic medical care.
Among these, nine refugee camps were established around Longchi Mountain, housing nearly forty thousand refugees, which would facilitate recruiting sufficient labor force locally when constructing the Longchi Mountain Lake Reservoir.
In organizing grassroots poor people, Tang Yi had long been thoroughly proficient.
Each refugee camp only dispatched a dozen or so staff members, including administrators, physicians, engineers, teachers, clerks, and assistants selected from Liyang Academy, yet managed a camp housing three to four thousand people, mainly elderly, weak, women, and children, with orderly organization.
Besides constructing fixed compound residences nearby and improving living environments, the very few able-bodied men, the highest proportion of able-bodied women, and youths over fourteen were organized into units and given basic drill training, preparing for the start of the Longchi Mountain Lake Reservoir construction after the new year.
Compared to fleeing famine and starvation, material supplies in the refugee camps were quite sufficient. Main laborers were initially all guaranteed a daily ration of one and a half jin of brown rice—when actually going to the embankment for high-intensity labor, standards would increase further. The elderly, weak, and children were guaranteed one jin daily ration supply. They adapted to local conditions to catch fish to improve meals and would provide some necessary oils. Elementary schools were also established in the camps, admitting youths aged ten to fourteen for literacy and arithmetic education.
Besides the refugee camps near Longchi Mountain, the establishment of other refugee camps was combined with construction of large and medium water conservancy facilities to be started locally.
This technical work of providing relief through employment had long been mastered smoothly by Tang Yi.
Guo Duanduo was over forty years old. His father had been a scholarly adviser and guest of Liang Taizu, unfortunately dying of illness before Liang state was founded. In his early years, he had studied alongside Zhu Yu.
When Zhu Yu at eighteen led over a hundred subordinates to serve as Luozhou Inspector, Guo Duanduo was among them.
At that time, Heluo had been devastated by years of repeated bloody warfare, leaving only ruins everywhere, with all counties destroyed. When Zhu Wen was enfeoffed as Prince of Liang, the registered population in the Heluo region was less than ten thousand. It was Zhu Yu who recruited refugees and established eighteen counties, in just three years filling the civilian households to over three hundred thousand, restoring cultivation to nearly twenty thousand qing, so that at one time grain for Biangjing’s various armies all depended on Heluo’s supply.
At that time, Guo Duanduo felt that Taizu’s not passing the throne to His Majesty truly went against heavenly principle.
During his dozen or so days lingering in Shouspring, combined with previously passing through western Huai, even though his heart leaned more toward His Majesty, he deeply felt that in this vast world, there were indeed people who could match His Majesty as equal talents.