After establishing the water bandits' lair, Huang Dagen began to think of a name considering that the place was secretive, easy to defend and difficult to attack, and would be very suitable as a base for the Perak Army in the future. He heard that there were large wild fruit forests in the mountains nearby, so he changed the name of the ravine where the water bandits' lair was to Huaguo Mountain. Leaving Le Quan'an's navy to deal with the follow-up matters of Huaguo Mountain, Huang Dagen took the teaching company straight to Gaojiagou, the largest village in Wugen Mountain. Huang Dagen led his army to set out in the morning and hurriedly and slowly arrived at the entrance of Gaojiagou at dusk. This was because marching in Wugen Mountains was really a headache. In fact, although the road here is narrow and winding, you can barely pass it. The main difficulty in marching is that the mountains have similar scenery and many forked roads, making it easy for outsiders to get lost. Although Huang Dagen and others had surrendered water bandits as guides, they still took many wrong paths. The water bandit guide’s name is Boss Cheng. According to him, there are dozens of residential areas in the mountains, with a total population of about a thousand. Among them, the small villages have only a dozen people, and the largest villages have only about a hundred people, but there are more than 1,000 cultivated lands. As many as tens of thousands of acres. Due to the invasion by the Mongols and the burning and killing by the government troops, there were no handicraft workshops in Wugen Mountain. All kinds of living materials except food were in short supply, and people's livelihood was also very difficult. Most of the water bandits' food was obtained from the mountain people in exchange for materials caught or robbed. Among them, salt, cloth and iron farm tools were especially popular, and the exchange place was Gaojiagou located in the middle of Wugen Mountain.
Gaojiagou was silent at dusk. There were no sounds of chickens and dogs inherent in rural villages, nor was there any smoke from cooking. Not even a house or a single villager was seen. This abnormal situation puzzled everyone. At this time, Boss Cheng explained to Huang Dagen that in order to prevent harassment and looting by the Mongols and government troops, there were no houses in Gaojiagou. The shacks where the villagers lived were scattered in hidden places in the forest on the hillside. They had seen so many The strong man carrying the weapon had already been hiding. Huang Dagen saw that it was getting late and ordered the camp to be set up. He also asked two soldiers to accompany Mr. Cheng to look for the person at night and explain his purpose. Boss Cheng has come to exchange supplies with Gaojiagou many times, and he is also familiar with the clan leader Gao Xiuming. During this trip, the teaching team brought with them a large amount of seized daily necessities, which were intended to be used in exchange for food with the villagers.
Early on the next morning, Huang Dagen woke up and just walked out of the tent when Boss Cheng and several old men in ragged clothes came up to them. The leader of the group, the old man with white beard and hair, was the clan leader Gao Xiu Ming. After the greetings, Huang Dagen explained his purpose and then proposed buying and selling at market prices, which made several old people overjoyed and made Boss Cheng slightly embarrassed. Due to frequent wars and the proliferation of bandits, normal commodity transactions have been disrupted. Even bold traders dare not set foot in the Wugen Mountains, making prices here high. The water bandits took the opportunity to lower the price during the transaction, which was similar to exchanging materials, half buying and half robbing. Although the Wugen Mountain people knew that they were being cheated, they were helpless. Although the exchange price proposed by Huang Dagen can make the Pili Army a lot of money, it is a huge discount for the Gaojiagou villagers.
Not long after he started trading, Huang Dagen discovered a problem—the supplies he brought were too few! Villagers surrounded the Perak Army's camp, begging for cloth and iron farm tools in exchange. There is no shortage of salt for the time being, because they just exchanged some from the water bandits some time ago. But now that spring plowing is imminent, there is an urgent need for iron farm tools to plow the ground, and the efficiency of homemade wooden tools is really low. As for the demand for cloth, we can tell something about it from the villagers' clothes - it's good to have tattered clothes. Most people's clothes are made of hay, and some children are even naked. In the early spring wind, Shivering.
The transaction only lasted half a day, and all the materials brought by the teaching company had been wiped out. Huang Dagen was surprised by the amount of food obtained in exchange. In the eyes of the Wugen Mountain residents, this deal was such a good deal that they all started a shopping spree and even took out their spare food supplies for disaster years. Although the climate in the Wugen mountainous area is consistent with that of the plains, the production conditions are not as good as those in the plains irrigated by the Dujiangyan Water Conservancy Project. When drought occurs on hillside areas, production is likely to decrease, so most mountain residents have a reserve of food. Huang Dagen saw that all the supplies he brought had been exchanged for goods, but villagers from nearby villages kept coming to exchange for goods. He had no choice but to send people back to Hengyuan Town to report to Ouyang Xuan, requesting that people be sent to send supplies and transport back grain. Ouyang Xuan, who was supervising the construction of Hengyuan Fort, was overjoyed when he heard the news and asked Yu Zhu to organize people to go there immediately.
The iron farm tools produced by the Pili Army are of high quality and are extremely popular among villagers. In particular, tread plows suitable for farming in mountainous areas are even more popular. However, in order to ensure the steel production required for military production and the construction of Hengyuan Fort, industrial companies did not cast many tread plows. The tread plows brought to Gaojiagou for sale became the hottest item, and there were even quarrels among villages competing to buy this tool for farming. Yu Zhu had no choice but to allocate tread plows according to the population of each village, register the demand gap for agricultural tools, and promise long-term supply in the future, and finally settled the dispute. According to the data reported by each village, the population of this Wugen mountainous area is around 2,000, with a labor force of 1,200 people. This data does not exclude the possibility that some villages may have made false reports to purchase more farm equipment, but even if the water is squeezed out, it far exceeds Yu Zhu and Huang Dagen's estimates.
After the rush to buy iron farm tools, the villagers turned their attention to cloth. It's just that the Pili Army itself is short of cloth and cannot meet the needs of the villagers. However, the villagers didn't pay too much attention to it. After all, the weather was getting warmer day by day, and they would get over it after a while. It took five full days for Yu Zhu to transport the grain back to Hengyuan Town. This time, a total of about 500,000 kilograms of grain was exchanged, enough to feed a thousand people for more than half a year, completely solving the Pili Army's food crisis. Part of this grain was kept in Hengyuan Town for fort building, and most of it was transported back to Wanjiazhai.
Just when Yu Zhu and Huang Dagen led people to transport grain to Hengyuan Town, the navy led by Yu Laodou and Liao Nilu also wiped out the water bandits. When they were first besieged, the water bandits were extremely arrogant. Not only did they turn a deaf ear to the Perak Army's calls, they even came out for sneak attacks at night. Although they were blasted back by firearms, they felt that the officers and soldiers were nothing more than that. As long as they stayed in the Huang family, they would not be able to do anything. How long will it take for these officers and soldiers to retreat in the face of difficulties? However, the water bandits did not expect that the Pili Army was determined to destroy them and firmly blocked the waterways leading to and from Huangjiadang. As time went by, the water bandits who ran out of food had no choice but to catch small fish and shrimps to satisfy their hunger. But the water was dry in winter, and I was exhausted but couldn't catch a few small fish. I was so hungry that I had to dig grass roots to fill my stomach, but I found that the more I ate, the less strength I had. Without food, the water bandit discovered that the reed marsh was not a shelter, but a large cage.
When Wugenshan's captured wife and children shouted outside the reed marsh, most of the water bandits finally couldn't resist, sneaked out and surrendered. Only a dozen tough bandits, including the leader of the water bandits, refused to surrender. The hands of these fierce bandits were stained with blood. It was they who repeatedly attacked the Perak Army. They knew that surrendering would not bring good results, so they simply resisted to the end. However, these stubborn bandits did not hold out for long, because the surrendered water bandits led the Perak Army to find their hiding place and blew them all to death with grenades. Yu Laodou and Liao Nilu were so angry that they didn't want to take any more prisoners, but the bandits were even more ruthless. They stabbed the corpses of their former accomplices one by one, fearing that they would retaliate against them if they were not fully dead.
