If the barrier lake at Widow's Cliff is ignored, it will become the sword of Damocles hanging on the plains of western Sichuan. Since April, more and more rainfall has occurred in the two states of Wei Mao and the upper reaches. In the past half month, the area of the barrier lake has expanded by about half. If there is another continuous heavy rain, this barrier lake is very likely to overflow or even burst. During this period, Huang Dagen had organized several explosions to widen the water discharge channel a lot, but there was still a lot of water in the lake. During this time, Huang Dagen asked Li Shuang to transport a lot of gunpowder, preparing to blow up the dam body in one fell swoop and completely eliminate this safety hazard.
Just when Huang Dagen was about to take action, Ouyang Xuan received a letter. He told Huang Dagen not to blast away the barrier lake at once to prevent excessive water discharge from causing flood disasters. At the moment, only small batches of blasting are needed to control the water level from continuing to rise. In fact, the most important reason for not rushing to eliminate the barrier lake was Ouyang Xuan's inconvenience to mention in the letter. He planned to carry out large-scale blasting after the summer grain harvest, using the flood peak formed by the huge amount of water in the barrier lake to destroy the water barriers of the Mongolian army in the river in one fell swoop.
After the water level rose in the spring, the Pili Army navy completely suppressed the Pengshan City navy. When the barrier lake of Widow Cliff was formed, the water level in the Jinma River also dropped sharply due to the sudden decrease in the upstream water. It was even much lower than the dry season in winter, which even caused the Pili Army gunboats to run aground. Naturally, the suppression had to be suspended. action. The Jinma River is the main stream of the Minjiang River. The water inflow from the upper reaches has decreased, and the water in the Minjiang River in the Pengshan section has naturally receded a lot. Since the Mongolian army did not dredge this section of the river and even set up water barriers, you can even catch fish with bare hands in many places. Seeing that the water level had dropped, the Mongolian garrison took the opportunity to build a lot of water barriers in the river in an attempt to prevent the Perak Army's navy from going south again.
Unexpectedly, the river suddenly rose again a few days later. The rapid rapids not only washed away nearly half of the newly built water barriers, but also washed away many civilians who were unable to escape, and even Mongolian soldiers who were catching fish were killed in the water. The reason why the river surged was because Huang Dagen blasted the barrier lake at Widow's Cliff. Due to the small amount of gunpowder used, the flood was small and did not completely destroy the Mongolian army's water barrier. The same was true for several subsequent blasts, so that the heavy gunboats of the Perak Army were still unable to go south to Pengshan City. These artificial floods gave Ouyang Xuan an idea and decided to create a major flood to completely destroy the Mongolian water barriers in the rivers of Pengshan City. It's just that the wheat harvest is only half a month away, and we have to wait until after the wheat harvest before we can start.
After last year's autumn harvest, the Perak Army began large-scale reclamation, planting a total of 3 million acres of crops in the plains and more than 200,000 acres in the hilly and mountainous areas. The food in the plains mainly includes 2 million acres of wheat and 500,000 acres of broad beans, and the other 500,000 acres of barley, peas and other crops. This planting structure was suggested by Ouyang Xuan. When he was a child, he lived in a rural area and had to help his parents with farming during busy farming hours. He also had a rough idea of the sowing and harvesting times of crops. Such a planting structure can maximize the use of light and heat resources in the western Sichuan Plain and realize crop rotation based on rice and wheat to achieve two crops a year.
Although the wheat suffered from winter drought this year, several timely rains after spring improved the moisture content, and the growth is still good. Although the production will not be a bumper harvest, it can be considered an average year. Most broad bean fields are harvested as early as March and rice seeds are sown. In fact, broad beans have just bloomed and set fruit when harvested, and are far from the mature season. However, the main purpose of planting broad beans is not to harvest the seeds, but to use their stems and leaves to feed horses, cattle, mules and other livestock. They are important assets for industry, agriculture, and commerce. Contrary to the traditional impression that these livestock only eat grass, they actually need a lot of grain to feed them. If they are just allowed to eat wild grass, they will become emaciated and even die. This is true even for Mongolian horses that can tolerate rough feeding. There are now tens of thousands of large livestock in the area under the jurisdiction of the Perak Army, which requires a huge amount of feed every day, and these broad bean seedlings and barley that have just bloomed and firmed up are excellent feed, and can even replace some beans.
In addition to providing livestock feed, the most important reason for growing broad beans is to allow the rice to have the best growth period. Since rice needs to be planted at the end of March, wheat can only be harvested in May. There is overlap in the planting times of these two most important grains. Harvesting broad beans in advance and implementing the two-stage rice planting method are the perfect means to solve this problem. That is, rice seeds are sown in broad bean fields that are harvested in advance, and the rice seedlings are transplanted after the wheat is harvested. As for dry crops such as sorghum, soybeans, and wheat grown in mountainous areas, in addition to being used for human consumption, sorghum can also be used to brew alcohol, which is an important chemical and medical material.
"Food is the first priority for the people." The top brass of the Perak Army were either members of the original grain collection team or were farmers, so they naturally knew the importance of food. War is about logistics, and the most important material in logistics is food. Therefore, in order to prepare for the most important task of summer harvest, the Perak Army convened a military-political joint meeting to discuss and prepare. Unlike the usual short meetings, this meeting was very long, but there were actually only two things agreed upon: one was to organize manpower and tools, and the other was to protect the fruits of labor and prevent the Mongolian army from coming to snatch food.
As usual, during the harvest season, except for the arsenal and guard troops, all personnel under the rule of the Perak Army must participate in labor. The top brass of the Perak Army took the lead. In addition to the older Lu Dezhi and the disabled Li Shuang, even Ouyang Xuan also had to participate in the summer harvest. This summer harvest is different from previous ones. Not only do they have to harvest grain, they also have to plant rice seedlings, and they also have to move supplies from rivers and low-lying areas to higher places. The task is very heavy. Regarding the new transportation tasks, Ouyang Xuan was vague, only talking about preventing major floods in summer.
Speeding up the preparation of labor tools such as harvesting and drying, as well as the preparation of granaries, are all trivial matters. It is not a complicated matter to allocate all factories, mines, businesses and soldiers to various settlement points to help with the summer harvest. What gives Li Shuang a headache is the distribution of mules and horses. Currently, there are more than 3,000 war horses, mules and donkeys in various units of the Perak Army. According to the decision of the Military-Administrative Joint Meeting, only 2,000 horses will be retained in the military system, and the rest will be distributed to factories, mines and other production departments. The reason for this is that more horses do not mean stronger fighting ability, because equestrian skills cannot be practiced in one day. The military is not a production department. Excessive occupation will cause a waste of animal power and squeeze economic development. These selected horses, mules and donkeys are urgently needed by various industries, so they naturally want to allocate more, which makes Li Shuang extremely embarrassed.
In recent times, the Mongolian army has repeatedly suffered heavy losses from the Pili army. According to its habit of seeking revenge, it is impossible to give up. Moreover, due to the Mongolian army's blind burning, looting and expropriation, the population in the area occupied by the Mongolian army in Chengdu was severely exodus. The crops were not only small in area but also growing poorly. Liu Heima was very likely to come to snatch the grain. Xinjin City's naval force was so powerful that the Mongolian army did not dare to go north or cross the river. However, a series of forts in the Changqiu Mountain area had been completed. It was obviously unrealistic for the Mongolian army to cross these hills and then cross the Pujiang River to attack the hinterland of the Perak Army. The Mongolian army finally The possible direction of the invasion is still the line from Guankou Village to Jiangyuan City in the east. Therefore, the military and political meeting decided to transfer the field brigade back to Chongqing Mansion to garrison in preparation for the Mongolian invasion.
