Two months ago, Sun Chengli had already decided to start recruiting troops after the matters in Sanshui Village were settled.

In the past two months, they have been busy with various preparations.

For example, Sun Chengli was personally responsible for investigating the situation in surrounding villages and finding out the situation in each village, such as which villages had young and strong men and which villages had people who were more willing to join the army.

The reason why we need to investigate these situations is that Sun Chengli's recruitment this time is different from the usual recruitment of rebel soldiers.

Ordinary bandits say they are recruiting soldiers, but their recruiting is more like recruiting troops. When they pass by a place, they just kidnap the local young men and take them away without even giving out a weapon.

Then, in the continuous battle process, those who successfully survived and gained combat experience were selected step by step, and then issued weapons for training, and eventually became the elite backbone of the bandits.

As for Sun Chengli and the others, they cannot engage in blackmail. After all, they have no plans to leave Funiu Mountain in the short term.

At the same time, considering that the food production in the entire Funiu Mountain area is limited, the population that needs to feed so much food is also limited.

Therefore, it is impossible for Sun Chengli and others to rashly recruit a large number of young refugees directly from outside the mountains, because this would mean squeezing the living space of the original population in the Funiu Mountain area.

The pressure-bearing capacity of these mountain people is very low. They are already living a miserable life. If you continue to collect more food, they will not be able to survive. If they cannot survive, they will flee or even resist.

In this way, the entire Funiu Mountain area will be ruined.

For this reason, Luo Zhixue suggested recruiting troops directly from surrounding villages, so as not to cause too much food pressure on the local area.

Although there will inevitably be a certain amount of food pressure in the future, Luo Zhixue and the others will also grow food in Sanshui Village, so the food pressure is still bearable.

As for Sun Chengli himself, he had his own reasons for agreeing to this suggestion. Sun Chengli wanted to recruit ordinary young men and train them into an army, just like himself.

Sun Chengli and the others were recruited from the army. Although they were all poor and poor before joining the army, they were still good people.

Sun Chengcheng wanted to recruit good people and train them carefully to develop an elite army.

As for the refugees, he has always looked down upon them. In the past, Li Tonglin recruited soldiers from the refugees, and Sun Chengcheng had a strong opinion.

It's just that Sun Chengli was not in charge at the beginning, so it's useless for him to have opinions...

But things are different now. Now that Sun Chengli is in charge, he naturally has to follow his own ideas.

Before they attacked Shanshui Village, they also captured hundreds of bandits, but Sun Chengli and others killed more than 30 people on the spot, leaving only about 70 ordinary ordinary bandit prisoners of war who were honest and good-looking.

Build village walls, Wuliguan, camps, farming, etc.

But until now, Sun Chengli has no intention of incorporating these prisoners of war into the army.

Luo Zhixue knew Sun Chengli's thoughts very well, so he never mentioned it.

Although these prisoners of war have always been under Luo Zhixue's management, Luo Zhixue also thought about recruiting people from these prisoners of war to enrich the supply camp.

But he didn't do this, and he didn't even mention it, because Luo Zhixue knew that it would be useless to mention it, and it would only arouse Sun Chengli's dissatisfaction.

So now those prisoners of war are still just prisoners of war.

Sun Chengli attaches great importance to the first batch of soldiers. He plans to recruit a group of mountain people and train them to see the effect. If the effect is good, he will continue to recruit soldiers. By then, the number of soldiers recruited will not be just a few dozen, but

There will be more than hundreds of people.

At that time, among the newly recruited people, except for a few who have special skills, such as those who can ride horses and archery, they will be trained as cavalry.

The rest will be trained as ordinary infantry.

Sun Chengcheng planned to create an elite infantry force that was not weaker than the official army recruits, and then cooperated with the existing cavalry.

But before that, we have to verify whether it is reliable to recruit troops from the mountain people.

——

After Luo Zhixue and Wuliguan returned, they did not stay in Sanshui Village for long. Instead, they followed Sun Chengli out again three days later, preparing to recruit troops from surrounding villages.

Luo Zhixue, who was riding a horse, looked at the rugged road ahead and couldn't help but sigh in his heart. This was the first time he had left the Sanshui Village area in more than two months after arriving in Funiu Mountain.

Not just him, but also Sun Chengli.

When I first arrived in Sanshui Village, on the one hand, I wanted to keep a low profile, but on the other hand, I also had to settle down and there were many things to do.

As for camp affairs and many military matters, Sun Chengli or Luo Zhixue are responsible for them, and they cannot leave at all.

But recruiting soldiers is different now. Because of the importance of recruiting soldiers, Sun Chengli is ready to go there himself.

In this recruitment, the supply camp also had a quota of thirty people, so Luo Zhixue would not neglect it and took An Yongduo there in person.

In addition to recruiting soldiers, they actually had another purpose when they went out this time, which was to conduct an on-site inspection of the specific conditions, terrain, and roads of the villages in the Funiu Mountain area.

On the one hand, it is to lay the foundation for the subsequent autumn grain collection, and on the other hand, it is also to be able to better deal with the enemy when facing enemy attacks. It is best to block the enemy directly in the outer area of ​​​​Funiu Mountain.

Now, whether Sun Chengli or Luo Zhixue, they have taken Funiu Mountain as their own territory and regarded the population and food in the surrounding villages as their own resources.

With this mentality, they naturally hope to block the enemy directly outside Funiu Mountain, instead of just guarding Sanshui Village.

The group headed east along the mountain road, but the mountain road was difficult to navigate. After walking for most of a day, they arrived at a village, but the village was already in ruins.

The fields have been abandoned and overgrown with weeds. The originally simple and dilapidated thatched wooden houses may have been burned and collapsed into ruins. Even the few thatched houses that are still well preserved are mostly overgrown with weeds.

Seeing this scene, Luo Zhixue couldn't help but sigh: "The Earth-turning Dragons and the others have gone too far. It didn't take long for them to occupy Sanshui Village, and it only took a few months, but they destroyed both villages."

Got it!"

"This place was originally called Lihuang Village by the mountain people. There were originally more than 200 mountain people. However, after the disaster caused by Fan Dilong and others, there were many casualties among the mountain people, and all the remaining people fled."

Sun Chengli said with disdain: "I have seen this kind of thing too many times. Those thieves are all the same. They do stupid things, such as collecting food, and they also burn, kill and loot. As long as they can have a trace of humanity,

I won’t even destroy this village!”

"There is another village to the east that was also abandoned by the Earth-turning Dragons. Originally, there were more people there. I heard there were more than 400 people."

Luo Zhixue is also quite disdainful and even hates the behavior of Fan Dilong and his group!

Everyone was cutting leeks, but he was good at digging up all the leeks...

Not to mention anything else, the two villages near Sanshui Village used to have a large population. It is estimated that there are hundreds of people in total. Moreover, the terrain is relatively flat and there is abundant water flow, so the food production is not bad.

.

If these two villages still remain, they can control these two villages nearby and directly use the local population and food for their own use.

But now...

The villages are all deserted!

It’s so bad that now they have to travel a long way to recruit troops and food...

Sun Chengli looked at the sky, then looked around and said, "It's getting late now. If you continue walking out, you will find a barren mountain and wild forest. There is no place to spend the night. Let's camp here in Lihuang Village tonight!"<

/p>

Luo Zhixue nodded in agreement, and soon took the people to arrange the camping arrangements.

There weren't many people coming out this time, only about 20 people, but even if there were only a few people, there were still rules for camping.

After all, they are not ordinary thieves, but rebel thieves who were officers and soldiers.

It is necessary to choose a camp and arrange sentinels.

After the arrangements were made, Luo Zhixue found Sun Chengcheng again: "General, I just took a look at Lihuang Village. The land here is quite good, and there are mountains and rivers for watering. It is better than our Sanshui Village.

There is more arable land, and this place is only a day’s journey from our Sanshui Village. It is also the only place near our Sanshui Village that is suitable for farming.”

"If we arrange manpower to farm here, we can not only meet daily needs, but also store some food!"

"We will recruit more soldiers in the future, but we don't have that much food. So many new recruits will have to be cultivated. Although some can be resettled in Sanshui Village, it is always a good thing to have more food for cultivation."<

/p>

Sun Chengli also felt that it made sense: "This is a good idea. These days, no matter how much food is available, it is not enough."

The settlement of Lihuang Village was only an afterthought, and whether it would take shape would depend on the subsequent recruitment of soldiers, so the two simply discussed it and did not discuss it in depth.

They left Lihuang Village early the next morning and walked for a long time before arriving at their first destination.

Standing outside and looking at the village, Luo Zhixue said slowly: "The mountain people here call this place Huangjia Village. It is said that the first family to settle here was a family of mountain people surnamed Huang who escaped from famine and went into the mountains, hence the name.

”

"More than ten years ago, there were only three or five families of mountain people living here. However, with the frequent natural disasters and constant chaos outside, more and more people fled from the mountains and came in. Now this place has

There are about 60 households with more than 300 people."

"By the way, the carpenter Huang we recruited before is from here."

"Because Carpenter Huang went to work in our Sanshui Village, I sent people to Carpenter Huang several times to bring him here for fair purchases. After several contacts, the people here naturally knew that we were different from those people who turned over the earth before.

I won’t engage in burning, killing, and looting.”

"So the people here have put down their guard against us now. At least they won't see our people just pack up their belongings and go into the mountains like before!"

When Sun Chengli heard this, he glanced at Luo Zhixue again. Now he felt more and more that recruiting and re-employing Luo Zhixue was the right choice. At the same time, he said: "We plan to recruit troops and food here. We cannot make people panic. We must
Chapter completed!