The prefect Zhou Yuan never dreamed that on the second day after he agreed, Yang Yuanqing led 20,000 cavalry outside the county town. He stood on the top of the city and looked at the 20,000 black troops outside the city, his eyes were a little dazed.

Moreover, he saw that the cavalry had no other supplies except the tent, so where was the food that Yang Yuanqing agreed to? Zhou Yuan was full of doubts.

At this time, General Pei Xingyan rode forward on a horse and shouted: "Can the prefect be here?"

Zhou Yuan bowed at the top of the city wall and said, "That's right!"

"My chief supervisor asked the prefect to go to the military camp to discuss transit and food issues."

Zhou Yuan was a little hesitant and went to the military camp to meet Yang Yuanqing. It seemed a bit dangerous. The Zhao County Magistrate next to him said: "The opponent's 20,000 cavalry is easy to kill us."

Thinking about it, Yang Yuanqing wants to kill him without any effort.

"Okay! I'll go now!" He had no choice but to agree.

The prefect Zhou Yuan brought two followers to the Fengzhou military camp. At this time, 20,000 cavalry had already set up a camp outside the city, and a large tent stood on the wasteland, with thousands of large tents.

Zhou Yuan was taken to the central army tent by soldiers. Yang Yuanqing bowed and smiled and said, "Prince Zhou, I haven't seen you for a few years. Have you ever married a few concubines?"

Zhou Yuan was the prefect of Yanchuan County for ten years, and Yang Yuanqing also served in Fengzhou for more than ten years. Naturally, they met each other. Yang Yuanqing's joke suddenly made Zhou Yuan feel relaxed. He bowed and smiled: "Last year, I married another Hun concubine, and I don't want to marry him from now on. I really can't handle it."

The two of them smiled knowingly, walked into the big tent, and took a seat. Yang Yuanqing didn't wait for him to speak first, and smiled and said, "The grain will come from the water. Two or three days later, so the prefect doesn't have to worry."

From Fengzhou, the Yellow River to Lingwu County, and then the tributary Yanchuan Water can directly reach the county town. Zhou Yuan was relieved and asked again: "The main force of Liu Jialun's army is Yan'an County. Will General Manager Yang go to Yan'an County to suppress bandits?"

"I have a plan to suppress the bandits. Today I invite the prefect Zhou to discuss future defense. I plan to build a city in Yanchuan County and station 3,000 troops to assist the prefect Zhou in defending the bandits."

Zhou Yuan was stunned for a moment. He never thought that Yang Yuanqing was trying to guard the mine.

Hongtie Mountain, one of the targets of Fengzhou Army, is located in the west of Yanchuan County, fifty miles away from the county town, and several miles away to the north is Yanchuan water. The water flows smoothly and can travel a large ship of 500 stones. In the past, there was a mine supervisor here, and a large amount of iron mines were mined on board, and the mine ships entered the Yellow River from Yanchuan water to Lingwu County for smelting.

If Yang Yuanqing occupied the mine, his mine transport ship would go north after entering the Yellow River, and the transportation would be very convenient to reach Wuyuan County. More importantly, Wei Siyun, the prefect of Lingwu County, was the chief of the Fengzhou General Administration Office back then. He would not generally block the Fengzhou mine ship.

This mine was occupied by the army of the slave thief Bai Yuso half a year ago. However, two months ago, in order to seize the mine, Liu Jialun, a bandit in Yan'an County, sent 30,000 troops to fight Bai Yuso's army along the Yanchuan River coast north of the mine, and finally ended with Bai Yuso's army retreating.

Liu Jialun occupied the mine, but thousands of mining slaves had already taken advantage of the war between the two armies to flee. Liu Jialun had no choice but to forcibly drive 10,000 civilians from Yan'an County and Honghua County to mining and leave 3,000 garrisons to monitor.

But Liu Jialun faces another problem, that is, how to transport the ore to Yan'an County. There is no direct river here. The only way is to transport it with animal power. It is to transport it with ten thousand horses. Each horse can carry a hundred kilograms of iron ore at a time. Therefore, it is necessary to accumulate a certain amount before it can transport it uniformly.

In two months, millions of kilograms of iron ore had been mined and piled up in several huge and simple warehouses. On these days, Liu Jialun was going to send a large group of horses to transport the mines.

It was late autumn in late September, and it was particularly cold in the morning and evening. At night, a semi-circular moon rose from behind the warehouse, and the cold silver light spread over the Red Iron Mountain. The dark mountain shadows enveloped the labor camp and a military camp at the foot of the mountain. The men who worked hard for a day fell asleep in a sleepy mood. The barracks were also particularly quiet. There were only two wooden whistle towers, each with two soldiers patrolling back and forth. The whistle towers were one mile apart, one east and one west.

At this time, two teams of Sui army scouts quietly approached the wooden tower. Two crossbowmen used rocks to cover them, raised the crossbow fifty steps away, aiming at the enemy sentry on the tower. The arrow tip was flashing green phosphorescence under the moonlight, and it was painted with a highly poisonous medicine from Sogdian, "Papamu," which was sealed with blood, and could not even shout out a voice. It was the best poison for the scout assassination.

I heard "Click! Click!, two light sounds, two crossbow arrows shot away like lightning, and almost hit two sentries at the same time. There was no shouting, only two muffled groans, one of the sentry fell from the two-meter-high sentry tower.

The cry of jackdaw came from the west, which was a signal that another sentry tower was successful, and there were also two responses here. Soon, sentries appeared on the sentry tower, which had been replaced by the Sui army.

Soon, a group of more than a thousand Sui cavalry came from the west, with thick linen wrapped around the horse's hooves. Although the sound was not loud, the momentum of the more than a thousand cavalry sprints swept over like a storm. Many enemy soldiers were still awakened and ran out of the barracks to inspect. What they saw were spears flashing with cold light and iron cavalry like thunder.

The Sui army suddenly rushed into the enemy camp, crying, shouting, screaming, and screams. The cavalry kicked over the camp tent, and the spear ruthlessly pierced the enemy's chest, and the sword slashed, and blood splashed everywhere. The Jihu army fled in scattered. Many people were not wearing shoes. They could not run away from war horses. The cavalry caught up in an instant and killed the fleeing enemy troops......

Half an hour later, the killing gradually stopped. More than 2,000 people were killed in the Three Thousand Ji Hu Army, and the rest knelt down and surrendered. Only more than ten people fled on horseback and ran back to Yan'an County to report.

The camp of ten thousand civilians was a hundred steps away. The massacre of the Sui army did not hit them, and no one dared to escape. Groups gathered in a daze in the camp, and everyone's eyes were filled with fear. At this time, several cavalrymen rushed over and shouted: "Don't be afraid, you are the Sui army in Fengzhou, come to rescue you!"

After a moment of silence, cheers suddenly sounded in the camp.

As the sky gradually became brighter, Yang Yuanqing led a dozen generals to the mine under the escort of a thousand cavalry. He squinted his eyes and looked at the mountain range. It was about ten miles long. It was a rocky mountain. There was no grass growing on the mountain, but not all of them were red. Only a few miles to the west were red. Red Iron Mountain refers to this section.

More than ten years of mining have caused a big gap in the mountains, but iron ore resources are still abundant and can be mined for hundreds of years.

At this time, the battlefield had been cleaned up, and the prisoners of war were tied up with their hands and sat in piles. Most of them were Hu people, and there were a very small number of Han people. The bodies had been burned and buried. More than 2,000 war horses, a large number of inferior weapons and hundreds of tents were seized.

More than 10,000 civilians were very quiet, staying in the tent, waiting for the Sui army to resettle. Today, the entire mine was shut down.

But Yang Yuanqing was not interested in this. He wanted iron ore. He urged his horse to come to several large warehouses, which were filled with mountains of ore, most of which were iron ore, but there were hundreds of thousands of kilograms of chalcopylene ore.

At this time, Cao Hejun, the Fengzhou Military Armor Division, turned over and dismounted and ran into the warehouse. He picked up the ore and checked it carefully. After a moment, he took a piece of ore and gave a gift to Yang Yuanqing. He couldn't help but feel joy in his heart and said, "Master, this is a treasure mountain! The iron content of these iron ores is at least 60% and there are very few impurities. It can make excellent fine iron, which is very suitable for making weapons and armor."

"Very good, these ores need to be transported back to Fengzhou as soon as possible."

Looking at the mountain of iron ore, Yang Yuanqing couldn't help laughing and turned around and said to everyone: "Then Liu Jialun worked hard to mine millions of kilograms of iron ore, and he didn't even see the shadow of pig iron, so he was taken away by us. I really want to know what his expression was?"

The generals burst into laughter, and Yang Yuanqing waved his hand and said to several lieutenants: "Organize these civilians to transport iron ore to the river as soon as possible with the seized war horses!"

"Abide by the order!"

Several lieutenants ran to greet the soldiers, and Yang Yuanqing said to Pei Xingyan again: "Liu Jialun will not give up, and he will definitely come to compete for the mines in large quantities. You should send more scouts to grasp their movements."

Pei Xingyan bowed and bowed, "I understand the humble position!"

After arranging the trivial matters of the mine, Yang Yuanqing turned around and said to the officers: "The bait has been thrown out, it's time for us to take action."

He turned his horse's head and led a large group of cavalry toward the county town.

In the northern part of the pass, Yanchuan, Diaoyin, Shuofang, Yulin and other counties, as well as some areas of Honghua, Lingwu and Wuyuan, due to the harsh natural conditions and no farming use, they have always been the areas used by the central court to resettle ethnic minorities. In these areas, hundreds of thousands of people from various tribes such as the Xiongnu, Xianbei, Jie, Di, and Qiang live.

When the central court was strong, these silence and duty were not beyond the rules. However, once the central court was weak or the Central Plains was in chaos, the nobles among these Hu people began to be ambitious, stir up troubles, and set off a wave of rebellion to plunder the wealth of the Han people and kill the Han people.

Liu Jialun was a Hun noble. When rebellion began to break out in various parts of the Sui Dynasty, he also believed that the time had come, and began to gather troops to rebel, and contact the leaders of other ethnic groups. His strength developed rapidly. In just a few months, he had a total of 100,000 troops. He called himself the emperor and took Yan'an County and Diaoyin County as the bases and led his army to loot and kill in the northern part of the pass. Villages were destroyed under their iron hooves. Except for some relatively large cities that did not fall, almost all the counties in the northern part of the pass were occupied by his army.

Like other rebels, Liu Jialun’s biggest trouble was that his equipment was backward and his extreme lack of weapons. Therefore, obtaining pig iron and building weapons was their ultimate goal.

Two months ago, Liu Jia Renzong's general Liu Yaozi led an army of 30,000 to seize the Chiling Mine occupied by Bai Yusu. In a fierce battle, they finally drove Bai Yusu away and captured the mine.

Just when Liu Jialun was hoping that the iron ore would be transported soon, a bad news came that the mine was taken away by the Sui army. All the millions of kilograms of iron ore they had worked hard to mine for two months were taken away by the Sui army.

Liu Jia was furious and how could he be willing to make wedding dresses for the Sui army for free? The day after receiving the report, he personally led an army of 60,000 to pounce on the mine. He wanted to step the Sui army that dared to steal his mine into powder.

...........
Chapter completed!