Time flies like an arrow.
Another month passed after Zhao Muyun returned to Yinzhou Prefecture from Yanzhou.
This month, everything went quite smoothly.
The construction of the city and defense system has begun to take shape, and the city wall has been basically completed, which is even more majestic than Shuozhou City.
The city wall, about five miles long, stretches between the Zishui River and the slopes of the remaining Heituo Mountain, firmly blocking the Zishui River Valley, the throat passage leading to the heart of Yinzhou.
If the Tartars want to plunder Yinzhou again, they must capture this city.
Otherwise, you have to go around the forests on the foothills of the Black Camel Mountain and enter the heart of Yinzhou from the edge of the Gobi Desert.
Or you can take a boat down the Zishui River and pass by Yinzhou City.
The Tartars obviously cannot build ships, so it is impossible for them to travel by water.
Crossing the forest was also time-consuming and laborious, and the supply lines were long.
The only way out is to capture the new Yinzhou City.
But the current Yinzhou City has a city wall that is five meters high and extends to the hillside.
There is also a ten-foot-high city wall on the hillside, all the way to the top of the mountain.
On the top of the mountain, there are beacon towers and watchtowers.
In front of the city wall, water from the Zishui River was diverted to dig a moat three meters wide and one meter deep.
Five miles north of the moat, there are a series of haphazard trenches and a mess of sharp stones.
Here, the temporary fortifications against cavalry built by Zhao Muyun and his men at Zhendi Fort were deeply reproduced.
It is larger in scale, with deeper trenches and more rubble.
If the Tartars want to pass through here and reach the city of Yinzhou, they will be skinned alive even if they don't die.
Even if they passed through this area and arrived at Yinzhou City, what awaited them were tall city walls, wide moats, and long-range firepower consisting of 500 compound bows on the city walls.
During these two months, Lu Zhizi, his son, and more than ten blacksmiths made horizontal swords according to Zhao Muyun's drawings, while also vigorously modifying the compound bow.
Zhao Muyun has assembled it twice and his process is very mature.
Now with the participation of experienced craftsmen like Lu Zhizi, although there are no key parts such as steel wires and elliptical pulleys, it is closer to the modern compound bow.
The range has been increased from 150 to 200 steps, and it is more accurate and stable.
More importantly, ordinary soldiers can easily draw the bow and complete standard shooting with just a little training, and do not need to undergo at least half a year or a year of training like the original archers.
Moreover, to become an archer, one must have stronger physical fitness than an ordinary soldier.
You should know that it is the limit for ordinary people to pull the bowstring of one stone more than twenty times in a row.
Archers must pull the bow at least thirty times to ensure the firepower sustainability and continuous output on the battlefield.
As a result, the difficulty of selecting archers and the cost of training them also increase significantly.
But it is different with the compound bow built with modern concepts. Ordinary soldiers can easily use and master shooting skills, so that archery is no longer limited by physical fitness.
Last time, Zhao Muyun made two hundred compound bows, but they had not been used yet. This time, in order to improve the comprehensive defense capabilities of the city, he copied another three hundred!
Five hundred composite bows were placed on the top of the city wall, one thousand infantrymen, plus three hundred Wuhuan cavalry, and there were so many defensive fortifications in front.
Even if King Zhelan sends out all his forces again, Yinzhou City will become their burial ground.
Over the past month, King Zhelan's army has been looting in Weizhou, Hedong Road, but the Xichuan grassland has been much calmer, which has given Zhao Muyun ample time to build cities and fortifications.
And to the south of Yinzhou, south of the river.
The rebel leader Li Jingang finally learned that his long-missing brother was in the hands of Du Wei, the commander of Yanzhou, and his old colleague Zhang Hong from the post station had also fallen into Du Wei's hands.
So, five thousand people were assembled to attack Luotuo Weir.
However, Du Wei was well prepared. He fortified his city and cleared the countryside, and refused to come out. While Li Jingang was unable to capture the city after a long siege, he received news that the troops of Tian Zun, the governor of Guannei Road, had been prepared and were heading towards Xiazhou.
Li Jingang hurriedly retreated to Xiazhou to prepare to meet the enemy, and Dewey was able to breathe a sigh of relief.
After the rebels retreated, Dewey sent people to negotiate with Zhao Muyun many times, and they reached a consensus on the coal mining in Qiwu Mountain, and further refined the profit distribution based on the previous 50-50 split.
Coal was mined from the mountains and transported to the Silver State.
Yanzhou also carried out large-scale stockpiling.
However, apart from being used for smelting, civilian use has not yet been started.
Dewey didn't know how to use it; Zhao Muyun knew it, but he didn't have time to deal with it for the time being.
Zhao Muyun first focused his energy on the purification of crude salt because the demand from Pei Lun suddenly increased; and Mahmud also opened up the smuggling sales channels in Beidi, and the demand increased even more.
Each time, tens of thousands of kilograms of fine salt were transported through special channels to the hands of Pei Lun and Mahmud, and then distributed.
Zhao Muyun didn't care what Pei Lun did with it.
However, it is certain that it caused an impact within Dayin.
As to whether the imperial court would trace the source of the salt, it is unknown.
As for Mahmud, Zhao Muyun let him sell it at a low price to cultivate the usage habit among the Northern Di Tartars.
In more than a month, it is estimated that every tribe and every herdsman in Beidi has used salt as fine as snow!
The mutton and sheepskins obtained from the northern Di people in exchange for fine salt have piled up into mountains.
The military and civilians of the entire Yinzhou Prefecture can have meat for every meal.
In short, the whole city of Yinzhou is busy, but everyone is happy.
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