Chapter 166: Breeding of Improved Breeds
Chang'an City, the Double Ninth Festival is approaching.

When the sky was turning white in the early morning, Black Bear opened the tent, walked out, looked up at the sky and exhaled a breath of white air.

Seeing that the sky was clear, he rubbed his nose and eyes and walked towards the nearest kitchen area.

There are thirty-six such kitchen and dining areas in the city.

More than 25,000 people were thrown into Chang'an City, and there was really no splash at all.

There is strength in numbers, and the progress of clearing and rebuilding the ruins is very fast.

When Wang Mang usurped the Han Dynasty, the well water near Chang'an City and Xianyang tasted bitter. Now, two hundred years have passed, and the groundwater has not recovered.

So currently we still use the Chan River for food and drink. This is river water, and you never know what is in the water upstream.

Even if you live at the foot of a mountain, the streams that flow from springs on the mountain are the same.

There is a stream four or five miles long. If you don't check it, you can lie down by the stream and drink the sweet mountain spring water.

If you check along the stream, you will find that it is filled with dead branches, rotten leaves, toads, and animal feces.

This was also the first time that Black Bear had controlled such a large population, so the first military order after moving to Chang'an was a "ban on raw water", prohibiting direct drinking of river water on the grounds that river water was contaminated with insects and caused disease.

The prevention and control of infectious diseases after military gatherings is second only to military discipline.

Afterwards, they divided the city into garrison areas, cleared the remains of the people in the city, and repaired the ruins.

The ruins are often just collapsed buildings, with the main structure of the house still there. To renovate it, one only needs to clean up the garbage, put up new beams, lay straw mats, and cover it with a thick layer of soil.

I don't ask for it to look good, I just want it to be livable in the winter.

Every time a house is renovated, whether it is a palace or a low-rise residence, a kang will be built.

However, after the kang is built, it must either be ventilated for a long time and wait for it to dry in the shade, or it must be filled with firewood and roasted over a high fire to dry out the moisture.

It took five days in total. The first batch of kangs were repaired and built the day before yesterday. They were filled with fuel and ignited yesterday, so it will take a few more days for them to dry.

After the kang is ignited, it continues to provide fuel, and most of the heat will be radiated into the house, drying out the moisture from the inside.

What is most urgent to dry the houses now is not people, but the various bamboo slips dug out when clearing the ruins.

The black bear...actually doesn't care about this.

Those who claim to value culture the most become even more cruel and ruthless when it comes to destroying and modifying culture.

If it's not to your liking, I'll burn it all.

It's a bit like a gardener. He seems to care for the garden, but he is the most cruel to the garden plants.

How many bites can cows and sheep eat?

Rescuing and excavating ancient books is an important step in building official schools.

Attaching importance to education is ingrained in our bones.

Under this unified goal, the army, prisoners, auxiliary troops and even the Qiang and Hu vassal troops in the city all worked hard and sweated profusely.

In order to ensure their enthusiasm for work, food supplies have been very sufficient since arriving in Chang'an.

At breakfast today, Black Bear looked through Chen Zhen's grain transportation data.

Fortunately, the terrible autumn rainy season has passed, and the Wei River has returned to normal from its surging and turbulent state.

The counties were also released from their pre-war self-defense state, and manpower could be put into food transportation, enabling them to continue transporting food to Chang'an.

Such an important task as transporting grain can only be entrusted to Chen Zhen alone at present.

Black Bear ate millet porridge, flipped through various military books, and occasionally wrote instructions.

He did not have a sufficient secretarial team, and all military documents and documents were sent back in original form after being approved, rather than being copied and filed.

At this moment, he wished he could split himself into two, one to stay in Chang'an and the other to inspect the counties in Guanzhong.

Don't be in a hurry. Reorganize the army in Chang'an first. After disbanding the army, you have a winter to inspect various counties.

After breakfast, Black Bear rode on his Yin Gan Horse to inspect construction sites around the city.

Most areas are just for clearing ruins to obtain wood, bamboo slips or stone bricks, and only a small part of the area is a reconstruction area.

Chang'an City was too big, and there was not enough manpower and material resources to fully repair it. Even after the restoration, it was still short of enough population.

Therefore, the purpose of this restoration is to prepare for the official school that will be developed next.

Whether it is for the restoration and transcription of classics, or for future students to move in, a comfortable living environment is needed.

There is no need to worry that these 20,000 people will not try their best. Anyone who has children of school age in their family can come to Chang'an to attend school in one month.

In Black Bear's plan, the city of Chang'an is a huge academic city.

Except for the living and learning areas, most other areas need to be flattened and cultivated.

Groundwater pollution is so serious that most of the well water in Chang'an is not suitable for washing clothes.

When Black Bear was patrolling the city, he saw four water trucks queuing up to draw water from a sweet water well.

The soldiers carrying water did not dare to approach and just watched curiously.

The black bear had a mask on his face, and Lu Bu's Fang Tian Ji was dragging lazily on the ground behind him.

On the way, they met a group of Qingzhou soldiers escorting prisoners. The Qingzhou soldiers shouted at the prisoners to stop. These Qingzhou soldiers formed a line to isolate the prisoners and watched the black bear pass by.

Although they were not worried about these captives causing any damage, if they disturbed their own leader, they would be laughed at by other Qingzhou soldiers.

The black bear was not surprised. His current task was to patrol everywhere every day to ensure that everyone had enough to eat.

As long as he patrolled the city, the new and old military officers would not dare to be negligent. These people worked hard, and the conflicts between the soldiers below were reduced by more than half.

There were considerable conflicts between the various military units in Guanzhong, some of which were directly blood feuds.

When patrolling the city, we arrived at Duan Wei’s camp in the southern part. Duan Wei had been checking the horse herd early in the morning.

He only brought two thousand Qiang and Hu servants, most of whom had horses. In the past few days, the horses were driven around Longshouyuan to forage for grass.

It was fine to let the Qiang people participate in the cleaning and loading and unloading of the ruins, but you couldn't expect the Qiang people's horses to work. So these horses, as well as Yang Qiu's or other officials' private horses, were mostly concentrated outside the city and raised in different areas.

This is also the difficulty in reorganizing the army. The vast majority of the knights in the army bring their own horses.

This is different from the previous reorganization of Liang Xing, Li Kan and Hou Xuan. Prisoners have no human rights and can undergo the most thorough reorganization.

The same is true for the Ma Wan troops in Chiyang City, which can carry out the most thorough integration of various resources.

But Ma Teng, Yang Qiu and even Zhang Heng's troops all need to be carefully identified.

Even Duan Wei had the obligation and responsibility to protect the horses of the Qiang servant troops.

Peeling off the appearance of these warlords, it turns out that each of them has various reasons.

Fortunately, the various tribes in Guanzhong have not yet developed into a group similar to the soldiers of the vassal states. After all, they were formed too recently.

They have only really taken shape in the past few years, lacking time to mature.

If after two generations, the officials of different departments start to intermarry with each other, that would be a real problem.

However, due to the special terrain of Guanzhong, it is easy for them to merge with each other to form a huge collective; unlike Guandong and Hebei, which have vast territories and are far away from each other, they have the terrain conditions for breeding vassal states.

After this period of contact, Black Bear discovered that Duan Wei was not as strong as the outside world said.

The so-called two thousand Qiang and Hu volunteers under his command were more like regular annual service. Once the service period was up, if they wanted to extend it, they would have to pay some extra price.

Duan Wei also has clan members, fellow villagers, and troops from Guanzhong and the north, but these troops cannot be moved easily. They are the ballast to suppress the Qiang and Hu in the north.

Black Bear could vaguely understand the old man's intention.

He would rather continue to waste the manpower of the Qiang and Hu servants than suffer losses in his troops.

If Duan Wei's own tribe suffered heavy losses, then these two thousand Qiang and Hu servant troops would definitely become a hidden danger.

Therefore, Duan Wei's life was far from as glorious as it seemed on the surface.

After this comparison, Black Bear realized how powerful the three thousand Qingzhou soldiers were.

Therefore, after moving to Chang'an, Black Bear was full of confidence and dared to take Lu Bu to inspect the camps and investigate the actual conditions of each unit in order to facilitate subsequent reorganization.

When filled with confidence, one's personal aura becomes exceptionally strong.

When he arrived at the South City area, Duan Wei had to put down his work and ride a horse to accompany Black Bear to inspect the herd of horses outside the city.

The quality of the horses among the Qiang and Hu people varies greatly.

The two men drove their horses to observe the horses. Black Bear watched for a while before saying, "The Duan family has been involved in border affairs for a long time. Even if the sons and daughters are not familiar with military affairs, there are some who understand horses. I would like to ask the old general to recommend a son and daughter to take charge of breeding for me."

Duan Wei couldn't see the changes in Black Bear's expression through the mask, so he asked, "General, how many horses do you need to breed these fine horses?"

“More than just horses.”

Black Bear took out a scroll of bamboo slips written last night from his harness and handed it to Duan Wei: "There are three directions for breeding fine breeds. The first is oxen for farming, the second is war horses, and the last is donkeys or mules."

Duan Wei spread out the bamboo slips and read them, and he saw that the breeding of oxen for farming was to crossbreed yellow cattle with yaks. Duan Wei also had this knowledge, and knew that a very strong kind of cattle was bred in Longyou and Hehuang.

They are strong, disease-resistant, and have particularly majestic horns, but like mules, they cannot reproduce.

Duan Wei asked with doubt: "General, do you want the Hehuang yak?"

"Yes, I know that the wild yaks in Longyou are particularly strong. I hope the old general can come forward to buy some. Yaks have thick hair. I will raise them in the valleys of Nanshan Mountain to breed good breeds."

Black Bear slowly explained: "This is the most important thing. As for the war horses, they are the least important thing. As for the mules and horses, we need to breed more donkeys at present. When the population grows stronger, it will not be too late to breed mules and horses. The oxen are for the people, and the mules and horses are for military use."

"I promised the old general that I would not mobilize the army until Guanzhong was prosperous. The reason is not only that I couldn't bear to see the people separated and in chaos, but also because of the logistical difficulties."

"If there are enough mules and horses, our soldiers will set out on the road with mules and horses, and use mules and horses to transport supplies. If there are 30,000 mules and horses, it will be easy to conquer the world."

Duan Wei lowered his head to read the bamboo slips, on which Black Bear had made a simple plan, starting from the eighth year of Jian'an, with each stage being five years.

In the first stage, we need to breed 10,000 oxen for draft, test the hybridization of cattle breeds, and select a suitable breeding plan; as for war horses, just as Black Bear said, we only need to breed and strengthen them for use as servants; and test the breeding plan for fine-bred war horses.

As for mules and horses, the situation was even simpler. During the first five-year plan, every effort was made to expand the donkey herd and test various breeding plans.

After all, yaks, mules and horses are unable to reproduce offspring, and breeding too many in the early stages would be a waste.

Black bears don't even pursue war horses. High-end war horses are too precious. They should be considered pets or national treasures, not suitable as war consumables.

Black Bear is not planning to develop a very elite cavalry unit. Heavy infantry that can ride on mules and horses and use mules and horses to pull carts to fight around the world are enough.

After all, there is a top-level Yin Gan horse, which is enough to be used as a tactical spearhead.

Duan Wei read it again and again, and realized what Black Bear was up to. He frowned and asked, "General, are you going to collect cattle and horses from the Qiang, Hu, and Xiongnu?"

"Yes, Guanzhong without Shuofang is incomplete."

How big should the real Guanzhong be? To the north is Shuofang, to the west are the four Hexi counties and the Hehuang area, and to the south it must include Hanzhong and Bashu, and it would be best if Nanyang as well.

As for the east, the areas west of Taihang Mountains, Yunzhong and Dai should also be included.

The Kanto area is so large, how can Guanzhong...that is, Kansai, be small?

Duan Wei frowned, "Once the war starts, it will be hard to stop. The general is sharp, and the barbarians will be uneasy. If we don't invade each other, they can still restrain themselves. If we don't kill the snake, the general's prestige will be damaged, and the barbarians will definitely fight and attack."

"It doesn't matter. I'll have to fight sooner or later."

Black Bear's tone was as calm as ever: "If we don't fight, our descendants will. We are poor, and the barbarians have not been doing well in recent years. Also, there is a lack of cattle and horses in Guanzhong. Although there are thousands of miles of fertile land, how can human farming compare to animal power?"

"Ten thousand oxen are worth the death of ten thousand of our men."

Black Bear sighed and said, "There are fewer women in Guanzhong than men. Some people can hardly marry and have children. It's better to follow me and fight the barbarians, snatch cattle and horses to farm, and snatch women to give birth to children."

He turned to look at Duan Wei and said, "General, this matter is currently known to you. Please investigate the Hu tribes in Xihe, Shangjun, Beidi, Anding and Hetao for me. I will send troops to the north by October next year at the latest. At the very least, I will clear out the Hu tribes south of Yulin."

"We are short of cattle, horses, women, and slaves. They stole a lot of them during the chaos in Guanzhong. Now it is our turn to take them back."

Duan Wei looked back at Black Bear. Through the mask, he felt like the person inside the mask was his brother.

Duan Wei nodded slightly with a dazed look on his face: "If it is to kill the barbarians, as long as I am alive, the sons of the Duan family will never lag behind."

(End of this chapter)