Chapter 333 No suspense
The night wind howls on the bank of the Yellow River at the foot of the Helan Mountains.

Lu Bu and Gao Shun formed two teams of ten cavalrymen and rushed into a camp from the left and right. The campfires were overturned by the puppet Taoist soldiers passing by.

In the melee, Black Bear drove his horse closer, raised his hand and waved, and two puppet hundred-man teams landed on the edge of the camp.

Except for a few leader puppets wearing armor, other puppets are wearing simple uniforms, and they rush into the camp barefoot with swords or spears to join the fighting.

After forming a team of 100 people, the puppet Taoist soldiers cooperated more skillfully.

After less than half an hour of fighting, the camp of a thousand people was completely collapsed.

Only a few dozen people found horses and broke through the encirclement. The rest either fought to the death and attacked with swords when they saw anyone, or knelt down and surrendered or pretended to be dead.

A team of knights holding torches gradually approached from behind. Black Bear raised his hand and two hundred-man teams turned into cards and flew back.

Dian Wei stood beside him holding a torch, and the knights who followed rushed straight into the camp.

Black Bear also orderly mobilized Lu Bu and Gao Shun's ten cavalry teams to withdraw from the battle, leaving the task of collecting surrenders to the newly arrived reinforcement knights.

Without resting, Black Bear drove his horse towards the western mountains to chase.

Lü Bu and Gao Shun's ten-horse team rushed ahead and chased for more than twenty miles before stopping in a valley.

Two hundred-man teams were summoned, and soon they brought in all the firewood they had collected.

A grand bonfire was lit, and Black Bear watched the blazing flames alone.

After more than two months of continuous fighting, the killing was really hard to stop.

He thought he could advance quickly to the Helan Mountain area, but he ended up spending more than twenty days in Shuofang, capturing and killing more than 30,000 Xianbei people and rescuing and recruiting more than 40,000 knights.

The result caused outrage among the Xianbei in the west and central parts of the country, like stirring up a hornet's nest.

The entire Shuofang region was in chaos, and it took him more than 40 days to repel the central and western Xianbei. Only after all the prisoners were taken did he lead the reorganized 60,000 knights south.

It is a completely nomadic style of play, and the more than 60,000 knights only exist on paper.

We may lose a few hundred cavalry here today, but we can get hundreds more cavalry elsewhere tomorrow.

The Western Set...that is, the Hexi tribes, are not very durable at all. The most difficult thing so far is to find the enemy's troops and tribes.

Up to now, whenever we encounter small scattered tribes in the Hexi region, they all shout that they want to surrender to the Han Dynasty.

Black Bear felt very sorry as he had not found any valuable enemies for several days.

As the leader of the wolf pack tactics, Black Bear originally thought that the Hexi tribes would gather their troops to fight a decisive battle with him after seeing the failure of the Xianbei's tactics in the west.

As a result, the Hexi tribes could not make up their minds whether to fight or make peace. When I went south from Shuofang, the Hexi tribes still had not come up with a plan.

Without an idea, the tribes in Hexi would not have been able to complete their grand gathering.

So a terrible battle spread from Shuofang to Hexi, with killings every day.

Up to now, this was the first tribe of a thousand people he had encountered in seven days.

It can almost be concluded that the tribes in Hexi are finished. They are either dead, turned into slaves, or some peripheral tribes flee to the four counties of Hexi.

He thought about the war for a while and then closed his eyes and fell asleep.

As the sun gradually rose, the puppet Taoist soldiers standing around to block the wind were melted by the sunlight, and in the end only the middle and high-level puppets were left.

After waking up, he washed up in a nearby mountain stream and rode back to the nearest base camp.

The base camp is located in Qingtongxia, Fuping County. It is composed of a number of camps, where the captured population, herds of animals, and supplies will be gathered. After the initial distribution, they will go south to Anding County and return to Guanzhong.

When Black Bear returned, Yu Fan was checking medicinal materials in the outer camp. At this moment, he could only look up and watch as more than 30 Black Bear riders returned to the camp, passed through layers of circular camps, and entered the core area.

There was a backlog of official documents in the center of the camp.

After Black Bear returned, he began to annotate official documents. He was already very capable in handling these documents, and he could even take the time to inquire about some trivial matters in the camp.

During lunch, Zhang Xiu, who was out on a reconnaissance mission, came back and brought a confession to Black Bear: "Grand Marshal, according to reports, the largest group of Qiang people have already fled to Dunhuang. They ran too fast."

"Then don't chase them. The Qiang people will come back sooner or later."

Black Bear took the confession and looked at it. It was signed by the officials of Jincheng County, so he said, "I am only troubled by one thing now. How can we transport so many animals back to Guanzhong?"

After the people and livestock that migrated south moved south from Fuping, the herds would eat the grass along the way so that more of the herds could return to Guanzhong alive.

Therefore, the team migrating south was divided into two groups. One group took the road inside the Great Wall, walked eastward along the south of the Great Wall to Shangjun, and then went south along the Qinzhi Road; the other group went through Anding County and entered Guanzhong from the Longshan Road.

The two routes are arranged crosswise to ensure that migrating teams on either route have access to fodder supplies.

Even so, each migrating group would have no more than 5,000 animals, mostly sheep.

The cattle and horses were too hungry, and it was difficult to supply fodder along the two routes from the south into Guanzhong.

The only way was to drive the herds northward along the Yellow River in a nomadic manner.

By going around the Yellow River, the abundant water and grass along the way can ensure the health of the cattle and horses.

Only during this period of time can enough fodder be transported to the Qinzhi Road from the rear.

These more than 1.2 million cattle and horses can only be transported back after there are sufficient fodder reserves along the Qinzhi Road.

There were simply too many animals, and driving them over long distances would cause huge losses, and disease would cause even greater losses.

If the death of a large number of cattle and horses led to a plague, the losses would be too great.

Black Bear was troubled by this question, and Zhang Xiu was also troubled, so he proposed: "Why not restore Beidi County, set up military settlements here, establish 100-household and 1,000-household units, and implement nomadic life?"

Seeing that Black Bear did not refute, Zhang Xiu continued, "Now that we have moved inland, we will have to move people to the border counties in the future. The strength of the Xianbei in the west has been greatly weakened. In my opinion, it is better to manage Hexi. When we go out to fight next year, we can use Hexi as an outpost. Whether it is to attack the Xianbei in the central part or the Qiang tribes in Hehuang, Hexi is a good front-line camp."

Black Bear frowned after hearing this: "According to what you said, we should stop migrating. However, many soldiers will inevitably be dissatisfied with the army stationed here. Let me arrange Huangge to count the soldiers from various departments. If there are those who are willing to station in Hexi, I will set up 100-household and 1,000-household units in advance according to the plan and divide the spring and autumn pastures."

Seeing that Black Bear listened to this opinion, Zhang Xiu didn't say anything more.

There were plans to operate Hexi, but not this year.

Unexpectedly, the captured animals were so numerous. It was okay to kill the sheep, but it was not worth the heartache.

But so many cattle and horses are of great strategic significance, and it is worth developing Hexi in advance.

In the future, in the Hexi, Shuofang, Wuyuan and other Hetao areas, black bears will not plan to raise sheep, but only graze cattle and horses here.

Cows and horses eat grass without hurting the roots, but sheep are too cruel.

If you want to start operations in advance, you need to set up a sizable garrison and deploy circular control to form a safe grazing and living area.

In this way, the herd can be protected when attacked by surrounding hostile tribes, and can hold out until reinforcements arrive.

Therefore, the size of the garrison cannot be less than 30,000. Fortunately, the Hundred Households and Thousand Households are a system that integrates the military and civilians.

(End of this chapter)