318 Dragon Head (1/2)

The events at Xunzhou failed to attract Ouyang Shuo's attention.

No matter the strength of the uprising army, they couldn't come to Lianzhou Basin in a short time amount of time. On the contrary, the expansion of the Taiping Country would help him destroy the other small territories in Guangxi. In the end, it would result in a situation where one person would take it all.

At that point, Ouyang Shuo would just step out to clean it up. As long as he destroyed the Taiping Country, he would own the entire Guangxi.

The Taiping Uprising Army was merely a living target in his eyes.

It wasn't that he had grown arrogant and wanted to make use of the Lianzhou Basin to take down Taiping Country. He also had other trump cards, which would come into play when the time came.

At that time, whoever dared to underestimate Lianzhou Basin would end up in big trouble.

To put it another way, east of Xunzhou, Wuzhou, there was still Chiyou City.

When two tigers fought, one was destined to get hurt.

Ouyang Shuo could just watch on as the tigers fought.

As for whether things would proceed as he had expected, it was still unknown.

The ripple that the Mulan House caused and everything else slowly subsided. Shanhai Territory had regained its normality.

The only matter that gave Ouyang Shuo a headache was the issue regarding war horses. To form up the 4th division, one had to mention the Qingfu horses. The other three other divisions all used Qingfu horses. Hence, Ouyang Shuo had to handle things fairly. Changing the war horses of the 4th division to Qingfu horses also climbed up his priority list.

Unfortunately, the various grassland tribes had already become wary of Shanhai City after the Tianqi tribe stirred up the waters. They did not want to trade with Shanhai City. As such, attempting to purchase Qingfu horses from them wasn't a practical idea.

After trade broke, Ouyang Shuo grew more and more worried about the grassland tribes.

Although the Lianzhou Basin had good weather and didn't have winter, the grassland wasn't suitable for herding close to the new year. Hence, the livelihoods of the herdsmen and shepherds became a big problem.

If they could not purchase food from Shanhai City, Ouyang Shuo had grounds to suspect that the various tribes would start a war.

Ouyang Shuo had ordered the Military Intelligence Division to increase their investigation into the grassland tribes and immediately report news. The leader of the second group, Leixun, was given the orders to do so.

However, the intel from Leixun puzzled Ouyang Shuo. The tribes had no intention for war and no tribe had asked for the herdsmen to join the army.

Everything seemed really weird.

The calm grassland seemed like it was on the verge of a huge storm.

Ouyang Shuo could only order the Military Logistics Department to quickly draw up a battle plan and craft logistics to get ready for a war; he ordered the Shanhai House to speed up the building of the city wall. They would prioritise the north wall and make it into an unbreakable fortress.

As the military size increased, the situation would change. In order to start a large scale war, he could not simply move the troops and immediately fight like before.

As they said, before the soldiers moved, the grain would move first.

For a huge war, they needed to prepare large amounts of grain, horses, chariots, arrows and many equipment. It was not something they could complete in a short time.

The four military workshops and the cave military factory had thousands of workers who rushed day and night to craft batch after batch of items. They sent the items to the various camps for them to equip themselves.

Especially the newly established fourth division, they only had the system gifted equipment from the class change, far from the standards of the Shanhai City army.

The newly appointed combat logistics director Zhu Hongliang was so busy that he did not even have time to eat.

Baiqi and Du Ruhui were busy preparing the military forces. They had also brought their personal guards, who entered the grasslands to take a look at the environment to prepare for the battle.

Baiqi's mind would not stop at any moment, as he continuously thought and found methods to outsmart the enemy. He mainly focused on the investigation and preparation work before the battle.

Du Ruhui was also very experienced and he had a sharp eye. He was a great military advisor and his tactics and war ideas were better than Baiq,i who was from the warring states period.

The two of them worked together and helped put Ouyang Shuo at ease.

With the two of them at the helm, Ouyang Shuo could take time and effort to look at other things.

For example, the Qingfu Horses.

The only way to obtain Qingfu Horses now was from the Jifeng Valley horse stables.

The stables had sent out four thousand Qingfu Horses before and they only had a hundred left.

The nurturing of a warhorse was a lengthy process. In such a short time, Ouyang Shuo definitely did not want to use the horses in the horse stables.