Chapter 858 Troop Training
With the arrival of spring, the water level of the Huai River in the north rises, and the water level of the Wo River is expected to be enough for large ships.
In other words, the day for Wu Jing's Northern Expedition to the Central Plains was approaching.
Today, he came to the school specifically to see how the recruits were being trained.
At first, in order to maintain the prefect's lead, he still watched from the tower.
At that time, Wu Jing stood under the canopy and had a panoramic view of the school grounds.
But this is far away. Although it is far away, it is not real.
The slogans below were loud and clear. It seemed that supplies were sufficient and morale was high. However, it was unclear what the martial arts level of these new troops was.
Wu Jing is a general on horseback, and he is not just here to watch the fun.
So amidst the embarrassment of all the staff and generals, he walked down the city and went directly to the school grounds.
And Wu Jing is not easy to fool. He didn't come up to say anything about the scene, but went straight to the arrow stack area. These things can directly show the team's training level.
But Wu Jing's face turned ugly as he watched, because the condition of the arrow stack was really ugly.
According to the signal from the golden drum just now, these archers should have shot three rounds of arrows, but how many arrows are there now?
He just glanced at the group of archers standing opposite, and he knew what was going on when their faces turned pale.
Wu Ding spotted an archer standing slightly behind and ordered him to come out and shoot ten arrows.
But as soon as Wu Jing finished speaking, the Qu Jiang next to him smiled apologetically and said to Wu Jing:
"My lord, that boy is timid, I will choose one for my lord."
With that said, the song general shouted to an archer at the front:
"You cum!"
But just as the archer was about to answer the order, he heard some sinister words coming from beside him:
"Ahu, you really need to lead the troops and nourish your energy. I didn't expect that you can make the decision for me now."
The song suddenly broke out with sweat on his forehead, and he was so horrified that he knelt on the ground, not daring to speak loudly.
Wu Jing kicked the archer aside, and then still shouted to the archer standing in the back row:
"Come out and shoot. If you don't raise your bow and shoot the arrows, I will use your head as the target."
Now, no one dared to persuade him, and the archer could only walk out tremblingly.
I don’t know whether it was because of his weak strength or the stiffness of the bow. Anyway, this archer didn’t even draw the bow fully for the first time. The arrow was halfway shot and fell limply to the ground.
The archer looked at Wu Jing hastily, but heard Wu Jing humming with a straight face:
"Go on, I ask you to shoot ten arrows, so you have to shoot ten arrows."
Feeling Wu Jing's murderous intent, the archer almost cried, but he also knew that the only one who could save him now was himself.
Perhaps out of the instinct to survive, the archer's second arrow was fully loaded, but unfortunately it missed the arrow stack.
After that, the archer shot three more arrows, but they also missed. At this time, the entire school grounds was so silent that you could hear a pin drop.
Then, the archer's luck came, and he shot two arrows in a row, and even one of them hit the target.
The archer's performance finally made the generals look much better.
But the luck ended here. Not only did the archer's three arrows miss again, he even failed to draw the bow with the last arrow, which shows that he was really exhausted.
In this way, Wu Jing glanced at the archer, then at the arrow stack and the arrows on the ground, and finally turned his attention to his feet.
There, Naqu Jiang was prostrate at his feet, shaking like a sieve.
Wu Jing's voice was completely emotionless, and he asked:
"Ahu, is this a soldier you trained in half a year?"
Why Wu Jing went straight to the archers as soon as he arrived at the school? It was because among the various skills in the military, bow and arrow training was the heaviest, most expensive, and the most rigorous test.
But for such an important subject, a random archer can actually miss eight out of ten shots, and even cannot draw the bow in the end. What kind of level is this?
Let's put it this way, when Wu Jing was twelve years old and had first gained strength, he could hit three out of ten arrows after practicing archery for half a month. But now, as a mature man, he can actually hit the target without any strength? Are these the elite soldiers he spent money and food to raise?
At this time, Wu Jing's whole mind was dizzy, and he wanted to kill the general immediately, but he still used his last sense to say what he just said, just to let the general give him an explanation.
Why? Why?
General Naqu also knew that his life was hanging by a thread. No matter how many unspeakable secrets he had in his heart, he had to speak out at this moment. He shouted:
"My lord, in the past Chen Xuzhou rose up from the Yangtze and Huaihe Rivers, attracting heroes from all over the lake and sea. Among them, most of them were attracted by Shouchun, and they all went east to Xuzhou. By the time the lord built his mansion in Shouchun, there were not many talented people left nearby."
"For half a year, the general has been sleeping in the military camp without understanding his clothes and armor. He has kept in mind the Lord's kindness to the general and has not dared to slack off in training. However, it is difficult to train archers. These new soldiers are weak and it is difficult to just maintain their strength. After three months, this is the end of my shooting skills.”
Jiang Jiang shed tears as he said this song, with sincerity and sincerity, and the people around him also tried to persuade him.
They also told Wu Jing how difficult it was to train new recruits, and why the bow was the most popular among all military martial arts. In addition to its high destructive power, it was also because it was difficult to practice.
A qualified archer will have to practice archery for three to five years, and archers must not only practice skills, but also strength. These recruits generally have poor physical fitness, otherwise they would have been recruited by Lu Jun before. Now, are you still here?
So although these military generals all said different things, they all meant the same thing:
"Although it is helpless to be like this after half a year of training, it is excusable."
Moreover, these generals also mentioned another situation, that is, not only the archers, but also the generals of the battalions were of poor quality.
The world is in chaos, and the princes of the Central Plains are fighting to the point of darkness. Today, either you will capture and kill thousands of people, or he will annihilate hundreds of them.
And these strong men and elite soldiers did not fall from the sky, nor did they grow on the ground. They appeared every year.
A qualified warrior would not be able to master the swords, guns, swords and halberds in the army in four or five years.
But it’s definitely too late to train them yourself, so don’t these Central Plains princes have to recruit troops elsewhere?
Not to mention Shouchun, there are only two counties next to it, Lujiang and Danyang. Both places produced elite soldiers, and both were extremely poor. The princes of the Central Plains were willing to recruit troops in Huainan.
And even if you don't use many of them, you can't let the enemy use them. Therefore, when every party comes here, they use all their skills and want to take away everyone who can use swords and halberds.
Shouchun is very rich, because it is located at the hub of the Central Plains Water Network and the Huaihe River, and business travelers from all over the world gather here, so there are indeed not many people who are willing to serve as soldiers.
But I couldn't bear that those business travelers who wanted to travel the trade routes in the Central Plains also needed protection. In this way, Shouchun's high-quality soldiers were almost exhausted.
In short, with the heroes of the Central Plains defeated, Huaixi's military resources can be considered exhausted.
All the generals said this, but unfortunately Wu Jing's face did not improve at all, but became more and more gloomy.
Finally, his anger reached its peak and Wu Jing exploded.
He cursed:
"A group of pigs and dogs now have the courage to work together to deceive me?"
With this sentence, the whole scene fell silent.
Then, Wu Jing took turns to curse:
"You say that archers need to practice for three years, but that is to train elite archers. Archery in the army is not about fine shooting but volley shooting. Half a year of regular practice of this kind of archery is more than enough."
"You said that there is a shortage of soldiers near Huaixi. This is even more ridiculous. The people of Huaixi have settled down and relocated. How many forces in the Central Plains can recruit troops if they come here to recruit, and how many will abandon their homes and go north? Only those who can go there are He's just a wandering knight in the countryside. "And half a year ago, I formed an army based on my household registration. I just wanted to train a good army. Otherwise, why would I give the paddy fields around Shaopi to these five thousand families?"
At this time, Wu Jing made everyone speechless, knowing that they could no longer fool their lord.
Yes, more than half of the generals present were the soldiers who had followed Wu Jing back then, including the generals who were kneeling at Wu Jing's feet and crying bitterly. They had all regarded Wu Jing as their leader for a long time.
This time, Wu Jing wanted to expand his power, so he put down these troops and led troops. Whoever thought of it could bring out such troops.
As the atmosphere became more solemn, Wu Jing felt someone around him tugging on his sleeve. He glared and saw that it was his aide Hu Zong.
Hu Zong was from Gushi, Runan, not far from Huaixi.
After Yuan Shao's defeat and death, a large number of scholars from the Central Plains migrated southward, and Hu Zong was one of them. Wu Jing had just arrived in Shouchun, and this man came to recommend himself.
Wu Jing chatted with him deep into the night, and hated to see him late. On the same day, he was admitted to the military mansion, where he was in charge of clerical affairs and counselor's affairs.
At this time, Wu Jing saw Hu Zong tugging on his sleeves, his heart trembled, and he suddenly understood.
He turned around and hummed to the generals:
"That's it for today. Come to the military mansion after you lead the troops back to the camp."
With that said, Wu Jing took his staff and guards back to the military mansion in the city without asking the reason behind it or looking at the training situation of other soldiers.
As soon as he came back, Wu Jing quickly asked Hu Zong:
"Wei Ze, do you have any deeper meaning when you dragged me just now?"
Seeing that none of the generals came, Hu Zong hurriedly replied:
"Master Fu, with all the officials and soldiers around, it's really hard to embarrass the generals, otherwise how will you be able to control your subordinates in the future? Besides, didn't Master Fu pay attention to one detail?"
Seeing that Wu Jing didn't understand, Hu Zong braved his taboo and said bluntly:
"My subordinates saw the archer today. Although his skills were indeed rough, he was fundamentally weak in strength. Looking at the rest of the warriors, the ones closer to him were better. As he moved further back, his face became obviously rosy. This is obviously due to the lack of strength among the officials. Eat enough.”
Wu Jing couldn't sit still now, and he subconsciously replied:
"How can I not be full? Is the rice sent by Shaopi fake?"
When he mentioned this, Wu Jing stopped talking, as if he realized what the problem was.
But Wu Jing still couldn't believe it. He asked Hu Zong to go back first, and then he called a group of tooth soldiers affiliated with the government and asked them to go to Shaopi sentry in batches to investigate the conditions of the farming there.
And in order to prevent the tooth soldiers from deceiving him, he specially dispatched five or six waves to go to Shaopi from different directions.
Later, while waiting, Wu Jing remained calm and began to ask people to investigate the private situations of the generals in the army.
But if you don’t check, you won’t know, but once you check, Wu Jing is shocked. Each of his subordinate generals now has a mansion in the city. It is said that many of them have also opened manors in their hometowns and raised countless slaves.
How could Wu Jing not know what was going on with these people? Back then, as long as these people had wealth, they would not defect to him.
It's just that within half a year of taking office, everyone has become a rich man?
In this way, Wu Jing began to believe in his original guess more and became more serious.
Soon, while waiting anxiously, the tooth soldiers sent by Wu Jing also came back one after another.
The tooth soldiers who came back at the beginning all said in unison that there was nothing going on over there in Shaopi. Wu Jing remained calm and just let the tooth soldiers stay in another courtyard, and then entertained them with wine and meat all day long.
The tooth soldiers who were behind him began to come back. When they came back, they were filled with resentment and began to tell Wu Jing everything they had seen.
Previously, in order to develop Nashaobei, Sun Jian attracted a large number of refugees from Sanwu and the Central Plains to farm and cultivate paddy fields.
Because the conditions provided were really good, the population of the Central Plains, which was suffering from the war, continued to move south, and at least more than 10,000 people settled in Shaopi.
Although there are tens of thousands of people working there, there are more than one million hectares of paddy fields in Shaopi. They are all paddy fields left behind when the water receded from Shaopi.
Therefore, tens of thousands of people cultivated land day and night, but only 300,000 acres of paddy fields were opened up.
But as soon as the 300,000 acres of paddy fields came out, people came to covet them. First, the field officials responsible for supervision began to occupy the fields. Later, the nearby wealthy families also came, and they even roped in Wu Jing's subordinates.
What is the concept of three hundred thousand acres? How could these poor generals endure it?
At the beginning, everyone occupied only a small amount, but later on, they had no control at all, so they became more courageous, from occupying tens of acres to dozens of hectares.
At the end of the day, the civilian villages set up by Sun Jian and the distribution ratio of seven to three were all useless paper.
These people worked together to make people slaves, and then brought them to their own farms for cultivation. In this way, there are fewer and fewer public fields and more and more private fields.
It may even be that greed has become a habit, and the generals have begun to withhold military rations. Perhaps in their opinion, it is a waste to use so much rice as military rations.
Naturally, the underfed new army did not have the energy to train. The generals who followed also knew that it was useless to practice, so they trained once every three days in the past to three times a month in the future.
So even though the new army has been training for half a year, in fact it has only conducted less than twenty drills.
With such intensity and such a small number of shots, the archer is really lucky to be able to hit two out of ten shots.
In this way, Wu Jing finally understood everything, but he felt deeply helpless.
Because he understands that the interests here are too great. Even though his generals are all from his own tribe, if he really uses this to deal with them, it will definitely trigger a mutiny.
By then, Wu Jing might accidentally drown in the Huai River one day.
And to be honest, behind the greed of the generals was Wu Jing himself. It turned out that the first person to embezzle the Shaopi farmland was none other than Wu Jing.
When the subordinates presented the number of acres of farmland, Wu Jing, with a stroke of his pen, took away 100,000 acres.
Perhaps it was Wu Jing's behavior that gave the generals this misjudgment.
Is that how the higher ups encourage us?
After all, if you don’t take it from your superiors, they definitely won’t be able to take it. And when you take it from the top, don’t you tell everyone that it’s time to divide the meat?
Because this matter was so serious, Wu Jing didn't even dare to let people know that he knew it.
So he first ordered a group of tooth soldiers who came back from behind to go to the courtyard next door, kill all those who came back first, and bury the bodies in the courtyard.
After the later group of tooth soldiers came back to answer their orders, Wu Jing didn't let them go. He had these people poisoned with poison and their bodies were buried in the backyard.
Wu Jing killed the first group of people who came back out of hatred for their disloyalty, while he killed the last group of people purely to protect themselves, so the events behind them were naturally different.
After finishing this, Wu Jing acted as if nothing had happened and waited for the arrival of spring.
As for the lack of many tooth soldiers in the mansion, the staff Hu Zong pretended not to have seen anything and was cautious in his words and actions.
It was in this atmosphere that spring came in the fourth year of Taiwu. Sure enough, in February, the Huai River in the north rose.
Then, Wu Jing suddenly gave the generals an order:
"Northern Expedition to the Central Plains!"