Chapter 517 Unexpected Gains and Railways

Author: Uncle Long Legs

Chapter 517 Unexpected Gains and Railways

(There is still one chapter to complete the transition and enter the final battle)

When a long wake-up call reached his ears, Xu Feng almost immediately jumped up from the bed like a conditioned reflex.

Then, using a faster speed than Lao Wang next door, when the male owner of the neighbor's house suddenly came back, he quickly put on his clothes.

Only when he was halfway through wearing it did he react:

Damn it! Last night, the team had a meeting with Yue Fei, Ma Kuo and other senior officials of the New Army. The meeting lasted until about three o'clock in the middle of the night. By the time they returned to the army, it was already four o'clock.

In order to sleep a little longer and avoid sudden death, didn't he tell the guard not to call him in the morning, so that he could sleep until he woke up naturally?

The result? At the sound of the wake-up call, I woke up as a conditioned reflex.

Obviously he is in the modern dimension, just a greasy electrician in his forties, but he was born in the mission world and was turned into a hard-core soldier.

When I think about such a bad thing for a moment, I have only one thought: What a sin!

While silently complaining about this point in his heart, Xu Feng took off half of the clothes he had just put on, got into the bed that was still warm, closed his eyes and planned to continue sleeping...

The problem was that after getting into bed, Xu Feng tossed and turned, but could not fall asleep again.

So I couldn't help but think of the content of last night's meeting; or to put it another way, it was the meeting that took place almost every night in the past few days.

The reason why in the past few days, I have had meetings every night.

And there's a reason why it's so late at night as soon as it opens.

Today is already the 13th day of the first lunar month of the second year of Maode. In other words, if Hu Biao and the others follow the plan of the Northern Expedition on the first day of the second lunar month.

It's only a little more than half a month until the war officially starts.

Thanks to his extremely good physical fitness through years of exercise, Xu Feng had already recovered from the serious injury suffered by Zhu Xianzhen more than half a month ago and was discharged from the hospital.

Then at the first opportunity, he was dispatched by Hu Biao to leave the army.

From that time until today.

In addition to New Year's Eve and the first day of the first lunar month, when the New Army soldiers were given two days off, Xu Feng also took a short rest.

All the rest of the time was busy training and getting used to the troops under his command.

It should be noted that the new army, which has been expanded once, has been organized into a total of three infantry armies.

Among them, the First Army has the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Infantry Divisions, plus the 1st Cavalry Division; the 2nd Army has the 4th, 54th, and 6th Infantry Divisions, plus a 2nd Cavalry Division.

The last 3rd Infantry Division is composed of the 7th and 8th Infantry Divisions, plus the 1st and 2nd Volunteer Divisions; each army has a size of 40,000 people.

After Xu Feng recovered, he took on the position of commander of the Second Army.

In fact, Xu Feng was originally intended to serve as deputy army commander, but the army commander asked one of his former regimental commanders in the new army to serve as the deputy commander.

In this way, if they are suddenly teleported away by the system after completing their mission, it will not cause uncontrolled riots in the troops.

The problem is that the former regimental commander under Xu Feng never dared to surpass Xu Feng in official positions.

So he could only be demoted to a deputy commander.

But in general, the problem of such an operation is not big; it is nothing more than giving the deputy commander as much help as possible in the future to increase his prestige.

As for the 1st and 2nd Artillery Divisions, there are also three units: the Rocket Artillery Division.

They are some combat units directly under the New Army Headquarters...

At this time, there are naturally a lot of things related to the Northern Expedition; various problems have cropped up one by one and need to be solved, or at least come up with a response plan.

For example:

First, according to the latest information from Dongchang, Jin Guoyang carried out the greatest mobilization during this winter.

Even the powerful and military leaders from all over the Northland only dispatched some old and weak people to cope with this mobilization. It was obvious that they were not doing their best and were waiting and watching.

However, with the almost universal mobilization of the Jurchens and the crazy support of some die-hard traitors.

The Jin people still mobilized a real army with at least 600,000 troops, not what they claimed; among them, the pure Jurchen troops numbered about 130,000 to 40,000.

Facing the threat of complete annihilation, any Jurchen who can ride a horse, shoot a bow and shoot an arrow will fill the battlefield in this battle.

Even in the dead of winter, they were still conducting training related to combating firearms troops.

It's a pity that the Jurchens did an excellent job of keeping this secret. For a while, even the fans in the West Factory didn't know what methods the Jurchens had come up with to deal with their firearms.

Therefore, they did not dare to be careless in this battle under the labor expedition.

Every day, various possibilities are deduced and some plans are made in advance.

Secondly, according to some reliable information passed back by the personnel deployed by the Zhe family in Xixia; after the Song Dynasty's Northern Expedition against Jin begins, Xixia will also come out almost in full force to attack and disrupt the Song Dynasty.

Xixia, with a population of just over 2 million, originally had a standing army of just over 50,000 people.

This time, they will mobilize a terrorist army of 500,000 people. Except for about 100,000 people who stay behind, the remaining 400,000 troops will attack the Song Dynasty in three ways.

You read that right, such a small country actually mobilized an army of 500,000 people.

This is entirely due to the Xixia people's extremely crazy military system.

Once they encounter war, all men over 15 years old and under 70 years old in Xixia must enlist in the army; and there are a considerable number of 'Makui' in their army.

The so-called "Makui" are actually some strong female soldiers.

In addition, they also used gold, silver, grain, silk cloth, cattle and horses as rewards to hire Gaochang Uighurs and Tibetan tribes to temporarily fight for them.

It is precisely because of such a crazy mobilization method that can even be described as "all-or-nothing" that Xixia was able to mobilize so many people.

Taking into account the Xixia people's sharp bows and horses, the threat from this direction is far greater than the initial one.

The original plan of dispatching one or two divisions of the New Army to unite with the Zhe family to withstand the Xixia attack was now probably very unrealistic.

The current dispute among everyone is whether to send the second army or the third army.

Third, in Hu Biao's preparations for the Northern Expedition, hundreds of types of equipment and materials including weapons, armor, grain, grass, and medicine were provided.

Because of the good cooperation from various places in the Song Dynasty, the preparations were quite complete and smooth.

However, when it was time to set off, an unexpected and quite troublesome logistical problem arose.

That is, this winter, the weather is far colder than before.

If the weather in previous years is followed, often by the end of the first lunar month, the waterway from Kaifeng City to Yanjing's Gaoliang River will only have a thin layer of ice left, even if the river surface has not completely thawed.

As long as an icebreaker with a strengthened hull and a steam engine is installed to open the way, there will definitely be some impact on navigation, but it won't be too big.

What about this year? There is still a thick layer of ice on the river.

Even if the icebreaker can forcefully break through the ice, the following ships will be in great danger due to the impact of large pieces of ice in the river.

Anyway, if the weather does not completely warm up in the next half month, then the Northern Expedition army will have to rely on a large number of civilians and carts to transport food and grass.

You know! There is a distance of 1,200 to 300 miles between Kaifeng and Yanjing.

Along the way, people ate what the horses chewed, and half of a cart of grain and grass might have been consumed halfway.

In view of this, the deputy envoys of the Privy Council, Yue Fei and Ma Kuo, proposed to postpone the Northern Expedition for one or two months.

Frankly speaking, such a suggestion is quite practical.

But doesn’t the systematic task force Hu Biao and others to take action in advance?

In short, as the Northern Expedition is about to start, all kinds of things suddenly become more and more numerous, and some solutions are needed to be discussed.

Recently, I have been having meetings every day, non-stop, and now Xu Feng feels that his head is buzzing...

****

Because of the chaotic thoughts in his head, Xu Feng tossed and turned on the bed for several minutes. Not only did he fail to fall asleep, but he became very upset and unspeakable.

When I heard the sound of a large number of footsteps on the large campus outside the stadium, it should be that the troops under my command were beginning to gather and prepare to start their daily five-kilometer cross-country trip with heavy loads.

Xu Feng simply stopped sleeping. After getting up again, he started to put on clothes.

During this process, I did not forget to wear an iron armor over my clothes and a backpack full of bricks on my back, so I was ready to bear the load.

A minute later, after pushing open the door to the room and feeling the ecstasy of a gust of cold wind blowing on his body, he immediately muttered this sentence in Xu Feng's mouth:

"Hiss! This weather is so damn cold~"

But even so, Xu Feng was wearing relatively thin clothes and still didn't put on a thick bearskin coat.

After just moving his hands and feet a little, and basically completing the warm-up, he took the two guards who went out after hearing the noise next door and started jogging together.

As he kept running, Xu Feng felt that his body began to heat up.

A mere five-kilometer cross-country run, for Xu Feng who insists on weight-bearing exercise all year round, such a distance is simply not stressful at all.

However, after making a circle and running back to the camp, he was a little surprised to find that he was not the first person in their entire second army to run.

When Xu Feng arrived, he saw two companies in front of him. They seemed to have been running for a while.

Xu Feng glanced over and found that the company was led by Han Shizhong and Gao Chong. The surprise in his heart calmed down immediately. It was normal for the team led by these two people to behave like this.
To be continued...