The six thousand people under Zhao Peng's command were covered with blood from Qing soldiers. Needless to mention the new army of two thousand Jinyi. Since the training of the capital, many large and small battles have been fought. Although they are only three months old, even veterans who have been on the battlefield and killed people have also undergone strict queue training and physical training, all they lack is personal skills.

Although the four thousand infantry were just refugees in the rebellion army not long ago, they had already seen bloody veterans after the bloody battle. Almost every soldier had seen blood from the Qing soldiers, and some people even killed the fierce Eight Banners soldiers. In their hearts, the Eight Banners soldiers were no different from ordinary people. They all carried a head on their shoulders, and were chopped off their heads, or hit by a musket to the vital point. They were not Nezha with three heads and six arms, nor Sun Wuzi with copper and iron bones.

The soldiers who had killed the Eight Banners soldiers no longer had fear of the Eight Banners soldiers. All these infantry lacked is stricter discipline. It only takes one to two months of training to become a truly capable soldier.

Four thousand infantry soldiers began to train. According to Zhao Peng's requirements, infantry was divided into four types: spearmen, halberd soldiers, sword cards and musket soldiers. He trained the Spanish phalanx. Among each thousand people, there were five hundred spearmen, one hundred sword cards, one hundred halberd soldiers and three hundred musket soldiers. The spearmen used by the spearmen were two-meter-long spearmen. The spearmen were actually axe guns. The spearmen that the spears were added to the 100 5-meter-long spearmen and were called axe guns. Because spears were easy to use, they needed to protect them.

Originally, with the development of the Spanish phalanx, the sword player and the halberd soldier were later eliminated. However, Zhao Peng retained the sword player and the halberd soldier because of the powerful bows and arrows of the Qing army.

The Spanish phalanx does not require high personal force of a single soldier, but requires strict discipline. As long as the opponent has good discipline, no matter how high the opponent's martial arts are, they will be stabbed into a horse's nest when facing a spear that is two feet long. In this era, the spear of the general army is only 15 feet long, which cannot reach the length of the Spanish spear. Therefore, when the two sides fight, only the spear of the Spanish phalanx attacks, but the opponent's weapons cannot reach their own side.

Of course, the Spanish phalanx requires strict discipline, so Zhao Peng first trains recruits to stand in queues, queue movement and other basics. After practicing until the formation can move fifty steps without any disorder, he can start training the spear formation.

In addition to training, Zhao Peng also had an important thing, which was to send people to contact Li Zicheng as soon as possible. He needed to establish a trade with Li Zicheng as soon as possible to help Li Zicheng solve some problems, and to protect the Ming Dynasty.

The current situation in the world is the four forces of the Qing Dynasty, the Southern Ming Dynasty, the Dashun and the Daxi West, but in fact the power of the Dashun is almost negligible, and only the three forces of the Qing Dynasty, the Dashun and the Nanming are divided into three parts. The timeline for the Qing Dynasty to attack the Nanming depends on how long the Dashun regime can last. The longer the Dashun can persist, the longer the preparation time left for the Nanming. Zhao Peng hopes that Dashun can persist longer so that he has time to develop his military strength.

According to the information received from all parties, Li Zicheng currently has many problems. Although Li Zicheng currently controls Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, he also controls the southwest of Henan and the north of Hubei, both areas controlled by Li Zicheng. However, after Li Zicheng's army failed in Shanhaiguan, his vitality was severely damaged and he could no longer face the Qing army head-on.

Zhao Peng taught Li Zicheng how to build a bastion. Although the Shun Army lacked attacks, it was still possible to defend itself. However, the Shun Army currently faced two major problems. The first is the lack of food. The north, which had been suffering from disaster for many years, has been in short supply after many years of wars. It was difficult for Li Zicheng to support hundreds of thousands of troops.

The spy from the Jinyiwei came back and reported that before Li Zicheng evacuated the capital, he first cut off Wu Xiang and fled to Shanxi. After the Shun Army arrived in Shanxi, he uprooted all the eight great masters of Shanxi merchants according to Zhao Peng's reminder and obtained a large amount of silver.

But no matter how much money Li Zicheng has, he cannot eat it. What's the use of not being able to exchange for food?

However, it is gratifying that Li Zicheng built a large number of bastions, from northern Hubei to Shanxi, along the way, there were bastions scattered along the way. Tongguan was also transformed by Li Zicheng. The originally tall Guancheng was demolished and replaced by a short bastion group. Due to the emergence of the Red and Barbarian cannons, the tall Guancheng had completely lost its function in front of the cannons. The Red and Barbarian cannons could easily destroy the tall Tongguan. However, Tongguan, built during the Tang Dynasty, was only high, but the thickness of the city wall was not thick enough, which caused the defenders to be unable to erect cannons on Tongguan to fight against the Qing army. Because if the thin and high Tongguan had set up cannons on Guancheng, it would probably have been knocked down by the enemy before the cannons collapsed.

Demolition of Guancheng and replacement with a bastion is undoubtedly Li Zicheng's wisest choice.

With the bastion group, the problem that Li Zicheng needs to solve now is the food crisis. Taking this into consideration, Zhao Peng decided to lend a helping hand to Li Zicheng.

"Send an envoy to Dashun to envoy Dashun, bring a batch of potatoes and teach them how to plant them, so that they can reduce the famine in Dashun. In addition, tell the King of Chuang to buy grain with silver, so that we can buy grain here and then send the grain." Zhao Peng ordered Gong Xiaoda to send people to Dashun to envoy Dashun.

However, even if the sweet potatoes are planted now, they will take four months to six months to harvest. What should I do if Dashun is short of food during this period? Therefore, Zhao Peng proposed to let Li Zicheng pay for the money to buy food.

On the territory of King Lu north of the Yellow River, you can still buy grain from the south. The grain transported from the south is north through the canal and transported to the Yellow River. By crossing the river, you can deliver it to the territory of King Lu. However, the grain purchased by Zhao Peng and Li Zicheng does not need to be sent to the territory of King Lu. It only needs to be loaded on the Yellow River boats and go upstream to deliver it to Xi'an.

At present, the Yellow River routes are still safe. The Yuyuan Army controlled a large area of ​​territory north of the Yellow River, including southeastern Shandong, northern Henan, and southern northern Zhili, resulting in the Qing army's hands not being able to reach the edge of the Yellow River. South of the Yellow River is the territory of the Shun Army and the Ming Army. At present, the Qing army has not yet eliminated Dashun, so naturally they dare not start wars against Dashun and Daming at the same time.

In the late Chongzhen period, the price of grain soared. At this time, the price of one stone of grain in the north had reached three taels of silver, and the price of grain sold to Li Zicheng was as high as five taels of silver and one stone! In fact, the price of grain that Zhao Peng bought from Yangzhou was only one tael and half silver and one stone of grain. After selling it to Li Zicheng, the difference was more than three times!

Li Zicheng, who was short of food, had no shortage of money, so he naturally agreed to Zhao Peng's offer readily. At the same time, Li Zicheng also made a request to Zhao Peng, hoping to buy a batch of thunder from Zhao Peng.

Ten days later, the envoy came back and sent a reply to Zhao Peng that Li Zicheng agreed to the grain transaction and hoped to buy the Zhentian Lei.

When Zhao Peng went to find King Lu to buy salt, Zhu Yihai said with a sad face: "The prince-in-law wants three thousand kilograms of salt, but where does Xiao Wang have salt?"

"We'd better refine the nitrite ourselves." Zhao Peng decided to refine the nitrite himself.

The method of refining nitrate by yourself is actually very simple. There were a large number of dry toilets in the countryside at that time. Some white crystals could often be seen on the walls and floors of dry toilets. As long as these crystals were scraped off, dissolved in water, filtered the soil and other debris, boiled, purified and dried, you would get nitrate.
Chapter completed!