It was mid-June in Kunming, and all the things to be discussed and the surrounding scenic spots have also been visited. Deng Ming did not plan to wait any longer.

"Li Guoying gathered 20,000 troops in Chongqing. It is impossible for so many people to rely on transferring food from Guanzhong." Deng Ming did not know that Beijing was supporting Chongqing, but instead speculated from an economic perspective that the Qing court would encourage Chongqing to be self-sufficient: "We went back to Chengdu to summon troops and rushed to Chongqing city before August to cut all Li Guoying's crops."

Because most of Sichuan's land is uninhabited, the Ming army's reconnaissance of Chongqing was difficult. The Western Sichuan Navy did not reconnaissance the Qing army's army on the edge of the Yangtze River, but Deng Ming still believed that Li Guoying would organize military camps in the upper reaches of the Jialing River to solve the food problem. Of course, the difficulty of collecting intelligence was not unilateral. Li Guoying also relied on speculation about the situation in Xuzhou and Wanxian. Because the navy was in a weak position, the Qing army's speculation was much less than that of the Ming army. For example, the military farming in Wanxian, Li Guoying believed that Yuan Zongdi had more manpower and had more mouths to eat, and would not be worse than Xiong Lan when she was in Wanxian.

The saddest person is Zhao Tianba. After the Myanmar coup, he hoped that Li Dingguo and Deng Ming would send troops to rectify the troubles, and that survival and demise were also a great reputation. Unfortunately, the Ming army really has no spare energy to care about the affairs of the vassals.

"Should wait for two more days. If Wu Sangui attacks King Jin, we will still help King Jin." Zhao Tianba said.

"Okay, just wait for two more days." Deng Ming agreed happily. During these two days, he discussed some contact methods with Li Dingguo and some agreements to support each other.

Two days passed by and there was no news of any invasion in Guizhou.

"Wu Sangui is a turtle. He has been holding it in for two years, but he still huddled in the turtle shell. " Zhao Tianba was unwilling to accept that when others followed Deng Ming out, war always came to him, but every time he followed Deng Ming, he was always calm. Zhao Tianba couldn't figure this problem out.

Before Zhao Tianba and Deng Ming left, Li Dingguo met him again.

"Your Majesty, I'll go back to Chengdu now." Zhao Tianba respectfully gave a great gift to Li Dingguo again.

"Okay, but in the future, Zhao Qianhu will not call me the 'King Shang'," Li Dingguo ordered: "In the future, you should call me the King like the Sichuan Army."

...

Tens of thousands of strong men were busy between Baoning and Chongqing, transporting a large amount of supplies to the Jialing River Estuary. Li Guoying carefully counted the amount of materials transported while seizing the time to repair the road. This military mobilization allowed Chongqing's Qing army to obtain a lot of valuable reference data. If the Qing court is determined to launch more than 80,000 armored attacks on Chengdu in the future, Li Guoying will have a rough impression of how many civilians should be requisitioned, how to allocate manpower, and which sections of roads need the most attention.

In order to ensure a successful offensive suddenly launched before the autumn harvest, Li Guoying tried his best to hide the arrival of Qing army armoured soldiers and repeatedly explained to them that the highest goal of this battle was to capture Wanxian, but it didn't matter if it could not be done. As long as it was destroyed, Yuan Zongdi's military camps were burned, the Ming army's docks were burned, and Yuan Zongdi could not breathe this breath within a year and a half. As for the next strategy, if Beijing continues to increase investment and Yuan Zongdi of Wanxian is unable to attack, Chongqing can consider steadily threatening Xuzhou; if Beijing agrees to make a long-term plan, then Li Guoying's main force will still have to retreat to Baoning.

However, Li Guoying had already understood that the Qing court would definitely not give up on Chongqing. Since this was the case, he began to build more outposts and watchtowers between Baoning and Chongqing. Once these fortifications were completed, the shipping of the Jialing River would become more stable. At present, Chongqing's rear route was not very stable, and the lack of a ground defense system gave the Ming army the opportunity to penetrate the rear of Chongqing by land and forcefully cut off the shipping of the Jialing River. Li Guoying now plans to make up for these weaknesses.

After Baoning arrived at Chongqing, it was completely stable and established enough warehouses, the Qing army threatened the Jiange, Jiangyou and Chengdu routes again. The Ming army must be wary of the Qing army sending light troops to attack from now on. This is also effective in restraining Chengdu's troops and consuming Deng Ming's materials.

At the end of June of the 18th year of Shunzhi, 10,000 people had been hidden in the north of Chongqing in Shanxi, and Sun Sike and 5,000 people were stationed further north. Zhao Liangdong and Wang Jinbao's 15,000 troops had arrived in Hanzhong, Guangyuan line, and could be ordered to go south at any time. This long-distance marching was also a good opportunity for Zhao Liangdong and Wang Jinbao to train new recruits. They took the elite soldiers of the headquarters as an example and led the new recruits to practice alternate advancement and field camping. Between Hanzhong and Guangyuan, Zhao Liangdong and Wang Jinbao also conducted several night sneak attacks on the camp and field exercises.

There is inevitably a ship crash in the Yangtze River shipping. Recently, a ship was killed near Chongqing. Li Guoying captured several Ming army sailors and learned from them that Deng Ming seemed to have gone to Kunming. After repeated interrogations, Li Guoying felt that the news was very authentic and couldn't help laughing to the sky: "It's God who helped me!"

In this case, Li Guoying further accelerated the pace of action and ordered Chongqing troops to start operations in advance in early July to ensure that the main attacking troops could attack Wanxian City in the middle. If the military operation in Wanxian went smoothly, the main force of the Qing army could return to Chongqing before August. If Deng Ming had not returned to Chengdu by then, Li Guoying could even consider a sneak attack on the Snow Prefecture to further expand the dangerous area of ​​the Ming army's water transportation.

However, in this way, Zhao Liangdong and Wang Jinbao's troops may not be able to arrive in time, but Li Guoying was not very worried. Because Deng Ming was not there, Chengdu's reaction would definitely slow down, and it would not be possible to mobilize the army to reinforce Wanxian or threaten Chongqing in time. The opportunity should not be missed, and the time would not come again. Li Guoying asked Zhao Liangdong and Wang Jinbao to set off immediately and go south along the Jialing River as soon as possible to replace the attacking troops to defend Chongqing.

When the Qing army launched its operations in full swing, Deng Ming led Zhao Tianba and his guards to Jiading Prefecture. His 200 guards did not travel with him but were behind. On the way back, Deng Ming had only a small number of guards around him, and he changed horses all the way back to western Sichuan at a quick speed to finally determine the plan for the autumn offensive.

"In the past two months, the Tartars in Chongqing seem to have increased their troops." Deng Ming had just arrived in Jiading Prefecture and saw the information sent from Xuzhou. Although Li Guoying carefully hid the army, when the Ming army ships were traveling back and forth next to Chongqing, he still noticed that the number of strong men around Chongqing increased significantly, and the Qing army freight in Chaotianmen was also several times busy.

"Li Guoying is indeed not giving up." Deng Ming carefully read the report and judged that Li Guoying wanted to further expand the warehouse in Chongqing and accumulate more materials on this key point, and finally prepare for attacking Chengdu.

With these reports in mind, Deng Ming rushed back to Chengdu on June 26. The left-behind Zhou Kaihuang, Li Xinghan also agreed with Deng Ming's judgment. They estimated that the total number of Qing troops around Chongqing had reached 40,000 to 50,000, but the number of armored soldiers did not increase, and the number of them seemed to be unarmed soldiers.

"Li Guoying wants to expand the warehouse and store more materials. There is no need to gather a large number of troops in Chongqing before he completes the preparations." Deng Ming judged that Li Guoying would not let these armorless soldiers be idle. He may have reclaimed a lot of arable land. After the food matures in a month, he will go to harvest: "Maybe since the beginning of this year, Li Guoying has opened a large number of military camps in the north of Chongqing. If he was asked to collect this year's harvest into the warehouse, then the Qing army's attack on Chengdu would launch early."

If Li Guoying now has 50,000 people and wants to rely on military garrisons to solve half of the food and grass, he also needs to reclaim 100,000 mu of land and harvest more than 200,000 stones of grain. If the Ming army rushes to cut off Li Guoying's grain, then the expenses of Chengdu's troops can make up for it, and it will make Li Guoying miserable.

"Let's set off again in mid-July," although Deng Ming felt that now was the best time to attack, but when he thought of the huge consumption of the army, he changed his mind to send troops immediately: "As long as we can suddenly kill the city of Chongqing before August."

Although Chongqing has a large total manpower, it is estimated that only 5 or 6,000 soldiers in armor may be only 5 or 6,000. As long as Deng Ming mobilizes 10,000 soldiers, the Qing army can only hold on to the city and let the Ming army cut off their food. The pressure is not great, so Deng Ming does not intend to mobilize too early or mobilize too many troops to minimize Chengdu's economic efforts.

In the end, Deng Ming decided to mobilize 10,000 soldiers and 20,000 auxiliary soldiers first, and immediately gather in Xuzhou, scaring Li Guoying back to the city first. The second step was to mobilize the same number of troops to prevent Li Guoying from sending reinforcements from Baoning. The Ming army with a population of up to 60,000 should be enough to fight against the hasty gathering of Ganzhou and Shaanxi Green Camp, and it was not too far away, and it would also bring convenience to the Ming army for transportation and mobilization.

What we have to worry about now is that Li Guoying was prepared for a long time or simply deployed a trap. Deng Ming instructed Liu Jinge to prepare for further mobilization and if the situation changes, he would immediately send reinforcements to the front line. If there is no accident, the reserve personnel would stay in Chengdu to continue to engage in production.

When he returned to Sichuan, Deng Ming brought some of the specialty of Yunnan, chicken palm. Because chicken palm was difficult to preserve, he put it in a small pottery jar according to the instructions of Li Dingguo Guard, marinated it with tea oil, and carefully brought it back to Chengdu. Deng Ming first sent someone to Fengjie to send some to Wen Anzhi, Zhou Kaihuang, Mu Tan, Liu Jinge, and He Daoning everyone got some, and left a portion for Ren Tang, and asked the people who went to Xuzhou to deliver it to him.

Wen Anzhi lived in Yunnan for a while and saw this kind of fungus. He asked someone to steam an egg custard that day, put a little chicken and brown in it, and savor it carefully. Ren Tang, who was far away in Xuzhou, also asked someone to send a message in the future, saying that he had never eaten such a delicious thing. Only Zhou Kaihuang did not take it seriously, and randomly put it in dry food and took it to the training ground to train troops. He swallowed it in two bites while eating.

When Zhou Kaihuang saw Deng Ming again, he seemed to be polite when he thought about it.

"The pickles given by the admiral are good," Zhou Kaihuang asked, "Is there any more?"

"What did you say? Pickles?" Deng Ming was stunned for a moment: "Oh, thank you for your praise. Don't worry, I won't bring you this pickles again in the future."
Chapter completed!