Deng Ming's army was not moving fast, and eight thousand soldiers left Jiading Prefecture and had been on land. Since the agreement reached between Kunming and Li Dingguo in mid-year, Jianchang has drawn some of the forces to establish a transportation line connecting western Sichuan. These newly built post stations helped the Sichuan army a lot, otherwise Deng Ming's marching would have been slower.

"Sooner or later, we will build a military station along the road, otherwise this road will be too difficult to walk." Deng Ming complained to Zhao Tianba. There are no less than 8,000 Sichuan troops in the post station. Every day, the Sichuan troops have to camp themselves and prepare food. Although there are guides at the post station to tell the Ming army where there are springs that can be cited by the army and where there are open spaces suitable for camping, it is an uninhabited place and everything depends on your own.

"How much does it cost? And how many soldiers are stationed? Do so many camps need to be sent to inspect frequently?" Zhao Tianba asked: "If you don't come to inspect frequently, the military station that has been built with great difficulty will probably be abandoned and will eventually be unable to be used by the army."

"I just said casually, Brother Zhao doesn't have to take it seriously." Deng Ming immediately realized that his ideas were not feasible. The geographical conditions of Sichuan Xingdusi were far inferior to those in western Sichuan. Many residents were fleeing people in western Sichuan. Liu Wenxiu collected the population when he was running Jianchang. After Feng Shuangli entered Jianchang, he continued to gather the residents around him. In the past two years, the situation in western Sichuan began to improve, and those people who were not captured began to move towards Jiadingzhou, which made it even more desolate between Jianchang and Chengdu. All stations had to rely on Jianchang or Jiadingzhou for supplies.

Deng Ming thought for a while and said to Zhao Tianba again: "Maybe we can formulate a policy that anyone who is willing to live here will allocate large areas of forests. A family can own thousands of acres of forests, and all the production is owned by him. Perhaps in this way, some people will settle here and form some villages."

Zhao Tianba pondered for a moment and continued to pour cold water on Deng Ming: "Even if a person can have several mountains, there is nothing here. Salt, tea, and cloth must be transported from Chengdu. After hunting prey and reclaiming mountain fields, there is no place to sell them, and the caravan will not come, right? Unless a gold and silver mine can be found, how can the admiral plan to make people willing to come here?"

Deng Ming sighed softly and admitted that he had no choice but to do anything. In the final analysis, Sichuan was ruined. Before gathering enough population, all the lofty ideas were castles in the air.

"When we go back to Dufu and pass by Jiading Prefecture, the admiral might as well go to Mount Emei to see if he can pull all the mountain people out." Some people who have been fleeing to Sichuan and Xingdusi have returned. The bold people have already gone to Chengdu, but there are still many timid people hiding in the mountains. These people are still skeptical about whether the Sichuan army can gain a foothold, so they would rather continue hiding in Mount Emei: "I heard that there are also a group of people in Mount Tiantai."

"Is that so? How do you know?" Deng Ming also heard about these things from the soldiers at the post station in Jiading Prefecture, but Deng Ming told him not to go up the mountain to catch people, and if they don't want to come out, don't force them. Deng Ming knew that the living conditions in the mountains were very difficult, so he also told the soldiers at the post station that if they met mountain people, they would help them with some grain and cotton cloth. Chengdu would give them special allocations, and there was no need for mountain people to use out-of-mountain life as exchange.

"Because we attacked Tiantai Mountain." Zhao Tianba replied shamelessly. He felt that Deng Ming gave grain and cloth to half the result with twice the effort. It would be better to send troops to capture all the people down the mountain and let them see the situation in western Sichuan with their own eyes, so they naturally would be willing to stay on the plain. In short, how the Ming army dealt with the auxiliary soldiers of the Qing army should deal with these mountain citizens: "When the Eight Kings were established, many people fled to Tiantai Mountain to avoid the war. There were many temples on it to accommodate them. Most of the monks inside were not good things, spreading rumors and saying bad things about our Xiying, bewitching the people not to return to their hometowns to produce."

"What's the result?" Deng Ming asked.

"There is a lake on Tiantai Mountain, where Danshui can be settled. The people who believe the rumors can't come down. When the Eight Kings sent troops, the thief and the Bald monks organized monks to resist on the vicinity. The one who led the team was Gongchang. The thief and the bald monks were not his opponent? Seeing that the thief and the bald monks were guarding the front mountain road, they sent more than a dozen elite soldiers to climb up from the back mountain, burning the temples of the thief and the bald monks." Zhang Xianzhong did not have the good temper of Deng Ming, and Bai Wenxuan was also a first-class general. At that time, the monks in Tiantai Mountain were killed by the Western Army. Zhao Tianba looked quite proud when he talked about Bai Wenxuan's outstanding command.

"What's the matter?"

"Originally, after King Gongchang killed all the thieves, he wanted to search the mountains and bring the people back, but at this time the Tartars came from Shaanxi, and King Gongchang hurriedly left. According to him, there were many mountain fields on the mountain, and there should be many people. Later, the King of Shu wanted to go to Tiantai Mountain and Mount Emei to find people, but it was not done because of the urgent military situation. When we gradually freed up our hands, we searched all these places."

Deng Ming nodded and did not continue to discuss this topic. In Deng Ming's previous life, Li Guoying slaughtered all the people hiding in the Kuidong general base area during the war to pacify Sichuan, killing all the people hiding in the Kuidong general base. After the war in Sichuan, after Li Guoying's unremitting search, many men, women, young and old were found from the surrounding mountains, and moved them all to the plains. It is said that there were hundreds of thousands of Sichuan people in this fashion, and they were able to escape the catastrophe in the late Ming Dynasty. But the good times did not last long, and the Three Feudal Rebellion broke out. The remaining Sichuan people and the people who had just immigrated to Sichuan were killed by Zhao Liangdong, and in the end, there were only 10,000 people left.

Deng Ming and Zhao Tianba estimated that it would inevitably delay some time in Jianchang and Yunnan, and they would not reach the Myanmar border until the first month of next year as soon as possible.

The pace of the war in the late Ming Dynasty was much slower than Deng Ming's previous life. Every time the Ming army went on a war, most of the time spent on the way. This time, the eight thousand soldiers led by Deng Ming were strong and were not threatened by the enemy, and could concentrate on their journey every day. Even so, it took about four months to get from Xuzhou to the destination. After camping every day, Deng Ming organized officers to learn the necessary knowledge in advance.

"There are elephants in Myanmar and other places. Have you heard of ivory? That kind of thing is the teeth of elephants, which is a huge animal." Deng Ming said, stretching his arms vigorously and gestured to his subordinates as his elephants' heads: "The Burmese army will probably use elephants as mounts to raid our army. If they charge with elephants, our army will definitely not be able to stop it by the square formation, and we will be stepped on by elephants into meat sauce."

Zhao Tianba had to admire Deng Ming's knowledge. When he was in Yunnan, Li Dingguo also purchased some elephants and trained a small number of elephant soldiers to fight against the Qing army. Zhao Tianba only saw the elephant cavalry at that time. He did not expect that Deng Ming, a mainlander, knew so much about this.

After seeing Deng Ming's big and small sign, many Ming army officers seemed a little nervous, and many of them had no idea about elephants.

"Although the elephant is very big, it is not a very good mount..." Deng Ming said this, and saw Zhao Tianba's disagreement on his face, so he stopped and asked, "Does Major Zhao have anything to say?"

"I think elephants are a good mount, and their roars are terrifying. When the King of Jin used them to fight against the Tartars, the elephants could scare the Tartars' war horses so hard that they dared not step forward, and the Tartar soldiers were also extremely scared. As the general said just now, when urging the elephants to rush forward, all the people were stepped into meat paste." Zhao Tianba, as the only person who had seen the elephant, had great authority in his speech, which made many Ming army officers even more uneasy.

"The elephant is so easy to use, how did the Qing army deal with it?" Deng Ming asked with a smile.

"We don't have a few elephants at first. They were all purchased from Myanmar by the King of Jin. Moreover, elephants bullied their lives and were difficult to train elephant cavalry. They ate a lot and were spoiled. Not long after, they all died in Hunan and Guangxi."

"So that's it." Deng Mingweiweizhou. The knowledge of people in this era was really limited. In the early Ming Dynasty, the Ming army fought against Vietnam, and later encountered elephant soldiers when fighting with Myanmar. Although the Ming army won it, there were no specific means of victory passed down. According to Zhao Tianba, Li Dingguo believed that when encountering an elephant, he should send fierce soldiers who dared to fight to the death to attack and use their lives to exchange for expensive elephants so that the enemy would not have the chance to attack the army formation. However, the Qing army had never had such equipment, so Li Dingguo's ideas had not been tested in practice.

Deng Ming was different. He remembered that in the history books he read when he was a child, he specifically mentioned how the Romans were repeatedly ravaged by Carthage elephants within a few years. With the determination of the soldiers of the Roman turtle formation, they were also trampled by the Carthage army that concentrated on using elephants.

Deng Ming still remembers the method the Romans figured out: "I just said that elephants are not a good mount. It's because they are different from horses. It's difficult for riders to control elephants. In fact, they just point their targets to elephants. The rest is basically based on the beasts that play out themselves. Elephants are very afraid of fire. If the Burmese people concentrate elephants against us, we have to shoot densely with rockets. Once the elephants are afraid, they will turn around and step on their own positions. Elephant cavalry can't control it at all - those Burmese soldiers standing behind elephants cannot stop them..."

After Deng Ming carefully explained the tactics, many officers breathed a sigh of relief. After the meeting, they would inform the soldiers of Deng Ming's introduction in detail.

"Is there any basis for the Grand Marshal's words?" Only Zhao Tianba was still dissatisfied. He felt that as a person who had seen the elephant with his own eyes, he should have a greater say than Deng Ming.

"I have read a military book that specifically introduces how to deal with elephants." Deng Ming replied calmly.

"What military book?" Zhao Tianba asked suspiciously. He had never heard of such records in the military book, and it was a weapon that was almost impossible to see in China, not to mention that the military book actually said that elephants were timid and very fearful animals: "What is the name of the book?"
Chapter completed!