Under his old friend's coaxing, Old Wu began organizing a force with the County Magistrate's support.
First, they gathered a group of able-bodied men.
There were around fifteen hundred of them.
For a county town, that was no small number.
As for silver, there was certainly none.
But they provided enough rations.
Naturally, those came from the wealthy households.
Quite a few wealthy families understood the situation.
At least more than half of them did.
Before, no one had organized them, and everyone had only wanted to protect themselves.
Now that the County Magistrate and the brave men were organizing things, they were willing to contribute several years' worth of harvests to get through this disaster.
Of course, if they had to keep contributing indefinitely, they probably would not be willing.
They might even want to open the gates and surrender.
In short, they had plenty of food for now.
Old Wu's training also went smoothly.
In any case, there was not much to train.
First, they trained them to obey orders.
Second, they trained them to defend the walls.
That included learning to keep their heads down.
Not to raise their heads.
To crouch while throwing stones.
The reserves had to run fast and quickly plug any breaches.
Even without knowing these basic operations, Wenren De could have worked them out.
It was nothing more than armchair strategy, writing and drawing on paper.
But it was still far better than making no preparations at all.
They prepared more fuel, logs, and stones.
They also had to clear the forests and houses outside the city. The forests had long since vanished, but the houses had to be torn down.
That would keep the enemy from having timber to use in an attack.
Next, they dug pit traps.
To stop the