The final decision of the war council was to leave Gao Heng at Feikou, with a substantial proportion of the troops held back for garrison duty. A thousand men from Shen Jin's forces, a thousand from Liu Jian's, and the banners of Zhuge Heng, Ding Kuang, Liu Agan, and She Yuan's cavalry were assembled as the Central Army under Liu Cheng, totaling over twenty-two hundred men. Wang Xia also went in person, escorting Xie Wan with two thousand men, bringing the total to over six thousand combat troops.
At the same time, Zhu Xian was to dispatch a thousand men to Zhuyi in Pei Kingdom to secure the rear along the Sui River.
That was why they spoke of six or seven thousand troops, rather than precisely six thousand or seven thousand. Slippery Zhu had, as ever, found himself a position that was neither quite one thing nor the other.
As for overland logistics when the army departed, that responsibility was entrusted to Guo Man, who had worked hard without making any mistakes last time... As it turned out, once you proved yourself capable in a grueling position, you would go on having a grueling time.
Even so, Guo Man was still moved to tears with gratitude toward Liu Cheng.
Four thousand civilian laborers were assigned to the expeditionary troops. For water transport, they allocated the first batch of over sixty newly built, caulked, and dried flat-bottomed rowing boats, along with over a hundred old boats and fifteen hundred boatmen.
There were objections to this at first. After all, the provisions for both the Northern Command and Western Command ultimately came from Jiankang. Now that the Western Command was going to assist in battle, there was no reason to transport supplies separately from its own territory once they reached Pengcheng.