Hitting the road in the snow is a very hard job.

Zhanzhao Mu Guiying, and the sergeant who was used to crawling and rolling were okay, Wang Yan was dressed like a hairy bear, but he was still so cold that he wanted to hit the wall.

After walking for many days, he arrived in Huanzhou, and then went north from Qingping Pass to Yanzhou in Xixia, and then joined an official of the Xixia Rite Department.

After passing through Yanzhou, you still need to walk a long way to finally reach Xingqing Mansion, the capital of Western Xia.

In the vast white snowy wasteland, Da Yan really admires the tenacity of the vitality of the people in this land. Because I could see the tent that looked like a company camp in the snow.

This is a primitive tribe at the lowest level. There is no such group in the Great Song Dynasty, but there are in Western Xia, Liao State, Hui Partridge and Tubo.

In fact, it is precisely because of the existence of many, many such simple and ignorant tribal herdsmen that the nomads can continue to threaten the agricultural civilization of the south despite the lack of national strength.

If this phenomenon is strange, it is not. For example, a thousand years later, India, which claims to be a democracy, still relies on the caste system to have hundreds of millions of slaves, and there are not many real citizens, and they are all elites.

There is nothing new under the sun, and it is often the case with backward countries or groups. The people at the bottom are simple and stupid to the point of uncivilized, and then there is a big fault, but the people at the top are quite cunning and intelligent, highly qualified, with special opinions, and they have concentrated a lot of resources.

This is not only the case in the current Western Xia or Liao. Even in India in the next 1,000 years, or including all kinds of pyramid schemes, cults, and underworld groups, in fact, it will basically be like this: the upper class is super elite, the middle is faulty, and the bottom is super ignorant and uncivilized.

The Great Song Dynasty was just the opposite, and the ministers of the imperial court may not be very smart. However, folk scholars and even civilians are not necessarily stupid, and even all kinds of verbal strategists can summarize and discuss countless theories of governing the country in one day, which is very reasonable.

In fact, this is called civilization and inheritance. The origin of this inheritance even dates back to the Spring and Autumn Period.

It's far away.

After going deep into the north, most of the Tangut people did not like the Song people, but they did not deliberately dislike the Song people. As for them, most of the Song people they could see were merchants, and merchants were not good but were generally polite, and they would carry the things that were most needed in the tribe, so they could trade.

Therefore, after these stupid herdsmen saw Wang Yan's troops in the heavy snow, they didn't care that they were like an army, and someone intercepted Wang Yan's team.

There was a little girl holding a lamb with a knife stuck in her waist, and her speech was so incomprehensible that she couldn't understand it. This caused the atmosphere to be tense for a while, and if it weren't for the fact that the leader was a little girl holding a lamb, I am afraid that this behavior would have led to a misfire.

In such a foolish country, there is a characteristic that the elite in the big cities basically know Chinese, and they can also come into contact with many Han people. But the low-level fools don't understand anything, and even walk a hundred miles in a different direction, that is, different dialects, and it is difficult for tribes to understand each other's language. It's so weird.

Now, the accompanying Western Xia guide officials did not know their language either. And since ancient times, the family Tartar is the most hateful, Wang Yan has no feeling inside, but the accompanying Xixia official and the herdsman who is full of strange smell are full of disdain. Before, I saw that this tribe was very big and had knives, so I just despised it and didn't dare to scold.

Now that it is clear that they are not angry, the officials of the Western Xia diplomatic port who accompanied them began to scold.

But after scolding, they didn't know what the other was saying.

After scolding, seeing that the little girl continued to hold the sheep and looked at Wang Yan with a smirk like a silly girl, the Xixia official felt very embarrassed, and turned to Wang Yan and smiled: "The people of the country are vulgar, let the ambassador laugh." ”

Wang Yan really didn't see anything ridiculous about this group of big-headed herdsmen? Under the rule of the young master, is this kind of labor a treasure?

Of course, Wang Yan didn't say anything, such bureaucrats were not only in the Great Song Dynasty, and he was relieved to see that there were also big geese in Western Xia. This is the reason why Da Song has not hit the street until now.

"You're welcome, Master Li is polite."

Wang Yan wore a hat crookedly, looking like a dumb official, and made a similar act to the Western Xia officials.

This guy's name is Li Ling, and his position is the same as Wang Yan, and he is also a member of the Ministry of Rites. On the whole, the official system of Western Xia is more painful, and it is all imitated by the Great Song Dynasty, and they basically have the yamen of the Great Song Dynasty. For example, they also have Kaifeng Mansion, and they also have three yamen or something, as for whether these yamen can play a role, it is not necessarily, anyway, they have to have a good appearance in the Great Song Dynasty.

Then the little girl holding the lamb was smarter than the other big-headed herdsmen, and then she thought that the chief could speak Chinese, so she turned around and ran into the chief's tent, and Shaoqing came out with a middle-aged man with a strange hairstyle.

The leader was very polite, smiled and politely said a few words, and then introduced Wang Yan and several other main characters into the tent to discuss.

Inside the chief's tent there was a large group of women, all of them the chief's wives, and a few of them were of good shape. Then there was a group of bear children, who surrounded the Song people after seeing them, and the little girl holding the lamb just now was also among them.

With envy and curiosity, the children reached out and touched the bodies of the people, pulled them, or stretched out their fingers to poke them.

There was a bear child who ran away with a pendant on Zhanzhao's waist.

"Hey, that's not for sale." Zhanzhao was speechless, but he couldn't shout back, and it was inconvenient to be rude.

Mu Guiying's temper is not as good as Zhanzhao, she doesn't care about her, but whenever she reaches out to get something and runs, she is dragged back by the eldest lady and slapped on the back of the head, and snatches the thing back.

After a while, the child who took the Zhanzhao pendant earlier dragged a sheep in, how bad the smell was, if it was summer, it would definitely be over.

I saw that the little fart child was pulling the sheep's ears and walking, and if the sheep didn't leave, the child gave the sheep a few slaps on the head, and finally dragged the sheep over and handed it to Zhanzhao, and then turned around and ran again.

"Hey, come back, that thing can't be exchanged for a sheep! That's just a souvenir of less than ten cents in Bianjing. Zhanzhao shouted, but the little kid ran away heartlessly.

The chief walked over and leaned in to smell Makin.

The old horse suddenly squinted at the chief with malicious intentions and thought: Smell the eggs, grandpa takes a bath at least once every two months, and he is much cleaner than you.

Immediately, the chief picked up the smoking gun on Ma Jinxi's waist and observed it curiously.

The old horse became proud, put a cigarette gun to his mouth, and stuffed some tobacco into it and lit it.

The chief is obviously stupid, the technique is wrong, he doesn't use his mouth to buffer, he directly uses his lungs to extract violently, and after inhaling it in one gulp, "cough cough @#......"

The chief choked on the appearance of smoke, but he thought it was very real, so he commented that for the sake of good things, he took the old horse's smoking gun, and after a while, someone brought a cow in and handed it to the old horse.

"But what do I want a cow, this cow has bought twenty smoking guns and fifty catties of tobacco." Ma Jin said in amazement.

The chief was a half-bottle of vinegar, and he understood some of the parts but not the whole thing, but he knew that the old horse was not satisfied, so he took the ox away again, and brought a beautiful woman in the tent over to the old horse.

"Uh, this ......" Lao Ma's mouth smiled crookedly, it seemed that this deal was very good, but he didn't have the courage to accept it, because Da Yan was not allowed to do this.

Eventually, Ma Jinsi asked the chief to get a cowhide and forget it.

The chief was surprised, thinking that these merchants were losers, where had they ever heard that a cowhide could be exchanged for something?

Wang Yan and Ma Jinxi were even more surprised, when they sent the cowhide, this thing that was not much in the Great Song Dynasty was really good. These people are born butchers, and the hides are very well preserved. This thing, processing it is really a lot of money in Bianjing.

Seeing their expressions, the chief knew that they were asking for leather goods, and then ordered that the surplus leather goods of the tribe be taken out. The quality is super good, in addition to cowhide and beef tendon, the use is very big.

After the big pile of things was laid out, the chief said in broken Chinese: "What do you exchange for?" ”

"Well, you've got the right person."

Da Yan became confident, and made a lot of preparations when he pulled out from Funing County.

This trip was not a war, so more than 200 war horses were loaded with supplies.

Da Yan clapped his hands and ordered someone to bring in two loads of tea cakes.

In the trade between the Han and the barbarians, tea was always the main event. Han people generally eat whole grains and vegetables and wild vegetables, and have no physiological need for tea, mainly for enjoyment. But the nomads who specialize in eating high-fat meat really have a physiological need for tea, and without tea, it would be difficult for the average person to live past the age of thirty-five under the conditions of this era.

When the tea cake was brought in, the chief became excited just by smelling it outside, and knew that something good was coming.

But when I opened it in the past, I felt that it was not tea, but some "flatbread", which looked very iron, so I looked at Wang Yan unconsciously.

Speaking of which, the most important cost in ancient trade was transportation. Tea is not heavy but occupies a lot of volume, so it is considered a very expensive material to transport. In order to solve this problem, Dayan used compression technology, just like the Pu'er tea cakes of later generations, to purchase a lot of tea leaves from the Suide army and make them into tea cakes for storage, so the tea leaves that could be carried on this trip were very large.

By the way, this kind of internal natural fermentation can derive a lot of beneficial bacteria, similar to the more popular enzyme concept in later generations.

The diet of the Han people does not need these very much, and they drink tea mainly to enjoy vitamin supplements by the way, but for these grassland people who mainly eat hot and dry meat, this kind of cake and tea is really powerful, and it will be immediate, and they can feel it after drinking it.

The chief thought about it, and then said in a crepe manner: "But why can this be regarded as tea?" ”

"This is a new variety developed by my Song family, which is super powerful."

Da Yan doesn't expect to popularize advanced concepts about these Qiu Ba science, it is to talk about cows, so it is enough to say a conclusion, and the rest depends on experiments.

After the tea cake was knocked down to a very small corner, and after it was scattered, in the eyes of these natives, the tea suddenly became more and more?

Put it in a tea bowl, bring the pot from their fire, and fill it with boiling water.

Everyone gathered around and sniffed it, not only the chief, but even the Western Xia officials next to them were shocked. Because I've never smelled such a pure taste of tea. This is the finest and best preserved tea.

Or because of the cake and tea. In addition to the initial internal fermentation of the tea aroma, tea is a very taste-absorbing thing, just put the tea and sheep together, soon the tea will absorb the smell of the sheep, limited to the ancient preservation means and environment, where there are people all kinds of smells emitted more serious than later generations.

So most of the time, the tea stored by the not very sophisticated magnates is generally mixed with five flavors, so they simply like to add various ingredients into the tea indiscriminately.

However, cake and tea have eliminated the "dyeing taste" to the greatest extent. Because of the same amount of tea, the area of cake tea can be lifted by air is not even one hundredth.

"It's amazing, I've lived for decades, I've never seen tea taste so pure, it can really penetrate deep into the heart and lungs." The chieftain always spoke in a crepe, and after taking a sip, he began to comment on the best of the best.

The Western Xia official Li Ling also enjoyed it very much, but he didn't comment much on it, mainly because he was envious and jealous.

In the end, after drinking two times, they were limited to the tea-making process, and their taste was also heavy, and the rest was basically tasteless, but the chief chewed and ate the brewed tea leaves. This is also a means of verification for him, these guys are not very good at arithmetic, only by eating it as usual, he can tell whether this seemingly small volume of tea is really not "less".

Now the chief had finally confirmed that the tea sent by the merchants in the past seemed to be a large handful, but the total amount was about the same as a small piece of this cake tea.