The first person in the envoy group to have an accident was Zheng Ji.

When Zheng Ji just took off his clothes and was about to scrub his stinky body with the spring water gushing out here, he found that there was an extra "black mole" on the inside of his arm near his armpit!

After a closer look, I couldn't help but gasp, where is this mole, it is clearly a small worm that is burrowing into his skin and sucking blood!

Only then did he feel a trace of pain,

Zheng Ji was about to snatch it away, but his hand was held by Ren Hong.

"This little worm can't be pulled out of place!"

Ren Hong asked Zheng Ji to sit down, and he couldn't touch the little worm.

"This is the sheep ice grass insect, Dunhuang County is also common, can bite people all over the body is red envelopes, Fu Gong asked you to wait for the grass to tie your legs, is afraid that this little insect is pervasive."

Ren Hong had been bitten by the ice grass insect next to the hanging spring earlier, so he knew that this little tick bite was looking for tender places under the mouth, what armpits, thigh roots.

When biting, the head and chelicera will burrow into the skin, and at first it is not painful or itchy, until it is full of blood and swells several times, then it can find that there is a "big mole" on the flesh.

Zheng Ji is a person who knows how to deal with leeches, and he has experience in dealing with leeches, but it is the first time he has seen grassland ticks, and experience tells him that it is best to listen to the arrangements of the locals.

"If it is frightened, it will twist and drill deeper, and if it is pulled out rashly, the head and chela will remain in the flesh, and it will be a lot of trouble."

This small insect is full of bacteria, and once the limbs remain in the flesh and cause infection, it will cause a high fever that does not go away.

"What then? Wait for it to suck up and go on its own? "How does Zheng Ji feel that this insect is going to live on himself.

"Don't panic, I have a way."

Ren Hong called Zhao Han'er: "Return to Han, take a box of Duozi 奓 (lián) in my bag!" ”

After Zhao Han'er took the things, Zheng Ji found out that this was actually the "makeup" used by the Han aristocratic women to make up:

A wooden round box, painted in black and brown, painted with red and white cloud patterns, after uncovering, there are six grooves inside, placed round and square shape lockets, respectively containing rouge, powder, silk cotton puff, copper mirror, comb grate, tweezers.

Isn't it a makeup box for later generations!

In fact, it is just a popular ordinary style in Dunhuang County, which is not comparable to the bells and whistles of the nine sons and whistles unearthed in Mawangdui, but it is enough to fool the Hu people in the Western Regions.

There is an unwritten rule in the envoy corps, if everyone has a private horse, they can bring some small things to the Western Regions to sell.

After Ren Hong thought about it, he bought ten boxes of makeup dowry in Dunhuang City, one box of 500 yuan, which was really expensive, enough to buy two big fat sheep......

He thought that after arriving in Loulan, he would fool those Loulan ladies who loved beauty, not to mention ten times or five times, and three times would always be sold.

After all, no matter what era, no matter which country or nation, women invest in makeup at no cost.

Now Ren Hong has found a dressing box, of course, not to dress Zheng Ji as a women's clothing boss.

Instead, he took the bamboo tweezers inside, asked Zheng Ji to raise his hand high, firmly clamp the position of the tick's head with the bamboo tweezers, and pull it straight out!

Ren Hong put it on the stone and said with a smile: "Ziqian, come and see, this little thing that is in harmony with your flesh and blood is still moving!" ”

Zheng Ji's face was full of disgust, and he trampled it to death, leaving only a pool of blood......

In the envoy group, there are still many people who are bitten by ice grass insects without paying attention, some come to Ren Hong to borrow bamboo tweezers, and some are not at ease and pull them out privately.

So the next day, there were three people who couldn't afford to have a high fever - all of them were new officials who had joined the mission, and their hometowns were either Chang'an or Kanto, and "unadaptation" was most obvious in them.

Even if Ren Hong helped them move the tweezers and took out the limbs of the ice grass insects that were broken in the flesh, the high fever still did not subside. Fu Jiezi and others have been walking in the Western Regions for many years, and there are also some local remedies for burning, but they are only effective for two people, and the remaining officials named "Zhao Jing" are still ill for a long time.

After different people were bitten by the ice grass insects, their symptoms were very different, and the other two people gradually got better, but Zhao Jing became weaker and weaker, to the point that he could not walk, but it was impossible for the envoys to stop, so they could only tie them to the camels and move forward.

Although the mission brought some medicine, and Fu Jiezi also arranged for special people to take care of the patients, after completing the personnel, they could only look at the destiny of heaven......

On the tenth day after leaving the Jade Gate, the sturdy man named Zhao Jing, from Chang'an Baling, stopped breathing forever.

While holding a hoe high next to an abandoned beacon and digging a grave for Zhao Jing, Zheng Ji and Ren Hong recounted that when they had chatted around the campfire earlier, Zhao had imagined that he would die in a fight against the Huns.

"After counting the arrows, he died with Hu Lu...... That's what he thought. ”

Zheng Ji stopped what he was doing and sighed: "But after all, I didn't expect that in the end, it was an inconspicuous little insect on the grass on the side of the road that died." ”

Thinking like this, Zheng Ji shuddered, and Ren Hong shouted at him, otherwise it would be cool to pull out the worm for a while, and he would be a good person, and I am afraid that the disobedience to the water and soil will be even more violent.

Ren Hong just silently dug the pit, for this matter, he only felt powerless, there are no antibiotics these years, looking around, even Artemisia annua can't find a tree, what can be done?

Fortunately, all the people buried outside the territory, Fu Jiezi promised that their families would receive a funeral money of up to 100,000 yuan from the imperial court.

After burying Zhao Jing, the people of the envoy group couldn't care about being sad for too long and continued to embark on the journey.

And the Achik Valley has finally come to an end, and in addition to the desert and Gobi that Ren Hong is already familiar with, there is also a strong wind that makes the scalp tingle.

Seven or eight winds, in the desert east of Lop Nur, blow more than 80 days a year, after leaving the valley, the envoys can suffer a lot, especially at night, the strong wind often patronizes the felt tent, first the sand is beaten, and then completely uncovered, if they are not dragged hard, the felt tent can be blown away.

What did the people still sleep, they simply withdrew their tents, and survived the night with their livestock in their arms, at the cost of itching the next day, and I don't know how many horse lice, mules, and fleas were sucking their blood, but fortunately no one fell ill again this time.

After midnight, the wind weakened, but the sky began to fall with snowflakes, and the next day, although the snow stopped, the wind began again.

It was dark for a while, Ren Hong had to step on the ground with his feet, and the person next to him had to hug his waist to help stabilize his body before he could move forward in the wind.

When the sandstorm was over, everyone's face, except for their eyes, nostrils, and mouth, was covered with gray sand, and everyone looked like freshly dug out terracotta warriors.

Although they brought a lot of water, water was more expensive than gold in the desert, and they were still washed with sand, just as the dirt on their bodies was accumulating, and the steps of the officials gradually became heavier, and they lost the brisk light they had when they first set out.

The yellow sand is broken and the moraine turns a thousand times, and the westward quicksand road is long, and this day is the same as the road, and there is no end in sight. Ren Hong did not return to the innocence in front of the Jade Gate, and it was really a dangerous and difficult thing to dig the Western Regions.

But Fu Jiezi told Ren Hong that compared with the white dragon pile that he was going to pass next, the "danger" he experienced in the past half a month was a fart......

On the fifteenth day after leaving Yumen Pass, after turning over a sand beam and turning west, Ren Hong suddenly saw an extremely spectacular scene:

He saw that countless "white dragons" were swimming in the sea of sand under the light of the morning light!

……

Climbing on the back of a "white dragon", Ren Hongcai saw the landform here.

The mound winds like a dragon, hundreds of meters long, or several kilometers long, one after the other, until the end that is invisible to the naked eye. Some dragons have their heads high, some lie on the road, as if trying to block uninvited guests, and some have their heads slightly raised, ready to take off at any time.

Looking at the foot of the foot, the mound full of white plaster mud is also covered with a thick layer of white saline-alkali soil, like scales.

This is actually the Yadan landform, but it is ten times larger than the Yadan Devil City on the east side of Sanlongsha!

At what point did Bailongdui also be part of the Lop Nur Lake, but it no longer flowed into the Shule River, and half of the water source was missing, and the eastern half of Lop Nur gradually dried up, leaving this Bailongdui with a radius of thousands of kilometers.

It is a natural barrier in the east of Lop Nur, and it is also the only way to go to Loulan, after Ren Hong walked into the white dragon pile, he found that the alkali layer under his feet was white and thick, like a rock, incomparably hard, leaving no footprints. Sun Shiwan said that the previous few times, the camel caravan passed here, and all hooves were bleeding.

It is indeed very difficult to pass through this natural danger, and it is no wonder that the old people in the envoy group are terrified at the mention of Bailongdui, and regard it as a dangerous road.

"Bear with me, this is the last hurdle of this trip, after the dragon pile, it will be regarded as entering the territory of Loulan!" When he was camping and resting that day, Fu Jiezi specially gave everyone wine to cheer them up, and under the encouragement of the old man's honor and wealth, everyone cheered up again.

However, the next day, just before the envoys entered the White Dragon Heap, the second deceased appeared!

……

PS: The second chapter is in the evening.