It was indeed a woman sent by the Mei family.

According to Wu Rui, this old Yue girl is Mei Hong's mother and Wu Rui's sister, but she has been married for more than 20 years and has long abandoned her clan and called herself "Mei Wu".

This is the mother, for the sake of her son, knowing that it might be a trap, she still resolutely went to the meeting.

The negotiation took place on the crimson Danxia stone, and although he knew that it was not polite, sitting five steps apart, Heifu couldn't help but look at Mei Wu's face.

It's not because she's pretty, but because the embroidery on her face is frighteningly dense: at first glance it looks like a fishing net, but when you look closely, you find that it actually resembles a big butterfly, with the wing of the nose as the midline, and the ink lines that can never be erased extend towards the cheeks......

"This is the custom of the Yangyue people, my sister married over, so she naturally has to follow the customs."

Wu Rui told Heifu that the Yue people cut their hair and tattooed their bodies to resemble dragons and snakes, and they believed that tattoos were instructions from their ancestors to avoid disasters and prolong life. In Yangyue, men had to learn to hunt and hunt for heads before they could get tattoos, while girls had to get tattoos before they could learn to weave, which meant that they were adults and could marry.

"First, dip a bamboo skewer in the black ash at the bottom of the kettle, draw a pattern around the eyebrows, the bridge of the nose, the cheeks and the mouth, and then ask someone to hold a bamboo chumb in one hand and a pat needle in the other hand to make a mark along the lines. After three or five days, the wound will be scabbed off, and there will be blue-blue marks on the skin and flesh, which can never be scrubbed off. ”

Just listening to it hurts, so there are not a few people who are infected and die, but the Yue people are still tireless in this custom. The more times the surface is tattooed, the darker the color, and the denser the pattern, the more outstanding the status.

Heifu felt that he was going to have a phobia of intensification if he looked at it again, so he looked away.

Dongmen Leopard stood next to Heifu, this guy gave birth to five daughters in a row, patriarchal in his bones, and sneered at the Yue girl: "You, a woman who married outside, can make decisions for the elders of the Mei family?" ”

He was still shouting that "he sent a woman to insult the prince" and wanted to blow them away.

"The elder of the Mei clan was born to me, and I am still the witch of the clan."

Mei Wu was neither humble nor arrogant, she nodded: "I can, but where is my son?" ”

Heifu motioned for Dongmen Leopard to retreat first, and responded: "He is fine now, but if Mei refuses to surrender......

Mei Wu looked like a female tiger who had lost her cubs, she glanced left and right, looking for Mei Kai's figure: "I want to know that he is still alive before I can talk to you." ”

Heifu clapped his hands, and Li Cang immediately put Mei Kai who was tied behind his back, Mei Wu immediately stood up, walked over to check, held his face, and was distressed, seeing that his son was not injured, he breathed a sigh of relief, but gave him a punch!

"You are the king, not the samurai, in case of danger, you should immediately leave the old and weak women and children, and leave with the young man, instead of leaving the broken queen!"

Mei Li lowered her head in shame, completely lost the fearlessness when she was first captured that day, and under the reprimand of her mother, she was obedient like a deer.

Heifu looked at this scene and glanced at Wu Rui: "I heard Li Cang say that the elders of the Mei clan originally wanted to kill the first batch of fugitives who came to defect, but Mei Wu tried to accept them to make up for the loss of personnel. In my opinion, your sister is the real leader of the Mei family, right? ”

"All I know is that she's a witch."

Wu Rui was a little sweaty, saying that he had no contact with Mei's in the past few years, and that he was a liar.

At this moment, Heifu only needs to move his fingers, and his subordinates can take down the Mei family mother and son together, and the entire Mei family remnants of thousands of people will lose their leader.

But Heifu didn't, he smiled and said: "Lu Jia told me that the army cannot stand without faith, and I also hope that I can dedicate to His Majesty's heart-attacking strategy for me to make a good start to keep my promises." ”

At this time, after Mei Wu taught his son a lesson, he also returned to Heifu and bowed to him, probably to thank Mei Li for not killing him.

"You've won, what more do you want?"

"What I want is simple."

Heifu stood up, spread his hands, and looked at this strange and wild land, completely with the face of a movie villain:

"Offer the land and the water! For generations, surrender to Qin! ”

……

"Pavilion Chief, just let her go?"

In the evening, the figure of the Yue people disappeared into the forest, but the Dongmen leopard was a little unhappy, he thought there would be a big battle, and he prepared for a long time, but it ended with negotiations, which was really boring.

Just now, Heifu took Wu Rui as a guarantor, and the two sides swore an oath to kill chickens. According to the agreement, Heifu let Mei Wu go, and after she returned, she needed to restrain the tribe, show surrender to Qin, and hand over the accepted fugitives for Heifu to be executed, and could no longer disturb pedestrians and vehicles along the way, and even had to cut down trees to ensure the safety of the Qin army's Beijiang Road.

And Mei Kai, who is still shouting "dissatisfied", will be temporarily detained in the Black Husband Army as a hostage.

At the same time, Heifu promised that he would ask Qin Shi Huang of Xianyang to make Mei Li an official "monarch", and the treatment would be the same as that of Rong Di of Bajun and Beidi, with a level similar to that of a county order, which could be inherited from generation to generation, and the imperial court would not interfere too much, let alone kill Mei at every turn like Jia He.

Dongmen Leopard is a little incomprehensible, in his opinion, the last time to cut Yue, the west road, the middle road was defeated, because the commander is not good, now that the black man is here, as long as the commander points out, he will lead the soldiers to rush all the way over, and he can sweep Lingnan.

But now, he has obviously defeated Mei's family, but instead of chasing and fighting, he has let go of a horse.

Heifu stood on the Danxia Giant Rock, shook his head and said, "Ah Leopard, this war cannot be solved by force alone. ”

"From the very beginning, the Southern Expedition was not only fought by the military, but also by the government."

And the essence of politics is two words.

"Compromise!"

Politics means compromise, and in politics we need to choose the least bad option, because it is the viable solution, and we can't get a better outcome.

Historically, it is no accident that the fetters system that lasted for 2,000 years in the south was not accidental, why did every dynasty choose a similar method in the ethnic minority gathering area? Are they so big in heart that they can tolerate such a nation within a nation?

Without him, if you don't want to, you can't. Even at the height of the Great Unification Dynasty, its power was limited, and the complete conquest of the frontier areas would have a great human and financial cost. Constrained by traffic, constrained by population, until there are enough immigrants in the Central Plains to fill these corners, restraint is the best way—at least not a worse way—to maintain Tusi's obedience to the imperial court, as long as you don't rebel openly.

This is the choice of history, and it is also the choice of Heifu, only with the passage of time, the southward migration of immigrants, the change of the proportion of regional population, and finally the balance is broken, can it be possible to change the land and return to the stream.

"Compared with this wilderness that cannot be defended even if it is captured, it is the right thing to let the three armies retake Panyu, gain a foothold in the city, let the road not be disturbed, and the Lingnan and Lingbei can be unhindered, so that the soldiers can farm with peace of mind and have no worries about food and clothing!"

Heifu knew very well that what he could do was by no means to control every inch of land and every drop of water in Lingnan at once.

All he can do is to print four big characters on this vast land, just like the tattoos on the face of the Yue Nu, made of blood and ink, which will never fade.

"Since ancient times!"

……

After solving Mei's problem, Heifu built a small town in the local area, named "Shaoguan", leaving Wu Chen and 1,000 people to garrison.

Then, he commanded the army, took Mei Kai as a hostage, and marched along the reopened Bakgang Road to Hengpu Pass.

In the middle of June of the 35th year of Qin Shi Huang, standing on the steep and rugged path of Tailing (Da Yuling), Heifu overlooked Hengpu Pass and couldn't help but sigh:

"When I came here 10 years ago, it was still called a Sharp Gate, and only one door was closed."

Now, the expanded and strengthened Hengpu Pass has become the most important hub for entering and exiting Lingnan.

"Looking at this pass from the north of the mountain and the south of the mountain, it is really a different scenery."

From north to south, what you see is a formidable wilderness.

Looking north from the south, what you see is civilization, your hometown, and the hope of getting out of this green hell.

This is the true feeling of every Qin soldier.

When they came to Hengpu Gate along the winding mountain road, Lixian was already waiting here.

The first thing Heifu did was to paced to the south-facing wall and stroked the masonry on it.

"The wall was torn down and rebuilt?"

"Exactly, it was demolished five years ago." Liham responded.

Hefu nodded, not asking again, but he clearly remembered what was written on the wall when he first arrived ten years ago!

It is written in dark red blood in the insect and bird script of the Chu State, with a total of eight characters.

"Although Chu has three households, the death of Qin will be Chu!"

It's like an unwilling curse.

It's like a mysterious prophecy.

At that time, everyone in the Southern Expedition was worried about the fleeing Chu people, and worried about the Shangganjun who ran to the Chu court in Nanyue, thinking that they would make a comeback

But now, who remembers them?

"I'm afraid that Ji Sun's worries are not in the moment, but within the Xiao Wall."

Heifu sighed, the real threat is never outside the wall, but inside the wall, I heard that in recent years, with the beginning of the southern expedition, as the contradiction intensifies, in the land of Sanchu, there are more and more people who secretly muttering this sentence.

However, after careful calculation, Heifu found that most of his subordinates were "Chu people" in a broad sense.

Needless to say, the old department of Nanjun, which is a descendant, belongs to Western Chu, although it has been controlled by the law for several generations, and they all regard themselves as Qin people, but they can't change it if they want to.

His staff, Xiao He, Cao Shen and others from Pei County, are also Western Chu, which is also the reason why Xiang Yu called himself the "Overlord of Western Chu" after the founding of Pengcheng and Surabaya in history.

Yu Zhang, who was regarded as the "backyard" by Heifu, and the Changsha soldiers who were happy and convinced of him after the treatment of the disease and the epidemic, belonged to Nanchu.

The 30,000 people in the Chenxian county camp recovered by relying on a human head and a bun, as well as the newly attached Lu Jia, are mostly from Shouchun, Huainan, and belong to Eastern Chu.

The dignified Qin Changnanhou, the 100,000 soldiers and civilians directly controlled in his hands, were mainly from Sanchu.

"A group of people from Sanchu, but they are spilling their blood for Daqin, opening up the territory, put it ten or twenty years ago, no one dares to think about it, right? And their commander, coincidentally or not, was me, who contributed a lot to the destruction of the Chu State. ”

He once seized Xiang Yan's handsome banner, and also led people to enter the Chu capital Shouchun first, plundered the wealth of the king of Chu, and watched the princess of Chu fall to her death, breaking her head and bleeding.

No one knows better than him how much blood has been shed and how many people have died in this world to complete the unification.

History really likes to joke, and is most enthusiastic about reenacting what has just happened over and over again, and never gets tired of it.

When he rode into Hengpu Pass, his ears were filled with cheers with a Sanchu accent, and Heifu couldn't help laughing at himself in his heart:

"If I say, I still want to use this group of people from Sanchu as wings to help protect this dangerous world, re-knead the broken rivers and mountains, and let the people of the Seven Kingdoms who have separated from Germany eliminate hatred, dare not say that they love each other, at least they can pinch their noses and make do with their ......"

"Will anyone believe this!?"