"The beacon fire shines on Xijing, and my heart is uneven. Yazhang resigned from the phoenix, and rode around the dragon city. The snow is dark and the flag is painted, and the wind is mixed with the sound of drums. Rather be a centurion than a scholar. ”

The scholars of the five dynasties of the Sui and Tang dynasties were proud to serve the country in the army, and they did not have the later Song Dynasty to emphasize literature and light martial arts, and even to the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Confucian scholars "did not listen to the things outside the window, and only read the sages and sages". That's why there is a pride of "why don't men take Wu hooks and collect Guanshan Fifty Prefectures".

This kind of enthusiasm for serving the country is something that the scholars of the Ming and Qing dynasties will never experience.

There were snowflakes in the sky, and the cavalry of 1,600 people composed of the 600 student army selected by Jinyang Academy and the Jinyang Forbidden Army braved the heavy snow to escort the convoy composed of hundreds of carts to transport grain and grass, leaving Jinyang, passing through Yunzhou and Hetao, and heading to Shuofang Lingzhou.

The carriage braved the wind and snow on the official road, carrying mud. After passing the Yanmen Pass, the temperature was even colder, the north wind was howling, and this huge convoy traveled through a snowy field in the north of Yanbei, stretching out for more than ten miles before and after. Fortunately, the government will set up special post stations every fifty miles on this official road, and this team transporting grain and grass saves a lot of time to set up camp every day.

In the afternoon, the convoy arrived at San'in Fort.

This place was originally just a post station, and it was only after Jinyang began to implement Tuntian in Yunzhou that a Tuntian fort city was built. The Hongtao Mountains in the northwest of the fort are a huge fault zone, with steep cliffs like a huge wall across the northwest of the Yunzhou Basin.

Li Ji was wrapped in a thick sheepskin coat and wore a sheepskin hat on his head, and rode his horse into the post station. It was freezing cold, and the surface of the fur hat and towel was already covered with white frost.

The post house has already prepared plenty of hot water and steaming meals, but the taste of the soup cooked in the big pot is really difficult to compliment.

Zhou Tingyu waited until the soldiers were basically settled, then returned to the room, sat down at the table and ate the cooking cakes, and said, "I will have to walk more than eighty miles to get to the place tomorrow." ”

Li Ji said with a smile: "Stay up, riding a horse every day, my waist and legs are sore, and sometimes I haven't walked happily." ”

Yang Chongliang said: "When it comes to horseback riding, it is indeed no better than those shepherds on the grassland, those guys drink too much, and they staggered on horseback, but they don't fall off." ”

Zhou Tingyu laughed: "Those goods can't fight, one person can beat ten of them, except for the horns, the fist and foot kung fu are too far behind." They were not trained in horsemanship, and when they arrived on the battlefield, they scattered their stalls. ”

A few guys from Shatuo were laughing at the cavalry on the grassland without any scruples, and they didn't have the consciousness that their parents or ancestors had just entered Jinyang from the grassland and settled down. The Jin army in Hedong was able to rise because the cavalry was indeed strong, and from Li Keyong to Li Cunmiao's father and son, they finally swept the north with the advantage of cavalry.

Since Li Qi took charge of Jinyang, he has indeed attached the most importance to the construction of the cavalry, except for the Tuntian army, almost all the standing armies in various places have been equipped with cavalry. The number of cavalry now exceeds 80,000, more than double the number of cavalry in the heyday of Zhuangzong. More importantly, these cavalry are all armored cavalry, although the number of armored cavalry equipped with horse armor is only more than 15,000 people, but ordinary cavalry is also equipped with chain mail, which is a place that the cavalry on the grassland cannot compare with at all.

Even the elite cavalry of the Khitans, only the officers were armed with iron armor.

The cavalry of the Northern Army was stronger than the steppe cavalry in terms of equipment and training.

The increase in steel production and production technology, coupled with the various machinery and equipment in the hydraulic workshop, greatly improved the production efficiency of the Ordnance Supervisor. The cost of producing weapons and armor was greatly reduced, so that the Northern Army had the ability to even begin to equip the Tuntian Army with armor.

It's just that the Tuntian army is mostly equipped with crossbows due to the small training time every year, and in the cavalry army, it seems that only the Jinyang Forbidden Army is equipped with riding crossbows, and most of them are still mainly riding bows. The crossbow has a strong armor-piercing ability, but it cannot be projectile, and its range is inferior to that of a war bow, and the most lethal thing is that the rate of fire is several times worse.

If it weren't for the improvement of technology and production efficiency and the reduction of costs, the equipment of these tens of thousands of cavalry alone would have allowed the imperial court to exhaust the treasury and not necessarily be fully equipped. The riding bow made by the Jinyang Ordnance Supervision is made of spring steel as the bow tire, and the corner tendons are still adhered to the outside to enhance the elasticity, and the energy storage is not necessarily as good as the good bow in the past, but it is better to be able to make it in batches, and the other is that it is durable, so as not to break the bow tire.

The other is the arrow, the armor-piercing cone is so expensive that it is deadly, and the manufacturing cost of a feather arrow made of an armor-piercing cone as an arrow is as high as 100 wen. Now, the production of arrow shafts and arrows is made in batches using machinery, and the cost has been reduced to less than ten yuan, and this armor-piercing cone has become the standard arrowhead.

"I've heard that it seems that there will be a big war next year, can we go to war then?" Yang Chongliang suddenly said with some anticipation.

Li Ji pouted: "It's beautiful to think about, it's just that if you really fight, we will come out of Jinyang Academy, and when the time comes, we will all be thrown into the baggage team to watch the carriage, it used to be like this." ”

"Won't let us go to war!" Zhou Tingyu sighed.

"We are weak now, we must have the consciousness of the weak, Li Sifeng's horse thief leader will not look down on us at all, and it is useless to jump." Li Ji poured cold water on everyone. This time, they were assigned to the Jining Army to carry out winter adaptation training in the northern grasslands, and next year they will not be allowed to go to the battlefield.

After the convoy passed Yunzhou, the scenery in the wild became more and more desolate, and only a white expanse was left between the heaven and the earth. However, along the Yuhe Valley, every dozen miles, there is a tunbao, which is not sparsely populated.

The convoy transporting grain and grass only went to Tongyuan City, which was regarded as the transit point of grain and grass in the north, followed by Jining City. After the implementation of military cantonment in the north, most of the cantonment areas have been able to become self-sufficient in grain and grass and supply military supplies, and the role of these grain and grass transit stations is to trade with the tribes on the grassland.

Without the fetters of the transport convoy, the speed of the march of this cavalry team suddenly increased a lot, and it only took one day to gallop from Tongyuan City to Jining City.

Jining is a big city in the northern grassland, although the city wall is still mostly made of loess, but every fifty steps are built with concrete towers, even heavy trebuchets have no way to take such a solid tower. It is the presence of these watchtowers that makes this city look impenetrable at all, giving people a sense of security, and becoming an important barrier on the Northland grassland.

The left wing water and the right wing water, plus the surrounding areas of Baishuiluo, relying on Jining City, Baishui City and Chunji City, there are more than 30 Tuntian forts, with a total of more than 10,000 Tuntian military households, becoming one of the most important Tuntian areas in the Beidi grassland. Relying on these Tuntian Forts, the power of the Tang State has firmly taken root here......