The steppe tribes of the north are like weeds that cannot be burned tenaciously survive, when the Xiongnu were strong, they were plundered and exploited by the Huns, and then Xianbei, and in the Sui and Tang dynasties, they were replaced by Turks. Whenever these rising powerful tribes on the steppe are short of money and food, they will look for these weak tribes to rob them......

However, these historically powerful steppe tribes have disappeared, but these weak nomadic tribes remain. It is difficult to understand how these nomadic tribes survived in such a cruel and harsh environment.

The ancients had difficulty traveling, and Li Qi realized it deeply when he was on the road with the caravan.

From Jinyang to Xinzhou, 200 miles of road, it took three days.

In this way, his more than 1,000 subordinates are pro-army, and the grain and grass consumed on this trip alone is not a small number.

After passing the Chiling Pass, it can be regarded as entering the boundary of Xinzhou.

"A barrage dam is going to be built here, and with the reservoir, irrigation in the south of Xinzhou will be greatly guaranteed. Shiling Pass and the north of Shiling Pass all the way to the Muma River area, all of which are zoned as tun fields. Standing on the bank of the Muma River, Li Qi pointed to the mouth of the White Horse Valley in the distance to the west and said to Lu Yan, the young eunuch of the Dushui Prison.

He was accompanied by some officials from Jinyang Prison on his northern tour, preparing to arrange the opening of new tuntian land along the way.

At this time, the climate was quite humid, and the groundwater was abundant, and the amount of water in the Muma River, which was almost dry in later generations, was not small.

The scenery of the Xindai Basin is good, and after the team passes the Yanmen Pass, the scenery in front of them is obviously much more desolate than that of Yanmen. Although the fields have been covered with a layer of green, the northern land still looks yellowish in the spring. The spring breeze does not pass the Yumen Pass, and this is also quite suitable for use in the Yanmen Pass.

The Datong Basin is very flat, and an ancient chariot and horse trade road stretches to the city of Yunzhou on the desolate grassland.

When the convoy arrived in Yunzhou, Li Qi was very disappointed when he saw the city, which was far from the fortified city he understood, about the same size as the county town in the interior, and most of the city walls were rammed with loess, and there were no bricks outside. There are also layers of reeds between the rammed earth walls, which makes people feel very insecure.

Zhenwu Jun Jiedu envoy An Jinquan and Yunzhou Assassin Shi Shayan and other generals led a group of generals to welcome Li Qi and his party into the city, and when they passed the low city gate on horseback, Li Qi felt that the entire Yunzhou City needed to be renovated.

In another time and space, after Shi Jingtang ceded the sixteen states of Youyun, Yunzhou Jiedu made Sha Yan martyred in the Khitan, and finally returned to a large official in the Liao State. However, Wu Luan, the general judge of Yunzhou, led the soldiers and civilians in the city to defend Yunzhou, leaving a legend of patriotism and loyalty to the enemy in Datong in later generations.

The caravan was repaired in Yunzhou for three days, and Li Qi took the people of the capital water supervisor to inspect the surroundings of Yunzhou.

He planned to build a barrage dam and a weaving workshop on the Rumudshui (Yuhe) in the north of Yunzhou. Now there is no other energy source to power it, and the machine workshop can basically be built on the riverside. It took a lot of stonemasonry to build the dam, and because of the need to install water turbines, many elaborate designs had to be built inside the culvert.

There will definitely be no shortage of coal in Yunzhou City, and the fire mountain more than ten miles southwest of the city is the famous super-large coal mine in later generations. However, the iron ore in Yunzhou is a small and medium-sized deposit, with low grade, which is not suitable for large-scale development of the iron and steel industry. But in this era, it can be barely used.

Li Jiqi estimated that if a three-zhang barrage dam is built, it will be able to store more than 100,000 cubic meters of water, which is almost enough to support the irrigation of tens of thousands of hectares of farmland around Yunzhou. In the area of Xiangyunzhou, there are several suitable sites for damming in the upper reaches of the Sanggan River.

The technology of building dams in ancient China has been very perfect, except for the lack of reinforced concrete, the structure and design are similar to those of modern times, and the dam body and culvert materials are mainly stone. There are lime mines outside Yunzhou, and the Baishan area is the main limestone and gypsum mining area.

In addition, the construction of dams and culverts also requires a large amount of stone, and Li Jiqi wants to use blasting to quarry, but unfortunately the amount of gunpowder in his hand is really limited. Gunpowder was already widely used in the Tang Dynasty and occasionally in the military. However, due to the small power, it is not widely used.

This is mainly limited by the yield and purity of the soil nitrate.

There are some nitrate mines in Monti in the north, but the reserves are not large. China's major nitrate deposits are mainly concentrated in the southeastern margin of the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, and its reserves rank first in the world. It is a pity that Huaguo did not catch up with the most valuable era of saltpeter, and by the time these nitrate mines were discovered and mined, they could only be used for fertilizer production.

The caravan made some transactions in Yunzhou, and when it came out of Yunzhou, there were more vehicles transporting goods, more than sixty horse-drawn carriages.

Li Qi planned to build a new border city north of Yunzhou as the main defense facility north of Yunzhou.

This plan was fully supported by An Jinquan and Sha Yanzhu, and the two agreed that after choosing a location to build the city, they would be responsible for recruiting people. After all, now that Yunzhou is at the forefront of the northern defense, the Khitan cavalry will often break into the vicinity of Yunzhou to plunder, which is annoying.

When Li Qi left Yunzhou, he took Wu Luan with him, preparing to take the title of Yunzhou Defense Envoy, and he would be responsible for the construction of the new city and serve as the commander of the garrison army in Xinguancheng.

The convoy continued north along the Imperial River, an ancient trade route that stretched through the mountains on both sides of the Imperial River to the depths of the grasslands. The Jin army built a beacon every ten miles on the top of the hill along this official road as a warning. Twelve soldiers were stationed in each beacon, including a commander in armor.

The shape of the peak is a square bunker, and its main function is to light wolf smoke to warn the rear when attacked. The military system of the Jin army followed the Tang system, and each ordinary Fengsui was armed with crossbows, four bows and eight bows, and five pikemen and seven sword and axe men among the twelve soldiers. Each hand has forty arrows for the crossbow and sixty arrows for the bow.

In addition, there was a larger fort, in which a team of fifty soldiers was stationed, and there was a capital leader who led the team, which was the lowest level of officers in the Jin army. Such forts have a certain offensive capability, so they are also responsible for border patrols and expelling herders who cross the border.

As long as the caravan passes through these peaks, the soldiers will go out of the fort and stand on the side of the road to greet them, Li Qi understands very well that these soldiers are mainly for watching the excitement, after all, the honor guard of the Son of Heaven is not easy for ordinary people to see.