Chapter 40: The Great Qanats

Early morning came.

Tie Xinyuan couldn't help but shiver after he came out of the soil cave, although the soil cave was simple, the inside was still a hundred times warmer than the outside.

After watching the urine on the yellow earth turn into ice in an instant, Tie Xinyuan was bent on burrowing back into the soil cave and continuing to sleep.

Seeing the thirsty yellow sheep coming over and **** the urine that was frozen into ice, Tie Xinyuan had no choice but to spew out a long mist and start today's task.

Meng Yuanzhi was as if he had just come out of the steamer, his whole body was covered with white mist, and beads of sweat the size of beans were still hanging on the connection, and the appearance of gurgling and icy water made Tie Xinyuan feel even colder.

"In such weather, if you don't pull your muscles and bones apart, it's easy to get hurt, I called you three times, but you refused to come out."

After Meng Yuanzhi finished drinking the water, he went into the dirt cave and changed into dry clothes, complaining about Tie Xinyuan's laziness while wearing a belt.

"I know what I am, I don't need you to remind me, if you don't stop your two hundred and five subordinates, they may get sick today."

Tie Xinyuan never likes to be blamed by others, whether it is good or bad.

Meng Yuanzhi threw those two hundred and five who stood in the cold wind to show off their muscles into the earth cave to change their clothes, and then said to Tie Xinyuan: "If we can't find the horse thief today, we will go back, and we can't march and fight for too long in this weather, otherwise someone will really fall ill." ”

Tie Xinyuan smiled and pointed to the yellow sheep who was tied by the rope and said: "I actually had a whim, if we can't succeed, we will go back, it's great to stay at home and wait for the horse thief to come to the door." ”

When you go out, there is naturally nothing to eat, and it is already a luxury to have a big bowl of piping hot rice porridge that can be used to soak dry cakes.

In this ghost place of the West Sea, it seems to be a luxury to find a handful of dry wood for the fire.

The yellow sheep, who had not drunk water for two days, bleated, and kept using their hooves and sharp horns on their heads to dig the loess under their feet.

Nowadays, the yellow sheep is already the main source of food in Qingxiang City, an adult male yellow sheep weighs one hundred and forty pounds, a larger head sheep, even one hundred and eighty pounds, even a smaller ewe, weighs more than one hundred pounds, the meat is delicious, there is no smell, this is also the only mutton that Wang Rouhua can eat in the Western Regions.

This thing breeds quickly, and if you give a little grass, you will grow meat, and the first batch of yellow sheep caught last year has been breeding in the valley for a generation.

When the children graze the yellow sheep in the closed pasture, they will always find the fattest yellow sheep as their mount, and they will fly in the pasture, and they will be unstoppable.

Huang Yang is also known as the spirit of the Gobi, whether it is in the hot summer when people can be roasted, or in the harsh winter when the wind is biting and the water drips into ice, survival is never a problem for them.

"Just follow the yellow flock and you will live!"

This is a very famous proverb in the Western Regions, and this sentence is very reasonable, because only the yellow sheep knows that at certain times, certain places can find water sources, or legendary oases.

Travelers who are lost on the Gobi Desert see the yellow sheep as long as they see the hope of living.

After breakfast, Meng Yuanzhi led the thirsty yellow sheep down the ditch, and walked less than half a mile, and the yellow sheep in the hands of the soldiers went crazy to top the loess mound beside him.

Tie Xinyuan stood on the top and was stunned for a moment, and then he found that the grass in this soil ditch basically grew on the earth cliff where Huang Yang took his horns to the top.

This is very weird, this side of the long grass is not the shady side of the soil ditch that is somewhat damp.

At Tie Xinyuan's signal, the warrior leading the sheep loosened the rope in his hand and let the yellow sheep bleat in the ditch.

At first, it was just a yellow sheep on the top, digging, and after a while, seven or eight yellow sheep began to attack the earth cliff fiercely.

Meng Yuanzhi gave an order, and all the soldiers began to dig the earth cliff with shovels, and after a while, they dug a big hole.

A fierce yellow sheep jumped up high, put its head on the earth cliff heavily, only to hear a boom, the yellow sheep immediately burrowed into the ground.

A swarthy hole appeared in front of them, and the sound of running water and the happy cry of the yellow sheep came from the cave.

Before everyone could enter the earth cave, those yellow sheep who were extremely thirsty rushed into the earth cave one after another, and the hole became bigger and bigger.

The soldiers used shovels to expand the hole outward, and the sunlight shone into the hole, revealing the scene inside.

Even Tie Xinyuan, who hurriedly ran down, couldn't help but secretly feel broken, the surface of the West Sea was scarred, who would have thought that there was such a cave underground.

When Tie Xinyuan and Meng Yuan walked straight into the qanaq, a moist breath came to their faces.

It's not only humid, it's also warm.

The flow of water also brings fresh air in from afar, and then expels the foul air through the outlet, and the whole qanats are wonderfully like a work of art.

Tie Xinyuan is no stranger to karez, before coming to the Great Song Dynasty, he had drunk karez well water for nearly three years.

The water here is sweet and pure, far from being comparable to the water in the river.

Qanats is a very old horizontal water collection structure for the development and utilization of groundwater, which is suitable for the foothills and alluvial fan margins, and is mainly used for intercepting underground diving for farmland irrigation and residents.

In spring and summer, a large amount of snow and rain flows down the valley and dives under the Gobi Desert. Taking advantage of the slope of the mountain, people cleverly created qanats to divert underground currents to irrigate farmland. The qanats do not evaporate a lot of water due to heat and strong winds, so the flow is stable, ensuring self-flowing irrigation.

The qanats that Tie Xinyuan saw before were very clean, with bright lights and delicate chairs for people to rest.

But the qanats here are dark and terrifying.

Judging by the bones scattered in the corners of the wide pools of water in the canal, it is possible that the canal was completed by the slaves with their lives.

It had been heard that the melting snow was so cold that slaves had to kneel in the icy water to dig qanats, and no one could live to be more than thirty years old.

And the bones here are mostly short, they should be minors doing this work, and I don't know if they will live past the age of fifteen.

A team of scouts searched along the qanats with torches to the bottom of the stream, and Tie Xinyuan sat on the edge of the qanats and said straight to Meng Yuan: "Wrong calculation, the number of horse thieves here is far more than we expected.

The number of people marked on the "Horse Thief Map" should be correct, there will be at least four or five thousand horse thieves here, and if the number is small, I am sorry for this karez that does not know how many lives have been spent. ”

Meng Yuan took a sip of water and said, "What the hell is here?" Is it worth the effort of that old horse thief? ”

Tie Xinyuan smiled bitterly: "We don't understand the mind of the horse thief. ”

Meng Yuan pouted and said, "We are also horse thieves."

"When we're as old as a cloud, we'll probably be able to figure out why he built a wasteful qanats here."

"How can it be a waste? With such a qana, it is not a problem to feed tens of thousands of people. ”

Tie Xinyuan sneered and said: "Look at the topography here, the loess layer and the sand layer are the most prone to leakage.

I dare to say that the water source at the source of this canal must be very abundant, and only in this way will it pass through dozens of miles of loess layer, and the sand layer will still maintain sufficient water here.

Moreover, the land of the West Sea is barren and unsuitable for growing crops, which means that the water in this canal is only for the horse thieves to drink.

This is a fatal waste for the Western Regions, a place where water is desperately scarce. ”

Meng Yuanzhi sighed: "It's really as you said, I don't know what the old horse thief thinks." ”

Tie Xinyuan snorted coldly and said, "The human life here is too cheap, so he can do what he wants without thinking about the cost."

All he needed was a little food, and just now, I saw the bones, and there were knife marks on them, and you should know what was going on! ”

While the two were talking, the fire shook in the depths of the qanats, and the scout ran from a distance panting, and without waiting for the breath to even, he said, "At the end of the qanats is a city!" ”

Tie Xinyuan's hand shook, and the water in the cup spilled out, Chengchi? It was so much that he had not expected.

He decided to see for himself.

Walking less than ten miles with Meng Yuanzhi, he saw a city built on the mountain, this city has not been built so far, many places are littered with stones, and the tall city wall is only half built.

There are countless caves on the mountain rock directly opposite, and there is a most primitive beauty carved into the cliff like a beehive.

Meng Yuanzhi only glanced at it and said to Tie Xinyuan: "There are a lot of people here, and our number is too small to occupy here. ”

Tie Xinyuan nodded and said, "This is just a relatively secret lair of horse thieves, and it is useless except for self-preservation. Just destroy it. ”

"There are not enough oil bombs and gunpowder......

"It's easy to destroy this city, as long as we destroy the qanats, there is still a large wasteland on the left side of the West Sea, as long as we bring the water from the qanats there, it will soon become an oasis."

"But the West Sea ......"

"Give up, give up completely, this place is not suitable for people to live in at all!"

"That's fine, no one can survive here in the West Sea without water, forcing those horse thieves to come out of the West Sea to fight us is much stronger than fighting here, I'm worried that the date of your departure is too close......"

Tie Xinyuan sneered: "After destroying the water source, they are even more summoned than me, only Lao Tzu has always driven people crazy in this world, and no one can threaten me." ”

Meng Yuanzhi glanced at Tie Xinyuan deeply and said, "I now begin to understand why a cloud would say that after he is retributed, it will be your turn to be retributed, the two of you are too similar."

It's just that one is a crazy madman, and the other is a sane madman. (To be continued.) )