"The minister... The envoy of the king of Mahatul Bactria, who was ordered by King Diodoptus II, came to the state of Chu in order to make friends with the state of Chu. In the known world, the Mahatula was the ruler of the world, from the westernmost Dakhlacules stone pillars to the easternmost India and Sogdiana, all under the rule of Mahatula......"

Yingdu is in the court, and Dazai Jin, who is in charge of diplomacy, reads the letter that Wu Ji submits. Strangely enough, the letter was written in both Greek and in unilanguage, and Hu Tansuozhi did not appear in the court with the envoys of the Bactrian kingdom, but was accompanied by a tall Caucasian man, who was said to be his attendant, named Nggo Vala.

"Tell the king, this is a Qi word?" Jin Yi said after reading the letter, and he couldn't help but look at it a few more times.

"Homogeneous?" Zhengchaoli is no longer the old ministers before, but the new ministers elected by the counties, these do not have as many rules as the old man, and they come up one by one to see the letter in Jin Yi's hand. It was a thick diplomatic letter written in Egyptian papyrus, with a Greek signature on it, and no familiar seal.

As an envoy, Wu Ji heard that the courtiers were reading the letter he wrote, and he suddenly said loudly: "The leaves are pale, and the white dew is frost. The so-called Iraqi people are ...... on the water side"

"Ahh Yidi, who was thousands of miles away, was able to recite Chinese poems, and the courtiers were amazed.

"My eldest father was once a courtier of the King of Qi...... "It is not taboo that he can only write Qi characters, but he can't speak Qi language, he can't understand Yayan, and he doesn't know Chu language, he can only write Qi characters to communicate." Looking for the elixir of immortality for the King of Qi, so he went west to the ruins of Kunlun, which was more than 80 years ago. ”

"The king, it should be the king of Qi Xuan." Confession.

A courtier, perhaps a monk, who had gone west in search of an elixir of immortality for King Qi Xuan, arrived in Bactria more than eighty years ago, met the Macedonian army that had conquered the area, and then became the king's envoy after more than eighty years......

Xiong Jing sketched such a story in his mind, and he asked, "The king of your country asked you to go to the Chu country, why did you do it?" ”

It is not taboo that you can't understand Chu language, you can only understand Qi characters. Jin Yi had no choice but to write Xiong Jing's words in unison. This kind of communication is laborious, but it can always be spoken.

"The king was willing to exchange horses for armor, swords, silk, and paper from the state of Chu." Needless to write.

"Paper?" Xiong Jing wondered how he had fallen on the paper.

"Yes, King. Because of the hindrance of the Sakha nomadic barbarians, we had to rely on the Sogdiana merchants to buy and sell. "The price of iron and paper in Chu is very low. There was also silk, but silk alone was not enough to tempt Governor Eutydemus, the real key was iron, a plentiful, cheap weapon that was better than Seris's iron.

"So how do the two countries buy and sell?" Xiong Jing asked again.

"Please send a caravan, the king." Wu Ji wrote: "As long as the king sends a caravan, he will get enough stallions and brimstone." ”

Needless to say, Hu Tansuo's business is clear, Chu State does not have much interest in jade, they need horses, they need sulfur.

"My lord, since I have traded with Hu Tansuo, I will no longer be a merchant to the river." Some of the ministers objected.

"The king, send the merchant Jia out of the fortress, only from the clouds and Yanmen." Chen Buyi told him that there are many businessmen in Chen County, and he has heard of some business. "However, there are Xiongnu and Yu branches outside the Sai, and they are full of armor when they go, and they are all good horses when they return, so they can't do it."

"The king, the minister also thinks it is impossible." Cai Wendao: "Since the people have made a contract, I should not regret it, and my great Chu Haizhou has been completed, why do I need to travel thousands of miles to the river to trade with them." ”

Cai Wenzhi's words said that the ministers nodded again and again. It only takes a few days from Zhufang to Yangma Island, and there is still a lot of time to stay in the middle of the Bohai Sea, and it is only two months. With such efficient transportation, all counties and towns want to build a sea boat to sell special products from the north and south. Sending a caravan to the river thousands of miles away, going for a year, returning for a year, and traveling by land is really not much interesting.

"There are no merchants in the Chu State to go out of the country." Xiong Jing also didn't want to go out of the river to trade, "but you can send envoys." ”

The ministers of the "Great King...... were moved and sent envoys to the river, which was comparable to the feat of Mu Tianzi's westward journey.

"The minister hopes to stay in Chu and practice the Chu language until Hu Tansuo returns to Chu, and then see if he needs to return to Bactria according to the king's orders." Seeing that Xiong Jing rejected his offer to send a businessman, he had no choice but to submit a request for residence.

"Yes." Xiong Jing, who didn't know what to do, didn't think about it, so he agreed. When he met a half-Chinese from the Greek world, he naturally had to ask about the situation on the other side of the mountain.

The Bactrian envoy quickly retired with his retinue, and was busy for the day, with several matters to discuss. The first is the Triple Alliance, the second is the flight of the poor, and the second is the smuggling of salt and iron.

The Three Kingdoms Alliance Chu has basically reached a consensus in the country, but the details of the alliance book still need to be discussed repeatedly, in addition to the etiquette of who is in charge of the alliance, who will shed blood first, who is in front and who is behind, and the more important thing is when they can join forces to attack Qin.

In view of the imminent alliance of the Three Kingdoms, Xiang Yan, Cheng Jie, Dou Yu Pheasant and others hope to bring the matter of recovering the old Ying to Richeng. Of course, it was not to take the initiative to attack the Qin State, but at the request of the Zhao State, to recover the old Ying by encircling Wei to save Zhao, and the time should be five years later.

Although the Qin State accounted for half of the world, it did not mean that it could fight on a large scale for ten consecutive years. Combined with the information transmitted by Xiong Qi, the commander of Changping, the Operations Division believed that under normal circumstances, the Qin army could only support the war for three years, and after three years, it had to take a breather before it could fight again. The reason for this was judged by the Operations Division to be a shortage of grain.

Xiong Jing doesn't see it that way. According to Xiong Qi's intelligence, he found that the Qin State was not short of food, and referring to Lian Po's opinion, he believed that after three consecutive years of fighting, the number of Qin soldiers and soldiers was extremely tired, the number of people who died from the epidemic had greatly increased, and the morale was also very unstable. One of the important reasons why the Battle of Handan can drag on for three years is that the Qin army that finished the Battle of Changping was very tired, and it was the biggest mistake of the Qin State to take Zhao State without taking advantage of the high morale, and it was also the ultimate reason why Zhao State was able to wait for Chu Wei reinforcements.

The Qin State fought large-scale operations for three years, rested for one to two years and then three years for large-scale operations, and then rested for one to two years and then three years of large-scale operations, which is likely to become the rhythm of Qin's future attacks.

According to this rhythm, Zhao must be like Chu, withstanding Qin's attack for three years in order to get a respite, and it is not known whether Qin will attack Zhao again after respite, but any of the three kingdoms of Chu, Qi and Zhao must have such psychological preparations.

If the Qin State really followed such a rhythm, then it would be undesirable for the Chu State to recover the old Ying after five years. Five years later, the Qin army happened to be resting and preparing for a new round of attacks. Either in the fourth year of three years, taking advantage of the exhaustion of the Qin army, to recover the old Ying, or in the ninth year of eight years, after the end of another large-scale offensive of the Qin army, the old Ying.

"The king thinks that Zhao State can withstand several rounds of attacks by the Qin people?" The King of Qi has returned to China, but Xiang Yan has not yet gone to Qi, and he must be ready to leave again.

"If Zhao doesn't destroy the Great Wall, at least two rounds." Xiong Jing Road. When he was in Jicheng, he had an open and honest conversation with Li Mu, and bluntly persuaded him not to get too close to the abolished prince Zhao Jia, so as not to be suspicious of King Zhao.

"Qi may be able to support one round." Xiong Jing said again. "The Triple Alliance should not be the first year to do a decisive battle with the Qin army. The 800,000 Qin army is dead, and another 800,000 troops can be recruited in the country, and our army will no longer have a fighting force if it is defeated. It is necessary to put an end to the big battle and pursue the small decisive battle. In the secondary battlefield, the strategic mobility advantage was used to gain a temporary numerical advantage, and then the Qin army was annihilated.

If the Qin army attacks Zhao, the first year should be Zhao's national strength to resist the Qin people, the two armies of Chu and Qi attack the rear of the Qin army, attack it and save it, and in the third year, when the Qin army is tired, they can go all out and press on it vigorously, but still don't fight a decisive battle easily. For the Qin army, it is better to cut off one of its fingers than to hurt its ten fingers, and it is better to annihilate one of its armies than to defeat the three armies. The so-called joint vertical and the so-called attack on Qin are completely useless, and only the complete annihilation of the Qin army like the Battle of Jiyi, so that the Qin army will lose its elite army within ten or twenty years is useful. ”

"The king is wise." Xiang Yan couldn't help but praise, the Battle of Qingshui and the Battle of Jiyi were stark contrasts, and they were both victories under his command.

"That's not what I said." Xiong Jing is a second-class dealer, but he is just picking up people's teeth.

"But the king thinks it's a four-year recovery or a nine-year recovery?" Su Kai asked.

"I don't know." Four years is too early, nine years is too late, and Xiong Jing doesn't know when to counterattack Jiuying.

"The minister thinks that there are two strategies, one for four years and the other for nine years." Cheng Jiedao.

"Four years is forty-nine years, and nine years is fifty-four years." Dou Yu Pheasant always remembered the days when Yancheng fell, when he was still very young, and when he led his troops to Yancheng, Yancheng was broken. "The minister thinks that you can't wait any longer, wait any longer, and the old Yingchu people will all die."

"It's war!" Seeing that the other ministers also wanted to echo, Xiong Jing immediately spoke out to suppress them.

Of course, the sooner the recovery of the old Ying, the better, but the war has a practical side, and the training of the Chu army itself will take several years, and the construction of the war boat will also take several years; There are also war horses, which take ten years to have thousands of excellent cavalry;

The last is gunpowder, the power of gunpowder is too small now, even if you can't find a way to purify the nitrate after ten years, you can find saltpeter with a high enough nitrate content - one of the biggest effects of gunpowder after the appearance of gunpowder is to siege the city, bury enough gunpowder under the city in the middle of the night, and any fortified city can be breached.

It's just that what will happen to the Chu people who have delayed the old Ying for five years? Will they be able to hold out for another five years? Xiong Jing didn't know. Whenever he saw the things related to the old Ying recorded by the historians, he always felt that he was guilty, his father was guilty, and his eldest father was even more guilty. But when you think about the situation at that time, it is difficult for them to do better.

I'm afraid that it is precisely because of this that the Empress Dowager Zu will come up with a poisonous plan to break her wrist. In the eyes of qualified politicians, anyone is a bargaining chip, and they must not hesitate to give up when they are needed, otherwise they will not be able to protect the overall situation.