The Uighur Khanate was a loose confederation of nomadic tribal confederations, and the dominant Uighurs themselves were divided into many tribes, which were the overlords of the steppe, occupying the most abundant areas of the steppe and enjoying the offerings of other tribes.

In addition to the Uighurs, the steppe was also home to a large number of small and medium-sized tribes of foreign peoples, who were oppressed by the Uighurs, and not only did they not enjoy the abundant pastures, but also unconditionally contributed their wealth to the Uighurs, who promised them that they would protect them from the bullying of the Tibetans and the Tang people, and act as impartial arbiters to mediate tribal disputes and lend a helping hand when the black and white disasters befell them.

A beautiful promise is pleasing to the ear, but if it is not kept, it becomes a shameful lie.

After a hundred years of power, the mighty Uighur Khan was exhausted, and he lived in seclusion, handing over power to the greedy and short-sighted prime ministers, and the depravity of the arbiter completely buried the fairness of the steppe, fairness was gone, and trust was lost. The current grassland is just like the one when the Immortal Heaven was first founded, with only the law of the jungle and bloody killing, no fairness, no trust, no warmth and no tomorrow.

Those who were once loyal followers of the Uighur Khan have now become speculators.

They no longer have faith in their hearts, and they don't even have shame, they only recognize interests and power, who is strong to whom, and who gives benefits to help whom. When the Tang Dynasty was strong, they rushed to Chang'an in groups to make a pilgrimage, offering a thin earthen ceremony, in exchange for a cart of thick rewards, they only had to pay a cheap bow, in exchange for the real protection of the Tang Emperor.

They are like leeches adsorbed on the body of the Tang Empire, sucking the blood of the Tang Dynasty one by one, until the blood of the Tang Dynasty is exhausted, and they see that it is unprofitable, so they immediately bared their teeth at each other.

Koubian, plundering the people, aiding and abetting.

The decline of the Tang Dynasty and the rise of the Uighurs, the Uighurs did not have the good temper of the Tang Emperor, and when the 300,000 Heavenly Wolf Army swept through the grasslands, those who followed me prospered, and those who opposed me perished. The grass on the wall was slightly disobedient, and the sharp saber immediately slashed at the neck.

When their heads fell to the ground, their knees weakened, and they turned to the Uighur court to make a pilgrimage, offering fat sheep and beautiful women in exchange for continuing to be slaves under the protection of the Uighur Khan.

Later, when the Tibetans rose, they took advantage of the situation to break free from the protection of the Uighur Khan and rushed to the arms of the Tibetan Zampu.

Tubo Zampu likes good horses, so they offer the best horses in the grassland, and Tubo Zampu likes beauties, so they search every felt tent and select the most beautiful and healthy beauty to go to the snowy plateau and send it to Zampu's dormitory.

Later, when the Tang Dynasty, Tibet, and Uighurs all declined, and the three kingdoms were evenly matched, they sowed discord on the left and right, sowing discord, eating the east and eating the west, and eating the west and eating the north.

Now is the saddest time for their lives, Datang is in an internal crisis, too busy to take care of itself, and there is no extra blood for them to suck. The Uighurs were plagued by coups d'état and wars, and those in power were either blind or greedy and tyrannical, and they extorted and extorted from these small and medium-sized tribes, causing unspeakable misery.

Listening to this way, watching all the way, Li Mao benefited a lot.

Soon after his reinstatement as Honglu Shaoqing, Li Mao gave Chen Shu a secret task to select capable people and infiltrate the Uighurs and Tibetans, focusing on the area west of Hexi and the Yinshan Mountains on the border of the Tang, Uighurs, and Tibetans occupied by the Uighur royal court and the Tibetans.

The first batch of five capable people had already entered the desert with Li Mao's mission, and according to Li Mao's arrangement, they had infiltrated the five larger tribes of party members near Daqingshan.

Li Mao was supposed to take these five men to the Uighur court, but what he saw and heard along the way made Li Mao change his mind.

The Uighurs were not as powerful as they had hoped, and the descendants of the Celestial Wolves, like the Tang magnates, had lost their bloodiness and aggressiveness, and their control over their vassal tribes was weakening, and their administrative misconduct and economic extortion caused even the most loyal adherents to drift away.

The future of these tribes, which lie between the heart of the Uighurs and the heart of the Tang Dynasty, is crucial, and Li Mao must prepare for it in advance.

Ten miles of different days, a hundred miles of different customs.

After crossing the Yin Mountain for a thousand miles, what was presented to Li Mao was a completely new world, and the customs were not the same as those of the Tang Dynasty, nor were they very different from any information about the nomads of the grassland desert stored in Li Mao's mind.

There is no doubt that the Uighurs were far less civilized than the Tang Dynasty, but they were far superior to the Liao, Xia, Jin, and Yuan dynasties of later generations.

Li Mao deliberately walked slowly along the way, on the one hand, he wanted to explore and collect the geography, climate, and folklore along the way, and on the other hand, he did not want the Uighur royal family to struggle out of the chaos so quickly.

As soon as the position of the khan was uncertain, the chaos of the Uighurs would not end, and the result of internal strife would only consume the national strength, which was obviously beneficial to the Tang Dynasty.

The most powerful candidate for the new Uighur khan was now in danger, and he desperately needed the support of the Tang Dynasty, and Li Mao's canonization document was the most favorable support for him.

He sent his close assistant Prime Minister Yu Sidu thousands of miles away to meet Li Mao's car.

Li Mao proposed to Yu Sidu to go to Tiezheng Canyon to pay respects to the Tang Dynasty condolence mission personnel who were killed by the Murowei people in the past.

Yu Sidu was very embarrassed by Li Mao's request. In the old days, the longevity of the heavenly relatives Khan to the princess of Gulu Viga as a welcome envoy, led about 100 people of the great chieftains of all ethnic groups and the prime minister to Chang'an to welcome the princess of Xian'an to the grassland to complete the marriage, the mission was ambushed by the Murowei people at the foot of the Daqing Mountain in the north of the Zhenwu army, and the prime minister was killed in the fierce battle.

When the prime minister was attacked, the Tang border army reacted slowly, and did not act after receiving the mission's request for help, resulting in the besieged Qiqi being outnumbered, and they were killed after three days and nights of bloody fighting.

At that time, the Tang Emperor Li Shi had always had a prejudice against the Uighurs because he was humiliated by the Uighurs during the Anshi Rebellion. The Khan of Longevity sent an envoy to ask for peace, but Li Shiben did not allow it, but it was the prime minister Li Mi who persuaded him to put the overall situation first, unite with the Uighurs against Tibet, and relieve the pressure on the western border of the Tang Dynasty.

Li Shi had always trusted Li Mi, and reluctantly agreed after the Uighurs offered to be vassals to the Tang Dynasty, a certain quota for the silk and horse trade, and a limit on the number of envoys entering Beijing.

The people of the time speculated that the emperor was not sincere and friendly, and the reason why he made a compromise was mainly because of the persuasion of Prime Minister Li Mi, and the words of the persuasion were reasonable, so that he could not refuse.

There is a basis for making such speculations, and although the relatives agreed, the emperor was reluctant in his heart, and everything was delayed, so that the mission was stranded in Chang'an for half a year.

Those border generals who were accustomed to looking at the above glances or had already called the emperor's pulse, and the Murwei people dared to cross the border to attack the Uighur envoys, and it was said that there was a shadow of the Zhenwu army behind them, and there were even rumors that it was the border generals who pretended to be the Murwei people to attack and kill the Uighur prime minister.

Similar rumors cast a heavy shadow over the newly reconciled relationship between the Tang and the Uighurs. A year later, the longevity of the heavenly relatives Khan died of illness, and the Tang Dynasty went north to mourn the mission passing through the Tiezheng Gorge and was attacked, including the deputy envoy Honglu Shaoqing Sun Gao, 38 people were tortured and killed by a group of people who claimed to be the Murowei Ma bandits.

The truth is the same as the truth about the Zhenwu army being attacked by the Uighur mission, which was lost in the yellow sand of the Gobi desert.

At Li Mao's repeated insistence, Prime Minister Yu Sidu had to agree to accompany Li Mao to go with him, but the road was grinding, and he walked 500 miles for five days.

Tiezheng Canyon was nameless, because after the mission was surrounded, people often played the kite at night, so it got its name.

The Uighurs explained that the Uighurs had to divert the valley by heavy rain and that the main north-south road was washed away by floods.

As for why there were so many Murwei people in the heart of the Uighur royal court that the Uighurs explained that the desert was too large and the steppes too vast for even the Uighur Khan, who was a holy god, could not stop the fierce flow from attacking his allies.

"After the incident, my Great Khan sent 30,000 Heavenly Wolf Army to attack the Northern Murwei Department of the Mountain and captured and killed Abu, the leader of the Molong Tribe."

The interpreter relayed the words of Ku Sidu, and Li Mao did not even believe the punctuation, and Abu, the leader of the Weimeron tribe in the northern part of the mountain, died of injuries sustained by a fall from his horse a year before the attack on the mission, which had nothing to do with the punishment of the Uighurs.

After the old Tang envoys were killed, the Uighurs collected the stumps, spliced them together into 38 complete bones, and buried them all in the Tiezheng Canyon, called the Tang mound, and sent them to the nearby tribes to guard them, but this treatment did not last for a few years, because of the stumbling between the Uighurs and the Tang Dynasty.

Thirty-eight graves were lost in the grass.

This time, because Li Mao was coming, Yu Sidu sent people overnight to grab the thirty-eight Tang mounds before Li Mao entered the valley.

In order to cover up the damp new soil, the Uighurs shoveled some turf and covered it with the newly raised mounds, which were half-dead due to poor maintenance.

Li Mao led the delegation to solemnly worship the heroic soul who was buried here, and the ceremonial ceremony was so grand that the guide, who had lived in Hudi for more than ten years, did not feel tears in his eyes.

Since the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang Dynasty has never cared about these heroic souls sleeping on the desert grassland, and has even disdainful of the Han people scattered on the grassland, and even sent troops more than once to assist the grassland tribes in encircling and suppressing the fortress established by the displaced people for the sake of the so-called overall situation of diplomatic relations.

Tang Ting's actions made the last little attachment of the displaced people to the Tang Dynasty disappear.

Not to mention those homeless people, it is the thirty-eight family members who were violated by foreign races who slept in the valley, and for the sake of the so-called overall situation, they failed to lose their leaves as roots and return to Sangzi, but slept miserably in the wind and sand thousands of miles away, accompanied by dry grass and stubborn stones.

In my memory, before Li Mao, there was not a single official of the Tang Dynasty who came here to pay respects. (Dissertation College)