In May, the Luntai prairie has been glowing green, and the buds that emerge from the old withered yellow grass on the grassland began to spread rapidly under the light of snow and sunshine, and one or two trees that appeared from time to time also frantically felt this warm breath at this time, reflecting their own figures on this grassland that has been the same every year since ancient times. In the vicinity of the trees, there are often babbling streams flowing slowly over the grassland, and the sun shines shiningly, winding away like a series of colorful exercises.

Luntai grassland can be said to be the foundation of Yanqi, and it is also a witness to the vicissitudes of Yanqi after thousands of years. There are not only vast grasslands where cattle and sheep can rest, but also farmland that has been developed by relying on the snow water of the Tianshan Mountains, producing abundant grains, fruits and a variety of special products, bringing wealth and prosperity to this field.

"Grandpa, Abba followed the Uighurs, saying that he was going to fight the Tang people. Who are the Tang people? A small herd of cattle and sheep came to the stream from a distance to drink, and a young man of only eleven or twelve years old asked while helping his grandfather take care of the sheep: "They all said that the Tang people came to rob our grassland and cattle and sheep, and they were robbers." ”

"Tang people?" The old man seemed to have fallen into distant memories when he was asked by his grandson, but after a while, he looked at his grandson with a confused tone in his eyes and said with vicissitudes: "The Tang people are people from the East, where there is a rich and vast land, countless cattle, sheep and grain, and countless kind people and a powerful empire. They came from the East, brought the silk and porcelain worn by the nobles, and taught us sheep and Qiang people to cultivate the land, grow wheat and millet, and this land gradually prospered and stabilized. ”

"Then why did the Tang people quit us? Are they here now to rob us of our land and steppes? Although the half-eldest son didn't understand what his grandfather said, his curiosity drove him to continue asking, "Wouldn't it be dangerous for Abba to fight the Tang people?" ”

"It's not about robbing us of our land, it's about their land. Now Datang has come to take back what belongs to him. The old man suddenly sighed and said something that his grandson couldn't understand, "It's been a hundred years, all this is like a reincarnation, and now that the Tang Dynasty is back, Yanqi has ushered in the old master after a hundred years, I'm afraid that for those tribes who participated in the encirclement and suppression of Guo Daduhu, the end should also come." ”

"Yanshixi, let's take the cattle and sheep to the Tianshan Mountains, I'm afraid your father won't be able to come back." The old man touched his grandson's head, and his tone was endlessly sad, but his movements were not slow at all, pulling his grandson to drive the cattle and sheep almost without stopping, and went directly towards the Tianshan Mountains in the north, which towered in the sun and had a snow-white roof.

Not long after the old man left, a shaking like a collapse of the sky gradually came from the eastern horizon, and then countless cavalry appeared on the grassland, galloping towards the northwest, if the old man was still at this time, he would definitely feel very strange, these cavalry troops from the east were not actually the Tang people in their mouths, but Uighur clothes, and the Uighur scimitars in their hands were also held. This is the Uighur Corps of the Western Expeditionary Army led by Hammad, because it has not been reorganized by the Ministry of Defense, so Hamoud's corps does not have a regular number, and can only be temporarily named the Uighur Corps, which is the same as the Anxi Corps led by Zhang Sheng.

However, although not formally reorganized, the cavalry corps, which was largely composed entirely of Uighurs, was revived, after less than half a month of upheaval. In order to quickly stabilize the situation in Gaochang, the families of the Uighur soldiers were given priority as Tang citizens, and their household registration was promulgated, and all the livestock, cattle and sheep of the large number of nobles forcibly confiscated during the reform were taken out and distributed to these families, and they were given priority care during the agricultural and animal husbandry reform. Even the morale of the Uighur army was regained in one fell swoop. Because of Hammud's purge, the current Tang Dynasty quickly gained a foothold after the Gaochang Uighur leadership was almost wiped out, and one measure after another was quickly promoted with the strong combat power of the Tiance army and the support of these people, which in turn benefited more people in the Gaochang area.

"Order all the troops to stop at the mountain pass in front, set up camp, and then search the surrounding areas as soon as possible." Hamoud looked at the map in his hand while galloping his horse, he had already led his army across the grassland area in the north of Yanqi City, to the edge of the Luntai grassland in the northwest, and then gradually broke away from the Yanqi land boundary in the west. This time, he needed to block and cooperate with Tuoba Siji's cavalry corps to encircle and annihilate the Anxi Uighur reinforcements.

By the time Hammud arrived at the intended location and set up camp and then began to send scouts to reconnoitre, the Modao battalion under the city of Yanqi had also prepared to begin the siege by the time Tuoba Siji set out with his army to strangle the Uighurs. More than 40,000 troops outside the city gathered on the southeast side, more than 100 artillery pieces were divided into two positions and aimed at the city wall in the southeast direction, and more than 40,000 soldiers of the Modao battalion were waiting quietly.

"Prepare for artillery fire for a quarter of an hour, not for thirty minutes." Shi Jian took out the latest timekeeping tool called a pocket watch on the side of the General Staff, and after calculating it, he spoke. This latest unit of timekeeping was brought by Li Xuanqing from later generations, and it was much finer than the so-called hour before, and the corresponding hands on the pocket watch also made him very curious, so he almost made a mistake for a while. However, compared with Shi Jian, the commander of the artillery position was obviously much more familiar, and immediately waved the red flag in his hand after receiving Shi Jian's order, only to see the gunners of one artillery piece constantly reporting the artillery preparations, and all the artillery in the two positions was prepared in a short period of time. Almost at the same time, the red and yellow flags waved crosswise, and in an instant, more than a hundred cannonballs were quickly disarmed and roared towards Yanqi City in the distance. 75 mm artillery in this era is basically an unsolvable artillery support, so Li Xuanqing stopped the army's large-caliber artillery equipment after making the 105 mm artillery, but retained the research and development strength and merged with the navy's naval artillery research and development, the main direction of army artillery research is how to increase the firing range, how to reduce the weight of the gun and the research and development of shells.

As soon as the artillery of the two battalions struck, Yanqi City was suddenly shrouded in rumbling artillery fire, countless explosions exploded on the city wall, and the fireballs that rose up were not scattered with countless figures, and the ancient city of Yanqi was afraid that it would no longer be able to keep this ancient and vicissitudes of the city wall after the arrival of the Tiance army. If it weren't for the fact that the Anxi Uighurs already had a lot of experience in fighting the Tiance army, only a small number of troops were on duty on the tower, and the main force was hiding in hidden places such as the urn city, for fear that they would be directly hit by artillery bombardment.

"Demoman prepares." Shi Jian handed over the command of the siege to Yan Chixia on the front line, so after the artillery continued to shell for about ten minutes, he signaled the dozens of demomen behind him to start preparation, waiting for the artillery to extend the fire and attack the target behind the city wall, and set off to blow up the city gate.

The powerful artillery fire on the side of the Modao battalion made it impossible for the Yanqi defenders to stand on the city wall for a long time, and this kind of light beating could not fight back, so that the defenders realized that the other party was only afraid that they were ready to take Yanqi today. Therefore, while actively trying to find a way to deal with the attack of the Tiance army, he sent troops out of the city and rushed to the west, urging the reinforcements in the rear to come quickly. Yanqi has a special status, the surrounding products are abundant, whether it is agriculture and animal husbandry or commercial handicrafts are very developed, located on the Silk Road is a treasure of the Anxi Uighurs, not only military value, economic value and political value are equally important, before it was also the location of the Anxi Uighur base camp, but the Tiance army hit the sandbar so that the Uighur commander Ye Hu felt that Yanqi was not safe and too close to the Tiance army, so he moved the governance to the western city of Shule. However, although Yanqi is not a place of governance now, when the Tiance army attacked the city on a large scale, the Uighurs could not help but come to the rescue.

However, as in the case of Jiaohe City, the other party commanded the forces outside the city to start a counterattack at the same time as Shi Jian led the army to attack the city, and countless young men of all ethnic groups who were bewitched began to march towards the camp of the Tiance Army with various weapons in their hands at this time, preparing to attack it and save it, forcing Shi Jian to divide his troops to rescue, thereby reducing the pressure on the city defense.

This method had been implemented many times before when Shi Jian was standing still, from the very beginning of the same attempt to destroy the water source as the Gaochang Uighurs, but under the reminder of Hamoud, the Tiance army had learned to use wells and canals to solve the problem of drinking water, and it was already May at this time, and the amount of snow water in the Tianshan Mountains was very large, and it was almost the peak period of the nearby rivers, so the method of destroying the rivers could not be implemented soon. However, soon another trick came, and these Yanqi troops began to harass the Tiance army day and night, trying to disturb the morale of the army and make it impossible for the Tiance army to rest normally, and resorted to the strategy of exhausting the enemy. At the beginning, these methods of using the advantage of cavalry to disappear without a trace really annoyed the Modao Battalion, although Shi Jian designed to kill the opponent several times and killed and injured many of the opponent's men and horses, but it could not fundamentally solve the problem. Because the Modao battalion is considered an orthodox infantry unit, if it is hastily replaced with war horses, it cannot be compared with the horseback nation at all. However, this situation was quickly eliminated after Tuoba Si arrived, and the cavalry corps began to attack separately, opening the way with a tough and bloody massacre, and killing all the people who came to harass the Tiance army camp, and even some of the Yanqi army were chased to the lair after those who stayed behind were all slaughtered, and then after finding out the origin of these people, Tuoba Siji even drove the army directly to these tribal settlements, and all the three or four small and medium-sized tribes that sent troops to participate in the bloodbath, This kind of brutal slaughter led to the large and small tribes around the city of Qi, and within a few days, Tuoba Siji had slaughtered the names of thirty or forty thousand people, almost half of which were actually ordinary people of those small tribes, but they were all killed by the autumn wind sweeping away the leaves.

The massacre of Tuoba Siji temporarily shocked these small tribes around the Uighurs who followed the Uighurs, but then the Uighurs once again thought of another way, and began to widely walk the Tiance army to seize these people's fields, cattle, sheep, livestock and grasslands, if they did not resist, then sooner or later everything would be snatched away by the Tiance army, and take advantage of the fact that the news from Gaochang had not yet reached to make a big deal about the massacre of the Uighurs by the Tiance army on Gaochang's side. This method caught Xuan Yingwei off guard and was quickly pulled up countless young adults of various tribes who were bewitched. And Zhao Si simply stopped refuting the guidance on the merger of the two Uighurs after seeing the guidance from the Xuan Yingwei headquarters, but added fuel to the fire in the back, but the news that Xuan Yingwei walked out turned out to be changed, although the Tiance Army was very murderous, but it was very good for the people at the bottom, and the people who killed were those big landlords, big nobles and big ranchers. As a result, many poor tribesmen at the bottom began to waver.

However, at this time, in the face of the swarming harassing army of no less than twenty or thirty thousand people, Tuoba Siji's face began to get colder and colder, and with a wave of his right hand, countless cavalry behind him began to attack frantically, and these red-eyed cavalry warriors let go of their restraints again, and began to regard those opponents in front of them as the objects of their slaughter.

Tuoba Siji originally led his army out of the southern front to pursue a group of participants who had fled to the desert, but on the way back, he received a report from Shi Jian that the Modao battalion was preparing to attack the city, and the Uighur resistance outside the city would definitely do their best to harass the besieging troops, and the cavalry corps needed to go all out to completely annihilate these people while attacking the city, so as to quickly stabilize Yanqi.

And Tuoba Siji faced this situation after rushing back, and after the purpose of clearing Shi Jian, Tuoba Siji did not have any reservations at all, and his cavalry corps attacked on all fronts. Because the cavalry corps of Tuoba Siji was almost a standing army that fought endlessly all year round, the cavalry tactics were perfect, and the cavalry unit of 30,000 people was divided into three on the way to charge, with 10,000 people in the middle responsible for the frontal impact, and 10,000 people on each wing quickly closed, ready to be strangled regardless of the 3721 encirclement, and not let go of one. On the way to the run, the cavalry artillery units were stationed at a distance of less than 500 meters from the opponent, and then quickly unloaded the mortars on horseback, and then adjusted the firing distance to load and then fired directly.

Under Yanqi City, the Tiance army divided its troops to attack in full swing, but in the northwest direction, Hammud met his opponent in advance, and the Uighur cavalry from Yanqi was much faster than expected, which also led to Hammoud having to face the opponent's troops alone, and when he saw the opponent's 80,000 army appearing at the foot of the mountain, Hammad's face suddenly became extremely serious.