The cart with the grain was pushed behind the formation by the bannermen and the wrappers, and they would not set off until the main formation was almost there.

Huang Taiji and Dai Shan, the two brothers, were the first, and the two of them were together with a thousand armored soldiers and their respective tooth swinging soldiers as the forwards, and they set off yesterday.

This formation is still in the city of Hetuala, and the forward has passed the Jilin cliff, from the height of Hetuala, everywhere there are ant-like villains and ponies moving forward, some people are riding on horses, that is mostly Tang horses, only the beam and Tang horses are allowed to ride, at the beginning of the spring with soldiers, the war horse is well taken care of is also inevitable to lose fat, after a fierce battle, the situation of losing fat will become more serious, and the Ming army may attack at any time, which makes the use of war horses by the Eight Banners become more cautious.

Niu Lu Ezhen is in charge of Bashiku and Zhuangda, there are many armor and bannermen are assembled in their respective villages, there are cavalry along the village through the conch horn to inform the village armor people to go out, when the armor of each village comes out, there will be a number of bannermen behind them, they only have the status of followers, most of them are young men who have just come of age, they need to prove their strength and courage on the battlefield before they become official armorers.

The Swing Tooth Lamas are gathered and followed behind the Ox Records and Jia Lap Legends, and on the battlefield they may be gathered by the banner owners to slash the formation and capture the flag and make a key breakthrough, or they may be scattered among the Cattle Records to enhance the combat power of the Cattle Records.

The ant-colony-like army kept moving forward, and countless small black spots soon appeared on the white slopes and roads, and where the crowd passed, the snow was trampled into mud, and the place without snow was almost a muddy pond.

At this time, there was a landslide and tsunami-like cry, Khan appeared in front of everyone's eyes, hundreds of pro-soldiers of the two yellow flags surrounded the Great Khan, under the protection of bright swords and guns and bright armor, the old Khan, who was already sixty-one years old, appeared in front of everyone on a horse vigorously.

Nurhachi's face was red and radiated a strange luster.

He had seen the scene in front of him many times, but the soldiers and horses went from dozens to hundreds, and then to thousands, and finally it was an army of 60,000 people in front of him.

It is not practical to recruit Ye He with such a mobilization of all the Eight Banners, and it is the Ming State behind Ye He that Nurhaci is guarding against.

The armoured men and the horse-free attendants continued to move forward, but Nurhachi watched at first, and then slowly stirred up the horses, mingled in the procession, and gradually moved away in the direction of Yehebe.

Zhang Han kept looking at the situation in front of him, and he couldn't help but feel a little excited.

Even though this is the enemy's army, it is still inevitable to see such a large army in action.

He and Li Yongfang waited for the Han army to reach more than half an hour before they set out, and after walking for more than two hours, they camped in a muddy depression, where they had cowhide tents to rest in, and most of the Jurchen soldiers also had tents, and the Han army either crowded together with dozens of people or leaned on the roots of trees and slept in their clothes.

On the fifth day, Huang Taiji sent a team of armored soldiers to strengthen the protection of Zhang Han, which was already close to the enemy territory, and occasionally Ye He's men came out to ambush him.

The leader was the dismissed Niu Lu Zhen Shumu, who was angry, but he didn't dare to disobey the military order at all.

Halfway through, a checkpoint Ezhen was beheaded by Nurhachi because of his poor guard, and his head hung on the side of the road, which made many people vigilant.

In the evening of the same day, Zhang Han saw a fire in the distance, he and Chang Wei and others walked up a small hill with their clothes on, and the fire was burning about five or six miles in the distance, at least a small walled city was ignited, and the fire was very large, reaching into the sky.

Li Yongfang, Tan Tai and others seemed to have no interest in such a situation, they rested early, and when Zhang Han returned to the camp, the tent was already snoring loudly.

There are table flags inserted in the ground at the corners of the perimeter, and there are strict regulations in the gap between the battalions, when the camp is set up, the middle army flag is set up first, and then the four-sided table flag is erected, and then some javelins are placed obliquely planted in the ground, or trees are cut down to set up wooden fences.

Zhang Han saw that although Ye Hebu's force was very weak, it did not pose a big threat to the Houjin soldiers, and the spacing and obstacles between the battalions were very standard, these things were almost exactly the same as the Ming army, and Nuerhachi's division was really from the Ming lineage.

It's just that they didn't dig trenches to prevent fire, and they didn't have a fixed kitchen area and toilets, there was a lot of wild on the roadside, and the flag soldiers, like the Han army, mostly only ate the fried noodles they carried with them, and the boiling water in the nearby river was not far away, and everyone beat their water bladders full according to the regulations.

In the era of cold weapons, a war may drag on for several days, and it is only by being able to eat and drink in tense moments to maintain physical fitness.

At dawn, the horn sounded, and all the people in armor who took off their armor put on their cotton armor again, and some people did not remove their armor at all, and directly turned over and got on their horses.

When they were stationed in the camp yesterday, the followers were responsible for camping and boiling water and other chores, they were actually the role of auxiliaries, and there were a large number of Jurchens, Sauron tribes, Sikhs, and Oroqen people in the service, in fact, they were all ethnic groups, most of them had the same language as the Jurchens, but they lacked vocabulary, and they could only master the Mongolian language or the Jianzhou Jurchen language after staying in Baqi for a long time.

The strong ones in the followers are made into dead soldiers, and they don't need to do the chores of the followers, but they are also more dangerous.

In the Eight Banners for many years, the death and casualty rate of the dead soldiers has been high, and these dingkous that have been collected from the dense forest often die directly under the sword and arrow before they have enjoyed a good day of successful looting.

At noon on the sixth day, Zhang Han and others walked to the vicinity of the walled city that had been burned down yesterday.

When I got closer, I realized that this village was very small, built on a mountain, close to the road crossing, and it should be an outpost of the Yehe department.

The stockade was burned down, and there were more than 1,000 acres of farmland outside, and under the thin snow were seedlings of various crops planted last winter.

A group of armored soldiers came from the valley in the distance, snow and white clouds on the top of the mountain floated above their heads, and a large herd of cattle and sheep appeared behind them, which were looting cattle and sheep.

The houses in the city are still burning, and sparks erupt from time to time.

When Zhang Han looked closer, he found that there were dead corpses of guards in front of the walled city, these Yehe soldiers were mixed, and there were no layered military flags like the Eight Banners, and their weapons were also very poor, and now they were discarded next to the corpses at will, and the servants began to strip their clothes and collect weapons and bows and arrows, Ye Hebing's weapons were very poor, but the bows and arrows were the same as the Eight Banners, and it took a lot of time to make qualified foot bows, and the so-called cavalry and archery levels of the Jurchen tribes were almost the same, and the mountain people had to shoot and hunt, and they would hunt when they could walk, And Nurhachi was able to annex all the ministries, and in addition to the military talent he did have, all this and the law of the army in front of him was the most important.

In the past, there were also high-level Jurchen mergers of various ministries, but only required the superficial submission of the tribal chiefs, Nurhachi's strategy was to burn down these Jurchen villages, except for a small number of women and children and men, most of the people were incorporated into the Eight Banners, moved to the core area of the Jianzhou Jurchen to live, compiled into a number of cattle records, strengthened the control of these Dingkou, men for soldiers, women and children for the people, in wartime it was mobilized layer by layer, and often cooperated with training in peacetime.

The houses in the walled city were burned down, these villages were very poor, the thatched-roof wooden houses and mud houses were the mainstay, and almost nothing was left after a fire, Zhang Han and Chang Wei and others walked in it, saw the corpses of men, women and children who were killed, and felt the cruelty of the war.

Compared with the situation in front of him, everything Zhang Han encountered in Lingqiu, Xinpingbao, and even on the grassland was nothing, just a child's game.

When Zhang Han went out of the city, he saw a few pond horses coming from the direction of Hetuala, the pond horses rode to the periphery, and a Niu Lu Ezhen greeted him, and after the two sides spoke for a while, Niu Lu Ezhen shook the small red flag in his hand, and Zhang Han saw Li Yongfang riding a horse to meet him.

Zhang Han knew that there was the latest intelligence sent from the direction of the Ming Dynasty, Nuerhachi gave Tong Yangxing the responsibility of the prime minister of the Han military and civilians, and Li Yongfang was responsible for the intelligence work of the Ming Kingdom, this hardcore traitor did pay a lot of effort, except for the infiltration and bribery of the Mongols may be responsible for the high-level Jurchen leaders, the rest of the intelligence affairs have basically been taken care of by Li Yongfang.

Li Yongfang quickly rushed to Tangma and Niu Lu Ezhen, and after the two sides talked for a quarter of an hour, Li Yongfang rode back again.

He rushed to Zhang Han and asked with a smile: "Wen Lan, I'm going to rush to Lao Khan, will you go with me?" ”

Zhang Han smiled: "I am very happy." ”

This time they rode lightly, only one more horse per person, not like before with the army, each of them kept walking through the soldiers and horses along the way, from time to time to see a group of flag soldiers in the mountains to hunt and plunder the fleeing Yehe people, there are also some captives were escorted along the road, Yehe is worthy of being the most unruly of the four Haixi Jurchen tribes, from Baylor to the people are full of hatred for the Jianzhou Department, few of these captives cry, and the resentment in everyone's eyes is incomprehensible.

From the outermost walled city all the way inward, there is very little flat land along the way, and there are many terrain with mountains and valleys, and there are few low plains, and a small number of plains are undeveloped, and it is a natural scenery of hills, grasslands and woodlands. The topography here is summarized in later generations as eight mountains, one water, half grass and half fields, there are few plains and fields, in addition to mountains or mountains, there are also many rivers passing through, here are the tributaries of the Tumen River and the Songhua River, there are various big rivers such as the Ula River in the territory, the area of tens of thousands of square kilometers lives most of the population of the four parts of the western part of the sea, and the total is not more than 100,000 people, a small number of Jurchens and fewer Mongolians live in such a vast place, Zhang Han and Li Yongfang travel through such a region, keep riding their horses forward, people are difficult to talk on the horses, the wind is very strong, and it was particularly cold, there was still residual snow on the ground, only branches were left on the dead trees, and the fallen leaves were spread on the ground and fell into a thick layer, year after year, and finally formed a humus layer, and when the four hooves of the war horse trampled on these grounds, the unpleasant smell spread in people's noses.