Out of Cannes, not far to the east is another famous city, Andijan, also known as Andukang. It is an important transit point between the river and the four towns of Anxi, and the railway from Samarkand to Andijan has actually been open to traffic for several years, but Huang Taiji followed the ancient camel caravan to walk the trade route leisurely, over the famous Fergana Mountain - when the caravans were lamenting the southward journey of the heavenly road, Huang Taiji, as a professional officer, thought about how to arrange troops if he guarded here, and how to plan if he attacked here.

After crossing the mountain, he did not go directly to Naren, the state capital of Naryn State, but turned southeast after saying goodbye to the caravan, preparing to spy on the situation of several famous mountain passes—since it was easy to come to the hinterland of Xia Kingdom, he felt that he should do more for the country. However, this was suspected of being a spy, and for safety, he sent both servants to Broken Leaf City to bluff, and he only took a guide hired in Andijan, two donkeys and some small goods, disguised as a merchant who walked the streets of the township market, and set off.

The journey was very peaceful, Huang Taiji was warmly received in several grassland tents, and the small glass mirrors and rouge gouache he brought were very popular with the herdsmen, and even the matches sold very well. Before he reached the mountain pass, most of his goods had already been sold, and a lot of fur was changed and put back on the donkey's back.

But whether doing business is a loss or making money, he doesn't care about this at all. Every night before going to bed, the dignified Guards officer would quietly take out a notebook from a leather bag with a hidden button, and write down the terrain and landforms, the direction of the water currents, the climate change in the pastures, and the customs and customs he had gained from his conversations with the chiefs and elders.

Of course, if this is discovered, it will obviously be very dangerous - espionage is a very serious crime, and once the stolen goods are caught, it is basically a rhythm of eating guns or sitting in a black cell. And their home country often won't admit this kind of thing at all in order to get rid of a bad reputation.

So he was very careful about doing this, for fear of being discovered. He spent several days with his own caution, and was uneventful, but his good fortune seemed to run out. It was the fifth day he came out of Andijan, in an unnamed tribe in an unnamed pasture, drinking mare's milk wine and blowing cowhides with the herdsmen for an hour, talking about the breeding of mares from the general trend of the world, and finally returned to a small tent with a little drunkenness, and was about to take out a notebook to write down the customs and mainstream origins of this place, when someone suddenly opened the door: "Is Mr. Ai there?" ”

Brother Huang Taiji, who is known as Boss Ai and Mr. Ai, was startled, and he quickly stuffed his bag under his luggage: "I'm here, who is it?" ”

A young herdsman came in with a bowl of milk tea: "Hello, sir. I ......"

The young man's cheeks, which had just grown a short beard, were still a little red—the kind of shy redness, not the drunken redness of drunkenness. Huang Taiji breathed a sigh of relief: "Is there something wrong?" ”

The young man handed him the milk tea: "Sir, I have a question for you. You're well-informed, and you'll be able to give me an answer. ”

Huang Taiji took the milk tea and sat down cross-legged: "Sit down and talk." ”

The young man's name is Amir, a very common name on the grassland, from the root, the roots of their clan came from the Kazakh steppe, that is, the Kazakh steppe where the Great Liao Empire fought with the Western Xia Kingdom for seven years, for those few acres of yellow grassland, I don't know how much young people's blood was drained - Huang Taiji's ancestor, the head of the Jianzhou Jurchens, also participated in that magnificent war, but they did not leave any name, it was a war belonging to Marshal Chen Luo and Empress Chengtian, It was the first battle of the General Staff of the Great Liao Empire. The transformation from the General Staff Headquarters to the General Staff Headquarters began with the Second Western Expedition, which belonged to the era of General Temujin and General Ye Shuixin, and there were still hundreds of years before the Jianzhou Jurchens really appeared on the stage of history.

But these were all a little reverie after Huang Taiji was drunk—he was still trying to listen to the troubles of this teenager, the kind of troubles that every teenager has.

Amir had a girl he liked, a girl from another nomadic tribe. The two tribes herded their cattle on either side of a river valley, each taking what he needed, with occasional barter. In the spring of this year, when both tribes came to the river valley according to the old rules, Amir was suddenly like a deer in the river to get water, and was deeply attracted by a girl on the other side of the river wearing a white dress and a golden belt.

The girl's name was Qulandam, and she was a Uighur girl. Supposedly, not belonging to the same ethnic group does not prevent two young people from freely falling in love and then intermarrying. There are also no rules and traditions in the steppes that intermarry only within one ethnic group. In fact, many new nations were formed by the great division and intermarriage of several old tribes.

According to the tradition of the grassland, Amir rode a foal, holding the wildflowers he picked, and went to the tribe on the other side to sing love songs, if the girl was interesting, then he sang and harmonized, and if the girl was not interesting to him, he also rejected him euphemistically with a song - this is actually not much different from the national style recorded in the Book of Songs, so the scholars of the Xia Kingdom believe that the tribes on the grassland have retained a considerable number of Zhou rituals, which shows that they are also people in the Chinese cultural system, and they are just wild people who are just so-called "courtesy and seeking wilderness".

Regardless of whether Amir followed the customs of the steppe or the ancient Zhou rites, there was nothing wrong with the young man's courtship, and he came to the other side, and sang a love song full of hope, who knew that he had just started a head, and was interrupted by a pair of young men: "Don't sing, go back." ”

"If you don't go back, we'll break your legs and let your horse carry you back."

As soon as they came up, they didn't even greet each other, and they made such a naked threat, which surprised Amir, a young man. He asked, why.

The other party only replied: "We are not all the way, and neither you nor your people can cross this river in the future." Otherwise, let's meet each other. ”

Seeing that he was so solemn about the other party, Amir could only go back to the other side of the river first and tell his parents about the matter. The next morning, to the astonishment of the Amirs on the west side of the valley, the Uighurs on the other side of the river were gathered in a clearing, listening to a few men in black robes speaking - a little far away, they could not hear what was being said, but then they saw the Uighurs jumping into the river one by one—it was still early spring, and the river was still cold and bitterly cold in the highland steppes during this season, but fortunately they only seemed to have a collective ritual in the water and went ashore. But even so, Amir and his people saw that some old people or children seemed to be unable to resist the biting bones of the snow-capped mountain meltwater, and they were helped ashore.

After this inexplicable move, the Uighurs on the other side left with lightning speed, waiting for the summer when the grass and dairy products were abundant, and then returning to their ancestral valley for the winter. The Uighurs left in such a hurry that one wondered if something had happened to them.

In line with the principle of helping if they can help on the grassland, Amir and their patriarch sent someone to ask if the other party had encountered any difficulties, but they were also in vain. All I got was some inexplicable answer - "We will take the glorious and correct path and advance on the great cause of the Lord." Don't come to us anymore, you who will go to Hellfire. Get out! ”

Kindly was also scolded, and Amir's people were also angry, saying that their neighbors were probably crazy and would go wherever they fell in love.

However, Amir is still thinking about the girl Gulandam he glimpsed in shockingly, and if she leaves with this group of madmen, will she encounter any danger? How do they survive after leaving the pasture? The young man's heart wishes to become a little lamb and leave with them.

So Amir came to Huang Taiji's account in the hope of gaining some life experience, after all, when he heard Huang Taiji brag at the banquet just now, he had already been overwhelmed by the rich experience of this fat old fox.

Huang Taiji listened to his story, and suddenly realized that those black-robed people seemed to be very likely to be a mortal enemy faced by the Liao State and the Xia State - the missionaries of the Tianfang Sect.

The western development of the early Liao Empire was in conflict with the westward expansion policy of the Great Xia Kingdom, and the bloody and tearful Seven Years' War broke out in the middle. After a long war, the two sides finally reached a certain understanding and divided their respective spheres of influence in the Western world. However, in the actual execution process, the two sides of the conflict found that they were facing a stubborn and huge enemy - the Celestial Cult World.

For the Liao, the Siseljuks scattered throughout the Anatolian Plateau and the valley of the two rivers were annoying and stubborn enemies, and for the Tanguts, the unworthy descendants of the Western Qarakhanid dynasty, which belonged to the same Uighurs as the Uighur kingdom of Gaochang, but the latter was a staunch supporter of the Xia state and a defender of Buddhism. However, the remnants of the Western Qarakhanid Dynasty converted to the Heavenly Religion and stubbornly resisted the rule of the Western Xia Kingdom.

Therefore, from the time of Xia Zhaozong, the Xia Dynasty adopted a divide-and-rule strategy for the Western Qarakhanids, subdividing them into more than 100 tribes and scattering them among millions of square kilometers of mountains, plateaus, and river valleys in several provinces, and guarding them with Tajiks, Uzbeks, Khazars, and Tocharians loyal to the kingdom. There are also a small number of people who are not converted, but their small numbers and scattered in the north and south, coupled with some "interesting" policies of the Xia dynasty, the Western Qarakhanid restoration movement is far less strong than the Seljuk Turkic Zionism.

The biggest trouble of the Xia people is the so-called Seljuk Zionism, and those Seljuk remnants have been in the country for 300 years and still remember the former glory of the Great Seljuks. And their wishful thinking was supported by the Sultanate of Rum on the Anatolian Peninsula, a few thousand miles to the west, which was also a small legacy of the Seljuk Empire.

The Seljuk empire was fairly short-lived, founded in 1588 and collapsed in 1746 under the attack of the Western Xia army. But this was the last glory of the Turks in their history—their heyday, their territory stretched from the river to Asia Minor, to the east to the Uighurs (Qarakhanids), to the west to capture the emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire, and to the Arab caliphs praised its monarchs as "kings of the East and the West." Such a huge empire, such an intoxicating martial arts, but it was vulnerable in front of the artillery and spear phalanx of the Tanguts. Therefore, Seljuk Zionism has a considerable place in the hearts of the Turkic remnants.