After loading the planks, Guli drove the carriage to the ranger's hut in front of her. Guo Shan was naturally not to be left behind, and also got into the car.

Huang Yang and Cheng Qi could only lag behind by half a step, and they were just happy to create an opportunity for Gu Li, so they deliberately walked behind.

In all fairness, if it weren't for the fact that there was a big battle in front of them, they would have just enjoyed the scenery.

According to the geographical map, it is a high-altitude coniferous forest valley, with steep slopes on both sides, and near the center of the valley floor, where the geothermal heat grows rich vegetation, in addition to tall deciduous trees and coniferous forests, a variety of delicious mushrooms grow in the humus under the roots.

As the altitude increases, deciduous trees become less and less common, and the higher you go, the coniferous forests completely replace other species.

On the slopes, the coniferous forests cover the low sections, and in the steeper places, only mosses live.

At the highest point of the mountain, there is a year-round wind and snow, and there is nothing above the white snow line, and there is no sign of life at all. Only snow and icicles are present. But don't think that this is the absolute forbidden area of life.

Every spring, when the temperature rises and the snow melts, a stream flows down the valley to nourish the land.

It can be said that all life in the valley is based on the melting snow above the snow line.

"This should be a crater." Cheng Qi boldly guessed that the boundary of altitude is not so obvious, but the change of species is too fast. It has far exceeded the threshold of a 100-meter altitude increase and a drop in temperature of 0.6 degrees Celsius. Therefore, he ventured to guess that there might indeed be a geothermal surge at the bottom of the valley to bring the temperature of the valley floor to temperate levels.

Huang Yang touched the soil on the surface, pinched the black clay rich in organic matter with his hand, and said, "The soil here is completely different from the grassland, and I heard that there are still large wild animals." ”

It was too late, and they seemed to hear the roar of an animal faintly coming from deep in the dense forest ahead.

"Tiger?" Cheng Qi put the shotgun in his hand and asked uncertainly.

Huang Yang was holding a large-caliber pistol in his left hand and a hunting knife in his right hand, and he was also very unsure: "Do you want to go and see?" ”

Cheng Qi hesitated for a while, but his reason still suppressed his curiosity.

"Let's wait until we're done to see it."

"Okay, let's let it go." Huang Yang turned in very calmly, and the two crossed a bridge together, just in time to see a hunter passing by with explosives on his back. He greeted the two little brothers: "Hey, can you do me a favor?" The mayor told me to put the explosives under the bridge and set up the traps so that as soon as the Uighurs came, we would turn them into chickens. ”

Cheng Qi looked at the river beach: "This water is not deep, they can come even if they are dripping." ”

Orion said: "Mr. Huang said that if you can't bite a dead person, you can still disgust people." Anyway, this plank bridge didn't take a lot of effort to build. It would be good to be able to add chaos to the Uighurs. ”

After the trap was laid, a low horn sounded from the entrance to the valley to the west. Huang Yang raised his eyes and said, "It's time for the Uighurs to come." ”

Cheng Qi felt a little fluttering in his heart: "It should be." ”

For some reason, he remembered Zhang Yan, the decisive and cruel enchantress who had done all the things she had done with him, and all of a sudden came to mind—until Huang Yang dragged him into the woods, waiting for the Uighurs to come.

At the entrance to the valley, Uighurs of about 500 men were marching slowly into the valley. They were from the same tribe, and the leader was Herahan, a tribal chief in his forties. He is powerful and bloodthirsty. Yesterday afternoon, it was he who personally led the warriors of his tribe to charge, and regardless of casualties, he rushed through the Xia army's defense line on a hill, and established the victory.

It was, of course, a pyrrhic victory. The Xia army was only more than 300 men, with only one company and a major in command, who occupied the high ground in accordance with the instructions of the infantry drill code, dug trenches with sapper shovels, and piled up the excavated soil in burlap bags into bunkers. There was even a sniper table for cross-firing. If there is a little more time, Xia Jun may also set up a rejection horse and a deer firewood. With such adequate defenses, the Uighurs stormed for one morning and one noon, killing and seriously wounding nearly 1,000 people, and countless more lightly wounded.

Until the afternoon, probably because the Xia army ran out of bullets and grenades, the Hrahan tribe rushed to the high ground, even in the white-knuckle battle, the Uighurs did not take advantage, the well-trained Xia army covered each other to form a battle group to withdraw from the position, even in the retreat maintained good order, not only the seriously wounded were transferred, even the bodies of their comrades who died in battle were mostly buried on the spot.

Herahan estimated that more than 100 of the Xia army of that company might have escaped in the end, and even if many of them were hung up, the Uighurs paid the price of more than 1,000 people, but only destroyed about 200 enemies and not all of them......

Although Herrahan did not attend a military academy, he also knew that the victory was not honorable.

When Herahhan was a child, he served as a laborer with his father, and the Xia kingdom was very wary of these Uighurs, not allowing them to join the army and gaining military exploits, but it could not let them be idle. Every time the kingdom's army set out, the Uighurs had to bring their own dry rations to serve the army—opening roads and rivers, building bridges in the mountains, supplying grain and grass, and building camps were all hard work for the Uighurs. It was also during his long career of labor that Herrahan learned some introductory knowledge of marching and fighting.

Naturally, he also knew how famous the kingdom army was, and how ruthless and ruthless it was to deal with the rebels.

On the road from Yibohai to Tocharian and Persia, there is still a Jingguan built by the Xia army with the heads of the rebellious tribes!

Right now, the fanatical black-clad missionaries are clamoring, "Restore the river to Yibo." "Want to create a new Uighur empire from the plateau to the Caspian Sea, bordering Persia.

Herahan also wanted to restore the glory of his ancestors, and battles such as the capture of the city of Keno had fully mobilized the bloodthirsty instinct in his bones, and that night he had a magical dream that his Uighur sons, like the Xia soldiers he had seen in his youth, were bloodthirsty, ferocious, and invincible, and cut off the heads of those hateful Han, Persian, Tajik, and Khitans as balls and kicks, pumped out their intestines to feed rats, and picked their babies on the tips of spears. Let their women be tactful under themselves......

He volunteered to lead his own tribe, along with a few more well-connected tribes, eastward to conquer the old Uighur lands of Yibohai. There are many Han people and many towns. Everywhere they went, they could go on a killing spree, turning everything they passed into a sea of fire and blood.

These 500 people are the elite he selected from his own tribe, all of them are men who have tried knives in Keno City, and it was their last charge yesterday that broke the last line of defense of the Xia army - although he also paid some price, but the "military" Herrahan knew that in order to make these herdsmen real soldiers, they must add a little scar to their bodies, and they can't achieve real warriors by just stabbing civilians!

He let his two sons walk slowly behind with the rest of the tribe, and he led the five hundred men first, firstly, he wanted to sharpen the team of five hundred people and grow into a reliable team as soon as possible. But there may not be much time left for him—Herahan himself knew that a single garrison of the kingdom could inflict such losses on the Uighur "rebel army" with five enemies, and that when the battle-hardened veterans of the kingdom were transferred back from Tocharian and Khorasan, the only thing that awaited the Uighurs was the destruction of their tribes.

But if you can pick up a reliable team, the vast steppe will not have a place for the tribesmen of Herahan. From the very beginning, he had made up his mind to go east, eastward into the Tianshan steppe in the east. It is not only rich but also peaceful. It was there that the Uighur revival was based.

Hezhong or Yibo was too close to the center of Xia rule. Here, Herahan knew that there was no hope of re-establishing the Uighur regime.

The only headache for Herrahan was the fanatical black-clad missionaries, who were so attached to the mission that they put everything behind it, and sometimes even did a lot of unnecessary things just to vent their missionary feelings.

In the city of Keno, for example, the people in the churches had already surrendered and even promised to be slaves to the Uighurs. But the black-clad missionaries chose to set fire to the church, and burned more than 100 people alive. Herahan was not a soft-hearted man, but he did not see any objection to such senseless slaughter—proper killing would temper warriors and terrorize the enemy. But such a ruthless killing of civilians can only show the world their cruelty.

Herahan could imagine how the Xia kingdom would have been furious when they discovered the tragedy of the city of Kino, and would have to punish the Uighurs, which Herrahan would have felt terrible to think about, according to the tradition of revenge in the steppe. In order to avoid this terrible revenge, he decided to take his tribesmen out of the mountain pass as soon as possible, to the Tianshan Mountains, to the Donghu grassland, and to leave the Xia people as far away as possible. After all, the world is big, in addition to the Xia people, there are also Liao people, and Song people. Their land is also vast and fat. If they are strong, they can work for them, and if they are weak, they can take their wealth! This is the simplest logic of the steppe man, and it is also the future he has planned for his tribe.

But to realize this future, we must first pass through this valley in front of us, and this valley seems to be a little strange and silent.