These domestic quarrels did not affect the trips of the Three Strangers. After resting for a while in Tianyi City, the capital of the Great Xia Kingdom, they told their readers in China that the three rangers were going to continue their journey—to find the traces of the long-lost Tang army.

Although the "wishful thinking" of these young people is considered by the mainstream academic circles to be unworthy of mention—after so many years, the archaeological excavations have been almost excavated, and the Tang Dynasty has not been active in the west of the Green Mountains for a long time, and the ruins left behind have been almost destroyed by the subsequent empires.

However, the people just like this, especially in the current atmosphere, excavating Han and Tang cultural relics in the vast area west of the Green Mountains to Persia to prove the legitimacy of the rule of this dynasty is also an important work of the Western Xia Kingdom.

Don't forget, the royal family of the Great Xia Dynasty is surnamed Li, who claims to be a descendant of Tang Suzong!

Under the guidance of such thoughts, an elegant royal family of the Great Xia Kingdom also met with these young men. The three strangers had a good impression of this noble man who was not much different in age. Cheng Qi wrote for the Bianjing Mainichi Yomiuri Shimbun that "this prince has an elegant manner, an extraordinary conversation, and his wisdom is very commensurate with his appearance, and I can see in him the hope of the ruling class of a country......"

Guo Shan also mentioned in his article for Luoyang's "Luoshui Times": "He is a prince who is very good at grasping people's hearts, and he is very clear about his country's culture and the world's hot spots. When we spoke of the misfortune that had just passed, the benevolent prince shed tears and exclaimed—the land of the ancestors, the people of the ancestors! ”

Huang Yang recalled in an essay he completed later: "There are such handsome characters in the world! The prince's foresight was gratifying, and he believed that in the future, under his rule, Chinese civilization would surely become more prosperous. ”

After replenishing their provisions, the three strangers continued to march south, and it was safe and easy to follow the main road along the way, but the further south they went, the more checkpoints and outposts there were on the way, and the people seemed to be more fierce, as can be seen by the bounty medals and human heads hanging at the gates of the town, which also served as fortresses.

The continental climate in the interior has made the three strangers far away from the monsoon area feel uncomfortable, and facing the bare mountains around him, Cheng Qi only wants to miss two lines of poetry: withered vines and old trees, faint crows, and ancient roads with west winds and thin horses......

When I was in the south of the Yangtze River, I felt that Luoyang and Chang'an were already arid in the north, and when I arrived in Luoyang, I felt that Lanzhou was far away in the sky. And only when you go to the lofty mountains of the Hindu Kush can you truly understand what it means to be outside the Eight Wildernesses.

Hindu Kush is a transliteration, but it is actually a combination of two words: Hindu has a more popular translation called India (or Sanskrit), and Kush means kingdom. Taken together, it roughly means the high mountains of India.

The Hindu Kush is a high mountain located in the middle of the World Island and an important source of water for the surrounding area. This region was so important that the Xia king did not dare to entrust it to any of his henchmen, and the Xia kingdom established the provinces of Hezhong in the northeast, Tocharian in the middle, Khorasan in the west, and Punjab in the south.

Little is known about traditional Chinese historiography, and even powerful classical empires such as the Han and Tang dynasties had actual control over a few regions north of the Hindu Kush Mountains, such as Sogdia (Zhaowu Jiu – Tang dynasty) and Ferghana Valley (Dawan – Western Han Dynasty). As for the Tocharian, Chandra, and Punjab regions, they often had to exert influence through monks seeking Buddhism and merchants on the Silk Road, and the heavenly grace of the imperial court was infinitely close to zero.

But from the perspective of less Sinocentric world historiography, the Hindu Kush and its environs are no longer "beyond the Eight Wildernesses" that the power of the Central Dynasty could not exert, but an important imperial lifeline.

Ancient Persian Empire, Macedonian Empire, Sassanid Persia, Arab Abbasid Empire...... Many empires that came out of the periphery of the Two Rivers Valley eventually came here. Before the Xia people moved westward, the only head-on collision between the Chinese civilization and the Taixi civilization also occurred here.

Now the Hindu Kush Mountains are under the rule of the Xia people, slowly incorporated into the Chinese civilization system, the Buddhist scriptures that were once abandoned due to the war have been gradually restored, and the ancient Silk Road has also been injected with new vitality because of the unification of the regime.

But until now, every map sold to tourists and daring adventurers has green, yellow, and orange areas in prominent lettering—and in the early days there were red areas.

The green zone is a safe zone, and the central town is a densely populated oasis where the Persians and Tocharians are at peace and the Tibetans and Turks are happy. This is the heart of the trade routes, and it is the place where conquerors throughout the ages have washed themselves with their swords and hot blood. For now, the Xia people are still a good conqueror.

The yellow area is a small town on the edge of a small oasis, where there are restless pioneers and thieves who have stolen their identities, and when the soldiers and horses of the imperial court pass by, they are good citizens who keep to themselves, but when they encounter a lone traveler, they will immediately turn into a vicious people.

The sheriff may be the biggest thug here, and there may be a well-run small society in the cottage - all in all, the romance of the west, and the feud of the swordsmen and horses are all vividly displayed here.

If the yellow area is the gray area that wanders on the edge of the law, then the orange area may be the result of the royal court also abandoning treatment. It is densely populated with hundreds of tribes, large and small, each with its own unique culture and traditions. The Xia Kingdom is in an era of rapid expansion, and in addition to exterminating those trouble-making birds, it is difficult to take care of them most of the time. The imperial court and those people in the poor mountains and bad waters, just like the Central Plains Dynasty and the Yi people in the southwest region, are mainly fetters, and they are peacemakers, and everyone is safe and sound—of course, this is only for now.

According to the results of the envoys from the Great Xia Kingdom to the Song Kingdom to inspect the southwest, the kingdom may have to "change the land and return to the stream" at any time.

Cheng Qi and they followed a group of Buddhists from the mainland to the location of the famous Bamiyan Buddha - Bamiyan County