PS: Chapter 2 is around 12 o'clock

The autumn is high and the horses are fat, and Yu Xi's cavalry is also preparing to set off. The pen "fun" pavilion www.biquge.info his station in the territory of the county called "Mayi", which is the thirteenth county of Taiyuan County, which was only set up last year, because of the large number of war horses gathered, so it is called Mayi. There is a joke in Jinyang City, that is, there are not as many people as horses in Mayi......

This is true, 1,500 people, this is three-fifths of the Zhao cavalry, two thousand horses, this is three-quarters of the horses that can be supplied by the whole county of Taiyuan, all concentrated here.

With so many men and horses having exhausted all of Mayi's grain reserves, Zhao Wuxian clearly told Yu Xi that if he could not defeat Daiguo this autumn and occupy the fertile pastures of Daibei, then Mayi would not be able to raise cavalry next year, and the county would face retrenchment.

Like Mu Xia, Yu Xi also made preparations in Ma Yi for more than half a year, he forced the cavalry from Jin and Lu to adapt to cheese and jerky, and few people just vomited and diarrhea like Yu Xi first ate buttermilk, and some people boldly protested: "There are Di in the north, and there are people who do not eat grains, isn't it the same as them when we do this!" ”

"Look at you." Yu Xi was not polite, and pointed to the outfits on everyone's bodies: the short-sleeved Di people's clothes and clothes.

"There is no need to deny that our dress, riding on a horse and galloping with archery, is imitating the northern Di people, this dress is more convenient for life and hunting, compared with the Central Plains military chariots, apprentices, with greater flexibility and mobility, this is Rong Di's strength."

He raised the head of the sword and said: "The advantage of the armor soldier, the strength of the bow, this is China's strength, Shangqing and Beidi, China's long, to create the Zhao cavalry, our talent to come like a bird, go like a string, gallop China and rarely have opponents." ”

"But the enemy we faced this time was different, Hu Raccoon and Dai Ren, both warriors on horseback, a five-year-old child who could ride a sheep, draw a bow and shoot birds and rats, and a little older could shoot foxes and rabbits for food. The adult men of the tribe drew their bows, all wore felt, and fought on horseback. When there is no war, they are nomadic at will, shooting birds and animals as their occupation; When the situation is urgent, everyone will practice offensive skills in order to invade and plunder ......"

"The grasslands and the land are the homes of their generations, and if we want to win the war, we must also adapt to the grasslands, cheese and jerky, which are the lightest rations on the grasslands, and a little at a time is enough to feed us for half a day. As for the beans and sorghum in your pocket, they are for the horses, and if you are not afraid that the horses will be thin and weak before the battle, it is okay to eat them! ”

Everyone obeyed, according to Yu Xi's request to ride and shoot on the grassland outside the horse, and the reason why Yu Xi took such painstaking efforts was because he knew that after the autumn harvest, this group of cavalry would really go deep into the region, they had no flanks, no rear, and the wounded soldiers would not be able to get timely help and treatment, and after the dry food they brought with them was eaten, if they did not have the ability to supply on the spot, they could only starve.

It would be an extremely arduous expedition, and their distance was not comparable to that of the foot soldiers of Commander Musha, a distance of eight hundred miles!

Zhao Wuxian was the planner of this route, while Yidun and Yu Xi were the executors: "Starting from Mayi, going north along the river valley at the western foot of Guanqin Mountain, passing through Loufu, fertile water, and deep into the grassland, after a simple supply and rest in Daihai, from the south of Hongshan into the northern part of Daiguo......"

When Mucha made a note and advanced along the Sanggan River, attracting the main force of the generation to intercept it, Yu Xi wanted to carry out an unprecedented strategic detour!

"Eight hundred miles, we need to walk it in ten days, because Mucha agreed with me that we will see you in the city after half a month!"

If they were foot soldiers, they would never be able to do it, even if they broke their legs, they would not be able to move that far in ten days!

But the cavalry could.

"'The Son of Heaven commanded me, and the city was on the other side. Hehe Nanzhong, Xuanqi Yuxiang! 'Yu Xi, you are my Nanzhong! Reading the expectations for himself in the letter, holding the long sword given by the lord, at the beginning of September, Yu Xi also swore to the north! Get out of the car Peng Peng, and get out of the car!

……

Lou annoying people have always considered themselves to be the Rong people, and they belong to the same clan as the dog Rong and Dai Rong, they live on the edge of farming and nomadism, and live a life of half-farming and half-herding. From the beginning of the period of King Cheng of Zhou, Lou Fu is divided, there are more than 1,000 people in small tribes, and hundreds of dozens of people are few, except for those big tribes and big city-states that control trade with the Jin State and Hezong clan, most of them live a poor and chaotic life.

However, the history of Lou annoying people was completely changed in the autumn of this year, a small tribe of more than 100 people north of Guanqin Mountain, the deafening hoof sound woke Lou annoying people from their sleep, I thought it was a neighboring tribal city-state to come to plunder, opened the felt tent to see, but was stunned by everything in front of me.

On a withered yellow grassland, more than a thousand knights lined up in several long formations to move forward, as if a black dragon was flying on the vast grassland, and Xiao Xiaoran's horse roared one after another. When they galloped on the high slope, they couldn't help but look at this tribe of Loufu, and even divided dozens of horses to run towards them.

The patriarch was nervous, and led the whole clan to greet him, timidly watching the army cross. However, when he saw that the comer had passed through this place with caravans many times, he breathed a sigh of relief and asked in a low voice what had happened.

Lou annoying class is simple, and he doesn't understand what Shangqing and ruling are, so Yi Dun is also concise: "Daiguo angered the king of the Zhao people, sent a large military region to attack, passing through here, you need to support food, horses, and please donate all the jerky and cheese in the tribe, as well as the horses that can run!" ”

"All the cheese, the horses?" The patriarch repeated the words in a low voice, and his heart was unwilling.

But can they say no? Since the old patriarch remembered, so many horseback riders and more than a thousand cavalry have run over the grassland at one time, which is enough to conquer half of the building! Looking at the half-stretched crossbows in the hands of those cavalrymen, he knew that he could not disobey, otherwise he might incur the destruction of the clan!

He showed a miserable smile, raised his hands that were as dry as old trees, and bent down deeply to Yidun and pleaded: "Without the meat and cheese, we still have cows, sheep and wild vegetables, and we can survive this winter, but without horses, how can we graze in the future?" ”

Chinese people often think that Rongdi in northern Xinjiang herds horses for a living, so horses are as cheap as dung and can be easily obtained, but in fact, this is a huge misunderstanding. Hurong's main livestock are cattle and sheep, and horses are only tools for grazing, so the number is much smaller than that of cattle and sheep, and usually a tribe of 1,000 people has up to more than 100 horses.

A bag of copper coins was thrown at his feet: "This is an exchange, if you can't survive, you will migrate to the border of the Jin Kingdom before the snowfall, as long as you show your submission and become the Zhao family's household Qi Min, you will naturally get pastures and fields." ”

After saying that, he left by himself, took the only twenty or so horses of this tribe, and followed the army to the next tribe, leaving only the patriarch of Lou Fu crying with a sad face, holding a bag of Kong Fang money that could not be eaten or worn and looked at the smoke and dust raised by Zhao Qi in a daze......

……

On the fifth day of the march, Zhao Qi left the pasture of the Loufu tribe and officially entered the grass hinterland.

Wide, empty plains stretched out beneath them, flat and vast to the end of the stretch. It's like an ocean. The hills and mountains are gone, and even the woods, city-states, and roads are gone, but the endless grasslands, the wind and clouds are surging, the yellow blades of grass are swinging like waves, and the whole world is bronze.

A falcon hovered high above the deep blue sky, overlooking Zhao Cai's lonely army deep into the grassland, accompanied by the horse's hooves splashing withered grass and sand, like a sandstorm.

This is the fourth time Yu Xi has passed through this place, and he has traveled to and from this grassland trade route several times in the past year, officially in order to familiarize himself with the road and prepare for the expedition.

When they left from the Loufu Realm, their number of horses had reached 2,500, and Yu Xi's goal was to gather 3,000 horses before entering the Dai Kingdom, reaching the combat strength of one person and two horses......

They continued to sweep the tribes along the way, the grassland since the first shepherd, is a piece of loose sand, in the southern foot of the Yin Mountain, this grassland of more than 1,000 miles from east to west, different clans, totems, blood relatives have created hundreds of small tribes, fragmented.

Generally speaking, a tribe with dozens of miles of pasture has less than 100 adult men in the upper and lower tribes. Mo said that under the threat of more than a thousand Zhao cavalry, he had no power to fight back, and even the Donghu tribe that Yu Xi and others met before who moved westward could make them bend their knees and surrender with two or three hundred cavalry. So most of them surrendered and contributed their cheese and horses.

However, as the dry food was increasingly consumed, Yu Xi ordered that even the live cattle and sheep in the tribes along the way should not be spared! Slaughtered on the spot and eaten on the spot, only a pile of intestines and bones remains.

Nomadic tribes are by no means as wealthy as people in China think, their livelihoods depend on the sky, and a single snowstorm or plague is enough to wipe out a thriving tribe, even if they graze all year round, in the autumn and winter they have few supplies and can barely survive.

Therefore, in order to survive this winter, some tribes also took risks and chose to rebel in order to survive the few cheeses and cattle and sheep left.

But the end was tragic, the continuous felt tents were ablaze, the people wailed and begged for mercy, all the Hu tribes who expressed their willingness to resist were slaughtered, ruthlessly destroyed by more than a thousand bows and crossbows, the chieftains were trampled into pulp by Yu Xi's horses, all the men who were taller than the wheels were killed, and the women and children were dispersed and left to fend for themselves, spreading fear by the way......

"Will they hate and retaliate?" Yu Xi asked Yidun.

"Yes, but they are more afraid, surrendering to the strong, and at the same time doing everything in their power to bully the weak is the instinct of the people of the steppe. Fear leads to submission and obedience, as well as a steady stream of people, horses, cattle and sheep. ”

Yi Dun could foresee the huge shock that Zhao's intervention would bring to the grassland, and they would either be sporadically incorporated into Zhao Shangqing's new grassland order, or they would choose to escape to the north of Yin Mountain and continue to live their original lives.

It was like a huge palm that swept over a pile of separate ant nests, casting a huge shadow, that is, from this expedition, the history of the steppe was completely changed...... (To be continued.) )