It has been four days since Guo Sheng and the others entered the territory of the Yarkand Khanate, and the scouts who were in charge of monitoring the two checkpoints of the Grand Canyon of Horsehair Mountain and the Dangjin Pass did not find any abnormal conditions, and the infiltration plan of Guo Sheng and the others was very successful. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

This is really thanks to the treacherous environment of the Xinjiang region, Guo Sheng and others crossed the Altun Mountains, and directly entered the east of the Taklamakan Desert, the desert area is inaccessible, especially near the edge of the Altyn Mountains, almost hundreds of miles are no man's land, and it is difficult to be discovered by the people of the Yarkand Khanate.

The capital of the Yarkand Khanate was located in the Taklamakan Desert, and if Guo Sheng's troops wanted to reach their destination, they needed to cross the Taklamakan Desert, the largest desert in Asia.

The Taklamakan Desert, which means "place where you can't get in and out" in Uyghur language, is often referred to as the "Sea of Death".

It is located in the center of the Tarim Basin in southern Xinjiang, the whole desert is about 1,000 kilometers long from east to west, about 400 kilometers wide from north to south, with a total area of 337,600 square kilometers, it is the largest desert in Asia, second only to the Sahara Desert in Africa, so it is called the "Taklamakan Desert", which is the second largest mobile desert in the world.

The locals know the power of the Taklamakan Desert, so they naturally do not choose to live here, so it is a natural concealment for the march of Guo Sheng and others.

However, even the locals dare not set foot here easily, Guo Sheng, a mere 3,000 people, really dare to cross this "sea of death"?

In fact, it is an exaggeration for the locals to call it the "Sea of Death", not to mention that there are no less than 20 rivers in the Taklamakan Desert alone, from the Kunlun Mountains from south to north, with a length of more than 200 kilometers.

The Kunlun Mountains are covered with snow all year round and have abundant water reserves, which can fully guarantee that these rivers will not be swallowed up by the desert.

Moreover, these rivers are very evenly distributed, and it can be said that from east to west, almost every fifty or sixty kilometers or so, a river will be encountered.

Therefore, as long as Guo Sheng and others do not go to the center of the desert and choose to walk to the south, the problem of water source can be easily solved.

It's such a simple thing, but why don't the locals understand it?

The main reason is that the environment of the desert is complex and changeable, there is no accurate direction, or it is similar to the guidance of landmarks, it is difficult for people to distinguish the correct direction in the desert.

Fortunately, Guo Sheng and they don't need to worry at all, the so-called standing high and seeing far, there is a hot air balloon in the sky to guide the way, and they are afraid of going in the wrong direction?

Although all the hidden dangers of crossing the desert were easily solved, Guo Sheng and the others still encountered a trouble.

To be precise, it is not a trouble, that is, a group of infantry marching in the desert, the speed is too slow, at most fifty or sixty miles a day is the limit, at this speed, to reach the west of Yarkand (Yarkand is also established in the Taklamakan Desert, and the straight-line distance from the diving site of Guo Sheng and his party is about 700 kilometers), even if there are no accidents, it will take about a month.

Of course, if there is a war horse and you choose to take the official road, it only takes four or five days to reach it.

This is also the main reason why Li Hongfei only gave Guo Sheng five days to attack, even the intelligence station of the National Security Bureau has carrier pigeons, does the Yarkand Khanate not have this kind of communication?

According to the speed at which the Western Regions sweat and blood BMW can travel thousands of miles a day (although it is a bit exaggerated, it is no problem to run six or seven hundred miles in one day and one night), as long as it is in the territory of the Yarkand Khanate, the other party can transfer back the army from any part of the country in five days.

Sweat and blood BMW is indeed a good thing, but it's a pity that Guo Sheng and his party don't talk about sweat and blood BMW, they don't even have ordinary Mongolian war horses, and they don't dare to take the official road with light and simple obedience, otherwise let alone sneak attack, it is estimated that in less than three days, they will have to become a rogue in the territory of the Yarkand Khanate.

Without war horses, and unable to take the more convenient official road (the official road can march day and night, and can effectively save the physical strength of soldiers, the speed is at least twice as fast as the desert march), Guo Sheng and others' marching speed is greatly reduced.

"There are no war horses, we have airships!"

Guo Sheng looked up at the sky, looking at the airships walking in the sky, and suddenly had a flash of inspiration.

They had crossed the Altyn Mountains before, and they had come by airship, so they were familiar with it.

The speed of the airship can reach 25 kilometers per hour, that is to say, the airship flies for one hour, which is equivalent to a day's march of Guo Sheng and others, and the airship can walk in a straight line in the sky, unlike the ground march, climbing and descending, and sometimes having to worry about quicksand traps.

In order to speed up the march, Guo Sheng let an airship rise to a height of 2000 meters to guide the way, and the rest of the airships were all 20 meters close to the ground, each flight for an hour and a half (in order to be more accurate timing, the military has begun to improve the timing method, calculated in seconds, minutes, and hours), no matter how far it flew, all the soldiers on the airship directly carried out the rope landing, and then the airship returned to carry the next wave of soldiers and weapons and equipment.

Although the airship had to fly back and forth three times to transport 3,000 soldiers and supplies, including the time to get on and off the airship, and it took a total of four hours to make a round trip, it was completely fine to carry all the soldiers and advance seventy or eighty kilometers a day.

Moreover, the first batch of soldiers after landing did not rest in place, but took advantage of the fact that it was still early, and would grope again to continue walking for more than ten kilometers, leaving marks along the way.

In this way, the second group of soldiers who landed could find the first group according to the markers, and the last group of soldiers would take the airship directly to the final camp just before dark.

After reasonable distribution, Guo Sheng's team can travel about 90 kilometers every day, and if nothing happens, it will only take eight days at most to reach Yarkand City.........

In the Ming Dynasty, in Jiayu Pass, half a month has passed since Li Hongfei issued a first-level combat readiness order.

After the first few days of nervous tension, Li Hongfei's mood relaxed, as long as he was not discovered by the enemy in the early stage, the further he went, the higher the chance of winning.

As for the news of Guo Sheng and his entourage, in Li Hongfei's opinion, it will take at least a month to come.

So during this time, Li Hongfei began to inspect the border guards, although most of the national defense forces have entered Mongolia to participate in the war, but there are too many Mongolian refugees stranded on the border of the Ming Dynasty, and the Ministry of Defense has to transfer some troops to continue to guard the various stations.

First, to ensure the normal transfer of military supplies.

The second is to deter those with ulterior motives, after all, the Mongols have just joined the Ming nationality, and it is inevitable that they will feel a little uneasy, once this emotion is used, it is easy to cause large-scale riots.

The purpose of Li Hongfei's inspection was to appease the Mongolian people who were sheltered by the guards, or to contact the local yamen to arrange work for them, or to contact the leaders of various tribes to directly lead the people under his rule to return to Mongolia and rebuild their homes.

After all, in just over 20 days, the Wehrmacht has advanced more than 400 miles to the north, and some of the tribes' territory has been recaptured by the Ming Dynasty, so it's time to rebuild their homes.

On this day, Li Hongfei had just finished inspecting Liangzhou Wei, and was planning to go to the barracks to have dinner with several generals at the invitation of the local defenders, but a flying pigeon message came from Jiayuguan, so that Li Hongfei had to change his itinerary and return to Jiayuguan overnight.

The first thing Li Hongfei did when he returned to Jiayuguan was to recruit Yang Song from the National Security Bureau.

"Yang Song, you said in your letter that your people came with news yesterday that Guo Sheng led his army to Yarkand City, and in just one hour, he captured the east gate of Yarkand City. Tell me what's going on! Li Hongfei asked Yang Song eagerly.

The biggest disadvantage of the flying pigeon book is that it can only explain only a few words, after all, the brush words take up too much space, if the explanation is too detailed, the paper will be more, and it is difficult for the carrier pigeon to bring it back.

So although the good news came, Li Hongfei was still confused, Altun Mountain is more than 700 kilometers away from Yarkand City, how could Guo Sheng's group of infantry arrive in Yarkand City in just ten days.

Even if the Wehrmacht is well-trained, and the soldiers are capable of long-distance raids, they are just a group of infantry, so is it possible to put on wings and fly over?

Another point is that, according to the previous intelligence summary, although Yarkand City is a city built in the desert, the monarchs of the Yarkand Khanate have repaired this city wall in successive generations, and the defense capability of the city wall is not much worse than that of the city at the level of Daming Prefecture.

Guo Sheng and his entourage did not have heavy artillery, how did they capture a city gate in just one hour?

"Lord Qiqi, this is all the news from this early morning until now, you will understand after reading it." Yang Song didn't know how to explain for a while, and directly handed over all the news from Yarkand City to Li Hongfei for a look.

"Damn, you really flew over, worthy of the Air Force!" While Li Hongfei was flipping through the information, he couldn't help but burst out with a foul language.

It wasn't until he read all the letters that Li Hongfei not only knew how Guo Sheng and others marched quickly, but also understood why they were able to capture Yarkand City in such a short period of time with only 3,000 troops (according to the follow-up letters, Guo Sheng and his party had successfully captured Yarkand City and captured all the royal family members in the city).

Using airships to establish an air route, even Li Hongfei didn't teach them, and it was completely explored by Guo Sheng and others.

As for taking the entire Yarkand City in only half a day, it is a bit dramatic to say.

It turned out that Guo Sheng's airship troops, even if they had been walking in a straight line in the desert, but there was no accurate map to refer to, in order to avoid exposing the target, they could only rely on the powerful reconnaissance ability of the airship, whenever they encountered a village in the desert (near the water source, occasionally the village of the local people could be found), it was directly bypassed.

This means that they must not be too far away from the local area, but they must also be as hidden as possible so that they will not be discovered.

However, on the tenth day of the march, Guo Sheng and his entourage strangely found that the village in the distance seemed to be a little large, and it was not easy for the airship to get around.

As a last resort, Guo Sheng had the airship land thirty miles outside the village, and sent scouts to the village to scratch their tongues to see where they had arrived and whether it was possible to bypass the area.

At first, Guo Sheng thought that this was Pishan County in Yarkand, because according to time, Pishan County should be the closest.

Pishan County is only more than 80 kilometers away from Yarkand City, just like Beijing and Tianjin in the Ming Dynasty, and belongs to the Gongwei City of the national capital.

However, after some investigation, Guo Sheng and the others learned that due to the natural barrier advantage of the "Sea of Death", Yarkand City did not have a city to defend in the east at all, and those "villages" that could be easily bypassed before were Pishan County.

Limited by geographical environment and population constraints, in addition to the two Acropolis with a population of tens of thousands in the west and south, the Acropolis in the Taklamakan Desert in the east has a population of basically no more than 1,000, so Guo Sheng naturally regarded the Acropolis as a village...........

And this "village" in front of you, which is difficult to bypass, is actually the outer area of Yarkand City.

That's right, the capital of a country, its outer area is just a larger village in the eyes of Guo Sheng and others.

The unexpected joy that suddenly came made Guo Sheng and the others a little incredulous, not to mention that the attack that was expected to be a month was greatly reduced, and they also came to the weakest area of the enemy's defense by mistake.

Among them, in addition to the airships of the Ming army, the so-called "natural barrier" of Yarkand City has become the biggest help for the Ming army to easily penetrate behind enemy lines.

Of course, arriving at Yarkand City does not mean that Guo Sheng and others can easily capture this city, even if it is a sneak attack, in the absence of heavy artillery, breaking the door in an hour, even those ace field troops of the Ministry of Defense dare not boast of this Haikou.

The reason why it was said that the city of Yarkand was captured dramatically was not out of ridicule, because the 3,000 defenders in the city were easily captured with almost no resistance.

It turned out that when he learned that the front was Yarkand City, Guo Sheng began to think about the way to break the city, and the continuous high-intensity use of airships in the past few days made him realize the benefits of the airborne troops.

That night, Guo Sheng personally led 2,700 soldiers into the village........ No, it was to touch the periphery of the Yarkand Imperial City and pretend to lurk.

Early the next morning, Yang Xiu led 200 special combat personnel to take an airship and forcibly descend into the city.

There were still more than 100 soldiers left on the airship, and they kept throwing grenades into the city below, covering Yang Xiu and his party to seize control of the city gate.

Guo Sheng's plan was simple, let the special forces carry out a rope landing and open a gap from the city, and the grenades thrown from the sky to the ground were fire support for the special forces.

Once the special forces occupy the east gate of Yarkand City, more than 2,700 national defense troops outside the city will be able to take the opportunity to kill them in one fell swoop..........