At the east gate of Zhenyuan Mansion, countless torches were lit, as bright as day.

It's just that Zhenyuan Mansion is too big, the east gate is dozens of miles away from the Mongolian and Jurchen camps, and outside the east city wall is the Asu River, they can't patrol, so no matter how bright and noisy it is, they can't find it.

All the troops that accompanied Lian Zining on the expedition had already arrived here.

The east gate is a water gate, which is both a gate and a sluice, which blocks the rushing water of the Asov River outside the city, and in the city, it is a deep and wide nullah that winds for hundreds of meters, and at the end of the nullah, is a wide lake with a square circle and mathematical theory. Here, it is the source of drinking water for Zhenyuan Mansion, and at the same time, there is also a stream of water flowing to the General's Mansion located in the inner city of Xishenwei.

At this time, there were hundreds of large boats moored in the lake, all covered with black cloth, and there was nothing to see in them.

Fifteen thousand cavalrymen of the three guards were all present, and they stood on the ground, accompanied by their horses, stroking the hair of their most trusted companions, some feeding them soybeans, and others leaning on their companions, holding their arms and closing their eyes. There are a few experienced veterans, but at this time they are sleeping soundly, accumulating enough physical strength for the upcoming battle.

The lower-ranking officers kept walking up and down the ranks, and they did not restrain the behavior of the soldiers, except for some who were really unsightly.

A huge team of tens of thousands of people, but it is not noisy and chaotic. It's very orderly.

This is in stark contrast to the 10th guard on the other side.

Although the Jurchens of the tenth guard are also lined up, they are crooked, like dead snakes, and they are also silent and quiet, but this quiet. But it's the kind of dead silence that can't see the future. At a glance, most of them are old and weak, women and children. His expression was discouraged and his eyes were glazed. Han Chinese officers and loyal dogs selected from the Jurchens walked around the procession with leather whips. As long as you see something strange about it. Immediately, a burst of whips flung over, and the Jurchen was beaten and screamed and cried.

The Han people have never been strangers to methods such as winning people's hearts or how to rectify people, and it has been several months since the formation of the Tenth Guard, and Xia Zikai has also cultivated many spokesmen among those slave-like Jurchens.

To find these people, it is very simple, you only need to intensify the contradictions among the Jurchens, and then support one of them, so that the conflict will erupt, and it is better to die a little more perfect. Among them, the handful of people who were stained with the blood of their own kind. It has become an object that can be cultivated.

The so-called spokesmen, they are no longer slave soldiers, but have become officers, vested interests. Originally, all the officers were Han Chinese, but Xia Zikai raised them and gave them a very small part of the power—even if it was only a small part, it was enough to make them grateful to Dade.

When they saw the miserable situation of their fellow tribesmen around them, and thought about themselves again, they were extremely content, and they became more diligent in attaining their masters.

Maybe it's because of being of the same race. They bullied the Jurchens, even more ruthlessly than the Han officers. And this kind of behavior also made them actively close to Xia Zikai's side.

The appearance of these people greatly divided and dissolved the Jurchens' sense of resistance and non-cooperation, and also made Xia Zikai know everything about the Jurchens and control the 20,000 slave soldiers more firmly. Even their appearance made the other Jurchens see hope, and their attitudes even became positive.

The eyes of the three guards around him who looked at the tenth guard were a little strange - cold eyes, even a little schadenfreude. As soldiers of the Wu Yi Army, they have a high sense of identity and pride in this collective. It's not as transparent as the senior officers know, so they are actually quite dissatisfied with the existence of these slave soldiers - what kind of thing, this is also worthy of our Wu Yi Army? …,

Lian Zining quietly appeared surrounded by a group of dragoons, and when he saw the hunting banner waving in the wind, everyone quieted down, the eyes of the cavalry were full of respect and love, and the eyes of those slave soldiers looked at him with hatred and fear.

Lian Zining sat on the horse, his eyes slowly swept around, and wherever he saw the area, the soldiers involuntarily straightened their waists, their eyes full of solemnity.

Lian Zining nodded and didn't say anything, just nodded heavily and waved his hand heavily.

Wang Dachun rode to the lake and shouted a few times, and the black cloth on the big boats was lifted from the inside, and it turned out that there were already people on it, but the lights were not lit. Although the big ship is far less spectacular than the Fushan ship that Lian Zining took when he went to Fusang, it is also expensive, with a length of thirty or forty meters - this size, in the Daming Navy, it can only be regarded as a small boat, but the fleets of Magellan and Columbus who sailed the world at the same time are only of this scale.

If you fall into the eyes of an experienced old boatman, you will definitely think that the construction of this kind of ship is strange - the boat is very wide, the side of the ship is very low, and it is obviously an inland boat. What's even more bizarre is that there is a high fence around the ship, which is more than two meters high, and the ship is a wide and huge deck, not even a cabin, and countless large and small boxes are piled on the deck.

The boatmen laid the springboards, and the commanders of the guards had already discussed how the ships should be arranged, and the guards, the thousands and even the hundreds, had already been numbered. Each ship had a flag erected on it, and a large number was written on it in ink, and it was only necessary to find the number.

With Lian Zining's action, the ranks were boiling, and the cavalry of the three cavalry guards boarded their respective big ships under the organization of the general.

After going up, I found the advantages of these strange big boats, which are very stable, have a lot of space, and people don't feel too crowded when they go to a lot of horses, and those fences can not only prevent people and horses from falling into the water, but also tie horses on the spot.

The Jurchen slave soldiers were also punched and kicked by the officers and kicked onto the boat, and their treatment was not very good, there were many people, few boats, and they were huddled together in piles. made Lian Zining feel alive and feel like the black slaves who were trafficked to the Americas by Europeans in this era. Aren't they stuffed in a boat like canned sardines and going across the ocean?

The army all boarded the ship, and Lian Zining also boarded his own ship surrounded by the guards, and his ship was no different from other ships, if it was preferential. It's just that there are a few chairs fixed on it, so you can sit on it.

For the sake of these ships. Lian Zi would rather take pains, he has never been satisfied with developing on the south bank. It has never been his style to be bitten and swallowed, and he has had a plan to counterattack the Nuzhen very early. And how to cross the river has become a big problem.

So from stabilization. After having spare strength, Lian Zining ordered the shipbuilding to be built.

However, in this era, shipbuilding, and it is to build hundreds of not small ships, is not a small project, not to mention that this is the north, the shipbuilding industry is almost zero, but it is not the shipbuilding industry has flourished for thousands of years.

I had no choice but to lower my requirements.

Cabin, don't want it. The ship's side, lowering, decking, enlargement, and as for the women's wall, they were all abolished.

And so this thing was created.

This thing, with a shallow draft, and to be honest, can easily capsize the boat, and can only drive on inland rivers. You can't go to sea, and a slightly bigger storm can wipe out the fleet. And the driving speed is slow, and it is not easy to handle, in short, it has various defects. But there are also many advantages, such as a large carrying capacity, which can carry more cargo than ordinary ships. Another biggest advantage is that it is cheap and easy to manufacture, Lian Zining recruited thousands of fishermen, and recruited many boatwrights from the Guannai, so he made these boats himself. …,

Almost produced in a rustic workshop.

Anyway, his requirements are low, and he only operates in inland rivers.

In fact, tens of thousands of troops only occupied about eighty percent of the large ships, and among them, there were some large ships, and I don't know what they were loaded with, stacked high, still covered with black cloth outside, and guarded by soldiers with straight faces around, which was obviously very important.

Lian Zining sent out a signal on the boat, and the east gate gate was slowly raised, and the huge gate weighing tens of thousands of catties rubbed against the dragged iron chain, making a squeaky and squeaky sound, and with the lifting of the sluice, the water level was higher than the river in the city and poured in rapidly, and the water level began to level out.

Under the control of the boatmen, one by one the ships passed through the gate and sailed towards the dark and mighty Azov River outside.

Standing on the river, surrounded by surging river water, rolling by, into the eye, it is pitch black, and there is no end in sight.

This was just the beginning, and some landlubbers were already throwing up on the side of the boat.

On the upper floor of the East Gate City, Xiong Tingbi and a group of generals who stayed behind were silent, and bowed deeply to Lian Zining.

Lian Zining waved his hand and smiled slightly.

The last ship passed through the locks, and the gates slammed shut, and all the torches on all the ships were extinguished, leaving only a small red lantern hanging from the stern, lest the ships behind them find their companions.

The boatmen continued to paddle the oar, and the ship began to move north.

If you look at it from above, you can only see a series of small red dots, almost in a straight line, constantly moving on a pitch-black background.

The Azov River joins the Songhua River from south to north, and the fleet goes north, going down the river at a very fast pace.

It's just a little more than an hour, and you can hear the rumbling sound of the water getting louder and louder, like thunder, and you need to shout loudly even to talk to the people next to you.

Everyone knows that it is time to reach the entrance of the Asu River where it joins the Songhua River.

Under the illumination of countless stars in the night sky, the visibility of tonight is actually not low, if the Fuyuwei and Jurchen coalition forces set up sentry here, they will definitely find this huge fleet, but unfortunately, they didn't expect that Wu Yijun would dare to send a large army to the Jurchen mainland when they were surrounded by more than 100,000 troops outside!

I'm afraid that if I tell them now, they will scoff at them as a joke.

There was a wider, darker darkness.

Lian Zining stood on the boat, looked around, and saw the stars in the sky reflected in the water, as if falling into it, the stars in the sky were ten thousand points, and the same was true in the water, just like countless star diamonds.

This scene can be painted.

"It's so beautiful!" Nona praised softly

Lian Zining suddenly became a poet, and he wanted to compose a poem or two, and after thinking about it for a long time, he only wanted to come up with a 'trip to the sun and the moon, if out of it, the stars and men are brilliant, if out of it'. Think about whether you will plagiarize a few more lines of poetry from later generations. I thought it was very boring, so I gave up.

At this time, he no longer needed to obtain anything by copying poems.

What he needs is to expand his territory!

The fleet sailed into the Songhua River, but instead of going all the way north, it turned around. Turn your head to the east. The Songhua River was originally to the east, so that. It's smooth again, and the speed is faster, all the way non-stop.

The night went by. Soon. It's the daylight.

After dawn, the soldiers found that the scenery on both sides of the strait was only an endless dense forest, an endless, low-colored dense forest. From time to time there were bursts of birds, apes and beasts roaring in the forest, the river had become very stable here, the boats were moving, and there were big fish jumping out of the water from time to time on the side of the boat. Extremely fat.

There was a commotion on the river, and when they saw the light of day, the soldiers who had tossed for the night were also excited. …,

Some wild women and real men just scooped out their housekeeping skills, they walked by the boat, scooping a homemade wooden spear in their hands, their eyes widened, staring at the river without blinking, waiting for a black shadow to swim under the water, and then they stabbed down very quickly.

I saw that the river was churning violently, and it was obvious that something was struggling to flutter. Blood poured out, stained red. The man jerked out the wooden spear, and saw a large fish three feet long tied to it, which was pierced through, and the Wuzi was still fluttering and struggling, and strings of water droplets were thrown out, shining in the sun.

The man slammed the big fish on the board, and the meat was soft and loose, the bones were crispy, and the fish was no longer tossed.

"Hey, Ba Buhai, that's good!" The wild girls and real men who were watching next to them all laughed excitedly and shouted loudly.

Some of the men had already set up a cauldron on the side, and the firewood was lit, and they picked up the fish, washed and peeled it on the side of the boat, chopped it into pieces, and threw it into the cauldron.

These wild women who work hard in the mountains and forests all the year round are commonplace to eat and sleep in the open, not only can they fight, cook, make weapons, and hunt are all good hands, and their skills are also quite good. The cauldron has long been filled with their own condiments, and these guys always have some unknown little tricks to enhance the deliciousness of the food.

Soon, the cauldron is filled with an enticing aroma.

The wild Jurchens are like this, and the commanders are not restrained, and the big war is coming, so it is best to let the soldiers relax.

The wild women were on the big boat full of aroma, and they drooled when they saw the gluttony of the Han people, although they also had military rations issued, but how could those dried meat have freshly caught fish soup and fish meat attractive?

But it's just a dry stare.

They don't have the craft.

"Here, Han brother!"

Ba Buhai stabbed another big fish, and after beating it, he threw it on the boat not far away, and laughed heartily.

"Try ours too!" The Han soldier over there also took it unceremoniously, turned around and pulled it, and threw a whole smoked pork leg over.

Nurhachi looked at it with a smile on the side, he wanted to integrate into the Wu Yi Army and integrate into the Han society to be recognized by the Han people as soon as possible, seeing that his subordinates were so sensible and got along with the Han people so harmoniously, he nodded with satisfaction.

"My lord, you can taste it too!" The soldiers brought a bowl of soup, and Nurhachi took a sip.

"Then call me the one named Ba Buhai." Nurhachi commanded.

Seeing this scene, Lian Zining was also quite pleased.

From these wild Jurchens, he saw the powerful fusion ability of the Han people, and those alien races in the future can also be disposed of in the same way.

When the hour came, another tributary appeared in front of him, and the fleet turned around and headed for the tributary.

This tributary is the Guru River.

The Gulu River is not wide, only about three or four hundred meters, and the banks are still densely forested, so it is going against the current, but fortunately, the Gulu River is not large, and the flow speed is not fast, although the speed has decreased, it will not reach an intolerable level.

Slowly, the speed of the fleet slowed down, as if looking for something, on the front ship, several Jurchen warriors who had been with Nurhachi to contact the Russians widened their eyes vigorously, and looked hard at the right bank, for fear of missing something.

Finally, a fork in the river appeared in front of them.

"This is it, this is it!" The Wild Jurchen warriors shouted. A red flag was raised on the ship and shook vigorously three times. …,

The fleet stopped, and the ship turned into the fork of the river first, followed by the ships that followed in turn.

It's tough, this fork in the river is very narrow. Only about two boats can be accommodated in parallel, for insurance. It's one by one. The river is narrow, and the dense forests on both sides of the river are extremely tall, and I don't know how many years it has grown. So much so that it formed a dome-like cover over the river. When I looked up, I saw the branches, but not the blue sky.

"My lord, this is it." Nurhachi said to Lian Zining: "The entrance to this fork river is very difficult to find, and the branches inside cover the sky, the boats are hidden in it, and they can't find it. ”

Lian Zining nodded with satisfaction: "This time it's thanks to you, the contact is still with exploration." This official will first make a big note for you. ”

Nurhachi hurriedly said: "My lord praised it falsely. ”

As he spoke, it suddenly became clear that he had entered a great bay, and the current was very gentle, and the area was so large that it was like a lake, and the boats were enough to stop.

The ships docked one after another, and the soldiers were already tired of sitting and couldn't wait to land the whole team.

On the Lian Zining ship, there was a huge map on the table. Nurha nodded with his bare hands and said, "This is where we are now, and here!" ”

His fingertips moved slightly: "It's Gulu Hewei, we call it Gulu Hewei, and the Haixi Jurchens are called Salhu!" Thirty miles from us, there is no road, and we have to travel through the dense forest, and judging by our heavy loads, it will take at least tomorrow to get there. But as long as we pass through Salhu to the west, it is the hinterland of the Haixi Jurchens, which is a large plain with a face of hundreds of miles, which is the most suitable for our cavalry to gallop. ”

"You've heard it too!" Lian Zining glanced at many senior generals and said, "The following is an order, the sixth guard and the seventh guard will go first, and the fourth guard will monitor the tenth guard, and the speed will be delayed, it doesn't matter." When you arrive, don't do anything for the time being, just stay where you are. In addition, Wang Dachun, leave a thousand people here to monitor the shipwrights and guard the ship, and take your logistics battalion to escort the baggage behind and move slowly. Everyone, before the day after tomorrow, must arrive, understand? ”

"Understood!"

With Lian Zining's order, the soldiers of Wu Yijun scattered into the dense forest like the sea.

Target, Salhu.

———————— Dividing Line————————

Salhu is a small city.

This city is an important town in the central part of the Jurchens, and to the east of it is the vast thousands of miles of fertile fields, and in this land, there are countless Jurchen tribes, and it is they who constitute the main body of the Jurchens in Haixi. And to the east of Salhu, beyond this dense forest, all the way to the sea, in this vast territory, a large number of Jurchen tribes lived.

They may not belong to the Jurchens in the true sense of the word, but in the Northeast, almost all ethnic minorities will be called Jurchens!

Especially now, the Northeast is the world of the Jurchens.

Daishan is particularly recognizant of this.

He is a hundred households in Salhu, and he is also the gate official of the south gate of Salhu.

At this time, Daishan was standing on the city gate tower of the south gate of Salhu, looking vigorously into the distance.

But to his disappointment, the long-awaited wagons of the cart did not arrive, and the wilderness was still empty, uninhabited, only at the end, the dense forest converged into a verdant line.

"It's the tenth day of August today, why haven't those grandchildren returned it, it stands to reason that they should have arrived yesterday. If they don't come, the lord's caravan won't be able to leave on time, damn, if it is delayed, the lord will blame it, and Lao Tzu will pick the skin of you savages! Dai Shan muttered secretly in his heart, while being ruthless. …,

In addition to being the official of the south gate of Salhu, Daishan also has a layer of identity, he is the clothed servant of Lord Delenzha of Salhu Town.

In the Jurchens, the clothed slave is not a representative of low status, but is usually synonymous with the master's henchmen.

This is the case with Daishan.

Lord Delenzha is the magnate of the Yehenala tribe, in terms of seniority, he is also the uncle and cousin of the resolute general, and he has a high status before the three surnamed Jurchen rebelled against the Ming Dynasty, and has the title of a thousand households. Later, when the Jurchens founded the country, Lord Gangyi named him ten thousand households, and led a part of the Jurchen people to migrate to this strategic place connecting the east and west, and established Sarhu.

At that time, the Daishan family also followed, and their family was already the coat of Lord Delenzha during the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, so Daishan also had to be reused.

After coming here, Lord Daishan took charge of the situation alone, his power increased greatly, and he also opened up a source of wealth - to buy all kinds of mountain goods and wild goods from those wild people in the dense forest, and then sell them to the north and south.

Daishan is responsible for guarding the south gate on the ninth day of the first month of each month, receiving those goods, and working as an errand for Lord Delenza, and then making a small profit himself.

"It just so happens that these wild people are here, so they are looking for this reason to suppress the price for them, the master allocated five thousand taels of silver, and I will give them three thousand taels! Damn, I've been drying here for a long time, and my face is covered with oil, so it's not too much to scrape you two thousand taels! Daishan wiped his sweat and made a small calculation in his heart.

He thought about it carefully, and after thinking about it, he felt that it was nothing for him to deduct the money, and he didn't dare to blow up his hair when he thought about it, so he could suppress it! Although he himself knows that even if it is at the price given by the master, five thousand taels, it is really too low.

God, what those savages send every month are buckets of sand gold, dozens or hundreds of very well-preserved skins of fine beasts with almost no defects, and hundreds of years or even hundreds of years of old mountain ginseng!

The old man only gave five thousand taels of silver? It's really a slash at home.

It is said that every year, a large number of Ming merchants detour to Mongolia to rush to the Khan's court to buy a large number of these things, and according to the price offered by these Ming merchants, the value of the things transported by these savages every month is 200,000 taels!

Forty times the profit!

And if you can take the path of those nobles in the Khan Court, and then buy off the border generals, if you go to the Ming Dynasty, this number will have to go up a lot!

Dai Shan only understood at that time why the mansion of Lord Delenzha has become bigger and bigger over the years, more and more beautiful mothers-in-law have been married, and food has become more and more extravagant and rich.

"I heard that there is a group of people in the north, saying that they are Russians, and they don't recognize these things, but they like the silk porcelain of the Ming Dynasty the most, and what they give is not silver, but very fine gold coins minted. If the lord can send me over there, the money will roll in. ”

Dai Shan thought about beautiful things in his heart, and wiped a handful of sweat again, although it was already August, but this autumn tiger still made people panic, raised his head and cursed: "This broken city building, the lord is really, and he is reluctant to spend money at all." ”

Although it is a Jurchen town, but Salhu is very small, the radius is only two or three miles, much smaller than a small county town in the Guannei, the city wall is a dirt fence, one zhang high, five feet wide, as for the so-called city tower, it is just a small earthen house.

One of the reasons for this situation is that Lord Delenzha is reluctant to spend money, and the more important reason is that the Jurchen cities are like this. In their opinion, in fact, the city wall is just a symbol, and the Jurchen soldiers are so victorious, only we can fight the Han people, and the Han people can hit us? (To be continued.) If you like this work, you are welcome to (.) to vote for recommendation, monthly pass, your support is my biggest motivation. )