The "sea" in Xihai Prefecture does not refer to the Caspian Sea, but to the Aral Sea. However, in terms of naming, the name of Xihai Prefecture is not very strict, because the geographical location of Xihai Prefecture is not strictly speaking, not west of the Aral Sea, but southwest of the Aral Sea. If you have to find this place on the map, it is recommended to give up the attempt to look on the map of China, and instead look for the map of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and other countries for reference.

This is not a barren land, and in the era of the Han Empire, it was by no means barren. On the contrary, there are vast grasslands, high mountains and ravines, and lofty peaks...... This is a whole new land—only for Shen Yun, of course.

For Shen Yun, who has never even been to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan in his previous life, and his visa and passport have only stayed in TV dramas, this land that was a foreign territory in his previous life and is a land with many "terrorists" with many hooded heads is undoubtedly "brand new".

But for Atletico and others, this is just a state of the Han Empire! And it was not valued before, and its status was far inferior to that of the old state!!

Speaking of which, many people may feel confused about the administrative scope of the new states of the Han Empire. In fact, in terms of administrative scope, the largest area should be Beihai Prefecture, that is, the area north of modern Outer Mongolia, which is the land of most of the modern "polar bear", followed by Duxin Prefecture, which is a mixture of Inner and Outer Mongolia, and then it is the turn of Dayue Prefecture, whose administrative area is equivalent to modern Xinjiang.

Xihai Prefecture is not even ranked in the top five on the map of the administrative regions of the Han Empire, because in addition to Beihai Prefecture, Duxin Prefecture, and Dayue Prefecture, there are also Dugan Prefecture and Donghai Prefecture - by the way, Bohai County, where Shen Yun is located, is actually just a county under Dazhou - after Dugan Prefecture and Donghai Prefecture, it is Xihai Prefecture.

In terms of affluence, the larger the administrative area. In fact, it is the poorer the place. Because of poverty, there are few people, but the land has been occupied, and the few people must control such a large territory, so they are even poorer. It's an endless loop.

Of course, compared to the almost barren Beihai, Duxin, and Dugan states. Dayue and Xihai are close to small countries such as Cai Xian, Tushi, and Shiguo, and can trade with Rome and the Caliphate, and the Silk Road is on this line, so the overall poverty level is not too bad. Even in terms of the prosperity of the city, it is not inferior to the old state cities of the Han Empire.

In particular, Dingxing Mansion in Xihai Prefecture has a population of more than one million households, although there is still a gap compared with Chang'an, Luoyang, Yangzhou and other big cities, but compared with Dihua, Yanqi and other northwest cities, it is so huge, even in the degree of prosperity and liveliness. It is more than many high-rise cities and large ports in the Central Plains. You must know that in the time and space when there was no Han Empire, the highest achievement of the city in feudal society was the Bianliang City of the Zhao and Song Dynasty, and the population of that Bianliang City was only about two million, seven or eight hundred thousand households.

It can be seen from this that the Holy Ancestor Emperor of the Han Empire has left behind such a huge and amazing wealth to the empire of this time and space! At least in terms of population, there is absolutely no one before it, and it is very likely that there will be no one after it!

Xihai Prefecture was like the other states and counties of the Han Empire. The four levels of state-county-prefecture-county are the most basic administrative system. The state has a state pastor, a state minister, and a state lieutenant; The county has a county guard, a county officer, and a county lieutenant; The government has a government order, a government Cheng, and a government Sima; The county has a county order, a county officer, and a county lieutenant. There are also town heads, township heads, and village heads...... Layer by layer, mutual supervision. Implement the separation of powers. The Imperial Executive Yuan generally appoints county-level officials directly, while those below the county level are appointed on the recommendation of the county order, and most of them are local well-known people who serve as officials below the county level.

However, a system is a system, and if a system can remain unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years, there will be no Han Empire. Perhaps the Great Qin Empire will return to Qin III and Qin IV...... Stretching to Qin Wanshi~~ Nearby, if the system is really like this, will there be a rebellion in Dayue State?!

In fact, as early as a hundred years ago, Dayue Prefecture and Xihai Prefecture already had certain rules on the appointment of officials. The directives of the Imperial Executive were not fully followed. The state pastors of Dayue Prefecture are generally either surnamed Zhang or Wen, while the state pastors of Xihai Prefecture usually appear in the surnames Wu, Xiao, and Li. These are the five wealthy clans of the two states of Dayue and Xihai.

Of course, if the Imperial Executive Yuan sent officials from the old state over, it would not be completely empty and inactive in Dayue Prefecture and Xihai Prefecture, because above these five powerful families, there is a more secretive but by no means weak Ma clan - the authentic descendant of Jin Gong Ma Chao, who is hereditary as the Duke of Xihai County. The duke of the county is a title second to the duke, and it is a title that only existed before the reform of the Holy Ancestor, and now there are few such "ancient" titles in the entire Han Empire, which shows the preciousness of this title.

The officials appointed by the Imperial Executive Yuan can exercise their power here, and it will not be because of the existence of the Ma family, with the Ma family, Dayue Prefecture and Xihai Prefecture are really the lands of the Han Empire, to a certain extent, the Xihai Ma family has become the only proof that the Han Empire has effectively ruled here in the past five hundred years! To a large extent, the Xihai Ma family represents the greatest authority of the Han Emperor in Xihai Prefecture!

The term of office of officials is limited, and few officials from the old state have been here for a lifetime, so the Ma family often needs to compromise and cooperate with the other five major families. In short, the five major families and the Ma family are actually contradictory beings that blend with each other but restrict each other.

However, it is very likely that this existence will soon be broken - as long as the Yue army defeats Yigong's counterinsurgency army, then the Wu, Xiao, and Li families in Xihai Prefecture will immediately unite to put pressure on the Ma family, announcing the merger of Xihai and the Yue clan to jointly split the Han Empire.

Before the final war results came out, the Wu, Xiao, and Li families were also trying their best to maintain the normal operation of Xihai Prefecture. But after all, because of the Yue's rebellion, the prefectures and counties other than Dingxing Mansion in Xihai Prefecture seemed quite deserted, but Dingxing Mansion became more and more lively.

Dingxing Mansion is actually composed of three counties, namely Wuding County, where the ancestral residence of the Wu family is located, Xingcheng County, where the ancestral residence of the Xiao family is located, and Baiju County, where the ancestors of the Li family lived. Wuding County is in the upper reaches of the Wuding River, Xingcheng County is in the lower reaches, and Baiju County is the most miserable. At the foot of Fucheng Mountain, fifteen miles from the river. It can be said that the prosperity of Dingxing Mansion is actually composed of the mountains and rivers of Wuding River and Fucheng Mountain.

This Wuding River was also called the Bukhara River before it, which is the Bukhara River that flows through the five Central Asian countries in modern times. However, after the Han army conquered this place, first of all, because the name Bukhara was too meaningless. The second is that the river often flooded three hundred years ago, often thirty years to carry out a change of course, each time to take many lives, in 805 years of the Han Dynasty, there was a Taoist priest who traveled to this place, saw this and gave the state pastor at that time an idea, said "this river has no fixed way, should be named undetermined, can be determined." So it was named Wuding River.

Strange to say, since the name of the Wuding River, this river has indeed stopped changing course, so far it has been more than 200 years, and there has been no flood, which is simply a small anecdote.

The composition of the three counties of Dingxing is somewhat similar to the modern Wuhan Three Towns, but it is different. The three towns of Wuhan have their own functions. or the main merchant, or the main worker. Or the main farmers, and each has its own urban planning, hundreds of years earlier, the three towns of Wuhan were actually three cities, each with its own city wall.

The three counties of Dingxing in the Han Empire actually share a city wall, stretching for hundreds of miles. It forms a zigzag inner city, with three water gates, five land gates, three horizontal and three vertical main roads, and 500,000 people at Dingkou. The outer city radiates to the surrounding area up to a hundred miles away. There is only a rough plan, and there are more than 2 million Dingkou, which is a real Dingxing mansion!

In the inner city of Dingxing Mansion, it is difficult to see from pedestrians that there is much difference between this place and the old state of the Han Empire, while in the outer city, the three counties of Dingxing can be clearly distinguished. The Xihai Wu clan mainly did business with the caliphs, so most of the caliphs with white scarves and heads were active in Wuding County. The Xihai Xiao clan mostly traded with the Romans, so the Westerners with short hair and long robes and exposed arms mostly lived in Xingcheng County. And Baiju County, where the Xihai Li family is located, is the county seat where the most Han people come and go, not because the Li family has a lot of transactions with the Han people in Laozhou, but because the stallion family of Xihai County is at the foot of Fucheng Mountain in Baiju County, and the Xihai Li family is a neighbor across the mountain. If your legs and feet are faster, you can run back and forth while the tea is still warm.

In this Xihai Prefecture, although it is not a fish and rice water town in the south of the Yangtze River, it is not short of water because it is close to the Wuding River, and the Caspian Sea is in the northwest, and the water resources are also quite rich. Judging from the port in the city alone, pedestrians are weaving, rubbing shoulders one after another, and there are painting boats and red sleeves swaggering on the Wuding River, which is like another prosperous paradise of the Han Empire.

The sun is dazzling, and although it is the middle of winter, it is still hot on the uncertain pier. The docks are full of goods from all over the world, and helpers from various countries and different colors and races are carried back and forth like ants. The street in front of the wharf is the original logistics distribution center, where countless people linger and shuttle, hoping to buy the cheapest goods here, so as to traffic in all directions and make profits.

Of course, this is also a mixed bag. And because of the rebellion of the Yue clan, goods from all over the country were piled up here, and all kinds of people were also blocked here, so it was even more crowded.

The people on the pier communicate in fluent or stilted Chinese. The Yueshi rebellion, blocking the east and west, the most important Silk Road has come to a standstill. If it was the Han Empire before the Holy Ancestor, once the Silk Road was broken, it would be a real break between the East and the West. But this was not the case with the Han Empire after the Holy Ancestor. In addition to taking the Silk Road to the East from Dingxingfu, there were three other roads that led to the Han Empire.

Article 1: Go south to Khorasan, take the sea route from the rest of the ship to the starfall city of the Han Dynasty, and then turn around to the interior of the Han Empire. Article 2: Go southeast, pass through Khorasan-Anxi-Dama, then enter the southwesternmost state of the Han Empire, then go from Siam to Maine, and then enter Guilin County or Xiang County from Nanzhang County, and finally return to the old state of the empire through the Lingqu waterway or the Pearl River system. Article 3: To the east, after crossing Pala Mountain, crossing the southern end of the Green Mountains, entering the Tubo Prefecture of the Empire, then taking the ancient road of western Sichuan, entering Jiannan County of the Han Empire through the Tea Horse Road, and then turning north, entering Luoyang and Chang'an.

The first and second roads are relatively more stable and less dangerous, while the third road is full of ravines and dangers, and the most serious thing is that the third road has to go to the plateau, and it is absolutely difficult for people who have not experienced the plateau to imagine the pain of lack of oxygen, even if the technology has been developed in modern times, there are still tourists who go to Tibet and cannot come back, let alone this era. Therefore, most businessmen will actually choose the first or second path.

Of course, the most convenient is the Silk Road, this golden road has been the main artery of communication between the East and the West since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, and this road is definitely the most important road before the shipbuilding technology is revolutionized.

Therefore, for the Yue's rebellion, the merchants of Dingxing Province may not all support it. At least on the wharf in Wuding County, hundreds of merchants, ninety households, are cursing the damned Yueshi people - because most of the people who set up shops here are caliphs. The caliphs didn't care what the game between the two great empires of the East and the West was, but what they thought about the most was the silk, porcelain, and exquisite Han ornaments of the Han Empire.

The next story will unfold in this combination of Chinese and Western, but the central and eastern city of Dingxing Mansion is dignified~~ (To be continued.) )