In the desert, the sand buries the bones, the camel team leaves deep hoof prints, the remnant sun is like blood, the red willows are swaying, the wind washes the yellow sand, the lizards rush into the burrows, and the hungry vultures lurk in the dead branches, eyeing the tiger.

This is the unique style of the Western Regions - desolate and bleak, lonely and pathetic.

For thousands of years, the Western Regions has been dancing solo in history with such a posture, and it has also left a little mystery in everyone's eyes.

From the legendary King Mu of Zhou to the Tianchi meeting of the Queen Mother of the West, the yellow sand land of the Western Regions has become a place that cannot be ignored by the Great Empire of the East. This land has carried too much killing, and it is also full of too much pride!

The Tarim River, originating from the Tianshan Mountains, nourishes the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, making Dayuezhou no longer a sandbar filled with yellow sand, but a veritable land south of the Saijiang River. At the easternmost end of the Tarim River, there is a place called Shanshan. This place used to be Shanshan State in the Qin period, and now it is just an ordinary county of the Han Dynasty.

However, this ordinary county is no longer ordinary today.

Fifty miles west of Shanshan, there is a small city perched on a mound, and outside the city is the confluence of the Dylan and Tarim rivers. Location is extremely important. This small city is called Luntai!

Yes, it is the Luntai City that made the second-class legions of Dahangan and Su Prefecture sink into the sand and kill three commanders!

Now, Luntai City has once again become the main point of the confrontation between the Han and the Yue Clan.

Shanshan City, a county town with a population of 40,000 or 50,000, is now full of soldiers from the old state of Dahan. Military orders were issued from here and spread to Luntai, fifty miles away.

This is the heart of the Western Frontier Front of the Han Dynasty. The tiger of the Great Han Yigong is stationed here.

At this moment, it is September of 1003 of the Han Dynasty. It stands to reason that Yigong, who set off earlier than Hu Gong and had an army that was completed earlier, how could he still stay in Luntai for nearly half a year? According to the previous inference of Hu Gong's staff, it is normal for Yigong to be in Dihua City at this moment.

And in fact. Yigong did almost arrive at the foot of Dihua City.

After arriving at the Moshan front in March, the first thing Yigong did was to organize his troops to fight. The Western Xinjiang Front arrived in Luntai in April, and in May captured Wusu (present-day Turpan), the most difficult stronghold in the middle reaches of the Tarim River. Here, it's only 300 miles away from Dihua! Walk fast along the straights, morning and evening!

But it was also in the city of Wusu that Yigong received the news that he didn't want to hear, that is, Dayuezhou had sent all its elite troops to Beihai Prefecture and was fighting fiercely with the Northern Frontier Front - this was also the reason why the Western Frontier Front was able to drive Wusu directly.

It is said that this news will only stimulate Yigong and make him more eager to break Dihua. But with this news, it was the news that Dihua City was empty, and Zhang Sheng, the puppet king of the Yue clan, had fled to Ili and set up a tooth tent to donate to the city (ai, not du).

The city of Dihua is empty. Then Yigong can enter more?

No, it's not like that.

Zhang Sheng, this bastard, in order to stop the Han army. actually turned Dihua City into a dead place. The entire city of Dihua was filled with four or five thousand sick people who had been driven from the southern part of Dayue Prefecture, and at the same time, all the water sources around Dihua had been lost to the dead livestock...... How Huo Qu died of illness, everyone knows it.

Yigong never expected Zhang Sheng to do such a desperate job. After this incident, Dihua City, no, the entire Dayue Prefecture is ruined. Without more than ten years of recuperation, Dayue Prefecture will definitely not be able to regain its former prosperity!

Yigong had also planned to send troops into Dihua to eliminate the source of the plague - medical officials had confirmed that the plague was not as ferocious as it was two years ago. As long as you pay attention, you can still avoid infection.

But the reality cruelly tells Yigong that even the plague virus in the terminal stage is not something they can fight...... After trapping more than 3,000 soldiers, Yigong wisely chose to retreat.

In the face of this unbridled plague, only through time, the cruel way of making all living things die, can the root cause be broken.

Therefore, Yigong returned to Shanshan.

While retreating to Shanshan, Yigong did not do nothing, he sent the three legions of the Western Xinjiang Front Army to Yumen Pass, and went out from the west of Yumen Pass, attacking Jingjie and Ruoqiang, hoping to advance from the southern front and arrive at Yili, where the king of the Pseudo-Yue clan is now stationed.

At the same time, he also transferred the Flying Eagle Guard back to Kannai. At this time, he already knew that the Northern Frontier Front was in crisis, and hoped to let Flying Eagle Guard join the Northern Frontier Front to help his old buddy get out of the predicament.

And this time the imperial court's decision-making was not slow, before Feiyingwei arrived in Dunhuang County, he received a new military order, directly sent troops to Beihai Prefecture, and the Ying Gong, who regained military power, set off directly from the imperial capital and went to Beihai Prefecture to join Feiyingwei.

Compared with the imperial court's quick decision on the Flying Eagle Guard, the Han army advancing from Jingjie and Ruoqiang was very procrastinating. However, this is also determined by the road conditions. There is a straight road from Moshan to Dihua, but the southern part of Dayuezhou is still a primitive road, or even no road, only a long stretch of yellow sand, and the red willows on the side of the road that can't tell whether they are alive or dead indicate the direction.

In August 1003, the three Han armies that left the Yumen Pass in the west were forced to stop at Jingjiewei because of a huge desert storm that swept away most of the army's supplies, and hundreds of soldiers were missing and thousands were injured.

It can be said that the shadow of the unfavorable division has always surrounded the Western Xinjiang Front.

The desert in August is like a child's face. And it's a day-to-day change. One moment the sun is dazzling, hot and hot, and the next second it will be covered with dark clouds and flying sand and rocks, like entering hell on earth.

In desperation, Yigong had no choice but to let the three legions retreat to the Yumen Pass and wait for the opportunity.

Just when Yigong was sitting in Shanshan and couldn't make an inch, he got new news. This news came from the Yulin Secret Guard - the king of the Pseudo-Yue Clan set off from Donating Yu and returned to Dihua City.

At this time, it has been two months since Dihua City was ravaged by the plague, and the people and animals inside have long been dead, even if they return to Dihua, they must not be defended. When the king of the pseudo-moon clan returned here, he was obviously looking for death!

Yigong did not hesitate to send troops to the battle, preparing to re-attack Dihua City. But this time, they didn't have the ease they had last time. As the vanguard, a part of the men and horses were surrounded and annihilated in Wusu, and the three legions of the Yueshi clan plus four brigades, a total of 150,000 people, marched east along the Tarim River, arrived at Shapobao, thirty miles outside Luntai City, and camped out, putting on a posture of fighting to the death with the Han army!

The message sent by the Feather Forest Secret Guard shows. These 150,000 people are the last combatable strength of the Yueshi people! As long as these 150,000 people are defeated, it can be said that most of the Yue Clan's rebellion will be pacified!

It should be said that the spy of the Yulin Secret Guard is still relatively accurate. Before the Yueshi rebellion, the Great Moon Prefecture had a total population of about eight million. At the beginning of the founding of the Puppet Yue Clan, four first-class legions, sixteen second-class legions, and the corresponding third-class legions were set up, with a total strength of about 1.2 million.

Although the strength of these legions does not match their names, because Dayue Prefecture is also a state and county of the Han Empire, its military service system is still very complete, and most of them are reserve soldiers. In the era of cold weapons, population and land area determined the overall strength of a country. A special enlistment order is being made in Otsuki Prefecture. Gathering 1.2 million people is actually quite a small number. If the king of the Pseudo-Yue Clan really needs soldiers and adopts the conscription norms of the pre-Qin period, the population of eight million can be expanded to at least three million troops!

Of course, it is possible to achieve so much without mentioning the quality of the army.

Thus. Think about it if the Great Han were to make an emergency call-up throughout the empire. How many armies can be expanded with a population of 600 million? At least 100 million !!

Of course. It is an astronomical amount that so many troops need to eat and drink, and even if the officials of the household department do not sleep, they cannot raise it, so it can only be a theoretical number.

It's far away, and the topic returns to Luntai City.

The information given to Yigong by the secret guard is divided into three parts, the first part is to tell about the entire state of people's livelihood in Dayue Prefecture today - it can no longer be accurately described by the people's lack of livelihood, so the intelligence uses the words "life is better than death": "The Han lost the hearts of the people." The puppet king lost the people's hope, and the people of the current Dayue could not bear to see it, and they all regarded death as the supreme destination...... Or it can be instigated, and the rest is in preparation. ”

It means that the people of Dayue Prefecture have been disappointed in Dahan. And the king of the Yue clan, who originally had high hopes, is now gradually losing his popularity, and they all want to just die.

This is obviously incomprehensible to Yigong. Either submit to the court, or rebel to the end, how can there be two sides that don't rely on it, and only think about death? Just thinking about death, why do you still hold a sword and fight the Han army on the battlefield? Isn't that a paradox?

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Actually, this is not a contradiction. Yigong is a military strategist, he understands that one general will succeed and ten thousand bones are withered, and he understands the truth that those above the soldiers surrender without a fight, but he is not a sociologist or a psychologist, so he cannot make an accurate prediction of the psychology of the people of Dayue Prefecture at this time. If Shen Yun is allowed to come, he may be able to analyze a little experience.

Very simply, Dayue Prefecture, that is, the Xinjiang region of later generations, has always been poor here, and it is the so-called poor mountains and bad waters. The people here have always been fierce, and there are often cases of drawing swords against each other if they don't agree with each other. In the history of Shen Yun's original time and space, the Han Dynasty died and the Tang Dynasty rejuvenated, and this place was a key area where Eastern and Western cultures converged and collided. The period from Emperor Taizong of Tang to Emperor Xuanzong of Tang was the peak period of Islamic expansion in the Middle East, and the teachings of Islam were radical and violent at that time, "Those who do not believe in Allah are infidels and should be killed!" This is the same as later Christian doctrine. The prestige of the Tang Empire at that time was also rising, and the radical Islamic culture and the Confucian culture-dominated Eastern civilization collided violently here, which led to the Battle of Talas, which made the Eastern civilization regretful.

After the Talas War, the Tang Dynasty had the opportunity to regain the ideological dominance of this region, but it was inevitably cut off due to the Anshi Rebellion and the decline of the Tang Empire. As a result, Islamic civilization rushed into Xinjiang and swept through the northwest, directly spreading to the land of the Han people......

And now that the Han Empire has lasted for thousands of years, the people here are still the most strongly influenced by the dual cultures of the East and the West. Because of the strength of the Han Empire, the influence of Eastern culture is obviously more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, but the influence of Western culture also exists. The conflict between these two cultures has led to a strong atmosphere of plagiarism among the people here, and they have retained the traditional ideas of "loyalty to the monarch and patriotism" and "respect for the father and protect the young" of the Han civilization.

It was this kind of ideological conflict that made them break out into a state of self-abandonment and broken jars after losing their confidence in the Han and the support of the puppet king. In their hearts, they want to vent, use violence to vent, destroy everything, and turn everything into powder, even if they die.

This is a very terrible trend of thought, and this trend of thought actually appeared in the late Han Dynasty before the Holy Ancestor, and it also appeared in the Han people. As a result, there was the turbulent era of the Three Kingdoms, which was endlessly warned, and the later Wuhu Rebellion. And the appearance of the Holy Ancestor transferred the tyranny of the Han people to foreign countries, and achieved a great cause for a generation!

And the emergence of this trend of thought is actually not unrelated to the uninterrupted cultivation of fierce martial arts in the Han Dynasty for hundreds of years. The Confucianism revered by the people in this period was not the "pseudo-Confucianism" that was emasculated after the Southern Song Dynasty, but the true Confucianism of the pre-Qin period in ancient times! Beneath the gentle exterior, the power of brutality has never disappeared – as can be seen from Confucius's "parental enmity"!

This trend of thought is not unguided, and as long as it is handled properly, it may not be a help. On the basis of the Han Dynasty's rule over the Great Moon Prefecture for five hundred years. On the basis that all the people of Dayue Prefecture agree with their identity as "Han Chinese", in fact, with a little guidance, the rule of the puppet king of the Yue clan will be easily overthrown.

However, Yigong obviously didn't think of this.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

In the second part of the secret guard intelligence, the distribution of the people of Dayue Prefecture is mainly introduced. The first is that there are no living people left in the southern part of Otsuki State. Nowadays, all the people of Dayue Prefecture are concentrated in several counties in the north, west, and southwest of Dayue Prefecture, such as Ili, Donyu, Shento, and Haimu, which also leads to overcrowding in these places. Not enough food. There are not enough medicines, and it has become a common phenomenon to eat without food. Secondly, intelligence shows that the death toll directly caused by the plague is about 200,000, and the number of indirect deaths due to the plague is more than 600,000, most of them without food, and then forced to join the army. Or be killed in the rebellion. In the end, the secret guard pointed out that the 150,000 troops sent by the puppet king of the Yue clan were the original rebels recruited from Ili and Donyu, because the puppet king of the Yue clan was from the people of Donyu County. The soldiers recruited from here are considered his countrymen, and their loyalty is unquestionable.

The content of the third part is the analysis and report of the secret guard on the current 150,000 troops of the puppet king of the Yue clan.

At present, the 150,000 Yue's army has a first-class legion, called the "Wangdu Army", with a strength of 50,000 troops. Abbas, whose Chinese name is Zhang Yu, is quite scheming, and his father rebelled, and he contributed a lot.

There are three second-class legions, namely the "Ili Legion", the "Donor Legion" and the "Nash Legion". The strength of the first two legions is about 35,000 people, and the main will be the second son of the puppet king of the Yue clan. Abbas, Chinese names Zhang Xian and Ji Zi Qin Si. Abbas, Han name Zhang Jue, among the two pseudo-princes, Jizi Zhang Jue is quite brave and has a deep relationship with Sacrate, while the second son Zhang Xian is quite weak, and the puppet king's youngest son Gongkun. Abbas, whose Chinese name is Zhang Xian, has a close relationship.

The last "Nash Legion", with a strength of about 30,000 troops, is mainly responsible for logistics, and is currently stationed in Dihua City, and the main will be the most famous Murdokzan on the list of Han hunting and killing, the Tai Lieutenant of the Pseudo-Yue Clan.

Of course, the intelligence of the secret guard is not only that, it also lists the current composition of the troops in the Yue's army, and some of the names of divisional and regimental officers who may pose a threat to the Han army, such as the cavalry in the royal army, which is about 30,000 people, and the commander is Slodax, a former Roman officer of the Red Coats.

Yigong scoffed at the title of "former Roman officer". Without him, I just want to cover it up. However, it is precisely this desire to cover up that the Han Dynasty now has no better way to deal with Rome. Even if Slodax is caught, it is useless, and Rome can refuse to admit it. If the Han declares war on Rome at this moment, Rome is afraid that it will not be able to ask for it. And by the time the Han really has the strength to ask Rome for his guilt, I'm afraid that Rome will already be busy and come to admit his mistake and apologize...... Damn Westerners!

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

"Well, your ministry has a heart. This marshal will play Your Majesty, please give credit to your ministry! In the main account of the Han army in Shanshan City, Yigong handed it over to the staff officer for sealing after reading the information, and then said to the secret guards who had been standing next to him waiting for the news.

"Your Highness!" The Dark Guard bowed and saluted, his voice crisp.

Yigong couldn't help but glance up and said, "Ben Shuai remembers, your surname is Yan?" ”

"Yes, the little girl's surname is Yan, and her name is like jade. She is the daughter of Yan Zhun, the head of the Yan family of the Great Han Dynasty. Yan Ruyu raised her head, her little face was full of dirty dirt, except for the two big flickering eyes that were still smart, how could the whole person have the demeanor of the daughter of the Yan family? The beggar wife of the entire January Moon State. If Fang Cheng sees it, he may feel distressed!

Yigong didn't know the relationship between Yan Ruyu and Fang Transcription, he didn't even know about Shen Yun and Yan's family and daughter, maybe someone mentioned this to him, but to be honest, who is Yigong, how can he remember everything clearly? He would ask such a question more, but he also felt that such a weak woman still had to pretend to be meticulous and work hard to get in and out of the enemy's army.

"You've worked hard." Yigong nodded, he was going to let Yan Ruyu out, but suddenly remembered something, raised his head and said: "Ben Shuai remembers that there seems to be a batch of military materials that were transported by the Yan family firm today, and the transporter seems to be the son of the father, you can go and meet your relatives." Ben Shuai still has some military affairs to deal with here, so you can get instructions later! ”

After each secret guard delivers the information, he has to wait for the receiver's instructions. After all, the two armies are fighting, and there may be some things that the main general has not yet understood, and it needs to be specially noted for the secret guards to investigate carefully. Although Yan Ruyu felt that his information was already very detailed, who knew what news Yigong still needed, maybe it was just that the Yue's people didn't prepare horses and nightgrass tonight, or which Yue's army didn't empty the toilet?! So Yan Ruyu has been waiting here.

Hearing Yigong's order, Yan Ruyu slowly withdrew from the camp tent, turned around and ran to the baggage camp in Nancheng.

"The Son of the Father"? How many sons does Yan Zhun have? One! That is Yan Cheng, the "little overlord of the imperial capital", the elder brother who loves Yan Ruyu very much. And Yan Cheng's feelings for his younger sister are far better than his eldest sister Yan Ruyue.

Thousands of miles away from home, born and died, Yan Ruyu only left a letter for her family, and that kind of guilt and longing for her family was about to burst Yan Ruyu's little heart at this moment.

"Why did the family send my brother over? Is there no one else? Really, the sword has no eyes on the battlefield, no, I must let him go back quickly! Yan Ruyu was eager and ran quickly across the long street. (To be continued......)