When I got closer, I found that there were two tents in the clearing of the forest, which were made of half-length wood to form a cone-shaped support, and then covered with animal skins, and the animal skins at the tip of the cone were opened, which were used for lighting and smoke. In the open space in front of the tent were two women in cloth skirts, the younger one was quite straight, with golden skin and black hair, and a baby on his back. When they saw the living coming, they smiled shyly, took the dead muntjac and went to gather and prepare food.

It was afternoon when they met the hunter, and it was already dark, but the two women washed and peeled off their prey quickly and well, and in a short time the fragrant roasted muntjac was ready. The hunter handed them the two hind legs of the muntjac, saying that the best part of the prey was to be given to distant guests. Yuan Weiting was very enthusiastic, and he was also a little hungry, although he was used to eating brocade clothes and jade, but gnawing such a large piece of meat here at this time was also very flavorful. Yuan Weiting asked Ye Chongzhi to pick a jar of high-quality grain wine brought by his entourage and give it to them, as the saying goes, "Camels in the northwest see willows, and Shandong sticks see wine", these hunters were very happy, and sang songs about the wine. At night they slept in the hunter's tent, and although the smell was a little horrible, it was quite comfortable.

The next day, following the instructions of the hunters, they went downstream along the stream where the muntjac was threw. The hunters' horses were the main pack animals and could not be sold, so they had to look for the peasants.

The stream left the valley and merged into a small river, and the mountains in front of me disappeared without a trace, leaving only a flat river, and the yellow-green grass undulated and stretched to the horizon. We walked along the river for another seven days when we saw a peasant village in front of us.

The river makes a big bend here, and the village sits in this bend. The village is small, with only a dozen mud-walled and grass-roofed houses. The eaves are very long, presumably to keep out the rain. Near each house there is a corral made of wattles. There is often also a small irregularly shaped field next to it. It's like a potato.

Their horses refused to leave again, so Ye Chongzhi had to go to the village to ask someone to help unload the goods. After a while, some old men came out and helped him carry the pack into the village. Ye Chongzhi loosened the horse's hinge, tied a stumbling block around his legs, and let them go to the nearby grass for a walk. When they entered the village, they found it empty, with only old and weak women and children and a few livestock. It seems that the men have gone out hunting, and their leader is among them. Boredom, Ye Duren had no choice but to go to the village blacksmiths to make irons - these two blacksmiths were the only men in the prime of life. The villagers' stoves are not very hot. Iron ore cannot be directly turned into molten iron, but can only become a loose and porous lump of black mush, and the blacksmith keeps beating this lump, and there is no one to reply to his question. From the mouths of these two people, he knew that these peasants only lived here in winter and spring, and planted some potatoes or something by the way. In the summer, they will move to the mountains and live in tents.

When the hunters came back in the evening, the noise could be heard from afar, but what spread faster than the noise was the "strange fragrance" of the roe deer. The leader of the hunters was a young man with a necklace worn by wolf fangs around his neck. Ye Chongzhi explained to him his intention and gave him the gift he brought. He readily agreed, agreeing to sell them a large roe deer and its fresh sachets. and the many prey they caught. The sachet is a bag that grows on the belly of the roe deer, and when dried, the oily incense inside will turn into small dark grains. Roe deer incense is a precious spice. If you put a little bit indoors, it will make the house smell very different and different. This fragrance is not only pleasantly aromatic, but also long-lasting. In fact, roe deer incense has been used in Middle-earth for a long time. Ancient literati, poets, painters all added a little roe incense to the fine spices, made of "fragrant ink" writing, painting, fragrant and quiet, if the calligraphy and painting are sealed, can be preserved for a long time, anti-corrosion and moth-proof.

Although he failed to hunt the roe deer with his own hands, he shot a big wild boar, which was finally worth the trip, and he bought a big roe deer, and the goal was achieved.

The reason why he wanted to give the incense deer to Lin Yiqing was not Wu Changqing's idea, but his temporary intention of Yuan Weiting, to do his part for Wu Changqing to tie up Lin Yiqing.

Yuan Weiting was born on August 20, the ninth year of Xianfeng. On the day Yuan Weiting was born, his uncle Yuan Jiasan happened to send a book home, saying that with the help of thunder, he won the battle against the bandits. Yuan Weiting's father, Yuan Baozhong, was overjoyed, so he named the newborn baby "Ting", and named the baby "Weiting" according to the ranking of the family's "Baoweike family, Qiwen Shaowu". Yuan Weiting's name is related to the war march, which seems to indicate that his life will be a career of fighting horses.

When Yuan Weiting was six years old, his adoptive father Yuan Baoqing found an enlightenment teacher for him, Yuan Zhizhong, to teach the Four Books and Five Classics. In the fifth year of Tongzhi, Yuan Baoqing worked as a Taoist in Shandong, and Yuan Weiting was eight years old at the time and also accompanied him. Later, Yuan Baoqing was transferred from Shandong to Jiangsu. In Nanjing, one of Yuan Weiting's teachers, Qu Nuan, was good at martial arts and taught Yuan Weiting some boxing and swordsmanship. Yuan Weiting has loved the art of war since he was a child and is determined to learn "ten thousand enemies". Try to say that "the three armies cannot win the commandery, if I have 100,000 elite soldiers in my hands, I can run rampant in the world." He often spared no expense to collect and buy various versions of military books and strategies, and was ridiculed as "Yuan Shunerd". When he was 13 years old, Yuan Weiting once made a joint "Daye Dragon Fang sting, and the Central Plains deer is fat." "There are few crosses, and they are no different from the "he can be replaced" of the overlord of Chu.

In the autumn of Guangxu's second year, Yuan Weiting married a woman surnamed Shen Qiuyu at the age of 17. He returned to Beijing in the early spring of the following year. At that time, his uncle Yuan Baoheng had just been transferred to the Criminal Department as a waiter, and he was busy with work. The two cousins praised him for being "smart" and "a beautiful material". When the drought in North China was a disaster, Yuan Baoheng was ordered to Kaifeng to help with the relief work, and took Yuan Weiting with him. In the fourth year of Guangxu, Yuan Baoheng died of the epidemic, and Yuan Weiting returned to Xiangcheng and moved to Chenzhou. In the fifth year of Guangxu, his uncle Zhang Xiangchen handled Henan relief affairs and entrusted Yuan Weiting to handle Chenzhou donations.

Yuan Weiting took the imperial examination twice in the second year of Guangxu and the fifth year of Guangxu, but failed to pass the township examination. Yuan Weiting's family motto is "seeking official merit and saving the world", and Yuan Weiting, as a person who has inherited these feelings and views through tradition and education, naturally has to follow the example of his ancestors. Shift your mind from the field to the "field". Yuan Weiting once wrote a poem "Words and Aspirations" to encourage himself: "The dragon and tiger in front of me can't fight." The murderous spirit went straight to the sky. I want to open my mouth to the sky. Swallow Hu Tianjiao in one bite. This poem is very heroic, indicating that he had great ambitions when he was a teenager. Of course, the path a person takes is not entirely determined by his family and himself, but also by social influence. From a social point of view, the "self-improvement" trend of the Westernists had an extremely profound impact on the formation of Yuan Weiting's ideology.

When Yuan Weiting was studying in Beijing, Li Shaoquan was serving as governor of Zhili. He admired the magnitude's prominence. Under the influence of the Western-style idea of "training soldiers to be strong", he was "good at reading military books." "Pay attention to current affairs," often make military arguments, and talk extravagantly about military training "inside and outside." Yuan Baoling was quite appreciative of his comments, and couldn't help but say that the Yuan family "has a lot of heirs, and they can also be comforted". Due to these reasons, after Yuan Weiting's hopes in the scientific field were dashed, he burned his poems and essays, determined to emulate Li Shaoquan. He said: "The great husband should serve the battlefield and be safe inside and outside." How can you be stuck in the pen and inkstone for a long time? At that time, most of Li Shaoquan's shogunate were from the ranks of the people or jinshi. Yuan Weiting is just an unknown talent. Therefore, he did not defect directly to Li Shaoquan, but in May of the seventh year of Guangxu, he led "dozens of people from his old department" to Dengzhou, Shandong, and defected to Wu Changqing, the commander of the Huai Army.

Wu Changqing and Yuan Baoqing were "good brothers" in their early years. When Yuan Baoqing was in Nanjing, Wu Changqing led troops to be stationed in Pukou, and the two had a close relationship. When Yuan Baoqing died, Wu Changqing crossed the river to see the coffin, "holding the coffin and crying bitterly" to help take care of the funeral. Therefore, when Yuan Weiting came to Dengzhou, Wu Changqing was not only very happy and willing to take him in, but also took good care of him, and then promoted him and reused him.

For Wu Changqing's favor, Yuan Weiting naturally knew that this time Lin Yiqing secretly visited Dengzhou Defense, Wu Changqing was interested in Lin Yiqing, and the clever Yuan Weiting understood the mystery, so he naturally had to use means to help Wu Changqing succeed.

As a veteran general of the Huai Army, Wu Changqing can be said to have admired Lin Yiqing for a long time, and Lin Yiqing inspected the coastal defense and found the Dengzhou Fort, which has been stationed for many years and is very familiar with everything here, so he naturally understands what will happen, but he didn't expect that Lin Yiqing would be considerate of the hardships of the defenders of the fort and pay for them to repair the fort.

He knew that Lin Yiqing had found out that the reason for the poor repair of the fort was not the officers and soldiers of the fort, but the mean and incompetent former governor of Shandong, Ding Zhihuang, so he was willing to pay out of his own pocket to help repair the fort. And Wu Changqing, who was also deeply afflicted by Ding Zhihuang, naturally also wanted Lin Yiqing to help "help with salary".

The sixth battalion of the Qing Army under Wu Changqing originally belonged to the Huai Army system, and as a strong force of Li Shaoquan's Huai Army, the Qing Army was transferred to Shandong to strengthen coastal defense and stationed in Dengzhou, a key place in Shandong. Ding Zhihuang, who was the governor of Shandong at the time, had no power to control this army, which belonged to Beiyang coastal defense and not to Shandong Province, because he was very dissatisfied with the arrival of the Qing army, believing that the Qing army, like the Beiyang Naval Division, was a nail arranged by Li Shaoquan in Shandong, and was very hostile to Wu Changqing's subordinates, not only did he not bear the military salary of the Qing army, but he also completely ignored the life and death of the Qing army's officers and men, which made Wu Changqing very annoyed.

Up to now, the Qing army's military salary can only be paid sixty percent, these are still managed by Li Shaoquan under the Beiyang coastal defense funds, the rest can only rely on Li Shaoquan and Wu Changqing to raise money everywhere, in order to raise enough military salaries, Wu Changqing can be said to be very troubled, sometimes really unable to pay salaries, can only rely on his old friend Yuan Baoling of the Lushun Project General Office to temporarily borrow under the project, and Lin Yiqing helped the fort defenders to pay money, but Wu Changqing saw new hope.

After Lin Yiqing inspected the fort, Wu Changqing took the initiative to invite Lin Yiqing to come to the Qingjun camp to inspect under the pretext that the Qing army belonged to the Beiyang coastal defense department, Lin Yiqing readily agreed, and soon took his entourage to visit Wu Changqing, Wu Changqing was overjoyed, and in the past few days he asked Lin Yiqing to inspect the battalions, inspect the soldiers and horses and military equipment, and give "guiding opinions".

This time, Yuan Weiting took advantage of the rest to come out to hunt the fragrant roe deer, just to get this precious spice as a gift to help Wu Changqing please Lin Yiqing.

Yuan Weiting led the team to march for about an hour, returned to the Dengzhou camp, and saw that Yuan Weiting had captured a huge wild boar and other prey, as well as fragrant roe deer muntjac and other prey, and the officers and men all cheered -- the Qing army lacked military salaries, meat was insufficient, and there was no money to buy it in many cases. It's all about going out hunting on your own. It's rare to catch wild boars of this size.

At that moment, the army dismembered the wild boar into the pot. Yuan Weiting had a lot of wine in the hunter village, and then he drank again, and he soon got drunk. After sending it to Wu Changqing, he fell on the bed and fell into a deep sleep.

He slept until dawn the next day, and before he woke up from the wine, he remembered that he should patrol the camp today, and he hurriedly got up and called to follow him, hurriedly changed his clothes, put on a saber and a pistol, and put on an official hat, and then went out to patrol the camp.

His head had been groggy due to the fact that he had drunk so much wine last night. The pace of walking was also a little unsteady, but fortunately, there was not much to do in the patrol camp. He just looked around, and the breeze outside also helped him sober up.

Although it has been a few days since Lin Yiqing came to the Qingjun camp, Wu Changqing has not officially introduced him, but he knows that after this roe incense goes up, the day of officially meeting Lin Yiqing will be soon. He didn't want Lin Yiqing to see his drunken appearance.

But at this time, the appearance of a person completely changed Yuan Weiting's fate.

Not far in front is the training ground, where a statue of the cannon is neatly placed, the gunners are doing maintenance on the cannon, it may be that Lin Yiqing will ask the artillery to test the firing, and the shells have also been moved out for careful inspection.

At this time, a few little girls came running from not far away.

These girls should be family members of the army, and at this time they should go to the grass on this side of the training ground to pick some flowers for the commanders' houses to decorate. They were picking pink daisies and fuchsia wisteria, intending to mix some citrus and lemon blossoms. The girls didn't see Yuan Weiting, who was patrolling the camp, and they got closer and closer to where he was.

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□□□□ (To be continued......)

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