readx; Time gradually to the end of October, as a cold wave swept the Central Plains, the temperature plummeted, the winter of the first year of Qingping finally came, everyone in Chang'an City put on a thick jacket, what makes the people of Chang'an more pleased is that this year's winter clothes are half cheaper than in previous years, a large number of furs poured into the Chang'an market brought by the expansion of trade between the East and the West, once a pair of leather boots, a leather jacket moved thousands of dollars or even tens of thousands of dollars, and now a pair of ordinary leather boots can be bought as long as the money has always been. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

And this year there is also a new winter coat: cotton clothes, the fabric is ordinary satin, and the lining is a good white cloth or linen, the key is the inner core, all of them are filled with cotton from the Western Regions, wearing on the body is both breathable and warm, because cotton is a big food merchant from distant Egypt, the price is very expensive, a cotton coat to sell for ten dollars, more than the price of a leather jacket, but also can only be a luxury for large households, it is said that there are large families with this cotton to make quilts and pillows, a bed of quilts will cost a hundred dollars, The extravagance is eye-popping.

Not only has there been a subtle change in winter clothes, but many careful people have discovered another interesting phenomenon, that is, many horses on the streets of Chang'an have obviously become taller, which is completely different from the short and thin Central Plains horses, which are Ili horses introduced from Anxi, but these are just ordinary horses, not excellent war horses, the Anxi army has extremely strict control over the excellent war horses in the Western Regions, and stallions such as Dawan horses and Arabian horses are never allowed to flow into Hebei to prevent them from being used by An Lushan to improve cavalry horses.

The Tang Dynasty was originally prevalent in the Hu style, but in the past it was only the influence of soft culture such as culture, clothing, music, song and dance, but now it is a large number of Western goods pouring into the Central Plains, such as Khorasan silverware, Damascus knives, Sogdian nine gems, Egyptian cotton cloth, Tianzhu medicinal materials, Byzantine gold and handicrafts, etc., a large number of commodities gathered in Chang'an, and at the same time, with Chang'an as the center, began to spread to the whole country.

At the same time, there were many fresh faces of Hu people on the streets of Chang'an, some of them had deep eyes and high noses, some were blond and white-skinned, these were merchants from Byzantium, and even more distant from the West, as well as dark-skinned Xinde merchants, and Byzantine gold coins also appeared in the Chang'an market.

And the people of Chang'an do not call them Hu people as in the past, many Han people who like to travel have also gone deep into the far west, and they have written a lot of travel notes about their experiences after they returned, such as "Records of the Roman Kingdoms" and "Records of Arab States" written by Xiao Ting, a native of Chang'an, and "Experiences of Egypt and Libya" written by Wu Wanli, a native of Luoyang, and so on.

These travelogues were carved into books and began to circulate among the literati of Chang'an, and then all kinds of anecdotes flowed into the market and were talked about by the people of Chang'an.

All this subtly changed the Tang people's view of the West, the most typical example is that the people of Chang'an are no longer collectively referred to as the Hu people, but began to have different names, Hui, Lingdong, Sogdian, Sindh, Cannibal, Roman, Frankish, etc., for example, a blonde and blue-eyed Western merchant came to eat at the Chang'an wine shop, and the enthusiastic shopkeeper would smile and ask in the two broken Roman words he had just learned: "Romans?" Franks? ”

All of this was due to the influence of Li Qing'an's ten years in charge of Anxi, and the great circulation of commodities began to gradually change the Tang people's contempt for merchants, and many powerful Han families were also attracted by the huge profits of international trade and began to organize groups to trade in the West.

In Yongxian County, Qizhou, Taishou Cui Ning led the state and county officials to wait for Li Qing'an's arrival on Tang Zhidao, which was Li Qing'an's second visit to Yongxian County in two months, the last time was to learn about the resettlement of Hebei immigrants, and this time it was for Tang Zhidao.

Tang Straight Road lasted two and a half years, the eastern section has been basically built, from Xianyang to Yiwu County, the journey of thousands of miles, which in Yongxian, Huizhou, Liangzhou and other three places built a transfer station, that is, a group of warehouses, stored a large number of strategic materials, Tang Straight Road is about ten zhang wide on average, smooth and compact, not an inch of grass grows, it imitates Qin Straight Road and repairs, but it is different from Qin Straight Road, first of all, it is not a new road, the new road is impossible to complete without ten years, and will consume a lot of manpower and material resources, It is almost possible to do it with the strength of the whole country, and Tang Zhidao is actually to widen and level the original official road, and the time is greatly shortened, only two and a half years.

Despite this, 300,000 people were mobilized, including 150,000 Xinde and Tocharian people, 100,000 Tubo soldiers, 50,000 residents of Longyou, Hexi and other places, as well as hundreds of thousands of camels, horses and thousands of elephants.

But it is the completion of this Tang Straight Road, so that the connection between Anxi and the Central Plains has been greatly strengthened, from Beiting to Chang'an, it used to take fifty-five days, and now it only takes thirty days, shortened by nearly half, especially every fifty miles there is a post station, each post station has three post guards and five post horses, can relay the official documents, with the best horses for relay sprints, the fastest as only twelve days to send the official documents of the North Court to Chang'an, which is comparable to the time spent by the carrier pigeon, but the amount of information it brings is not comparable to the carrier pigeon.

The Tang Straight Road is a dual-use military and civilian, it is its completion that makes the land trade between the Western Regions and the Tang Dynasty begin to flourish, the peaceful environment, good road conditions, the disappearance of horse bandits, and the post stations along the way can be eaten and lodging to rest, which greatly reduces the toil and danger on the journey, stimulates the pursuit of profit by merchants, and caravans begin to appear on the long Tang Straight Road.

Taishou Cui Ning has been waiting for half an hour, since the last time he had a deep talk with Li Qingan, he began to feel bright about the future, and made every effort to resettle the immigrants, half a month ago the Ministry of Household and the Ministry of Officials in the selection of resettlement immigrants in various places, Qizhou ranked first, Cui Ning also got the annual evaluation of the upper examination, this is his fourth consecutive year on the upper examination, which means that he will be promoted next year.

"Cui Taishou, here!" An official shouted pointing into the distance.

Seeing the yellow dust billowing in the distance, an army was galloping towards this side, Cui Ning was in great spirits, and told everyone: "His Royal Highness King Zhao has arrived, everyone should pay attention to etiquette." ”

All the officials nodded in agreement, and soon, the cavalry team got closer and closer, and a big flag with gold on a black background appeared above Huang Chen, on which was written a big 'Li' in white, which was Li Qing'an's handsome flag.

In fact, Li Qing'an's visit this time was not entirely for the completion of Tang Zhidao, but there was another important reason for his visit, which was to inspect the hay warehouse in Yongxian County, which was the storage center of the Tang Army's cavalry hay warehouse, with 300 large warehouses that could accommodate tens of millions of loads of hay.

It can be said that hay is the most important strategic material for the cavalry of the Tang Army, people can eat grain, but the horse must eat grass, and the amount of food is very large, after the Tang Dynasty, the cavalry of the Han people is said to be gradually declining, on the one hand, the degradation of the horse breed, since the beginning of the Western Han Dynasty, the excellent war horses have been castrated in large quantities, and the descendants of inferior horses are reproduced, generation after generation, hundred years and thousands of years, and finally the Central Plains horses can not run fast, can not carry, thin and small, far from being the opponent of the nomadic cavalry.

The second is the disappearance of the land of horse breeding, after the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang army in the Western Regions was all transferred to the Central Plains, and the Tubo took the opportunity to occupy Longyou, Hexi and Anxi, so that the Han people completely lost the place to raise horses, and it became an indisputable fact that the army had no horses.

The third is the high cost of cavalry, the training and equipment of cavalry is of course to consume a lot of financial resources, more importantly, it is difficult to raise horses, raising a horse requires four acres of land to grow pasture, such a high cost makes the farming Han civilization unbearable.

Li Qing'an's Anxi army has a million war horses, and there are as many as 300,000 war horses entering the Central Plains.

Prior to this, there were two forage fields in Guanzhong, one was located in the imperial city of Sinong Temple large grassland, it was stacked in the open air, and four million quintals of forage had been hoarded, and the other was Huazhou forage field, with three million quintals of forage, these were the original horses, and now the 300,000 war horses of the Anxi Army have been added, which is obviously not enough for the Tang cavalry to consume for a winter, so that the newly built Yongxian forage warehouse is the key to whether the war readiness can be successfully completed.

Starting from Chang'an, 3,000 cavalry galloped all the way, the purpose was to test the Tang Straight Road, from Chang'an to Fengxiang, in two days, they completed the inspection of hundreds of miles of Tang Straight Road, below, Li Qing'an inspected the forage warehouse.

Li Qing'an saw that there were officials in front of him to greet him, so he gradually slowed down his horse's speed, and when he was far away, Cui Ning greeted him and bowed his hand: "Welcome Your Highness to Qizhou for inspection!" ”

Li Qingan turned over, handed the reins to his soldiers, stepped forward and smiled: "Let Cui Taishou wait for a long time." ”

"Well, Weichen heard that His Highness came to inspect Tang Zhidao, I don't know if His Highness passed through Qizhou, or returned to Chang'an?"

Li Qingan smiled and said: "Tang Zhidao I have finished the inspection, I came to Yongxian mainly to inspect the forage warehouse, Cui Taishou is willing to accompany me?" ”

Cui Ning was stunned for a moment, and immediately reacted, Li Qingan galloped all the way, but the inspection is over, the official office that commanded the construction of Tang Zhidao is located in Ganzhou, Li Qingan can't go to Ganzhou to inspect!

He hurriedly said: "Weichen is willing to accompany His Highness to inspect the forage warehouse, Your Highness, please!" ”

"Please!"

Everyone got on their horses one after another, and walked west along the Tang Straight Road, and met Tian Zhen, the governor of Fengxiang who came to greet Li Qing'an, and he quickly dismounted and knelt down on one knee and said: "The last general Tian Zhen, if you miss the distance, please forgive the general!" ”

Li Qing'an knew that he was sick, so he dismounted and helped him up, saying, "General Tian is not feeling well, so don't make a special trip here, just wait for me in the forage field." ”

"Thank you for the general's concern, it is the duty of the last general to go out to meet the general, and I dare not disobey the military regulations of Anxi."

Li Qingan saw that he was serious, so he didn't say more, and the two got on the horse and drove all the way forward.

"General Tian, how much stock is there in the forage warehouse now?"

"Back to the general, the day before yesterday just sent 500,000 quintals of hay from Hexi, so far there are 6 million quintals of hay in the hay warehouse, but we have successively shipped 2 million quintals to the Huazhou grassland, if you count this part, then we have 8 million quintals of hay, yesterday I received news from Longyou, there will be 2 million quintals of hay from next month, all of which are spring dried tender grass."

Li Qing'an nodded, in terms of quantity, it was enough for the Tang cavalry to be used for more than half a year, and now he was concerned about safety, especially after his scouts exploded the gunpowder field in Hebei, An Lushan was likely to attack the forage storehouse, and in retaliation, he didn't dare to be careless.

"The main reason why I came to inspect this time is to hope that you will strengthen security, raise the security level to Class A, and eliminate any loopholes."

"The last general obeys!"

They walked a few miles, and saw a huge group of warehouses from a distance, Yongxian forage warehouse is located about three miles south of Tang Straight Road, and built a branch road to connect it, covering an area of dozens of hectares, and more than 300 huge warehouses are composed, there are two high walls outside, the forage warehouse is directly controlled by the military, there are 8,000 soldiers stationed around, there are nearly 100 guard towers alone, the defense is extremely tight, and there are 2,400 forage workers, they are all local people, their family background is innocent, and they have to change their clothes in and out of the forage warehouse, The main purpose is to prevent people from bringing tinder into the warehouse privately.

The forage depot is now a second-class security, patrolling three times each day and night, if it is upgraded to first-class, it will be a non-stop patrol day and night, the guard tower will be doubled, the following officers and soldiers are not allowed to take vacations, and they are not allowed to have any contact with the outside world, and the forage workers are changed from entering the warehouse every day to once every three days, and the body is searched and the soldiers are monitored one-on-one and change clothes.

Li Qing'an and his entourage arrived at the forage warehouse, and Zhao Fengjun, the lieutenant general stationed in the forage warehouse, stepped forward and knelt down to salute, "The last general will see the general!" ”

"General Zhao, please get up!"

Li Qingan smiled, pointed at Cui Ning and said, "I asked Cui Taishou to come and inspect the forage warehouse today, can you allow it to enter?" ”

Zhao Fengjun shook his head and said: "Local officials must have the general's golden arrows to enter the forage warehouse, this is an iron rule formulated by the general himself, and now it is only the general's dictation, and the general himself can only be accompanied by twenty personal soldiers, which is the third paragraph of Article 5." ”

Li Qing'an secretly approved, he invited Cui Ning to come with him in fact, in fact, to test the defense of the forage storehouse, and now that he was very satisfied, he turned back to Cui Ning and said apologetically: "Cui Taishou, the military regulations are like this, I'm sorry." ”

Cui Ning smiled bitterly, he knew that he had made Li Qing'an's touchstone, so he said: "Since the rules are like this, of course I can't violate the rules, so I will wait outside, and His Royal Highness will go to inspect it." ”

"Oh well! We play by the rules. ”

Li Qingan smiled at the twenty personal soldiers behind him: "You twenty people go in with me to inspect!" ”

He urged the horse to enter, but Zhao Fengjun stopped him, he hesitated, but he still pointed to a row of wooden houses in the distance, and said solemnly: "The rule set by the general, the first paragraph of Article 2, anyone who enters the forage warehouse must be searched and changed, I'm sorry, this includes the general." ”

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Half a month later, Zhonglang General Zhao Fengjun was promoted to one level, and was awarded the title of first-class Zhonglang General, a general who was a loyal general, and a reward of 3,000 yuan.

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(To be continued)