Wu Yingqi looked at the white clouds in the sky, secretly calculated the next few days, in two months the pioneer group will leave the Hehuang Valley to return to Chang'an, thinking of the warm family heart is much more down-to-earth, more than 800 days and nights to experience the test of plateau wind and snow, the harsh living environment, the strong amount of sunshine, and the altitude sickness that cannot be seen or touched. ▲ ∴ top ▲ ∴ point ▲ ∴ small ▲ ∴ said, 2 + 3x

Life in the Hehuang Valley is unusually monotonous and depressing, with nothing but the prairie as far as the eye can see, cattle and sheep everywhere, and more than 50,000 Han pioneers scattered on the edge of the confluence of the plateau, living in settlements to grow crops.

The crops of the plateau are very special, and the wild grain similar to wheat is the only grain, and Cao Shi named this grain barley, the mysterious plateau grain above Qinghai.

Late July is the harvest season for barley, and the Han people carry sickles on their backs to harvest grain from the ridges of the settlements.

"Uncle Zhang has worked hard."

"It's not hard, there are still twenty acres of land harvested, and this year's can rest."

The yield per mu of barley is very low, the Qiang people will not plant barley, the yield per mu is maintained at about one stone all year round, the Han people came to the plateau to present highland barley, along the Huangshui and the river (Yellow River) to establish settlements to plant highland barley, the initial yield of highland barley is only less than two stones, and it is expected to break through three stones this autumn, although it is not as good as the corn harvest of five stones in Chang'an City, but this achievement is absolutely amazing on the bitter cold plateau.

Although the Hehuang Valley is only a section of the plateau, it is still a good place with a vast territory and sparsely populated areas, the Qiang people do not like to settle in one place for a long time, the Qiang tribe lives a traditional grazing life of moving from water to grass, and the most fertile land by the river is all given to the Han people to cultivate, causing the Han people to desperately expand the area of cultivated land. There was a shortage of labor everywhere, so much so that each Han had to take care of an acre of arable land. A family of five should plant at least 3 hectares of land.

The lack of people and the abundance of land are also one of the many reasons for the low yield of highland barley, even if the yield of highland barley per mu in the Hehuang Valley exceeds three stones. It is converted into 18o city catties, which is still a long way from the ideal high yield.

Wu Yingqi himself has one and a half acres of cultivated land, and a bare-pole commander like him who has not yet started a family has to have more kinds of fields, and some of the nobles and lows in the pioneer regiment have to obey discipline to go to the fields to cultivate the land, and the grain eaten by the pioneer regiment every year comes from the barley harvested in the field, and self-sufficiency is not a grain of grain in Chang'an is the purpose of the pioneer regiment.

Cao Shi once told them that the money earned from selling salt, horses, cattle and sheep was calculated separately. The purpose is to cultivate the tenacity and perseverance of the Han people on the plateau, and the profiteering industry that comes quickly cannot let the Han people take root in the Hehuang Valley forever, and only self-sufficient farming and grazing on the plateau can take root forever, so that the land of Hehuang and even the entire plateau belong to the Han family.

The wind and snow in winter are cold, the scorching heat in summer is unbearable, every Han people are in a hurry to harvest grain in the autumn harvest season, and the next month is a good time to dry grain, after this threshold will usher in the wind and snow in winter, and the soybeans in autumn will also be planted in time before the heavy snowfall. The yaks trained by the Qiang people can pull the quyuan plow, water and fertilize the land, threshing and drying grain, and reserve straw for livestock feed.

on the plateau. The Han people revived the tradition of thousands of years ago and lived a life of half-farming and half-pastoralism.

Each Han family has to raise hundreds of cattle and sheep, and yak dung is the main heating fuel in winter. Yak dung collected for a year is used for cooking in winter, and yak hair is an important raw material for making felt cloth. Felt tents, felt hats, felt robes, and felt boots almost all the clothes of the Qiang people are made of felt cloth, and only felt robes can be worn in the hot season.

But such days soon came to an end. The Han people brought light and breathable linen cloth from the plateau summer, the price of a horse of linen cloth and a piece of felt cloth was satisfactory, the Qiang people liked cool linen cloth very much, and there were more expensive silk brocade for sale, a cheap silk silk cloth needed three felt cloth exchange, a slightly more expensive four felt cloth, the best fine silk one needed twenty horses of the best felt cloth, only the king of the Qiang people used it.

Wu Yingqi raised his head and saw a familiar figure speeding over, and shouted, "Ge Ribu, why are you here?" Have you collected all the barley? ”

"My Abba is receiving! Ah Wu, I have a message for you, the Huns under the mountain in the north sent an envoy to our Qingtang to meet our king, promising to make our king the commander of ten thousand horsemen, and to give the crown prince a beautiful Xiongnu noblewoman, and the two sides will forever make a blood alliance, and the king is considering the request of the Huns. ”

The strong man of the Qiang people is named Ge Ribu, with a string of earrings made of sharp teeth of wild beasts hanging on his ears, and a circle of complex bracelets around his neck and wrists, some of which are cyan and some are red, and the Qiang people are the descendants of the plateau of the Gurong people, and still maintain the totem worship and ancient habits of the Gurong people, and the Yueshi people also retain the customs and habits of stringing beads.

"The Huns? What did they do on the plateau? ”

Wu Yingqi was very puzzled, the Xiongnu was born in a brotherly alliance with the Han emperor, with the grassland as the border to the north is the Great Xiongnu Empire, to the south is the Han Empire, theoretically the plateau is in the south of the grassland should belong to the territory of the Han Empire, the Huns cross the border to seek an alliance does not seem right, giving people the feeling as if the Huns are a little half-hearted.

"I'll have to go check it out."

"No need to go, the Hun envoys have returned, and they say that they will come again next season to greet the king."

Ge Ribu led the horse to the river to drink, his mount is a beautiful Qinghai horse, the snow fur is shiny, a fat Qinghai horse can travel 800 miles a day, with a weightless rider a day to travel 300 miles without pressure, one person and two horses gallop 600 miles, so Qinghai Cheng can be sold at a sky-high price in Chang'an City, like the top famous car in BC, money may not be able to buy.

Wu Yingqi also has a Qinghai horse, which is not inferior to Ge Ribu's crotch mount, the most important thing on the plateau is a good horse, the adult foal that can survive four cold winters has no horse, the proud Qiang people do not allow the horse to live through two winters, and the Qiang people would rather use a slow yak to carry a tent than use any horse.

Han people live on the plateau for less than three years, learned a lot of unheard of new knowledge, horses and cattle and sheep breeding technology from the Qingtang Qiang people, the fierce Qiang people are not only brave and good at fighting, but also excellent herdsmen and excellent veterinarians, almost every Qiang people have the ability to identify and heal livestock, in the vast plateau day and night temperature difference is very large, will not provide a good environment for livestock. If you can't cure the diseases of livestock, you can't stand on the plateau at all.

Wu Yingqi hesitated: "I remember that the relationship between the Qiang and the Xiongnu is not good. ”

Ge Ri preached: "I don't have a good relationship with you Han people. Except for our brothers, the Yue, we Qiang people will not trust anyone. The timing of your coming is very good, before there was a Han caravan to our Qingtang to recruit dozens of brave and warlike Qiang warriors to go to the west, after the introduction of the Yue people, our king has seen the power of the Han people, I believe that you will avenge our brother Yue people, so you are allowed to live in Qingtang. ”

"Later, everything changed."

"Yes, everything has changed, the Han people bring strange and new things, new things that we Qiang people have never seen. Teach us to fish and catch shrimp, dig salt lakes in summer, fish for alkali blocks in winter, Qiang people in addition to grazing and make quick money, no matter how lazy people can mix three meals a day, wear beautiful silk clothes, use good-looking celadon bottles and jars, and the spicy cabbage made by the Han people is very delicious, and in winter, I love to eat hot roast mutton with hot pickled cabbage. Delicious. ”

Geribu is not a foodie, but limited to the influence of cultural customs, in addition to eating, drinking, hunting and grazing every day, the rest is nothing more than the love of men and women or the competition of pasture horses. The simple and boring days have gone through more than 1,000 cold and summer temperatures over and over again, and they are almost about to become the instinct of every Qiang person, and the hard life has cast the perseverance of the Qiang people. Every Qiang person is brave and fierce, and can fight jackals, tigers and leopards with bare hands, and even Qiang women can draw bows and shoot arrows to defend their homeland.

The Qiang people, who are conservative in their traditions, still stubbornly refuse. The younger generation of Qiang people gradually became accustomed to the Han people in the river valley, although the level of grazing of the Han people was so poor that even the Qiang children had to watch jokes. Although the riding skills of the Han people made the Qiang women laugh at them, they experienced something unprecedented from the Han people, who were very diligent and brave, willing to bear disasters that they had never encountered before, and willing to adapt to the plateau they had never encountered.

Changing to ordinary Qiang people to live on the plateau, I am afraid that few Qiang people can get used to it, the mountain is indeed a good place with abundant water and grass, but the Qiang people are accustomed to the poor life on the mountain, and they must go through a long adaptation period to the bottom of the mountain, and not everyone is willing to accept that kind of adaptation process.

Ge Ribu admires the Han people very much, Wu Yingqi is his Han friend, and he is also the trade agent of their tribe, but he has a yardstick in his heart, the Han and the Huns are outsiders in their eyes, even if the ancestors have a relationship that cannot be beaten by eight poles, it is useless, and the Qiang tribe is also a broken relative, and the competition for pastures and water sources is not a bloody battle.

At the beginning, the king of Qiang agreed to let so many Han people settle by the river, because he valued the countless grains sent by the Han people to feed more Qiang people, and there was no interest to maintain the balance between the two sides, and it was a joke to talk about the kinship more than a thousand years ago.

"I heard you say that your lord has won a war in the south and conquered millions of barbarians there, will your lord come to fight us as well?"

Wu Yingqi caught a glimpse of Ge Ribu's Yan sù expression, and laughed: "Our leader is called Pingyang Hou, he took 200,000 soldiers to fight South Vietnam in order to avenge his hatred, because the South Vietnamese united with the rebellious remnants of our Han land to kidnap Pingyang Hou, fortunately he was lucky to escape back, so he led the army to destroy several countries and shame, you Qiang people and us Han people have no grudges, on the contrary, it is a good partnership, we have common interests to maintain, why fight you?" ”

"Are you telling the truth?"

"Taiyi God is above, and we Han people never lie in front of God."

Ge Ribu raised his head to look at the fiery sun in the sky, and prayed silently with his hands folded in awe, I am afraid that no one would have thought that the easiest communication between the Han and Qiang people is precisely the realm of God, Taiyi God is the main god of the Han people, Kunlun plough is the main god of the Huns, and the Qiang people also have their own totem gods, which are roughly equivalent to the sun god or the god of heaven, and the customs of the heavenly burial are roughly the same as those of the Huns.

There are 1oo settlements in the Hehuang Valley, each settlement has 100 households, built with rammed earth and stones, imitating the most basic township system established by the people of Luli Household Qi, Wu Yingqi temporarily acts as a tour of the township, and is in charge of public security cases such as catching thieves and thieves.

There are a lot of people in the 50,000-person settlement, and there are not many people who really have families, and most of them choose to come to the plateau alone, and only a few military meritorious families are not good in Chang'an, so they simply drag their families and a dozen families to move to the plateau to take root.

There is a temple of Taiyi between the settlements, there are ten temples in total, scattered between the Luli separate buildings, the believers of the pioneer group act as temporary witches, go to the temple every evening to pray, and provide underground shelter for the people, the temple is responsible for storing the children of the settlement to read and write books, and the Han family can ensure that the sinicization is not lost, and not fall into the trap of Huhua becoming Qiang.

In the temple, there is also a newspaper copied by the county every month, and the news of the imperial court is sent from Longxi to the settlement of Hehuang a month late, and there will be a letter from home every month.

"You go back, I have to write a letter to send to my family, it is very strange that the Huns suddenly appeared on the plateau." Wu Yingqi took out the charcoal pen and quickly wrote a letter to his family, Ge Ribu stared at it for a long time and didn't recognize half a word, just like all the same people on the plateau, Ge Ribu was also illiterate, including their great Qiang King was illiterate, the Qiang people did not have their own writing, the Yueshi people had writing but did not reach it, and they were still far from a mature civilization.

The letter will be sent to Chang'an City with the knight, and someone will respond there.

Send the messenger down to rest.

Liehou sat around and pondered, Cao Shi put away the secret letter sent by Wu Yingqi, looked left and right, and his heart was extremely heavy.

His appearance made the Xiongnu have a large deviation, the intensification of the contradiction between the left and right Xianwang is unexpected, the left valley Li Wang Yizhi almost defeated the Wuhuan people, the Zuoxian King in the Xiongnu left frantically swept the Xianbei people, so that the right Xianwang was not convinced, privately sent a messenger to contact the Qingtang Qiang King, the military minister Shan Yu seemed to turn a blind eye to the Huns' infighting, peace of mind to eat meat and drink wine, happy to sit on the mountain and watch the tiger fight people scratch their heads.

If the Huns are allowed to mess around, sooner or later there will be a big disturbance, and Zhao She's ability to stir things up alone is unexpectedly strong.

Cao Shi felt a headache, the history of the Xiongnu is famous, it is not the only nomadic overlord civilization, but the Xiongnu is two thousand years later many nationalities recognized as the ancestor of the nation, the Xiongnu in this era is one of the two poles of the world, at least before the emergence of the Roman Empire is the only two level powers, 6o years ago Mao Dun single in the era of 400,000 strings, 6o years later today 600,000 strings control no problem.

Such a large balance of power in front of him, enough to make every military general feel a headache, stirrups and Takahashi saddles are not worth relying on, the kind of unskilled harness is easy to imitate, no matter how stupid the Huns are, they will think of Piso instead of iron stirrups, playing cavalry Han people are difficult to be the opponent of the Hun cavalry, and training cavalry is not something that can be done overnight, how should he be good.

"The Huns are in front of me, how should I carry out the strategy of westward and southward?" (To be continued!)

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