Mobei, located in the north of the Hanhai Desert Group, has always been the rear of the northern nomads to invade the Han people in the Central Plains, in ancient times when there were no railways and engines, the farming people in the south of the desert wanted to conquer northward, and the transportation of grain and grass alone could drag down an empire.

When Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty conquered the Huns, he exhausted the national wealth accumulated during the reign of Wenjing and Liangdi, and it took ten years, but only forced the Huns to retreat from the southern grassland to Mobei, and the hussar general Huo Qubing died on the road of the northern expedition.

After the division of the Xiongnu in Mobei, most of them migrated westward and crossed the green mountains to plague the ethnic and tribal states in West Asia. The Huns who stayed behind were not accustomed to the hard life of Mobei, so they bowed to the Han Empire and attached to the south of the Great Wall for a half-ploughing and half-pasture, until the former Xiongnu slave Xianbei people rose in the Daxianbei Mountain, and it took more than 100 years to occupy the steppe in the north.

The rising Xianbei people, under the leadership of a generation of male lord Tanshi Huai, formed a large alliance of eastern, central and western tribes, and when they were at their strongest, the territory they controlled reached the Great Xianbei Mountain in the east, Yanmen and Yunzhong in the south, and Wusun in the west to the Wusun Kingdom in the Western Regions, and I don't know where they went in the north. However, although the Xianbei people were strong for a while, but failed to form a unified country, after the death of Tanshi Huai, the tribal alliance fell apart, the large and small tribes on the grassland both attacked each other, and from time to time went south to invade the Han people, so that the Xianbei and the Han people did not really get cheap.

It wasn't until the appearance of a person that this boring game of killing, fighting, coming back, and being beaten back was completely changed.

This person is Liu He, who has just been crowned a hussar general.

After counting the battles with the Xianbei people since Liu He commanded the troops, the troops invested by both sides more than once at a time, and the Xianbei people who died on the outskirts of Youzhou exceeded 100,000. These dead Xianbei people. All of them are men in the prime of life in various tribes, and many of them are warriors in the tribe, and they are the spiritual symbols of a certain tribe.

In addition to the Xianbei people who died on the battlefield, there were also 50,000 Xianbei captives who were castrated by Liu He's order and thrown into the mines and tunnels to engage in the hardest physical labor, and finally the fate that awaited them was also exhausted early, and then filled into the abandoned tunnels, and even the souls were suppressed in it forever, and they could not die forever.

Liu He returned to Youzhou in the second year of Chuping, and the time has just passed ten years, because of his survival. The Xianbei tribe, the most populous in the northern grasslands, lost 150,000 strong men, which was no longer a heartbreaking injury for the Xianbei people with a total population of less than one million, but a fatal blow. If another 150,000 comes, there will only be old people, women and children left in the Xianbei tribe, and then what awaits them is only extinction and annihilation.

In the eyes of the Han people in the north, Liu He is now their god and hero, while in the eyes of the nomads of the northern steppes, Liu He is a devil and an executioner. Once. When Liu He heard that the Xianbei people, whether they were old people or children, called themselves devils, he said happily: "If this race can be completely wiped out, I don't mind if they call me the Living Hades!" ”

There is no way, the restrained and peaceful farming people are facing the aggressive nomads. Nature does not have any advantage, and the best way to deal with these nomads who are in charge of killing and burying them is to cut the grass and eradicate the roots, and then occupy a dominant position all the time. It was not until the age of thermal weapons and steam power that the mobility of the nomads was completely canceled out, so that there was a possibility of peaceful coexistence between the two races.

Although Liu He is called the devil. But he didn't have the devil's exaggerated golden finger, and in this era when science and technology were still in their infancy, he couldn't build steam engines and machine guns and cannons, so he could only shoulder the task of destroying miè, cutting off the claws of the Xianbei people who invaded the south again and again, and driving them back to the north.

However, just driving the invading Xianbei people back to the north was not the result that Liu He really wanted. In his plan, the goal of this life is to build the cement avenue all the way to Mobei, build the fort to the wilderness of the far north, and then rely on these strongholds to carry out dragnet cleaning again and again, until all the nomads in the north are eliminated, and the vast steppe is turned into a pasture for the Han people.

In Liu He's view, the Han people have the strongest ability to adapt, as long as the nomads in the north are cleared, some Han people who have committed crimes can be exiled to the cold north in the future, and then teach them to graze and survive on the grassland, it will not be too long, they will become the best herdsmen, and they are also the kind of herdsmen who keep to themselves and do not like to invade.

Even if the descendants of these exiled Han people grow stronger in the north in the future, and develop the habit of nomadic invasion everywhere, it is still the Han people in the north who fight with the Han people in the south, and the meat is rotten and still in the pot in the end, so that hundreds of thousands of Han people will not be killed by butchers on horseback hundreds of thousands of years later, or a pigtail like a pig's tail hangs on the back of their heads......

If Liu He wanted to realize this grand idea in his heart, he had to face many difficulties and obstacles, the most urgent of which was to unify the whole country as much as possible and achieve long-term internal peace and stability, while the most long-term problem was the population problem. No matter how Liu He could fight, even if he commanded the troops to fight to the west of the Green Ridge in one go, if he could not move the Han people over, it would not be possible to form an effective occupation, and in the end it would be just a flash in the pan, making wedding clothes for other ethnic groups.

The Han people are undoubtedly the strongest in their ability to reproduce, but their enterprising and pioneering spirit is very lacking, and Liu He is now trying his best to prevent the Han population from plummeting due to famine and plague, just to send the Han people thousands of miles away in his lifetime and lay the broadest living space for the Han people.

Now, the catastrophe has not passed, and the north is facing the threat of plague, which makes Liu He feel frustrated and extremely unwilling at the same time. Although he knew that it would be difficult to act against the sky, Liu He still didn't want to give up, as long as there was still a breath, he still had to fight and struggle. Because, Liu He is not fighting alone now, there are still many followers and supporters behind him.

Although the "Health and Epidemic Prevention Bill" drafted by Liu He himself is still being revised and improved, some of its provisions and measures have already been published in the "Dahan Times". In order to rapidly expand the spread of the contents of this issue, the print run of Dahan Times increased from 5,500 to 100,000 copies. This is tantamount to Liu He taking out his own money to do a free publicity and education on epidemic prevention knowledge for the people.

Liu He also asked the carved wooden masters to be sent from Yecheng to Jicheng, Macheng, Xiangping, Lelang, Luoyang, Wuwei and Tancheng as quickly as possible, and demanded that the latest issues of newspapers on health and epidemic prevention be vigorously distributed in the areas under his control and influence, so as to further expand the influence of the newspapers and popularize the people's basic understanding of health and epidemic prevention.

When the snowflake-like newspaper was printed and sent, all parts of the northern Han Dynasty immediately responded to Liu He's call. Swift action was launched, and a huge anti-epidemic campaign was launched.

Macheng is thousands of miles away from Yecheng, which is at the junction of Youzhou and Bingzhou, and was originally just an ordinary border city, but because Liu He had been stationed and fought here, it was famous in the north. In addition, this city is also the location of the Captain of Huwuhuan, and there are a large number of secret weapons workshops and research and development workshops in the city, so this is now another important town in the entire Youzhou after Jicheng.

After the special issue of the "Dahan Times" on epidemic prevention was delivered to Macheng, Liu Zheng, the captain of Huwuhuan, immediately mobilized craftsmen to print the newspaper overnight, and the next day began to send it door-to-door in the city. On the third day, they sent newspapers to the camps of the surrounding garrisons, and on the fifth day, they received newspapers in Jining Duwei City and Baishan Duwei City, hundreds of miles away.

The military and civilians of Macheng have an almost fanatical personality cult for Liu He, Liu He was originally to Macheng as a pilot to carry out sanitation and cleaning in the city, this time Liu He reminded the people in the newspaper to be vigilant against the catastrophe at the same time will be accompanied by a major epidemic, and called on the people around the country to act quickly to fight a war against the epidemic, after reading the newspaper, the Macheng military and civilians not only understood why the epidemic prevention. And they know how to prevent the epidemic.

Do not drink raw water, do not pollute the water source, wash your hands before eating, and ventilate your house regularly every day. Keep quicklime, sulfur, realgar and mothballs at home...... When the corpses of people and animals with unknown cause of death are found, they should immediately cordon off the surroundings and report upwards, and when they find unidentified Hu people in the north approaching the city, they should report it, and they must not cross the border line and enter the northern grasslands without permission......

Each of these detailed regulations has been imprinted into the minds of the military and civilians of Macheng. A lot of it is actually what they've been doing all these years.

Outside the city of Duwei in Jining, a convoy transporting quicklime is arriving from the south, and Duwei Du Qi is checking the preparation of epidemic prevention materials in the city. "How many medical officers are there in the city?"

"Back to the words of the captain. A few days ago, ten more people were transferred from Jicheng, and now there are a total of twenty-five medical officers in the city. ”

"How much charcoal is stored for burning corpses?"

"There are 100,000 catties in the warehouse, and the 100,000 catties temporarily transferred from Macheng are already on the way. In addition, there are 200,000 catties of coal. ”

"There are masks for sale in Macheng, have you ever purchased a batch and come back?"

"Macheng's masks are very expensive, and I bought 5,000 at the beginning of the year, and they are all stored in the official treasury."

"Five thousand is not enough, immediately send someone to Macheng to buy another 30,000 and come back!"

"Dare to ask the Captain, where did the cost of this purchase come from?"

"It's out of the income from the sale of livestock this fall."

In the city of Baishan Governor, Zheng Hun, the second governor, is also seizing the time to prepare for epidemic prevention. He gathered all the twenty-eight leaders of the four major tribes and then lectured everyone.

"You've all read this special issue, right? It is rare for a hussar general to write an article in his own handwriting, and since he has made arrangements and instructions on how to prevent the spread of the plague, there is no room for slackness and sloppiness! Some of you may think this is a bit of a fuss, because you have no idea how terrible the Great Plague is! During the reign of Emperor Ling, there were a total of five plagues, two of which were around Luoyang, do you know how many deaths were caused by these plagues? ”

Zheng Hun's family history, coupled with the fact that his hometown is near Luoyang, still remembers the several plagues that broke out during the reign of Emperor Ling.

It's good that the leaders of the four major tribes can read the newspaper, but who knows the tragic situation after the outbreak of the plague when Emperor Ling was in power, they can only blink their eyes and face Zheng Hun's question.

"I have come to tell you that the five plagues killed five million people! The population of Youzhou last year was more than 5 million, and if a major plague broke out, the population would be reduced by half within a year! Now, do you know how terrible the plague is? ”

The leaders were stunned by the numbers Zheng Hun said, and they realized that the epidemic prevention preparations they had made before were far from enough.

"The order of the Duwei of Chuanben, from now on, close several farms near Duwei City, stop any trade with the Hu people in the north, transfer all adult livestock in the city to the south of Baishan, and the people in the four major tribes stop nomadism and return to the city to recuperate until the thaw next year!" (To be continued......)