The cold wind carried the snow particles, and the armor on his body clanged. This is a cold wind from the Western Regions, which is said to freeze cattle and sheep walking on the road. Whether the rumors were true or not was not known to him, but he once saw a stupid half-catty (Note 1) whose wings were broken by the snow and fell from the sky, and his neck was broken into two pieces on the spot.

The unlucky bird, who had broken his neck, was picked up by the samurai and brought back to his felt tent and served him and Liu Hongji snacks that night. Compared to the coarse horse meat and the fishy mutton, roast bird meat is simply the most rare in the world. It's just that this thing is really rare, and he can't hunt it even if he has the heart to hunt. Even the frogs and wild mice that had been hiding in the ground for the winter were dug up and eaten by the swarms, and if they flew in the sky or ran on the ground, as long as non-human creatures dared to dangle in front of them, there would be no bones left in an instant.

On the orders of Li Yuan, who remained behind in Honghua, the 13 counties of Guanyou sent people to recruit victims in the areas of Feng'an and Mingsha (Note 2) to participate in Tuntian. However, there is a flood of refugees, and the diversion measures are not exhaustive. According to the news from the scouts in the army, many people fled not because their hometowns were affected, but because the Huining, Zhangye and Zhuhu tribes under Helan Mountain took advantage of the empty troops on the frontier of the Great Sui Dynasty and began to expand on a large scale. Generations of Han Chinese who had settled throughout Longxi were forcibly evicted from their farmland, and their houses and livestock were all detained. "This is where we graze!" Zhuhu Khan emphasized that he did not care about the virtue of protection of the Great Sui for many years. The person who took the lead was the Khan of Hosana, who had been pacified by the emperor's order last summer, and returned to Guannai with more than 20 carts of gifts, and reported to His Majesty that the Western Xinjiang Zhuhu was obedient as usual. Now Lord Pei can enjoy his gifts at home, while the people pay the price of displacement for his greed.

"These bastards! Sooner or later, Lao Tzu asked them to spit back tenfold or hundredfold what they had eaten! The warrior scolded hatefully, eager to lead his troops to kill the troublesome Hu tribe. But he also knew that his wish would never come true in the short term. The small tribes in the border areas have always been grassy on the wall, and if there is no one behind them, they will not dare to be so lawless. And the villains who instigated them to sprinkle salt on the wounds of the Great Sui Dynasty must be the Turks, who taught them a lesson more than ten years ago. At present, the national strength of the Great Sui is declining, but the Turks are becoming stronger and stronger, and in the case of the decline of strength, the Great Sui court has no choice but to turn a blind eye to the tragedy on the border......

The imperial court did not come out, and the samurai Tong as a general could only endure it. While enduring the biting cold wind, he endured the conscience torment caused by a military general who saw his own people being bullied by foreign enemies. Since following Li Shimin to Mingsha to recruit troops in November, he has had a hard time every day. Before he came here, he used to sigh that he had too much fat under his buttocks, but now he wished that the flesh on his body would grow back, so that he would not be sour from the saddle all day long.

However, Samurai never regretted his decision. This trip was not in vain, although before leaving, Li Yuan, the Duke of Tang, who was afraid of arousing the suspicions of the imperial court, made a temporary decision to reduce the amount of troops recruited from 5,000 to 3,000, which greatly reduced the results of this trip. But the samurai saw a beautiful scenery that he had never imagined. He once saw the wide Yellow River frozen into an ice sculpture thousands of miles long in front of his eyes. Each wave seems to be in a state of rushing clearly. He had seen a chrysanthemum-yellow sunset fall from the other side of the Great Wall, like a salted egg yolk, but no one knew who would eat it. Beyond the Great Wall is the unchanging wilderness, and beyond the wilderness is thousands of miles of yellow sand. Wu Shitong once accompanied Li Shimin on an adventure to climb the Great Wall, which had been damaged by the wind, and he saw a beautiful fairyland-like city between heaven and earth in the distance. Richly dressed shepherds rode white camels, and there were countless bearded women from the Western Regions, who walked barefoot without shoes in winter, and the gold rings on their ankles shimmered.

It was a mirage formed by the sand monster exhaling underground, a newly recruited soldier cautiously told him. Everyone who appears in the mirage is a soul who was fascinated by this scenery during the journey and finally died in the desert. After their deaths, their spirits persisted, so they obeyed the orders of the Sand Monster Master and conjured up on a sunny day to attract more people. When they said this, the soldiers kept their voices low, for fear of retaliation if the ghosts heard them. And Li Shimin, who was standing beside Wu Shi Tong, was enraged, pointed to the scenery on the horizon and scolded, "Guy who works for the tiger, wait for Lao Tzu to lead the troops to dig up all of you and file your bones and ashes!" ”

His words frightened many of the soldiers into trembling, fearing that the next moment the sky would fall apart. Unexpectedly, the monster in the sea of sand is also a guy who bullies the soft and is afraid of the hard, and he quickly put away his mirage. In an instant, the camels, the city, and the beauties were gone, and only the empty earth and sky were left in front of them.

"See, the so-called demons and monsters, that's what happened. The more you are afraid of him, the more daring he becomes. Pull out all the knives for me, and line up! Li Shimin was very dissatisfied with the performance of the recruits and shouted angrily.

When the sergeants heard the order, they quickly lined up in a horizontal line on the city wall, drawing their swords to the wind. They moved quickly, their troops were neat, and they didn't look like they belonged to any of the elites all the time. But looking at it with the eyes of Wu Shitong, Li Shimin and others, they can find that the team in front of them seems to lack a little spirit compared to the demeanor of the grain protection army when it entered Liao. What exactly is missing, Samurai himself can't say. This group of people are all strong men selected from a hundred miles according to Li Shimin's requirements. If he fought alone, it is estimated that one person can defeat three or five brothers in the food protection army that day. Wu Shi Tong and Liu Hongji also trained them according to a standard that was twice as strict as that of the grain protection army, and no matter how heavy the wind and snow outside were in the past two months, everyone never missed a day of exercise. But this group is not like a soldier, but more like an obedient puppet. Li Shimin told them to go east, they never went west, let them drill snowdrifts in winter, and no one frowned.

However, after drilling through the snowdrifts, their faces were filled with despair, without the slightest passion for survival. "We've recruited a bunch of cows that don't have eggs!" When the four of them were deliberating, the eldest grandson Wuji once commented on the newborn Li Jiajun. This is the conclusion he drew from folklore, it is said that when the people of the Northwest fanned the ox, they always liked to put the cut cow eggs in front of the angry bull and smash it with a hammer in front of it. The moment he sees his male organs turn into meat sauce, no matter how fierce the bull is, he will bow his head. From then on, ploughing and pulling carts, even if they were led by women and children, they would never resist.

What Li Shimin needs is an invincible army, not a group of obedient bulls. For this, he was sullen. Do everything possible to find the reason for the fruitlessness of the military training. When Liu Hongji, Li Xu, Wu Shi Tong and others were training, he used to personally observe from the side. All the methods, the steps, the orders, the military regulations, are all the same. But the same method is applied to different people by the same people, and the effect is very different.

"It's not that they don't have eggs, it's that they haven't recovered from their sadness!" The samurai was good-hearted and took the initiative to defend his subordinates. Most of the men who have been conscripted into the army have just lost their families to natural disasters and man-made disasters, and it is difficult for them to recover quickly under the blow of the separation of their wives. The reason why these people were able to grit their teeth and keep training and obey all orders was because they knew that only the barracks could feed them, and that only the barracks could give them a place to sleep at night.

"It can't go on like this. If they continue to train like this for a whole year, they won't be able to go to the battlefield! Although Li Shimin's experience is not as deep as Liu Hongji and Wu Shitong, he also knows that the brothers under his command cannot fight. Only those who have the desire to survive can defeat their enemies on the battlefield, and those with dead faces are usually slaughtered like cattle and sheep. On that day, it was precisely because they wanted to return to the Central Plains alive that the 800 grain guards created a miracle of being invincible for thousands of miles in Liaodong. If they had just started and learned that the back road had been cut off, even if Sun Wu was reborn, it might not be able to boost the morale of everyone.

"From tomorrow onwards, Brother Hongji and I will sleep among them all day long!" Samurai Tong thought for a moment and replied. Undressing and pushing food, this is what the ancient famous generals once did. In order to seize the rare opportunity to perform, he can no longer consider whether the move is a taboo.

Wu Shitong's words made many people's eyes shine, and everyone remembered that when he was in Huaiyuan Town, Li Xu also mingled with his brothers. Of course, Li Xu couldn't help but mingle with everyone, at the beginning, he was just a team, and those who could join the grain army were all thicker than him at that time. Later, he was promoted to an official position, and he became familiar with the people around him, and he couldn't pull up a fight if he wanted to.

"Well, starting tomorrow, my luggage will be moved to the barracks. Eat and live with everyone, Brother Zhong Jian can do it that day, and I can do it too! Li Shimin thought about it and said.

On that day, Huaiyuan was training troops, Liu Hongji was just pointing from above, and Li Xu, Wu Shi Tong and others were the specific executors. Therefore, Li Shimin believes that the reason why Liu Hongji did not bring out another grain army after Brother Zhong Jian left was largely because he did not like to mix with the brothers without a frame like Li Xu.

"This must not happen!" Without waiting for Li Shimin to finish his thoughts, Liu Hongji and eldest grandson Wuji objected in unison. After glancing at each other, the eldest grandson Wuji decided to state his reasons first, "This place is close to the border, and the foreign departments are eyeing each other. You are the second son of the Li Mansion, once someone plots against you, we will all die and have no place to be buried! ”

Since Li Yuan sat in Honghua, he has never been soft on horse thieves, rogue bandits, and local tyrants who have plotted against him. While stabilizing local law and order, he also made a lot of enemies. If these men had sent the dead soldiers into the barracks, and Li Shimin had to share the weal and sorrow with the soldiers, the Assassins would have easily succeeded.

If he loses the main general, Liu Hongji may be exempt from prosecution by virtue of his official position. Samurai Tong and the eldest grandson Wuji will definitely not escape punishment. Moreover, even if Duke Tang was gracious afterwards, their future in this life would definitely be ruined. No one would rest assured that they would use a staff member who couldn't even protect their own mastermind, even if the Li family didn't like it anymore.

"Shimin, I didn't go to mess around with the brothers all day long like Zhong Jian, I didn't do it, but I couldn't!" Liu Hongji knew that Li Shimin had misunderstood himself and the criteria for being a qualified general, so he raised his face and shouted advice. "As the old saying goes, a good general governs the army, and grace and power are combined. If there is grace but no authority, it will not be possible. If there is power but no grace, no one will die. Zhong Jian was a lieutenant that day, so he naturally had to treat the brothers like brothers, and I was ordered to lead the whole army that day, so I had to keep a certain distance from the brothers. ”

"Thank you, Brother Hongji, for your advice!" Li Shimin knew that Liu Hongji was teaching himself, and arched his hand gratefully. But soon, he discovered the inappropriateness of what Liu Hongji said, and found an excellent counterexample, "But Zhongjian later brought out the Xiongwu Battalion? ”

For Li Xu, who is only less than two years older than himself, Li Shimin is not just blindly admiring. From the two battles of Liaodong to the later leading troops to quell the rebellion, he watched every move of the other party. In private, he often wonders if he can do better than the other party if he changes positions with the other party. Therefore, he observed Li Xu far more carefully than Liu Hongji and others, and pondered more seriously than Liu Hongji and others. That was his dream, as the second son of the Li Mansion, he rarely had the opportunity to practice it in person, but he could integrate himself into Li Xu's story, fantasizing that he could also get rid of all shackles and sway freely in the thousands of troops.

"Zhong Jian led the troops, and he was too close to the brothers, so everyone was willing to fight side by side with them. In this way, when fighting a good fight, the morale is like a rainbow, if there is a setback, everyone is too familiar with him because they are usually too familiar, and they are fearless, and they will inevitably have the mind that they will not be punished if they retreat. Liu Hongji thought about it and explained.

"But there's a strategy to avoid it!" Knowing that Li Shimin may not be convinced, Liu Hongji continued to add, "That is, he takes the lead in every battle." As long as you don't retreat, the brothers will definitely not be able to abandon the boss and flee first. And what Zhong Jian did the best was precisely this! ”

"If the coach fails, the whole army will be exhausted, and there will be no chance to turn the book at all!" The eldest grandson Wuji added loudly on the side. He knew that the person he admired the most was Li Zhongjian in Liu Hongji's mouth, but how noble the second son's identity was, no matter what, he couldn't charge in person like a madman like Li Zhongjian. For a child of a family, it is too self-deprecating. Another point is that Li Shimin's martial arts may not be as high as he imagined, and the eldest grandson Wuji knows this very well in his heart, but he can't say it explicitly anyway.

Note 1: Silly Banjiner, whose scientific name is sand grouse, is an endangered wild bird that was once widely distributed in Northwest China and Inner Mongolia. Because of his obesity and poor flying ability, he likes to go to private houses to warm up and send him to death, so he is called a stupid half-catty by the people.

Note 2: Mingsha, near Zhongning, Ningxia, near the Yellow River. Not far from the north bank of the Yellow River is the Great Wall of Sui.

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