Tuanbai Valley is located in the south of Taiyuan more than 120 miles, under the jurisdiction of Taigu County, is the only way to go to Taiyuan from the southeast and north of Jin, the throat road. The valley is one hundred and twenty miles long from north to south and nearly one mile wide from east to west. The mountains on both sides of the valley are steep, and in many places there are cliffs that go straight up and down, reaching tens of feet high. On the east side of the valley are mostly rows of dense trees or small fields of the common people, on the west side there is a Taigu water that occupies nearly half the width of the valley, and in the middle is a narrow official road that goes south and north.

On the morning of the 22nd day of the seventh lunar month of the seventh year of Xiande, a huge procession of tens of thousands of people and thousands of horse-drawn carts, mule carts or ox carts was slowly marching through the Tuanbai Valley, along a mountain road only about ten paces wide to the north. In the middle of the ranks, Shi Shouxin, the commander of the Later Zhou and Han armies, wiped the sweat on his face and cursed the scorching sun on his head that was ruthlessly swaying his infinite heat overhead, while urging his soldiers and servants to speed up and be sure to rush to Zihong Town on the other side of the valley for the night before dark, so that it was possible to send the 50,000 stone grain and grass and a large amount of military supplies to the Zhou army camp outside Taiyuan City before the Zuihou deadline of the 25th month of the seventh month of the lunar calendar.

Originally, Shi Shouxin didn't have to be in such a hurry, he set off from Luzhou not late, and he was able to arrive at the Zhou army camp two or three days earlier than the specified time. Unfortunately, the weather was not beautiful, and it began to rain the day after he led his army to leave Luzhou. At first, it was just a light rain, and although it affected the speed of travel, it did not make him miss his daily itinerary. But when he arrived in Qinzhou, the situation changed, not only did the drizzling rain turn into a pouring rain, but also the gusts of wind blew from time to time. In this kind of weather conditions, it is said to be a heavy-duty vehicle, and it is impossible for ordinary people to walk lightly. Faced with this scene, Shi Shouxin had to accept his fate no matter how unwilling he was, so he had no choice but to rest in Qinzhou City, waiting for the rain to be a little lighter before continuing to go north. As a result, the wait was four days, and it was not until the 18th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar that the grain convoy was able to get back on the road.

The shelter from the rain in Qinzhou completely lost Shi Shouxin's time margin before, and the muddy roads in the first two days of leaving Qinzhou also dragged him back a lot, so in order to grab time, he really rushed forward regardless of the past few days, so that not only the soldiers and servants of the grain transportation team were tired and miserable, but even the mules and horses pulling the carts were exhausted to death. Despite this, Shi Shouxin had no intention of slowing down the trip. Because as the commander of the rear army and the grain officer of the grain transportation team, he was very aware of the consequences of not being able to deliver the grain, grass and military materials to the army on time -- at the least, he would be demoted and fined, and the military stick would be served, and at the worst, he would be beheaded by the gate to show the public as an example. More importantly, if the batch of grain and grass he escorted could not be delivered on time, the nearly 100,000 troops outside Taiyuan might be in danger of running out of food.

However, after all, people are made of meat, and they are not as good as machines. Early in the morning, we set out from Fenshi Town, which is located in the middle of the Tuanbai Valley, and now it is nearly noon, and the road has been walking for nearly three hours under the increasingly poisonous sun, and both the soldiers and servants in the grain transportation team are exhausted, and even many mules and horses are so tired that they begin to foam. Seeing that his subordinates were tired and tired, and if he continued to walk, he was afraid that the men and horses would die of heat stroke, even if Shi Shou was in a hurry in his confidence, he had to order the team to temporarily stop and rest, bury the pot and make food, and wait for the men and horses to eat and drink enough and rest before continuing to move forward. At this time, Shi Shouxin's grain transportation team was still about thirty miles away from Zihong Town at the mouth of the valley on the north side.

As soon as the order to rest was given, the grain transport team immediately stopped. Many soldiers and men sat or even lay down in the shade formed by the shelter of the vehicles, hiding from the scorching sun overhead, and did not care about the dust on the official road covering their bodies and faces. Some of the soldiers and servants who still had the strength to sit and did not want to sit on the official road rushed to the edge of the Taigu water, or drank the cool river water, or poured river water to cool down, enjoying the rare coolness. Worse still, they simply jumped into the river and soaked, thus splashing clusters of water, provoking the complaints of their companions who were drinking or washing their faces on the shore - fortunately, although the center of the river was deep, it was relatively shallow twenty or thirty paces from the shore, but it would be waist-high so that the soldiers and servants who jumped into the river would not be in danger of drowning. …,

The time to relax is short, after letting his subordinates enjoy the coolness of the Jinyuan River, Shi Shouxin ordered all departments to gather people, seize the time to eat, rest, and be sure to get back on the road after half an hour, and must rush to Zihong Town before dark.

Although they were reluctant to leave the cool river, the military order was the military order, and in the face of the strict discipline in the army, those soldiers and servants who jumped into the river had to give up the rare coolness, and reluctantly walked ashore from the river to sit with their companions to eat and rest. Fortunately, the wind began to blow in the valley at this time, although it was not as strong as the wind that almost blew people into the sky a few days ago, but the cool feeling of blowing on wet clothes was still relatively comfortable.

The soldiers and servants began to eat and rest in groups, and Shi Shouxin also sat under a large umbrella under the service of his own soldiers, chewing dried meat and dry food while drinking the clear river water. However, perhaps it was because of his keen perception of danger that he had cultivated through a hundred battles, or perhaps it was the dirt and grass clippings falling in the sky that caught his attention, or perhaps the birds that were originally chirping happily in the woods on the top of the mountain suddenly lost a little sound, so that Shi Shouxin, who was supposed to enjoy the rare leisure time in the past few days, suddenly had a premonition of unhappiness, a premonition that danger was rapidly approaching. This premonition made him regret that he had been patronizing the road in the past few days, and had relaxed his investigation and investigation of the area through which the grain transport team passed, which was really a little too careless.

Of course, the reason why Shi Shouxin was so careless was that in addition to the urgency of time and having to simplify or even cancel the steps of reconnaissance and reconnaissance in order to speed up the trip, it also had a lot to do with the fact that Zhou Jun had been smooth sailing and invincible since his attack on the Han Dynasty. Today, in addition to the prefectures and counties in the south that have been conquered or received by the Zhou army, and the military states of the Zhou court in the west, such as Shizhou, Xianzhou, and Lanzhou, which took the initiative to surrender to the Zhou court, only Taiyuan City and Xinzhou and Daizhou in the north are still under the control of the Northern Han court. And except for a small number of defenders responsible for defending Xinzhou and Daizhou, and the main force of the Northern Han army, which was already concentrated in Taiyuan and was confronting the nearly 100,000 Zhou troops outside the city, there was no sign of any other military activity in the entire Northern Han Dynasty. The previous batches of grain convoys also came and went very smoothly, and not only did they not encounter any harassment and attacks by the Northern Han army along the way, but they did not even encounter a few ordinary people -- the town of Fenshi, where Shi Shouxin's headquarters camped last night, was almost an empty town, and except for a small number of people who were old and frail and could not walk, there was no one at all.

However, Shi Shouxin is a famous general in the Later Zhou Dynasty after all, and his years of experience in the war make him very concerned about his hunch. Therefore, although he looked around the mountains and cliffs on the left and right sides and on both sides of his head and found nothing unusual, for the experience and habits of the general, he still stopped eating and drinking, turned his head and called a personal soldier and ordered: "You go to the front scout to pass on the order of a certain general, and order him to quickly send scouts to scout horses, carefully search the road in front of us and the mountain beams and cliffs on both sides of our convoy, and ensure that there will be no mistakes in the safety of the front and both wings of the convoy." ”