In the summer of last year, Lanzhou fought with the Dangxiang cavalry, and the Mobei Kelie Department moved to the northern foot of Yinshan Mountain, which once blocked the way of the Lanzhou army. After solving the threat of the party members, Wu Yingying felt that the side of the couch could not allow others to snore, so he mobilized several detachments of the hussar battalion to harass the Kereh tribe who were wintering here day and night.

The nomadic warriors of the hussar camp were like wolves that occupied the territory. They do not come into direct contact with the powerful Kree. They threw decaying livestock on water sources near the Kerebu, burned the hay stored in the Kereh to give the livestock wintering and even destroyed the overwintering pastures. Amur even asked Singu to help collect the corpses of typhoid or other plague-infected patients from the densely populated areas of the Central Plains, and to throw them near the water source of the Kerebu. This primitive idea of germ warfare was stopped by Wu Yingying, but if one day the grassland nomadic tribe is strong enough to threaten the survival of Lanzhou, Lanzhou will do whatever it takes.

Usually the steppe tribes grab the overwintering pastures and are afraid of each other. Just as no one can do a loss-making business in the business field. However, the more than 20 Mobei hussar battalion tribes supported by Lanzhou sent a large number of their livestock to Lanzhou or the Yin Valley to feed for the winter, and there was no shortage of forage, and the grain and grass were supplied by Lanzhou. The hussar battalion's near-defeating destruction of wintering resources was a headache for the Kreb tribe with a large number of women, children, elderly people and livestock. Hussar warriors were kept warm by down jackets in their fur jackets, silk down sleeping bags at night, and their horses were fed with concentrate, and their ability to move on the steppe in winter was far better than that of tribal warriors on grass horses, wearing thin fur coats or cold armor.

Once the warriors of the Kereh tribe launched a crusade, the hussar battalion detachment fled far away, or simply hid in the foothills of Yinshan, where some places were leeward, warm valleys suitable for wintering, and some places were windy, and the wind was bitter all year round, and it was more severe than the desert. Lanzhou sent the newly formed Jincheng battalion to fight with the hussar battalion at the foot of the Yinshan Mountain, and once the herdsmen of the Kereh tribe pursued and killed them into the unfamiliar Yinshan, they were often ambushed and killed after being exhausted.

The steppe tribes could not rely entirely on the hay stored in the autumn for wintering, and the Kereh tribe also went south in the hope that more wintering livestock would survive in the grasslands in the south. However, the necessary materials such as hay on the winter grassland are extremely limited, and the tribes need to be scattered over a vast area in order to obtain enough resources for survival. However, as soon as the hussar battalion discovered the scattered herdsmen of the Kereh tribe, they would unceremoniously burn the tents, take people and loot the livestock, and use all kinds of methods to do so.

The Kereh tribe was increasingly unable to cope with the harassment of the Lanzhou hussar camp like horse thieves, and they could only live together in thousands of tents, but the pastures near the wintering grounds could not support the needs of so many tribes and livestock, and a large number of livestock died of hunger because there was not enough forage. In one winter, not only did they lose a large number of soldiers and herdsmen, but the livestock that survived the winter were far less than those that stayed in Mobei for the winter.

The north wind stopped for a while, the east wind gradually rose, and green grass and green shoots just appeared on the grassland. After being harassed by a winter, the Kerebu hurriedly pulled out the camp and returned to the north, and the tribal nobles who began to come up with ideas to come to the south to spend the winter were complained by the leader and could no longer raise their heads.

The Lanzhou Hussar Battalion detachment was unforgiving, following the brigade of the Kereh Division hundreds of miles to the north, and once a group of troops tried to break away from the brigade and become nomadic in the vicinity, the Hussar Battalion detachment would unceremoniously abduct people and grab livestock. After fighting for a whole winter, piecemeal, more than 1,000 herdsmen of the Kereh tribe were captured and plundered, and nearly 10,000 livestock. The hussar battalion and the Jincheng battalion, which were directly involved in the operation, also greatly increased their combat strength.

In the course of the winter campaign, a concept of land power developed from the concept of territory inherent to the steppe tribes emerged. That is, through the combination of strong cavalry detachments and tribal base areas, the control of key passages is ensured, and finally the territorial division and control of the vast area are achieved. Although these passages are almost uninhabited, the Lanzhou army will have clear control over them, and the enemy will be attacked by Lanzhou when they enter this area.

The vast steppe is not an indiscriminate barren land in the eyes of the Central Plains people, but in the eyes of the nomadic people who are familiar with the grasslands, the steppes are formed by the abundant water pastures, hunting grounds, salt fields, riverbanks and lakeside areas, and the roads that connect these blocky areas. Although the grasslands are vast, the migration of large tribes is extremely dependent on water sources, so the nomadic movement on the steppes can only move according to a limited route of water meadows and water sources of a certain scale.

Cavalry can ignore such resource constraints for a short period of time, but large tribes can only move according to a limited number of options, otherwise the loss of livestock and population due to insufficient resources alone can devastate a tribe's vitality. At that time, the Xiongnu crisscrossed the desert for hundreds of years, just because they were forced by the Han Dynasty, they fled in a hurry and did not choose the road, and as a result, the number of people and livestock who died in the migration far exceeded those killed and captured by the Han people.

The roads that the Hussar Camp emphasized were valuable because they were important routes with pastures and water, or traditional routes for the nomadic migration of steppe tribes, or trade routes between the East and the West themselves. Controlling these areas can achieve the role of clamping down on trade routes, blocking hostile tribes, and seizing the first hand in the competition for survival in Mobei.

Controlling the key pathways is only the first step for the Lanzhou Hussar Battalion to pass through the grasslands. The second step is to force the grassland tribes to abandon their nomadic habits and attach themselves to Lanzhou, and Lanzhou will arrange territories and pastures for the dependent grassland tribes to practice fixed grazing.

The nomadic habits of the steppe tribes are not so much forced by the natural environment as they are needed for defense. Animal husbandry and wandering are not naturally related, a certain carrying capacity of the pasture, to feed a certain number of herds, will inevitably be able to feed a certain population. The reason why a nomadic system was formed in the vast steppes of the northern part of the Eurasian continent was due to the survival law of the jungle on the steppe. Weak tribes are often oppressed by powerful tribes, plundered, and even reduced to slavery of entire tribes, and in the end, herders can only gather into a few huge tribes, and such a large number of herders exceeds the limit of what a natural grassland can carry. As a result, the "populous" steppe tribes had to move from one pasture that had been eaten by cattle and sheep to another, and if there was a weak tribe in the pasture, they would conquer and annex it. If it's another powerful tribe, fight, ally or avoid. In this way, they have been attacking each other for thousands of years.

Divide the grasslands controlled by Lanzhou into several territories. For example, two hundred-man units set up a fixed grazing territory, and 200 sergeants in one territory have a total of 2,000 herdsmen. The two centurions took turns to patrol, one led his own team to garrison the capital area, and commanded the tribal warriors in the cute household under the two centurions, enough to defend themselves, and also to fight horse thieves and deal with raids and harassments, while the other centurion led the team to concentrate on the cavalry, forming thousands of elite cavalry under the command of the cavalry commander to patrol around and deter. In this way, the size of the tribe does not exceed that of the grassland, and the stable storage of livestock in one place will undoubtedly greatly improve the efficiency of livestock fat and the survival rate of wintering. And the strong cavalry gathered can also give the territories the same force as the powerful tribes.