Built 200 years ago, this city is the heart of the entire Great Food Country, just like the city of Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty, where the great Abbasid caliph al-Mansur visited several places, and finally stopped on the right bank of the Tigris River, where some of the most powerful capitals of the ancient world were built, and he said: "This place is an excellent camp." In addition, there is the Tigris River, which can connect us with China, and can bring us all kinds of seafood and grain from Mesopotamia, Armenia and its surroundings. Here is the Euphrates, where the goods of Syria and Raigai and the surrounding areas can be brought to us. "Caliph Mansur spent four years and about 4,883,000 dirkhans, recruiting about 100,000 architects, mechanics and laborers from Syria, Mesopotamia and other parts of the empire to build this magnificent capital, which surrounded the palace in three concentric circles of the outer city, the inner city and the forbidden city, and gave the city of peace the name of "round city".

Rao is Zhang Zhongyao and other old and capable people can't help but be excited, the sergeants consciously tidy up their clothes and faces to show that China is a civilized state, the porters urged the camels to speed up their pace, the guide and the sergeant looked at the forbidden city wall that was more than ten zhang high, so there was still a long distance from looking at the city wall to the front of the outer city wall. Outside the outer city, the mission was stopped by the soldiers defending the city, and the two guides explained the situation to them.

"Are you really from China?" said the Prophet that if knowledge was far away in China, it would be squirrel, and I saw a messenger from the east. He waved them into the city, and saw that this huge contingent of missions, without the need to be driven away by the city guards, the caravans next to them all consciously dodged a way, Zhang Zhongyao smiled and thanked him, and led the team slowly into the city, along a wide avenue, all the way towards the towering inner wall, there are four such avenues in Baghdad, and the Golden Gate Palace, named after the gilded palace gate, radiates from the central area, like the spokes of a wheel, and shoots to the four corners of the caliphate.

Coming to the door of the pavilion that received the envoys from all over the world, a eunuch wearing a refined brocade robe and a smile on his face greeted him and said to Zhang Zhongyao: "I am Ebu, the attendant of the king of kings, the messenger of the monarch of the east, welcome to Baghdad, the king of the great kings is very happy, please rest in the city, and in three days, the king of kings will summon the messenger in the eternal palace." Zhang Zhongyao thanked him, his eyebrows moved slightly, it seemed that if he wanted to see the caliph, he had to pass the level of Adulyard Dalai, the monarch of the Baiyi Dynasty.

Ebu the eunuch was a self-acquainted man, muttering a quip that had become fashionable lately: "'Baghdad is a good place for the rich, but a land of misery for the poor, and I wander the streets like the Qur'an in the house of a hypocrite.'" Zhang Zhongyao and Cai Lang were taken aback by his unscrupulous jokes, it seems that although there are a large number of religious fanatics in various parts of the country, these princes, nobles and close servants are not necessarily very pious. Before the mission, Wu Yingying roughly described to Zhang Zhongyao the situation of the Great Food Palace, the caliph was under the control of the Baiyi Dynasty, the Praetorian Guard was dominant, and the eunuchs were also favored, but there was no disaster of eunuchs in the former Tang Dynasty. Zhang Zhongyao respected his identity and didn't want to be verbose with that eunuch, so he took ten white porcelain plates and two boxes of good tea and gave them to him as gifts, so he told Cai Lang to greet him. Cai Lang has lived in the court since he was a child, and he has no ill feelings towards eunuchs and eunuchs, and many eunuchs are either poor or prisoners of war, and there are many kind-hearted and talented people.

It was getting late, so Cai Lang left the waiter Ebu for dinner, and the two had a good conversation, only to learn that this man was not only proficient in poetry, but also had a unique study of heraldry. After getting acquainted with it, Cai Lang took out the jade pendant he carried with him and showed it to Ebu, and said: "This is a treasure of my family, the front is the Chinese dragon pattern, and the back is said to be the coat of arms of the Great Food Country, I wonder if the official knows its origin?"

Ebu frowned and said, "Don't hide it from the envoy Cai, the ornament behind this gem should come from the palace coat of arms of the great caliph 'Umar more than three hundred years ago, why it appears on the gem from the east, I don't know very well, but I can go and check some palace archives, maybe there will be some gains." Cai Lang smiled: "Then there will be a big official Lao." He was already satisfied with the provenance of the coat of arms on the back of the jade pendant.

During the three days of waiting for the king of kings, Adulyadej al-Dawlai, to summon him with nothing else to do, the Xia delegation was moving around the city of Baghdad.

At this time, although the Great Food Empire had fallen apart, its capital city of Baghdad was at its peak of prosperity. Baghdad is a prosperous commercial city, and the merchants who have made huge profits in international trade have built buildings with a strong Arab national style everywhere in the city, so that the urban area of Baghdad has continued to expand, forming a pattern across the east and west banks of the Tigris River, and the east and west banks are connected by huge bridges. The shops along the street are filled with gold and silver utensils, cultural relics and antiques from all over the world, and it is known as a city of museums. The lavish mansions of dignitaries and wealthy merchants were home to famous doctors, mathematicians, geographers, astrologers, and alchemists from all over the world, making Baghdad a place of scholars and scholars.

In order to avoid trouble, the members of the mission who went out changed into Persian and Arab costumes, in the noisy street market, Cai Lang looked at the exotic customs around with great interest, and Zhao Kuang, the ten-captain next to him, was also looking left and right, and was surprised from time to time: "We came out of the Central Plains, I thought that the territory of the Hu people, a small city with a wall, is not bad, but I didn't expect that along the way, Khotan and Ghaznavid are the state capitals of the rich people, and I didn't expect that the Hu people also have Tongdu Dayi comparable to Chang'an and Bianliang." ”

Smiling and declining a water seller wearing a Kunlun slave costume, Cai Lang said to Zhao Kuang: "The so-called reading thousands of books is better than traveling thousands of miles, sitting in the Central Plains, you know the size of the world, you see that this Hu people also have all kinds of abilities, you can know that the 'natural selection, survival of the fittest' in the 'theory of natural evolution' is not a lie, the races in the world are competing, if you are arrogant and relaxed, you will be surpassed by foreign races." Zhao Kuang grinned and said, "You can tell a truth from anywhere, the captain is better than the teacher invited by the battalion." ”

The two arrived in a square in the outer city of Baghdad, surrounded by rows of shops flanked by hundreds of narrow side streets. The center of the square is the place where folk artists perform, storytellers, glamorous orchids dance Arabic dances, play suona and play eye snakes and poisonous scorpions, wear small hats to play monkeys, let donkeys smoke, take crystal balls and dominoes to tell fortunes, conjure and play music, artists wear their own national costumes, variety, each show their stunts, everywhere is full of dangers, novel and exciting scenes. Artists have formed countless large and small fields. The whole square was crowded with people, and the smell of roast lamb and pie, the smell of all kinds of body odors and spices mixed together, and if it were not for the fact that the square was very empty and well ventilated, I was afraid that the veiled women would be smoked on the spot.