"I hope that the Zhang family has been on the border for two hundred years, and he will send reinforcements quickly. If this imminent disaster can be solved, the Zhang family of Hexi will definitely return to the lord, and Zhong Yao should be tied to the grass ring to repay the great favor. ”

Zhang Zhongyao rushed back to Lanzhou almost at the same time as Xin Gu's military report, and went to Wu Yingying's mansion to ask for help without taking a break. The flying pigeon at home passed the book, the Shazhou Cao clan had been passed by Wu Bingyumen, and the Ganzhou Uighurs in the west were about to move, and the two-hundred-year foundation of the Zhang clan in Hexi, which was once prominent, was in danger, and I was afraid that it would be wiped out.

Wu Yingying frowned and looked at Zhang Zhongyao who was kneeling on the ground, and said in a deep voice: "Zhongyao, please get up, you and I are brothers, why do you need to be like this." Captain Xin had already led the three battalions of Jinfan, Hussar, and Shooting Geese to rescue Yumen Pass first. After receiving Xin Gu's military report, Wu Yingying was also taken aback, and at the same time deeply appreciated Xin Gu and other generals who made a decision immediately, if they lost the support of the Zhang clan in Hexi and could not enter the Western Regions, the Liu clan in Hexi, the Cai clan in Dingnan, the Fengzhi clan in Linfu, the Khitan and the Great Song Dynasty would be defeated sooner or later.

Seeing Wu Yingying groaning, Xiao Jiu asked: "Dare to ask how the soldiers in the Yumen Pass are doing? What is the situation in Hexi? Can our army gain a foothold in a hurry?"

When Zhang Zhongyao heard that Xin Gu had led the army to help, he was slightly settled, got up and said: "My Zhang clan has 3,000 armor soldiers in Yumen Pass, including 1,000 elite cavalry. Since the Cao clan came to power, they have gradually turned to the Uighurs and suppressed the Han family, and the people of Hexi have long been deeply disgusted. The reason why the Cao clan stood still was due to the support of the Uighurs of Shaganzhou. The lord raised troops to the west of the river to fight against the rebellion, and the only people who were concerned were the Uighur tribes of Shagan. Once the Uighurs were defeated, the Han people in Hexi should win the grain and obey. It was a matter of life and death for the Zhang family, Zhang Zhongyao knew everything, and said endlessly, and said: "If the Zhang family is destroyed by the Uighurs, the Han family in Hexi will be frightened, and they will fall apart, and each will find a backer. ”

"Although the Yumen Pass City is small, the Zhang family has also been operating for a hundred years, there are five wells in the city, and the grain storage is enough to support 5,000 soldiers for more than a year, in addition to the Zhang family generals and their dependents, there are only a small number of idle merchants in the city. At present, Captain Xin waved his army to help, and the people in the city were excited. It was indeed difficult for the Uighurs to forcibly capture the Yumen Pass. Because of the marriage between the Cao clan and the Uighur Khan for several generations, in the eyes of families like the Zhang clan who adhered to Chinese orthodoxy, the Cao clan had been in collusion with the Uighurs.

Wu Yingying nodded, Yumen Pass has been the key to the Central Plains since the Han Dynasty, known as "the road must be by, that is, the throat of the western border", and there are male soldiers who stick to it, and they can support the Lanzhou headquarters to help. It's just that the army is far away from the west, and the time to go back and forth is not short, and the Lanzhou headquarters has been empty for a long time, so I am afraid that others will take advantage of it.

Seeing Yu Fu Renliang pondering beside him, Wu Yingying asked, "Does Captain Yu Fu have a plan?"

Yu Fu Renliang arched his hand and said: "The Uighur tribes have always been light and fierce with troops, and they have lost their composure, this time they will attack the Yumen Pass, and they will inevitably continue to increase their troops, resulting in the emptiness of the two states of Gansu. ”

Wu Yingying also agreed with this proposal in his heart, and asked again, "What does Zhong Yao think?"

Zhang Zhongyao pondered for a moment, although he was worried about his hometown, but Yu Furen's plan to encircle Wei and save Zhao was really the best policy, so he nodded and said: "Captain Yu Fu's words are very true, Ganzhou is close and Shazhou is far away, the Uighur tribes think they can crisscross the west of the river, and the only one they are afraid of is Tibet, and our army is thousands of miles away, and it can be attacked unprepared. ”

"Good. If the Uighurs of Ganzhou are defeated, Yu Fu Xiaowei should be the master of the policy. Wu Yingying said in a deep voice, "The soldiers are very fast, this time the cavalry is the main one, and the tooth army, the eagle archery, the horizontal formation, and the Modao battalion also fight together, and Xiao Tongyu led the baggage battalion to stay in Lanzhou." Hussars and White Feather Second Battalion Tribal Warriors were recruited to assist in the battle, and each sergeant could carry two servants. The caravans in the city were requisitioned to carry baggage with the army. After the army set out on the expedition, the archers of the people in the city were sent to help defend the city. ”

The lieutenants replied that since the winter, the sergeants have strengthened their military training for Moe Hu, mainly practicing archery. There was a martial style in the northwest, and under the many means to encourage the practice of martial arts, the people gradually became familiar with the things of conquest, although they could not fight with the enemy in the field, it was more than enough to shoot arrows at the head of the city. Under the control of the sergeants, tens of thousands of households were organized, not a rabble.

The military order is like a mountain, the decisive battle of Lanzhou sent a total of 6,000 cavalry, 3,000 infantry troops, mobilized the caravan and the households, has been full force and a battle, according to Wu Yingying's plan, the battle is won, then Lanzhou occupies the west of the river, and slowly moves the artisan battalion and some of the households to the west.

The movement of history is often a combination of necessity and contingency. Even if the Cao clan did not have the whim to contact the Uighurs to attack the Yumen Pass, under the threat of strong enemies on all sides, the Lanzhou forces could only develop westward to avoid the collision of the two great powers of Song and Liao, which were in full swing at this time. Zhao Guangyi would never tolerate that behind his reconquest of Yanyun's army, there was such a strong alien force as the Lanzhou army, and with the strength of the main force of the forbidden army in the early Song Dynasty, the still weak Lanzhou army had to go west to avoid. Although Wu Yingying had foreshadowed in Xiazhou in advance, how could the foundation of the Cai clan of the Dingyan Army be easily shaken. In the end, the way out for the Lanzhou army was still Hexi, laying a foundation in the marginal areas of the Uighurs, Tibetans, Dangxiang, and the Great Song Dynasty.

All the arrangements of the Lanzhou army are for the strategy of advancing into the Western Regions and the Central Plains of Xutu, for the long-distance expedition, the infantry and cavalry armies have been mule and horse, and the sergeants have realized the meat-based, long-distance marches only need to carry enough livestock with the army, and if necessary, they can also slaughter and prepare horses to satisfy hunger, and there is no need to carry a large amount of grain and grass like the Central Plains army. In order to get supplies and military information along the way, dozens of tribal detachments attached to the hussar battalion took root on the main road leading from Lanzhou to Dunhuang, from the northern foot of Yinshan Mountain to Juyanhai, and on the inland side, the Baiyuying tribal detachment of Dijinze also vigorously expanded its power to the north and south of Yinshan and Helan Mountain, so to speak, the passage of Yinshan was basically controlled by Lanzhou. Even in order to facilitate the supply of the caravan, Lanzhou stored a large amount of grain and grass in these tribes that controlled the east-west passage in advance, one was the heart of the people, and the other was convenient for the army to move from east to west, without carrying a large amount of grain and grass. Even the infantry battalions of Lanzhou, in the name of escorting caravans, traveled back and forth between Dunhuang and the Central Plains many times, and were familiar with the expedition road.

The Cao clan's sudden attack on Yumen Pass only brought Lanzhou's plan to advance Hexi.

The decision of the military government, along with the captains of the battalions and the herald cavalry, arrived at all the locations under the control of Lanzhou.

In the battalions in the city, the captains summoned the centurions to arrange the expedition, and the centurion then ordered the commanders of the centurions to inform the sergeants to assemble in the barracks. The city defense was handed over to the baggage battalion, and at the same time, the grain and bows needed for the expedition were received from the baggage battalion.

The Lanzhou army fought differently from the traditional imperial army, and the sergeants and even the common people reaped the benefits of every victory. In a small battle to rescue the Han people from the hands of the Shuozhou Khitan, each sergeant began to have a cute household. Mobei conquered the grassland tribes, and the craftsman battalion obtained thousands of worker slaves, and most of the production of these worker slaves was actually subsidized to the salaries and military supplies of the Lanzhou sergeants, and even ordinary cute households also felt that Lanzhou was more prosperous. After the decisive battle of the party members, the trade routes were unblocked, and the profits were even greater. What's even more eye-catching is that the Hussar Battalion and the White Feather Battalion have won a huge opportunity to expand after the battle against the alien race, and it is very likely that they will form an army alone, and the future of the two battalion sergeants is also rising. This made the old battalions such as Jinfan, Modao, and Heiyun in Lanzhou extremely hot, and they were all looking forward to the opportunity to win more war dividends.

Through the discussion of military strategy, the Brotherhood's plan to develop westward has been discussed countless times among the core members of the army, and even some centurions at the bottom sometimes subconsciously use the Uighur light cavalry as an imaginary enemy to carry out actual combat training. As soon as the order to defeat the Uighurs in Ganzhou was issued, the battalions rejoiced. According to the military report, the population of the Uighurs in Ganzhou was 300,000, and the Uighur Khan's army was no more than 10,000, and most of them were trapped in the Yumen Pass. For this battle of changing shotguns, enthusiasm from top to bottom is very high.

"Brother Guan, I heard that the Uighurs in Ganzhou have occupied the main trade routes of the westbound trade for more than 100 years, and even the bowls used by the nobles to are made of gold, aren't they? Fu Ziqiu, a sergeant of the Jincheng battalion, wiped the bow and crossbow with a sigh of relief, and asked Guan Yaozong, the commander of the ten masters, because the Jincheng battalion was a new army, it failed to take the opportunity of the expedition, which means that there are no cute households, and now there are only Jincheng battalion soldiers in Lanzhou City, and most of them have no cute households.

"yes. The price of our good tea and silk in Shu has doubled when it is transported to Ganzhou, and it has doubled when it is transported to Dunhuang and sold to people in the Western Regions. "Sergeant Huang Ruiyun pulled the bow to the full, Jincheng Battalion and Baggage Battalion, plus the Craftsman Battalion, there were less than 1,000 sergeants left in Lanzhou, and the headquarters of Lanzhou was unprecedentedly empty. To defend against foreign enemies, and to suppress tens of thousands of cute households and thousands of workers and slaves in the city, there is no room for negligence, so as soon as Xiao Jiu returned to the camp, he sent someone to let the Jincheng battalion receive the baggage needed to defend the city. Xiao Jiu was ordered to stay in Lanzhou many times, and he was thoughtful about all kinds of incidents, and even made preparations for the whole city to be attacked by the enemy, and the remaining sergeants were prepared to carry out street battles in units of 100 people. All of these people who could draw bows and shoot arrows were led by sergeants, who patrolled the city day and night.

Xiao Jiu's logic is that the cute households must not be idle, and if they are idle, they will have different intentions, and they are eager to pull the entire city to dig trenches or raise the city walls.