This time there were a total of three cars, Lin Qing and I and Zhou Jing shared one, Yi Shiting carried one in Tsing Yi, and Zhang Jinya and Cao Yuan in one, we started from Yujiang County, Yingtan City, and went straight to the northwest.

This trip was really not short, running from East China to Northwest China, almost across half of China, and the span far exceeded the last time we entered the Qinling Mountains. Fortunately, the first half of this road is still easier to walk, after all, after putting forward the slogan of "if you want to get rich, have fewer children and build more roads" a few years ago, our country's transportation network is still well woven, at least in East China, so at the beginning of the crime was not guilty, the real ordeal began a day later when entering the Hexi Corridor.

The Hexi Corridor is the main route from Chinese mainland to Xinjiang. From Wusheling in the east, to the ancient Yumen Pass in the west, between the South Mountain (Qilian Mountain and Altun Mountain) and the North Mountain (Horsehair Mountain, Heli Mountain and Longshou Mountain) in the north and south, it is about 900 kilometers long, several kilometers wide to nearly 100 kilometers, it is a long and narrow flat land in the northwest-southeast direction, shaped like a corridor, called the Gansu Corridor. Because it is located west of the Yellow River, it is also known as the Hexi Corridor.

This corridor has always occupied a very important position in the history of our country, because it is the choke point that must be taken from the east to the west of China, and it is the real starting point of the ancient Silk Road!!

More than 2,000 years ago, the Hexi Corridor did not have any connection with the Central Plains, and at that time it was an ancient country in the Western Regions - Yueshi!

At that time, the Yueshi could be said to be a big country in the Western Regions, but although it was powerful, it was still a little too immature compared to the Spring and Autumn Five Hegemons and the Seven Heroes of the Warring States in the Central Plains, so at most it could only dress up with some surrounding small countries, and it has never been connected with the Central Plains.

When did the Hexi Corridor really begin to attract the attention of the emperors of the Central Plains?

This probably starts with the Tianjiao of the Huns.

After Qin Shi Huang set foot on the Six Kingdoms to unify the Central Plains, Mao Dun Shan Yu's father's head Mandan Yu once led troops south, trying to challenge Qin Shi Huang, a terrible lion dominating the Central Plains, the First Emperor was furious and asked Meng Tian to lead an army of 300,000 to attack the Xiongnu in the north. During the reign of the first emperor, the combat effectiveness of the Qin army was well known, and the old Qin people's military orders were like mountains, swearing to move forward, and the strength of the troops was fierce, which once shocked a whole era, where was Tou Manshan the opponent? The Battle of Hetao, the Qin army decided the battle in a battle, and the corpses of the head Mandan Yu subordinates were all over the field, and he fled north in a hurry. After experiencing this incident, Tou Mandan Yu had a huge fear of the Qin people in the Central Plains, and did not dare to herd horses south for ten years, indulging in wine, because he favored a Yan clan too much, so he moved the mind of abolishing Chang Liyou, and threw his eldest son to the Yue clan as a hostage, and then attacked the Yue clan, hoping that the Yue clan people could kill Mao Dun.

It's a pity that although the Yueshi people wanted to kill Mao Dun, they still didn't succeed after all, but let Mao Dun escape back to the Xiongnu, Ming Di killed his father, and became the big single Yu of the Xiongnu in one fell swoop.

Since he has become a Xiongnu Shan Yu, how could Mao Dun let go of the Yueshi people?

As a result, Mao Dunshan Yu Yu Yue clan moved the Yue clan westward, and in this way, the Huns became the masters of the Hexi Corridor!

If the Yueshi people could kill Mao Dun in time, maybe the whole history would be rewritten. Mao Dun died, there will be no future conquer of the entire Western Regions of the Xiongnu lord Mao Dun Shan Yu, the Huns may not be strong, the Yue clan may become the overlord of the grassland, taking advantage of the chaos at the end of the Qin Dynasty to enter the Central Plains melee, although with the Yue clan's national strength can not unify the Central Plains, but it will accelerate the integration with the Western Regions, and when the Central Plains is unified again, the Central Plains and the Western Regions will become one, and then the Western Roman Empire will directly face the most powerful empire in the East, and the West at that time will ...... Can it really stand in the way of the incomparably glorious civilization of the East?

If Mao Dun hangs, maybe the world we live in now is a completely different world, but unfortunately there are not so many ifs in history, and the Hexi Corridor eventually fell into the hands of the Huns.

During the Western Han Dynasty, the relationship between Han and Hungary intensified and deteriorated, and in the year of Emperor Wu, Emperor Wu wanted to destroy the Xiongnu, so his eyes finally turned to the Hexi Corridor.

Hexi Corridor ...... It was at this time that it entered the eyes of the emperors of the Central Plains, in order to contact the Yueshi people who moved west to deal with the Xiongnu together, Zhang Qian passed through the Hexi Corridor and walked out of the famous Silk Road......

In other words, the real glorious starting point of the Silk Road should actually be in the Hexi Corridor, not in Xi'an.

Arrived at the Hexi Corridor, our journey is really begun, into the eye, full of the desolation of the Gobi Desert in the northwest, the road is also extremely bumpy, the road of more than 900 kilometers can be described as extremely difficult, and when I arrived at Jiuquan, my body was almost falling apart, and the others were also very tired, so we could only rest in Jiuquan, Gansu Province for a night before setting off again, and the next day arrived in the Hami area of Xinjiang.

At this point, we know that our comfortable days are over.

In fact, the ancient Silk Road is mainly divided into two roads, the South Road and the North Road, of which the South Road is from Dunhuang through Loulan, Khotan, Shache, through the Green Mountains to the present-day Pamir to the Great Yueshi, Anxi, and to the west to Tiaozhi and Daqin. The north road is from Dunhuang to Jiaohe, Qiuci, Shule, through the Green Mountains to Dawan, and to the west through Anxi to Daqin.

The end point is all Great Qin, that is, the Roman Empire at that time, but the path is completely different!

We took the south road, because Zhang Qian's second mission to the Western Regions took this road, and the flow of the ancient river channel of the Peacock River is also this way, the fat man and they disappeared when they followed this road to trace the traces of Prince Duolun, and we can only follow this road.

Now that we have crossed the Hexi Corridor and Dunhuang, if we want to continue along the Silk Road, the next step must be to go to Loulan!

Where is Loulan? In Lop Nur!!

Today's Lop Nur is not the huge lake where the Tarim River and the Peacock River converged, but a desert, connected to the Taklamakan Desert, forming the largest dry desert in our country, or a quicksand desert, which is called the Sea of Death?

Why is it called Sea of Death? Because this place is too vast, there are few desert oases, and there is quicksand everywhere, and if you don't have the ability to go in, you basically can't get out.

Anyone who has been to the desert knows that if the car drives into the quicksand desert, it is no different from looking for death.

Most of the foundations in the quicksand desert are unstable, and the sand on them is not solid, so it will form a sand body that will flow like water.

There's only one way to get through this desert – a camel!

The camel is also called the Desert Boat, which has a strong ability to survive in the desert, has a good sense of direction, and can recognize the quicksand, as long as the camel is ridden, it is generally not easy to fall into the quicksand and have an accident.

We all knew in our hearts that we would not have the leisure and elegance of sitting in the car and listening to music, and that as soon as we rode our camels into the sea of death, life and death would have to be left to Allah.

But we still have to go to this sea of death!

Because whether it is the fat man or the rescue team later, they all lost contact after entering the Sea of Death, and if something happens, I am afraid that something will happen in this big desert. This sea of death has always been mysterious, the ancient city of Niya and the old land of Loulan are all in it, and before this place was desertified, Lop Nur can be said to have carried countless historical weather, that is to say, several ancient countries were buried in this sea of death, and it was afraid that it was dangerous and ruthless.

This time, we are here for these, and we must understand what exists in this quicksand desert so that we can figure out the whereabouts of the fat man.

In order to find camels and guides in the desert, we stayed in Hami for two days, during which Yi Shiting went out a few times, and then found an old man named Alayi, this old man is a footwalk merchant who often goes in and out of the desert area, and he has a camel team, mainly to enter the desert, to do business with the villagers of some small villages in the oasis, and is very familiar with the desert environment.

Unfortunately, as soon as the old man of Alayi heard that he was going to enter Lop Nur, he immediately shook his head wildly and refused to do anything, saying that it was the place where Allah Allah had sent his wrath, and that he could not go in anything.

The name Alayi comes from the Quran, which probably means noble and excellent, but although this Alayi old man has a good name, he does not seem to be special, I heard that it is important that Lop Nur said nothing at the beginning, and then Yi Shiting auctioned 50,000 cash, this old man immediately changed his words, two small eyes are shining, like a god stick to tell us - we have provided wealth income to an honest and kind Islamic family, so even if it is into the sea of death, Allah Allah will forgive.

So, the old man fell under the money offensive and agreed with us to take us to the Sea of Death the next day.

That night, a few of us ate and drank in Hami, because we all knew that when we entered the sea of death, then my fate would not be up to me, whether I could eat or drink, whether I could come back, and how many I could come back was unknown......