In the midst of the cascading mountains, bathed in the scorching sunshine of the tropical dry season, a team of tired travelers is trudging hard.

It was probably more than forty days since I set out from Tenochtitlan!

Squinting at the apparently west-slanting but still scorching sun in the sky, Kuohtmok calculated in his mind.

The long and bumpy journey not only severely drained his physical strength, but also made his memory blurry.

After leaving the cool Mexican highlands, the lower you go to the sea, the hotter it gets.

As far as the eye could see, there were endless mountains and mountains all around, and he was tired of seeing such an unchanging barren scenery.

Fortunately, the "plastic sandals" that his wife bought for him from the envoys of Hunghyutizgan are much more comfortable than the original straw sandals, otherwise if he had worn straw sandals all the way to the present, I am afraid that his feet would have been full of blisters.

As an excellent soldier who is strict with himself, although according to the noble status of Kuokhtmok, he can ride in a sedan chair and let people carry him all the way from the city of Tenochtitlan to the kingdom of Hungshutizgan. But he still insisted on sharing weal and woe with his subordinates, relying entirely on his own two legs, and came all the way here...... However, it seems that it is already reaching its limit.

This time the envoy to the kingdom of Honshutizgan, because the city of Tenochtitlan was in a state of turmoil, so there were not many people who could be taken away by Kuauchtmok, a total of only a squad of twenty cronies and guards, more than thirty accompanying nobles, servants and maids, and more than fifty coolie porters, who were responsible for transporting the food, tents and cooking utensils of the whole army.

Because the number of porters was a little insufficient, the vast majority of the men had to carry some of their luggage on their backs and trek day after day on extremely rugged mountain roads, with slopes of more than 40 degrees...... As a result, everyone was tired and sweaty, panting like a cow, and the more they walked, the more listless they became.

In the heat of the dry season, they dragged a somewhat loose queue of tired people along a very unfamiliar winding mountain road, deep and shallow, walking on the dry and solid gravel soil, making the monotonous noise of Kerakara.

During the drowsy journey, there was sometimes a sudden "thud", and then a large mess of earth, rocks, grass and trees collapsed, and rolled down with the smoke and dust, tossing the unfortunate ghosts behind them into ashes, provoking a wave of weak anger - most likely because someone in front of them had accidentally kicked a large stone or tree root......

When they had first set out from the city of Tenochtitlan, there were many young men who had never left Lake Texcoco and regarded this trip to the kingdom of Hungshutizgan as a pleasant and novel excursion, pointing and pointing at each other. But by this moment, this uninhabited, rugged and steep long mountain road had already exhausted all their energy.

No one had the strength to gossip, not even the porters had the strength to shout, and all that was left in the ranks was the small murmur of a pair of feet stepping on the sand and gravel, combined with the hot sun, the sultry air that often did not move at all, and the dust that was always around everyone...... In the end, a monotonous, boring, and sleepy subtle atmosphere was created, making the physical and mental exhaustion of everyone in the team seem to be invisibly magnified.

And the few villages and towns along the way were also full of hostility towards this envoy group, either closing the gates and refusing to provide food, water and guides to Kuauchtmok and his party, or sitting on the ground and raising prices and wantonly ripping off customers. …,

-- A few years ago, when the Aztec army went south to attack the kingdom of Honshutizgan, in order to solve the problem of supply on the spot in the enemy's territory and alleviate the difficulties of logistics and transportation, all the mountain tribes along the way were choked enough. Nearly every stockade of corn, pumpkins, chickens, and meat dogs was robbed by the Aztecs, and the locals starved in agony. Some cottages were also forced to pay large quantities of human sacrifices for the priests who accompanied the army to disembowel, dig out their hearts, and sacrifice to the gods...... It can really be said that it is a hatred of two places in one day, and hatred of three rivers and four seas!

Kuauchtmock knew very well that if it weren't for the might of the Aztecs, the mountain people would have attacked him.

However, in view of the unprecedented predicament of his country, he could not provoke any trouble at this juncture, so he could only endure it silently.

Looking back at his subordinates who were staggering forward like the walking dead, Kuohetmok had to roar a few times with his dry throat, urging the rear team to speed up, and then he felt a feverish heat - the cotton coat was wet and sticky to his body, and the exposed skin was blown by the mountain wind, and the hot sweat that had just flowed out immediately condensed on his face and hands, and Zuihou made it sticky and tight, which was really unspeakably uncomfortable.

-- The hot, dry weather, the rough roads, the hostile mountain people...... Everything along the way was frustrating. Kuauchtmock couldn't help but reach out and press his aching temples, laughing at himself in order to drive away the sleeping demon that was getting stronger and stronger in his mind.

Fortunately, this time he was here to negotiate peace, not to conquer this terrible land...... In fact, Kuauchtmok did not think that the barren lands of the kingdom of Hunsutizgan were worth any value in mobilizing an army for conquest - it was enough to ensure that the people of Hunsutizgan could continue to huddle peacefully by the sea, and not to think of once again crossing the mountains and invading the rich valleys of Mexico.

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The ruling core of the Aztec Empire was always confined to a corner of the Mexican plateau. For the coastal areas beyond the plateau, whether it is the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean, even if they were once conquered, they would still be difficult to control, so that whether it was the Pacific coast traversers or the Spaniards who landed on the Gulf of Mexico, they could easily gather a large number of Indian Confederate troops to challenge the hegemony of the Aztecs?

Here we can make a similar analogy.

-- The Tibetan Dynasty on the Weishenme Plateau, in its most powerful period, was always fighting against the powerful opponent of the Tang Dynasty, which was also in its heyday, instead of crossing the Himalayas to attack the more prosperous but fragmented and declining land of Tianzhu?

On the map, the distance from the valley of the Brahmaputra River to the Ganges plain is much closer than that of Chang'an.

In the past dynasties, Tubo Zampu and Weishenme have all given up the easy and the difficult, and they are willing to choose the strong as the expansion goal?

Started in more distant Afghanistan, the Mughal dynasty was quite limited at first, and was able to achieve the great cause of conquering India, which could mobilize 400,000 troops and be closer to the Tibetan dynasty, Weishenme could not do it?

Because, for the Tibetan people on the plateau, it is not an easy task to climb over the Himalayas and heel in the Gangetic plain. The first is that this huge difference in altitude is a challenge for anyone's resilience – people from the lowlands have altitude sickness when they go up to the high altitudes; When people from the highlands come to the lowlands, they will also be uncomfortable, which is called "drunken oxygen reaction".

Moreover, the sultry and humid tropical monsoon climate of the Ganges Plain and the cold and dry plateau climate on the roof of Shijie are completely two extremes, and without a gradual adaptation process, people and war horses may be completely unbearable.

Therefore, the Tubo people, who often live on the roof of Shijie at an average altitude of 4,000 meters, regard the rich and prosperous Ganges Plain as a daunting path, and would rather expedition to the desert of the Western Regions with thousands of miles of yellow sand and fight with the Tang Dynasty iron cavalry than to cross the snow-capped mountains and expand southward. The Aztecs, who settled on the Mexican plateau at an altitude of 2,200 meters, also saw the hot and humid coastal areas as unsuitable for settlement. Moreover, the rainforests of the Pacific coast of Central America are far less fertile than the Gangetic Plains, while the Mexican Valley is much richer than the Brahmaputra Valley.

Therefore, the Aztecs never had the idea of grabbing land with the Honshutizgans, at most they wanted to loot and let them pay some tribute. Even if the other side refuses to pay tribute, the cost of sending troops to attack is a bit too high - if you launch a large army from a plateau with a cool climate and fight for a long time in the humid and hot coastal rainforest, I am afraid that the unlucky people who will be infected with miasma and plague will die more than the warriors who die in battle!