The starry night passed, Taibai went out of the east, the end of Yin and the beginning of the month, and the stone tower station.

At this time, the sky was just white, and there were three groups of caravans who had fled the scorching sun at night and led camels and horses to the vicinity of the post station, and they entered the courtyard from the gate of the post station in turn following the direction indicated by the arrow on the high guiding pole.

The newly built post house covers an area of nearly seven acres, surrounded by earthen walls, and the gate is built in the style of the city gate. In the courtyard, which was quiet and unpopular a moment ago, it has become a pot of porridge at this moment, with the jingle of camel bells, the scolding of the team leader, and the greetings of old acquaintances. The postmen in the post station ran out and shouted hoarse to maintain order.

"Who's that! Lead the camels to the stables on the east side. No need to unload! Don't you have to hurry tonight!"

"Isn't there a warehouse in the west? Can I keep my goods in the warehouse? I'll pay you money, there is still a batch of goods waiting for us to go back and pick up in Yangguan!"

"No, the warehouse is full! Half of our owner's goods are accounted for!"

The leader of the caravan sighed, regretting that he had not caught up with the good time of the Shang Xiu Station, and it was too late to get the news. I heard that the imperial court had given the permanent right to use the desert storehouse to the merchants, and the people who traveled all the year round knew that it was not easy to have such a storehouse in the middle of the Khotan Road, and it was possible to use two caravans to transport them separately to improve safety, and also to adjust the price of seasonal goods.

After the uproar, order is always restored, and these vendors, who wear leather felt on the outside and plain silk on the inside, crowd into the hall of the flat-roofed house, and sit curled up one by one by the mound table, the room is so crowded that there is no place to put their feet, and the porters carry the strange smell of oil tea soup from the heads of the people.

From time to time, someone took out two or three Tongbao from his bosom and handed them over, shouting: "Bring me a bowl too!"

"Okay!"

The temperature difference between day and night in the desert is large, and the businessmen who travel at night are shivering with cold, and at this moment there is a bowl of hot oil tea in front of their faces, and the rising white gas warms their faces, and even their hearts are warm. No matter how much hardship there is in the journey, it is all happy at the moment.

The villagers even spoke in a much warmer voice, and began to talk nonsense from all over the world, mixed with some meat words, which aroused everyone's heartfelt laughter, and even the air was much lighter.

I don't know who mentioned the post station, and sighed and said: "This time, the Duhu Mansion is engaged in business and repairs the post station, but it has brought convenience to us business travelers."

"Yes, yes." A group of Guan Zhongtones echoed there.

"It's not just that it gives us convenience, I heard that the merchants who repair the post station will also make a lot of money in the future, not to mention the permanent warehouse, how much money will we make from the men who run the business road in the past ten years? Don't talk about anything else, let's just say that a bowl of oil tea in front of you is not just fried noodles with mutton fat, a pound is less than 30 yuan, you can make a twenty or thirty bowls, a bowl charges us five yuan, and you calculate how much money you want to earn us inside and out. How many business trips are there on the Khotanese Road in a year, and your owner will send it just to sell oil tea!"

"Yes, yes."

The villager licked it beautifully, and asked the postman who was running back and forth, "Did you say that, man?"

The postman raised his chin proudly, as if he was proud of his owner's foresight, and he also had the energy to sell cheaply, and said indifferently: "Why don't you say how much money our owner spent on building this post station, how many people were used, and the yak alone was tired to death of two horses, and this transaction will not be lost."

The township party began to raise the bar: "How much can it cost to repair the post station, we know very well, your owner will not be able to earn it back in two years, I will screw off my head and give you a night pot, and the remaining eight years are purely oil and water."

The surrounding businessmen began to echo: "Yes, yes."

The post chief, who was lying on the counter to settle accounts, was idle, and also poked his head out to join the debate: "Don't just talk about us, don't you also make a lot of money, all the merchants who have been on the Khotanese road for these three months, which one has not been full of money in these months." In previous years, eight out of ten of the goods you brought to the west were sent to the mouth of the bandits, and the remaining two trips met a few bandits who talked about morality, and they left half of them for you. Like this year, dozens of camels can completely pull goods to Khotan, exchange them for gold, ivory, spices, carpets, and transport them back to Chang'an to make a few times. ”

The township party smiled and dragged out his voice: "Alas, I don't refute what you say. This is a great benefit that has not been encountered in ten years. This is also the kindness of our fellow Guanzhong countryman, General Li Siye. He rode a black horse, held a Mo knife, and only led hundreds of Tang troops of the Anxi Army, and killed seven back and forth on the Khotanese Road, killing those sand bandits who had suffered thousands of knives, and the corpses were all over the field. I heard that the number of sand bandits who died at his hands was in the thousands. ”

"That's right, no matter how many years we have lived and died on the trade road, since the opening of the early Yuan Dynasty, Du Siam Dadu Protector was built in Khotan Road Post Station, and shot to clean up a sand bandit, and in the next ten years, the sand bandits on the Gobi were rampant, and the envoys of Khotan Town despised the trade road and attached importance to the military merits, and would rather go to fight the Turbid Horse Shi people, rather than take action to clean up the trade route. Now, thanks to General Li, he personally led more than 100 elite soldiers of the Anxi Army to purge the sand bandits in the desert Gobi, and we traders can have some way to survive. ”

"Yes, yes, thanks to General Li's shot, we can make money."

A businessman sitting cross-legged in the corner of the wall wore a felt hat on his head, squinted his eyes with his hands in his sleeves, and sat steadily without interjecting just now, but suddenly asked: "I heard you blow so evilly, have you ever seen this General Li?"

"Hehe," the township party laughed dryly: "Of course, I haven't seen it, but I have a cousin who has seen it, and he led a caravan that was almost sacked by sand bandits, but fortunately, General Li led the Tang army to kill it from the halfway, and their caravan was able to have both men and goods."

He glanced at the corner of his eye and turned around proudly, and asked the businessman who was shrinking in the corner: "Your Excellency asked this question just now, do you think you have seen General Li?"

Shang Jia poked his sleeves and raised his neck and said loudly: "Of course I have seen him in person, and he is not far away, so he can be regarded as seeing it all."

"Shhhh Brag. ”

Most people don't believe in this kind of talk, General Li came and went in a hurry like a storm and lightning, like a dragon seeing the head but not the end, and those who have seen him can only see it from a distance, how can it be easy to see it so closely. But it doesn't prevent them from listening with curiosity, which can be regarded as a relief from boredom.

"I've seen it." Shang Jia squinted his eyes and said calmly.

"You said you had seen it, so tell me what General Li looked like?" The village party asked, raising his goatee chin, as if trying to find a hole in his words.

The merchant also pricked up their ears and leaned sideways to listen.

"General Li, he is eight feet tall, broad-shouldered, and rides a black horse, the kind that is black in the water. It is not the bright light armor you say you blow, the golden mountain armor, but the silver and blue mountain armor, wearing a phoenix winged hood, carrying a nine-foot Mo knife, and a horned bow hanging on the saddle. It is not the Modao team that leads it, but the most elite turtle jumping camp in Anxi. ”

The crowd was surprisingly unanimous in their refutation, for the man spoke in a manner that did not look like bragging.

The merchant travelers sighed in unison: "General Li is the protector of our merchant travelers on the Khotanese Road, and he cleaned up such a desert sand bandit, and the trade route in the west of the moraine will be prosperous for a while."

"That is, when I go back to burn incense during the Chinese New Year this year, I can't just burn a pillar for Taijun and the God of Wealth, but also for the protector of our Silk Road."

Youfu couldn't help it, and he was addicted: "What is this, even the major event of Shang Xiu Post Station was personally promoted by General Li."

"Really?" The crowd stretched their necks to the postman's side.

"Of course! General Li took action to clean up the sand bandits, not only to protect the trade routes, but to protect the post station under construction from being attacked by the sand bandits, and our host was present at the time. ”

At this time, there was a sudden knock on the door outside the door, and the post chief who was lying on the counter thought that this guy's mouth was broken, should he say that he was bald, and frowned and ordered: "Qiu Liu, go out and take a look, is there another passing caravan."