The endless Great Plain of North China, crossing the entire Jizhou to the north, and extending to the Yanshan Mountains, only then did he stop his footsteps.

At the southern foot of the Yanshan Mountains, a majestic city stands in the middle of it, which was once the Yijing of the ancient Yan Kingdom, the place where Youzhou was governed during the Han Dynasty.

In the past few decades, this is Yan County under the rule of the Northern Qi Dynasty, and it is also the seat of Youzhou, but after the Northern Zhou Dynasty conquered the Northern Qi, this city has been changed to Zhuo County, but now the Northern Zhou has also been replaced by the Great Sui, and it has become the military hub of the Sui Empire in the north.

As a large city at the core of the Great Sui and previous empires to defend against the threat of northern Xinjiang, the geographical location of Zhuo County is not unimportant, it is the general hub of the entire Yanshan defense line, and almost all strategic materials are concentrated here.

As long as Zhuojun is controlled, even if the nomadic forces cross the Yanshan Great Wall and go south, they must conquer this strong and tall city, otherwise it is very likely to be cut off.

Of course, this is under the premise that the defenders have the strength and determination to go out of the city, otherwise it will be like the Ming Dynasty has no effect on the Qing army's entry into the customs, and the Han people at this time still have a very strong heart to die, as long as a large number of strategic materials are stored in the city, the defense line of the front line is extremely solid.

Historically, Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty opened the northernmost section of the Grand Canal to Zhuo County, and then hoarded a large number of strategic materials in Zhuo County, and not long after the opening of the Grand Canal, he launched a large-scale attack on Goguryeo.

The real Yang Emperor of the Sui Dynasty in history Yang Guangxiong is very talented, and Li Tang, who replaced Yang Guang, cannot be compared with the Sui Dynasty at all, especially Li Shimin often asks others if he has surpassed Yang Guang, which shows that the real history is not just as simple as it is said in the history books.

After the establishment of the Great Sui Empire, it was the most important city in Youzhou.

Zhuojun not only stores countless armaments and materials, but also stationed more than 100,000 soldiers, coupled with a large number of people living around Zhuojun, so that this northern city seems to be a little prosperous, and there are a large number of merchants coming and going every day.

Today, however, Zhuojun is even more crowded.

As the younger brother of the Great Sui Emperor, Yang Shuang, the king of Wei, went out again, and he and his generals led an army of 300,000 to come here, and the army will rest here for a few days before continuing to conquer Liaodong to the east, and recapture all the four counties lost by the Han family in the past.

After the young Wei Wang Yang Shuang entered the city, he suddenly found that there was something wrong with the atmosphere in the city.

As soon as he entered the border of Youzhou along the way, he noticed that the number of people welcoming the army was very small, and at that time it could be explained by the people's fear of the army crossing the border, but when he only brought more than ten generals and hundreds of personal soldiers into the city, there were still not too many people to greet him.

He took a closer look at the people who welcomed him, and the people in Zhuojun City didn't even have any reaction to his attack on Liaodong and passed by here, as if they had never had anything to do with him, which made him both displeased and extremely curious.

Yang Shuang couldn't help but feel wronged, he had just conquered the Western Regions and captured a large area of land to return to the division, and before he had time to go home and take a good rest, he took over the major task of leading the army to attack and seize the four counties of Liaodong.

Although some people persuaded themselves, saying that their brother had become suspicious of him, and persuaded him that it was best not to control the military power anymore, but Yang Shuang, who was dedicated to making meritorious contributions, did not take this matter to heart after all, if he didn't even trust his own brother, would anyone in this world be credible?

After taking over these tasks, Yang Shuang took over the 200,000 troops that had been driven back from Nanchen, plus the 100,000 troops he had brought back from his previous expedition to the Western Regions.

Along the way, first along the Weishui into the Yellow River, and then down the river from Jijun landing, all the way through Yecheng, Zhaozhou, Changshan, Zhongshan, Changli, Fanyang and other places, the middle of the road does not know how much suffering, this is finally reached Zhuojun.

I thought that in the past, the local people in Youzhou were often harassed by the Khitan and Xi tribes in the northeast, but now I just swept them all in one go, and I didn't expect that the people of Zhuo County did not have a warm welcome.

Yang Shuang, who led the army to fight, now doesn't even know the fact that the Khitan and Xi people have been wiped out, and now the remnants of the Khitan and Xi people are hiding under the wings of the Great Sui to survive, these are the pawns of the Sui Empire against the Xia State, if you really want to clean it up, these people don't know who will be the happiest.

What Yang Shuang didn't know was that the people of Zhuo County had a much deeper understanding of the Xia Kingdom than him in recent years, because in recent years, merchants, commodities and other objects from the Xia Kingdom had often been introduced to Zhuo County, and even a considerable number of Han people from Youzhou had migrated to the Xia Kingdom.

From the beginning of the Northern Zhou Dynasty's attack on the Northern Qi Dynasty, to the present six or seven years, there have been at least twenty or thirty thousand Youzhou Han people who have migrated to the Xia Kingdom through various means, and these people always like to write letters to show off in front of their relatives, and then invite their relatives to settle in the Xia Kingdom.

With so many volunteer propagandists, although many Han people in Zhuojun and Youzhou did not immigrate because of various concerns, their understanding of Xia Guo gradually deepened, coupled with the letters of their relatives, and their feelings for Xia Guo gradually deepened. Good

In addition, the reason why the people of Zhuo County were reluctant to come out to welcome the Great Sui army was also related to the Khitan and Xi people arranged by the Sui Dynasty in the White Wolf Water (Daling River) Valley.

In the past tens or hundreds of years, whenever the Rouran people and Turkic people in northern Xinjiang went south to plunder, the Xi people and Khitans, who were vassals of the Turks, would naturally send large armies to follow the invasion, even if the strength of these two departments was not strong, but they were the ones who did the most evil to Youzhou.

After the Xia Kingdom conquered these two tribes and occupied all the territories of the Khitan and Xi people, Youzhou and Zhuojun never faced any invasion of the grassland army, and every household no longer had to be strictly guarded in the spring and autumn as it had been in the past few decades.

What makes the people of Youzhou dissatisfied is that after the Khitan and Xi people were defeated by the Xia State, they were vacated by their own court to settle them, and these Khitan and Xi people not only did not have to bear taxes, but even the imperial court provided a large amount of grain and grass supplies to support them every year.

However, after these Khitan and Xi people were attached to the imperial court, they still did not change their thieving intentions, and often bullied and plundered the local Han people in Youzhou, and the government favored them in order to rely on these Khitan and Xi people who were good at riding and shooting.

As a result, the contradictions between them and the local Han people became more acute, which also led to the Han people in Youzhou hating these Khitan and Xi people even more, which also shows that the Xi people and Khitan people are far less intelligent than the Ya people who are buried in life and develop in a low-key manner in Yingzhou.

Tudi Ji led tens of thousands of people to join the Northern Zhou Dynasty, and when he arrived in the Sui Dynasty, he was still appointed by Yang Jian as the governor of Yingzhou, but in Yingzhou he was particularly restrained by the clansmen.

The intensifying contradictions between the Khitans and the Xi people and the Han people made the Youzhou Han people, who had been plundered by these two tribes in the past, very angry, but the decision made by the imperial court, the little fart people could not express any opinions after all, and at this time they could only use their silent actions to protest the decision of the Great Sui court.

No matter what, Yang Shuang finally led the army to come, because the city of Zhuojun could not accommodate hundreds of thousands of troops after all, so Yang Shuang ordered people to camp five miles away from the city, and he led his own soldiers and generals into the city to rest for a few days.

After Yang Shuang led the army to Zhuo County, the happiest people in Zhuo County were those big businessmen who did business with the army, and these big businessmen were the kind of officials and businessmen who had big officials behind them as background support.

If you think about it, you can understand that since ancient times, the closer the businessman has been to the government, the easier it is to make a lot of money by making a fortune in the country.

Generally, those small businessmen with no background face this situation, they have long been far away, so they dare not get involved, the government says that it is purchased at the market price, but it can also use a variety of means such as dragging money, secret kickbacks, and so on, all kinds of dark things are many, and small businessmen dare not have too much intersection with these official sales.

When 300,000 Sui troops gathered in Zhuo County, a large number of supplies were continuously transported to Zhuo County along the roads and rivers, because the roads within the Sui Empire were very poor, and in order to support a front-line soldier, it was necessary to mobilize almost the same number of people.

Therefore, the grain and grass of soldiers and horses, and the consumption of people when transporting materials along the way, was a very powerful test for the logistics of the Sui Empire.

In the original history, the army of the Sui army when it attacked Goguryeo was almost one million, and there were more than one million people who supplied the army alone, although the army of the Sui Empire was only 300,000, and there were 200,000 people who transported grain and grass in the rear.

The consumption of so many people along the way is very large, and the loss of supplies and food on the road because of the difficult road is not a small amount.

At this time, Yang Jian also noticed that the Jiaoji Avenue built by Wang Yong in Sanqi at the beginning, the road with a width of ten zhang, even after so many years, is still extremely smooth, whether it is conducive to the transportation of troops and grain and grass during wars, or it is extremely convenient for merchants and people to walk in peacetime.

After some investigation, Yang Jian also understood that to rule such a powerful empire, it would not work without good transportation.

Since the Qin Dynasty, after the unification of any central dynasty, the transportation of the entire empire will be sorted out, even if it is such a desolate dynasty as the Northern Qi Dynasty, a large number of official roads were still built during the Gaoyang and Gaoyan periods.

Therefore, under Yang Jian's orders, the Sui Empire was the first to build a road from Chang'an to Luoyang via Tongguan, and was ready to build a large number of roads from other states and counties after gaining some experience.

However, Yang Jian did not understand Wang Ze's practice of using road construction to stimulate the economy, and he still used the practice of apportioning forced labor.

The local officials and officials did not have the ability to listen to the wind and rain, so they quickly found new ideas to make a fortune, and constantly extorted large amounts of money and grain from the people by apportioning forced labor, and more people had to sell their sons and daughters because they had no money.

There were also some people who were angry and killed officials and rebelled because they could not bear the oppression, so the number of bandits in various places increased rapidly, and the people in the north and south of the Great Sui who had just passed a few good days began to fall into miserable days again.