When Ma Chao met Zhao Xing. Why is he so excited? Because he feels that he will definitely follow Zhao Xing into the customs to fight a big battle next, which is much more comfortable than him being entangled by those princesses in Yanqi all day long.

Zhao Xing didn't open any pot and asked Ma Chao with a smile: "Meng Qi, which princess of Yanqi Kingdom do you fall in love with?"

Ma Chao's face was suddenly flushed, and he didn't know what to say. The two brothers, Ma Dai and Ma Xiu, who were following Ma Chao, immediately laughed, and seemed to have finally found a good opportunity to watch the big brother eat deflated.

I didn't want Zhao Xing's next sentence to make the little brothers shut up quickly. Zhao Xing said: "You two are smiling so happily, it looks like you have to marry a few princesses and come back to discipline them well!"

When Zhao Xing joked about Ma Chao, this guy was only twenty years old now, and his two brothers were sixteen or seventeen years old, and they were all untrained fledglings, and when they heard about marrying a wife, they would be inexplicably panicked.

The brothers were all frightened by Ma Yunluo after they got married. Zhao Yun before marrying Ma Yunluo, although he spoke less, he often drank wine and played cards with his brothers. Since marrying the eldest lady of the Ma family, Zhao Yun has spoken even less, and he has no time to come out to drink with his brothers, and he can't even mention the matter of playing cards.

Although Ma Yunluo is the sister of Ma Chao's brothers, she now has a very high status in the Zhao Mansion, which makes her brothers' faces very bright. But as soon as they thought of Zhao Yun, who was now in charge, they couldn't help but feel panicked. If you marry a daughter-in-law in the future, you will be as spicy as Ma Yunluo, won't they all have to change from a little wild horse to a family foal with the reins?

It is precisely because of this inexplicable fear of marriage that the brothers were nervous when they heard that Zhao Xing asked them to marry their daughters-in-law.

After making fun of the three brothers of the Ma family, Zhao Xing still has important things to do next. Now that Ma Chao has brought 20,000 Xiliang cavalry and 30,000 cavalry composed of Yanqi and Shanguo, how to bring this chaotic army out of combat effectiveness has become a top priority.

There was a new situation that attracted Zhao Xing's attention - two lives, and he discovered the camel soldiers for the first time. In the last life, when he was in the special operations camp, he had heard his comrades-in-arms mention the existence of camel soldiers in the depths of the Gobi, but Zhao Xing had never seen it. Among the 30,000 well-prepared Yanqi cavalry brought by Ma Chao this time (in fact, including the two parts of Yanqi and Shanguo, which will be collectively referred to as Yanqi cavalry in the future), there were nearly 5,000 camel soldiers.

Zhao Xing knew from the bottom of his heart that camels were important mounts in arid and semi-arid areas, and when fighting in these areas, riding camels was sometimes even more advantageous than war horses. In the Middle Ages, camel soldiers were prevalent in the Middle East and Arab countries, and the crusaders on horseback suffered many losses. The most famous was the Arab cavalry led by Saladin, who once beat the Romans to the ground.

According to Zhao Xing's analysis, there are two main reasons why the Roman cavalry suffered against the Arabian camel soldiers: first, natural factors, war horses are not suitable for desert combat, and the crusaders are heavily armored and not adapted to the hot environment. Second, in terms of command, Saladin rarely used frontal clashes and was highly mobile, while the Crusaders were long-distance raids, and supplies were very problematic, and they basically relied on the will of the soldiers to support them.

If you really attack head-on on flat and open terrain, the cavalry is still more advantageous, after all, the cavalry's attack and defense capabilities are much higher than that of camel cavalry.

Zhao Xing had the group of camel soldiers in the Yanqi cavalry measured their speed, and finally came to the conclusion that the speed of the shuangfeng camel was eight to twelve miles per hour, and the dromedary camel was significantly better than the shuangfeng camel, and in the case of carrying people, it could still travel twenty-five to thirty miles per hour. Moreover, dromedaries can run for a long time, up to eight or nine hours without stopping, and perhaps the knight on the back of the camel may be exhausted, and the camel is fine.

The biggest advantage of the shuangfeng camel over the dromedary is that it can carry heavy loads, which is very suitable for long-distance supply in desert terrain. If Zhao Xing wants to compete with the countries in central and western Asia in the future, logistics and supply transportation will be particularly important.

After figuring out the advantages and disadvantages of camel soldiers and their specialties, Zhao Xing secretly decided to try to form a cavalry unit composed of war horses and camels in the Western Regions, and the Xiliang Army in front of him naturally wanted to undertake this glorious task.

It has been said that an emaciated camel is bigger than a horse. That's true. Some of the larger shuangfeng camels can ride three to four people on their backs, and their height is barely about the same as that of an elephant. Even a small dromedary camel is a head taller than an ordinary war horse. The main reason is that camels have long legs and long necks.

It is also said that war horses are afraid of camels, because the smell of camels can frighten horses. That's a bit of nonsense. With a little adaptation, the horses can travel in the same ranks as the camels, and as for the smell, it is even more untenable. A trained war horse dares to step on a lion even if it encounters a lion, let alone a camel.

Zhao Xing's idea was that in the future, when the cavalry went on an expedition to the west, a war horse would be equipped with a shuangfeng camel, and the war horse would carry people, and the camel would carry grain, grass, fresh water, and a certain amount of arrows, so as to ensure that the logistics supply of the expeditionary force would not be too tight. The expeditionary cavalry will no longer be equipped with heavy cavalry divisions for a period of time, until they encounter the cavalry corps of the Great Qin (Roman) Empire in the future, and then form a heavy cavalry regiment according to the situation.

These are all later words, and the problem facing Zhao Xing now is first of all to integrate the 5,000 Han cavalry guarding him, the 20,000 Xiliang cavalry under the command of Ma Chaotong, and the 30,000 Yanqi and Shanguo cavalry accompanying him to form a combat force that is both offensive and defensive.

Just imagine, when Zhao Xing secretly commanded 50,000 troops wearing Hu clothes and riding camels to enter the Sanfu region and throw thunder at the head of Chang'an City, the expressions on the faces of Huangfu Song and his son would be very exciting.

In order to achieve the purpose of training and integration, and at the same time to give Huangfu Song, who was eager to try in the Chang'an area, a chance, Zhao Xing decided to continue to stay outside the Yumen Pass, while subduing the former and rear Che (pronounced jū) divisions as training troops, while waiting for the situation in the Guanzhong area to change.

Cheshiguo, formerly known as Gushi, was located on the eastern edge of the Junggar Basin, guarding the gap in the Tianshan Mountains, and its capital was Jiaohecheng (northeast of present-day Turpan, Xinjiang). Here it is connected to Loulan in the south, Yanqi and Qiuci in the west, Wusun in the northwest, Xiongnu and Hujie in the northeast.

During the Western Han Dynasty, Gushi was very tired of the past Han envoys often asking for food and water, so he often attacked and plundered the envoys sent by the Han Dynasty, or acted as the eyes and ears of the Huns, so that they could send troops to attack and intercept the Han envoys.

During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he ordered Zhao Ponu to defeat Gushi and threaten Wusun, Dawan and other countries in the Western Regions. Since then, the aunt has been renamed the car master. Because it is far away from the Han mainland, it is still close to the Xiongnu, and it still poses a great threat to the past Han envoys.

By the time of Emperor Ling, the remnants of the Northern Huns, who were located north of the Cheshi Kingdom, were completely driven west of Kangju by the Xianbei people. The invincible Xianbei people have been hit by Zhao Xing of Bingzhou sparing no effort, and now no one dares to call themselves the descendants of the Xianbei people in the northern desert, otherwise the first to come up is the Yansheng cavalry led by Yan Xi.

Without the suppression of the Xiongnu and Xianbei people, and the long-term rebellion of the Qiang people in the Xiliang region, the officials and troops of the Han Dynasty have not arrived here for decades.