In fact, the Great Wall is a section, often built on a flat ridge or plain, in order to block the cavalry charge of the steppe nomads, and the city is still some distance from the Great Wall, if you see the Great Wall lit up beacon smoke, the people still have a little time to evacuate.

The border is barren, and there is a lot of wind and sand, the loess builds the city, and the crops are difficult to live, and the people who live here never dream that there is such a picturesque place as Jiangnan in the world, but the Han people have always been like this, and there is a sense of dependence on their homeland that is difficult to describe in words, so that they leave their homeland to go to other places, and more people still prefer to stay in the place where their ancestors have lived for generations.

The military system of the border army of the Ming Dynasty, eight points into tun, two points into soldiers, while training on duty on the Great Wall, there are not a few soldiers who change their clothes and return to the city to be farmers, Wang Er is also one of them, people are as cheap as the name, nearly forty years old and have not married their mother-in-law, they can only look at the crops in the field every day and worry, and then look at the northwest direction day after day to guard the wolf smoke.

Listen to the comrades, the north has been fought, the beacon fire spread throughout half of Datong, in the past will only be like hyenas to rob the caravan town of the Mongols is really ruthless this time, even the royal court has sent cavalry, has crossed the Great Wall to trample the horse's hooves on the Han people's rivers and mountains, these days the hundred households are always a little worried, saying that I don't know when there will be those ferocious barbarians here, when the time comes, hundreds of old and weak soldiers, what to take to guard this section of the Great Wall, and the people in the small city behind them?

Wang Er wouldn't think about it so much, this Qiu Ba, who had been an honest soldier on the border of the empire for decades, thought more about the crops in the field, and the widow Li with a child next door.

Meng Yuan invaded the south, defended the country, and what else was it difficult for the vassal king to rebel, those are what the big men should think, decades of life experience told Wang Er, as long as he guards his own acres of land, as well as the military uniform on his body, how many people in this world are so alive? He has no reason not to be able to be a special one.

It was almost time to change shifts, the hand standing by the beacon tower holding the torch was already a little sore, the sky was dark, Wang Er was about to insert the torch back and go home for dinner, but there were some vague shadows on the wasteland at night.

Most people in this era have night blindness, and Wang Er's eyes are not very good, he squinted his eyes and looked at it for a long time, at first he thought it was a shaking tree shadow, but after a while, he reacted that the tree shadow would not get bigger and bigger.

Nervous, uneasy, the hand holding the torch trembled, his throat was as dry as the dry well in the backyard, the tremor of the earth came, and the words of the hundred households and his comrades appeared in his mind, obviously far away, but Wang Er seemed to see the faces of Meng Yuan who were immediately hideous.

Enemy attack! The Mongols are coming!

This is already close to the border of Datong, and Warat is raiding the city in the north, and will not go around in such a big circle, these are - Tatars?

Wang Er trembled and lit the beacon smoke, he couldn't find wolf dung, the beacon tower was piled with horse dung and cow dung, the fire was ignited, the black smoke made Wang Er cry, with his mended and torn military uniform looked extremely embarrassed, he threw away the torch, and listened to the terrible horn sound in the distance, which meant that the news had been spread, and the small town behind him would definitely be in chaos, and his duty had been completed.

What to do? Where to run? There are so many cavalry, you can't hold it! The life of a soldier is also his life, what is the difference between staying on this Great Wall and wiping his neck?

Wang Er's head was very messy, he heard a roar, probably a hundred households came to the Great Wall with their comrades, but what was the use? At that hurried glance just now, the black shadow of the black pressure was not something they could hold, this section of the Great Wall... It's over.

And maybe the little city behind you.

People can only see themselves clearly when they are desperate, Wang Er has not thought of being a hero before, his ancestors have been scolding those barbarians for their barbarian cruelty, every family has more or less blood feuds with the Mongols, Wang Er and his friends also held sticks to pretend to be those generals and heroes when he was young, looking forward to killing the grassland and capturing the Khan alive, but at this moment, his mind was full of those few acres of land and the widow Li next door.

Sure enough, it's useless to help her carry water every day, she is really a coward, and she should have picked it out earlier.

Wang Er picked up the spear beside him, holding it like a dung fork, saliva splashed out of his open mouth, and screamed fiercely at those barbarians who couldn't hear at all:

"your mom!"

……

"On December 11, the Sangmu Pass was broken, and the city was slaughtered."

"On December 13, 30,000 cavalry bypassed the Great Wall and raided Liucheng, broke the city, and slaughtered the city."

"On December 16, Warat built a human head view outside Lu County, and everyone who saw it was terrified."

"December 17..."

Attributed to the focus of the development of the secret spy department, there have been many spies lurking in Datong Xuanfu, except for the place in Jinling, Gu Huai sent a lot of people to watch the two Beiping rear, so in the past few days after entering Datong, although he got rid of the 50,000 soldiers and horses sent into Datong by Zhu Di, there was also a steady stream of military intelligence sent over, but the more he looked at it, the more gloomy it brought from the south became a little thicker, and in the end, Gu Huai no longer knew what expression to show in order to face such a human tragedy.

The Mongols' destruction of Datong was much more tragic than imagined, although the border army was numerous, but in order to deal with the King of Yan, the Xuanfu of Datong dispatched many border troops to garrison at the junction with Beiping, and even Meng Yuan did not dare to withdraw back when he went south, after all, compared to being robbed by the Mongols, the responsibility for being captured by the King of Yan was much greater.

There is no doubt that the imperial court is biased in this regard.

But no one could have imagined that the Mongols came to play with their lives this time, and the appearance of royal cavalry on the battlefield means that this is not a planned southern invasion of some tribes on the grassland who are poor and crazy and can't live a life without capital, but a planned southern invasion, the cause is naturally the Jingnan War within the Ming Empire, but the funny thing is that this time the Mongols saw through the hearts of the Han people, and when they gathered a large army to the Ming border, they found that the Great Wall moat that could not be broken in the past was no longer so unattainable.

It was already late winter, after the first battle of Beiping, the imperial court was already a little unable to send supplies to the border, and the border army was busy confronting the king of Yan, when the Mongols attacked, they could not even transfer the soldiers back, because the army of the king of Yan also marched to Datong.

Gu Huai picked up another battle report, which was much easier than the bloody and cruel just now.

"In the middle of December, the Yan Wang soldiers out of the Bauhinia Pass, after the capture of the Yimaling, with lightning speed trapped in Ulzhou, the defenders of Ulzhou are isolated, after the surrender of the Yan army into Datong, on the way and divided the troops to attack Baoding, Baoding prefect Yu Xiancheng surrendered, and Li Jinglong really also sent troops to Taihang Mountain, rushed to help Datong, at this moment I am afraid that it is still in the Taihang Mountain difficult march."

How ironic, Datong who wanted to fight but didn't dare to fight before, is like a lamb to the slaughter at the moment, and all of this is exchanged for the lives of people who don't know how many people at the border.

But what is there to blame Zhu Di? This war should not have been provoked by him, he is rebelling now, and it is impossible for him to send troops to the steppe to fight the Mongols, will Li Jinglong watch the empty Beiping not start?

The Mongols wanted to survive, so they went south to plunder; The soldiers are also people, and they are still short of food and clothing when they are attacked from both sides, and it is completely understandable that they surrendered to King Yan; Dezhou City has already sent troops to help, both fighting the Mongols and Zhu Di, and it can be regarded as fulfilling its duty.

Everyone is not wrong, everyone is satisfied, but what about the people? Who has asked the people if they are dissatisfied?

The winter wind blew the cloak on Gu Huai's body into a hunting sound, and a small city appeared on the horizon, Chen Ping pulled his horse to his side: "My lord, there is Yecheng ahead, and when you leave Yecheng, you will enter the grassland." ”

The road that I had walked into the grassland before was now in full swing, and the five thousand cavalrymen wearing Ming army uniforms of unknown origin would definitely not be able to walk, so they took this road, but looking at the smoke rising from the small city in the distance, Gu Huai had some bad premonitions in his heart.

Sure enough, when they arrived in the city, it was already in ruins, and in the distance, under the Great Wall, a human head tower had been piled up.

The cold wind is cold, and there are no mosquitoes and flies in winter, so this human head tower should be able to exist for a long time, and there are people and border soldiers in it, men and women, old and young, and the only thing in common is that they are all Han faces.

"It's Tatar," Chen Ping's face was equally ugly, "I asked a few surviving people, it was a city that was broken three days ago, and there should not be many cavalry coming, and after robbing this place, they retreated." ”

Gu Huai quietly looked at those hideous faces and the blood stains that spread, imagining what these people looked like before they died.

"That's right." He muttered to himself.

"I see."