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Chapter 887 Ruoqiang
"You are not kidding... Pah pah pah... Think carefully. It won't be too late to reply after this battle. Now I will give you a new task. Lead the Eight Banners Army to advance along the wooden stakes to clear the way for the army. Find Mangya Fort as soon as possible and notify the defenders to prepare."

Hong Tao wanted to tell Huang Taiji what he should focus on in the next ten years, but he swallowed a mouthful of sand right after the class started. He decided to stop the class for now. It wasn't something urgent, so why bother to keep nagging while swallowing sand?

Everything is nonsense now. The key is to find Mangya Castle first and notify the garrison to move the stored supplies out in advance. Don't wait until the army arrives to prepare, which will take up most of the day.

What they are racing against now is time. If they cannot quickly occupy Yarkand and Kashgar City and capture most of the rulers and nobles of the Yarkand Khanate, the Northern Army will have to launch a strong attack on Hami.

Although Guazhou is only 700 miles away from Hami, less than half the distance from Xiningwei to Mangyabao, the area in between is entirely Gobi desert and there is no place to get supplies.

The only three or four water sources are at spring level, and the flow rate is only enough for a hundred people to drink every day. If war horses and camels are added, it is estimated that it cannot even satisfy a hundred people.

If the northern army wanted to pass, they had to abandon their spare rations and most of their baggage, carry a lot of drinking water, and become pure light infantry. They would travel long distances in groups of 1,000 or 500 people.

If an army without sufficient artillery and ammunition encounters an enemy cavalry several times its number, it is difficult to predict the outcome. Even if it can win in the end, it will have to pay a huge price.

If the situation really turns out like that, it is entirely my own decision-making error. It would be better to cross the Outer Khalkha Steppe and attack Hami from the northern border. Even if it costs more than twice the military and material resources, it is more cost-effective than the death of tens of thousands of soldiers.

Ruoqiang, which controls the throat of the southern Xinjiang to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, is very important. However, it was not given enough attention by the rulers of the Yarkand Khanate, and was even used as a place of exile to exclude dissidents.

If there were not a few small oases leading to Yangguan intermittently, I am afraid that even the formal Khanate army would not be stationed there, and the area would be maintained solely by the ethnic armed forces of the three local emirs.

Daniel is the third son of Emir Inshaji. It is said that his ancestors have Turkic blood. He is tall and handsome with a sharp face. In addition to his handsome appearance, he has been very good at dealing with people since he was a child. He has a very good relationship with people and has always been valued by his family.

Although he was appointed as the Governor of Ruoqiang, it sounded like he was exiled, but it was of great significance. Latif Khan led the main force to Turpan, accompanied by the Governor of Kashgar and the Governor of Khotan. The only strong army was the Governor of Ruoqiang, except for the thousands of troops in Yarkand.

So even though the position is not very impressive, the trust is full. With the trust of the Khan and the Shadi Khoja family, he will definitely be assigned a more important position once the war in Turpan is over.

In addition, for the family itself, serving in Ruoqiang is not completely useless. Since the Yingshaji family has always supported the Shadihezhuo family, its strength has grown a lot in recent years and there is a need for further expansion.

However, the fertile land and pastures near Yarkand City, Kashgar and Yecheng had long been divided up by various families, and it was almost impossible to squeeze in unless by using force.

At this time, they could only settle for the next best thing and look for targets that would be beneficial to the family's expansion. Although Ruoqiang was located in a remote area, it had good resources. The most important thing was that the local emirs were relatively weak and not trusted by the Khan and Shadi Khoja, so it was easier to annex them. Daniel fully understood his father's intention. After leading his army to Ruoqiang, he immediately launched an investigation into the three nearby small tribes and finally chose the Abash family in the east of the city as the target of attack, killing the chicken to scare the monkey.

He first requisitioned Abash's manor in the name of Latif Khan as a temporary residence, and then set up barracks next to a large vineyard in the east of the city, deliberately allowing the soldiers to trample on it at will.

Although Old Abash strongly opposed it and claimed that he would go to Yarkand to complain to the Khan, he was helpless in the face of the aggressive army. It would have been better if he had not protested. Now not only did he lose his manor and vineyard, but he and his family were also imprisoned, and dozens of people were arrested.

In fact, he didn't know that Daniel would not return the manor and vineyard at all. He would just wait for the war in Turpan to end, and then he would find an excuse to have dealings with the Han people and the Baishan Sect to uproot the Abash family. The manor, land and people would all become the property of the Yingshaji family.

But there was one person who could not be killed, Abash's granddaughter Gulandam. What a beauty, Daniel's heart beat faster when he saw the girl for the first time, and he sat on the horse for a long time without being able to take his eyes off her.

"Who's still making loud noises at this late hour? Do you want to be whipped?"

Just as that beautiful figure appeared in my mind, a loud noise came from outside the house. It sounded quite far away, as if it was outside the yard, with people shouting and weapons clashing.

This made Daniel very angry. He had clearly ordered not to harass nearby residents, as they would all be members of the Inshaji family in the future. Who was so bold as to cause trouble right under his nose?

"Emir, Emir... It's bad, a group of guys broke into the town and will chop anyone they see!" Without waiting for the guards to answer, someone else started shouting outside the courtyard gate. His voice was very shrill, as if he had seen a devil.

"You're useless. You can't even suppress the villagers. Find out immediately whose tribesmen they are. Aren't they afraid of death?" At this moment, Daniel suddenly had a bad feeling. Could it be that the Abash family saw that the situation was not right and wanted to strike first?

However, he soon regained his composure and did not send all his main forces to the oasis ahead. He left a full two thousand cavalry in Ruoqiang City. Even if the three families here united, it would be like an egg hitting a stone.

"They... they seem to be speaking Mongolian, and their clothes and weapons are also like Mongolians..." The guard on the roof was obviously unable to answer his superior's question. He only made an ambiguous judgment based on the faint shouts and blurry figures.

"Mongols? Captain of the guard, take twenty people to the town first, notify the rest of the people to gather immediately, and send someone to watch the house at the back, don't let the woman from Abash's family slip away in the chaos!"

This made Daniel even more confused. There were quite a few Mongol people in southern Xinjiang, but most of them lived in the north and east of the desert. How could they appear in the south? But asking here obviously wouldn't give an accurate answer. He had to go out and see for himself.

(End of this chapter)