The bad emperor of Tang Dynasty

After the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang Dynasty fell into a domestic civil war, and had no time to take into account the control of the western region of Xinjiang. The Tubo Dynasty established on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau immediately began a large-scale expansion. Now in this generation of Zanpu, the power of Tubo gradually began to move northward to the Tarim Basin. , Sichuan and Shu in the south, and Qinghai in the east are encroaching on the territory of the Tang Dynasty. Facing the powerful forces of the enemy, the people of the Tang Dynasty had to give up the military control of the towns of the Anxi Dufu in the Western Regions.

The fertile pastures around Qinghai Lake are now occupied by the Tubo people. It embezzled the homeland of the Tuyuhun Kingdom, which was originally a subsidiary state of the Tang Dynasty, and then it hooked up with the remaining post-Turks. The Hexi Corridor leads to the silk of the Western Regions. The road is gradually blocked.

Guo Nuan heard that more than 1 soldiers from the Lingzhou Military Region were transferred to the Guyuan Longshang (Liupan Mountains) area, which is the only way from Ningxia to the Western Regions. It was a sign of a big war. Longshang was the key point of the west city exit. Once the war with Tubo broke out, Datang might have to prepare to garrison heavy troops in the Guyuan area to guard against it.

Longshang is located in the southern part of the Loess Plateau, with ravines and ravines inside, and the narrow and narrow mountains are very dangerous and difficult to navigate. However, as a battleground for military strategists, Guo Nuan knows that this mountain range is also a place that is easy to defend but difficult to attack.

In mid-October, Guo Nuan followed a regiment of 300 people and was dispatched to the Longshang Mountains to transport military rations and equipment. He walked hard through the narrow and long valleys and looked up at the 3000-meter-high main peak, Meigao Mountain. Feeling a little dizzy, the lush mountains on Longshang are like a shining pearl on the barren Loess Plateau, a green corridor of life.

The trip to Longshang was extremely difficult. First of all, the surname of the captain of the 300-man regiment was Liu. Captain Liu was kind and friendly. Although the schedule for escorting the army rations was tight, he didn't dare to scold and insult his subordinates to move forward quickly. After all, in this area The roads in the loess hilly area are not easy to walk, and Guo Nuan got a lot of news when he heard him chatting with several teams near the escort vehicle near the captain's carriage.

Lieutenant Liu had been in charge of escorting military rations to Longshang many times, and this time he was familiar with the road. Fortunately, he had his command, otherwise many soldiers might have died in vain during the complicated journey.

Starting from the military area, Guo Nuan and the others passed by the saltland through the endless plain.

Due to the hot weather, Guo Nuan's team quickly drank the water. In this boundless area of ​​windy and sandy loess Gobi dunes, except for some small saline-alkali lands scattered at the bottom of the valley, or scattered in yellow-brown barren soil There are stacks of bushes and weeds growing, and occasionally they can see a small group of red deer and antelope wild animals looking for food in the low grass and bushes beside the boundless and desolate skyline.

Fortunately, Guo Nuan and the others were lucky, Fatty used his engineering shovel to find a source of water on a dry riverbed at the bottom of a valley in the salt land.

The river bed was covered with dry rocks and soil. Da Biao dug the soil seven or eight meters deep with a sharp engineer shovel, and dug out a deep trench. The sweet spring water, but anyway, this is one of the few sources of fresh water in the salt land, if it is replaced by others, it may not be possible to dig so deep with ordinary hoes and iron picks.

Before fresh water was found, a few soldiers were extremely thirsty, so they secretly ran to the salt water swamp to drink water, but this was not due to drinking poison to quench their thirst. Cutting the thigh of a military horse pulling cargo, and pouring half a bowl of horse's blood into a bowl, he recovered.

Although Shuofang is located in the desolate northwest inland, far away from the sea, but there are salt mines in the area of ​​Lingyan Platform, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians in Shuofang will not be without salt, and although it is a bit barren, it still produces Glauber's salt, and Haizi.

Guo Nuan heard that the area bordering the Yinchuan Plain and this salt land was also suitable for farming. Several generations of soldiers and civilians in Shuofang introduced water from the west of the Yellow River to irrigate the plain and built canals to irrigate the fields. It is a fertile farmland, but after the water flow was introduced into the loess inland, too many artificial lakes were built. At that time, no drainage channels were considered, and the water source was inaccessible. Slowly, the artificial lake water changed the local soil quality, and the soil gradually became salty. Alkalizing.

This time, more than 2000 peasant households were mobilized for the escort army rations. The escort team meandered through the vertical and horizontal ravines of the rugged and arid Loess Plateau. The team along the way was like a long snake. Overlooking the grain transportation team behind him from the top of the rock, he felt the portrayal of the boundless nature and the unyielding human beings. You said that in order to guard a desolate area pass, human activities are really everywhere.

A soldier, bring a bow, twenty arrows in the quiver, and a horizontal knife. If you don’t mind being in the way, Guo Nuan can also apply for a Mo knife in the armory. I forgot to mention, Guo Nuan also had to bring a whetstone, this knife was also very precious, it was impossible to just find a sudden hard rock on the Gobi Desert and sharpen the knife.

It is said that before the fat man set off, he stuffed some equipment in his dart bag randomly, such as twenty catties of wheat, five catties of rice, and some sweet potatoes grown in his own vegetable field, but he forgot to bring the whetstone.

"What should I do?" Da Biao was a little anxious, saying that he was too embarrassed to ask the team members to borrow sharpening stones, because the sea team said before departure that if anyone missed equipment, he would solve it by himself. Ten beats.

It is said that he was starved to death in the cold Loess Plateau, and he hadn't eaten much meat for a long time, and he almost suffered from neurasthenia.

No, he was lucky once, and found a prey. While hunting, he jumped out of a small mound and slashed at it. He wanted to hit a gazelle, but unexpectedly, this guy was very alert, with sensitive ears, and disappeared in no time. The unlucky fat man used too much force, and chopped the blade of the horizontal knife on a big rock with one stroke, curling the blade.

Come on, he didn't have a whetstone and couldn't bear to borrow his old face from his teammates, so he stepped on the big rock and buried himself in sharpening the blade. He didn't expect the gloomy sea team to appear quietly behind the fat man who was enjoying it , and then a sad thing happened, kicked the fat man's ass by the captain, and everyone talked about it all the time, and since then he never dared to pick a stone Sharpen the knife, otherwise the good knife will be worn out.

After crossing the Gobi Desert on foot, the hungry soldiers and labor farmers finally reached Longshang. The tributaries of the rivers in this area are densely criss-crossed and distributed in the bottom of the mountain valley.

There are a lot of spotted carp, crocodile, and loach. Guo Nuan and the others are very busy. Seeing that the task was completed after the army rations were escorted to the military fortress on the mountain, the captain ordered all the soldiers to move freely for a day, so Most people either went into the mountains to hunt with bows and arrows or went to the river to catch fish.