"What do you want to say, Master Hou, the two of us are at the mercy of Master Hou!" Jiang Hu almost understood what Chen Xu meant at this time, and it was estimated that there were other arrangements to make a proposal to the emperor to attack the Western Regions.

"It's not to listen to my arrangement, but this matter is very important to the development of Daqin in the future, this Hetao area is the rich land of the Great River Basin, in fact, from the northwest corner of the Hetao across the Great River, there is a more fertile and rich land, where the water and grass are abundant, and there is a large lake, if you occupy this area, you can reclaim a large number of grain fields to plant millet rice, and you will inevitably get a huge granary in the northwest, where you can build a city and immigrate to monitor the movements of the Northwest Zhuhu at the same time, you can also use this as a base to infiltrate and develop in the west and north directions, And choke the exit of Yinshan to the Western Regions, and completely cut off the connection between the Xiongnu and the countries of the Western Regions! ”

"We know that place, I heard that the water and grass are indeed abundant, it is said that there are Xiongnu nobles settled here, gathered seventy or eighty thousand Xiongnu tribes, the strength will not be worse than the Xiongnu royal court, and has not been very subordinate to the jurisdiction of the Xiongnu royal court, last time we originally planned to raid here, but then felt that because of the Henan war, the Xiongnu here may be ready to face the battle, so we gave up this plan, but crossed the Yin Mountain to the north to raid the Xiongnu royal court!" Jiang Hu nodded and said.

"Master Hou hopes that we can capture this place this time?" Jiang Bu almost understood Chen Xu's thoughts at this time.

"Yes, occupying this place is particularly important for stabilizing the northwest of my Great Qin, like a wedge firmly nailing the power to Hebei, and at the same time, it can continue to penetrate westward along the big river, and continue to penetrate the power into the countries of the Western Regions, and in a few years, you will definitely be able to obtain a large number of Western Regions specialties and materials, and at the same time, you can also slowly find out the news of the Peacock Dynasty."

"Master Hou, haven't you said that there are any good things in the Western Regions, a bitter cold place where the grassland is yellow sand?" Jiang Hu couldn't help but remind.

"There are many good things in the Western Regions, where there are rich in all kinds of nutritious melons, fruits and spices, all of which are excellent varieties that are not found in the Central Plains, such as watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes, flax, pomegranates, walnuts, garlic, carrots, as well as pepper and cumin, many agricultural products in the Western Regions are mostly from the West, such as eggplant and cucumber are also very good vegetables, and the yield is high and the taste is good......"

Jiang Bu and Jiang Hu looked at each other.

"Master Hou, apart from these melons, fruits, vegetables and vegetables, what else is there in the Western Regions?" Jiang Hu opened his mouth a few times and felt that his mouth was a little bitter, and he said that Hou Ye likes food, and it is true that the purpose of arranging the Western Regions is to get these things to eat.

"Eat? Oh~ Yes, yes, these are all eaten, the people take food as the sky, and introduce these fruits and vegetables to the Central Plains, and the people of Daqin can eat a lot of delicious food, why not? Chen Xu was stunned for a moment and asked curiously.

Jiang Hu smiled bitterly and nodded: "Master Hou, there is nothing wrong with eating, but if it is just because of these strange foods that you want to lead the army to conquer the Western Regions, I am afraid that Your Majesty will really not agree!" ”

"I haven't finished talking about what you're anxious about, there is a crop called cotton in the Western Regions, that is the most important good thing, cotton is a small tree, in fact, such as a peach, it blooms after maturity, there is snow-white velvet inside, and the textile clothes are gentle and considerate, if the cotton velvet is filled in the jacket, the cold winter wax moon is used to keep out the cold than the filling of reed silk and linen is a hundred times warmer, and cotton is born with velvet that is easy to spin and weave, light and breathable, not to mention easy to print and dye, and the clothes made are more intimate and beautiful, and countless times more comfortable than linen!"

Jiang Hu and Jiang Bu glanced at each other and then nodded together: "This cotton seems to be indeed a good thing, wait for the opportunity to help Hou Ye grab it!" ”

Chen Xu's head is full of black lines, why did he help Lao Tzu rob it, as if you don't wear clothes.

What's more, once the cotton is planted on a large scale, cotton clothes will inevitably replace hemp clothes, which is inevitable, light and breathable, and close to the body soft, unlike twine clothes worn on the body panic, if not in the lining of a layer of silk, the whole person is like wearing coarse wool clothes, the more new clothes are tied the more powerful, so Chen Xu especially hates to wear new clothes, even if it is fine linen, there is a sense of numbness that the soul wants to fly, and it is difficult to feel that the soul is out of the body, so it is necessary to keep scratching everywhere.

"In addition to cotton, there is actually a very important material in the Western Regions, which every household needs to use every day, every day is indispensable, and the national consumption is huge.

"Hou Ye, tell me what it is?" Jiang Hu asked excitedly.

"Salt!"

"Salt?" Jiang Hu and Jiang Bu exclaimed at the same time.

"Yes, at the beginning, I Daqin and Chu fought for a hundred years for the salt of Ba, and later became bad with Qi, but also because Qi cut off the salt road of my Daqin, and did not allow salt merchants to sell salt to my Daqin, although now my Daqin unified the six countries, Chu salt and Qi salt are all obtained, but the output of salt is still not enough, it is an extremely scarce material, the people in many places have no salt to eat, and if you don't eat salt, people will be weak and sick, although Ba salt is good, but the output is scarce, can only meet the rich ministers, and although the sea salt is bitter and inferior, But it is still in short supply, the Central Plains is ten dollars a bucket, ordinary people still can't afford to buy it, although my Central Plains is desperately short of salt, but within the scope of the Western Regions Zhuhu, there are several huge salt lakes, the snow salt in the lake is piled up like sediment, inexhaustible, not only delicate and mellow taste, there is no slightest bitterness of sea salt, once found, the two generals want not to get rich and difficult, and after His Majesty swept away the South Vietnam and North Hu, the people of the Central Plains live a stable life, the population is bound to grow, and the demand for salt is getting worse day by day, This salt must be a shortcut to make a fortune, you can sell as much as you can bring back, ten dollars a bucket, if you can transport back a million buckets a year......"

"Goodong~"

Jiang Hu and Jiang Bu swallowed a mouthful of saliva at the same time, and when they saw the location on the map drawn by Chen Xu, their eyes showed a light like a wild wolf predatoring.

The importance of salt does not need to be reminded by Chen Xu, it is clearly reflected in the military camp, salt is the most important strategic resource in addition to food, ordinary soldiers are half a bucket a year, the lower ones are one or two buckets, and the lords are more than two to ten buckets, and a bucket of salt is only 2.5 kilograms, and it is still coarse salt, bitter and astringent, so it will often not be supplied, and ordinary people's homes are even more conceivable, one is that there is no money, and the other is that money may not be able to buy, except for the rich land of the Central Plains and the salt-producing area, Many of the frontier wastelands lack salt and eat soil, so they can only refine nitrate to supplement salt.

The reason why Chen Xu was able to buy salt in Qinghe Town at the beginning was because Nanyang County was located in an important grain-producing area, and there were many wealthy merchants, and there were tens of thousands of copper and iron merchants near Wancheng alone, because there was no shortage of money and the consumption of salt was very large, so naturally there were a large number of salt merchants who sent salt to Wancheng for resale.

Nanyang has convenient transportation, just in the center of the Central Plains, is the only place to go from south to north, not only the sea salt in the east, but also the salt in the southwest is easier to transport along the Yangtze River to Chu.

The second is that the local people are poor and eat soil, most of the poor people can't afford to eat salt, so they earn a little salt money a year to buy half a bucket and put it at home to eat tightly for a year.

In later generations, there were several major salt-producing areas in China, the sea salt in the northeast, the well salt in Zigong, the rock salt in Sichuan, and the pool salt in Qinghai are the most famous, and Qinghai salt is the famous green salt, the texture is delicate and snow-white and pure, the taste is pure, in fact, it is dug out of the salt lake.

There is a famous tourist attraction near Qinghai Lake called Chaka Salt Lake, Chen Xu went to it with his classmates during the summer vacation, the lake is surrounded by the salt layer of white flowers, the local paving is made of salt, there is no money at all, as long as you are not afraid of death, you can walk all the way to eat all the way, to meet the extremely rich imagination of all the poor people for salt.

And Qinghai Lake is already very close to Longxi County in Daqin, and the straight-line distance is less than a thousand miles, that is, the distance from Xianyang to Luoyang.

Qinghai also has a Chahar salt lake, which is the largest salt lake in China, and the detected reserves are enough for the world to eat for thousands of years, and there is more than one salt lake in Qinghai.

Therefore, as long as you go to Qinghai in later generations, ask the local natives and herdsmen, it will be easy to find the salt lake, and the only trouble is to transport it back.

These salt lakes are all on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and the terrain on the plateau is complex and rugged, almost the dividing line between the Great Qin and the Qiang people at the moment, if there is no convenient road and strong guards, I am afraid it will not be easy to get it back, but in any case, this is a huge treasure trove of resources, once the emperor knows that the Western Regions really has an inexhaustible supply of high-purity salt, he will inevitably find a way to grab it, it doesn't matter if he can't get it back, the important thing is that he must be Daqin.

"By the way, I heard that the Western Regions are also rich in gold!" Chen Xu finally said with a knife.

"Gold?" Jiang Hu and Jiang Bu's eyes suddenly lit up almost at the same time, and they felt a golden light reflected out.

"Yes, legend has it that in some places in the Western Regions, you can pick up a few catties of dog's head gold when you walk, and the people of the Peacock Dynasty are very fond of gold, and use gold to create various ornaments to hang on their bodies, especially nobles, and grab a person who is estimated to be rich enough for ordinary people to live a lifetime......"

Jiang Hu and Jiang Bu clenched their fists and began to lick their lips.

All kinds of stimulant drugs have been ordered, and the expressions of Jiang Hu and Jiang Bu have begun to change, and they are ready to release the tiger and wolf sumo to the countries of the Western Regions on the map.

But now is not the time to open up the looting of copies of the Western Regions countries on a large scale.

Therefore, Chen Xu crumpled the drawn map and said: "Two generals, what I said today has never been heard of by outsiders, but this is an opportunity for the two generals to be promoted and make a fortune in the future, so it needs to be kept strictly secret for the time being, otherwise when a large group of generals in the court know that the two of you are fighting in the northwest again, I am afraid that this credit will not fall on your heads!" ”

"What Master Hou reminds us is that about Western things such as the Western Regions and the Peacock Dynasty, we will never reveal half a sentence!" Jiang Bu nodded.

"Master Hou, why did you tell the two of us these things today?" Jiang Hu almost got some clues from Chen Xu's words at this time, but he was confused and clueless, only knowing that Chen Xu would not tell them these things that could shock all the people in the Central Plains.

For a long time, the Central Plains knew that there were still human beings in the western part of the Arctic, but the legend has it that the descendants of the dog Rong and the Yin Shang who were driven out by the Chinese ancestors in ancient times were barbarians who lived together with various barbarians, such as the Xiongnu Donghu and Qiangrong and other miscellaneous Hu, so these places were not looked at by the vassal states of the Central Plains, and they felt that those bitter cold lands were not cultivable and the weather was bad, so they were not worth conquering at all, and the Central Plains was so rich that they naturally wanted to dominate the Central Plains.

And some folk circulation, such as the Classic of Mountains and Seas and the Biography of Mu Tianzi, and other unreliable books that seem to be anecdotes, record all kinds of unbelievable affairs in the southeast, south, and northwest of the earth, but no one has ever confirmed their authenticity, so except for some interested Fang Dao warlocks who will delve into it, most of these contents are circulated as stories, and they have not been taken seriously at all.

But today, the Marquis of Qinghe, who is said to be a disciple of the Immortal Family, really said that there are more powerful countries in the West than the Central Plains, as well as various products that are not available in the Central Plains, and there is a humanoid nobleman with a head full of gold......

This temptation completely ignited the two generals who had just tasted the excitement of military exploits.