"Your Majesty, it has been more than half a month since I last wrote to you."

"As mentioned in the last letter, on August 17 (the Western Julian calendar, the predecessor of the current international calendar), the 18th day of the second month of the lunar calendar, which is also the first day of the eighth month of the Ming calendar, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yunxi, and the great Khan of the Samarkand city state Timur mobilized more than 500,000 and 400,000 troops respectively, a total of nearly one million soldiers to fight, after seven or eight hours of fierce fighting, Timur was defeated, about 200,000 soldiers fled, and the rest were surrounded or eliminated. The next day these surrounded soldiers all surrendered or were exterminated, and Timur himself was captured and died that same night. ”

"The Ming Emperor originally wanted to spare these captives, but because of the discovery of mistreated people in Timur's camp, the emperor was furious and decided to put most of the captives to death."

"At that time, Alonso and I, as well as the envoys of other countries, were also regarded as civil officials of the Samarkand city-state and were almost executed, but fortunately, Fu An, the envoy sent by the Ming State to Samarkand, came forward to prove that we were not officials under Timur, and we were spared."

"I won't say much about the specific circumstances of the massacre, it's just a commonplace thing all over the world, and the soldiers of the Ming Kingdom don't have a very novel way of killing."

"At the same time, the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom sent a general to lead his troops to pursue the retreating soldiers of Samarkand, and stopped most of them under the city of Urumqi, and killed them all."

"After that, the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom was in Hami, Your Majesty, your minister was wrong, now that Timur has been defeated, I have become a prisoner of the Ming people, and I should be called Yiwu according to the name of the Ming people. The Emperor of the Ming Kingdom held a celebration banquet in Yiwu to reward all the generals who had made contributions to the battle. ”

"I was not able to see this feast with my own eyes, but after questioning some of the people who attended it, I learned that it was a very large feast, with hundreds of generals in attendance, which was more than the number of knights in many small countries around the kingdom. But in the Ming Kingdom, this is only the number of generals, and it does not include all the generals who participated in this battle. The feast consumed a great deal of food and wine, which is estimated to be worth about the same amount as the financial surplus of a province in the kingdom for a year. The wealth and power of the Ming Kingdom are undoubtedly revealed. ”

After that, the emperor of the Ming Kingdom sent the King of Qin, who had been sealed in Yiwu, to lead an army to the west, which was said to seize the land of the Seven Rivers east of Lake Balkhash. However, Zhu Shangbing, the king of Qin, led a full 150,000 soldiers to the west, and it didn't take so many soldiers to capture the land of the seven rivers, so I guess that the purpose of the Ming kingdom should be more than just the land of the seven rivers. ”

"After sending the King of Qin on an expedition, the emperor of the Ming State intended to return to his capital. I felt anxious. These days, apart from the relocation of us from the precarious camp of the former army of the city of Samarkand to the house in the city of Iwu, no official of the Ming Kingdom has spoken to us, and I have no idea what the Emperor of the Ming State intends to arrange for us. I think he probably didn't care about the envoys of our countries who were far away from the territory of the Ming Kingdom, and the officials up and down didn't care either, so he forgot about us. ”

"There's nothing I can do about it. This is not where the glory of the Lord can shine, nor is it the place where the prestige of the King can be spread. In fact, on the contrary, I think that after this war, the entire Western nobility and even the nobility of Germany, France and even England will know the name of the Ming Emperor Zhu Yunxi, but the people of the Ming Kingdom will still not know the name of the monarch of any European country. ”

"But fortunately, God forbid, the emperor of the Ming Kingdom remembered us and decided to summon us. As soon as I got the news, Alonso and I immediately changed into our most gorgeous clothes, and went to wait outside the courtyard where His Majesty the Emperor temporarily lived with the officials of the Ming Kingdom. ”

"Now the emperor of the Ming Kingdom has received Fu An and the others, and is ready to summon foreign envoys. That's all for the time being, and when I meet the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom, I will write another letter detailing the process of meeting the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom. ”

"May God bless you, my majesty. The year of the Lord is September 10, 1404. ”

……

……

"The emperor of the Ming Kingdom summoned foreign envoys, why didn't he summon us first?" Claviyo put down his pen and heard Quihano's complaints. He looked at the Ming officials who were announcing the envoys of the Western countries not far away, listened to the words that were translated into Khorezm, and said dissatisfiedly. In his opinion, the two countries that Timur brought to Yiwu this time represented were the strongest, and the others were some small countries that did not enter the stream, and they should be ranked first.

"Alonso, I think that the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom may know whether the country represented by the envoys who are waiting for him to summon him here is strong or weak, but he doesn't care about it, because it doesn't mean anything to the Ming Kingdom. And with the strength of the Ming Kingdom, it is enough to do so. Claviyo said.

"Hey!" Gihano knew that what she said made sense, so he could only sigh and stop talking. Seeing this, Claviyo did not speak again, but turned the first few pages of the diary and pondered for a while what to say to the emperor of the Ming Kingdom.

The purpose of their mission to Samarkand had been lost. King Henrique III of Castile sent them to Samarkand in order to unite Timur against the Ottoman state. Because at this time Castile had already controlled some of the islands off the coast of Sicily and Greece, and was fighting with the Ottomans for Greece, hoping that Timur would make persistent efforts to contain it from the east.

Unexpectedly, they arrived in Samarkand in September 1403 (the eighth month of the Ming calendar), only to find that the civil and military ministers and nobles of the entire country were talking about the Eastern Expedition to the Ming Dynasty, and no one wanted to send troops to attack the Ottoman State again. And within a few months, hundreds of thousands of troops were on the way to the east.

Claviyo and Gijano were helpless, but they could only follow Timur to the Crusade. At that time, they also fantasized that Timur would defeat the Ming state, and then abandon the plan to continue the eastward invasion, and the Ming state was bordered by Handong or Jiayuguan, and then led the army back to Samarkand and sent troops to attack the Ottoman state again.

But things are far worse than the worst they can imagine! The Ming Kingdom actually won, and it was a complete victory, almost completely annihilating the soldiers of the Samarkand city-state in the Eastern Expedition, and Timur himself died. When he learned that Zhang Fu led his troops to annihilate the last formed army under the city of Urumqi, Jihanno said sadly: "The city of Samarkand originally had a total of more than 20 million people, and it lost 700,000 in this battle. Claviyo didn't speak, but he thought the same thing as him.

But then things took a turn for the worse. The Ming Emperor sent the King of Qin to lead his troops to the west, and the number of troops far outnumbered the need to capture the Land of the Seven Rivers. Although it was not included in the letter just now, after careful study and discussion with the city of Samarkand, he believed that it was very likely that the destination of King Qin of the Ming Kingdom was the city of Samarkand.

This gives them hope again. Once the Ming state occupies the city of Samarkand, the situation in the whole of Central Asia and even West Asia will change dramatically, and the city state of Samarkand will be completely divided, if not destroyed, and the Persia and eastern Anatolia regions it originally occupied will fall into a power vacuum. Seeing this, the Ottoman nobility was likely to turn their main attention to the east, fighting for land on the mainland, reducing the forces invested in the Aegean Sea, and allowing the Kingdom of Castile to get a temporary respite. Although the Ottomans would have been stronger when they had secured their territory in the East, that was for the future.

Therefore, "Alonso, after we meet the emperor of the Ming Kingdom in a while, we should try to win him over to let the King of Qin go west to conquer more cities, and make the situation in West Asia even more chaotic." Claviyo said to Gilano.

"I'm afraid it's not easy. Even if we want to use our words, the emperor of the Ming Kingdom can't understand the language spoken by the two of us, so he can only listen to the translation; The skill of speech is greatly reduced after translation. Gijano said.

"Even if it doesn't work, you have to say that you have made an effort." Claviyo himself knew there was little hope, but he wanted to give it a try.

"But what I hope more is to go to the mainland of Mingguo to have a look."

Claviyo continued: "Before my mission to the city-state of Samarkand, I happened to have read Marco Polo's travelogue, in which he described the country of the Seris as a country full of gold, where the people lived and worked in peace, where all people were rich and rich, where commerce was prosperous, and where there were no beggars. ”

"I didn't believe that there was such a country in the world. But this time, when I came to Yiwu to see the war between the city of Samarkand and the Ming state, and heard the lavish banquet held by the emperor of the Ming kingdom, I now believe in these things written by Marco Polo. ”

"Me too!" Jihanno also said: "I didn't believe that such a country existed in the world before, but after seeing the luxury of Ming, I also believed it." I'd love to visit the cities where Marco Polo had been, and see if they were the same as what he wrote in his travelogue. I especially want to go to Khan Bali (Beiping) to see how prosperous this most prosperous capital in the world is. ”

"Now the capital of the Ming Kingdom is not in Khan Bali. Khan Bali was the capital of the Mongol rule of the Seris, and the newly established Ming kingdom arranged the capital in 'Yingtian'" Claviyo said these two words in Chinese, and continued: "The location of this city is near the Yangzhou described by Marco Polo, and it should be the most prosperous city of the Seris now. ”

"Wherever it is, I want to see it." Gihano said nonchalantly.

As they were talking, they suddenly heard the words of Khorezm from the front: "Your Majesty summons the messenger of the country of Castile. It was repeated in several other languages.

Hearing this, Claviyo and Gihano immediately straightened their clothes, straightened their hats, polished their shoes, walked up to the interpreter who spoke, and followed him to meet Yunxi.