The Chengying Battalion is not as good as other armies, and the families of the sergeants do not live together. So according to the request of Zhao De, the tenth commander of the Chengying Battalion, the Baggage Division, arranged him next to the Bachelor's Mansion. The house with two entrances and one courtyard was originally owned by a bachelor's disciple, but later people went to Chang'an, and the courtyard was empty. The servants hired by the Heavy Duty Division swept it clean, and Zhao Xingde didn't even need to prepare furniture, but only purchased bedding and other things in the city, and moved in with Li Ruoxue.

The couple settled down, and Qiu Shiliang, a lieutenant of the Anton Military Division, Shi Wenhu, a sergeant, Li Rui, a friend of Li Rui, Jian Cheng, the ten-captain of the same battalion of the Chengying Battalion, and his teammates Chen Yongqi, Chu Tianrui, Cui Wenhao, Fu Bin, Hu Yanjie, Liu Zheng, Shi Yan, Tan Binglong, Yang Xin, and Zhang Changling came to congratulate him on his housewarming. Xia Guoren has been in the army since he was 20 years old, and he has been unsuccessful in many applications, and he is nearly 30 years old when he is promoted to sergeant. Many sergeants are retired and then solve marriage matters, like Zhao Xingde's team, except for Liu Zheng and Shi Yan, who already have wives, the others are unmarried.

After a lively while, Zhao Xingde was forced to say goodbye to his wife, pack his bags, and go to the desert west of Dunhuang with the sergeants of the battalion to participate in the training of the seventh battalion of Chengying.

The first level of the whole training test was to use the sky-watching locator that Li Rui had mentioned, with the help of the detailed map provided by the Military Intelligence Department, to march westward on foot, pass through Ruoqiang, and arrive at the lonely city of Jimo in the desert, where Zhou Zhongyuan, the commander of the Chengying Army, was waiting for them.

When Zhao Xingde got the map, he almost scolded Zhou Zhongyuan, a madman, marching from Dunhuang to the end of the city, not a thousand miles, but also eight hundred. The route follows the Chimo River through the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, which is fashionably known as the "Great Quicksand". Frequent and violent winds are frequent all year round, and eighty percent of the sand dunes flow under the action of wind and sand. Only on the edge of the desert and along the river, where red willows and shrubs grow, do there be a small number of fixed sand dunes.

Zhou Zhongyuan didn't even designate a temporary centurion or lieutenant, but just asked five hundred sergeants to march together and not to be separated. The soldiers of the Xia State are mostly unwilling to be left behind, and since they have not been formally promoted, no one can control anyone now. As a result, there was a chaotic situation in which fifty ten-captains gathered in front of the map to discuss the march.

"Go to Changhai first," Zhao Xingde pointed to the place, which at this time was still a vast salt lake, which the Hu people called Lop Nur Zhuoer, and the Han people also called Changhai, or Yanze. "Then march along the river to the city of the end of the river."

"Zhao De, will you use this thing?" Jian Cheng fiddled with the Celestial Gazetteer for a while, but this thing was a little more complicated, even in the legion, except for the marching Sima, almost no one would use it. I don't know what Zhou Yuanzhong's intentions were, so he asked for a valuable astronomical instrument from the Ordnance Division, and directly sent it to the five hundred sergeants of the newly recruited army, and then ordered them to arrive at the end of the city within a month, no matter what method they used. The marching Sima sent by the three generals' mansions even put on a look of ignorance, claiming that General Zhou had greeted them, and they did not interfere in any military affairs until the last resort, but only followed them all the way to the end.

"I'll see." Zhao Xingde took it, this celestial observatory is actually a clairvoyant mirror, which is also common in the Song Kingdom and the Liao Kingdom, but it is not as sophisticated. The three marching horses looked at him with a sneer in their eyes. Zhao Xingde frowned slightly, although there is a scale on the objective lens of this clairvoyant, there should be a table to cooperate, he doesn't believe that Xia Junzhong has reached the level where he can independently use astronomical measurements to calculate latitude and longitude without a data table. So, he walked to the wooden box containing the astronomical instrument, reached out and looked inside, and sure enough, two large books full of data were placed in the deepest part of the box, and the ten-captain who had taken out the astronomical instrument just now did not see it.

The key to positioning is these two data tables called "Licheng". Zhao Xingde roughly flipped through it, and one of them was based on the location of several stars such as crape myrtle to get the latitude where the army was located. When the road was not lost, the army relied on obvious geographical signs, such as mountains and rivers, to advance. In the unlikely event that they get lost in the wilderness, the army should find the latitude of the destination on the map, march to the same latitude circle under the guidance of the compass, and then follow the same latitude to the destination. If this still does not lead to the way, the only way to find the army is to find the longitude of the army on a more complex standing by observing the eclipse and accurately measuring the time from noon to the eclipse of the eclipse. See if the march along the line of latitude misses the destination, or if the distance is not enough. The longitude calculations made by the Ordnance Division are extremely complex. What was sent to Zhao Xingde was only a part of a huge standing form.

"Without an accurate clock, it is impossible to easily measure longitude when marching, so presumably the Ordnance Division is making every effort to make high-precision pocket watches." Zhao Xingde thought secretly, looking at the map, he clearly drew a detailed longitude line, and in the absence of an accurate clock, he could do this, and he didn't know how much manpower and material resources were invested in it.

Zhao De flipped through Licheng with great interest, as if he was not pretending, and the three marching horses looked at each other, revealing a look of surprise.

"I'll use a little, this thing must be put away." Zhao Xingde said to Jian Cheng, knocking on the wooden box that kept the astronomical instrument, "At a critical time, it can save our lives." "Once you strayed into the big quicksand, the road loomed, and it was very easy for passers-by to lose their way due to the sandstorm. Since the opening of the South Silk Road, I don't know how many caravans have been buried on the edge of the mysterious quicksand, so that later generations can only pile up the remains of their predecessors to mark the direction and indicate the way, which has also won the reputation of the "Sea of Death" for the Great Quicksand.

"Yours really is." Jian Cheng patted the wooden box with a smile, he didn't doubt that Zhao Xingde was boasting. He knew that Zhao De had a friend who was a disciple of the Heavenly Machine Academy of the Bachelor's Mansion, and that Zhao De would rather have the mansion next to the Bachelor's Mansion and marry a wife with a seven-trick exquisite heart, which showed that he had a good set of things for this kind of complex thing.

The other ten-captains around him had envious or wary glances in their eyes. Zhao De's archery skills are amazing, not to mention, he can actually use the celestial sphere, and this is usually the stuff of the marching Sima of the General's Mansion. Several people immediately listed Zhao De as one of the candidates who might compete for centurion or even lieutenant in the future.

Zhao Xingde returned to the map, deliberated on the preset route, and said in a deep voice again: "No matter what happens, you can't deviate from it. ”

In order to keep the road smooth, Xia Guo consciously restricted the reclamation of the upstream, so that the water of several rivers flowing into the big quicksand should still be sufficient, if he did not deviate from the end of the river, Zhao Xingde was still sure to bring his team to the end of the city.

"This is natural." "Of course you can't leave the river." Several ten-master commanders immediately rushed to say, as if Zhao De said this sentence more, and seized another opportunity. The centurion and captain have not yet been promoted, and the ten-division commanders who have won the position with martial arts are holding back their strength.