On the twenty-third day of July, Bai Liyan led his army to bypass Ba Kang and go to Tianquan, and at night he found that there were hidden barbarian fires on the east and west sides forty or sixty miles, and the speed was nearly a day faster than expected.

"Jiang Jie, there are still enough food and grass for a few days."

"Three days, after three days, you can only kill horses to satisfy your hunger. My lord, can we still go home? ”

"Of course you can, the road is walked by people, as long as there are two legs, there is always a way to live. Don't you want to go back alive and marry a woman in two rooms? ”

"Hehe, I want to ......"

"It's good to think, as long as you want, you can live. When people live, they are afraid that they will not have a head, and with a head, no matter how big the difficulties are, they can pass. You have a good rest, I'll go see the wounded. ”

When people reach despair, their spirits are immortal and lifeless, even if they know that it is an illusion.

Lu Gao's back injury has improved, and the blood is no longer spraying, but he often has intermittent difficulty breathing, which may have injured his lungs, or the infection has metastasized to the bronchi, and he still needs to recuperate, and the sequelae are inevitable.

Sikong Nan's arm injury has not fully healed, and his muscles are already showing signs of atrophy. After the wound of the large incision heals, it is often accompanied by muscle atrophy, and Bailiyan's leg has been injured three times, and one of them has atrophied very much.

The bumps along the way are all good, the minor injuries can still be settled, and the seriously injured have to suffer a lot.

After walking around the camp, Bai Liyan found Figos, who is still a "felon" who is still a "felon" with strict precautions, and will be tied with ropes at night and guarded by special personnel.

"How does it feel, have you figured it out?"

"Nope." Figos said bluntly, and rolled his eyes, even if he didn't roll his eyes, most of the time he still looked like he was still rolling.

"Just because we are barbarians in the Central Plains, you are noble?"

"It's not."

"What's that?"

"I just don't want to."

"You're straightforward, so you're not afraid that I'll kill you."

"You won't, you all flaunt your benevolence, so you won't kill me easily."

"Okay...... For you frogs at the bottom of the well, sooner or later I have a way to make you bow your head. ”

"What is a frog at the bottom of a well, you say this word many times."

"Oh, I forgot, there's no word yet, in other words, it's short-sighted."

"I don't know. Only divided tribes will be short-sighted and kill each other, if you want to satirize yourselves. ”

"Hehe......" Bai Liyan smiled helplessly, even embarrassed.

Figos's words cannot be said to be completely unreasonable, but many times, they are indeed irrefutable. Compared with Jin Xuedi's system, the old aristocratic system of slaves in the Central Plains is indeed short-sighted in the face of a perfect feudal system.

But objectively speaking, the animal resources of the Jinxuedi people have largely contributed to their long-term unification, and the land of the Central Plains is too vast, and there are neither thousands of miles of horses, nor unicorn horses with a load of fifteen stones, so they cannot project the orders and military will of the central dynasty to every corner of the empire in a short period of time, but it cannot be said that the feudal system is a short-sighted political system.

Compared with the current productive forces and science and technology, the sub-feudal system has just rightly maintained the relative integrity of the Central Plains civilization and the stability of the country.

In the final analysis, the innovation of the political system is the change of the social relations of production, the improvement of the productive forces, and the transfer of power relations and the progress of civilization.

Compared with the old aristocratic slave feudal system, the centralization of the feudal monarchy lies in the fact that the production relations concentrate all the resources within the scope of the rule in the hands of the centralized rulers with a highly unified will, and the productivity efficiency is much higher than that of the fragmented geopolitical production relations under the feudal feudal system.

It is an inevitable result that Jin Xuedi's economic potential is higher than that of the Central Plains coalition army, which is not determined by the will of the people and the times, but by the productive forces and production relations.

Bai Liyan has no interest in continuing to engage in a war of words, he knows very well that the Central Plains is undergoing changes, and in the next ten or twenty years, the fate of the world will soon be rewritten because of that "heavenly ship".

"I ask you, how far is it from your homeland to our city?"

"Why, you don't know?"

"I probably know that there is not a single city of yours three thousand miles south of Jieping, and I know that it is because you have millions of unicorns, which can transport a year's worth of military expenses of millions of troops at a time. Therefore, before you march north, you will set up a large advance camp south of our frontier city, so that you can stock up on grain and grass a few years in advance, and then go north.

The reason why you do this is precisely because there are no unicorns in the Central Plains, and the environment of Qianyue Mountain is treacherous and the air is thin, so you can't transport grain and grass in large quantities with manpower and animal power, so you don't set up a city within 3,000 miles, just to prevent our army from expanding to the south after capturing the city, but you can expand to the north without any scruples.

I want to know, where is the nearest city to Jieping in the south, and how far is it? ”

"You really don't know?" Figos wondered.

"Tell me, how far is it from the bottom?"

"Well, as far as I know, after three thousand miles south from Jieping, you will encounter the Papugia Mountains, I don't know what you call them, but I think you have never really been to the back of the south of the Papugia Mountains, if you can go over the Papugia Mountains, you will be able to see the Yasna Plains. But in fact, the Papuya Mountains cannot be crossed at all, so after arriving at the Papugia Mountains, you need to turn southwest and walk a thousand miles to the Posong Province, and then walk 1,500 miles to the end of the Posong River, the city of Posong.

Walk 2,500 miles west along the Posong River through Songdia Province, then go south for 200 miles to the Posongjiang Plain, turn southwest from the Posongjiang Plain, and walk another 2,000 miles, which is my home.

Of course, all this road was our city, and there were the Great Snow Mountains in the southwest of the Bosa Plain, and the width of the ends of the Great Snow Mountains and the Papugia Mountains was less than eight hundred li, and we built a wall there. Inside the wall is our homeland, and outside the wall is outside the gate.

We thought you would attack our homeland from the north, but we later learned that our fears were unfounded, and that you were so divided that you could not afford to go south. ”

Figos made a tirade, which really made the well-informed Bailiyan stunned, not knowing how to continue.

"Also...... That is to say, it takes seven or eight thousand miles to travel from Jieping to your homeland! ”

"It's almost, but it's not a straight line, if it's just outside the gate, it's four thousand miles away, if you go to the mainland from here, from the map, it's a zigzag, if you can make a hole in the Babugia Mountain, you can see the Yasna Great Plains for three thousand five hundred miles, which is much more comfortable than this ghost place."

Bai Liyan suddenly understood why no one had ever mentioned where Jin Xuedi was located, and it was useless to say it at all, because the whip was beyond his reach, and the Central Plains Coalition Army simply did not have the ability to go south to expedition to Jin Xuedi himself.

Not to mention the more than 5,000 miles between the garrison camp and the Papugia Mountains, half of which are plateaus, inaccessible and difficult to transport materials, even if it is a plain, it is impossible to attack people's homeland in a desolate and barren land eight thousand miles away from the mainland.

Even for the southernmost city such as Jieping, it is an extravagant hope to maintain its minimum defensive function, not to mention that there is still four or five thousand miles to go from Jieping to Posong City. The 1,200 li behind Posong City, it is not difficult to see from the words of Figos that the Jinxuedi people built a wall of 800 li long hundreds of years ago to block the southward movement of the Central Plains Army.

It can be seen that this wall should be their Great Wall.

There were as many as a million unicorn horses with Jin Xuedi on the northern expedition, far away in the rear of the mainland, not to mention how many unicorns, engaged in the transfer of millions of materials all day long, their logistics efficiency was much higher than that of the Central Plains Army, they could go thousands of miles away to hoard grain and grass, but the coalition army could not do this.

At that time, the Tang Dynasty sent Gao Xianzhi to lead 30,000 elite soldiers to Afghanistan, starting from Chang'an, going to Afghanistan to fight with the Arab Legion in Central Asia, trekking thousands of miles, and there were advance bases along the way.

Not to mention that the Central Plains is now more than four times larger than the territory of the Tang Dynasty in its heyday, only from Xianguo to Posong Province outside the Guan, the distance is conservatively estimated to be no more than 18,900 li, and it is necessary to cross the 4,000-mile plateau, and the span is so large that it is no longer the price that agricultural civilization can bear.

Bai Liyan was silent for a long time, and he couldn't see any meaning in the war that was going on right now. Whether the Central Plains people win in the end or the Jinxuedi people occupy the Central Plains, the geographical span is a fundamental contradiction that cannot be overcome by the current technological productive forces.

"You, go to bed early, you have to hurry tomorrow!"

After speaking, Bailiyan turned around to leave, but Figos shouted:

"Can't you untie the rope from my hand after I've said so much!"

"If you don't run!"

"I'm not going to run, I swear."

"I advise you not to run, and don't think about going to the whistleblower, otherwise the consequences will be very serious, and you will kill other people!"

"Okay, okay, I'm not running, it's okay!"

Bailiyan motioned for the sentry to untie the ropes, and then returned to his camp.

The next day, when it was dark, the battalions assembled and stood by, and Bailiyan announced a major military order, no longer seeking to break through to the north, but to turn to the south and go south to seek survival. As soon as the news came out, it immediately caused a strong backlash. Lu Gao was seriously ill and was unable to oppose it, and Sikong Nan, Su Hong, and Bai He fiercely opposed it.

"General, to the south is thousands of miles of uninhabited prairie, but you personally promised the brothers that you will take everyone back to your hometown alive, and now you are walking south, is there still a way!"

"I know, people can't figure it out. However, at present, the barbarian army is encircling and intercepting, and our army has only more than 2,000 people, and it is almost impossible to break through to the north. Brother Sikong, can't you see it! ”

"Then go south, is there a way out? We only have enough food for three days, and after three days what will the brothers eat! ”

Bailiyan took out the map of the southern region south of Jieping that Cao Chi was giving from his arms, pointed to the place name of "Langping" in the map and said:

"From here to the south, the eight-day journey is Langping, which has woods and deer herds in the forest, and you can hunt deer for food."

"If there was a case and a trace was lost, would two thousand brothers be killed!"

"It's better to starve to death than to die in battle in order to survive a few people. We had horses and weapons with us, and even eating horse meat was enough to keep us through a few months. Now that the situation is collapsing, even if you and I escape back, we will not be able to recover the situation, so let's avoid the limelight first! ”

Bai Liyan never thought that the words "avoiding the limelight" would come out of his mouth.

"The general still insists on going south!"

"Yes, there are more than 2,000 people left, and there are only a few left when Guangxin came out together. I said that if I want to bring them back alive, I will do it, and believe me, I will definitely go home alive. ”

Bailiyan's breath was heavy, Sikong Nan gritted his teeth, and said against his will:

"In that case, the last general will go with the general!"

"Well, it's brother! Let the soldiers be ready to go on the road, and if necessary, kill the horses to satisfy their hunger! ”

"No!"

Bai Liyan knew very well that as long as Sikong Nan was convinced, Bai He would be much easier to settle. And Lu Gao was seriously injured and was powerless to object. Su Hong's qualifications are too shallow, and he didn't dare to promote him by himself. As for Jiang Jie, he didn't dare to go against his will.

In an era of high prestige worship, the right to speak in authority is everything, and it is often more convincing than everything. At this time, Bai Liyan had completely forgotten the advice of Zong Botai on the side of Xiaolin Road.