Chapter 152: Follow

After Altan Khan began to exchange markets, these Han Chinese vegetables were also popular among the Mongols, and were as popular as tea bricks, in contrast, food was also important, but not as indispensable to the Mongols as vegetables and tea bricks. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

There is grass on the grassland, and meat and milk tea can also be obtained through the herd, as long as it is not a year of heavy snowfall, the herdsmen get a stronger nutritional supply than the Han people, which also makes the herdsmen generally strong and strong, not necessarily tall, but the muscles on the body are coiled, quite strong.

The vitamin supplements that tea and sauerkraut can provide are precisely the most needed part of Mongolians, and vegetable products such as sauerkraut have a unique taste and are also necessities in Mongolian life.

In recent years, the horse market has stopped, and the vegetable reserves of various departments have long been exhausted, and when they saw the Han caravan heading north, these Balhu Mongols were actually quite excited.

Chen Zhuang actually wanted to find some opportunities, he was a border soldier in Datong, he didn't hold back his anger when he was fighting, he shot the person who quarreled with him, ran to the grassland and killed the horse thief first, and was almost killed by the fire in the operation of Hutchison to clean up the horse thief in the first two years, a lead flew past his ear, and hit an earlobe, almost killing him. Chen Zhuang, who was distraught, did not dare to stay in place, and a few partners ran all the way north, and then inexplicably arrived at the Balhu tribe, the partners died, the illness was sick, and in the end he was the only one left, wearing Mongolian robes and clothes, and also had his own felt bag to live, but there was no herd, and he usually did odd jobs in the pastures of various herdsmen for some food, and barely survived.

Later, Chen Zhuang knew that many of his partners back then had been recruited by Hutchison and became a member of the merchant army, and he was already a majestic professional soldier, and he was invincible in sweeping the desert, which made him feel extremely regretful...... If I hadn't run away desperately and chose to surrender, maybe I would have been much stronger now?

Of course, Chen Zhuang didn't know that his original partners, quite a few people, did not survive...... Most of them died under the rules of military law, and there were more than 100 horse thieves who were dragged to death by Zhou Yao with horses.

Hundreds of Mongols continued to run north, stopping until late afternoon.

They just came looking for an opportunity, and of course they refused to give up easily.

In the twilight, there was a road that stretched north and south to their west, and whenever they saw this road, Chen Zhuang and these Balhu Mongols would feel a palpitation, and an incomparable sense of shock immediately came to their hearts.

Last year, the Han people began to build the road here, it seems to be earlier than this time, the brigade of people and horses drove in, every dozens of miles is hundreds of thousands of people, from a desert and grassland, soon appeared a straight road, the road is divided into several layers, although it is a dirt road, but in the short term there is no fear of carriage crushing and rain and ice and snow invasion, plus every dozens of miles there is a maintenance site, timely drainage and repair, it is expected, this road will be used for a long time.

Chen Zhuang often observed the situation on the edge of the grassland, and he found that at the beginning of every hour, every day at this hour, a small group of cavalry would come out from two simple walled courtyards sixty miles apart, and then several large carts, possibly carrying tools, and then dozens of people would march along the sixty-mile road in the north and south directions, and march until around noon, and the two sides would meet in the middle, and then have a picnic meal together, and after the meal, they would turn back, as if they would exchange a book in the middle of the road, which was very important. Once you've signed each other, you're ready to go back.

Chen Zhuang observed for dozens of days, whether it was windy or rainy, he did not stop this kind of road patrol work, these people are not only walking on the road, they will always find the wrong places on the road, flatten the depressions, dredge the drainage ditch, tamp some vain roads, some places have to add stone bricks to fix, and some places plant wicker to prevent the invasion of floating sand.

This kind of work, regardless of the sun or rain, has never stopped, because Chen Zhuang found out that it must be two teams meeting in the middle, and then exchanging the book, presumably that is the voucher, if there is no record of daily exchange, there may be no way to explain when the senior management of Hutchison comes to inspect.

Chen Zhuang deliberately walked a little farther, and found that within a distance of three or four hundred miles, this road connecting the north and south was everywhere, and in the morning, whether it was dawn or not, someone would come out of the courtyard...... Later, Chen Zhuang learned that it was called a maintenance and supply station, and there were a small number of soldiers and a large number of soldiers, that is, road maintenance personnel.

In addition to the maintenance of the supply station, there will be a small fire road pier about thirty miles apart, the bunker is not necessarily built on the road, it may be on the grassland by the roadside, or it may be on the edge of the sea near the water, and some are built on the hills, condescending, you can see the enemy situation from a distance.

Whenever the sentry scouts of these fire road piers, Chen Zhuang will be more careful, once the Balhu people gathered more, the distance was closer, from a pier above the sudden artillery, the cannon sound is like thunder, the fire is like lightning, these Balhu people have not experienced artillery bombardment at all, on the spot crazy run, several people accidentally fell off the horse and broke their necks, which is a herdsman who grew up on horseback since childhood, almost integrated with the war horse, it is really quite an incredible thing.

On the journey of three hundred miles, and Yusheng also built two military forts around Lixu, each military fort is stationed with hundreds of soldiers, they often go deep into the grassland to patrol, whenever this time, whether it is the Balhu people or the Oroqen people, the Sauron people, the Evenks, are like frightened rabbits, far away, how far away is how far to escape.

Every time Chen Zhuang ran away together in the crowd, he was also afraid of being caught up by those fierce cavalry...... There has been a lot of mixed news from the Khalkha people in the north, but one thing everyone can be sure of is that these Han cavalry are particularly fierce, and those cavalry in red clothes are out-and-out demons, they keep killing, from one ranch station to the next, they are light and strong, they move extremely fast, they are better at cavalry combat than the Mongols who grew up on horseback, they are brave and ruthless, almost breaking into a pasture will burn the local area, in a short period of time, These red-robed cavalry brought considerable damage to the Tushetu Khan department, and it is estimated that it will not be until ten years later, the pasture destroyed by hundreds of red-robed cavalry will slowly recover, these killings are still fresh in people's memory, and the Khalkha people mention it as if they were possessed by a nightmare, and the terrifying expression is shocking and difficult to forget for a long time.

It is strange to say that when Chen Zhuang fled, he actually had a faint sense of pride in his heart.

When he fled into the grassland more than ten years ago, he was still a vigorous and impulsive teenager, and many Han people who committed crimes fled beyond the border and went north to the grassland to make a living. Many people went directly to the Bansheng land on the Tumo River to farm for the Mongols, and after staying for decades, the family also began to make money, such as the famous Zhao family, and some people like Chen Zhuang did not like to be restrained in life, coupled with the vigor of youth, they would rather choose a relatively free path, and the result was to join the horse thieves on the grassland, and lived a happy life of eating meat and weighing money.

But when a horse thief is also chased by the Mongols on the grassland, and the Han horse thieves are exterminated more seriously, many horse thieves are with those who run out of the Mongolian company, making the illusion that the Mongols are leading, in the team, the status of the Mongols is very high, far higher than Chen Zhuang, a Han horse thief, after a long time on the grassland, Chen Zhuang has been used to being discriminated against...... The Han people are cowardly, do not hold together, infighting, and treacherous, which are all the stereotypes of the Mongols of the Han people. This is also no way, a few decades ago, the Mongols broke into the hole every few years, plundered and killed the Han people are between tens of thousands of people, and there are all kinds of cowardly and timid stories of the Han people in the Mongols, passed down from old to young, and when the Han people are mentioned, they are the kind of contemptuous eyes...... The Mongols are like this, when a person wanders to the door of a shepherd's felt bag, he may generously give you a piece of mutton, a bowl of goat's milk, but he will also despise your people in person, despise your identity, this contempt is also naked, undisguised, just like the Mongols' worship of power, has been deeply engraved in their bones.

Because of the influence of the Mongols, the rest of the races on the steppe also despised the Han people, as if the Han people were useless flocks of sheep, and they could grab a handful at any time if they wanted to.

When the Khalkhas, Balhus, Evenks and Oroqen fled in all directions because of the arrival of the Han army, and their faces were colorless, although Chen Zhuang was also a member of the fleeing crowd, he also had a faint sense of pride in his heart.

This sense of pride comes from blood and cultural inheritance, from a sense of identity in the core of civilization, no matter what kind of identity it is, the pride caused by this sense of identity is also difficult to contain, difficult to eliminate, the more suppressed, the more it rebounds...... The farther Chen Zhuang ran, the more he wanted to come back and take a look, even if he was pushed away from it like a rabbit.

After running for more than a dozen miles to the northeast, all the cavalry stopped.

Many herdsmen have leaders, most of them are nobles in the tribe, this time they came to do some business with the Han people, but they hesitated, there was no way to get close, the most worried was afraid of being raided by the Han cavalry, and even lured wolves into the house, if the Han army along the Krulun River all the way to the west, the lair of the Balhu Mongols could not be saved.

The Han army once led the Chahar people through these places, and the spirit of being strong and tenacious and swearing to move forward is still remembered by the Balhu people...... That army is too strong and too strong.