Grass waves. Looking at the spear between the green bounds, and the scenery of the clear and ugly bottom of the river is fascinated.

This is Ili, a treasure of abundant water and plants. And that river is the source of nourishment for this pastoral area, the Ili River, in ancient times, not only an important water source area, but also an important transportation lifeline, but now, with the exhibition of industrial technology. As well as the needs of commerce and national defense, the Ili River can no longer meet the needs of modern transportation, and a more modern mode of transportation has appeared on the banks of the Ili River.

Now, on the north bank of the Ili River Valley, a railroad is being built, and it may not be long before the ancient city of the Western Regions can hear the whistle of a train.

It was not an easy task to build the railway to Ili, because it had to cross the Tianshan Mountains, and the difficulty of its construction can be said to be daunting.

But Zhan Tianyou finally took over the errand, and in order to supervise this big project that is enough to shine in the annals of history, Zhan Tianyou even rushed to the front line of the project and lived in Ili City.

Now, Zhan Tianyi is sitting in a car, rushing from Yili City to Huiyuan New Town, accompanied by not only a few armed security personnel, but also more than a dozen engineering experts and technical backbones, all of whom are Zhan Tianyou's most powerful assistants.

The so-called car is actually a somewhat dilapidated truck, and everyone is not sitting on a stool. Instead, he sat on a wooden box with a mouth, and the wooden box was not filled with ordinary goods, all of which were made by Russia to sell special explosives, which were used for mining, and because of the passivation, the safety was relatively high. In addition, there is no lead, so it is natural to sit on the top with confidence.

Yesterday I had a day off, and I got up early in the morning today, and everyone wanted to rush back to the construction site as soon as possible, urging the workers to continue the construction, and build the roadbed as soon as possible. Although the top of the truck was covered with an oilcloth carport, it had long been in tatters, with large holes and small holes, and a lot of sunlight was shining through.

Now that the train has not yet opened, many supplies on the Ili side need to be transported by airway. Some of the supplies that could be purchased directly from Russia could of course be transported from the land passage to the west. For example, railroad tracks, wagons, heavy tools, signal facilities, special vehicles, fuel, explosives, and so on, but other materials that cannot be purchased from Russia can only be purchased by aircraft, but because the air force's actions are limited by meteorological conditions, it cannot fly to Ili every day. As a result, "insignificant" supplies such as newspapers and books could only be delivered to Ili once a week.

"It doesn't matter" is the officer's statement, but Zhan Tianyou cannot agree with this prejudice. In fact, considering that newspapers and books do not actually take up much space on the plane, Zhan Tianyou has always believed that this is a dereliction of duty by the logistics department, and the so-called "irrelevant" statement is actually just a perfunctory remark by the air force officers.

Zhan Tianyou is the chief minister of the Ministry of Railways, and his position is already very high, if you insist on finding someone with a higher position than him, there may only be two, one is Tang Shaoyi, the minister of foreign affairs, who is now the de facto head of the cabinet, and the other is the president.

But now those two people with higher positions are busier than Zhan Tianyi, and it is not an exaggeration to say that there are thousands of opportunities for daily management, so Zhan Tianyi did not trouble them in the end, although maybe only a telegram can solve this problem of spiritual food.

Now, Zhan Tianyi can only continue to endure the torment of being able to read the latest domestic newspapers every other week, but fortunately, the Air Force transports a lot of newspapers every time, and if you read one every day, it can be regarded as a good pastime. Therefore, although Zhan Tianwei's briefcase now contains several newspapers, he still decided to only read the copy of "The Grand Duke" in his hand today

。

Now, Zhan's attention is completely drawn to the front-page headlines of the newspaper.

"The Republic of China Miheng" scolded the street, and the "political pioneer" did not forgive. 》

Just looking at the headline of this news, it is enough to make people smile, that "Republic of China Miheng" is talking about Zhang Binglin, the former leader of the United Front, and as for the "political vanguard", it naturally refers to Yang Du.

As for the content of the news, it was Zhang Binglin who wrote an article in the newspaper accusing the 15 political commissars in the "Political Scraping Committee" for being vegetarians. I only know that officialdom is entertaining, I don't know how to serve the country, and this public opinion supervision is nothing, but this Mr. Zhang's wording is quite fierce, scolding people without dirty words, and the spearhead of the struggle seems to want to point at the cabinet and even the president, so several political commissars with Yang Du jointly wrote an article to fight back, accusing Zhang Binglin of making trouble out of nothing and making trouble, and threatening to go to court with him to solve the problem. Sue someone for the crime of "spreading rumors and slandering".

In this remote border city in the Western Regions, being able to see the performance of officialdom through the newspaper, Zhan Tiansheng was somewhat emotional, and the reason why he chose to stay away from the capital. Go to this remote place to supervise the project. Since resigning from the post of chairman of the United Front, Zhang Binglin has almost scolded senior cabinet and government officials in the past two years, but he has not scolded him Zhan Tianyou. On the contrary, he praised him for being a doer, which meant that there was some accusation that the officials of the central ministry were all corpse vegetarians.

Zhan Tianyou read the news of the headline of the newspaper word by word, which took about twenty minutes, and then he swept his eyes and moved to the news on the second page of the newspaper, but it was a report on the recent situation of the Empire of Hawks and Jin, and the newspaper quoted the British and French newspapers Victoria" and according to the report of the British newspaper, just yesterday Rodenko, chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Empire, warned His Majesty the Tsar of Russia that the current situation in the Russian Empire is very critical and that there is a danger of revolution at any time. The State Duma hopes that His Majesty the Tsar will understand the suffering of the people and the danger of the country's economy, and stop launching a military offensive on the front line easily, and at the same time remind His Majesty the Tsar not to put up notices and offer rewards in vain to find that. "Missing. The court lamp officer, Mr. Rasputin, may have fled to Germany, and according to the rumors among the people, Mr. Rasputin, the court lamp officer, is likely to be an important suspect in leaking the Russian army's operational plans, and even the wife of His Majesty the Tsar cannot get rid of the suspicion of leaking the secrets of the emperor's ** affairs.

It wasn't until this time that Zhan Tianyou noticed. The date of this news report is February of the 7th year of the state, and today is the day of March of the old year of the Common Era, so if you count it, the newspaper he is reading now is already half of it. It was published many months ago. Apparently, those officers of the logistics department of the Air Force were grossly negligent in their duties, which can hardly already be called "news." Although Zhan Tian estimated that most of the newspaper news he had read for more than a year had seriously lagged behind, he had never read the "news" of half a month ago like today.

It's the old year, and it's been almost three years since the start of the construction of the Ili Valley Railway.

"They even showed me the newspaper from more than half a month ago. How can it be so?" Zhan Tianyou muttered, and then looked at the time, it was still far away from Huiyuan New Town, so he quickly threw away his distracting thoughts and continued to read the newspaper in his hand that was published more than half a month ago with relish.

In order to transport railway supplies, an improvised road was built between Yili and Huiyuan New Town, although the terrain was flat, but there were several small rivers in the middle, and the bridge had not yet been completed, so cars had to be very cautious when crossing the river. Passengers on the bus must also get out of the car first, wait for the car to cross the river before crossing the river and then board the car. Continue to move towards Huiyuan New Town.

Coupled with the explosives on board, the car certainly couldn't get up fast. Therefore, it was not until half past nine in the morning that the truck drove to the old city of Huiyuan, which was still several miles away.

The old city of Huiyuan was once the residence of the "Ili General's Mansion", the highest military and political organ of the Qing court stationed in Xinjiang, located on the north bank of the Ili River, with a large scale and a dangerous situation. It used to be a very lively town, but in the year of Gang, the Russian ** team invaded the area of Ili on a large scale. The old city of Huiyuan was destroyed in the war, and later the Qing court built a new city in the north of the old city of Huiyuan after the end of the war, which is the new city of Huiyuan, although the new city was built more solidly, but it was far less prosperous than the old city of Huiyuan.

Now Huiyuan New City is the front-line headquarters of the railway project, but the old city of Huiyuan also comes in handy, this is actually a logistics base, all kinds of equipment and materials used in the project are stored in the old city of Huiyuan, so when the car of Zhan Tiansheng arrived in the old city of Huiyuan, Lihai stopped the car, ready to unload the explosives loaded on the car.

In the old city of Huiyuan, Zhan Tianyou was surprised to see Xiong Bingkun.

Xiong Bingkun is the supreme commander of the engineering unit, and is now assisting the railway engineering unit in digging tunnels at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains, and his troop station is very far away from the old city and new city of Huiyuan, and it takes a day and a night to walk, so it is difficult to see Xiong Bingkun in the new city and the old city of Huiyuan in ordinary times.

"Commander Xiong, why did you come here?"

Zhan Tianyou hurriedly stepped forward to say hello, wanting to ask Xiong Bingkun why he came.

"Yesterday morning, I received a telegram from the Commander-in-Chief, asking me to go to Ili, saying that there was a military order to be delivered. It was a top-secret order, so I had to rush to Ili in person.

As for the construction site, Chief Zhan is relieved. I have sent my right-hand man to keep an eye on it, and nothing will go wrong, not to mention that with the assistance of American technical experts, the pass project is currently progressing smoothly. ”

Seeing that Zhan Tianxuan was a little worried, Xiong Bingkun could only tell the truth, the two had been cooperating at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains for almost two years, and they had cooperated very happily with each other, but the progress of the project was much slower than that of Ji Gezhong after all, which could not blame the engineers for not working hard, it was really the Tianshan Pass project was too arduous, and even the American and French technical experts who guided the project had changed several times, the Tianshan Mountains were not ordinary mountains, this mountain range across Central Asia was very grand, and the scenery was very good. However, this directly increased the difficulty of the railway project exponentially, although in the design, Zhan Tianwei and all the engineering experts tried to minimize the design of the tunnel. Even at the expense of the double locomotive scheme, but even such a "cutting corners" design could not speed up the progress of the project, and. In the actual implementation, everyone has also realized that the funds for the railway project have been greatly budgeted.

Even under these circumstances, the central government gave full support to the railway project. This somewhat surprised Zhan Tianwei, because in his opinion, there are many places that need railways now. However, the center attaches so much importance to the railway project from Ili to Dihua and to Lanzhou. It's a bit bizarre.

However, no matter how unbelievable it is, Zhan Tianwei and his engineering team must also step up construction and strive to complete the construction of this railway as soon as possible.

Of course, Zhan Tianwei is not clear now, the current situation in Europe is very tense, after more than two years of war, the situation in the Russian Empire has become out of control, just a few days later, a revolution that shocks the world is about to explode in Russia, at that time, he may understand the intentions of the center.