The guard was also a little aggrieved, so he had to say: "Boss, we are taking the official road - we used to follow the official road, and we didn't encounter anything, but this time, the official road cut off a ditch." There are flying sand and rocks in front of you, and you can't see far, and you only find it when you are almost there. The ditch is bottomless, and it makes people dizzy at a glance, it is two or three zhang wide, and it can only be circumvented. It was a rainstorm last summer. ”

"Damn, these bunch of garbage in Shoukou Fort, I haven't cleaned up the road for so long, waste!" Fan Jienian didn't have any excuses, so he had to scold a few words and wave his hand: "Go and let them take a detour quickly, don't delay." ”

"Yes." The guards responded and hurriedly rode their horses, for fear that they would be late and use Fan Jienian as a punching bag.

On the large wasteland south of Huluyu, you can see a series of gullies from time to time.

A gully is actually a valley formed by the erosion of a flow of water, which is usually not a seasonal or stable river. Most of the time, a sudden rainstorm can create a large number of gullies. This kind of gully is very common in the large areas of loess in northern Shanxi and northern Shaanxi. The forests in these two places have almost been cut down, leaving only a large area of bare loess, the climate is unstable, with little precipitation but occasional heavy rainfall, coupled with the loose loess soil, it is even easier to form.

Generally speaking, gullies are deep and steep, narrow and deep. The depth varies, there are also three or four meters, more than ten meters are very common, tens of meters deep is not less, and the length varies from hundreds to thousands of meters.

These ditches are generally headless and tailless, and there may be one somewhere.

The gully in the south of Huluyu is extraordinarily deep, the shallow one is almost more than 30 meters, and the deep one is 50 or 60 meters. If you look at it from above, it looks like a crisscrossing scar on the earth. There are even sections of the Great Wall that will be cut off by the gully, but I don't have to worry about it, compared to the Great Wall, the gully is a more difficult barrier for the enemy to overcome.

For example, the ditch that has cut off the official road now has a depth of about 60 meters, and it is nearly 20 stories high in later generations. The coachman at the front got down from the carriage, walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down cautiously, but he couldn't see the bottom at all, only felt dizzy, and hurriedly took two steps back.

This ditch is straight up and down the Qitou cliff, can not be turned over at all, want to build a bridge to pass, it is also impossible, one is nowhere to find a plank, two is that these carriages are too heavy, even if it is a temporary bridge, it is simply not able to bear.

You have to go around a few hundred meters to find your way up and down.

Some of the guards who had gone out to explore the road returned, and said that it would be better to walk to the west. The carriages began to turn around and head west, trying to get around the gully.

Half an hour later, the huge convoy traveled more than a mile west to bypass the gully. But there are still a few ditches ahead......

An hour later, by the time the caravan entered Huluyu, it was already dark.

As soon as I entered Huluyu, with the shelter of the mountains on both sides, I could obviously feel that the wind and sand were much smaller, at least the visibility was much improved.

He poked his head out of the carriage and let out a long sigh: "Damn, this windy ......"

After two glances, he made a tsk sound from his mouth.

"It's fucking desolate!" Although it was not the first time he had come here, Fan Jienian couldn't help but sigh after glancing at the bare mountains and bare land around Shoukou Fort.

Even in later generations where the environment has been severely damaged, the scenery here is much better than Fort Shoukou in the Xiaoice era.

In later generations, the fortress, whether it is the Great Wall on the mountain or the fort wall under the mountain, is hidden in the apricot blossoms. As the so-called: it is another year of green grass, and the spring breeze is fragrant with apricot flowers. Life is a lover, and this hatred is not about the wind and the moon. At that time, on the east bank of Yanmen Water, all the way to the foot of the mountain, there were apricot trees everywhere, tender red, pink, snow white, mixed with green, green in white, white in blue, red flowers and green trees, a thousand kinds of splendor, all kinds of beautiful. Don't say that it is a desolate place in the north of Jinbei where the mountains and rivers are not green, and it is difficult to find such a beautiful scenery even in the south of the Yangtze River.

It's just that at this time, it's just a barren land.

When such a large caravan came, it was naturally impossible for the people guarding the fort not to see it, and in a short time, the south-facing city gate was wide open, and a group of knights rode out of it.

The leader of the team was an officer in his forties, wearing a green cloth iron armor and a pointed iron helmet, but he also looked very strong. The seven or eight knights behind him, all wearing cotton armor and carrying swords on their waists, with sharp eyes and spirits far beyond ordinary soldiers, were all first-class figures.

The caravan did not stop, but continued to move in the direction of Shoukou Fort, and the group of knights bypassed the front of the caravan and headed straight for Fan Jienian's carriage, obviously familiar with the caravan.

But Fan Jienian was quite arrogant, and when the group was in front of him, he still hid in the carriage and couldn't get down.

On the contrary, Fan Jieqiao greeted him, he had already taken off his face towel, and smiled at the middle-aged officer who came: "Mr. Huang Bai, I haven't seen you for many days, everything is okay?" ”

It turned out that this middle-aged officer was actually a hundred presidents, you know, this position is definitely not low. In the officer system of the border army, due to the different towns, the status of the hundred generals is also different, but they are generally more than 100 troops, and they are under the general general. The entire Shoukou Fort is just more than 400 soldiers, and the garrison is a general, and this Huang Baizong is here, and he is already a senior officer.

But obviously, the Fan family didn't take him very seriously, and even Fan Jiejiao was very casual when talking to him, putting the two sides in the same position.

Mr. Huang Bai was not annoyed, but smiled and said: "Thanks to your blessings, everything is fine, and I will give you a good old age, good luck, and great wealth." Hahaha......"

He pursed his lips when he didn't speak, looking a little cold, but when he opened his mouth, the aura of a soldier on his body suddenly disappeared. Instead, he was a philistine and shrewd, and he spoke very kindly, not like a border general, but like a wealthy businessman.

At this time, Fan Jienian only got out of the carriage half of his body, stretched his waist, and said with a lazy smile: "Lao Huang, I can borrow your auspicious words, hey, after staying in this carriage for a day, my bones are sore......"

That Huang Bai always knew the meaning of the song when he heard it, and hurriedly smiled: "Ouch, this ghost weather, but it has neglected Fan Dong's family." We can't be lazy anymore, Lord Liu has already prepared the wine and food with the officials, the resting realm has also been cleaned up, the houses are all cleaned, the hot water and hot rice are boiled, just waiting for you to come! Fan Dongjia, Lord Liu has set up a banquet for you in the mansion, just waiting for the wind! Let's go, let's talk at the table, say at the table. ”

Listening to him, he was not only very respectful to Fan Jienian, but even a little stammering.

can have this status, naturally because of his deep background. Fan Yongdou is more than the prince, is the number of big businessmen in the north of the Jin Dynasty at this time, and in the late Ming Dynasty, the status of merchants is already very high, although the official is still talking about Shinong industry and commerce, but in fact, the social status of merchants has changed greatly.

Especially a big businessman like Fan Yongdou, where can he not have some official background? For example, Zhang Siwei, the first assistant in the Wanli period, was not born in a merchant family? And in Fan Yongdou's family, there are also some officials and eunuchs. As for Fan Yongdou's interactions at this level, they are all high-ranking officials and dignitaries. It is the gate of Yang Sichang, the governor of Xuanda, and Fan Yongdou has also boarded it more than once. As for the officials such as the governor of Datong, the governor of Xuanfu, the general army of Datong, and the general soldier of Xuanfu, Fan Yongdou is their guest.

Not to mention how much silver is spent every year and feeds them to the full-bodied, let's just say that many times, these officials want to be promoted, build relationships, and dredge the way of money, and Fan Yongdou is also unsparing in supporting. Once these officials can be promoted, they will naturally take care of Fan Yongdou's business.

The collusion between officials and businessmen has long been a common phenomenon in the Ming Dynasty.

With these things that the eight imperial merchants are doing in Xuanda, it is really nonsense to say that the local officials don't know! Not only do they know, but they may even get a piece of the pie!

With Fan Yongdou's current status, such as Fan Jienian leading the caravan to clear customs, he didn't need to come forward at all, he just had to go to Yanghe Bingbei Road Yamen, and Yang and Bingbei Road had a meal and drank wine, so naturally a piece of paper was passed from Bingbei Road Yamen to Shoukou Fort, and they were better organized.

Of course, with Fan Yongdou's shrewdness, he naturally would not forget to share some benefits with Shoukou Fort. In these days, it is easy to buy people, but it is easier to offend people, and in the final analysis, it is just a piece of money.

Fan Jienian was comfortable by him, and his heart was very happy, but he felt that the depression of coming over this way had also been alleviated a lot, and he laughed and said: "Cheng, let's go, let's eat and drink!" ”

Mr. Huang and his entourage surrounded Fan Jienian's carriage and entered Shoukou Fort first, while the huge caravan was slowly moving behind.

Night is falling, and in the distance, you can see the lights on the tower of Fort Shoukou.

When the last six-foot-long cart also entered the fort gate, the four eyes that peeked not far from the south of Huluyu were finally retracted. This is a gully, compared with other extremely narrow and deep gullies, this one is much shallower, that is, two zhang deep, about one or three or four feet wide, it looks like a small gap, very inconspicuous. Here is the red clay, and the gullies are also colorful. Perhaps because it is more than ten or twenty zhang away from the Yanmen water, the groundwater seeps over, forming a small stream at the bottom of the gully, five feet wide, no head and no tail, I don't know where it flows out, at the bottom of the gully along the terrain after stretching forward for sixty or seventy zhang, the end is to disappear at the end of the gully, maybe it is directly infiltrated into the ground.

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