Nanming Engineer

Chapter 317 Longxi Buying Horses
The end of summer in the second year of Yongli in Nanming, the ninth day of September.

The weather is so hot that there is no wind, the scorching sun scorches the earth, evaporates all the remaining water on the ground to the sky, and then disappears, leaving the steamer-like temperature continuing to cover the loess, and the dust visible to the naked eye floats in the air, and the loess is rammed The official road has been deserted into pieces of gravel. As far as I can see, there are no birds in the sky, no animals on the ground, and there is no trace of green on the vast plain. The land is like a dead place.

A black and thin old man with white beard and hair was walking hunched on the official road with a bundle of dead branches he found somewhere. The dead branches basically lost their moisture and became very light, but the old man still struggled Carrying on his back, walking very slowly.

There is no one else on the official road, or in other words, there is no sign of human activity in the entire field of vision. The only living thing on the ground is this old man carrying firewood. He walked slowly forward alone. The surrounding scenery slowly passed by him.On both sides of the road, there are some abandoned ruins, bricks and tiles, which seem to be the ruins of a village that was once inhabited. The old man doesn't even look at them, and he still walks slowly.

On the far horizon, there was a yellow column of smoke rising. The old man narrowed his eyes, looked at it blankly, and stopped in his tracks.

The smoke column became thicker and thicker, and gradually turned into a cloud of smoke, and under the smoke, a group of black spots gradually appeared.

The sound of horseshoes accompanied by the approaching smoke knocked on the eardrums of the old man, and the group of black spots gradually became bigger and bigger, from small spots to black shadows, and finally, they turned into vigorous knights, reflected in the old man's turbid eyes. In the eyes.

The old man is still numb, he is very old, the skin on his body and face is like a grapefruit that has lost moisture, wrinkled and shriveled, the black dirt in the deep wrinkles is like lines on the lines, even in gray Against the backdrop of his fluttering complexion, he was so eye-catching. A hemp garment with countless holes was tied around his waist with a rope, barely covering his lower body. On his dark chest, a hideous knife scar emerged from the Swiping from left to right, it seems that the knife almost cut him in half alive at the beginning, and it is still shocking after many years.

He looked at the group of people on horseback who were getting closer and closer in confusion. In this dry season, he hadn't seen anyone pass by for a long time.

The horse is a healthy horse, and it came to him in an instant. The person riding in front of the horse glanced at him, and then relaxed his grip on the handle of the knife. ,No danger."

More and more knights rushed over. Seeing those bright spears, the old man became nervous. Although he was not afraid of horse thieves in the wasteland, he was afraid of another kind of people.

Officers and soldiers, he is afraid of officers and soldiers.

And this group of people in armor are officers and soldiers.

Horse thieves rob things, burn houses, kill people and set fire to them, they do all kinds of crimes, but for an old man like him, horse thieves don't bother to kill him.

The officers and soldiers were different. His head was completely cut off and brought back as the head of a horse thief, and then received the reward.

The old man took a step back involuntarily, because among the knights, a man who looked like a general on a white horse glanced at him.

When the general passed by him, he slowed down his horse and looked at it carefully, but without stopping, he passed by, then started galloping again, heading straight into the distance.

There were more than 200 riders in total, rumbling past the old man, like a burst of spring thunder that had not been seen for a long time, rolling in and rolling away.

The horse team ran past, the sky was full of dust, the old man couldn't help squinting his eyes to avoid the oncoming sand, and when he opened his eyes again, the cavalry had turned into a string of small black spots on the horizon, just like they just now The same as when it appeared, lost in the smoke and dust.

After the cavalry continued to run forward for an hour, a burly man in the lead put his finger in his mouth, made a circle, and let out a loud whistle.

The cavalry team of more than 200 people received this signal, and the horses slowed down at the same speed. After a few breaths, the whole team stopped together, and they knew at a glance that this was a team of well-trained veterans.

The leading man pulled down the white cloth that covered his face, rode his horse to the general on the white horse in the middle of the team, and said loudly: "Sir, there is a village in front of you. There is water in the village, and there are still people living in it. We can go there and have a rest. , On this hot day, if I keep running, I won’t be able to survive.”

The white horse general also took off the white cloth covering his face and spit a few times. Although the white cloth covered his face, the pervasive dust from the high-speed riding still got into his mouth, making him feel like he had eaten sand all day.

As soon as the white mask was pulled down, Wang Huan's handsome face was revealed.

He blinked hard, squeezed out the sand in his eyes, frowned and said to the burly Han Milayin: "Is the weather in Gansu always like this?"

Mi Layin smiled "hehe" and showed a mouthful of white teeth: "It's not necessarily true. During the Wanli period, it was not so hot here, and there were not so many winds and sands. Since the Chongzhen period, the Lord of Heaven has changed his face. It doesn’t rain all year long, and if there is no drought, there will be insect plagues, day after day, it has become like this.”

Wang Huan looked at the horizon. On the loess plateau, which was as far as the eye could see, there were undulating hills one after another. But without exception, there was not even a blade of grass on the mountains.

"How far is it from Ganzhou?" Wang Huan asked.

Mirayin looked up at the sun, then looked around, and replied: "There are still two hundred miles. Ganzhou is about five hundred miles away from Jiayuguan."

"Is this road so deserted? We walked hundreds of miles and only saw an old man carrying firewood. Where are the others?" Wang Huan asked again.

Mi Layin's dark face suddenly became sad, and he shook his head and said, "Gansu originally belonged to Shaanxi, and it was only after the Tatars came that they were drawn from Chengyi province. Shaanxi has suffered from catastrophes for many years, and it has hardly been peaceful in the past ten years, isn't it?" Drought is a plague of soldiers and locusts. No one can survive. Those who can run have run away, and those who have not run have turned into bandits. Now this land of thousands of miles has become a no-man's land. Only some oases with water are still alive. There are some Zhuangzi left, but in order to prevent horse thieves, these Zhuangzi are built in remote places, standing on the official road, naturally no one can be seen."

Wang Huan frowned and said in a deep voice: "Longxi has been rich in water and grass since ancient times, and many good horses for the imperial court have been born here. Why has the fertile grassland turned into Gobi wasteland in just a few decades? How can we produce horses in such a situation?"

Mi Layin snorted, and said in a bitter voice: "I don't know, my lord, this place was indeed full of grass and fertile land, but during the Wanli period, the three major conquests launched a military campaign, the imperial court expanded the scale of the racecourse, forced the Longxi horsemen to increase the number of horses, and ordered the army to increase the number of horses. Settling wasteland, logging and opening up fields, this flat grassland was wasted for life, and then caught up with the severe drought during the Chongzhen period, the fields were barren and the grassland withered. In less than a hundred years, the horse breeding land in Longxi became a dead horse land. If we wanted to buy horses, we had to go west to Jiayuguan and buy them from the Mongols.”

Wang Huan also sighed inwardly. Environmental protection, it seems, has been a serious issue since ancient times. With military settlements, unrestrained grazing, and devastating climate change, Gansu in the late Ming Dynasty had no land to raise horses. After a trip, it seems that it is really necessary to go outside the Great Wall.

"The Khalkha tribe has already agreed to sell horses? They paid tribute to the Donglu more than ten years ago. We are enemies of the Donglu, so they will sell horses to us?"

Mi Layin grinned and said with a smile: "Your Excellency, you think highly of the Mongols. They have lost the backbone of Genghis Khan long ago. They are all philistines. Whoever gives the most money will sell the horse to him. There are so many tribes in Mongolia. The Khalkha tribe is very far away from Liaodong, and the control of the eastern captives is not so tight. Their horses are worried that they will not be sold. I sent someone to ask, and they rushed to agree. I said I want [-] horses, but they still asked No more, they still have more, hahaha!"

(End of this chapter)