stubborn thief

Chapter 244 There is a real sea
In March of the fourth year of Chongzhen, the weather became warmer during the day, and the night gradually stopped freezing.

Liu Chengzong led the training horse battalion and formed an army of five miles and 150 paces with vehicles. He planned to march to the northwest at a marching speed of seventy miles a day.

As a result, it took four days to complete the [-]-mile journey and arrive at the shore of Qinghai Lake.

The blue sky is high and far away, clusters of clouds are rolling, surrounded by mountains on all sides, and the mountainside melts along the ice and snow to form a white line, which spreads straight to the grassland surrounding Qinghai Lake, forming a piece of pink and white.

At the end of the pink and white, he saw the Sun and Moon mirror dropped by Princess Wencheng 1000 years ago.

The calm sea was slightly turbulent, and the bar-headed geese who had moved back from the south gathered in groups on the snow, sometimes flying up and sometimes falling down.

There are also three thousand cold children who are used to the desert, staring blankly at the endless sea on horseback, and the snow-topped mountains connected with clouds and mist across the sea.

Until Liu Chengzong said: "Go run, go play!"

People experienced a brief moment of astonishment, and no one knew who came back to their senses first. In an instant, a hundred horses galloped together, stepping on broken snow and solid ice to the coast.

Huang Shengxiao, who had completed artillery training, was sent to the horse camp to strengthen his riding skills. He ran to the coast the most urgently, and he urgently needed to confirm one thing.

When the horse's hoof stepped into the shallow water, all the birds flew together in fright. Huang Shengxiao, who had been the army of Baicheng Zidun, leaned on the left side of the horse's back, stepped on the stirrup, reached out to scoop up a handful from the sea, and put it in his mouth.

Well, it's salty.

He had long wanted to do it.

After doing this, Huang Shengxiao was in a very complicated mood. With a look of loss, he hit the coast with his horse, and finally sat on the beach with his mount.

The war horse was lying on its side on the ground, and Huang Shengxiao leaned on the horse's back, looking at the sea and feeling lonely.

It turned out that those thieves in Baichengzi hadn't lied to him. There is really water in the world that stretches as far as the eye can see. The salty one is called the sea.

However, there are not many people in the Lions Army who are as hypocritical as Huang Shengxiao. After all, this is not a season for playing with water.

More people were chasing wild geese with horses and bows, and some ran further away with horse poles, trying to ride a yak.

Liu Chengzong came here to find Dai Qing and Chen Qindai.

After the Seventh Tribe of Riyue Mountain was attached, Gongbu Dorji’s tribe became the communication station between the Lion Army and the Mongolian tribe in Haibei. People from both sides occasionally communicated with each other in winter and sent Chen Qindai the Qindai code several times.

But after the new year and the beginning of spring, Chen Qindai had no news, so Liu Chengzong decided to come to Daiqing's important person.

It's a pity that he was in vain, and Dai Qing's tribe went south around the west line of Qinghai Lake.

According to the local Fanbu, it was around Chinese New Year that Xiaolazuna received the order to summon the army, so he pulled up the tribe and went south.

After collecting information, Liu Chengzong probably knew the reason for gathering the army.

Originally, Razun's mobilization of troops this time was to launch an offensive against him in spring.

The person Dai Daozi sent back said that Razun didn't expect to stay so long because he said that he had spent a year in Juerwan, thinking that his brother was detained or killed by him.

So Lhazun spent the whole winter in a state of nervousness, chanting more than 800 mantras to curse him in Bajiao City.

Looking at the current situation, Liu Chengzong felt that the spell used by Razun might...maybe curse him to be healthy and everything will go well.

So Razun gathered the army before and after the Chinese New Year, and all the natives and Dazi heads attached to him gathered in the Gannan grassland.

As a result, the army was assembled on the front foot, and the back foot swears and went back. He didn't suffer any crimes, gained five catties, and brought back news that Liu Shizi was not easy to deal with and was very rich, ready to open the market.

Razun couldn't tell the difference after a full meal, but the army is here, so what should we do?
You can't do things like playing with the princes in Fenghuo. If you gather an army, you have to go to war. Who will you fight?Hit the big brother.

A huge nomadic army assembled in the Gannan grasslands, from east to west, crossed the Yellow River through Yangqu, entered the Heka grassland, and went straight to Chaka Salt Lake to kill.

Dai Daozi, as the most elite armed force around Taiji, also participated in Lazun's expedition.

Seeing Qinghai Lake, Liu Chengzong wanted to measure how big it was.

He knew that Qinghai Lake was big, but he didn't expect it to be so big, so he sent two teams of pond soldiers to walk along the shore and asked them to come back in a circle, but they didn't come back on the third day.

After playing by the lake for two days, the army started to get down to business. They sent people around to look for Fanmin and inquired about the surrounding situation. They learned that this area in Haibei was the easternmost hundred households of Handongwei in the early Ming Dynasty.

After Hongzhi, Turpan became stronger and stronger, and the native officials of Handongwei and Andingwei could not be restrained. During the Jiajing period, the Tumote troops entered Qinghai, and the defense line of the Ming army shrunk. The native officials here also went to the imperial court and moved inland to Ganzhou up.

Further on, this is the first stop for Mongolians from Monan Mobei to enter Tibet.

After coming to Qinghai, Liu Chengzong learned more and more about the general situation on the grassland as he interacted more and more with the Mongols and Xifan people.

For example, the environment north of Nine Sides is slowly changing.

In the earlier period of the Yuan Dynasty, or in the early and middle period of the Ming Dynasty, the Central Plains Dynasty fought with the north, and the north has always had a retreat route.

Running to the north and northwest of Monan is an excellent route to escape from the pursuit of the army of the Central Plains Dynasty. Across the fishing sea, the north is a place that is difficult for the Han army to reach.

But now, Liu Chengzong discovered that the Mongols would no longer run to the northwest, but could only run to Qinghai.

This kind of abnormal thing seemed inevitable in Liu Chengzong's era.

The right-wing Tumed in Monan will go to Qinghai, and Khalkha in Mobei will also go to Qinghai.

So what kept them from going northwest?

The answer is ready to come out, the once loyal subordinate of the Mongols, the taxpayer of the Kipchak Khanate in Russia, and the Cossack sent by Orus.

In the tent by the Qinghai Lake, Liu Chengzong, who was sitting on the camel's hair blanket, couldn't help shaking his head and smiling wryly. He found that because of the existence of another memory, he had a very strange view on things.

He is still far from being the ruler of all Qinghai, but when it comes to some things, he always looks at some things from the perspective of the next generation of rulers of the Central Plains Empire.

In his eyes, many things are hard-won inevitability, and many things are accidental, but those accidents also have almost inevitable results-his wish is to comply with those inevitability and prevent accidents before they happen.

For example, the demise of the Ming Dynasty and the dominance of the Later Jin Dynasty were inevitable, but it was accidental that the Later Jin Dynasty seized the world; the decline of Mongolia and Russia's eastward invasion were inevitable, but it was accidental that Russia became a new northern border threat.

By the seventh day, his cavalry had found arable land in Haibei and began to measure the fields, but the road-finding soldiers had not returned.

Liu Chengzong began to wonder if the hundreds of soldiers he sent to explore the road had been beaten to death.

It wasn't until the No. 16 day that the dusty Tang soldiers came back from Haidong. People were disheveled, and they were a little too old to carry things with them.

They ran nearly eight hundred miles along the lake.

At the mouth of the Haixi River, there was a fight with Xifan Village.

There were more than 700 people in that village. Before that, they were attached to Gu Ru Huang Taiji, and they mistakenly thought that they were troops sent by Lazun to rob. The two sides could not understand each other, so they fought.

The two sides did not line up or engage in close combat. There were many light bows over there. The two sides shot each other for a few rounds.

No one was killed in the two Tangqi teams, but a famous Ningxia Tangqi was thrown on the bridge of his nose, and he had a lot of nosebleeds, and his nose was still swollen when he came back.

Accidentally, the bandit number of the Lion Army was increased by one, and there was an extra crooked beam.

Tang Qi didn't care too much about Hekou Village. After the day's fighting, he continued on the road and ran to Hainan to make up his mind. The lake was much larger than expected. I'm afraid they didn't have enough rations for [-] days, so they spent a day looking for Xifan Village. .

I didn't find the village of Xifan, but I found a small Mongolian tribe where all the men went to serve as soldiers. The women of the tribe wanted to fight desperately.

Later, it was discovered that they had no intention of fighting, so they exchanged 23 sheep for two saddles, three blankets and a wrist knife.

In Haidong, they spent another day in the desert twenty miles north and south.

Only then did the [-]-day non-stop trip around the lake be completed.

The size of Qinghai Lake not only exceeds the imagination of the Tangqi, but also far exceeds the imagination of Liu Chengzong.

This made him feel that his number of craftsmen was seriously insufficient, and he had to assign another task to Yang Dingrui to recruit craftsmen from the east when he returned.

Moreover, he also sent someone to find Si Tongzhi, Qinghai Propaganda Envoy, Sunday Qiang.

Master Zhou, who got the fourth-rank official position, was not happy. He followed the team to Xining and stopped going west.

Let Liu Chengzong spend 12 taels to buy a second-entry house with a yard in the east of the city, and squat in Xining City all day long to cheat the imperial court's salary.

The house was also given the euphemistic name Qinghai Xuanwei envoy Si Tongzhi Yamen.

To put it nicely, and to know the yamen, at best, it is the office of the Qinghai Propaganda Envoy in Xining.

However, Sunday Qiang’s small life was indeed quite comfortable. He didn’t work for the court all day long, and he was still receiving the salary of a fourth-rank official.

Sunday forced him to look away. He didn't want to do this job for the court, but he was forced to come here, and there was nothing he could do.

He didn't know what the court would do by putting him beside Liu Chengzong.

Zhou Qiang asked himself, can a fourth-rank official solve the Qinghai Xuanwei envoy's affairs?

The emperor, the chief assistant, the Minister of the Household Department and the Minister of the Ministry of War, two governors, three general soldiers, [-] local officials, and [-] frontier troops. In short, it is necessary to gather the forces of Shaanxi to solve him.

What are you?
Originally Zhou Riqiang thought that he would be a personal official seal, and he would stamp it whenever he needed it, but later found that the Lions did not recognize the official seal.

The official seal is not as good as an autumn radish.

He's not even that useful, so there's no need to go further west.

Liu Shizi's army slept in the diwozi in Juerwan for several months, and Zhou Tongzhi became a big drinker in Xining City.

He drank the sweet and sour highland barley wine brewed by Tusi Li all day long, and fell asleep in winter after feeling dizzy.

It was night when Zhou Tongzhi in Xining City received the news. He had just drunk and was in a daze, and slept in the carriage for another day and night.

Waiting for the sober person to be stupid in the swaying carriage.

Who am I and where am I?

After bouncing on the carriage for another two days, I saw Liu Chengzong staggeringly.

He was completely awake now, but looking at the vast and boundless Qinghai Lake, he still wanted to drink another pot.

"Marshal, find the officer...can you change Hongqi's vest?"

On Sunday, Qiang just saluted Liu Chengzong, when he looked up, he saw the third-rank official digging grass with his head down in the snow, his face was tired and crooked.

Liu Shiquan pretended not to hear, and raised his finger to the lake: "Have you seen it, do you feel any shortcomings on the sea?"

Sunday Qiang looked confused: "You beat all the geese?"

"No, I mean there is something missing on the sea." Liu Chengzong looked at him with an unteachable look: "Boats, fishing boats, merchant ships, and warships!"

When Liu Chengzong saw Qinghai Lake, he wanted to build a port in Haibei and build a navy in the lake.

He sounded serious, but Sunday Qiang didn't sound serious, he leaned forward and back with joy: "The commander-in-chief just asked me to listen to a joke?"

"What a joke, do you know how long it takes my people to circle around, a full sixteen days."

Liu Chengzong was very serious: "Sixteen days, there are only a few sixteen days in a year. Look at the mountains on the opposite side. You don't need to look carefully, anyway, you can't see them clearly. The mountain pass leading to Yanchi in Hainan is on the opposite side."

"How much is the salt in Xining?"

Sunday insisted: "Maybe a catty, a load of official salt is 26 taels."

"The Mongols take salt by taking a large spoon to the salt lake in the south of the mountain, scooping it up with a spoon, saying that the salt there is natural and inexhaustible."

Liu Chengzong said: "From the opposite side of the sea to the salt lake, it takes five days for the pack horse team to go back and forth for 240 miles. From there to here, it takes ten days to go back and forth for [-] miles."

"From here to Xining, it's another [-] miles round trip, which means that to occupy the entire route, it will take half a month to mobilize the army."

After Liu Chengzong finished speaking, he raised his hand and pointed at the shore where he was standing: "And from here to there, if there are two ports, it only takes 150 miles. I remember that you were an official on the coast of Shandong, and it was probably the Lion Army who opposed the ship. The person who knows best."

He turned his head and asked, "If you sail by boat, how long will it take?"

Zhou Qiang's demeanor gradually became serious, his expression gradually serious.

He gradually understood that what Liu Chengzong was talking about was money.

A load is 26 taels, and a thousand loads is 6000 taels. If he dares to joke about such an important matter, Liu Chengzong may really kill him.

Sunday insisted: "The commander-in-chief can't find someone in the Lion Army. I have rebuilt fishing boats for the common people. This, can this be called the person who knows boats best in the army?"

Zhou Riqiang doesn't care much about whether he is the person who knows the most about ships.

The key is... who wants to be in your army!

Maybe one day he will be the No. [-] member of the anti-thief group, and the old Zhou family in Baoding will be scolded from the sky, who can bear it!
Liu Chengzong said with helplessness on his face, "You are indeed the person who knows the boat best."

His army is not only landlubbers, but during the few days waiting for Tangqi, Liu Shizi conducted a survey in the training horse camp. More than 100 people were born by the river, and many people know about walking on the river. .

But everyone's understanding of water vehicles does not mean that they have an understanding of ships.

What they know is rafts, bamboo rafts, wooden rafts, sheepskin rafts and cowhide rafts.

To think about the boat, you have to rely on Sunday's strength.

Sunday sighed forcefully: "It's quite windy here, and we need to use a boat to get to the other side...for a whole day and night?"

Snapped!
Liu Chengzong applauded and said: "It's not enough, it's you, Zhou Tongzhi, your yamen is here from today, build the ship and repair the port, just tell me what you need, and I will solve it!"

　good evening!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)