Gou was a member of the imperial family in the late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 1268 Northern Desert
"Pooh!"

He spat heavily on the ground, then raised his hand to wipe his face haphazardly, muttering a few curses under his breath.

The Ming Dynasty's Prince Shun Ning, the ruler of Chahar and Khorchin, rode on his horse, looking at the somewhat desolate grassland before him. Although it was called a grassland, it was actually close to desertification. The surrounding greenery was patchy like psoriasis, and there was more sand than green. The wind blew yellow sand into his face, making him feel quite uncomfortable.

"Your Highness, it's getting late. Why don't we set up camp here for the day?" A Mongol general suggested to Agudamu. Agudamu looked up at the sky and nodded slightly. With the order given, Agudamu's elite cavalry set up camp. Soon the camp was ready. Agudamu entered the tent and washed his face. He had been eating sand on the road for the past few days. By the end of the day, his mouth and nose were full of sand. His face was okay, but the sand in his nostrils was a real problem. He had to pick it out with his hands.

Sitting cross-legged, picking his nose and occasionally flicking out clumps of sand-covered debris with his finger, Agudamu finally felt a little better after a while.

"Your Highness!" Several generals entered from outside and bowed to him.

"sit!"

Agudamu waved his hand, and the generals, without any hesitation, sat down below him one after another.

"Is the camp all set up?" Agudamu asked first. A general nodded and said, "Your Highness, rest assured, everything has been settled. Scouts have been sent out, and the camp's security will be guaranteed to be fine."

Logically, these subordinates should have addressed Agudamu as "Great Khan," but the title of Great Khan no longer existed in Southern Mongolia. With the Ming Emperor becoming the master of the Mongols, the title of Great Khan fell to the Ming Emperor after the Guihua City Alliance. The various Mongol tribes accepted the Ming Emperor's investiture according to the alliance results and were assigned to territories, all becoming subjects of the Ming Dynasty.

Nowadays, all the tribes of Southern Mongolia have changed their titles, especially the brothers Tengger and Agudamu. They were originally the Shunyi Prince and Shunning Prince of the Ming Dynasty, so they are now addressed as "Prince". Moreover, Agudamu feels that the title of Prince is more suitable for him. After all, he feels that the title of Khan is not as prestigious as that of Prince. Furthermore, he understands that he is a descendant of the Zhu family and has the blood of the Ming imperial family flowing in his veins, so he should naturally be called Prince.

“Yes, don’t be careless. We’re almost in the northern desert. There’s no guarantee that some fools won’t come out and cause trouble. Besides, those damned rats have disappeared somewhere. I don’t believe there’s no one secretly helping them.” Agudamu nodded, then turned his gaze to another general and asked, “Erdem, have you still not found the whereabouts of those rats?”

Erdemu felt slightly ashamed and said to Agudamu, "Your Highness, I am incompetent. I can only confirm that they entered the northern desert from this direction a few days ago, but I cannot determine their current location. Your Highness, please give me some time, and I guarantee that I will find them. Even if they are hidden in the sand, I will dig them out one by one!"

Agudamu looked rather grim, but he didn't scold Erdemu. After all, he also bore some responsibility for this. If he hadn't been slow to react and hadn't been so unprepared that he had alerted the enemy, things wouldn't have turned out this way.

After receiving the imperial decree from the Ming Dynasty, Agudamu began to investigate the Khorchin region. According to the information from the Ming Dynasty, the puppet Qing emperor and empress dowager, along with some others who had escaped from Liaodong, were hiding in the Khorchin tribes. Moreover, it was said that the regent Dorgon had also died in Khorchin. However, the exact number of people hiding in Khorchin and their situation were unknown.

This news surprised Agudamu greatly. He had done the same thing when he captured Khorchin, but he never expected that the Qing people were still hiding in Khorchin. He found it hard to believe.

However, Agudamu understood the power of Ming intelligence and took the matter very seriously. He also knew the harm the pseudo-Qing dynasty posed to Ming and even Mongolia. As the saying goes, you must nip it in the bud! If left unchecked, who knows what might happen in the future? Especially since the Khorchin lord, Qitat, had been missing since his defeat, which was always a problem. It seemed that these people should gather together, otherwise they wouldn't have been hiding in Khorchin without his knowledge.

To uncover these individuals, Agudamu conducted another thorough investigation of the various tribes of Khorchin, this time with significantly greater intensity than the first. However, unexpectedly, halfway through the investigation, news arrived that a small tribe in northern Khorchin had migrated, citing the need for grazing as the reason. When this news reached Agudamu, he immediately sensed something amiss. Logically, even if grazing required migration, it shouldn't be at this time. Generally, Mongols migrate according to the availability of water and pasture, but migrations typically occur in spring, when everything on the grasslands is growing. By early summer, the pastures are at their most fertile, making migration unnecessary.

Furthermore, the direction of their migration was incorrect. If they were merely grazing, they should have migrated south, east, or west along the river. However, they migrated north, which made Agudamu realize something was amiss.

He vaguely suspected that the person he was looking for was probably in this tribe; otherwise, there wouldn't be such a coincidence. However, because the distance was quite far at the time, and Agudamu's people were scattered among various tribes in Khorchin, it was too late to gather them back and head north. Therefore, Agudamu came up with a solution: he sent someone to inform the tribe that there was no problem with their relocation, and that there was a grassland in the central part of Khorchin that was currently uninhabited. He suggested that the tribe move there to settle down, thus testing the waters and stabilizing the situation.

But to everyone's surprise, Agudamu's plan not only failed to work, but also alerted the enemy. After his men delivered the order, the enemy outwardly agreed and treated the envoy with utmost respect. However, just when the envoy thought the matter was settled, the enemy suddenly launched an attack at the banquet held in honor of the envoy, killing the envoy and his entourage. Of the dozen or so men he sent, only one managed to escape. After killing the envoy, the tribe broke camp without a word and headed straight for the northern desert. When the survivor reported the incident to Agudamu, he was filled with regret. If he hadn't been so clever as to send an envoy, perhaps the enemy wouldn't have fled so quickly. Now that the man had headed north, it would be difficult to capture him.

Moreover, this incident proved that the Ming Dynasty's intelligence was correct; the group of people from the pseudo-Qing regime were hiding in this tribe, or rather, the entire tribe was filled with these people impersonating others.

To remedy the situation, Agudamu quickly assembled an army and personally led his troops to pursue the fleeing tribe. By the time they reached the tribe's location, the enemy had already been gone for several days. Following the trail of their northward migration, Agudamu continued the pursuit, a chase that lasted three days. They were now located in the southern part of the northern grasslands, almost outside the traditional territory of the Khorchin people.

Waving his hand, Agudamu didn't want to listen to such empty words right now. The key was to catch the person and eliminate this future threat.

"Sucha!"

"exist!"

"Tomorrow you will lead a hundred-man squad ahead, carrying my token, and head north quickly. By the way, I remember that the area ahead should be that old bastard Schinbale's territory, right?"

“Your Highness remembers correctly, further north is the territory of Schinbal,” Sucha replied.

"Go directly to Schinbal and tell him that I have come to pursue the rebels and have no intention of invading his territory, so he need not be alarmed. Also, have Schinbal help find those stinking rats. If he finds them and presents them to me, I will surely reward him!"

“Yes!” Sucha replied.

Agudamu was very clear-headed. Although most of the northern Mongolian tribes had submitted to the southern Mongolian tribes and had been granted titles by the Ming Dynasty, the northern Mongolian tribes were different from the southern Mongolian tribes. Moreover, the Mongolian Mongols in the northern Mongolian tribes were not actually true Mongols. When Genghis Khan established the Great Mongol Empire, he conquered countless grassland tribes and brought them under Mongol rule, while also allocating and demarcating grasslands for them to live and multiply.

In this context, the Outer Mongolian Mongols emerged. In reality, the Mongols of the Outer Mongolian Mongols were simply other nomadic tribes conquered by Genghis Khan and his descendants. They were not true Mongols in essence. Moreover, in the following century, a large number of slave tribes joined the various tribes of the Outer Mongolian Mongols. From this perspective, the Outer Mongolian Mongols and the Southern Mongolian Mongols are very different.

Moreover, after the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, the Yuan court fled north and lived in Southern Mongolia, where the bloodline of the Golden Family remained. This resulted in Northern Mongolia always being inferior to Southern Mongolia. As time went by, Northern Mongolia, seeing the gradual decline of the Golden Family, began to harbor inappropriate thoughts. They even started to boast about their own origins in the Golden Family, intending to break away from Southern Mongolia and become independent.

This is also the reason why successive Great Khans of Southern Mongolia, including Ligdan Khan, launched several campaigns against Northern Mongolia. However, although the Northern Mongolians are not of good bloodline, they still have their own way of fighting, and they have managed to get by to this day by relying on the terrain and their opportunistic style.

Decades ago, Chaoketu Taiji emerged out of nowhere. Taking advantage of the conflict between Ligdan Khan of Southern Mongolia and Nurhaci of Liaodong, he basically unified the entire northern Mongolia and became a local overlord.

After Ligdan Khan's death, Choktu Taiji led his troops south, intending to seize Qinghai and Western Mongolia, using them as a springboard to advance into Southern Mongolia and Tibet. Unfortunately for Choktu Taiji, he encountered Tengger, who, upon receiving a plea for help from Western Mongolia, decisively dispatched troops, joining forces with the Dzungars, Gushi Khan, and the remnants of Ligdan Khan to deliver a crushing blow to Choktu Taiji.

In this battle, not only were Chaoketu Taiji's dreams of expanding territory and establishing merit shattered, but he also lost his life. After Chaoketu Taiji's death, the newly unified Outer Mongolia split again. Not long after, Tengger led his troops north and used force to severely punish the various tribes of Outer Mongolia, forcing them to submit. However, this submission was only superficial. Apart from some tribes, many others still harbored ambitions of independence, maintaining a facade while secretly plotting against each other. As a result, it was impossible to determine how many of the Outer Mongolian tribes were truly trustworthy.

(End of this chapter)