Guiyi Fei Tang

Chapter 83: Eastern Expedition to Liangzhou
"Wow—"

In early February, spring seemed to have forgotten this desolate land of the Northwest. The cold wind in the wilderness was still biting, blowing away the thin heat in the air.

The green grassland has not yet returned, and on the bare ground there are only grass buds less than two or three inches tall, struggling to survive in the wind.

The herdsmen wearing rough leather coats sat high on their horses, their eyes as sharp as those of hawks on the grassland, closely watching every move of the herdsmen in the distance.

The herdsmen wore ragged cloth clothes and old hats on their heads.

They were waving long whips in their hands, and the sound echoed in the empty grassland, sounding particularly desolate.

Their faces were tired, their eyes were dull, and they waved the long whips in their hands like wood.

There were thousands of lambs in front of them, but not one of them belonged to them.

These herds of sheep were the property of the nobles in the city. The nobles could waste more than a dozen sheep every day, but would not give a single piece of meat to these herdsmen.

They grazed under the supervision of herders and would be whipped if they were lazy.

There are many people who are unwilling to live this kind of life, but their end is not much better, just like now...

"Hannu! Stop!"

In the distance, several herdsmen were driving the herd towards the north. The herdsmen who were following them noticed their behavior and immediately drew their bows and arrows and aimed at them.

"Pang Da, the foreign dog has drawn his bow!"

Among the shepherd slaves, a thin slave about twelve or thirteen years old was shouting in fear, his eyes full of terror.

Standing not far from him, seven herdsmen ranging from thirteen to thirty years old looked back at the movements of the foreign bandits. The oldest, a thin man, gritted his teeth and said:

"Hide in the herd. They dare not shoot at the herd. When they get close, we pull them down with whips and horse poles, snatch their weapons and kill them!"

"Mr. Zhang has already conquered Shandan, and Lun Kongre has been defeated. Let's grab the horses and run west!"

As soon as he finished speaking, seven or eight herdsmen in the distance rode their horses towards them. They rushed into the herd and used it as a shield.

Seeing that there was no way to shoot arrows, several herdsmen put away their bows and arrows and replaced them with spears, scimitars and ropes.

They rushed towards Pang Da and his men with great momentum, and Pang Da and his men shouted at the top of their lungs when they saw what was happening.

"They are all resisting! Kill them and we can go west and become Zhang Gong's subjects!!"

No matter how Pang Da shouted, the other dozens of slaves did not respond, but herded the herds obediently.

Amid the indifference of the slaves, seven or eight herdsmen rushed into the herd, dispersed the herd, and began to charge towards Pang Da and his men.

A herdsman leaned forward and rushed forward with a gun in hand. Although Pang Da was very thin, he was very strong.

He dodged the spear by leaning sideways, and boldly reached out to grab the spear. Even though the spear scraped his palm, he held on tightly.

“Get down!!”

Amid his roar, the shepherd was pulled off his horse and before he could fight back, Pang Da knocked him unconscious with a punch.

Pang Da excitedly grabbed the spear, turned around and saw that several of his companions had fallen down.

Before he could do anything, a noose was put around his neck and he was dragged away.

Even if he swung his spear to cut the rope, before he could get up, seven or eight arrows would shoot him into a hornet's nest.

He lay on the ground twitching, blood gushing out.

A shepherd rode up to him, dismounted, and killed him with a knife.

In this way, the riot of seven or eight herdsmen was suppressed in less than half a cup of tea. No one was spared and all became nutrients for the grassland.

"These Han slaves always think they can break free from us with a little strength."

The herdsman who was brandishing the knife smiled as he mounted his horse. The herdsman who followed him also smiled and said:

"Last month, a herdsman was even stronger. He pushed a horse over and we used a lasso to pull him to pieces."

"You said they were really stupid. They had no weapons or armor, but dared to rebel with only a single coat and a spear."

The herdsman patted his fur coat as he spoke, and the coat made a sound, apparently there was protective gear hidden inside.

They looked back and saw dozens of other slaves still herding the cattle obediently, so they gathered the herd back with laughter.

All that was left were the eight skinny bodies of the shepherd slaves...

No one, neither the herdsmen nor the herdsmen’s slaves, cared about their deaths.

As time passed, when it was noon, the temperature around rose slightly and was not as cold as at the beginning.

The herders can ride their horses and play on the grassland, but the herdsmen have to drive the herds to graze.

The goshawk was circling in the sky and the shepherd was riding his horse on the ground.

While they were playing, clouds of dust rose from the west.

The billowing smoke and dust attracted the attention of the herdsmen riding their horses, and their faces instantly became solemn.

"Come back! Come back everyone!"

"The group of dog slaves are coming!"

"When did dog slaves appear in the West?"

"Never mind, come back first!"

Faced with the rolling dust, the old herdsmen who had been grazing outside all year round began to remind the young herdsmen, cursing the so-called dog slaves.

The dull sound of horse hooves began to sound. The old shepherd who had gathered everyone together listened calmly, but gradually he realized that something was wrong.

When he reacted, he saw flags fluttering in the wind emerging from the rolling smoke in the west.

"kill!!"

The shouts of killing echoed throughout the grassland. When the herdsmen saw the flags, their hearts were broken and they subconsciously rode their horses to flee south.

"escape!!"

"How could...how could they appear here!?"

"Isn't it the beginning of spring now?!"

Amid their fear-filled voices, the elite cavalry clad in armor charged forward like a tide.

The herdsmen raised their hands one after another, and the herders abandoned their herds and fled.

The elite cavalry was divided into two, with the majority staying behind to encircle the herds and slaves, and a small group pursuing the herders.

The horses ridden by herdsmen were nothing more than skinny and weak horses, while the horses ridden by the elite cavalry were military horses that had been fed with bean fodder for a whole winter.

The two sides chased for only more than ten miles before the herdsmen gradually slowed down due to insufficient horsepower.

In order to survive, they chose to surrender at the first opportunity.

Less than half an hour after the two sides met, more than thirty herdsmen, more than fifty herdsmen slaves, and thousands of herdsmen became the spoils of the elite cavalry.

A cavalry commander with slightly more ornate armor led them to a place and raised his hand to bow: "Guo Yi, we are all here, and no one escaped!"

The herdsmen looked in fear in the direction where the cavalry general was bowing, only to see a tall general standing on his horse a few steps away, and in front of him was the huge corpse of the man who had been killed before.

"It's a shame, it's bloody..."

In front of the herdsmen and slaves, Liu Jilong let out a long sigh, dismounted, grabbed a handful of dirt and sprinkled it on the huge corpse.

"I will take revenge..."

As soon as he finished speaking, he jumped on his horse and rode towards the herd without even looking up.

"Do it!"

The cavalry general spoke in a cold voice, and before the thirty or so herdsmen could react, the elite cavalrymen on both sides raised their swords and cut off their heads.

Blood was spilled on the ground, and they finally suffered the same fate as Pang Da and the others.

"Haha! Guo Yi, look, there are at least three hundred horses and two hundred cows here!"

Excited laughter rang out, and Zhang Chang shuttled among the herd, touching cows here and horses there, as if he had never seen a herd of cattle before.

"Look at you, come out quickly, or you'll get gored by the bull!"

"hey-hey……"

As Liu Jilong was speaking, Zhang Chang nimbly moved out from the herd and skillfully climbed onto the horse.

Watching him get on the horse, Liu Jilong turned and looked behind him.

Ma Cheng, Li Ji and Shang Duoluo stopped their horses behind him, and behind them were more than fifty herdsmen and eight hundred elite cavalrymen, each riding two horses.

Among these eight hundred elite cavalrymen, three hundred were from Shanzhou Army, and the remaining five hundred were from Shandan Army.

Although Liu Jilian wanted to lead more than a thousand elite cavalry, after eliminating some unsatisfactory horses, he finally chose to lead eight hundred elite cavalry.

After three days of galloping, they crossed the grasslands in the north of Ganzhou, bypassed Yanzhi Mountain and arrived at the border of Liangzhou.

Not long after entering Liangzhou, they ran into Tibetans who were grazing.

"Ask them who they are, remember their ethnicity, and see if you can get some useful information." "Yes!"

Liu Jilian spoke the official language of the Tang Dynasty, and Ma Cheng and others also responded in the official language.

More than 60 years ago, the official language of the Tang Dynasty was not uncommon in Hexi. However, after nearly a hundred years of enslavement by Tubo, most people in Hexi could not understand the official language at all, and the official language became a confidential language.

Ma Cheng and his classmates have studied Mandarin for four or five months. They still can't understand the more complicated parts, but they can understand simple parts.

They took the fifty-odd slaves to a place a hundred steps away and interrogated them.

A quarter of an hour later, Ma Cheng brought them back, summarized the information, and then bowed before Liu Jilong.

"Guo Yi, they said they were herdsmen from Jialin City. We probably went astray, at least thirty or forty miles to the north, otherwise we would have run into the herds from Fanhe City."

After Ma Cheng finished explaining, Liu Jilong couldn't help but sigh.

It is easy to go off track when chasing on this grassland without any particularly conspicuous reference points.

Fortunately, Fanhe City and Jialin City are only thirty or forty miles apart, and the pastoral areas overlap to a great extent, so the main forces of the Fan army in the two cities will not be disturbed.

"Did they tell us about Fanhe and Jialin's situation?"

"said!"

When Liu Jilong asked, Ma Cheng quickly responded, "There are 20,000 people in Jialin City, and 3,000 bandits in the city are controlled by three Jie'er. The three of them divided Jialin up and had to pay tribute to Guzang regularly every year."

"There are about one or two thousand bandits in the city, and they don't know the rest."

"There are more than 60 tribes of varying sizes in the northern grasslands. Each tribe has 20 to 30 to 300 herders. Basically, one herder manages two herder slaves."

"In addition, the Uighurs and the Umu people in the north often come south to plunder, but usually after the beginning of autumn."

"Perhaps it is because of this that these bandits did not flee south immediately."

After Ma Cheng finished speaking, Zhang Chang immediately laughed and said, "Guo Yi, there are so many herdsmen, if we take away half of them, we will be rich!"

"You wish." Liu Jilong also looked around with a smile on his face.

"Once a large number of herdsmen are killed by us, the rest of the herdsmen will inevitably flee south."

"It's only 40 to 50 miles from here to Fanhe and Jialin. If they flee and provide support in the south and north, we will be discovered soon."

As he explained, Zhang Chang was excited and said, "Then fight them! They only have 3,000 to 4,000 men, and at most 1,000 elite cavalry. We won't be afraid of being defeated!"

"Yes! Fight them!" Li Ji also clamored to fight against the bandits in the two cities of Fanhe.

Liu Jilong looked at Ma Cheng and saw Ma Cheng bowing: "I will listen to Guo Yi."

"Me too!" Shang Duoluo stated decisively. After all, he was very convinced of Liu Jilong.

However, Liu Jilong was not reckless in his response to their support: "This time we enter Liangzhou not to kill the enemy, but mainly to see if the plan is feasible."

"The focus of this battle is to rescue the people and herds, not to engage in a fight with the enemy."

After he finished speaking, he looked at Shang Duoluo, Ma Cheng and the other four people and said, "I will lead 400 elite cavalry to station here, and use this place as the center of the army. You will each lead 100 elite cavalry to scout the surrounding areas!"

"If you encounter a herdsman team with less than 100 people, you can just let them go and rob them."

"If you encounter a herd of more than a hundred people, no matter how large the herd is, you need to send the Tangqi back to report."

"I have already said that anyone who disobeys military orders will be killed, regardless of their relationship with me!"

Liu Jilong's words made Ma Cheng and his companions feel frightened, and they all bowed solemnly.

As the army grows larger, the previous brotherhood seems too crude. Military law must be established early on so that all generals know the importance of "obeying orders and prohibiting prohibitions."

"Go!"

Following his order, the eight hundred elite cavalrymen were divided into two. Four hundred stayed where they were and began to explain their origins to the herdsmen, while the remaining four hundred were divided into four teams and went to explore in all directions.

At the same time, the shepherd slave who was rescued earlier also reacted.

"The Tang Dynasty... Is the Tang Dynasty here?"

"We are the righteous brigade of Hexi. You have suffered, but you will no longer have hard days in the future!"

"Long live the Tang Dynasty! Long live the Tang Dynasty!"

"Tang Dynasty..."

Before going to the battle, Liu Jilong had training on speech skills with many teams in the army.

Although it was the beginning of spring when the cattle and horses were weak, it was precisely in such weather that the Eastern Expedition achieved unexpected results.

After the explanation of the captains of the army, the originally numb eyes of more than 50 pastoral slaves gradually brightened up, and finally they shouted loudly: "Long live the Tang Dynasty!"

Liu Jilian did not slack off, but asked people to collect fuel and prepare to kill a batch of sheep to reward the army.

They galloped for three days, relying solely on corn cakes and dried meat for food, which left a slight bitter taste in their mouths.

Now that we have enough herds, we naturally have to have a big meal to make up for the hard work of the past three days.

Huke Siguang led his men to deal with the old sheep in the herd, while Liu Jilong sighed as he looked at the bodies of Pang Da and others being buried in the distance.

"Guo Yi, have you ever resisted before?"

After arranging everything, Hu Siguang walked over to sit next to Liu Jilong and asked curiously: "If it was you, Guo Yi, you should be able to resist successfully, right?"

"Won't……"

Liu Jilong shook his head and looked at Hu Siguang: "I remember that you are the child of a craftsman. It's no wonder that you don't know the difficulties of herding slaves."

He looked at the bodies of Pang Da and the others and explained, "The bandits are very wary of us. After we go out of the city to graze, not only will they ask the herders to restrict our food, but they will also send soldiers to support the herding teams at any time from a distance."

"The bows and arrows they gave us were all soft bows, and they held hard bows themselves."

"If any of the herdsmen resist, the soldiers will shoot them to death from a distance with their hard bows, but our soft bows can't shoot far, and once the arrows are used up, they will die."

"Besides, given the situation in Guazhou at the time, even if we killed the soldiers, where could we go?"

"There are bandits in the west, south and east, and Uighurs in the north. They love to capture runaway slaves like us and make them herdsmen."

"I have seen many slaves who rebelled, but none of them survived."

As soon as he finished speaking, Hu Siguang took a deep breath and said, "I am better than Guo Yi and the others. A craftsman slave only needs to make weapons and armor. The foreign bandits still respect us."

"Hmm..." Liu Jilong did not respond to him, but looked into the distance.

In his sight, the liberated slaves had already started to collect the old sheep in the herd together with the Shandan soldiers.

They were obviously very happy that they were liberated, but their faces were full of tears and laughter, and they couldn't stop beating their chests and stamping their feet.

The soldiers of Shandan were deeply touched by this, after all, they also came from the path of herding slaves.

"Guo Yi, after we return to the Tang Dynasty, will we no longer fight?"

Hu Siguang asked, but Liu Jilong did not turn around and asked, "You don't want to fight anymore?"

"It's not that I don't want to, but I just feel like if we keep fighting like this, there's no way it'll ever end. And I always feel like something...something..."

Hu Siguang scratched his hair, and Liu Jilong chuckled: "You are in danger of losing your life?"

"Yes! That's it!" Hu Siguang's eyes lit up, and he murmured the word.

Faced with his curious gaze, Liu Jilong was unable to give an answer.

It’s not that he doesn’t know, but he knows it too well, so he can’t say it.

Even if he told Huksiguang what the real Tang Dynasty was like, Huksiguang would not believe it.

The people of Hexi grew up listening to fairy tales about the "Golden Tang Dynasty". No one can convince them unless they take the initiative to tear apart the fairy tales.

If the people in Hexi could realize that the real Tang Dynasty was not the Tang Dynasty they imagined, then things would be easier.

If the Guiyi Army had been able to gain some dominance over Heshuo and Lianghuai, Zhang Yichao would not have fought for more than ten years without getting the title of Jiedushi of Hexi, and Zhang Huaishen would not have failed to get the banner of Jiedushi of the Guiyi Army.

The uncle and nephew's repeated retreats did not win the trust of the Tang Dynasty, but instead made the Tang Dynasty look down on them.

When in Shandan, Liu Jilian wondered some nights whether the Guiyi Army would have a better fate if Zhang Yichao and his men could learn from the military governors of Lianghuai and Heshuo and give the Tang court a little shock from time to time.

When Liu Jilian thought of the fate of the Guiyi Army after Zhang Huaishen's death, he felt that the Tang Dynasty really needed to be shocked sometimes.

"Buzzing..."

When Liu Jilong was thinking this, dust began to appear on the grassland in the south, and the Three Stars Flag fluttered and approached the north.

"It seems that there is a harvest..."

Liu Jilong stood up and smiled. Huke Siguang followed him and saw a large group of livestock following the Sanchen flag. The harvest was quite good.

"Don't think too much. First work hard to get promoted to captain, then think about these things!"

Liu Jilong reached out his hand to wake him up, then turned around and walked to the back.

There, the roasted lambs were already sizzling and oozing with oil, making a group of people cry with envy...

(End of this chapter)