Everyone loves Huo Qubing

As the sky darkened, Mrs. Wei's cries rose together with the lights.I stood on tiptoe in the courtyard alone, waiting for the servant to bring me the hot bath water.Taking a hot bath at home is obviously more comfortable and comfortable than soaking in a large empty pool with cold water temperature.

Putting on obscene clothes and sitting in front of the desk, the bronze mirror reflected the familiar face from childhood to adulthood, which was slightly reddish from the steaming heat.I stretch out my fingers and lightly cover my eyes.

In fact, every time someone commented that I looked like my second uncle, I would feel a little joy in my heart.I have to admit that my eyes are indeed the direct evidence that I am a member of the Wei family - not only like the second uncle, but also like the aunt, and even began to have a bit of the shadow of Wei Zhang and Jingsheng.Blood relationship is indeed the closest distance in the world. No matter what happens, we are destined to be closely connected and never be separated.

There is indeed a light purple mark on the collarbone, maybe I accidentally bumped it there recently.

I put the bronze mirror upside down on the desk, and took the "Biography of Gongyang", which had just been seen again not long ago, and I flipped through it by candlelight.Gong Sunhong, a wise man, was appointed as the Taifu by the emperor because of his self-taught Gongyang, replacing Sima Taifu who was sent to Xishu to set up a county.

According to word of mouth, Sima Xiangru was suspected by the court because he pleaded for empress Chen's "Longmen Fu".It is indeed true that Sima Xiangru was demoted from Beijing. However, with his recent flattering writing style, it is absolutely impossible for Sima Xiangru to send himself to the emperor's tiger's mouth. Jun's pungent style.

Suddenly there was confusion outside the door.

"Military newspapers, military newspapers, military newspapers all day long!" Er Jinniang's angry voice came from the opposite wing, "On the first day after marriage, the total number of words you said to me was only ten sentences!"

Mrs. Wei next door was apparently also awakened, and the baby's night cry was particularly loud in this silent night.

"Why don't you speak up, don't you justify?" Su Jia cried, "I waited for you for four years, and I waited for the day when you brought me home in eight palanquins, and you just treated me like this? How can a woman wait for you?" How many four years can you afford?"

The door of the wing room opened with a creak, and the second uncle came out with the pillow and quilt in his arms, and the bamboo slips I brought back under his arm.

"Madam was so wronged last night, it's my turn to sleep in the guest room tonight." He turned back while walking.

Su Jia was wearing a bodice-wrapped underwear and chased out the door with bare feet, but she was a step too late, and the second uncle had already sneaked into my room swiftly.

"Go, go, go and sleep with your nephew! I think you might as well stop staying at home and pretend to take some wedding leave, and report back to your court tomorrow!"

With a bang, the door of the opposite wing was slammed shut.The weeping of Mrs. Wei next door became louder and louder, and the nanny coaxed helplessly.

"Excuse me for one night, I'm sorry to bother you." The second uncle put the quilt on the couch that the uncle hadn't used for a long time, stirring up a cloud of dust.

"No, I'm the one who disturbed you." This was originally the second uncle's mansion, and I was the guest.Besides, the second uncle broke into my room suddenly. Apart from the accident, I also felt a little excited.

"Have you any spare candles here?"

"Yes." I skillfully took out my uncle's candle lamp and picked it up, bringing bamboo slips, pen and ink.

Everything was finally quiet, and I crossed the letter in my hand, and used my peripheral vision to silently describe the second uncle on the opposite side who was concentrating on it.As a newlywed, he still seems to be shrouded in sorrow.

The person at the desk opposite suddenly raised his head.My eyes met inadvertently, and I turned my head away in embarrassment.

The corners of the second uncle's lips curved into a beautiful arc.

"Recommending talents is a good thing. If Qubing meets someone he likes again, you can first tell your uncle or Gongsun Ao to let them check for you. There are hundreds of officials under His Majesty, and there are many relationships that need to be undertaken. Leapfrog The recommendation will bring him pressure to make decisions." He pointed to Li Jiao's name at the end of the bamboo slips, "For example, the one you recommended today has a low official position but a complicated background. Since His Majesty decided to summon him, he must be shy away from self-effacing At the same time, he recommended his father, General Li Guang."

"Li Guang?" Oh, this time it's embarrassing, I just want to recommend Li Jiao, not Li Guang.

"Yes, that's the problem. Uncle Zi's father, Gongsun Kunxie, is very disapproving of General Li Guang's leadership style." He flipped forward to the record where his uncle mentioned Cheng Bushi and Li Xi, "You Look at this, when Uncle Zi recommended the generals of the foreign dynasty, he did not mention General Li Guang to His Majesty."

I nodded to express my understanding. My uncle's evaluation of Li Guang was indeed not very good.

"In addition, Emperor Xiaojing has always been afraid of this veteran who acts impulsively and recklessly. I think, no accident, His Majesty will definitely help Uncle Zi avoid the possibility of cooperating with Li Guang."

"What is a cooperative battle?" I was curious.

"Do you have any paper here?" he asked.

"Yes." I opened the bookcase and took out a roll of sheepskin color.

This kind of yellow-bottomed pulp paper was popular in the palace. It was made of hemp grass and added with silk. It was more flexible and delicate than silk, and many times lighter than bamboo slips. It was light and easy to carry. The price is expensive, and I planned to stock up a batch as a gift for my second uncle.

The second uncle spread it out, brushed and wrote, and a map of the Central Plains appeared vividly on the paper.Pointing to the area south of the Yellow River, he said: "This is the Han land in the Central Plains, that is, Hanzhong, and the whole land belongs directly to our Han court." Then he wrote the character "工" on the middle border of Han Dynasty: "This is Hangu Pass. To the northeast of the pass is the Dai and Yan states, and to the southeast of the pass are the kingdoms of Zhao, Qi, Liang, and Wu, big and small."

After talking about the east, he returned to the north and drew a straight line from Yunzhong County to the west: "This is the Great Wall of Qin. The fan-shaped area south of the Great Wall of Qin and north of Longxi County and Beidi County is The Heshuo Grassland, also known as the northern barrier of Hanzhong, has been a battleground between the Han and the Huns since Emperor Xiaogao, and is now occupied by the Huns, Baiyang and Loufan."

As I rubbed the ink, I watched as he quickly sketched the rest of the northern border, and drew four circles in sequence on the northern border.

"Yunzhong, Yanmen, Dai, and Shanggu, these four counties are called the 'Throat Four Counties' of Hanzhong. Yunzhong County is in the west, facing Yinshan Mountain in the north, between King Youxian and King Baiyang and King Loufan Between. Yanmen and Daijun are the northern barriers of the Hedong Plain, and they are often looted. Shanggu County is adjacent to Yanshan Mountain in the north, and Zuo Xianwang's troops have just invaded Shanggu, and our horses have lost one-tenth of the loss."

"This is Baideng Mountain." The second uncle didn't say much about the battle of Emperor Xiaogao Baideng, which can be described as "tragedy", but left a fork in the northwest of Shanggu County.

I couldn't help but babble, completely relying on memory, my second uncle had already drawn this entire map of Han and Hungary.

"This time the battle is mainly to find out the strength of the Xiongnu Shanyu and the two sage kings on the left and right. The strategic goal is nothing else, that is to divide the troops and go northward, and return to the division after reaching the destination."

"Uncle Zi originally planned to go out of the cloud to explore the ancient Yinshan Road to the north, and this road should not change; Gongsun Ao originally planned to go out of Yanmen, I went out of Daijun, and my elder brother went out of Shanggu. Brother is gone—”

He stopped here, frowning.

I paused in my heart and took his tightly clenched left hand.His hands are very cold, I put them in my arms carefully, hoping to use the body temperature to warm him up.

The second uncle breathed a sigh of relief, and continued: "No accident, General Li Guang should be able to successfully replace the injured General Han Anguo. It is a pity that when General Li was the prefect of Shanggu, he violated Emperor Xiaojing's order and went out several times to fight fiercely with the Xiongnu. Your Majesty will not give him the chance to make the same mistakes again. So General Li has only one choice, which is to exchange with me, he will leave Daijun, and I will leave Shanggu. In this way, General Gongsun will not have to face any personnel changes in the deployment of Yanmen."

He turned his head and looked at me, his smiling eyes full of expectation: "And I, too, can inherit the unfinished legacy of my elder brother."

I blinked my eyes, expressing that I was still reminiscing about the sharp turn of division: "Uncle is so powerful, I was completely surrounded by you."

"Heh, if you listen a lot in the future, you will naturally be familiar with these matters," said the second uncle with a smile. "Besides, what I said may not be correct. Listen to their discussions these days to see if it is what I expected. The results match."

"Uncle, are you really not going to court tomorrow?" After the lights were turned off, I leaned on the bedpost and asked in a low voice.

A chuckle came from the opposite couch: "Your Majesty gave me a wedding leave, why should I go back?"

"But His Majesty misses you very much. During your absence, he has been in a bad mood and unhappy."

The person in the dark sighed softly: "Qu Bing, do you know why the Queen Mother agreed to hand over the Tiger Talisman?"

"I don't know." I shook my head.

"Because Your Majesty promised that she would give birth to a prince." The voice on the other side was light and ethereal, as if it would disappear into the void at any time, "Your Majesty is already twenty-seven and has no children under his knees. At this time, the princes and kings will inevitably be ready to move when they go north. I think, if If I don't hang around in front of His Majesty, he should turn his attention back to his sister and the concubines in the harem."

"But, are you really hiding from His Majesty just because of the prince's affairs?" Comparing my heart to my heart, I know that my second uncle loves the emperor deeply, and I will never suddenly give up the relationship between the two for many years because of the simple reason of the queen mother urging the emperor's grandson. emotion.

There was a long silence on the other side, and just when I thought he had fallen asleep, the other party spoke again.

"In the past, I had an illusion that as long as I did my best for His Majesty, His Majesty would always be able to sit back and relax. My elder brother's accident made me realize that I may not be able to be your Majesty's permanent support. If I can't come back from the battlefield, Your Majesty You have to learn to be on your own.”

"Uncle, don't say inauspicious words, you must come back," I gritted my teeth and whispered, speaking to him and myself, "You must come back, you must be able to come back."

"Well, I'll definitely be back." The person opposite assured me with a soft but firm tone.

***

When the flowers are in full bloom, there are snowflakes all over the sky, commonly known as "cold spring".The city of Chang'an was covered with snow, Taishi Li went to Dai County, and there was no agent for the archery class, so it was changed to Cuju class. Cao Xiang and I ran a few rounds to our heart's content until we were sweating profusely and panting.

Putting on dark clothes and walking through the small half of Chang'an City, the heat in my heart gradually cooled down with the severe cold of the snow.When they arrived at the Xuanshi Hall, the court meeting in the front hall was not over yet, and when the curtain of the side hall was lifted, someone was already occupying a book case, writing and drawing on the bamboo slips.

Dongfang Shuo looked up and saw that I took out a stack of pulp paper from my arms and spread it out. He jumped up, grabbed it, picked it up, and looked through it in his hand, exclaiming "good paper, good paper" in his mouth.

"Nephew, do you have any spares? Can you give me some?" He reluctantly returned the pulp paper with the map of mountains and rivers to me.

"Your salary is higher than mine, why do you want someone to give it to me when I bought it?" I taunted him.

"The salary of the minister needs to provide for the house, raise horses, and feed the stomach." Dongfang Shuo shook his head and complained, "When the nephew reaches his thirties, he will know the hardships of life!"

Earlier I heard that Dongfang Shuo had finally saved enough money to buy a mansion at the foot of Chang'an City, so as to avoid the hardship of traveling every day. I also saw that he worked hard every day just to support the beautiful lady at home. It was really hard work. Then he smiled and said, "I do have extra pulp paper, you can go to the Weifu to get it from me when you have time."

The charcoal fire in the stove at hand was crackling, I was wrapped in a short jacket, kneeling in the side hall of Xuanshi, holding the map that my second uncle left me, staring blankly at the direction of Shanggu County in a daze.

It has been some time since the day when the four generals left the capital with their own concerns, and some unexpected things happened during this time.

The original plan of dispatching troops was exactly as the second uncle expected. My uncle went out of the cloud to the west foot of Yinshan Mountain to explore the road to Queen Baiyang. The minister was Shanyu Qianfeng, and the second uncle went out of Shanggu to the north through the mouth of Yanyin Valley to explore the distribution of Zuo Xianwang's troops.

However, things did not go completely in the direction predicted by the second uncle.It can only be said that people are not as good as heaven, whether it is the emperor or the second uncle, they have overlooked one point, that is Li Guang's own wishes.

"I have cooperated with the Prime Minister of Han and Gongsun's eunuch before, and I have been guarding the border for the Han Dynasty for more than ten years, and I have rich experience in fighting the Huns. Therefore, I am willing to lead the troops out of Yanmen. I implore Your Majesty to consider it!" The pre-war sacrificial ceremony is in progress , When worshiping the general, General Li Guang said so.

When Li Guang took the half of the bear talisman from Gongsun Ao, I seemed to be able to see the blue veins protruding from Gongsun Ao's forehead. It is not an exaggeration to describe General Gongsun at this time as "angry hair rushing to the crown".

The main force of soldiers and horses coming out of Yanmen is the elite soldiers of the Xiaoqi Battalion cultivated by Gongsun Ao after several years of painstaking efforts. The horses equipped are the best horse breeds of the big man.Li Guang didn't play cards according to the rules, petitioned in front of the emperor and the priests, and demanded the military power of Yanmen in front of all the soldiers. If Gongsun Ao refused to give it, it would be disrespectful to the sky.Therefore, in the final order of dispatching troops, Li Guang led the Xiao cavalry battalion out of Yanmen County on the left side of the middle, and Han Anguo guarded Yanmen County;

Uncle Uncle never sees a sudden change of mind on weekdays, her face turned pale with anger, and she wanted to fight Li Guang on the spot, but was stopped by her second uncle.Li Jiao didn't expect that the old father would make a moth during the obeisance to the general, and at the end of the sacrifice, he found Gongsun Ao to apologize.But I think Li Jiao must also be very sad. His father would rather ask Daixiang Han to do logistics, and not cooperate with his son.

It was the first time the big man took the initiative to attack the Hungarians, and it was also the first pre-war sacrifice I participated in. Who would have expected that it would end in such a chaotic situation.Sima Tan, the Taishi Ling who was in charge of divination of auspicious days, was quite disturbed by this, and repeatedly kowtowed to His Majesty to apologize.

Early yesterday morning, the war in the northern border finally had some clues.The military report in the cloud was the first to be sent back, and my uncle, that is, the light chariot general Gongsun He successfully marched into the ancient Yinshan Road, and the whole army went unimpeded all the way.

"Xun Aiqing, can uncle Zi write down the number of gains in the letter? Can you seal it?" Finally, the emperor breathed a sigh of relief when he got a result.

Xun Yu glanced at me who was sitting on the side copying the military newspaper, cupped his hands and said: "Return to your majesty, the servant did not say that the head was captured, but according to the returning messenger, they encountered scattered tribes and Hun scouts along the way. , a total of less than 200 people, no one slipped through the net. Your Majesty said that since the purpose of the operation of the West Route Army has been achieved, please ask your Majesty not to award rewards in order to keep it secret."

The Son of Heaven nodded: "Alright, pass an order to the prefect of Yunzhong, and ask Uncle Zi to come back as soon as he finishes his rounds. I will wait for news from the other three parties about the reward."

The author has something to say:

Jinjiang is even slower here. If you are interested, please move to Changpei.