In the northwest of Jiuyuan County, in a small dilapidated village.

Since Zhao Kun expelled the Xiongnu, the original territory of the Xiongnu was included in the territory of Jiuyuan County.

Jiuyuan County was originally a border county. It was located in a bitter cold land and was often plundered by barbarians. The people's lives were miserable.

However, after taking over a large territory from the Xiongnu, the people of Jiuyuan County immediately started to tremble.

It was impossible to grow food in this area, so the local people simply herded cattle. Over time, they became good herders.

After the Xiongnu's old territory was included in the territory of the Qin Dynasty, it was still not a good place for the counties in the interior of the Qin Dynasty.

It was even once used as a place of exile for prisoners.

Prisoners from other counties would feel cold all over when they heard that the place of exile was the old land of the Huns.

In the eyes of ordinary people, they would rather be exiled to the island outside Yue County than go to the north.

Although Xiangjun is near the sea, it is said to be an exile, but due to the developed maritime trade of Daqin, the nearest Qiongdao has been developed into an independent trading island.

But, what is there in Jiuyuan County?

Although Da Qin trades with the Western Regions, the border between Da Qin and the Western Regions is still a long way away.

Jiuyuan County is in the northeast of the Western Region, and no caravan will take a detour from Jiuyuan County.

Jiuyuan County naturally does not enjoy much of the benefits of trade in the Western Regions.

Calculating it this way, it's quite a backwater.

However, in the eyes of the people of Jiuyuan County in the past, this place was a treasure land.

In the past, the Huns were powerful and occupied large areas of natural grassland with rich soil and water.

These areas cannot be farmed, but are excellent places for grazing.

In recent years, almost all the original people of Jiuyuan County have moved north, and the villages that were previously in a bad location gradually declined and were eventually abandoned.

At this moment, hundreds of people were crowded in the only intact ancestral hall in this deserted village.

Squatting on the ground in the middle of the ancestral hall, looking around, there are hundreds of Daqin people with black hair and black eyes.

Surrounding them were a group of foreigners disguised as Qin people.

At the entrance of the ancestral hall, two people, one tall and one short, stood.

The short man is a thin, alien old man.

The tall man was a burly man with pitted faces and hideous wounds.

If Wang Li were here, he would surely recognize that burly man as none other than the Nanyang giant Liu Cheng.

In the Battle of the South China Sea the year before last, Wang Li destroyed Liu Cheng's main fleet.

In fact, as a Nanyang giant, how could Liu Cheng not know the principle of the cunning rabbit's three burrows?

During the naval battle at that time, the sky was filled with artillery rain, and Liu Cheng had already prepared a small sailboat to escape.

As soon as he saw something was wrong, he ran away immediately.

Fortunately, he was lucky enough. In the chaos, although the small sailboat he escaped was blown to pieces, he was also seriously injured.

But relying on the skills he had developed over many years of traveling across the sea, Liu Cheng managed to escape.

Although he escaped with his life, the huge fleet he had built over the years was completely wiped out by Wang Li in that war.

The capital for Liu Cheng's comeback no longer exists.

But when he escaped, he brought out Hannibal's envoy.

Although the messenger Crean was very grateful to Liu Cheng for saving his life, Liu Cheng's loss of his fleet meant nothing to Carthage.

Crazy Liu Cheng thought of a way.

He persuaded Kerian to kidnap talents from the Daqin Academy of Sciences and go to Carthage to develop weapons.

This proposal immediately moved Crean.

That naval battle almost scared his courage.

Regarding the strength of Da Qin's military force, Crean believed that he had the most say.

Liu Cheng told him that all the military equipment of Qin Dynasty were produced by the Academy of Sciences.

If we can kidnap a group of people from the Academy of Sciences, they can help Carthage manufacture gunpowder weapons and other weapons.

Then, in the war between Carthage and Rome, things will definitely turn around.

This kind of temptation is really too great.

Crean immediately sent a message back to Europe and asked Hannibal to send people to support him.

At this time, Carthage was being crushed by Rome on the European battlefield.

Hannibal's army was like a trapped beast, completely driven into madness.

Even the devil told him that as long as he sold his soul, he could defeat Rome.

Hannibal would do it without hesitation.

Along the way, he finally managed to survive his father and his brother, and then he took over the power.

At the beginning of the Second Punic War, Carthage also had an absolute advantage.

It was going smoothly all the way, but in the end it was overturned.

How can you endure such an arrogant person like Hannibal?

Therefore, as soon as he received information from Crean, Hannibal immediately sent people to support him.

As the saying goes, a skinny camel is bigger than a horse...

As one of the two heroes in Europe, although Carthage lost on the battlefield, the power it could mobilize was still very terrifying.

Hannibal gave the order, and the elites in Carthage immediately set off for Daqin to cooperate with Crean's operation.

The backward feudal system in Europe resulted in much more infighting among nobles than in the East.

Letting the elites of these countries go to the battlefield may not necessarily be a strong fighting force.

But when it comes to murder and kidnapping, they are experts.

In early February of this year, the people sent by Hannibal, with the help of the Pontic Kingdom, infiltrated into the Pontic Kingdom's envoys and entered the Qin Dynasty.

Then, they immediately started planning an action.

For four months, they secretly kidnapped talents from the Academy of Sciences and disguised them as accidental deaths or disappearances without a body.

Kerian was naturally very cautious when doing this kind of thing in Daqin.

His original plan was to use two years to achieve his goal.

But this year Carthage suffered successive defeats on the European battlefield.

In addition, in July, the Qin Navy entered Europe and showed off its power in Xibal City.

This made Hannibal even more anxious.

When he learned that the Qin navy had completely annihilated the navy of the Roman Southern Legion without any losses, he had an unprecedented desire for the military power of the Qin Dynasty.

Under Hannibal's urging, Crean had to speed up.

That's why things like this happened now.

Those Da Qin people in the ancestral hall are all people from the Academy of Sciences whom they have kidnapped in the past eight months.

The four people surrounded by everyone, to be precise, were three people and a corpse.

A middle-aged man with gray hair on his temples and a somewhat gloomy face. This man is Liang Ji, one of the core members of the Academy of Sciences who disappeared a few days ago.

The person intertwined with him was a European woman with long brown hair, Lisanna, Sulia's maid.

Next to the two of them, sat a young man in his early twenties.

The young man had a look of fear on his face and was looking at the door in panic.

This man is Wuluo, the son of Wucheng.

The man lying on the ground was the guard captain who went to Xianyang with Lisanna to do some shopping.

Lisanna looked at the guard captain on the ground with tears on her face.

Lisanna never imagined that the captain of the guard traveled across the ocean with them and finally came to Daqin from Carthage.

He survived being chased and intercepted by various pursuers along the way.

Finally died here.

Moreover, it was for this reason that he died in the hands of the Carthaginians.

At this time, Liu Cheng and Kerian walked in quickly.

"Vice President Wang, how have you considered what I said?" Liu Cheng asked with a gloomy look.

In the past eight months, he led the Carthaginians and captured people everywhere in the Qin Dynasty.
To be continued...