Because the natural dangers of Helan Mountain are insurmountable, there are only a few passes that can be passed through, such as Helan Pass, San Pass, Gunzhong Pass, etc. At that time, Yang Ben attacked Tachaer in a sneak attack and took Dawukou.
Going south from Dawukou is Helankou, commonly known as "Hualuokou". The scenery in the mountain pass is elegant, and you can see strange peaks stacked on top of each other as you follow the ice-covered spring water to the west.
Further south, there is the rolling bell mouth. The terrain is like a giant lying bell. The mouth is surrounded by mountains on three sides and opens to the east. There is an isolated small peak in the middle that was once the palace of Li Yuanhao. From the perspective of the route, the Yuan army believed that Li Zengbo would escape.
Enter the bell mouth.
On December 17, Li Zengbo staggered and led his horse into Helankou.
There are rock walls everywhere in the valley, and there are rock paintings engraved on the rock walls, which were carved on the rocks by the Dangxiang people with stones and bone tools. The contents include hunting, animal husbandry, dancing, breeding, and fighting. Although they are rough and thick, they can be described as
A Xixia epic.
Li Zengbo didn't look at the scenery. He squatted down by the mountain spring, picked up a stone with his hands that were red from the cold, and knocked it on the ice.
I knocked twice but couldn't open it.
Instead, his reflection was reflected on the ice, making him feel a sense of disgust.
"Thousands of soldiers have died, but this useless old loser is not dead yet." He muttered to himself in a low voice, and sat slumped by the mountain spring.
"Commander, would you like to light a fire? If you escape to the mountains, the Yuan army will not be able to catch up for a while." "Yeah."
Li Zengbo responded, turned around and saw that there were only hundreds of remnant knights around him. Xingqing Mansion was recovered in his hands, but also lost in his hands.
Busy and busy for several years, apart from making the already dilapidated city even more dilapidated, destroying the river canals that were finally repaired, and causing the people to suffer several more years of war. What else did it bring?
Li Zengbo shook his head to dispel these pessimistic thoughts.
He knew very well that a heavy price had been paid here, and it was also a huge drain on Meng Yuan. The reversal of national power may only be in the past two years, and it is not time to be decadent at this time.
"You come."
"Marshal Li."
"I didn't have time to ask you in detail in the city. Let me ask you again, did Lian Xixian really arrive at Qingtong Gorge?" "When he did, I followed Duke Lian across Shatoupo, and Duke Lian ordered me to hurry up and deliver the message."
Li Zengbo nodded and asked: "Can he guard the Yellow River? In case the Yuan army is allowed to cross the Yellow River."
"Marshal Li, don't worry, that section of the canyon is full of rapids and cannot be crossed on ice. The Yuan army must either defeat him and take Shatoupo or go from the north to cross the river, but Guanzhong has deployed troops to Dingbianzhai for defense."
"Okay, okay, I'm relieved now. I haven't asked you what your name is yet?" "Ai Shan."
"Ai Shan? This is your Chinese name."
"It is both my Chinese name and my Uyghur name, which means auspiciousness." A Uyghur named Aishan said with a smile, "I moved to Heihe, Suzhou two years ago."
"I know where you are. You are from the Desu Amu tribe." Li Zengbo asked, "You speak Chinese well." "Hey, I like to watch singing and singing operas. I learned it on the stage."
Li Zengbo asked a few more questions, then tremblingly took out a letter from his arms.
He originally wanted to die in Xingqing Mansion, but it was this letter that made him change his mind and flee all the way here. Although he had read it once in the city, he read it more carefully now.
When I opened the envelope, the first thing I took out was a simple map.
In the far west of the map, a circle is drawn on the bank of the Ili River. There are small characters on it that read "Tuohu won a great victory, and Muba was killed by an arrow in the sand." This was news several months ago. After all, the Western Region is far away, and Lian Xi
Xian obviously learned about it later, and it was not mentioned in the previous letter.
When Li Zengbo was in the city, he had no time to digest the news, so he began to wonder whether this matter was good or bad. It was not necessarily a bad thing.
Because there are two arrows on the map, one is from the Altay Mountains to the north, and the small characters on the side say "Haidu sent troops to Hara and Forest", and the other arrow is from Ali Maya to the east, and the small words on the side are "Wu"
Lu Hu then led thirty thousand troops to pursue Tuohu."
The third arrow is Lian Xixian. He pursued Tuohu from Gaochang, met Uluru Hunai at Xingxing Gorge, and joined forces to pursue Ruoshui.
After the ancient city, he returned south along the Ruoshui River to the Hexi Corridor, while Uluru Hunai continued eastwards.
Some soldiers lit a fire beside Li Zengbo.
As if unaware, Li Zengbo took out a thin pen and added a few strokes on the map.
"In August, Lian Shanfu was here to deliver the news, reporting the route of Brother Zhu's return to the east. In early October, His Majesty decided to march westward to intercept. In December, Uluru Hu should have arrived."
Opening the letter that came with the map, Li Zengbo read it for a while and murmured: "Lian Shanfu is amazing."
The reason why Lian Xixian sent a courier to return the Yuan army to the eastward route was to remind Li Zengbo to send troops to stop it, even if it was a small defeat for the Yuan army. However, no one expected that Kublai Khan would personally conquer it, let alone Li Xia.
Go and attack Sungge La in person.
After that, a series of changes came to Lian Xixian, but he still made a judgment thousands of miles away.
He believed that with Li Xia's ability, he would be able to return from Mobei. The real crisis in the Tang Dynasty was that Kublai Khan's army marched straight in and decisively returned to rescue Xingqing Mansion.
Marching to Shatoupo, they determined that Xingqing Mansion could not be defended, so they immediately defended Qingtongxia and asked Li Zengbo to march westward.
Li Zengbo couldn't help but think back to the time when he was first ordered by the Song Dynasty to go to Longxi to work with Lian Xixian. At that time, he really looked down on this lustful man who surrendered from Mongolia.
Until now, it was Lian Xixian who asked him to live...
At night, hundreds of Tang soldiers who had escaped extinguished the fire. Ai Shan never dared to fall asleep and kept looking at Li Zengbo's figure.
Before he came to deliver the letter, Lian Xixian had warned them that Marshal Li had failed to hold Xingqing Mansion and that he might want to die in the city, so he had to be persuaded to live.
"When the boy was fifteen or twenty, he captured the Huma cavalry on foot. He shot the white-fronted tiger in the mountains, and he was willing to count the yellow-bearded children under his command." Suddenly hearing what Li Zengbo was reading, Ai Shan couldn't help but get closer and asked:
"Marshal Li, what's wrong?" "I can't sleep. Looking at Helan Mountain, I thought of a Tang poem."
"Tang poetry?"
Although Li Zengbo was a marshal, he did not feel presumptuous because of the Uyghur soldier's interruption. He sighed: "It's just like your song."
Ai Shan nodded vigorously and said, "I know poetry! I know Li Bai!" Li Zengbo gave a rare smile and asked, "Do you know Wang Wei?"
Aishan shook his head and asked: "Is it Wang Wei's poem that Marshal Li is reading? What does it mean?"
""The Journey of a Veteran" is about a veteran who spent his whole life fighting in the east and west, but ended up with no merit and was demoted. But when the war broke out on the border again, he volunteered to serve the country again."
Li Zengbo said and sighed again.
"If His Majesty hadn't been born out of nowhere, this poem would probably be talking about my life. If I think about it like this, what's the point of losing?"
Even so, his eyes still looked lonely.
Aishan then asked, "Can Marshal Li teach me this poem?" "Okay."
In the dark night without firelight or stars, an old man and a young man who couldn't sleep casually chatted about some poetry.
"The first eight lines of this poem talk about the veteran's wisdom and bravery in his youth. When he joined the army as a young man, he was able to capture the enemy's war horses and kill white-fronted tigers. The following is about how he fought for three thousand miles with one sword and once served as a million-man warrior."
At the end, Li Zengbo murmured the sentence "Don't dislike the old guard in the clouds, he still deserved to win meritorious service in a battle" without further explanation.
He is finally different from the veteran in the poem. No one dislikes him. He still has a chance. It just depends on whether he can get meritorious service in one battle.
It's just that the future is uncertain. After passing through the Helan Pass, there is a vast snowfield. No one is sure whether Li Xia can come back or whether he will take this road back.
~~
At dawn, Shi Gang stood on his horse at Helankou, waiting for the detective horse to go in first to find out.
Hundreds of households came forward and asked: "Major General, why do you want to pursue Li Zengbo again? What can the Tang army do with only the few troops left?"
"How many soldiers and horses?" Shi Gang said, "Then you take a hundred people into the valley and bring me Li Zengbo's head."
"This" the hundred households quickly apologized and said with a smile: "The villain is saying that Li Zengbo is familiar with the terrain. We are following behind.
Even if we chase him, we won't be able to catch him for a while. By the time we catch up, Tang Jun may have starved to death or frozen to death. Not to mention how long a seventy-year-old man can last in the ice and snow."
"You also know that there may be an ambush." Shi Bang frowned and said, "The army has occupied Xingqing Mansion and is about to move south. If Li Xia and Li Zengbo are allowed to meet on the other side of Yinshan Mountain."
For many generals of the Yuan Army, the most vexing problem since the war started is that Li Xia has never been found.
The more I don't know where he is, the more I can't help but worry.
Some low-level generals did not have such far-reaching considerations. The hundred households asked: "I don't understand. Even if Li Xia comes, can he still defeat our army?"
Shi Gang actually couldn't figure it out, so he said calmly: "Do you know how many people who thought it was impossible for Li Xia to win ended up dead?"
"I don't know, I'm too talkative."
They waited for a while, but did not wait for the exploration horse to come back. After all, they did not dare to easily enter the dangerous place in the valley, so they continued to chat.
"Major General, why do I feel that Your Majesty seems to trust us Han soldiers more?" "Why do you think that?"
"In this attack on Xingqing, Yang Wen'an was sent to capture Qingtongxia, Zhang Hongfan was sent to capture the puppet Khan Xiliji, and our commander was sent to set up the Yinshan defense line. They are all Han troops."
"There is no fake Khan Xiliji." Shi Gang first reminded: "Xiliji was killed by Li Xia when he was in the Western Regions. The fake Khan has always been fake. Li Xia asked the missing neighbor princess to pretend to be one."
"The villain knows that when we talk about this, many Mongolians in the army muttered secretly, especially the prisoners released by Li Zengbo at that time. They all said they saw it with their own eyes."
"Shut up! Do you want to die?" Shi Gang shouted, "Don't mention it again after it has passed. There is only one Khan." "Yes!"
Shi Gang chuckled softly, changed his tone, and asked, "Do you know why your majesty trusts the Han army more?" "I don't know."
"There are two types of Han troops. One is like Yang Wen'an, who surrendered. If he surrenders to Li Xia, he will definitely not be reused, and he will have to serve the Yuan Dynasty wholeheartedly. The other is like my father, Taizu's
Those who contributed to the founding of the country will be awarded the title of king in the future, and Li Xia will never have a status in the Yuan Dynasty if he surrenders. Of course, he is loyal."
At this point, Shi Gang turned around and pointed, saying: "On the contrary, there are some Mongolians who don't study and don't know loyalty. If they surrender to Li Xia, they think that the grassland is so far away that Li Xia can't control them at all. In the end, they still
We can only be gentle and indulge them. Do you understand? There are so many loyal feelings, they are all thinking about benefits and making their own calculations."
"I understand, but I don't quite understand."
"You just need to remember that your Majesty hates someone to shake his prestige on the grassland, and then shut your damn mouth."