On the channel of the Furjaha River, the water has completely frozen. There is heavy snow in the sky, and the howling north wind blows along the northern foot of the Sikhet Mountain. The temperature at this time has reached minus 30 degrees, and the oncoming wind is blowing.
The cold wind can choke people to the point of being breathless.
At this time, Serdan was leading a reconnaissance team, marching hard in the valley of the Furjaha River. Their team had been walking for eleven days since their departure, and their goal was to investigate the northwest direction.
In the area around Fuldan City. In order to avoid getting lost, Serdan led his small team along the mountain roads on both sides of the Fuljaha Valley all the way north, over the mountains and ridges.
On the snow-capped hills, the leaves have long since fallen bare. If you stand at a slightly higher place on a sunny day and there is no obstruction in front of you, you can see dozens of miles at a glance.
Zhao Xin slapped his head and opened his mouth. After the original investigation order was issued, Serdan found Zhao Xin. He said that the land route from Beihai Town to Hunchun was at least a thousand miles, and it was impossible to walk in this kind of weather.
Upon hearing this, Zhao Xin realized that he had made a common sense mistake again, always unconsciously using the traffic from another time and space to test ancient maps, so he decided to only investigate Fuldan City.
Serdan led a maroon Mongolian horse, clearing a path through the waist-deep snow. The team members behind him led two brown heavy-duty draft horses and a dozen Mongolian horses, and lined up behind him.
They formed a straight line, and the four dogs followed closely behind the queue.
Worried about encountering wolves in the wild, their eleven-man team carried 6,600 rounds of rifle ammunition, 3,000 rounds of machine gun ammunition and a Negev light machine gun; Zhao Xin gave the ammunition based on three base numbers.
In addition, they distributed enough dry food for two months, animal fats, extra cold-proof clothing, sleeping bags, tents, axes, oil, and portable diesel heating stoves.
Seldan never thought that he would be equipped with so many things when going out in winter. After putting on goggles, scarves, warm socks and thick white cold-proof clothes, except that it was inconvenient to shoot arrows, he didn't feel cold at all, especially on his feet.
A pair of off-white cold-proof boots are warmer than animal skin boots stuffed with urala grass.
However, one advantage of traveling in this kind of weather is that you will not encounter local border residents. Once the snow stops and the weather clears up, the border residents who hunt mink will go out in groups on horse-drawn sledges or dog-drawn sledges.
, looking for traces of martens in the pine forests. The border residents relied on catching them in winter to pay the head tax to the government every year.
Serdan took off his goggles and looked at the sky, and then shouted loudly to the people behind him: "Climb over the hill in front and find a place to camp." After hearing this, the soldiers behind him conveyed the message back one after another.
Two hours later, the team arrived at the leeward spot under a large rock. Except for the two sentries, the others tied their horses and took the logging ax from the horse's back. They began to cut wood around and build a wind shelter fence. Waiting for the fence
After setting up, the ground had to be cleaned and the tent set up. When the bonfire was lit and the surroundings became a little warm, everyone began to heat dry food, toast socks and feed the horses by the fire.
When horses perform heavy work in extremely cold weather, they need to supplement at least 50g-60g of salt every day. Although soybean nutrition seems to be comprehensive and rich, horses eating too much can cause bloating and even poisoning.
If the rescue is not timely, it will die quickly. Moreover, after the horse eats raw soybeans, it needs to strictly control its drinking water. If it drinks too much water, it can easily cause acute gastric dilation, leading to gastric rupture and death.
At nightfall, the oiled wood made a "cracking" sound in the bonfire. After eating the dry food, most of the soldiers got into the tents and slept. Serdan himself stayed in front of the bonfire, smoking a dry pipe.
Night vigil. At this time, apart from the sound of wind, there was only the howling of wolves in the distance. The soldiers in the reconnaissance team had long been accustomed to hearing this sound, and it did not affect their sleep at all.
Serdan counted the days and found that today is the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, and the Chinese New Year will be the day after tomorrow. At the current marching speed, he will not even be able to return to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month.
I don’t know how long it took, but suddenly, a dozen horses began to feel uneasy. They shook their heads from side to side, stamped their hooves on the spot, and stuck their erect ears forward. The hearing and smell of horses are much sharper than humans.
As a former hunter, Cerdan immediately understood something was wrong from the horse's abnormality!
"Get up, there's a wolf!"
With Serdan's low shout, the soldiers in the tent were awakened.
Dots of green fluorescence were swimming on the snow dozens of meters away. Serdan knew that the wolves did not dare to approach because of the bonfire in the camp.
As the soldiers emerged from the tents one by one, those green fluorescent lights were still not far away. Several wolves took small steps and ran criss-cross in front of the camp along the diagonal. Perhaps they knew that there were many people here, and the cunning
The wolves ran almost without making any noise, and they acted as if they were not targeting the reconnaissance team; but Serdan knew that the wolves were using this method to complete the encirclement.
"Machine gun ready." As soon as Serdan finished speaking, a soldier quickly loaded the drum and pulled the gun bolt.
Serdan no longer needed a bow and arrow. He took the rifle handed over by his subordinates and formed a fan shape with the others behind the campfire. The two soldiers also moved their horses under the rocks behind the tent.
Serdan has been a hunter for so many years, but he has never seen dozens of wolves appear at the same time. He tried to calm himself down, stared at the green fluorescence and estimated that there were probably more than twenty wolves in this pack.
Now, the wolves and the crowd are facing each other in a fan shape, with a bonfire in the middle. The wolves may have felt the danger of the weapons in the hands of the people opposite, so they did not dare to cross the fire for the time being. A dozen wolves were scattered in front of the crowd.
Ten meters away, others were slightly further away, running back and forth with their tails drooped, as if looking for fighter planes.
"Don't shoot, take your fingers off the trigger. Stand up, don't squat!"
Because of Serdan's order, the nervous soldiers stood up one after another, holding rifles, and stood facing the wolves. Standing facing the wolves is a kind of oppression to the wolves. During the tense confrontation, Serdan kept trying to find the head.
The wolf was nowhere to be found in the pitch black night.
The two sides were in a stalemate like this. The wolves neither attacked nor retreated. Time passed by minute by second, and the night became darker and darker. No one knew how long this anxious situation would continue.
Finally, a soldier couldn't bear it anymore. He unconsciously turned off the safety and pulled the trigger on the gray wolf at the front. The crisp sound of gunfire instantly tore through the silence in the wilderness.
The gray wolf who was shot had a big hole in his head. He didn't even have time to scream and fell to the snow. The wolves immediately became restless, as if they didn't expect the weapons in human hands to be so powerful.
.
Before Serdan had time to scold the soldier who opened fire without authorization, other soldiers had already turned off the safety and sprayed bullets at the wolves with their rifles.
The wolves finally began to attack. Facing the humans with live ammunition, they did not swarm forward, but attacked from the left and right wings. Serdan understood that the target of the wolves was actually the horse.
"Protect the horse! Don't let the fire go out!"
The sound of bursts from the light machine gun sounded, and the soldiers operating the machine guns fired bursts to stop the wolves from charging towards the horses. However, these wolves were extremely flexible in their movements and the impact speed was very fast, so every time a wolf was killed, at least two or three bursts were required.
"Cover each other and load bullets." Serdan never started to fight. He knew that once there was a space for everyone to load bullets together, the wolves would swarm up and it would be too late at that time.
In the interplay of light and shadow, a figure that was obviously larger than the other wolves jumped out of the darkness and rushed diagonally towards Seldan from the right.
"The alpha wolf!"
In the flash of lightning, he turned around quickly and fired two shots at the alpha wolf.
Late at night on the 29th day of the twelfth lunar month, at the gate of Tianning Temple outside Yangzhou City. Today was the day agreed with Zhao Xin to meet. Lu Shoushan and Xu Dayong arrived here at the second moment. The two wore cotton hats and held their hands in their hands.
In my sleeves, I stamped my feet on the bridge in front of Tianning Temple, trying to drive away the cold.
Xu Dayong rushed back from Henan just the day before yesterday. What he saw and heard along the way shocked even a person who had experienced the great disaster. He didn't understand what happened to the Qing Dynasty. The salt merchants in Yangzhou City
Why can't you spend some money to help the victims of the disaster when you spend all your time drinking, arrogant and extravagant?
In particular, he saw the tragic scene in Shangqiu where a dozen victims froze to death in order to rush to the porridge factory to beg for food before dawn, and were stripped of their clothes by the victims after they died. Since you can cook porridge for relief, why can't you donate more?
What about two pieces of clothing?
Xu Dayong was thinking wildly while staring at the door of Tianning Temple. After a long time, his eyes suddenly blurred, and a figure suddenly appeared a few meters away.
Lu Shoushan was looking away at this time. Xu Da raised his hand and rubbed his eyes vigorously to make sure that his eyesight was not blurred. He quickly patted Lu Shoushan. Only when he and Lu Shoushan took two steps closer could he see clearly.
The person is really Zhao Xin.
"Sir, you are really here!" Xu Dayong said in surprise.
"Shh." Zhao Xin made a silent gesture, motioning the two of them to follow him into the shadows under the temple wall, and asked in a low voice: "How long have you been here?"
"Sir, we'll be waiting here after midnight."
"How is the situation in Henan?"
"I came back from Henan just yesterday. You are right. Twenty counties were affected by the disaster. It's so tragic!"
Zhao Xindao: "It will be even worse in the spring next year. You should be prepared."
Xu Dayong explained the matter between Wang Changsheng and Luo Jiao again. After hearing this, Zhao Xin praised: "Well done! Let Wang Changsheng continue to maintain this line. Is the money still enough?"
Lu Shoushan said: "I have discussed with Dayong and want to buy some coastal wasteland in the Sheyang Lake area east of Funing. Firstly, it is relatively close to Henan, and we can recruit people from Henan in the name of reclaiming wasteland; secondly, it is relatively close to Henan.
You can get there from Xuzhou by walking along the canal to the Wusha River, and it’s very convenient to take the waterway.”
Zhao Xin nodded and said: "You two can discuss this matter. I just want a steady stream of people." After saying that, he took out a large kraft paper envelope from his backpack and handed it to Lu Shoushan. "This is the fifteenth
Ten thousand taels of silver notes. You can use it to buy land and a boat first. The sailor can ask Wang Changsheng to find someone from Luo Jiao."
He collected these banknotes from the house of salt merchant Wang Jinglong. He, Liu Sheng, and Wu Siyu made a careful inventory of all the things they had looted from the Wang family afterwards. There were a total of 300,000 taels of banknotes and 200,000 taels of banknotes.
cash. In addition, there are a large number of land deeds and loan IOUs. Now that the Wang family has lost these IOUs, those who borrowed money are relieved because they don't have to pay them back at all.
After Lu Shoushan took the banknote, he said: "Sir, I'm old now, and no one is doing business now. Land and ship affairs can't be done until the fifteenth day of the first lunar month."
Zhao Xin smiled and said in a low voice: "Let's have a good time this New Year first." But then his face changed and he warned again: "Be careful and don't show off."
"Don't worry, Sir." Lu and Xu clasped their fists and bowed in salute. When they stood up and looked again, Zhao Xin had disappeared.
Lu Shoushan and Xu Dayong had their mouths wide open and their chins wanted to be dragged to the ground. They looked shocked! They looked at each other, hurriedly knelt on the ground in the night, and kowtowed three times to where Zhao Xin was standing just now.
Then he got up and left quietly
The day finally dawned, and the reconnaissance team, which had been fighting fiercely with the wolves all night, sat in front of the campfire exhausted, biting the dry food in their hands numbly. Among the bullet casings on the ground, the huge wolf king had been frozen solid.
If this had happened before, Seldan would have desperately taken off the wolf skin; but now, he was so tired that he no longer had the energy to even take a look. After everyone ate dry food, they all got into their sleeping bags to rest until noon.
When I arrived, I packed up my things and continued on my way.
The atmosphere of this Lunar New Year festival in Beihai Town is very peaceful. Like last year, refugees from the island country braved the snow to go up the mountain to collect pine branches and hang them on the doors of their homes to welcome the New Year.
In order to avoid causing unrest prematurely, before Zhao Xin left, he specifically told Chen Qingsong and Liu Sheng not to issue a mobilization order until the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. Anyway, the Qing army would not be able to fight this season.
Zhao Xin, who is in another time and space, is running around all over the world every day. He is doing everything possible to purchase supplies and prepare for the war in the coming year. Andrew and the official wearing glasses, because of what Zhao Xin brought
Make a lot of money from large orders.
The only ones who are not used to the climate of Beihai Town are girls like Tang Xiao and others who have just arrived in Beihai Town. Even if the fire in the wood carving is burning brightly and the room is very warm, they still have to go out, so most of the girls
They both had frostbite on their hands; the Ertang sisters were so cold that they cried because of the cold wind outside. After Liu Siting heard about it, she sent them frostbite ointment and asked the cafeteria to cook a large pot of hot and sour soup for them.
The girls sent it.
Tang Xiao and the girls who were the best at writing calligraphy wrote more than a dozen Spring Festival couplets. In addition to giving them to the nine-member group at the education center, Zhao Xin and others also posted them on the offices and doors of their residences.
The Spring Festival couplets at the door of Shen Jingdan's house were written by him at the request of Wu Xianhou: "The pines and cypresses are luxuriant every year, and the chunxuan is blooming in the world." The horizontal line is "Auspicious place and auspicious birth." The stove in his house was burning brightly, and Oginoto held his newborn son in his arms.
While breastfeeding, Shen Xuan pouted and helped wash the diaper while complaining in her heart: "Damn Zhao Xin, stinky Zhao Xin! He disappeared again."
Wu Xianhou and Wu Xianning have been in the hospital since the second day after arriving in Beihai Town. They followed Hong Tao to learn how to read image films and analyze the condition. The two were addicted to the use of X-ray and ultrasound equipment, and they also learned about
I was amazed by the efficacy of penicillin and streptomycin! Wu Xianhou even thought that he must have his father come over next year to take a look.
The two "magic sticks" Markarius and Ferapontov returned to their homes every night and secretly recorded everything they saw and heard during the day; then they secretly stuffed the sheets of paper into
In the cracks in the wood under the bed. Little did they know that all their actions were under the close surveillance of Beihai Town.
The two expressed great joyful anticipation for the Chinese Lunar New Year. Markarius, who once had the experience of being a religious missionary in Beijing, knew that whenever the Lunar New Year comes, the dishes on the Chinese dining table will change.
It will be very rich.
The teachers of the Nine-member Regiment, except for Fang Hua who is still busy in the military workshop, are also temporarily free due to the Chinese New Year. Apart from going to the big cafeteria to eat every day, they sit around Lao You's room and chat at other times.
, gossiping about all the gossip about Beihai Town and Zhao Xin.
Liu Sheng and Wang Yuanfang have been busy formulating recruitment and training plans after the New Year every day during this period. They plan to allocate a platoon from the existing company to form a new recruit training team. In addition, they also need to train artillery
, machine gunner; otherwise it will not be enough to support the defense system of Fuldan City.
Deng Fei and Ding Guofeng took Katsu Kaishu and Jiuzang back and forth between Ishinomaki Port and Beihai Town. Finally, before the Spring Festival, they took away 18,000 refugees from the island country and 200 strong people from the Ezo area.
A strong Ainu.
The island country will soon enter the fifth year of Tenmei. The "Tenmei Famine" that has lasted for a year and a half shows no sign of relief, and the famine is getting worse. The Hachinohe Domain (20,000 stone high) in the Mutsu Aomori area alone is hungry.
Thirty thousand people died. From Mutsu to Edo, and from Edo to Osaka, thousands of people starved to death on the streets every day and were later abandoned in ravines outside the city.
Many refugees have heard that there is a way to survive in Sendai Domain, so the number of refugees gathered under Aoba Castle has reached tens of thousands, and the refugees outside Ishinomaki Town have gathered in huge crowds. The entire Sendai Domain was destroyed by the swarm of refugees.
Worried, the elder Ishikawa Murafumi often scolded Tang Yi when he was alone.
In the autumn of this year, the father and son of the shogunate, Nakatanuma Yiji and his son, coveted the family tree of a lower-level samurai. They lied about seeking an official position for the other party, and then defrauded him of the original family tree. The lower-level samurai realized that he had been deceived and tried to ask for it again and again.
He failed to return. The angry samurai sneaked into a meeting attended by Tanuma and his son. During the meeting, he suddenly drew a sword and stabbed Tanuma Eiji. However, he was stopped by his son Tanuma Eiji. In the end, the samurai killed Tanuma Eiji.
Tanuma, who lost his only son because of greed, is becoming increasingly depressed, and the death knell of Tanuma's cabinet will soon sound.
In Jilin City, thousands of miles southwest of Beihai Town, in an ordinary house, fifteen-year-old Wang Zhenyi put down the brush in her hand and smiled with satisfaction.
On the rice paper on the table, a seven-character poem has just been written.
"Which of the people in the picture can be the same? The husband's ambition is the talent's breast. The first believer is a man and a woman. Who says that children are not heroes?"