Chapter 838 Subtle Changes

Chapter 838 Subtle Changes

Chapter 838 Subtle Changes

As soon as the sky was getting light, the valley became lively.

People kept coming from all directions and sent groups of horses to the gathering place.

"The horses are well cared for. They were almost foaming at the mouth," said Jotan, picking up various horse tackles from the ground.

"You only know how to run, but you don't know the hardship of the horse." The man who sent the horse said, stroking the horse's head lovingly.

The horse turned its head and nuzzled him gently.

Qiao Tan looked a little jealous and cursed, "I got up so many times in the middle of the night to feed you horse feed, and now you don't remember me, you are such a beast."

The shepherd laughed and turned away.

Herds of horses came from afar, bringing over horses that had been roughly fed for a day or two, and taking away horses that had been running for a long time and were exhausted.

This is how long-distance raids work. A single horse can't cover a long distance. Even with two horses, the distance covered on the first day and the second day is very different, not to mention the third and fourth days.

Strictly speaking, for a horse team like theirs carrying a large amount of luggage, three horses per person are not enough. It would be better to have five horses, or carry less luggage.

The officers stood somewhere else and talked in low voices.

This place is past Xinping and only about sixty or seventy miles away from Pingcheng.

Since yesterday, they have encountered more and more resistance, and have been chased and intercepted everywhere. As a last resort, the 8,000 cavalry were divided into three groups, each with a commander, to disperse and harass.

There is only one mission: to create chaos.

It is difficult to win a head-on confrontation with the enemy.

This is not an empty prairie with no one around, but an area suitable for grazing and farming with villages, forts and cities everywhere. The whereabouts cannot be kept secret, and it is difficult to achieve surprise except at the beginning.

Therefore, they were now facing a large number of enemy troops. The exact number was unknown, but there were definitely more than 10,000 cavalry, and there must be a large number of infantrymen waiting in battle array in the cities and villages. If we were optimistic, we might have tied down 30,000 to 40,000 people.

Most importantly, create chaos and panic, like what they are about to do…

After changing the horses, Yin Xi led the team personally, and three thousand people mounted their horses and rushed out.

The grassland in summer is extremely beautiful. When running across the wide and flat river valley, the cool breeze and the fragrance of the grass make people want to stop and quietly appreciate the beauty of nature.

However, the fighting among humans soon destroyed this tranquility and beauty.

Drums sounded in the manor, and the young men retreated behind the thin earth wall, drew their bows and arrows, and nervously looked at the cavalry coming from afar.

It’s against Tiangang!
In the past, only they rode southward, and the Jin people hid behind the wall and waited for them. But now they have deployed everyone, they are on guard, and the Jin people are attacking everywhere.

There were several messengers in the village. When they saw the Jin cavalry from afar, they ran away and rushed to their own cavalry station to report the whereabouts of the Jin army.

Yin Xi was unable to stop them, so he led his troops around the manor and found no loopholes to escape, so he sent someone to shoot a letter up and rode away.

The letter was quickly picked up and handed in.

The old man, who was about fifty years old, opened the book and read it, and remained silent for a long time.

The others looked at him quietly without urging him.

After a long while, the old man handed the letter to the others and sighed, "In the past, Wang Kuxian lived in Pingcheng, and he and Tuoba Liwei were both conferred titles by the Central Dynasty. One was the 'Jin Wuhuan Guiyi Marquis', and the other was the 'Jin Xianbei Guiyi Marquis'. The two swore an oath to help each other. At that time, the status of Pingcheng Wuhuan and Shengle Xianbei was equal..."

"However, due to the unfilial descendants, the golden seal conferred by the Jin court was snatched away. The descendants of Kuxian became like slaves of the Tuoba clan, the power of the Wuhuan clan declined, and even the old site of Pingcheng was moved to a large number of Xianbei tribes. Since then, the Tuoba clan has been conferred the title of Great Khan and Duke of Dai, and has become the master of the grassland..."

Everyone was a little confused. Why were they talking about these old almanacs at this time?
During the Later Han Dynasty, the Wuhuan migrated to various places and could be seen everywhere from the northeast to the northwest. Only Dingxiang and other places were directly controlled by the Han court and did not allow the Wuhuan to migrate in.

Therefore, when the Tuoba Xianbei migrated south and west, they took a fancy to the counties and prefectures that were not occupied by the Wuhuan tribe and flocked in. When the Han court was forced to relocate and abandon the land, these counties and prefectures became a paradise for the Xianbei people.

From then on, the Xianbei in Shengle and the Wuhuan in Pingcheng formed an alliance.

But the alliance was destined to break up. By now, the Wuhuan people had become subordinates of the Xianbei people. This was what the old man lamented.

"Don't look at me." The old man smiled and said, "In Pingcheng, the Xianbei are a minority, and the Wuhuan are the majority. But we have to wait and see what happens."

"Sir, do you want to expel the Xianbei?" someone asked subconsciously.

The old man shook his head and said, "In fact, if we really want to talk about it, there is no such thing as Xianbei, Wuhuan, or Xiongnu. For example, the Tiele Xiongnu who were stationed in Yanmen back then had half of the Wuhuan blood, but they called themselves Xiongnu, and now they call themselves Xianbei, and the 'Dugu tribe'. I can't tell the difference between bloodlines, and neither can you. The only ones who can really tell the difference are—"

The old man pointed to the millet fields, hemp fields, mulberry forests, and orchards outside the manor wall and said, "It's just a matter of how we make a living. In the past, the suspicion between the old and the new in Shengle was certainly due to lineage and family disputes, but wasn't the biggest reason that the old nobles didn't like the way we make a living?"

"Then why not side with Madam Qi? She promised to make use of newcomers." Someone asked. "King Liang of the Jin Dynasty led his army northward and relied on the Jin court for support. Isn't that better than relying on Madam Qi? The Jin court is the biggest newcomer." The old man laughed.

These words shocked everyone.

Since the reign of Emperor Hui of Jin, due to the successive famines and wars in Bingzhou, a large number of people from Jin went north to the grasslands to seek survival. The more they came into contact with the people of Jin, the more they looked down on the rustic nomadic Xianbei. Although they were also mainly nomadic decades or hundreds of years earlier, didn't they enter the semi-agricultural and semi-pastoral state earlier than the Xianbei?

If the Xianbei wanted to develop and grow stronger, they had to move south, so they had to make use of the large number of Wuhuan people in the Pingcheng area. This would of course cause dissatisfaction among the nobles of the western tribes, and the dispute between the new and the old was an unavoidable topic.

Madam Wang was born into the Guangning Wang family, a descendant of the Wuhuan noble family. Although she was fighting for revenge for her old party member Tuoba Yulu and supporting Yulu's son Shiyijian to come to power, she now had many choices because she had received direct help from the Jin court.

The simplest way is to form a political group with new people as the leader and old people as the subordinates, with Pingcheng as the base. As for whether this newly formed force is led by Daijun Wang Feng or Tuoba Shiyijian, it doesn't matter.

Of course, the latter is better and can win over the Tuoba Xianbei forces as much as possible.

After all, the Western leaders saw the Wuhuan as Jin people, but the Jin people saw them more like Hu people. The Wuhuan people actually did not really want to leave the Dai alliance. It would be best if everyone could live together and have the newcomers become the dominant force in politics.

"Don't spread the letter to others. Just guard the door and observe secretly." The old man finally said, "I think the soldiers from the Eastern Expedition will be back soon."

******
Tuoba He is really in a dilemma now.

He received news this morning that Helan Aitou led 30,000 cavalrymen eastward, marching along the northern foothills of Yinshan Mountain. He defeated two small tribes in succession and recruited more than ten major families to surrender. His momentum was growing.

Messengers were sent from the Dongmugen Mountain direction one after another, requesting that the young and strong men who were recruited to go south be taken away to resist the enemy.

Tuoba Hena did not agree, but did not refuse directly either. Instead, he patiently persuaded people repeatedly, but few people listened.

It’s not their fault.

You said you wanted to resist the Jin army. Well, we have conscripted a group of strong men to serve as your soldiers, and sent some old, weak, women and children to drive cattle and sheep to follow the army and provide you with supplies.

But now the situation has changed.

Helan Aitou knew that fighting had broken out in the south and that fighting was also very fierce in the east, so he chose the right moment and selected 30,000 elite troops from each tribe and rushed over to attack. What do you want us to do?
Being surrounded by enemies on three sides, namely the south, east and west, with troops divided everywhere and wars to be fought everywhere, this is the biggest dilemma, and it can even be said to be a desperate situation.

If it was an external enemy, it would be fine. If we can't defeat them, we won't surrender or even stab each other. But now it's a typical civil war.

To the tribal leaders, joining Tuoba Yihuai or Shiyijian was not unacceptable, but this was the most fatal point.

Once they are desperate and have figured it out, the old party will send envoys to Shengle to pay tribute, and the new party will go south to Xingbei to beg for surrender. The Tuoba Alliance will evolve into two groups, Yihuai and Shiyijian, and He Li and he will inevitably be eliminated.

If that time came, they would probably have no choice but to flee eastward to Ruyuan, where there were still a few small tribes that firmly supported them, and with the support of the Yuwen clan, they might be able to get a chance to breathe. But to be honest, that would be the end of their lives. If Yihuai and Shiyijian did not come up with a big trick, He Li and him would definitely have no chance to restore their country, and would most likely be annexed by the Yuwen clan in the end.

Disaster!Disaster!Disaster!
Tuoba Hena paced back and forth anxiously in the mansion, unable to make up his mind.

At dusk, a servant suddenly came in and reported in a low voice: "Hegushi led his people westward and went to the Nuozhen River."

"What?!" Tuoba He was shocked.

Last year, the Hegut tribe was ordered to travel east to attack the Guangning Wang family. There were losses, but they were not great.

We lost a lot of people in April this year, and we returned to the grassland more than a hundred miles west of Dongmugen Mountain a while ago to recuperate.

Tuoba He had no idea that they could not offer much to compensate the Hegu tribe. They might be resentful, but why did they suddenly rebel and join Tuoba Yihuai?
When he thought about the fact that more and more tribes in the south were defecting to Shiyijian under the pressure of the Jin army, Tuoba He felt a chill.

I don't know how this battle turned out like this.

In his expectation, they should gather elite troops from various units and fight bloody battles with enemies including the thief Shao.

Even if he fails in the end, he will not lose his courage and will always have a heroic spirit in his heart.

But how did it become like this?

You fought a military war with Shao, and Shao fought a political war with you. As the battles went on, you became deserted by your friends and relatives...

"Push the east again, it's time to return." After hesitating for a long time, Tuoba Hena said: "Conscript another group of soldiers and I will personally lead the troops to the north to repel Helan Aitou first."

Vaguely, he seemed to have a sense of familiarity.

This is what my mother seemed to have said when she led He Li on the Eastern Expedition: first repel the enemy along the way, and then concentrate on the decisive battle with the Shao bandit.

But now they have not been able to completely defeat the Jin army in the east, and Helan Ai's 30,000 elite cavalry have arrived from the west. They need to repel this group first to prevent Tuoba Yihuai from continuing to poach the enemy before they can concentrate on dealing with the thief Shao.

The more we fight, the more enemies there are, and the fewer of us there are...

(Third update in the evening, last day for double monthly votes, vote quickly, thanks.)
(End of this chapter)