At night, the north wind roared and snowflakes were flying. The crown prince Li Fang, who was in charge of the country again, listened to the movements caused by the wind in the window, and looked at a sketch with the light of the gas lamp.

In this sketch, there are no cities, villages, and no fixed settlements. The various symbols and lines on it represent mountains, rivers, lakes and pastures.

So, can the army attacking in the snow and snow find its target in this area where there are almost no obvious references or roads?

Or, if you fail to kill a tiger, you will suffer instead?

Li Fang fell into deep thought.

For a long time, people have felt that the world is vast and the surroundings are the same, and it is easy to get lost.

Nomadic tribes living in the grassland and desert, their whereabouts are erratic.

If the Central Plains Dynasty sends troops into the grassland and seeks a decisive battle in the desert, it is difficult to find the opponent's main force, because the opponent is also moving, and the troops of each of its own troops will easily get lost.

Therefore, the grasslands and deserts are really the forbidden zones for the people of the Central Plains? As soon as the people of the Central Plains enter, they are blind?

Not so.

Li Fang heard from his father that the reason why people think it is easy to get lost on the grassland is because they are not adapted to this terrain. Those who have lived on the grassland for generations will not be troubled by the problem of "lost".

And in the Central Plains, such as Pengli Lake District, there are also such problems:

The first time a boat ride into the lake, I saw that the water was everywhere, but I knew how to get there?

But fishermen who live in the lake area all year round can come and go freely in the lake, and go wherever they want, making it difficult to get lost.

The reason is very simple: choose the reference object correctly.

The Central Plains are full of mountains, rivers, lakes and hills, and there are a large number of cities, villages, and settlements. The roads formed over the past thousands of years are well-connected, and people are used to such reference objects.

Suddenly, when you arrive at the endless grassland, without those reliable and easy-to-distinguish references, people will naturally get lost.

And in Pengli Lake District, how do fishermen "recognize the way"?

Of course, the small islands and reefs are used as reference objects, and even different flow directions, water-colored waters can also be used as references, and then these reference objects are familiar with them.

Over time, they naturally came and went freely. The children of fishermen learned how to follow people on boats into the lake since childhood.

So, what are the reference objects on the grassland?

There are fewer mountains, that is, rivers, lakes, rolling hills, and various grasslands. How to use these reference objects is an indispensable life skill in grassland life, just like fishermen recognize reference objects on water/sea.

Tribes on the grassland live by chasing water and grass, grazing cattle, sheep and horses.

Cattle, sheep and horses need to eat grass, and the places with the most abundant grass must be filled with water sources, namely rivers and lakes.

People and livestock cannot live without water and pastures, so they cannot live without four seasons of pastures and winter camps in winter.

Therefore, the tribes on the grassland have very regular movement trajectories and approximate ranges of activities throughout the year. The traces left by a large number of cattle and sheep can also indicate the whereabouts of the tribe.

As long as you master these rules and be familiar with the lifestyle on the grassland, you can find your goals in the endless vast avian wilderness.

Li Fang recalled his father's teachings and looked at the sketch in front of him.

The lifestyle of nomadic tribes on the grassland is to change the four seasons and grazing, just as farming has busy farming seasons, grazing also has "busy farming" seasons: summer and autumn.

These two seasons are when cattle, sheep and horses are growing. Tribes are busy dispersing cattle and sheep to eat grass and need to concentrate a large amount of labor to graz. Therefore, under normal circumstances, there will be no big battle before late autumn.

When it comes to autumn and winter, a large number of tribes will go south and spend the winter at the junction of the Central Plains and the grasslands. At this time, it is considered "slack farming".

After the whole autumn feeding, the horses were fat and strong, and the chiefs of each tribe could take their subordinates to ride horses to rob the villages in the border areas of the Central Plains and make a fortune.

After winter, the livestock consumed a lot, lost weight, and the grazing of the new year was about to begin. All tribes had to drive the cattle, sheep and horses they had raised to the seasonal pastures, so they did not care about fighting, so as not to miss the "farming time".

This is the norm of life on the grassland, and now it is winter.

A large number of tribes went south and spent the winter on the Yinshan line, so mountains, large and small, and hilly areas have become excellent places for countless tribes to hide from the wind and snow.

If this area is connected into a line, it will be the "rear" of the defense line of the six towns of Yuan and Wei.

The defense line of the six towns in the Yuan and Wei towns is north of Yinshan, which is backed by mountains, facing grasslands and deserts.

This line of defense is in the direction of the grassland and desert in the north, and the enemy is Rouran, or called Wanli, Lili, and Ruru.

Rouran was the former overlord of the grassland and had always posed a major threat to the Yuan and Wei. When the capital of Wei was still in Heisei and had not yet moved to Luoyang, the six towns north of Heisei were the key border defense areas.

Even later, when Li Fang was born, Rouran was still powerful and at the same time suppressed the East and West Wei.

Forced the East and West Wei to join forces to marry Rouran.

Rouran was very arrogant at that time, but the good times did not last long. A few years later, the Turks of its Forsaken Tribe rebelled and actually overthrew the overlord of the grassland.

Rouran Khan Anan (Yujiulu, also known as Anaru) led his army to fight against the Turks and was defeated and died. Li Fang heard from his father that he was only two years old at that time.

After Anazun's death, there was an internal strife in the country to compete for the position of Khan and was unable to deal with the powerful Turks who seized power.

The Rouran nobles in the eastern part defected to Qi and became subordinates, but wanted to become independent, so they collapsed under the attack of the Turks and Qi.

The Rouran nobles in the western region led their troops to surrender to the Western Wei, but the Western Wei could not withstand the threat of the Turks and handed over the Rouran nobles and their large number of followers to the Turkic envoys and executed them in Chang'an.

So Rouran perished, only about ten years after the previous powerful force of the East and West Wei Dynasty.

Now, the overlord Turks on the grassland have a stronger momentum than Rouran. The defense lines of the six towns that were guarding Rouran in the past have been occupied by the Turks with the drastic changes in the situation in Qi.

According to previous information, every autumn and winter, the eastern Turkic tribes would go south to the six towns to spend the winter and attack the prefectures and counties on the border of Qi.

If the Turkic Khan took over the benefits of the Western Wei/Zhou Kingdom, he would send troops to attack the Shuozhou and Bingzhou areas of Qi Kingdom with the Zhou army, and once went directly outside Jinyang City.

The Turks would also act alone to harass the Hengzhou area of ​​Qi (where the early capital of Pingcheng in the Yuan and Wei dynasties), or break through Juyongguan eastward and enter Youzhou area to rob.

Therefore, since the reign of Qi Lord Gao Yang, Qi State has made several major constructions to build the Great Wall in the Shuo and Hengzhou areas.

These Great Wall defense lines moved hundreds of miles south compared to the original six town defense lines.

It is precisely because of this that the Turkic tribes became increasingly unscrupulous, and they went south to spend the winter in late autumn, and their stationed positions became increasingly south.

Last year, I tentatively attacked Youzhou, but was scared away by the government troops.

Now, if the official army walks north road, leaves Youzhou, and goes west from Northern Yanzhou, passes Hengzhou and enters Shuozhou, and attacks Bingzhou from the north, it faces the greatest threat. In addition to the Qi army stationed along the Great Wall, they are the Turkic troops who go south to spend the winter.

So, are the Turks very powerful?

Li Fang didn't know, but his father said that with the "reference" of Rouran, it can prove that the Turks are not invincible.

Rouran, once a great trouble for the Wei Kingdom, had hundreds of years of operation. Its foundation is solid and its strength is strong, but it can collapse within several years when it was at its peak.

So, why can't the Turks, which have just risen for more than ten years, be beaten to collapse?
Chapter completed!