At noon on June 18, Hu Biao and others came to the Baigou River again; as long as they crossed this river, they would officially enter the territory of the Liao Kingdom and enter the Sixteenth Prefecture of Yanyun.
Fortunately, it seemed that the ever-victorious army in Zhuozhou City behind him could be vaguely felt and had some objections.
Because Yelu Dashi was seriously injured and unable to take charge, the tens of thousands of Liao soldiers originally deployed along the Baigou River have now hurriedly returned to Yanjing City.
In this way, Hu Biao and others did not have to worry about being attacked by Liao soldiers when they crossed the river.
Unfortunately, it is midsummer now, and the Baigou River is in the wet season with the most abundant water in the year.
What's even more terrible is that those Liao soldiers were a little bit disrespectful when they left. They directly burned several pontoon bridges in the river that were easy to build.
Looking at the river water that was rushing down in the river that was now almost a hundred meters wide, everyone suddenly had a headache.
There is no doubt that this is a difficult problem assigned to them by the system.
Otherwise, if the modern plane is from Xiongxian to Tangshan, the distance between the two places is only 300 kilometers by highway.
If there was no difficulty, the system would never give them, and it would take more than half a month to travel.
After a while, the old snake looked at the river in front of him and suggested:
"Lao Hu, there are quite a few large trucks carrying luggage in our team. Without building a bridge, there is no way to get across. We can't even build some rafts to cross the river.
But the amount of work to re-build the bridge would be too large.
When the Song and Liao armies were stationed here, almost all the surrounding wood was destroyed, and the nearest forest had to be moved back ten miles to the outside world.
It will take at least a week with our manpower to wait until enough trees are cut down and then transported back to build the bridge again.
How could we have so much free time after such a long time?
How about we take a look along the river bank and see if we can find some narrow spots in the river that can reduce the amount of work?"
"Okay, let's go up and down the river without stopping at night. Others just take advantage of this time to quickly deal with their thigh wounds, bury pots and make rice, etc."
After thinking for a while, Hu Biao agreed.
So the army, which had been on the road for half a day, stopped and began to bury pots and make rice. Yu Hanfeng and Singer stayed up all night, riding their war horses in two different directions along the river bank in different directions.
After the food was cooked, these people came back again.
Although this period of time was not long, the people who were exploring on war horses had traveled at least twenty miles in both upstream and downstream directions.
It is a pity that during such a process, they did not find any suitable place.
Or to put it another way, the river in some places is indeed slightly narrower, but this also means that the river is deeper and flows faster.
If you build a bridge in this kind of place, the amount of work will be larger and it will take longer.
Faced with the difficult problem of how to cross the river, it finally fell on Hu Biao's head.
Because only Hu Biao is qualified to make some choices and trade-offs.
After hurriedly grabbing a bowl of rice with marinated meat and filling his stomach, Hu Biao started to think hard in his head while smoking a trumpet cigarette.
In the end, it was better to hurry up and cross the river, so as to leave enough time to deal with the difficulties that may arise along the way. Such an idea had the absolute upper hand in his head.
He fiercely spit out the cigarette butt in his mouth far away as if to vent his anger.
Hu Biao cursed: "What the heck! I don't need all those carts. Try to carry as much of the supplies as possible on the empty horses."
War horses can originally swim, so as long as the brothers who can swim carry the rope across the river first, and after temporarily connecting a few ropes connecting the two banks, everyone should be able to hold on to the rope and cross the river."
After hearing such an order, Lao Hei instinctively wanted to object.
In their team, they do have a lot of spare war horses. There are almost more than 500 horses. Almost everyone has a horse ready for war.
But how much supplies can an empty war horse carry after it is loaded with everyone's armor and weapons and while maintaining the necessary mobility?
Once we cross the river, we are immediately in enemy-occupied territory.
Without enough baggage, it must be quite difficult to supply supplies in an unfamiliar area, and I really feel a little worried.
I just thought that if those big cars don't give up, there is no other better way.
In the end, he could only keep his mouth shut and acquiesced to Hu Biao's decision.
In the following time, a few men with good water skills crossed the river very easily holding some wood. They tied a total of three ropes to the remaining pontoon wooden piles at both ends, completing the construction of the ropes.
Relying on these three ropes, all the troops and horses crossed the Baigou River at around five o'clock in the afternoon.
However, seeing that the supplies suddenly decreased a lot, with at most only one-fifth of the previous supply reserves, a shadow immediately fell over the hearts of Hu Biao and everyone else.
In my heart, I felt a little panicked for no reason.
****
After nightfall, piles of bonfires were lit, which immediately warmed the hearts of everyone who had been on the road for a day.
I just thought about the food and fodder they carried, which was decreasing at a speed visible to the naked eye every day, and that they were still quite far away from their destination, and all the above troubles.
For a time, the atmosphere in the entire Xuange camp became a little depressed.
The time at this moment is already June 21st, which means that two days and two nights have passed since Hu Biao and the others crossed the Baigou River.
There are only nine days left before the deadline to reach Pingzhou.
Don't forget that two days have passed. Hu Biao and the others have not traveled too far since they entered the Sixteenth Prefecture of Yanyun.
They were still in Zhuozhou, and later had to pass through Youzhou, Jizhou, Jingzhou and other places before they could reach Pingzhou where the mission required.
The reason for this is because there are too many places where they need to make detours along the way.
Ever since Guo Yaoshi, the ever-victorious army, rebelled against his will, in order to prevent the Liao soldiers from taking action against him in advance, some sentries were set up at many important places outside Zhuozhou City.
Hu Biao and others naturally did not want to know where they were, and they caused more trouble after being discovered.
Therefore, under the leadership of the guide Qian Fu, we continued to take detours. As a result, we went around and around. Although we successfully bypassed the checkpoints, the efficiency of the journey was not very good.
As for tonight, the place where they camped was a deserted village.
According to Qian Fu's original statement, this village called Zhangjiacun had at least a population of more than 200 people, most of whom were northern Han Chinese named Zhang.
But after arriving here today, in addition to hundreds of corpses that had long since rotted, there was only one man who was stunned and couldn't even ask a word for a long time.
Judging from various traces, it was obvious that he had been slaughtered just a few days ago.
In addition, everything edible in the village, whether it was grain, livestock, chickens or ducks, was all robbed, and Xuange camp did not even have to replenish any grain or grass.
Instead, Hu Biao thought that the Han people in the north were also Han people.
After shouting to everyone to dig a big pit and bury more than a hundred corpses together, everyone became more and more exhausted.
Jiu, who was standing guard in front of a fire, now saw that his morale was a little low. Although he was also very depressed in his heart, he also knew that he could never go on like this.
We must do something to improve everyone's morale.
As for how to improve, let's forget about the drama "The White-Haired Girl".
This thing has been performed for so many consecutive performances, not to mention that Ali, Cang Guan and others were almost vomiting while watching it; but if he did not perform "White-Haired Girl", Hu Biao also thought of another good one
way.
After he stood up, he spoke loudly to Yue Fei, who was currently in front of another fire behind him, looking at the Song Dynasty edition of "Ji Xiao Xin Shu", who was quite entranced.
With his mouth, he issued his own invitation:
"Yue Dutou, tonight is boring anyway, how about we compare notes on marksmanship~"
Upon hearing this, everyone immediately became excited...
