Sanchuan and Qinling are bordering each other, but in the past, there was no specific dividing line between the two. However, over the years, the two sides gradually formed a tacit understanding that the eastern mountains of Qinling should be used as the dividing line between the two places.
"Note: The Qinling Mountains mentioned here refer to the Guanzhong Qinling Mountains in the narrowest sense, and are not the Qinling Mountains in the broad sense, that is to say, they do not include Huashan Mountain, Kuzong Mountain, Xiong'er Mountain, Xiaoshan Mountain, etc."
To be precise, the current boundary between Sanchuan County and Qin State is Huashan Mountain, also known as Taishan Mountain, Taihua Mountain, etc.
Huashan Mountain is connected to the Qinling Mountains in the south and overlooks the Huangwei River in the north. It has many strange peaks and rocks. It is logically a must-win area. However, in the concept of the Sanchuan nomads, there is no concept of "every inch of land must be fought over", so the Sanchuan people are very worried.
Stay away from these mountains, which are not conducive to grazing.
Especially Huayin, literally means the northern part of Huashan Mountain. It is the land blocked from the sun by Huashan Mountain. Therefore, it is very barren, wet and muddy, and inaccessible. People from Sanchuan hardly come here to graze, so it is still preserved here.
It bears the traces left by the ancestors of the Zhao family of Wei State for hundreds of years.
But in the south of Huashan Mountain, also known as Huayang, on that fertile land with sufficient sunshine and full of pasture, it is one of the natural pastures that the Jie tribe relies on for survival.
If the Qin army really wants to attack the Jie tribe, then the place where the former will attack is Huayang.
On October 17, Zhao Hongrun and Lintao lord Wei Ji, Lu Balong and Wei Jiao and other clan guards rode to the Huayang area.
Don't even think about crossing Huashan Mountain, because the mountains in the Qinling Mountains and Huashan Mountains are not comparable to those in Wei State. In front of the towering Huashan Mountain, Anling and Yanling in Wei State are nothing more than small hillsides.
, just short hills.
In order to save time, Zhao Hongrun chose a more adventurous route, bypassing the mountain range from the west of Huashan, passing through the slit between Huashan and Qinling, and arriving at Huayang.
It is said to be a slit, but in fact, the gap between Qinling Mountains and Huashan Mountains is enough to be called a plain. However, it is currently the battlefield where the Qin army and the Jie tribe are fighting, so if you want to pass through here,
The risk is very high.
Fortunately, their team's goal was small, and the Qin people's attention should be focused on the Jie tribe at the moment, so the journey was uneventful. Not a single person was seen during the journey of more than a hundred miles.
But when Zhao Hongrun and his party came to Huayang, the situation was completely different.
First, they saw a group of camps stretching for dozens of miles on the plain near the Qinling Mountains. Zhao Hongrun suspected that these were probably the main camps of the Qin army.
However, he did not dare to get close. After all, the Qin army had chariots and cavalry, and there were only eight or nine people in their group. If the Qin army were alerted, they would not even have a chance to escape.
Therefore, Zhao Hongrun suppressed his desire to observe the main camp of the Qin army up close and drove his war horse to the southeast at a fast speed, because in the southeast, that was where the Jie tribe was located.
On the way, Zhao Hongrun accidentally encountered a cavalry duel outside the wilderness. On one side were cavalry in dark black armor, about twenty or so; on the other side were cavalry in sheepskin coats, about twenty or thirty people.
about.
Judging from the number of people on both sides, Zhao Hongrun believed that these two groups of cavalry should be Qin army scouts and Jie clan sentries that they happened to encounter in the wild.
He originally wanted to stop and observe the two groups of cavalry fighting each other, but the two groups of knights took out their horns in unison and began to call for friends and friendly forces.
Not wanting to be implicated or accidentally hurt, Zhao Hongrun and his party left quickly.
However, before they could run a few miles, they ran into a group of Jie Clan sentinels who came to support them, and were surrounded by them.
Of course, Zhao Hongrun and his party would not choose to resist. After all, in front of them were nearly a hundred Jie clan sentry riders. They were prairie warriors whose proficiency in bow and horse was no less than that of the Korean cavalry.
As a result, Zhao Hongrun and his party gave up their resistance. Wei Jiao, the Zongwei chief, took out the flag of Wei from his horse's bag without saying a word and held it high above his head. Lu Balong also invariably took out the flag of the Sichuan-Luo Alliance.
Seeing these two flags, the Jie clan sentry cavalry lifted their attack posture. Immediately, a centurion leading the team came to Zhao Hongrun and others with some vigilance, and asked in the Sheng language why Zhao Hongrun and others were here.
Purpose, and gesturing while speaking, may be because these Wei people may not understand the Yi language.
Facts have proved that the centurion was overly worried, because in Zhao Hongrun's team, Zhao Hongrun and Lu Balong were both proficient in the Sheang language, and even the clan guards could speak a few words in the standard Shen language, such as
Say "Hello", "We are not enemies", etc.
After the two sides revealed their identities to each other, the centurion of the Jie tribe's sentinels told Zhao Hongrun and others that they were currently at war with the Qin people, except for the one that Zhao Hongrun knew - that is, when all 40,000 slave soldiers were killed
Apart from that battle, the Qin people and the Jie people had actually fought against each other more than a dozen times.
Of course, these dozen or so confrontations refer to relying on the mobility of the Jie tribe's sentinel cavalry to harass and attack the Qin camp.
As for the frontal battlefield, the Jie tribe, which had lost more than 40,000 slaves a while ago, did not have the confidence to allow its warriors to fight the Qin army regardless of casualties.
Since he was rushing to provide support, the centurion did not chat with Zhao Hongrun and others for long. After pointing out the location of their Jie tribe, he hurriedly left with his warriors.
"Your Highness, are you going to the Jie tribe's tribe?" Lu Balong asked Zhao Hongrun after the team of Jie tribe sentries left.
To be honest, Zhao Hongrun actually didn't want to go to the Jie tribe. Even after the "Battle of Sanchuan", the relationship between the Jie tribe and the Wei people warmed up. But in the end, this relationship was still just a paid cooperation on the premise of non-interference.
Indicates that the two positions are consistent.
However, now that we have arrived at the territory of the Jie tribe, it would be unreasonable not to pay a visit to the owner here.
However, if you go, safety is another problem. After all, there are many people among the Jie people who are still hostile to Wei.
After thinking about it, Zhao Hongrun still shook his head and refused: "Forget it, I have already said hello to the Jie tribe anyway, so I won't go there for the time being."
Lu Balon nodded and said nothing more.
After all, Lu Balong is a member of the Sheang tribe and has a bad impression of the Jie tribe.
In the evening, several soldiers from the Lun tribe found Zhao Hongrun and his party. Not to mention, although there were only a few of them, Zhao Hongrun felt much more at ease.
After all, the current situation in this land is not peaceful. Even if there is one more Lun clan warrior nearby, this is a guarantee of safety.
That night, Zhao Hongrun and his party stayed overnight at the foot of Huashan Mountain. Since this place was very close to the battlefield, Zhao Hongrun and his party did not dare to light a fire to barbecue. They just ate a few mouthfuls of dry food with water, and then got into the tent early.
sleep inside.
Because they were afraid that the war horses would be frozen to death by the cold weather at night, everyone specially built two tents for the war horses. The rest of the people were crowded into the other two tents, except for the two Lun warriors who were on sentry duty.
The next day, Zhao Hongrun and his party began to climb Huashan Mountain, hoping to find a suitable viewing point halfway up the mountain to observe the war between the Qin people and the Jie tribe.
To their surprise, they found an abandoned stone watchtower halfway up Huashan Mountain.
This watchtower has three floors. The bottom two floors may have been used to live in or store food. The top floor is an observation tower. It is about seven or eight feet in diameter. It is a very regular watchtower.
This was an unexpected discovery. Even Lu Balong was surprised. After all, the Jie tribe hardly had the habit of monitoring a certain place on a fixed basis. They were more accustomed to using mobile surveillance methods, that is, sending out sentries.
"...This doesn't look like what I, the Great Wei, left behind."
Zhao Hongrun observed the watchtower carefully. Judging from the completeness of the stones, he felt that it was not like what was left by the ancestors of the Zhao family of Wei State hundreds of years ago. It should be further back.
Finally, Zhao Hongrun made a guess: This may be a watchtower built here by the Qin people decades or hundreds of years ago, shortly after the Jie people came to Sanchuan, when they had a conflict with the Qin people, for the purpose of monitoring the Hua people.
The Jie people in Yangping Plain.
No matter what the truth is, Zhao Hongrun and his party are very happy because they have found a place that can shelter from the wind and rain. More importantly, the view from this watchtower is very superior. Not only can they vaguely see the Qin army camps, but also the
Even the tribal camp of the Jie people can be seen, let alone the battlefield between the two.
Therefore, Zhao Hongrun asked several warriors from the Lun tribe to guard the horses at the foot of the mountain. He himself moved Lintao Jun Wei Ji, Lu Balong, Zong Wei and others to this watchtower, and stayed at the watchtower every day.
Waiting for the war between the Qin army and the Jie tribe.
After waiting for two days, the Qin army and the Jie tribe finally made some changes.
In the early morning of October 20th, when Zhao Hongrun was tightly wrapped in a woolen blanket and sleeping soundly against the wall on the second floor of the watchtower, Zongwei Lu Mu hurriedly ran down from the observation deck on the third floor and said,
The words woke up everyone who was resting on the second floor: "The fight has begun, the fight has begun, the Qin army and the Jie tribe are going to fight."
Hearing this, Zhao Hongrun said nothing, took off the sheepskin blanket and ran along the stone steps to the third floor, where he held his hands on the wall and looked at the battlefield in the distance.
Sure enough, I saw that the flat land that had been empty a few days ago was now full of dark crowds of people.
Due to the great distance, Zhao Hongrun could not estimate the specific number of Qin's troops, but the overwhelming crowd still made him take a breath.
And just when Zhao Hongrun was looking at the Qin army's military situation in the distance, at the foot of Huashan Mountain, a group of people was slowly coming towards the watchtower.
In the team, there was a familiar face that Zhao Hongrun was no stranger to, and that was Qin Shaojun, whom he had met in Daliang, Wei State a few days ago.
I saw Qin Shaojun sometimes looking at the map in his hand, sometimes carefully searching the middle of Huashan Mountain with his eyes, muttering something in his mouth.
"Strange... there should be a watchtower here that Da Qin built a hundred years ago. Why can't I find it? Was it destroyed by the Jie tribe?"
After an unknown amount of time, his eyes suddenly lit up and he put back the map in his hand as he spoke.