From Yanzhou all the way south, through Guangyang, Baitan and other places, when it reaches Miyun, the capital is already in sight.
Although it's nearly October, this year has been plagued by drought, and it's getting hotter the further south you go. The autumn tigers were unbearable. It was almost noon. Hundreds of fine horses galloped around day and night. At this time, they were exhausted. The leader raised his hand and looked out. When he saw a pergola erected along the road not far away, he lightly lifted the reins and slowed down his pace. When the carriage behind him caught up, he leaned forward and knocked on the siding of the carriage, asking for instructions, "General, we've been running all night, why don't we rest before continuing on our way?"
The car curtain was opened by a slit, and a hoarse male voice came out with the fragrance of bitter medicine: "Is there a sharp spot in front? Rest in place. Brothers have worked hard."
The man took the order, and the group rushed towards the pergola in front of them on horseback. The place where they passed was dusty, attracting passers-by who rested in the pergola to look sideways.
This team had no flags, all of them had narrow sleeves and cross-collared cyan martial robes. All of them were sharp in stature and had a chilling aura. Even if they didn't identify themselves, the words "Can't be provoked" were written on their faces.
The shopkeepers who run the tea shops are weather-beaten and familiar with people coming and going, so they don't say much. The leading man got off the horse, handed out a small piece of silver, and instructed the innkeeper to bring anything to eat and drink, so that his subordinates could rest on their own; he himself found a cool table, wiped it clean, and prepared it for heat. Tea and a few fine items, turned to the door, and helped a young boy with a pale face and a weak air from the carriage.
The man's footsteps were vain, his face was sick, and he had to be helped to move. The distance from the carriage to the tea shop took a long time. When he finally sat down at the table and his body seemed to be unable to hold back and coughed a few times, the other guests sitting under the pergola all let out a sigh of relief - they were all exhausted for him.
This breath was relieved, and they realized that they had been stunned just now: although the man looked like he was about to die at any time, he had a strange and inseparable temperament. He was born with a good skin that is one of a kind in a thousand miles. He is not the elegant and handsome face that is popular in Beijing today, with a face like a spring flower, but his eyebrows and phoenix eyes, eyes like cold stars, a steep nose bridge, and thin lips. Handsome is very sharp and cold.
The man is very tall, he seems to be accustomed to looking down at people, his eyelids are always half-lifted, his body is filled with a sense of inattentive fatigue, and he is so thin that only a handful of jagged and sick bones are left, and there are heavy thick porcelain bowls in the tea shop. It seemed like it could crush his wrist.
But when he sat quietly, his back was straight and straight, like a green bamboo pulled up from the soil, a long knife tempered by calamity. Across the world.
The traveling merchants stretched their necks unconsciously, like a group of live geese engrossed. Until the young man slowly finished drinking a bowl of water, put the porcelain bowl on the table with a "bang", and said impatiently: "The neck is so stretched that you can tie your head to a donkey, does it look good?"
The strong man eating and drinking next to him shivered immediately when he heard the sound. Some of the live geese retracted their necks angrily, and a few of them were very enthusiastic. They even came up and said, "Where does this son come from? Are you going to Beijing too?"
Xiao Yao, who had been waiting for the uncle, had a tingling scalp, ready to hang this man on the tree outside the door as soon as he said "Get out".
Unexpectedly, the gentleman who did not like to talk to people was unexpectedly tolerant, and replied calmly: "I came from Yanzhou City in the north, and I am waiting to go to Beijing to seek medical treatment."
Because they all wore regular clothes, they didn't wear swords, and the chariots and horses were not very ostentatious. Although the guards were imposing, but the gentleman who called the shots was dressed in ordinary clothes, not like the fashion of the capital. The merchants guessed that they might be someone from Yanzhou. The young master of a big family is traveling. Because Yanzhou City is an important military town on the frontier, and the folk customs are fierce, it is normal for some family members from military households to accompany them.
The merchant didn't want to ask him directly about his condition, so he talked about another strange thing: "Young master came from the north, have you ever heard about the return of General Jingning Houfu to Beijing? Mile!"
Xiao Wei was almost choked to death by the tea, the young master raised his long eyebrows and said with great interest, "I never saw this. But I think Xiongtai seems to know a lot about Fu... This Marquis of Jingning knows a lot?"
"It can't be talked about," the man smiled and waved his hands again and again, "for those of us merchants who travel between the north and the south, who can't tell two anecdotes about General Fu! I don’t know how much I have done before. Even if the people in Beijing mention General Fu, they all admire it. You don’t know, last year, when General Fu led the Beiyan Iron Cavalry to defeat the Tartars, I came back from selling furs in the north, in the streets and alleys. There are many rumors, saying 'Fu Shuai is in the northern Xinjiang, and the capital is safe'. He is the storyteller in the teahouse, the singer, and the actor in the theater."
The Beiyan Iron Cavalry, known as the Great Zhou Northern Defense Line, has been under the jurisdiction of the Fu family since its establishment. Its predecessor was the frontier garrison commanded by Fu Jian, the Duke of Yingguo.
The Central Plains called the nomadic people who ruled the northern grasslands the Ta people. Decades ago, the Tatars were turbulent and divided, and some tribes were forced to move westward and intermarried with ethnic groups such as the Hu and Sogdians in the Western Regions, which were called West Tatars; the other part occupied the more fertile grasslands in the central and eastern regions, which were called Eastern Tatars. Tartar. Twenty-three years ago, not long after Yuantai Emperor Sun Xun Jianzuo, several tribes in the Eastern Tartars invaded Dazhou. Wherever the Tatars went, they burned, killed, and looted, leaving ten rooms and nine empty spaces. Tens of thousands of people were affected by the war. During the reign of the late emperor, he had been in peace for a long time, and his ministers were timid.
Emperor Yuantai was in his prime, and he refused to bow his head to the barbarians with the respect of the heaven and the country. It happened that Fu Jian was transferred from Lingnan to Jiedu in Ganzhou, and Emperor Yuantai ordered him to transfer troops in Gan, Ning and Yuan to fight against the barbarians. . Fu Jian, his two sons, and his generals gathered an army of 100,000 troops and wiped out the Tatars in Guannei. Fu Tingzhong, the eldest son of Fu Jian, even crossed the Great Wall and drove his army straight into the hinterland of the grasslands, almost capturing the King City of East Tartar. After the battle, Fu Jian posthumously presented Duke Ying, the general of Shangzhu Kingdom, and Fu Tingzhong attacked Duke Ying, restraining the military of Gan, Ning and Yuanzhou. The second son, Fu Ting, served as a general of the country and controlled the military of Yan and Youzhou.
These two built an iron-clad northern border line for Da Zhou. The frontier army led by the Fu family was called the Beiyan Iron Cavalry. From the sixth year of Yuantai to the eighteenth year of Yuantai, in the past ten years, under the deterrence of the Beiyan Iron Cavalry, there has been no war on the border.
Until the nineteenth year of Yuantai, Fu Tingzhong was assassinated by the East Tartars, and the East Tartars formed an alliance with the Zhe people in the north, and committed Da Zhou again. Fu Tingxin led a lonely army to go deep into the siege and finally died in battle. The old incident of soldiers approaching the city was almost a repeat, but at this time, there were not as many elite soldiers available as in those days, and Emperor Yuantai was no longer determined to forge ahead in his earlier years. The main war faction and the main peace faction quarreled for several mornings, and finally made the most confused and wisest decision.
They pushed Fu Tingzhong's eldest son, Fu Shen, who was not a weak crown, and pushed him to the battlefield.
A Fu family member was selected because Dongta had a deep hatred with the surnamed Fu, and this trip was for revenge; and Fu Shen joined the army early and trained with his father and uncle, and he could barely be regarded as a "general's talent". But looking at the past dynasties, how can there be a reason for the ministers who are full of food all day long to hide behind and let a young man face the wolves, tigers and leopards
Fortunately, in the misfortune, the Fu family may really be reincarnated as a group of stars.
The garrisons in Tangzhou and Xuanzhou were too big. When Fu Shen was pushed out, he didn't expect to get help from his own people. . Fu Shen gathered the Beiyan Iron Cavalry and faced the main force of the Zhe people at the three gates of Yanzhou, while the Yeliang Cavalry flanked the Tazhe allied army from the northwest and solved the danger in the northern border.
After the war, it was attached to the Norabu, and the cavalry was mixed into the Beiyan Iron Cavalry. On the grounds that the front line was too long and it was inconvenient to mobilize, Fu Shen handed over the frontier defense power of Ganning and Ningzhou to the center, focusing on the front-line frontier defense of Yuanzhou, Xuanhuai, and Yanzhou. After the Battle of the Three Passes, Fu Shen officially became the commander-in-chief of the Beiyan Iron Cavalry. After Fu Tingzhong and Fu Tingyi passed away one after another, Fu Tingyi, the third son of Fu Jian, succeeded the Duke of Yingguo, so Fu Shen changed the title to the Marquis of Jingning.
With Fu Shen's efforts to turn the tide, he could have justly named a prince, but at this time, the mature and prudent minister jumped out to object, saying that Fu Shen was too young to be convincing - His Majesty actually obeyed.
Anyone with a discerning eye could see that His Majesty was frightened by the Fu family, for fear that their family would come up with a "perpetually famous" Duke Ying.
But some people are destined to go upstream. In just a few short years, Jingning Hou Fu Shen held the Yanguan Iron Cavalry in his hand and became the mainstay of Da Zhou. Over the years, the northern Xinjiang has been peaceful and the people of the north have lived and worked in peace and contentment. Most of it is his credit. As long as Fu Shen is in the army, even if he sits still, being a mascot is the greatest deterrent to aliens in the north.
The young son listened with a smile at first, but when he heard the phrase "The capital is a peaceful bed", the smile disappeared completely. Seeing that he was in a trance, Xiao Yu went to reach for the tea bowl on the table, and hurriedly picked up the teapot to fill him with water, and deliberately interrupted: "Sir... Master, do you want some snacks?"
The young master returned to his senses, took a sip of the hot tea with the bowl up, the corners of his mouth twitched, and his smile seemed to contain a hint of mockery, "If this word spreads, how many people cannot sleep."
A guest wearing a hat next to them was aroused by them to chat, and he interjected in a dazzling manner: "The Marquis of Jingning has made great achievements in the northern Xinjiang, but he has also made a lot of murders. , Prosperity must decline', think about it, did he not respond to this sentence? Those famous generals in the past were either short-lived or orphaned, because they were all descended to the world and killed by their masters, which was different from ordinary people. I It seems that the Marquis of Jingning is probably also a seven-killer."
With a sound of "Kara", the bowl in Xiao Yu's hand was crushed into several pieces. Everyone followed the reputation, and they were all stunned. It was embarrassingly quiet for a while in the tea shop.
"My hands are too strong. I'll buy you an iron rice bowl next time, so that you won't waste anything." The young man's face was the same as before, and he said indifferently, "Don't forget to lose money later."
Xiao Yu bowed his head and said "um".
The conversation that was interrupted by the episode could no longer continue. The person said that it is not auspicious and good things to say again. This time, a tea bowl was broken. pause.
Only the out-of-place young man watched the fun and didn't think it was a big deal, smiled and said: "Interesting, according to this brother's meaning, short-lived orphans must commit crimes, since the Marquis of Jingning is already disabled, will he be able to get a wife this year? already?"
Xiao Yu: "..."
Someone slapped the table and said, "Why is a man without a wife! Heroes like Hou Jingning, what kind of woman do you want!"
Someone echoed: "Yes! Exactly! If he loves men, how many good men are waiting to marry him!"
An earth-shattering cough broke out in the tea shed.
Because the previous dynasties regarded male marriage as elegant, although the Great Zhou Dynasty prohibited civil male and male marriage, the powerful did not prohibit it, and there was even a precedent for the emperor to grant male marriage. Marquis Jingning is a well-known son-in-law of the golden turtle in the capital, and the dream of many girls, but the marriage has not been decided yet, so some people guess that he has different hobbies.
When it comes to such matters of love and moon, everyone talks more and more. The young master no longer interrupted, but silently listened to them discussing and commenting on the life of Hou Jingning, with a smile on his lips, as if he was listening to some very interesting and wonderful story.
After listening for a long time, Xiao Yu softly probed: "General... Young Master, the sun has passed, can we go now?"
"Well, let's go," the young master stretched out his hand for Xiao Yi to help him up, and scribbled his hands at the crowd of merchants, "Brothers, you are in a hurry to enter Beijing, so we will go ahead."
Everyone raised their hands to say goodbye to him. Xiao Yu helped him to the car and pulled down the curtain. The chariots and horses walked hundreds of paces, and suddenly he heard him say inside: "Chongshan, give me a pill."
"But didn't Mr. Du ask you to take the medicine half an hour earlier?" Xiao Yi took out a delicate purse from his arms, which contained a thin porcelain vase, "We still have two hours to go to Beijing."
"Don't talk nonsense," stretched out a hand from under the curtain and swept away the porcelain vase, "Further ahead is Jingying, let's just fool the common people like this, we will definitely be recognized when we arrive at Jingying, and then we will be lame. come in time."
Xiao Wei muttered: "But you are really lame..."
The young master—the Jingning Hou Fu Shen, who was called "the master of the life", swallowed a brown pill the size of a finger, and sneered, "Chongshan, do you think there is a general who is expected to recover, and a commander who is completely crippled. , which is more likely to keep you awake?"
Xiao Yu stopped talking.
Fu Shen threw the porcelain bottle back into his arms, closed his eyes and felt the numbness spreading from his limbs, and said softly, "Let's go."