After the Hu merchants escaped danger, they left with the goods. Before leaving, they offered a thank-you gift and asked the Buddha to accept it.
Several monks came forward to decline Hu Shang's offering, comforted him with gentle words, and even performed a ritual for the dead businessman in the name of Tamara.
The merchants were grateful.
Yaoying and her personal soldiers were temporarily placed in the ranks of Wang Tingzhong's army.
The Beirong people and other tribes she saw in the Western Regions all wore their hair with left-back hair, and most of the royal cavalry had shawls and braided hair, but their uniforms were different from those of the Beirong people.
The Chinese cavalry wore blue shirts, light armor, white robes, long knives and bows. The white robes were embroidered with intricate patterns, and everyone had their own servants who ran errands for them.
They are different from the brave and belligerent Beirong soldiers. They seem to have good manners. Although they hate Yaoying for blaspheming their Buddhist son in public, they glared at her when they saw her, but they did not insult her face to face.
However, the attitude of the two personal soldiers of Tanmaraga towards Yaoying was much worse, and they had her horse taken away and ordered to go with the lowest slaves.
The most important point: she is not allowed to mention the name of Tamara, and she is not allowed to look at Tamara.
The chubby, round-faced knight pointed at Yaoying and shouted, "You shameless Chinese girl, if you look at our king, you are blaspheming our king!"
Yaoying looked at the front of the team, the huge snow-white flag fluttered in the wind, and Tan Mo Luojia rode at the front, she could only see a thin back.
Among the thousands of troops, only he was wearing a scarlet cassock, and his figure was cold and lonely.
It looks like a mansion of God.
The middle army knights crowded behind him, looking at his back with fanaticism and piety.
The knight followed Yaoying's line of sight, his face flushed with anger, and shouted to stand in front of her: "Han girl, don't look at our king! You can't look at it at all! I'll gouge your eyes out if you look at me again!"
Yaoying's mouth twitched and she looked away.
The knight glared at her in dissatisfaction and called the soldiers: "Let them follow at the back of the team! Don't allow this Chinese woman to take a step closer to the king!"
Yaoying followed behind the central army with her personal soldiers, and looked back at the valley.
The dust was rolling in the sky, and Haidu Aling left with the Beirong soldiers.
Yaoying and her personal soldiers walked at the end of the central army. The slaves of the knights were all men. Seeing that she was a beautiful Chinese lady, she looked at her curiously and treated her kindly.
From their mouths, Yaoying learned that this place is very close to Shacheng. Tamara and Wakhan Khan just swore an oath in Shacheng. The army left Shacheng with the front foot, and the scout reported that Haidu Aling intercepted the royal court caravan. He immediately led his troops to deter the Beirong people.
Yaoying was terrified.
Haidu Aling went to Shacheng, and they had a chance to escape. As a result, they escaped from the camp and lost their way, and they ran all the way in the direction of Shacheng!
It's simply self-inflicted.
Luckily, Tanmaraka frightened Haidu Aling away.
The royal court's army was moving very fast, and it was not until night fell that they rested under a barren cliff.
The Chinese army was stationed around Tammoraka's camp, and several armies with obviously different colors from the Chinese army were on guard outside.
Yaoying distributed the dry biscuits that were hard enough to smash to death to other slaves.
While chewing on the cake, the slave told her that most of the knights in the Chinese army were descendants of nobles from the Holy City. They were loyal to the royal family, valued honor, and only obeyed the orders of the monarch. They were the guards of the palace and Buddhist temple. Several other armies were devoted to several great nobles. There was a regent in the royal court who acted for the Buddha's son in the political and customary affairs of the court. Although Tamara is a monarch, sometimes it is ruled by nobles.
When it came to the last sentence, the slave was very angry: "The Buddha is the incarnation of Ananda, who is compassionate, saves all beings, and is a truly great man. He wants to release us captured slaves and let us be civilians, but the nobles do not agree. ."
Yaoying gave the slave a silver coin.
People in the Central Plains trade in money and silk, while gold coins, silver coins and silk are popular in the Western Regions.
The slave looked surprised, took the silver coin, thought about it, and told Yaoying: "You are a Han Chinese, it is best to stay here in the Central Army, and never go out alone. The Knights of the Central Army obey the king's orders and will not insult Han women. "
He raised his eyes and looked at her face.
"A beauty like you, the royal court nobles will definitely like it when they see it. In order to get rewards, their subordinates will loot the beauty of various tribes for the nobles during battles. You have to be careful."
Yaoying looked surprised and asked in a low voice, "Wang Ting hates Han people?"
To the south of the Tianshan Mountains, to the north of the Kunlun Mountains, and to the east of the Congling Mountains, there are vast expanses of desert and wasteland. The climate is hot and arid, and it is almost no man's land. An oasis.
In this long and narrow oasis area, small, small countries, surrounded by rivers, were scattered with large and small city-state tribes.
Yaoying knew a little about the Beirong royal family, but she was completely unfamiliar with these tribes in the Western Regions. She only knew that the royal court was a Buddhist country that believed in Buddhism, and it would be destroyed under the iron hoof of Beirong in a few years. If she hadn't known about the approximate life of Tamara, she would not have remembered the name of the royal court.
After being taken captive to the Western Regions by Haidu Aling, she has been imprisoned in the camp, surrounded by Beirong soldiers, and she has no way to inquire about the situation of the Western Regions.
She knew that the Beirong people regarded all the other tribes they conquered as untouchables, but she didn't know that the same was true in the royal court, and listening to the slave's suggestion, the royal court people especially hated the Han people.
The slave lowered his head to wipe the silver coins and said, "The nobles and commoners of the royal court hated the Han people. In the past, we were also subjects of the Central Plains Dynasty. Later, the Central Plains Dynasty didn't care about our life or death, and other tribes ruled the Western Regions. In the Western Regions, the Han people became the lowest class. pariah."
Yaoying frowned slightly.
Unexpectedly, after the fall of the Western Regions, the status of the Han people in the Western Regions was so low.
Speaking of which, Tamara is also a royal nobleman. He is a prince of the royal family, so he can serve as the secular and religious leader of the royal court at the same time. If the royal court, from the nobles to the commoners, hated the Han people, the words she shouted out in public would not only be of no use to him, on the contrary, it might be a taboo for the royal court.
Why would he help her
There are only two explanations:
One, Tamara wanted to form an alliance with the Wei Dynasty.
Second, the monks were merciful, and as a monk, Tanmaraka could not bear to see her being kidnapped by Haidu Aling.
Yaoying weighed it, no matter what, as long as she can temporarily escape from Haidu Aling's claws, she has the possibility of returning to the Central Plains.
From Helong to the Western Regions, no matter where she fled to, Haidu Aling could capture her back. Only by fleeing to the royal court would she have a chance to breathe.
Let's take a step by step.
Tamara seemed to be in a hurry to get back to the holy city. The next day, the team set off before dawn, and that night did not stop camping until it was completely dark.
On the fourth day, the Chinese cavalry directly separated from the other teams, threw off their baggage, and continued to advance.
After a few days of rushing in this way, I only passed a small oasis on the way, and the other places are endless Gobi gravel. The towering mountains in the sky are always so far away, and the snow-capped peaks are shrouded in clouds and mist all day long.
The further north we went, the hotter and hotter the weather was. Yaoying and the soldiers had no clothes to change, so they could only continue to wear thick felt robes.
The medicine she exchanged from the royal cavalry with silver coins was gone, and Xie Qing's injury did not improve. It was hot during the day and cold at night, and her wounds gradually showed signs of festering.
Yaoying was a little anxious.
Tamara seemed to have forgotten her since he rescued her that day, and neither sent anyone to confirm her identity nor said what to do with her.
The cavalry of the Chinese army brought her food every day. She asked to see Tanmaraga in person. The cavalry immediately sneered and reprimanded her for her wishful thinking: "How did the Buddha meet you, a Chinese girl?"
Yaoying thought of other ways.
She had run out of silver coins on her body, and Tamaroka ignored her intentions.
It seemed that the monk had no intention of forming an alliance with Wei Chao, and it was only a compassionate attack that would save her.
Yaoying and her personal soldiers exchanged felt robes with other slaves for some medicine, changed into slaves' clothes, and lasted for two more days.
That evening, a round of red sun burned half of the sky bright red, and the marching team suddenly burst into cheers.
The slave pointed to the towering cliff in the distance and said to Yaoying, "Han girl, this is our holy city!"
Yaoying looked up and thought that she would see a majestic capital city, but in front of her there was only a large black soil cliff. Below the cliff was a river that was several tens of meters wide. For a week, it forms a natural barrier.
Before she could take a closer look, a knight on horseback galloped all the way from the front of the line to the end of the line, loudly announcing that the line had stopped and rested.
Yaoying was stunned: Judging from the speed of the team in the past few days, Tan Mo Luojia was obviously in a hurry to rush back to the holy city. Why did the team stop and rest when they reached the foot of the holy city
Isn't he afraid that he won't be able to make it back to the capital when it gets dark
The Central Army deserves to be the most loyal team to the royal family. No one complained about the order of Tamara, even if the Holy City was in sight, the team that returned like an arrow stopped immediately.
The setting sun put away the last golden afterglow, the night wind blew, and it suddenly cooled down, Yaoying and her soldiers were shivering with cold.
Just when she thought she was going to sleep in the Gobi tonight, the team suddenly moved again.
Yaoying and the others were walking in the dark under the guidance of the knight, thinking to themselves: It turns out that Tanmaraga has to wait until it gets dark before entering the city. Does he not want to disturb the people in the capital
She had never been to the Holy City and could not identify the road. She felt that she had walked a long way, and then she seemed to pass a long trestle bridge, and then a series of steep stone stairs. After climbing for a long time, she reached the top of the cliff. It's a downhill sand track.
It seems that the holy city is located in a river valley, surrounded by rivers, and broken walls and earth cliffs...
It happened to be a terrain that was easy to defend and difficult to attack, so it was no wonder that Beirong could not conquer this city.
In the darkness, only the torches in the hands of the cavalry shone dimly.
Yao Ying didn't see anything clearly, she felt that she had walked on the ramp for a long time, and the front seemed to be suddenly bright, the wind was blowing, and the wind was whimpering.
The cavalry took her and her personal soldiers away from the ranks of slaves and sent them to a stone prison to guard them.
The stone prison was dry and cold, Yaoying and the soldiers looked at each other in the dark for a long time, and said, "It's better than sleeping in the Gobi Desert. Go to sleep first."
The round-faced cavalry came out of the stone prison and rushed back to the palace.
Tanmaraka has quietly returned to the palace, the main hall in the palace is lit up, a few monks hurried over, talked to Tanmaraga for a while, and then quit.
The cavalry respectfully saluted the monks.
One of the brown-eyed monks said, "Prajna, the Buddha said, you brought a princess of the Wei Dynasty back this time?"
The round-faced Qibing suddenly turned black and red, snorted a few times, and said, "Yes, that brazen Chinese girl said that she was the seventh princess of the Wei Dynasty, and her title was Wen Zhao."
The monk changed color slightly and asked, "Where is the seventh princess now?"
Prajna replied: "In the stone prison, she blasphemed the Buddha's son, and the crime was extremely heinous. Tomorrow I will ask the regent to deal with her crime!"
The monk frowned, clasped his hands together, and said, "The Seventh Princess is a destined person, so she can't be so slow."
Prajna opened his mouth in surprise.
Yaoying just fell asleep on the spot, when there were rapid footsteps outside.
Several royal court soldiers opened the prison door and said respectfully, "Seventh princess, please come with us, the mage wants to see you."
Yaoying was taken out of the cell and came to a side hall of the palace.
An old man wearing a shoulder cassock stood in front of the stone steps, and when he saw her, he put his hands together: "Seventh Princess."
Yaoying's eyes fell on the old man's face, she was stunned for a while, and finally recognized the brown eyes.
Her heart was surging, she couldn't speak for a long time, she slowly regained her senses, put her hands together, and smiled, although her hair was disheveled, and she was dressed in slave clothes, her bearing was still graceful: "Master, Chang'an, farewell, will you be safe? "
Mundativa looked at the girl who was still calm in front of her, and smiled slightly: "Thanks to the princess, my long-cherished wish has been fulfilled."
The author has something to say: Thank you for your understanding~
Regarding geography and city-state names, it will be very sensitive when it comes to real history, ethnicity, etc. The article is fictional, and the cities and characters are all fictional settings.