A story similar to that of the young prince Maodun also happened in the land of the former Jin Dynasty.
Thinking back to the past, the fatuous Duke Xian of Jin doted on the young concubine Li Ji and wanted to use Li Ji's son as his heir. However, he regarded his two grown-up sons, Prince Shen Sheng and Prince Chong'er, as the most troublesome obstacles.
Later, the honest and honest prince Shen Sheng was still unwilling to leave his motherland, so he was forced to commit suicide by his father and Li Ji;
However, Prince Chong'er chose to flee and wander around for nineteen years, silently accumulating strength and waiting for the opportunity. Finally, he killed his nephew Jin Huai Gong and successfully restored the country. He became a famous king of Jin Wen Gong.
On the grassland not far from the Jin Kingdom, Prince Maodun chose a simpler and more crude way to seize power. He only used a new type of weapon-Mingdi.
Mingzhe means a cry; dysprosium means an arrow.
Mingdy, to put it simply, is a kind of sounding arrow. When the arrow flies, it makes a sound, like a god of death who can sing in a low voice.
The dynamite arrowheads polished by the Hun prince himself every night were made from the leg bones of the most ferocious wolves on the grassland. The whole body was polished smooth and smooth. There were countless small holes in the hollow. One end was sharp, and the other end was in the shape of a square melon. It was white and dense. The wolf bones are glowing with fluorescence and have a bleak and simple beauty.
Mao Dun took advantage of the opportunity of training thousands of cavalry given by his father to change the previous individual combat status of the Xiongnu troops that gathered and dispersed and failed to respond to orders. Using the experience learned from the Yuezhi Kingdom, he planned to train a group of soldiers who would obey the leader's instructions and obey their instructions. of dead soldiers.
These dead soldiers will only obey the orders of Mao Dun, and their arrows will only follow the flying path of the dynamite in Mao Dun's hand.
***
Prince Maodun was full of confidence and wanted to train these ten thousand dead soldiers into the first team with iron discipline in the history of the Xiongnu tribe.
For the first time, the prince's Mingdi whined in the wind and flew towards his favorite horse. The soldiers were shocked and at a loss. Anyone who hesitated and did not dare to shoot was immediately beheaded under the horse.
The second time, the prince's Mingdi shot at his favorite Yan family (yān zhī). More of the dead soldiers hesitated, and those soldiers who were soft-hearted and refused to shoot, together with the poor Yan family, died in an instant. The sun sets over the long river in the desert.
This is a kind of quick training. This kind of training is not based on the constraints of traditional Central Plains morality. It is bloody and cruel, but it is very effective.
Compared with the gentle and graceful Duke Wen of Jin who followed the etiquette in exile and gradually built up his reputation and won over people's hearts in a slow process, the princes on horseback chose to establish their own political authority through absolute violent conquest.
The grassland environment is cruel. Every day when people open their eyes, they have to fight snowstorms, droughts, wolves, and other tribes. They have long been accustomed to killing and conquest, and life is fleeting. Those who miss it will only become a new wisp of ownerless souls in the desert.
Fortunately, the God of Destiny favored Mao Dun and did not let the ambitious man wait too long.
***
During a hunting event not long after, the prince, who followed Man Chanyu out for a hunt, once again took a deep look at his father, who was charging ahead with his whip and arrogance, and silently took out the Ming Dy from the quiver behind him.
Nocking the arrow, buckling the string, straightening the upper body slightly, taking a deep breath, pushing with the left shoulder, pulling with the right shoulder, and exerting force on the back, to fully draw this familiar ox-horn bow as if it were a part of my body——
To be steady, this arrow must be steady, just like what I have been rehearsing in my mind for hundreds of nights before, aim steadily.
Then, he stared forward and gently released the three fingers on the strings of his right hand. His eyes were as sharp as an eagle, neither sad nor happy.
This time, the prince's Ming Dy spun in the air with the belief that he would win, and flew towards his father with a death cry.
The dead soldiers, who had been trained to be absolutely loyal to the prince, without thinking, fired thousands of arrows and slaughtered Touman Shanyu, the stepmother Yan who followed the hunter, and all the cavalry commanders who were unwilling to surrender immediately.
In the rain of arrows whistling all over the sky, the shiny green grass on the earth was wet with dripping blood and dried by the hot sun, leaving only traces of a faint fishy smell like old rust.
The new generation of wolf kings on the prairie was born in this baptism of arrows and blood.
After his father-in-law came to power, the external and internal troubles Maodun Chanyu faced did not diminish at all.
The powerful neighboring country Donghu bullied his new king into taking the throne, and his foundation was not stable. He kept provoking and making troubles, sometimes asking him to offer good horses, and sometimes asking him to offer the Yan family.
However, at this time, Mao Dun was already a king who knew how to accumulate knowledge and would not be easily angered like other people in the royal court.
While secretly training his troops, he continued to use generous gifts to paralyze King Donghu, making him take off his guard against himself, a reckless but unambitious Huns boy.
A few years later, Han Xin, the God of War in China, led his troops to break out of the Hanzhong Plain. The war between Chu and Han was raging, and the princes were involved, and no one had time to pay attention to the northern border.
At the same time, on the grassland thousands of miles away, the fledgling Maodun Chanyu was waiting for the opportunity to attack Donghu in the east, Yuezhi in the west, merge with Loufan and Aries Wang in the south, and conquer Hunyu and Dingling in the north. Not only did they unify He conquered the north and south of the desert and took back all the land in Henan that his father had lost to the Qin people.
***
Liu Ji recalled the familiar cruel stories about Maodun Chanyu, and thought about the absolute overlord whose territory stretched from Liaodong to the Tianshan Mountains and dominated the north. He couldn't help but shake his head:
I actually want to seek the skin of a tiger through marriage, and it is simply a daydream to use benevolence, justice, propriety, family ties, and family ties to restrain the Huns.
“However, even if we adopt the method of distant relations and close attacks, it will still take time to find those countries in the Western Regions that have been driven away, and to persuade and unite them one by one.
If we don't negotiate peace with the Huns through marriage, how can we delay the past few years? "
Lu Pheasant rolled his eyes and said calmly,
"Your Majesty, why are you suddenly abandoning your roots and chasing others?
If you and the Huns change places, think about it carefully, what is the beginning and end of this whole thing?
Could it be that when the Xiongnu Chanyu made peace with the Han Dynasty, it was the Han princess herself who did it?
The marriage was just a pretext and could not solve the problem, because what the Huns really wanted was the wealth and products of the Middle Kingdom. "
History has proven that even if you get married, you still have to offer cotton, wine, rice and grain on time every year. It is better to get rid of this hypocritical and useless model and start directly with trade goods;
Moreover, even in the context of the alliance between Han and Huns, the Huns' cavalry still traveled throughout Longxi, Beidi, Yanmen, Daijun, and Yunzhong, taking and asking without mercy.
"The current plan is just one word 'drag'.
Until our Han Dynasty becomes strong, until we can raise an elite cavalry to compete with the Xiongnu, until we find the tribes in the Western Regions and become allies. "
"Historical Records" records that seventy years later, during the reign of Emperor Wu, when Zhang Qian finally found the countries in the Western Regions after all the hard work, they had already settled down in their new territories and no longer thought about revenge;
But this time, Lu Pheasant thought to himself that he must find them as soon as possible, while their blood is still cold and their hatred is still in their hearts, while they still want to fight the Huns again.
