Perhaps Guan Lu and Duo Luo never thought that they would become such legends in the second half of their lives. One was a guard in the Forbidden City who learned martial arts from his ancestors, and the other was a second-generation dandy in the Eight Banners who ate and waited to die.
According to their original life trajectories, one was a caged bird and a fighting cock lackey, ruining his life for forty or fifty years!
The other one is following the imperial court and specializing in the unethical work of exterminating families!
Just two people like this, thrown into Sijiu City, they could just pop up in a pile, and there would be no way to show that they were different.
But fate is so strange. In the fourth year of Tongzhi, Xiao Letian came and made trouble for the Qing Dynasty, which had been incessantly troubled from the beginning. In the end, he even abducted the emperor.
Guan Lu, Duoluo and a group of other four-nine city elders had their fortunes completely reversed.
In Ryukyu, they received the latest military training, and the hell-like recruit camp rubbed off all the rough and stinky flaws on their bodies.
Immediately afterwards, more than half of the guards were sent to Fujian by the emperor and began to train the emperor's personal troops on Zuo Zongtang's territory, while the other part followed the emperor.
Doro and Guan Lu are the personal guards who follow the emperor. In the past few years, they have seen the thousands of miles of waves in Ryukyu and the exotic atmosphere of Fuso.
There is also the cruel and bloody scene of white body and black water, and there is Europa where blood, fire and conspiracy are intertwined!
They were so dazzled. When had these two Forty-Nine City men ever seen such a diorama? Now they didn't dare to recognize themselves until the returning fleet sailed to the Indian Ocean and the little emperor gave them the latest order. .
Admiral General Gordon has become the first European minister in the hands of Emperor Tongzhi. With his contribution in suppressing the Taiping Rebellion and his heroic deeds in saving the emperor, he finally got a golden job in the Qing Dynasty.
Emperor Tongzhi hired Gordon as the commander-in-chief of his new army and conducted purely Western-style training and command.
Also returning home was explorer Samuel Baker, who successfully found the source of the Nile River. This time he was preparing to conduct an arduous geographical expedition to Central Asia, so he came with him.
No one knows how many secret agreements the little emperor has signed with Britain. Anyway, these guards can feel that Britain has mobilized almost all colonial resources along the way to support the little emperor.
The navies from all over the country came out to protect the safety of the little emperor, and the gift list sent by the British colonial governor was already piled up on the table.
Before the fleet arrived in India, the little emperor ordered an advance team to disembark from India, and then go north to Central Asia under the protection of the British military.
The first important task of this advance team is to investigate the true identity of the rebels in the Western Regions, and the second is to secretly contact Zuo Zongtang.
Zai Chun did not want to wait until he returned to the country before sending his envoys, because he knew very well that as long as he returned to the country, he would be under absolute surveillance. Zai Chun still knew the abilities of the queen mothers of the two palaces and the princes of the Eight Banners.
Only by attacking outside the country, where their power cannot be deployed, can they avoid Xiaoxiao's prying eyes!
Doro and Guan Lu took on this arduous task. Under the protection of the British expedition team, they went all the way north into the Pamir Plateau and headed straight for the Ili Valley.
Lu Duoluo and Guan Lu opened their eyes this time. Europe is the peak of Western civilization, and the Qing Dynasty is also the afterglow of Eastern civilization. As for Fuso, there is also a small prosperous scene.
But in Central Asia, all they can see are the vicissitudes of history and endless depression!
There are stones and yellow sand everywhere in the long Gobi Desert, and you can see scattered bones within a few steps. Samuel Baker is very interested in these bones and always leads a group of people to start digging.
It was hard for Doro and Guan Lu to imagine that there were Song Dynasty coins and even Tang Dynasty daggers buried under many of the bones, which meant that these bones were left behind by the Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty people.
I really can’t imagine that Chinese people from more than a thousand years ago would actually come here, but when I think about the fact that Tang Sanzang took this road to obtain scriptures, everything will be relieved.
Explorer Baker excitedly said to these Qing palace guards, "It's a caravan, a Chinese caravan. I found fragments of silk... It's really amazing. You have been doing business here more than a thousand years ago?"
"Why don't you continue to go out now? Why are you closing the country? What a pity. If you have maintained such business contacts and continued to develop like this, God knows what changes will happen to geopolitics?"
Listening to the explorer's words, Doro and Guan Lu blushed a little. They couldn't tell the difference. They couldn't directly say that those people were Han people. We Manchu uncles didn't care about Central Asia or the Pamir Plateau.
What really shocked Doro and the Three Treasures was the moment they saw the Bamiyan Buddha with their own eyes!
Faxian of the Jin Dynasty and Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty both came here. They both saw, knelt down and wrote about two huge Buddha statues with their own eyes.
The Western Buddha in red cassocks and the Eastern Buddha in blue cassocks, more than 800 meters apart, look compassionately at the busiest commercial road in Central Asia, and have protected business travelers here for thousands of years.
Seeing these two giant Buddhas, Doro and Guan Lu immediately found a common ground of emotion. Manchus also worshiped Buddha!
The two of them knelt down in the dust, with tears filling their eyes. At that moment, he suddenly found the feeling of his own home in a foreign land thousands of miles away!
At that moment, thousands of years of history suddenly hit their hearts. The oppressive atmosphere made them unable to breathe. Crying was their only way to express their emotions.
As the old saying goes, read thousands of books and travel thousands of miles! This is true. If you don’t study, you won’t be wise. But if you don’t travel and see the world with your own eyes, you won’t be able to feel the weight of the world.
Central Asia has a history of thousands of years of ethnic migration. How much profound and profound heritage is hidden in a few strokes cannot be understood unless you come and take a look for yourself.
Doro and Guan Lu even had a philosophical epiphany at that moment. What exactly are Manchus? What does our two hundred years of rule mean to Chinese civilization?
Where is the way out for Manchu people in the future? Who can escape the wind, frost, rain, snow, and iron horses of history?
But before Doro and Guan Lu could escape from the border, the expedition encountered trouble again. Some local tribal chiefs who hated the British began to organize groups of soldiers to attack the expedition.
Guan Lu, Duoluo and a dozen other guards had no choice but to fight with the Gurkha mercenaries against the local tribesmen. They fought bloody battles for four or five times in a row. Although the expedition team won each time, they really could not stand up to the local tribesmen. Too much.
Just like flies in the summer, there are endless batches!
The expedition team had no choice but to rely on money to clear the way. Their guide contacted the elders of the local tribe in advance, offered a high toll, and guaranteed that he was just an expedition team and not an army, so that the locals could show their favor.
"Tough! The people here are so tough!" Doro said with lingering fear.
