Recruiting surrender and accepting rebels is difficult at the beginning. As long as one fortress surrenders, the others behind it will follow suit!
The half-fed surrendered soldiers waved white flags and went to find their comrades. They stopped their carts at the gate of the village one by one and shouted upwards against the northwest wind.
"Stop fighting. General Xu is so merciful that he won't take our lives and give us food to eat!"
"We have surrendered. We are eating beef and dry food from the Chinese nation...I won't fool you. Anyway, we survived, but we have to go to Anxi Prefecture to do hard labor!"
"Forget it... As long as you can save your life, don't think so much..."
Strangely enough, when it comes to asking these people to surrender and do hard work, the recruitment process goes more smoothly. This is the cleverness of the people at the bottom!
If Xu Zhanbiao really takes care of everything, saying that he will not kill the prisoners but then feed them and pay for their passage home, there will be no punishment at all... If this is really the case, these rebels who have been rebelling for many years really can't believe it!
How can there be such a good thing in the world? If you rebel and don’t behead, you won’t be punished?
Now Xu Zhanbiao wants to exchange hard work for death penalty. This deal is feasible and the big guy can be trusted!
This canned beef was so fragrant that it penetrated into the camp despite the wind. In the bitterly cold weather in the northwest, the temperature was already more than ten degrees below zero, and all the beef soup turned into white aspic.
Under the moonlight, it is even more beautiful than the stars in Xingxingxia!
"I can't stand it anymore, give me meat and I will surrender..." The second camp finally opened, and the starving ghosts rushed out and stuffed meat into their mouths facing the cold northwest wind.
One, two... seven or eight... more and more villages surrendered under the persuasion of the prisoners and the temptation of food!
Before five o'clock in the morning, all the fortresses on the Gobi highlands on both sides of the Xingxing Gorge Pass had surrendered. The defense line of more than thirty fortresses was completely under the control of the Shu army camp.
"Okay, okay... Now Xingxing Gorge has become an iron chain locking Aguba. As long as this place is firmly in our hands, the gate of Xinjiang will be under our control!"
"Haha, Anxi Prefecture is already safe, unless those lunatics dare to go to Qinghai... Detour through Qinghai and go to Qaidam? Go to Yemaquan? Take the Danghe River to Dunhuang?"
"Bah... I'll starve them to death! Don't forget that the Tibetans are not of the same mind as them. As long as they dare to go to the Tibetan people's territory to show off their power, the commander will have 10,000 ways to kill them!"
The night attack on Xingxing Gorge completely changed the pattern of the Western Region, because there are only two roads from Xinjiang to the Central Plains, one is through Xingxing Gorge and the other is through Southern Xinjiang.
However, southern Xinjiang has always been bordered by the Tibetan areas, which have high-rise buildings, and the Tibetan areas have always been very loyal to the Qing court. The long live tablets of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty are enshrined in the Potala Palace!
In addition, the religious beliefs of the two sides are completely different. The Tibetan areas have long disliked these rebels in the desert of southern Xinjiang. As long as Agubai dares to invade the Central Plains through southern Xinjiang, he will definitely be blocked!
What's even more terrible is that the altitude of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is much higher than that of the Southern Xinjiang Basin. Once a conflict breaks out, one side will attack from top to bottom, and the other side will attack from bottom to top!
If he could win this fight, he, Aguba, would really be the God of War!
Therefore, only a small group of enemy troops can move across southern Xinjiang. It is absolutely impossible for a large army to cross the border. If Agubai and the rebels from the Gansu and Shaanxi tribes want to invade Gansu and even the Central Plains, they can only go through the Xingxingxia line!
"Set up our cannons and send a signal to the rear... The more shells and cannons, the better... With this terrain, as long as there are cannons, I can defend it with a thousand soldiers!"
"The rest of the brothers have repaired quickly. Did the reserve team have a good rest this night? At dawn, I will divide into three groups to fight out of the Xingxing Gorge and attack Hami!"
"Hit me! Hit the enemy in the belly, expand the fear... Attract all the enemy troops in the entire Hami Hall and Zhenxi Hall to the front line of Xingxingxia..."
“Only in this way can Lord Long Live’s expedition team pass by safely!”
"I obey the general's order!" the cavalry team preparing for battle roared and then led the team to assemble!
The captive shopkeeper who was about to starve to death also came over and handed over the order at this moment, "Fortunately, I did not disgrace my order... I helped the general to persuade him to surrender!"
"Old shopkeeper, hurry up and get up! Thanks to the old man's plan this time, I lost a lot of brothers... By the way, I still don't know what I call my father-in-law?"
"Little old man Cao Jiuling... a person from Guanzhong!"
"Oh, it turns out to be shopkeeper Cao. On behalf of the whole army, I would like to thank the old shopkeeper!"
"I don't dare, I don't dare... The general's life-saving grace, let's rebuild the kindness, go home and set up an immortal tablet for the general! And the general doesn't say that the little old man has meritorious service. In fact, I just saw that the general brought a lot of military rations. …”
"I'm a businessman. I can tell by a quick calculation that these rations are enough for an army of ten thousand people to consume for more than a month... To put it bluntly, the general may have already made such a plan, right?"
"Hahaha... I'm smart, do you know what my nickname is?" the adjutant next to him said, "People in our general's hometown call the general General Pumpkin!"
"Ah? General Pumpkin? This nickname..." The people in the caravan were stunned. What a nickname for a dignified general?
Xu Zhanbiao didn't say anything, and his trusted adjutant explained for him, "My family, General Ziyi, came from a poor family and couldn't survive anymore, so he went to a Taoist temple with an uncle to become a Taoist priest. He also learned to read and write while at the Taoist temple!"
"Later, the disaster in my hometown was so serious that even the Taoist temple could no longer feed the Taoist priests. The general had no choice but to lead a group of young Taoist priests down the mountain to steal pumpkins!"
"The pumpkins stolen by the general at that time fed many poor old Taoist priests and the surrounding people, but they also offended the local landlords..."
"They entangled the servants and besieged Sanqing Temple, forcing the Taoist temple to hand over the general...but in order not to implicate the Taoist temple, the general had no choice but to return to secular life and leave his hometown, which is when he joined the army and received military pay!"
Cao Jiuling asked with emotion, "The general is a general from Shu. I wonder where his ancestral home is?"
"Shunqing Mansion, Xichong County under Nanchong..."
"Oh... the land of abundance is also experiencing such a big famine?"
"Haha, the Land of Abundance isn't all paradise! The mountainous areas are just as poor and destitute. In addition, the tax imposed by Changmao during the war is too heavy, making it difficult to survive!"
Xu Zhanbiao let out a long sigh, "I was really scared of hunger when I was a child, so since I led the troops to fight, I have paid special attention to the issue of military food supply... and I have also developed a habit of inquiring about the enemy's military situation. The first thing is the enemy's food prices!"
"If I don't tell lies, I know that the world has the most food to eat...Rebels are also human beings. Even if they believe in a different religion and speak different languages than us...but they still have to eat!"
"Everyone needs to live a good life, and having enough food is the most basic thing! In my eyes, food is also a weapon, and it is the most effective weapon!"
"In the first few months of autumn, Xizuo had already told me that food prices in the Hami area had skyrocketed, and the people had no food to eat!"
"This is our opportunity, this is our weapon to compete for the hearts and minds of the people! Pass my order...bring more portable military rations for this harassment!"
"Let the suffering people share a little... let them know who is good and who is bad!"
"General, you are so kind! Please bow to me..." The entire caravan bowed and saluted!
Note: The nickname General Pumpkin was not made up in the book. This story is still circulated in Nanchong, Sichuan. Xu Zhanbiao’s old family house seems to have always been there and has become a cultural relic!
