The speed of ancient beacon transmission was not slow. It relied entirely on the visual system. To put it bluntly, messages were transmitted at the speed of light.
As soon as the beacon smoke rises here, people dozens of miles away can faintly see the black smoke. It would be even easier at night, and the flickering of the fire would be even more obvious.
The speed of light is the fastest speed, but the beacon system obviously cannot achieve this efficiency, because it is manpower that delays time. After all, discovering and lighting beacons require human operations.
It’s okay if you’re fully prepared, but it’s not okay if you waste a little time moving firewood!
But in the 21st century, a documentary once conducted such an experiment. A beacon tower and an off-road vehicle could transmit messages faster than the other. As a result, the speed of the beacon signal was more than three times faster than that of the off-road vehicle.
Even based on a speed of 100 miles per hour, Fenghuo's message transmission speed has reached 300 kilometers per hour.
This is exactly the speed of the high-speed rail!
The beacon fire passed from Jiayuguan to Zhangye, and then to the southeast to Shandan, Yongchang, Wuwei... and finally to the Gulang River, the Great Wall began to be divided into two.
Some went straight east to Ningxia, while some went south as close as Lanzhou!
It only took a total of two and a half hours to send the message from Jiayuguan to Gulang River. After that, the beacon fire divided into two routes and continued to advance. It took more than 40 minutes to light the beacon fire at Shajing Station in the north of Lanzhou City. This is The last beacon tower leading to Lanzhou.
When the beacon was lit, the sky was just getting dark in the east. The people in Xigu City who got up early stared stupidly at the fire burning on the hilltop in the north, and asked questions one by one.
"What's wrong? Why is it still burning..."
"That's it, mountain fire?"
"That's not right. If there was a wildfire, wouldn't there be so much smoke with just a little less smoke?"
The people crowded into the streets and no one knew what was going on. The beacon signals had not been used in the entire Qing Dynasty for two hundred years. They had long forgotten the good things left by their ancestors.
But is there anyone in the yamen who understands? The master jumped up when he saw it, "Sun! Beacon warning? Isn't that the beacon tower on the Great Wall at Shajingyi?"
"This is the signal from Marshal Zuo! Report the news to Lanzhou City quickly..."
The Xigu County Government Office galloped towards Lanzhou City. Where was the General Logistics Department where the army and supplies were assembled!
The city of Lanzhou was shaken, and everyone knew that something great had happened in the west. However, although the beacon fire was fast, it also had a very annoying shortcoming, that is, it could not convey complex messages.
People know something happened, but they just don’t know what happened!
The whole city spent three days in anxiety before receiving the homing pigeons from Jiayuguan. The generals who stayed behind were so excited that they jumped three feet high when they saw the military situation.
"A great victory! A great victory in Xingxing Gorge! The Western Expedition Army has conquered Xingxing Gorge and reached Hami!"
"Hahaha... Notify the whole city, post it red! Send homing pigeons to Xi'an City... Let Xi'an City quickly send a telegram to the world!"
The streets and alleys of Lanzhou were all covered with red good news. The news of the victory in Xingxingxia made the whole province of Gansu excited like the Chinese New Year!
But at this time, Xi'an and the capital were still confused. They had no idea what was happening in the far northwest.
The Great Wall is divided into two parts from the Gurang River side, and the main body continues to extend eastward along the ancient Great Wall Road of the Ming Dynasty, including Dajing Fort, Hongshui Fort... along the Yellow River to Ningxia Zhongwei, and then all the way north to Ningshuo.
Cross the Yellow River and enter Hongshan Fort, go straight to Dingyuan and Jingyuan of Shaanxi Province... and go straight to Yulin City in the northeast!
For Shaanxi Province, the Great Wall is the entire northern border. To the north of the Great Wall is Inner Mongolia and to the south is Shaanxi. Like Shanxi, it was the frontline of the Ming Dynasty against Mongolia.
The beacon fires burning here have completely confused the soldiers and civilians along the route. The descendants of the frontier troops of the Ming Dynasty were all overwhelmed by the smoke. Even many abandoned beacon towers were spontaneously lit by the people around them.
You ask them why? They can't say anything, but the oldest elder in the village will give them a severe lesson.
"Don't ask why...the rules left by our ancestors are like this. If the beacon fire in the west starts burning, you have to follow it!"
"How many beacon towers does such a long Great Wall have? It's possible for one place to be crazy, but how can it be possible for thousands of beacon towers to be crazy?"
"You're right, the folks in the west must know something, otherwise they wouldn't waste firewood!"
Incredible, later historians labeled the incident of the Great Wall’s renewed beacon fire in 1871 as incredible! The Qing Dynasty abolished the defense system of the Great Wall that had existed for more than 200 years. In many places, the city bricks were almost completely lost. How could it be so mysteriously resurrected?
Many beacon towers have been completely covered by decaying grass. Except for the people who herd sheep and horses, no Qing Dynasty garrison or government officials are willing to take a look here.
But the Qing government's ignorance did not erase the long-lasting memories deep in the hearts of the people!
Many things are actually passed down through folklore, oral traditions, fairy tales, operas, notes of wild people in the countryside... and other things called culture.
No one organized them, they just acted like that spontaneously based on instinct and the cultural memory passed down in their blood!
The villagers on the side of the Great Wall may never be able to write their names in their entire lives. They are blind or illiterate, but they know that when the smoke rises, there are police outside the Great Wall!
When the war breaks out, there is a family member asking for help. When the war breaks out, you must pass on the war smoke!
This kind of culture imprinted in the blood is the genetic gene of Chinese people that never ceases to exist. No matter whether you are ruled by aliens or bullied by foreign powers for hundreds of years, this culture will never die!
The local officials were dumbfounded. All the local officials trained by the Qing government did not know how to deal with such emergencies, and their snail-like administrative efficiency could not keep up with the speed of beacon transmission.
There may be a few county magistrates or commanders of the Manchu garrison who feel something is wrong and want to stop this behavior, but how can they stop the beacon that spreads at the speed of light?
The Manchu commander in Shenmu County, north of Yulin City, had just led his troops to the edge of the Yongxingbao Great Wall, but he saw the beacon smoke rushing towards the east, and it had already ignited the boundary of Shanxi!
"Oh my God! What's going on here, what's going on here? Who's going to hit the Great Wall? What's going on... What's going on!"
Datong Prefecture, Shuoping Prefecture, Ningwu Prefecture, Baodezhou, Daizhou...these are the places where the Great Wall passes through Shanxi.
Shanxi is originally narrow in the east-west direction. Before the officials of the local state capital could turn over, the beacon signal had already reached Zhili within three hours!
The Great Wall passes through Shanxi in two ways. After entering Zhili, take the North Road to Xuanhua Prefecture, that is, Zhangjiakou and Chicheng, then turn south and go straight to Miyun Huanghua Valley.
The South Road enters Yi County, Baoding Prefecture, and goes along the mountains to Zijing Pass and Baihua Mountain, then enters Changping in the west of Beijing and goes directly to Juyong Pass!
The two groups advanced at the same time, almost ten minutes apart. The beacon fires in Huanghuayu and Juyongguan were suddenly ignited, and the capital of the Qing Dynasty was shocked!
From Juyongguan to the capital, it was a winding road of five thousand miles, a distance of 2,500 kilometers, and it only took two days for the war to continue.
Forty-eight hours, the beacon fire traveled five thousand miles!
When the beacon fire at Juyongguan was lit, the entire city of Changping exploded! The people of the capital never expected to see Juyong setting off a beacon!
The Eight Banners garrison went crazy and sent fast horses to Sijiu City. As a result, all the 60,000 new troops of Guiziliu's Xishan Camp knew the news halfway!
Yi Xin's eldest son Zai Cheng held two jade-like walnut plates and made a clicking sound: "Holy shit! What the hell did you see today? What the hell is this!"
