The gray and yellow mandala is far away from the oasis.
Yue Guanchao and the others left Moyu County and stopped at the base of the city wall. This circular mandala had city gates on all sides. People from the Western Regions and camel caravans were constantly coming and going. From time to time, cars would roar by and drive by. Entering the city gate, it was busy and bustling.
Thinking back to the Khotan era thousands of years ago, Moyu County would have been hundreds of times more prosperous than it is now!
Moyu County is located at the foot of the Karakoram Mountains. It is an ancient city at the southern end of the oasis. After three days of hot air, all the sand and dust have fallen, and the blue sky has returned.
Looking in the distance, Hotan Oasis is thousands of miles away, connected to the yellow sand horizon in the distance. The combination of red and green is particularly fantastic. Looking back, you can directly see the continuous snow-capped mountain peaks, black and gray. The complex wild mountains.
It is summer, and some of the snow-capped mountains have also melted away their accumulated water, forming rushing rivers on the mountains, flowing turbulently to the Karakash River in Moyu County, bringing turbid and turbulent melt water from the snow-capped mountains.
At this time, the river was turbid, and the location they left the city happened to be near the Karakash River. Both sides of the river bed were filled with craftsmen and people who came to collect jade materials. The black masses were like herds of cattle and sheep, piled up near the river.
During the flood season, the jade-stepping method is often used to pick jade. Many people who go down the river dress similarly:
There was a cowhide rope tied around their waists. One end of this rope tied them, and the other end was fixed on a wooden stake and stood on the river bank. Then they wore shorts and shorts with bare arms and legs exposed, or they also rolled up the clothes on their trouser legs and arms.
The people who had already entered the river had bamboo baskets as big as their heads hung around their waists. They held iron rods in one hand and pliers in the other. They used their feet to keep walking in the turbid river water, feeling the touch of their feet like a minesweeper to find out who was trapped. Jade material in the mud.
If there are more grandiose ones, there will be jade carts like wooden frames that sink into the river. The front ends of these carts have a spiral structure like a water wheel. Each spiral leaf is a trapezoidal funnel. When rotating in the water, It can not only drive the jade cart forward, but also transport the jade materials in the mud to the water surface through the spiral and fall into the inner bucket of the cart.
There was a gentle ringing of camel bells, and more than a dozen camels walked out from the city gate. Yue Guanchao looked closely and saw that it was the old herdsman and his few guys. When the old herdsman saw them, he first said hello from a distance, and then raised his arms. The camels heard the signal with the sound of whips, and fell silent in twos and threes, lowering their heads to regurgitate the contents of their stomachs, with steam rising from their nostrils.
The old herdsman handed over the camels to them and continued: "Young man, I don't know what you are doing in Hongbai Mountain? It is a desert after all. If you are willing, my guys and I can help you drive the camels on the way. I want to repay you for buying my camel at a high price, and on the other hand, I also want to help you out. I, Queenie, have no other abilities, but I am still somewhat capable of driving camels."
Song Siyuan looked at Yue Guanchao: "Since Uncle Quini has this idea, let's let him drive the camels for us. After all, these camels belong to him and we are very familiar with him."
There is strength in numbers, and everyone has no objections to Uncle Quini's joining. A few more guys can be considered as a few more people to help them. The group of people rode on camels and walked forward along the Kashgar River.
From Hotan Oasis to Hongbai Mountain, the straight line length is about 400 miles. According to the camel footsteps, it takes about three or four days. They walked for a day and barely got out of Hotan Oasis. The further they walked, the more they felt The oases are gradually decreasing, and the vigorous vegetation is beginning to be replaced by sparse desert plants. You can already see the desert in the distance without a telescope.
Before Yue Guanchao and the others came to Hotan Oasis, they had already had two experiences of walking in the desert, and they still figured out some ways to understand the desert environment!
The great desert is a general concept, and the desert conditions in each region are completely different.
For example, most of the deserts in northern Xinjiang are dominated by oases, but deserts are scattered among them. Various oasis cities are connected by rivers to form giant oases. Together with the Tianshan Mountains, they form mountain oases.
In southern Xinjiang, because there are too few rivers, oases are distributed in patches, and the area of green corridors between oases is too small and can almost be ignored. Another example is that the desert in Western Xinjiang is the driest, and it is also located in the hinterland of the desert, covered by red and white The sacred mountain is divided into two, with dry sand dunes on both sides and no trace of any oasis.
Eastern Xinjiang is close to the Hexi Corridor. The terrain is complex and changeable. Oasis, snow-capped mountains, ravines and rift valleys are mixed with each other. When walking, you can see the crescent oasis in the desert. The landform is weird and strange, with wind-eroded peaks, sandy wastelands, dry ancient swamps, abandoned Fortresses, earthen caves and sinkholes, diverted old rivers, barren mountains, split river valleys...these changeable wasteland landforms just prove that Hexi has not yet been completely deserted and can still host diverse topography.
If we use a metaphor, Hexi is like a half-dead land, using its last strength to carry diverse geographical environments.
Compared with the Hexi Corridor, Southern Xinjiang has basically entered the center of the desert!
There is no longer a complex and changeable environment here. Thousands of years of drought and harsh climate have basically corroded all the mountain peaks and plateaus in the desert, and have corroded all the hills and platforms that cannot withstand the wind and sand into fine yellow sand. , under the accumulation effect of wind blowing, it is like there is a huge millstone in the desert, grinding everything into fine sand, spreading it evenly in the desert, forming endless sand dunes stacked like fish scales.
Therefore, apart from the unique red and white mountains, there are no high-lying peaks in the hinterland of the desert. There are only undulating sand dunes everywhere you look. It is easy to get lost without reference.
In this southern desert, only the river channel extending from the Kashgar River can still be covered with desert plants. Most of the desert has turned into yellow sand without any signs of life. If they had not been able to move forward along the river, they would have been completely destroyed by now. get lost.
It can only be said that the Hotan River, as the green corridor and lifeline of the Hotan people, is truly worthy of its name. Just imagine, in the thousands of miles of arid desert, there is a river that never flows. Even if there are no plants on both sides, it is still a river that can keep people alive. lifeline.
In the desert, where there is water, there is an oasis, and where there is an oasis, there is a way to survive!
At this time, Yue Guanchao and his camel team formed a line, like ants in the desert, walking slowly near the sparse river oasis. While the camel team was resting by the river, Uncle Queeny unfolded the map and said: "We have been walking for a day , we have just left the Hotan Oasis. From here on, we have entered the desert. Further ahead is the center of the Devil's Desert. The environment will be a little worse than it is now. Now, we can still see plants along the river. When you get to the desert, you can only see running rivers and no plants."
Yue Guanchao asked curiously: "Uncle Queenie, isn't it said that where there are rivers, there are oases? Since there are rivers extending through the desert hinterland, how can there be no plants?"
The old herdsman Queenie looked mysterious: "The sand in the heart of the desert cannot survive without drinking water."
"Can sand drink water?"
This statement aroused everyone's curiosity. Song Siyuan motioned for Queenie to continue. The old herdsman did not hesitate to explain: "The sand in the hinterland of the Devil's Desert is different from the one here. The desert here is still mixed with mud. Let's see now. It does look like desert from the outside, but as long as you dig down a dozen or twenty meters, what appears will definitely be soil."
"Once there is a river flowing through the groundwater, it can nourish the soil. When the soil is full of water, it will become sticky. It can stick the sandy soil. As long as the soil can directly become moist land and store water in the soil, the plants will It can grow, and over time, it will form the oasis we see. The sand in the Devil's Desert is different from the one here..."
The sand in the hinterland of the Devil's Desert is not just a thin layer. No matter if you dig down ten meters, twenty meters, or hundreds of meters, you will still see yellow sand piled up into hard blocks. Thousands of years have passed, and there is no trace of it. Know how many layers of yellow sand have accumulated.
Oases can appear near rivers because there is soil that accumulates groundwater. If the sand does not absorb water, it will have no way to retain water. No matter how much water is given to it, the sand will act like a funnel, leaking all the water into the underground river, or in a few days. If the inside evaporates completely, of course there will be no way for plants to appear.
Even some deserts will have too much water to survive in the soil, forming saline-alkali land under the evaporating climate, as if the ground is all salty soil, and no plants can survive.
When the old herdsman Quini said this, his eyes became serious: "The hinterland of the Devil's Desert belongs to such an environment. Even if the Hotan River flows through, it will only make the surrounding sand slightly moist. The sand cannot drink any water at all. Of course, There won’t be any plants, and there will be saline-alkali land near the river.”
What Queenie said was completely different from the description of the underground palace murals. The underground palace murals showed that there was indeed an oasis in the Red and White Mountains during the Tang Dynasty. This was obviously not consistent with the description of saline-alkali tidal flats near the river. Yue Guanchao asked again: " Uncle Quini, isn’t there any special situation? Why do I remember that there is the Sand Sea King’s City near Hongbai Mountain? Then the King’s City should be built in an oasis, right?”
The old herdsman Queeni waved his hand: "You are talking about the imperial city of the ancient Shanshan Kingdom. That imperial city was indeed built on an oasis under the Red and White Mountains. However, the appearance of the oasis was not natural. It was caused by the kindness of the Empress Dowager. Let an oasis grow in the saline-alkali land.”
"This Empress is the last queen of ancient Shanshan. She was the only one who could create an oasis out of thin air in the salt-alkali land. This is just an example. Apart from this Empress, there has never been one in the hinterland of the desert. Any oasis, I think probably because the salt flats near the river channels are not suitable for survival.”
