"Lord Zhao, come and see! The people of Gaochang are truly resolute. To prevent us from stationing troops on this land, they are preparing to suppress the bandits themselves."
From Su Dingfang's position, he could just see a military camp of Gaochang State. Since their morning court was over, the officers inside had begun to gather soldiers. Now hundreds of cavalrymen had gathered. From the outside, they looked quite formal, but if you looked closely at the expressions of these soldiers, you could tell that they were unwilling to go.
This group of Xueyantuo people are also notorious. They have been here for quite some time. Although they are all stray dogs, they were originally the guards of Xueyantuo Khan. They are also the best troops of Xueyantuo. Although they are dressed in rags, their combat effectiveness is not bad.
The Tang army is not afraid of them, but we are not the Tang army. We are just an ordinary army of Gaochang Kingdom. How can it be so easy for us to fight them head-on or find them in the Gobi Desert?
If we have accurate information and know the enemy's exact location, then this battle can still be fought. But if the enemy does not want to fight and just keeps wandering around on the grassland, it will be impossible for us to destroy them.
Nomadic peoples all know that it is very easy to drive away the enemy when fighting in places like grasslands or deserts. As long as you are well prepared and launch the charge earlier than the enemy, this strategic goal can be achieved at any time. But if you want to destroy them, it is almost impossible.
You can ride a horse, and so can others. You can survive in the desert, and so can others. If the other party doesn't want to fight you, he can drag you across the desert for several days. By then, you will have eaten and drunk all your food, and your physical fitness will have declined. It's hard to say who will defeat whom.
There were similar situations in the Western Regions in the past, so they had a rule when fighting: either you kill him in one fell swoop, or you go back to gather strength and come back again. Never pursue him in the wilderness. If you do that, it's like being led by the nose, and in the end you get nothing, but instead you exhaust your own resources.
But now the King of Gaochang has issued an order, and they can only go forward regardless of their fear. Moreover, according to the information fed back from outside, these people of Xueyantuo are simply too bold and arrogant. They are doing bad things all the time, and the death toll has now risen to more than a thousand.
"Then we can just wait at home and see how successful their efforts are in suppressing the bandits. If they truly succeed, we'll congratulate them. If they fail, it won't just be about stationing troops in two places. Have we sent our men out yet?"
Lord Zhao stroked his beard and said, this guy doesn't want the people of Gaochang to win. Now Xueyantuo Khan is already at the end of his strength. It doesn't matter even if we can't catch him. He will not be of any significance in the future anyway. What we have to do is to station troops here and firmly control the channels between the East and the West.
"We've sent everyone out, but there's been no news so far. They have their own way of surviving in the wilderness. One day they're here, the next day they're there. I heard they change locations every few hours, so it's not easy to find them."
The troops sent out by Su Dingfang were not ordinary troops, but troops equipped with sounding balloons. As long as they put the balloons in the air, they could easily search the area within dozens of kilometers around. But this is not our home after all. We don’t know the situation around here, and we don’t know what tribes those are. So even if we find any, we have to identify them.
"Just search slowly. We are now in an invincible position. Whether they can destroy Xueyantuo or not, there is a way forward for both of us. If they destroy them, we will take the Khan back to the capital. If they don't, we will have to negotiate terms."
Lord Zhao looked at the military camp in the distance again, and then went back to rest. Anyway, there was nothing else to do in the past few days. The king of Gaochang used to entertain them often, but now that the army of Gaochang went out to fight, it was estimated that even the highest-level Tang Dynasty wine would not be enough for the king of Gaochang to drink.
Lord Zhao immediately agreed to Gaochang Kingdom's proposal to station them outside the city. It was indeed not a good idea for their army to go out to fight while our army was stationed inside their city. If something happened, we might be blamed. Now we are stationed outside the city, and you will be responsible for any problems.
Except for the seventy guards around Lord Zhao, all other troops have come to the outside of the city. This is nothing to our people, because they have always received this kind of field combat training anyway.
The King of Gaochang finally breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the Tang army's cooperation. He now had only one thought in mind: to kill the Xueyantuo Khan. He had just received news that his cousin had been killed. He was from an extremely wealthy tribe, and they had grown up together when they were young. Now both of them had been kidnapped by the Xueyantuo people, especially his beautiful cousin's wife...
The Imperial Master is now staying indoors, knowing how much trouble he has brought to the entire Gaochang.
If it weren't for his greed, perhaps the hungry wolves of Xueyantuo would not have been able to get in at all. He also found the man who was the Khan of Xueyantuo at home, and wanted me to give you the pass. Don't be silly, so he killed that little brother directly.
Of course, before he died, I thought about it for a long time. He also hoped to make a contribution. If he knew the hiding place of Xueyantuo Khan, maybe this guy would cooperate with the general who defended the country. But that little brother didn't know it at all, so he just killed him.
Xueyantuo Khan was robbing in the Gobi Desert while waiting for the customs clearance documents, just waiting to go to the Western Regions after getting the customs clearance documents. However, he did not expect that Gaochang Kingdom had changed so much and had now sent troops to capture him.
However, his men have lived a good life recently. When they were in Xueyantuo, they often robbed other tribes, but they were from the same country after all, so they would not kill people indiscriminately. But now we are on the land of Gaochang Kingdom, so why should we care so much?
Take away the things, kill all the men, and the women...
