The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 933 In Anxi - Iron and Blood
Anxi Envoyage Office, Hezhong Province, Mulu Prefecture, Kunxu County.

This area is located near the border of Turkmenistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, and was once part of Khorasan in Persia.

Historically, it was briefly under the control of the Central Plains regime and was part of the Persian Protectorate under the Tang Dynasty's control.

Later, it belonged to the Male Region of Turkmenistan, located in the eastern part of the country.

Mulu, and even Kunxu, were the names used for this place during the Tang Dynasty, and Dayu basically continued to use them.

The Anxi Envoy established the Mulu Garrison Army in Mulu Prefecture, which consisted of 3,000 men. In other counties such as Kunxu and Shenglian, militia organizations were established according to the garrison system.

Located in the vast Karakum Desert, the conditions in Mulu province are much worse than those in the Mesopotamian region, namely the Syr Darya and Amu Darya river basins. As a result, the entire province has only 130,000 people.

Kunxu County had even fewer, with only 21,622 registered Han Chinese.

The wind from the Gobi Desert brought with it the dry heat of the desert. When it blew on your face, you only felt warm, but soon your mouth and throat became dry.

Meanwhile, fine sand keeps getting into your eyes, nose, and mouth, making it impossible to avoid.

Niu Liangchen, who came from Caoxian County, Caozhou Prefecture, Shandong Province, was wearing a white, non-heat-absorbing imitation military uniform, with a turban popular in the Tang Dynasty tied on his head, and his face covered with a veil.

Behind him, more than forty Han cavalrymen in similar attire followed him, a red banner with white lotus flowers fluttering in the wind.

After galloping for several miles, Niu Liangchen took out his pocket watch and then pulled out a short pencil to draw on the small map.

“There is an oasis of the Khorasan tribe within five miles to the east. Since we are chasing them so fast, those bastards can’t have gone far and will have to go to the oasis to replenish their water supply.”

After saying this, Niu Liangchen spurred his horse and led the way, turning east from where the Mulu River could be seen, heading directly into the depths of the desert.

In the vast deserts of these rivers, the only place to survive is along the riverbanks.

The Murghab River, which supports the province of Mulqab, originates in the northwest of the Pashtun Plateau (Afghan Plateau), and all settlements in the province of Mulqab are built along this river.

Kunxu County, Shenglian County, and Mulu Prefecture are all located on this line.

But there are exceptions, namely the oases near the river.

Sheikh Oasis is located about five miles southwest of the Mulu River. It is one of the few places where people can live without being adjacent to the Mulu River, thanks to the groundwater that gushes out from here.

The water volume is quite large, forming a small lake even larger than Crescent Lake in Dunhuang.

However, due to intense evaporation, and possibly because this is the end of an underground river, the lake water is slightly bitter and not particularly suitable for human habitation.

The firewood crackled and popped in the stove, and after a camel was laid down, it was quickly cut into chunks of meat suitable for stewing.

The greasy camel hump and several large pieces of meat still covered in blood were casually thrown into the pot, and a pair of rough, bloody hands added several large, dark, pebble-like grains of Karakum salt.

"Great Sardar, after you finish this camel feast, you should hurry on your way."

The Qin people have noses sharper than dogs, eyes more piercing than eagles, and methods more ruthless than jackals. Once they know you've been here, everyone in the oasis will be killed.

The young elder of the oasis knelt before a bearded man, pleading humbly. The bearded man glanced at him contemptuously, clearly displeased with the young elder's attitude.

"Turushekh was once the greatest spiritual leader of our Tekin tribe, but I never expected that you descendants would be so cowardly."

Those Qin people have already been slaughtered and are hiding in their rat holes. Where would they find eyes sharper than an eagle, or methods more ferocious than a jackal?

Sardar is not a name, but a title of respect for a commander in wartime who could lead a force of hundreds of men, essentially an enhanced version of a centurion.

The Tekin tribe was once the largest tribe controlling eastern Turkmenistan, with a population of 300,000 at its peak and capable of deploying 50,000 light cavalry.

However, in the battle where the Da Yu destroyed the Persian Qajar dynasty, the Tejin tribe, which sided with the Persians, suffered a devastating blow, with more than 20,000 people killed in battle, including their tribal leader Muhammad Bodi Khan.

A year later, the Dayu army captured Jinma City (Ashgabat) and Mulu (Male), where Dong Jinfeng's eldest son, Dong Shaoquan, presided over a brutal sweep.

In three years, at least 100,000 Tekin men were killed, and a large number of women were taken as slaves. Only no more than 20,000 escaped to Persia.

This centurion was one of the remnants of the Tekin tribe who had managed to escape. Under the leadership of the young Nur Bodi Khan, they had allied with the Pashtuns and were ready to descend the mountain to seek revenge.

“Look, this is the fate of those Qin heretics. They invaded our homeland and slandered our scriptures. No believer in God can forgive them.”

We are engaged in a holy war, and everyone must be prepared to die!

After a bite of camel meat and a bowl of wine that defied doctrine but was extremely precious, the centurion stood up and boasted loudly.

He grabbed two dark heads from a cage beside him, revealing them to all the men and women of the Tejin tribe. Their distinctively tied-up hair proved that the two heads belonged to the Qin people.

“Jinwa’er, Uncle has come to take you home!” Large tears welled up in Niu Liangchen’s eyes. He put down his binoculars, his fists clenched so tightly they cracked.

The smaller of the two heads that the centurion of the Tekin tribe had captured belonged to his nephew, Niu Jin.

Taking advantage of the shortage of people to harvest wheat in Kunxu County, this group of people wandered to the vicinity of Baihua Village in Kunxu County, where Niu Liangchen lived, intending to incite the Tejin chief laborers hiding among the Persians to start an uprising.

As a result, they were discovered by a youth patrol team composed of fourteen-year-old Niu Jin and others. During the firefight, the patrol team of only eight people, all of whom were boys aged fourteen to sixteen, was scattered by dozens of people from the other side.

Fourteen-year-old Niu Jin and sixteen-year-old Song Xingdong were killed, their heads cut off and taken away. However, their sacrifice left the enemy with four corpses that they could not take away and two wounded, thus exposing their whereabouts.

The cheers of hundreds of people failed to dispel the centurion's fear. He pretended to have won a great victory, but in reality, his forty-odd tribal warriors were almost defeated by a few children, which made the centurion deeply aware of the Qin people's terrifying nature.

So after the display, the centurion pretended to be hearty and continued to eat meat and drink wine, but in reality he wanted to leave as soon as he was full.

"Jiro, you're a good archer. Take out those two sentries in the open. The rest of you, get ready. As soon as their hidden sentries spot us, rush in immediately."

Moriyama, from Japan, drew his bow and arrow from his back and walked forward silently.

Two Turkmen sentries, wearing red turbans and munching on dried meat, looked enviously at their companions drinking in the distance.

Suddenly, a faint, sharp sound rang out, and an arrow suddenly appeared on the red-headed man's head to the left.

The arrow was incredibly powerful, penetrating the shaft by 30 percent, with its fletching still swaying rapidly. This caused the red-headed man to violently jerk his head and fall to the ground without even making a sound.

Redhead on the right was dozing against the tree trunk when he glanced over and saw his companion lying on the ground, completely unaware of what had happened.

He walked forward in confusion, only to feel a sudden chill on his neck, as if someone had pushed him hard. Then, a warm and slippery sensation came from below his neck.

Redhead reached out in horror and touched it, only to find it was bright red blood. He immediately sensed something was very wrong.

He tried to shout a warning, but his open lips could not utter a sound. His left hand, which reached for the sheep bone whistle at his waist, fell limply halfway down.

'Clap clap clap! '

The centurion was enjoying his meal, a sip of wine and a bite of meat, when he suddenly heard a short gunshot. He recognized it all too well; the Qin youths had used the same kind of fast and accurate long spear that night.

Not only did the centurion hear it, but the crowd did too. Two or three hundred people erupted in chaos, scattering and fleeing everywhere.

But the gunfire was faster than their movements; in the glow of the setting sun, the flashes of gun muzzles relentlessly reaped lives.

The garrison cavalry on the outskirts rode Ferghana horses, a hybrid breed from the Turkmen region, charging back and forth. With each slash of their steel-forged sabers, another corpse would fall to the ground.

The centurion had long since lost his earlier 'heroic' demeanor; he even dropped his weapon and hurriedly ran towards his warhorse.

In the dim light, the centurion suddenly saw nothing before him. There, where he had tethered his horse, stood a burly man, surrounded by four or five of his men, all lying in the blood.

The centurion let out a miserable howl and tried to turn and run again, but Moriyama, who was holding a firing pistol, came over. The short but extremely strong man turned his rifle around and smashed the butt of the rifle into the centurion's temple.

The bearded man staggered a couple of times, then his vision went black and he collapsed.

"Master, Master Qin, spare us! Spare us! We were forced by them!" The elder who had just urged the centurion to run away cried out as he fell to the ground, frantically kowtowing and begging for mercy.

"You wretches, you can't bring back a good son of the Han people even if you die a hundred times!" Niu Liangchen drew his waist knife, and the setting sun reflected a dim oasis on the blade, like an orange hell.

"Men, be careful! Don't let a single one escape, or we'll send them all to the deepest hell!" Niu Liangchen roared.

"Yes!" A loud reply rang out. The poor priest on the ground stopped kowtowing; he straightened his back blankly, knowing that their tribe would no longer exist.

Anxi was deeply influenced by Han chauvinism, and Dong Jinfeng's fourth son, Dong Shaode, even developed his own set of Han chauvinist slang.

For example, instead of referring to oneself as "I", one should refer to oneself as "so"; instead of responding as "yes", one should respond as "no"; and instead of addressing officials or superiors as "you" (or "sir"), one should address them as "official superior" (or "superior").

In order to be closer to the Han and Tang dynasties, it was even stipulated that no matter where one's hometown or where one came from, one must speak these words with a Guanzhong accent.

It has basically achieved a level of sophistication where one can determine whether the other party is a Han supremacist simply by looking at their words.

During the decades-long westward expansion of the Great Yu, this set of retro slang spread particularly widely, even among the natives of Central Asia, Persia, and Pashtun.

Most of them knew that if they encountered such strange words that seemed to come from the Han and Tang dynasties, it wouldn't just be one person dying, but all of them would die without any chance of survival!
Amid screams, blood flowed like a river in the Sheikh Oasis, an oasis famous for having produced the Turu Sheikh.

Half an hour later, apart from a dozen or so bandits who were to be taken back, there wasn't a single native left standing in the oasis.

"Jinwa, Xingdong, your father begged me to take good care of you when he left. Now they've returned amidst mountains of corpses and seas of blood, but the children are nowhere to be found. How am I supposed to explain this to them!"

Niu Liangchen washed the heads of his nephews Niu Jin and Song Xingdong clean, then retied his disheveled braids, while sobbing.

Not far away, Moriyama Nao and others also felt their noses sting. Several Japanese people whose fathers came from the Mikazuki Domain even started singing a mournful tune for the deceased.

*Pfft! Pfft!*

To the peculiar melody, dark, sticky heads were piled together with even stickier blood and mud, secured with branches and ropes, and in no time, a small mound of skulls was erected.

A towering fire broke out, burning down all the huts in the Sheikh Oasis, and the headless corpses were all thrown into the lake, polluting the water.

This oasis will be uninhabitable for at least six months.

Baihua Village, Kunxu County.

The village's name comes from Baihua River in Cao County, Niu Liangchen's hometown.

The village is mainly composed of people with the surnames Li, Song, and Niu, interspersed with five families of samurai from the Mikazuki clan of Japan.

These people had already died in the White Lotus Rebellion during the Jiaqing era.

Two years ago in history, Lin Qing, a commander of the Imperial Guard (Jinyiwei) now in Europe, started an uprising in Beijing. Niu Liangchen, Song Wencheng, and others also started an uprising in the Huaxian and Caoxian areas, but were eventually suppressed by the Manchu Qing dynasty.

Baihua Village is a typical Anxi village fortress, meaning that the village is usually built on a hill that is easy to defend and difficult to attack, and most of the settlers and immigrants in the village also live together.

Farmland and orchards surround the village, so even if it's a bit far, it's not a problem. Every family of the settlers has a horse, so they can just ride a horse to do farm work.

A temple stands at the highest point in the center of the village.

Well, although it's called a temple, it doesn't actually have a mountain gate or other facilities. Instead, it's a three-courtyard building. The main hall enshrines the White Lotus Sect's Incarnation Buddha, while the ancestral tablets of each family in the village are enshrined on both sides.

This is actually a 'village committee' that serves a dual function as both a religious institution and an ancestral hall.

Of course, it also served another purpose: an armory, a training ground, and a last stronghold.

"Brother Song, brother, just kill me! I couldn't protect my nephews, and they fell victim to those villains. Just kill me, just kill me!"

In the main hall of the temple, Niu Liangchen knelt outside the hall where the Buddha of the Descent of the World was enshrined, facing his brother Niu Liangde and Song Xingdong's father Song Wencheng.

Song Wencheng was a tall man with a terrible scar on his left cheek. He was a famous warrior in the Anxi army.

In the Battle of Kirova before the attack on Tsaritsyn, he fought against a hundred men single-handedly and killed seventeen Russian soldiers in hand-to-hand combat.

Therefore, after the war, he received a special banquet from Commander-in-Chief Mo Gongling, was awarded a first-class merit, a reward of one thousand silver dollars, and was granted the title of General of the State by the Crown Prince.

This is the eighth rank of nobility within the Imperial Clan. Above that is the General Who Stabilizes the Nation, and then the Earl. So, although it sounds like a miscellaneous general title, the actual rank is equivalent to a Baron who governs a vassal state.

"My son, did he die in battle, or was he murdered?" Song Wencheng stroked Song Xingdong's coffin with one hand, while supporting his wife, who had fainted from crying, with the other.

"Dongwa was a good man. He sacrificed himself to cover Laiwa and the others. Before he died, he killed two thieves!" Niu Liangchen said, crying.

Upon hearing this, Song Wencheng burst into laughter, and tears that had been welling up in his eyes for a long time fell down his cheeks with the vibrations of his laughter.

"Truly worthy of being my son, Song Wencheng's son; truly worthy of being His Majesty's loyal guardian of the border!"

"Get up. This isn't your fault. It's their fate." Hearing Song Wencheng say this, Niu Liangde went over and pulled Niu Liangchen up from the ground.

At this point, Niu Liangchen finally couldn't hold back anymore, and knelt down with a thud, hugging his brother's leg and bursting into tears.

"Brother, I wish I were the one who died! I wish I were the one who died!"

Niu Liangde kicked and threw Niu Liangchen far away. "What are you crying for? Your nephew and Dongwa died for a good cause. Remember this grudge, and we'll take our revenge in the future!"

Speaking of revenge, Niu Liangchen remembered something, stood up and waved his hand.

“Come on, bring them in. Right here in front of the Buddha, skin these bandits alive as a sacrifice to Dongwa and my nephew.”

Under the dismal moonlight, the red-headed centurion was tied to a ladder like a fat pig. He struggled desperately, sobbing and pleading through a gagged mouth, displaying a grotesque and pathetic state.

Song Wencheng handed the wine bowl to his second son, Song Xingzai. The twelve-year-old Song Xingzai took a big gulp, then, holding the ox-ear knife his father had given him when he was eight, walked over step by step.

The red-headed centurion was almost driven mad with fear. He roared wildly, and his uncontrollable excrement and urine dripped straight down his trouser leg.

Song Xingzai looked at the burly man from the Special Jin tribe with disgust. After a moment's hesitation and a bit of fear, he stabbed the man in the abdomen with a knife, then gripped the knife handle with both hands and twisted it violently, causing the man's intestines to rupture.

A moment later, he shouted, drew his bull-ear knife, and after the red-headed centurion could barely groan, he plunged the knife into his chest, ending the villain's life.

. . . .

On the same day, in Nanshan Village, on the outskirts of Stone City (Tashkent), by the Kaitian River.

A large red flag with a gold sun and moon on a red background fluttered high in the village, accompanied by the clamor of gongs and drums and the sound of sobbing.

Women and children knelt on both sides of the road leading into the village, while able-bodied men carried the coffin, chanting in grief as they advanced. Elders greeted them at the entrance of the village temple, tears streaming down their faces.

Nanshan Village is different from Baihua Village; the able-bodied men went there not to fight against Russia, but to fight against France.

The 11th Company of the 3rd Regiment of Liangfan Central Guard, composed of able-bodied men from the village, suffered heavy losses in the battle to rescue Belgrade under Li Xingtai.

Of the thirty-seven men who went to war, fourteen died in battle and ten were wounded and forced to retreat.

"Old Man Jiang, the King says he has wronged you by not bringing back all the soldiers who went to war. This is a personal letter from His Majesty to you, praising your village."

The Left Assistant of the Liang Prince's Palace handed a document with yellow silk borders to Old Man Jiang, who was dressed in a flying tiger robe.

Fifty-seven-year-old Old Man Jiang, a one-eyed man, quickly knelt down and took the document from Zuo Zanshan's hand.

He first bowed three times towards the east, facing the direction of the capital, then raised the silk cloth and bowed again towards the direction of Stone City.

"Please inform Your Majesty, sir, that the four families of Jiang, Zhao, Jin, and Quan in Nanshan Village were originally lowly people from Silla, and the other families, such as Liu and Zhu, also came from poor backgrounds."

In the past, we were starving and poorly clothed. It was His Majesty the Emperor who gave us a way to live, sent us to this land of abundance, gave us land, bestowed livestock upon us, taught us etiquette, and enabled us, these barbarian border people, to become His Majesty's children.

"The lives of the 237 people in Nanshan Village have long belonged to His Majesty and the King. Don't even mention this small loss; even if it meant the lives of our entire village, we would give them up!"

Old Man Jiang's Mandarin is not very fluent because, including himself, 60% of the population of Nanshan Village came from Silla.

“That’s right. Please tell the king, we know who gave us this pearl rice, this fatty mutton, this hundred acres of fertile land, this mansion and this fine horse.”

"My son is gone, but I still have my grandson. And even if my grandson is gone, this old man can still serve His Majesty!"

(End of this chapter)