"As long as Wenhe isn't hurt!" Ye Jingchen replied instinctively.
He spoke too fast, and Xie Shaoling didn't hear him clearly. He subconsciously asked, "What and?"
"No harm will be done. Uncle Xie, I just can't bear to see the people of the Northern Frontier suffer from the ravages of war again, and I hope that the soldiers stationed in the Northern Frontier can return home safely as soon as possible!" Ye Jingchen straightened his expression and said earnestly.
"Have you considered that your plan will put the Northern Barbarians in a desperate situation? To survive, they will fight back with all their might. The Northern Barbarian cavalry is already invincible. If they fight to survive, they will be even more terrifying. Even if Dayuan can defeat them in the end, what price will they pay?" Xie Shaoling asked with a solemn expression.
"So I will take the initiative to strike before they are driven to a dead end, so as not to give them a chance to fight back," Ye Jingchen said with a smile.
Upon hearing the words "take the initiative," Xie Shaoling's expression changed.
"Does Your Highness intend to venture deep into enemy territory alone?" he asked.
"Going deep into the heartland is the best way to defeat the Northern Barbarians. The Drunken Horse Grass plan is just to make this battle easier," Ye Jingchen said.
"There are almost no landmarks in the wilderness, making it easy to lose your way. There are also quicksand and swamps. Without someone familiar with the terrain to guide you, even an army could be silently wiped out," Xie Shaoling warned with a stern expression.
Ye Jingchen smiled and said, "There are people familiar with the terrain. Aren't there guides in the caravan? I'll ask them to carefully survey the routes when they go to the Northern Barbarians these next few times."
Actually, the person who was truly familiar with the terrain was Xie Chang'an, but this was Xie Chang'an's first time in the Northern Frontier, so he shouldn't be familiar with the terrain of the wasteland.
"How can we keep our trade routes a secret from the Northern Barbarians?" Xie Shaoling looked at Ye Jingchen with a complicated expression.
They couldn't fool the northern barbarians; if they ventured deep into enemy territory alone, wouldn't that be handing themselves over to be attacked?
He didn't say the rest, as a way of giving Ye Jingchen face, but he believed Ye Jingchen would understand what he meant.
“It’s not a caravan traveling on trade routes, it’s a private caravan,” Ye Jingchen said calmly.
Smuggling salt and tea is prohibited on the border of Dayuan. Legitimate caravans are permitted by the imperial court, but the sale of salt and tea can be extremely profitable, so there are always some unscrupulous people who take the risk for profit.
If these people were to go to the Northern Barbarians, they certainly couldn't take the trade routes; they would have to find safe paths on their own.
In his previous life, Xie Chang'an used these people to find a safe route to the Northern Barbarians in the wilderness.
Xie Shaoling was not the kind of person who was pedantic. After learning about Ye Jingchen's plan, he also began to prepare for it.
Only cavalry can play a greater role when an army ventures deep into enemy territory alone. Therefore, the Shenwei Army began to focus on training cavalry.
After informing Xie Shaoling of the plan, Ye Jingchen then told the emperor about it and asked him for warhorses and money.
In Dayuan, warhorses are extremely valuable strategic resources. The Shenwei Army only has 30,000 warhorses. In order to expand the size of the cavalry, Ye Jingchen asked the emperor for another 20,000.
Although the emperor was heartbroken, he gritted his teeth and agreed.
After all, this battle was crucial to whether he could make a name for himself in history.
If he were to accomplish the great feat that several generations of emperors of the Great Abyss had failed to achieve, he could then proudly face his ancestors a hundred years from now.
As time went by, Ye Jingchen's plan was being carried out in an orderly manner.
In the past, if drunken horse grass appeared on the wasteland, the herders would definitely kill it immediately.
But this year is different. Merchants from Daejeon are actually buying this animal-harming stuff at high prices, and the prices aren't low either. They can even directly exchange it for salt and tea.
In this way, these poisonous plants all became useful.
Some powerful figures in the Northern Barbarians sensed a conspiracy, while others wanted to profit from the ubiquitous poisonous herbs.
Without human intervention, the poisonous weeds have grown more and more, even affecting grazing.
There are only so many places on the wasteland where grazing is possible. If more poisonous weeds grow, there will naturally be less grass for cattle and sheep to eat.
But before the herders could even panic, the merchants of Dayuan showed extreme enthusiasm for the immature poisonous plants. They were even willing to give them salt and tea on credit in advance for the sake of those plants.
June and July are the season when poisonous plants bloom. By September, they begin to bear fruit, and the autumn winds will spread their fruits throughout the wasteland.
When the wind turns cool, it's time to harvest the poisonous weeds.
This year was like a dream for the herdsmen of the northern barbarians.
Although many of their cattle and sheep starved to death, they managed to obtain enough salt and tea by selling the poisonous herbs. They could even use the money from selling the herbs to buy rice and flour that only people from Dayuan could afford.
Although grain was expensive, it was worth it for the northern barbarians who rarely had the opportunity to eat it.
Anyway, poisonous plants are everywhere in the wasteland. As long as there are poisonous plants, they can sell them for money and then eat the food they couldn't afford before.
This winter, for the first time, northern Xinjiang was free from war.
Although some tribes wanted to raid the border of Dayuan as they had in previous years, this year they had stockpiled enough winter supplies by selling poisonous herbs, so no one would starve to death again. Very few tribes responded, and the matter was dropped.
The poisonous weed is no longer a poisonous weed, but a divine weed.
For Da Yuan, although it cost a lot of money to buy the Drunken Horse Grass at a high price, the prices of salt and tea that Da Yuan sold to the Northern Barbarians also increased, and the most expensive item sold was still grain, which was rarely traded before.
Previously, the staple food of the Northern Barbarians was mostly beef and mutton, and they rarely ate grain. However, this year, there was not enough beef and mutton, so they had to use the money from selling horse feed to buy grain.
So, after going around in circles, most of the money eventually returned to the people of Dayuan.
At least, as the caravan that orchestrated all these transactions, Ye Jingyu suffered considerable losses, but in his view, the rewards and recognition his father gave him far outweighed his losses.
Therefore, when Ye Jingchen offered to pay extra to make up for the losses of his caravan, he refused to accept it no matter what.
Although this winter is cold, it is not as difficult to endure as in previous years, whether for the soldiers and civilians in the northern frontier or for the northern barbarians.
As the snow melts on the wasteland, flowing into trickling rivers and giving birth to greenery, a new round of life-or-death struggle quietly unfolds.
After a winter of preparation, without the need for artificial sowing, the Drunken Horse Grass grows wildly on the wasteland.
Once the Drunken Horse Grass was linked to rice, flour, salt, and tea, the herders no longer hated it; instead, they began to cherish it.
For the northern barbarians who were used to eating beef and mutton, fragrant and soft rice and flour were definitely the most delicious food in the world.
But problems soon arose.
Merchants in Dayuan only buy the fruiting Drunken Horse Grass, which doesn't bear fruit until September.
Before this, they still relied on cattle and sheep for a living.
But there's hardly any grass left on the grassland to feed the cattle and sheep.
Without meat to eat, they have no choice but to buy grain at high prices. However, the money they earned last year from selling wild grass was not enough to buy enough grain to sustain them until this year's wild grass harvest.
Moreover, this year, the merchants of Daejeon are no longer willing to extend credit to them for grain.
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