Chapter 37: Far From Home

Zhang Mai spent the night with Guo Fen, and his eldest son was here at night. The next day, Fu'an took the initiative to pay his respects to Guo Fen. Guo Fen's temper was not very good, but Fu'an was very gentle, making people unable to lose their temper. If not, with the situation of Cao Yuanzhong's faction during this period, Guo Fen might not be able to bear it today.

Zhang Mai chatted with his two wives to enjoy the snow and stole the leisure for a whole morning. After lunch, a lot of things came to him. He handled affairs in Guofen's outer room. The two wives teased the children in the inner room. Fu'an sighed and said, "I used to hear my father explaining that you are too hard, and my father has been praised repeatedly, but he is not like his husband. He can't have a day of leisure. A few days ago, I complained that he had not come to see the children for many days, but now I think about it, but it's mine, and I don't even care about his difficulties outside."

Guo Fen smiled and said, "I'm really busy recently, that's true, but you're too honest. Don't be fooled by him. He doesn't go outside to handle official business today. He deliberately did it here for us to show you how busy he is."

The matter outside just came to an end, and Zhang Mai said in the curtain: "What are you two saying bad things about me?"

Fu'an said: "No, my sister discussed with me what to stew to cheer up my husband."

Zhang Mai smiled and said, "You may have such a thought. Your sister is not that good person. She hasn't been angry with me yet. I worked all night last night, and when I woke up in the morning, she didn't even prepare water for me."

Fu'an asked, "What are you busy with?" Suddenly he remembered something, his face turned red, and Guo Fen said angryly: "You are so unrestrained, the maids and children are all in front of you, why are you chewing the tongue!"

Zhang Mai smiled and said, "Fuan is not an outsider."

Guo Fen spat, Guo Zhang entered the outside, and Guo Fen stopped. Guo Zhang was Guo Fen's clan brother. After coming in, he first asked his sister for gifts. Zhang Mai said, "If there is no urgent matter, I will not be in charge today." Guo Zhang said, "It's nothing big. Does the marshal still remember the Saman merchant we saved that night? He had to remind me that the two slaves had driven away and now he is asking for a meeting outside."

Zhang Mai said: "It's gone. Let Ma Xiaochun deal with it on my behalf."

Guo Fen suddenly asked, "Businessman Saman? Did you come to Ningyuan?"

Guo Zhang said: "Yes."

Guo Fen said: "Why let him come in. I'll ask him about Ning Yuan's recent situation."

Zhang Mai said: "Don't Alua Bian often writes letters and messages to you?"

"That..." Guo Fen said: "What outsiders say will be a little different from what they say to their own family. Brother Zhang, bring him in."

Guo Zhang went out to bring the man in, but it was a Saman businessman and a young man. The businessman begged that he was not fluent and hoped to bring the young man as his translator. Ma Xiaochun carefully checked that the young man did not bring weapons and then let him in.

The merchant Zanji came in and saluted Zhang Mai, while the young man kowtowed to Zhang Mai. Ma Xiaochun knew that Guo Fen was going to ask questions, so he moved Zhang Mai's seat to the curtain. Fu'an in the middle asked the maid to move the mat to the curtain, but Guo Fen walked out generously and sat side by side with Zhang Mai. Guo Zhang pressed his knife to the guard next to him.

The merchant Zanji saluted Guo Fen again, and the young man couldn't help but look at Zhang Mai and Guo Fen. Guo Fen asked, "Where are you from?"

Zanji said, "We come from Baghdad." He actually understood some Tang Yan and could say a few words, and he answered this sentence directly with Tang Yan.

Zhang Mai said with a sneer and said, "Baghdad, aren't you Saman's businessman?"

Zanji said: "The villain is Saman's man. He started the Kuba trade route and went to Baghdad to sell silk and earned a lot of gold and silver. He followed him back all the way and walked here."

These sentences are relatively complicated. The young man translated casually, and his words were filled with a strong Hu accent.

Zanji said again: "Actually, the villain is planning to move from Saman to Ningyuan."

Guo Fen hurriedly asked, "Why?"

Zanji said: "The folk customs in Ningyuan are more free, and everyone knows that the Tang Dynasty will revive in the future. Unlike Tianfang, it has declined almost. Saman also began to look tired."

Guo Fen originally wanted to ask Ning Yuan about the situation and want to know what environment his brother lives in - although she communicated with Guo Luo and Guo Bian, she thought that brothers and sisters would mostly report good news but not bad news, so she had to learn about these situations from other people.

But Zhang Mai was attracted by Zanji's words. He thought that although it was unintentional to let the Saman merchant come in, it was right, so he asked: "How is Tianfang's decline method? Why is Saman tired?"

Zanji said, "The True God is far away from us. The Tianfang Cult has been divided into many years. Wars are everywhere in Khorasan, and madmen are everywhere in the city. In the countryside, there are disaster victims everywhere. As for the nomadic people on the grassland, they are becoming more and more barbaric. Although they also believe in the Tianfang Cult, they have become biased in their beliefs. Using the teachings of the True God as an excuse for their killing, they completely deviated from orthodoxy. It is so terrible. As for the Saman, they are in danger. As for the Saman, they are not able to do so."

Zhang Mai remembered in his heart that in recent years, he spent nine out of ten of his energy. He paid attention to the West to the Uighurs and Saman and other Tianfang countries, including Lingxi, Saman, and asked again: "I heard that Saman is very rich now."

"It's very rich now," Zanji said. "And it's reaching the peak of wealth."

Zhang Mai said: "Isn't that good at the peak of wealth?"

Zanji smiled and said, "At the peak of wealth, you will go downhill. Naisl II is indeed a wise ruler, but he has been in power for twenty-three years. In the first ten years of his succession, it was the best decade with Saman. The whole country went from early expansion to stability, and people began to work hard to create and accumulate wealth. At that time, Saman was not particularly rich, but in my past forty or fifty years, I felt that that period was the happiest and most hopeful - just like we just walked out of a forest, and the front gradually became brighter, and the hope that led people to light made people full of happiness."

After listening to the young man's translation, Zhang Mai and Guo Fen nodded and said yes. They also remembered the experience of Tang Jun's entrepreneurial stage. Yes, life was still very hard at that time, but their hearts were full of expectations for the future. Because there was hope, hardship did not seem to be bitter. Every time they achieved even a little bit of results, they would feel satisfied.

"The whole decade when Samman was accumulating wealth was also the decade when I created wealth myself," Zanji said. "Now when I think back, my life was really, very hard in those ten years. I still don't know how I survived it, but I didn't feel it was hard at that time, and I was even very happy."

The couple looked at each other and remembered those difficult and happy days. Their hearts merged into one in this sight, but this kind of emotion was not something that Fu An, who had never suffered in the same troubles, could have.

Zanji said: "After those ten years of wealth accumulation, Saman became rich, just like me, and I also got rich. I completely got rid of poverty. I enjoyed the wealth I had made in the previous decade, enjoyed the beautiful wife and concubines, enjoyed the wine and food, enjoyed everything, everything. The first half of this decade can be said to be my most enjoyable time."

"The first half?" Zhang Mai asked, "Did you go bankrupt later?"

"No," Zanji said: "While I enjoyed it, I also opened shops in Bukhara and Samarkand, making my assets bigger and bigger, and my wife, children, and family members more and more."

Zhang Mai asked, "Then the second half of your ten years should be better."

Zanji shook his head, "No, no. I don't know why, after a few years, the meat that used to taste delicious and the wine that used to taste sweet could not make me happy. I once remembered that when I was young, I was in the desert, and a sip of clear spring made me feel very happy and happy, but later on - I put all the fine wine and food in front of me, and I lost my appetite. All the delicious food and beauty could not make me happy. Moreover, after my wife and children had more, I had more worries. I am not afraid of laughing at you, Marshal, for several years, I was worried about the trivial matters at home, and I was so worried that I wanted to jump to the secret river! But when I was young, even when I was fighting with the horse thief in the desperate situation of the Gobi, my knife was about to chop on my neck, and the food was cut off, and I never had such painful despair."

Zhang Mai was stunned for a moment, looked at Guo Fen, and then looked at Fu'an inside through the curtain. Suddenly, he felt a little touched. Although he was not as painful as Zanji, he had to go to the Macheng River to jump into the horse city, but he had more and more troubles after entering Liangzhou.

"What happened later? Have you ever thought about how to solve this problem?" Zhang Mai couldn't help asking.

"Of course I want to." Zanji said: "Who doesn't want to find happiness back?"

"What do you do?" Zhang Mai asked again.

"My way is to regain my youth."

"Retrieve youth?"

"Yes," Zanji said: "One day six years ago, I suddenly decided to go out to do business. I wanted to get back the feeling I was young, I wanted to experience that pain again, and then regain that happiness. When I made this decision, my old friends in Bukhara and Samarkand thought I was crazy, and my big and small wives thought I was deliberately hiding from them--well, of course, this is part of the reason, but I still made up my mind and walked out of the house and out of the city.

The city, walked out of Saman, reorganized the camels, and lived a dangerous and arduous caravan life again. But Marshal, you know, I have been eroded by the beauty of wine and meat for many years. In the first two years of living this kind of life, it was really painful. There were countless times when I wanted to escape back and stay in the gentle country, but the desire to regain my youth supported me to continue walking. A few years later, I slowly adapted to this kind of life. Although my youth has not been regained, I have become accustomed to it until today."

Zhang Mai and Guo Fen both admired this businessman when they heard this. They both thought that the merchants in Tianfang World could go deep into all parts of the world, and it was not entirely based on religion and force. This spirit from the people was also a huge power.

Guo Fen asked Guo Zhang to pick up the wine and asked Zanji to taste it. Zanji did not refuse. Guo Fen asked, "Then you said just now that you are ready to move your family to Ningyuan. Tell me the truth, don't be afraid of offending me. In fact, is it just to please us?"

"No, Queen." Zanji said—that he called, and the young man translated it like this: "Although the city of Ningyuan is far less than Samarkand and Bukhara is prosperous, she has a youthful taste, and the country of Tiance is the same. I like this taste. Samarkand and Bukhara have actually become depressed now, let alone other parts of the dynasty, and the people in Ningyuan have more smiles than those in the Saman dynasty."

Guo Fen was relieved when she heard this. She could hear that Zanji did not tell lies. If the people of Ningyuan were happy, then Guo Fen thought that as the ruling commander of that area, his brother Guo Luo should not be in a bad mood.

"The smell of youth?" Zhang Mai asked: "Is Samman aging?"

"It has not yet reached the point of decay and aging, but it is indeed like Nesser II. Youth is gone." Zanji said: "If we look at wealth, Samman is richer now than ten years ago, and even more than twenty years ago. It is like a person. At fifty, he will generally be richer than at forty, and at forty and thirty years old. However, although a person in fifty has more wealth, he has lost more. Under the cover of wealth, he will have countless problems. The same is true for Samman. Although this country is getting richer, he is still richer.

As there are more and more rich people, there are more and more poor people. The rich have reached a point that they dare not imagine twenty-three years ago, while the poor are poorer than they were twenty-three years ago! The city is very prosperous, but many rural areas are irreversibly destroyed, and the dynasty's control over the nomadic peoples on the border has been greatly weakened. Even within the city, as people's wealth grows, the gap between them becomes increasingly powerful. If these two classes could live in peace more than 20 years ago, then today the rich and the poor are simply incompatible.

"In recent years, Kuba's border meter has been opened, and people from Tianfang can also go to the Tang Dynasty to do business, which greatly promoted Saman's trade, and many people made money because of this, but this money did not flow into the hands of those who were eager for food and clothing, nor did it flow into the hands of those who had solved the problem of food and clothing but were still craving for wealth. Saman's business line was monopolized by a group of inherent rich people. Those poor and those who had nothing to do with, could only get a little juice in the trade with the Tang Dynasty. Seeing the rich getting richer and richer, they could not change their destiny, and even felt that even the fate of their descendants could not be changed, and many people's eyes became redder and redder.

"So I think the situation of Saman is very dangerous. This country is likely to be turbulent at any time. Nesser II's courage is far inferior to that of the past. He cannot distribute the wealth brought by the Silk Road after the opening of the Silk Road to the more needed people, but is divided by the already rich groups. Even if this wealth increases, it may not have a good impact on the dynasty, and may even lay aside the evil deeds of chaos. A few years ago, those radical factions that could only operate in remote areas have been active in Bukhara and Samarkand in the past two years. More and more people, especially the poor, have betrayed the gentle orthodox factions and turned to those radical factions. When they have no other way, after losing hope, they have placed their future on violence. This has gradually become incompatible with many schools in the Tianfang Sect that could have lived in peace.

"In Ningyuan, this city is much fairer and more just. For many poor people, there are many opportunities to become rich and successful. Even foreign teachers can live with the Tianfang Cult, not to mention the factions within the Tianfang Cult. I think such a city will be more promising than Samarkand and Bukhara. Therefore, I said that I was considering moving to Ningyuan, not to please the marshal and queen."

Zhang Mai listened and nodded constantly. He suddenly thought of a problem, that is, the world Guo Luo faced in Ningyuan might be wider than he had imagined before.

During the process of advancing eastward, Zhang Mai considered the enemies and conquered objects, mainly the Central Plains countries, the Khitan, and the Uighurs in Beiting. The objects he was concerned about were at most, plus a Lingxi Uighur who might cause trouble. After the diplomatic relations between Saman were stabilized, Zhang Mai did not spend much energy on this.

But what about Guo Luo?

Ningyuan is the westernmost border for the Tiance Army, but it is in a heart position for the entire Western Region - at least one of the few hearts. For the whole world, Ningyuan is at a key point where the intersection of east and west! It is of great significance in both military, political and cultural terms!

"Maybe A Luo is still paying attention to the entire Tianfang Cult world."

In Ningyuan, Guo Luo was not only the highest military chief, but also the highest executive, and even had considerable diplomatic power. He exercised the power of no second person within the Tiance Army, and the issues he had to consider were also more comprehensive.

Although Yang Yi was also in charge of military and political affairs in Beiting, at this stage, Beiting's civil affairs issues must serve the military, while Ning Yuan is no longer at this stage.

After the incident of Satuk broke out, Zhang Mai complained about Guo Luo because he felt that Guo Luo did not seem to have done his best to deal with the Uighurs in Lingxi, but at this time Zhang Mai thought about the problem of Uighurs in Lingxi, "Is it only a small part for Aluo?"

In recent years, there have been letter communication between Zhang Mai and Guo Luo almost every month, but thousands of miles apart and state affairs are so complicated, so many things cannot be fully expressed in writing.

Guo Fen originally wanted to ask Zanji in to ask a few words, but later Zhang Mai and Zanji spoke more and more and more. They said that they could not stop the sunset, so Zhang Mai set up a meal to invite Zanji. Zanji was happy to accept it. Because he felt that the young man had made contributions in the translation, he also asked him to attend.

The boy said he didn't dare, and Zhang Mai smiled and said, "What are you saying? You didn't listen to your master just saying that he liked our Tang Dynasty, but he liked that there were fewer estrangements here, and do the poor hope for more? You are just a penniless boy now. I have a lot of opportunities in my territory, but who knows what kind of future will be? "

So he asked him to sit down and asked his name again. The young man said, "My name is Guo Julan."

"Guo?" Zhang Mai smiled and said to Guo Fen: "That's your family."

Guo Fen smiled slightly. In recent years, with the resurgence of the Tang Dynasty, many Hu people in the Western Regions have changed their surnames. Among them, Zhang, Guo, Yang, Zheng, Shi and other surnames are the most popular. This young man seems to be a mixed race even if he is not a Hu person, and most of the surname has changed it himself.

Zhang Mai said again: "Julan...Julan... are you from Julan City?"
Chapter completed!