After sending off Liu Ba, Chen Xi no longer felt like going back to sleep and instead began to ponder the intelligence Jia Xu had copied and sent to him.
"This is really strange. According to expectations, the Bingzhou border would be pushed close to Yongzhou, but I haven’t seen any trace of the Northern Huns. Could my guess be wrong?" Chen Xi reviewed all the intelligence related to Bingzhou with a bewildered expression.
Even though the idea that Lyu Bu was ferocious enough to crush the Western Xianbei, making the Northern Huns fear to move south was sothing Chen Xi couldn’t believe. According to his assessnt, the Northern Huns should be to the west of Bingzhou, and even Liu Bei knew how to use war eagles to gather intelligence on the grassland, so how could the Northern Huns not understand?
Moreover, Lyu Bu transford Langjuxu Mountain into a lake, which they consider an ancestral grave. If the Northern Huns had no reaction, Chen Xi would absolutely not believe it, but the fact remains there aren’t large gatherings of Hu people north of Bingzhou, which is utterly unscientific!
Truth be told, Chen Xi’s eagerness to deal with Yuan Tan and the Northern Xianbei, Fuyu, and Wuhuan folks actually had so intention of keeping Cao Cao occupied.
After Cao Cao suppressed the Western Xianbei, it seed like there were no more enemies in the north, and there was no need to worry about attacks around Hetao. But in fact, Chen Xi was waiting to see Cao Cao’s reaction.
Logically speaking, starting this year, the Hu people north of Bingzhou would be a hellish challenge for the Han Dynasty, because the paradigm had shifted to the Northern Huns.
If Chen Xi’s guess is correct, then the Xianbei occupying the entire Bingzhou at that ti should have been the Northern Huns.
At the very least, Chen Xi wouldn’t believe that the Han Army, which had fought with Xianbei for over a hundred years and lost only once, could suddenly fail so miserably unless they changed opponents. Chen Xi couldn’t think of any other possibility.
Only in this way can it be explained how the Northern Huns, who had been reduced to just a few hundred thousand people fifty years ago, managed to muster over a million strong and more than two hundred thousand archers during the nation-destroying of Parthia after more than ten years.
If it weren’t for these combat abilities, even if the Northern Huns equaled the peak Han Army, they wouldn’t have been able to break into the newly forming Central Asian Sasanian Empire.
As a tribe nearing extinction, the only way they could restore their combat power so quickly was if they found a way to do so without draining their strength, which definitely wasn’t by fleeing, but by stabilizing in a place where they were provided for!
Based on this, the Bingzhou battle at the end of the Eastern Han becos remarkably strange, as to why history records the invasion as Xianbei instead of Northern Huns—Chen Xi completely understands. It’s really simple; do you think the Great Han can recognize all the steppe tribes?
Xianbei, Wuhuan, and Huns are just general terms, much like how ten miles in the Han Dynasty could change the dialect. These tribes surely spoke different languages, but fundantally, they were recognized as they claid to be, and that’s how the Great Han recorded them.
This is why Gongsun Zan simply said he was killing Hu people without specifying any tribe, because he couldn’t distinguish them. If Gongsun Zan claid he only killed Wuhuan, tomorrow the Wuhuan tribe might rena themselves Xianbei. In tis like these, survival is most important.
It’s not uncommon for the Great Han Dynasty to mistakenly identify a Southern Hun tribe as a Xianbei tribe and destroy them. They all wore fur and looked different from Han people; generally, they were called Hu people, and being able to distinguish Xianbei, Wuhuan, and Huns was comndable.
Due to this, Chen Xi suspects that Bingzhou’s complete takeover by Xianbei might have been Northern Huns calling themselves Xianbei, or Northern Huns swallowed the Western Xianbei and integrated their core mbers, allowing the lions to lead the sheep without declaring themselves as Northern Huns...
Chen Xi completely disbelieves that the Xianbei, who always got trounced by Great Wall garrison soldiers, would suddenly erupt with far superior power.
Comparing maps of the Late Han and Three Kingdoms eras reveals differences; Xianbei advanced to within a hundred or two li of Chang’an before the Battle of Guandu, which was the capital city!
From the northernmost part of Bingzhou to Chang’an is over a thousand li, this was a national war. The front lines had pushed over a thousand li, nearly reaching the capital. The last ti foreign clans pushed this far was during the Western Han, at the Huns’ Beacon Fire Sweet Spring incident.
As for why it wasn’t called the Northern Huns, Chen Xi was quite clear. If they were nad Northern Huns, just look at Emperor Huan of Han, Liu Zhi. When the Northern Huns rely barked at Pulei Sea, Emperor Huan imdiately dispatched troops to fight them across thousands of miles.
Everyone knows how useless the Two Emperors Huan Ling were; even Zhuge Liang, a loyalist of the Han, criticized them for ruining the empire. But even soone so incompetent as Emperor Huan heard the Northern Huns were making a fuss thousands of miles away and didn’t hesitate to send troops for battle.
It shows just how deep the hatred between the Han Dynasty and Huns is. Forget the Northern Huns reaching Bingzhou; as long as they were identified, the Han Dynasty found it aningful to continue the fight.
It can be said that in the Han Dynasty, defeating the Huns was an act that was politically and morally correct; extinguishing the Northern Huns could even earn one a noble title. So given the ager Northern Hun population, if they dared to overtly claim to be Northern Huns, it would be surprising not to face extinction!
For the sake of political correctness, at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, all warlords needed first to fight the Northern Huns, as the banner of imperial family orthodoxy might not be as captivating as this centuries-old blood feud.
If the Northern Huns had declared openly back then, perhaps the Han Dynasty might not have crumbled, the possibility of turning civil war into foreign war almost certainly would have existed. And once that happened, chasing and fighting the Northern Huns might incidentally gain advantages from Parthia.
However, the current peculiarity is that Chen Xi hasn’t seen intelligence of large assemblies of the Western Xianbei Tribe in the north of Bingzhou.
Without troop assembly, despite those scattered Xianbei forces, even if it were the Northern Huns, it wouldn’t be useful at all. This hardly fits Chen Xi’s long-standing conjecture!
[Is it possible that the actual force pushing the battle line from northern Bingzhou to northern Yongzhou was truly the Xianbei, and don’t tell it was that group led by Helian last year?] Chen Xi felt his mind was insufficient, for if Helian had such capability, how would he have been killed by Kebinen?
Last year’s wave of Xianbei was quite capable, but being beaten by the mix of Lyu Bu, Cao Cao, and Ma Chao made them seem weak. But in reality, they were decently strong.
Yet even decently strong, Chen Xi entirely disbelieves that under Helian’s leadership, those five weaklings could push to Yongzhou without Lyu Bu or Cao Cao resisting, traveling over a thousand li distance; plus, Bingzhou was a nest of soldiers.
If Xianbei had such capability, why did Ding Yuan and Lyu Bu stay locked around Hetao and Yunzhong for those seven or eight years?
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