Chapter 469: The Hu reappeared, Wuji fell ill
In the third year of Yuanfeng, an urgent report arrived from Shuo Fang Commandery: "Hu cavalry have been spotted at the foot of the Yin Mountains. It appears that Hu people have entered Henan Land."
Although no battle reports had arrived, the court immediately sprang into action. The Han Court had never let its guard down against the Hu people of the North.
And years of observation suggested that the Hu people on the Grasslands were indeed gradually flourishing again.
The fifteen years of repeated defeats under Emperor Xiaoding, Liu Jin, had given many tribes on the Grasslands breathing room. Liu Dan had not sent troops against the Grasslands early in his reign, while later he had won too many victories, defeating all the powerful enemies around him. He had therefore repeatedly ordered generals to patrol the frontier, flaunting the Han Court's military might and intimidating the barbarians on the Grasslands.
It was not that such frontier patrols were useless; it was simply that there was something wrong with the thinking behind them.
The Han Dynasty could crush the Xiongnu, but it could not crush the Grasslands. The Grasslands lay there, open in every direction. When one tribe or people fell, another would rise.
That was to say nothing of a state like the Xiongnu, whose institutions were already relatively well developed. Destroying it was extremely difficult.
Usually, when a state on the Grasslands fell, it either succumbed to internal strife or was annexed by another state on the Grasslands. Only very rarely was one crushed outright by a dynasty of the Central Plains.
There was something very interesting about reading history: after several decades, the Central Plains still had the same dynasty, but the enemy states on the Grasslands had already