!
Why had Luo Shi submitted a memorial asking the emperor to dispatch a great army?
Because when a powerful empire like Great Han fought a nomadic empire like the Xiongnu, the most crucial thing was-finding them!
At the height of a dynasty's power, whenever a Central Plains dynasty took the offensive, it basically never lost as long as its commanding general had a functioning brain.
Apart from a certain Iron-Blooded Strong Song, this held true across the board.
Sending a great army made it possible to preserve each detached force's strength as much as possible while raiding more camps on the Grasslands, increasing the chances of finding traces of the Xiongnu.
During Emperor Xiaowu's reign, the Marquis Champion and the Marquis of Unshuang had swept across the Grasslands with two great cavalry armies. Xiongnu camps fell one after another, until the momentum snowballed and the two of them shattered the Xiongnu Royal Court in a single strike.
The Han Army's expedition to the Grasslands this time was very different from those during Emperor Xiaowu's reign, when the Central Plains had been utterly blind to conditions there.
This time, however, the Han Court had a fairly good understanding of the courses of the rivers, the lay of the mountain ranges, and even which pastures were most likely to harbor Xiongnu.
Of all the armies setting out on this expedition, Luo Shi's was the best adapted. The Northern Foothills of the Tianshan Mountains already had vast stretches of grassland, and the soldiers he brought had likewise lived on grasslands for years. They felt not the slightest discomfort upon entering Xiongnu territory.
The armies of the Western Regions and Hexi numbered forty thousand cavalry in total, with several thousand armored soldiers. Their column wound like a long serpent, appearing and disappearing