The change of horses kept the team at Sour Lake for several days.
Although you can just hitch the horse and run away, there is no rush now. Let everyone adapt to the new horse's habits with the Chamber of Commerce staff.
There is a big difference between the cold area horses here and the southern horses.
In terms of body shape, cold-land horses are fatter and have a furry appearance. The amount of hair is more like that of a pony. The face is more slender. The shape of the nose bridge is obviously different from that of southern horses. The head height is generally less than 1.6 meters, and they are not resistant to riding. But in It shows better endurance in traction work. The key point is that its sole area is larger in proportion to its body weight, making it less likely to sink in the snow.
Southern horses are larger, have shorter coats and look shiny. They have good riding performance, good traction, and are relatively comprehensive. However, they are not very reliable when the temperature drops to minus 20 degrees.
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Of course, both types of horses have subdivided populations, and cold-land horses also have types that are selected to form heavy cavalry.
There was another difficulty in moving north in winter, the supply of horses.
There is almost no need to consider this issue on the east-west front line of Lei Ming Country. The horse can just go to the roadside to eat grass. It will pick out the tender grass and chew it, and only supplement some beans with high protein and oil content when passing through the city.
The environment in the north is much harsher. Sour Lake can pass through several cities to the north. Once it approaches the magic well, it is basically a pure snowfield.
The horse species evolved in response to the steppe transition during the Ice Age. The horses in this universe come from who knows where. Judging from their size, they are quite similar, and they also have the ability to find grass under the snow.
However, eating grass rhizomes under the snow will cause them to lose weight even when there is no load. Now that they are required to tow a vehicle, they cannot consider relying on the rhizomes under the snow to work.
Bringing your own silage… still not practical.
Horses belong to the order Perissodactyla. All creatures in this order have not evolved the ability to ruminate, and their utilization of forage nutrients is far inferior to that of cattle and sheep.
For example, the cold-land horse we replaced this time is obviously not big, but the trailer still needs to consume 20 to 30 kilograms of fodder a day. This amount of food is still calculated based on the walking speed of 40 to 50 kilometers a day.
If the speed or distance is slightly increased, more than twenty horses will have to kill a full load of fodder in one day or two days at most. They obviously do not have the ability to enter no man's land.
I still have to eat higher-end food. Beans... are too expensive, but grass seeds are fine.
The chamber of commerce specializes in collecting grass seeds for sale. All kinds of grass seeds are mixed together, including round granules and spindle-shaped ones. If a horse eats 20 kilograms of grass, if it is replaced by this, just six kilograms can meet the physical endurance. The price is 40% cheaper than beans and grains.
These grass seeds have been dried, so the horse needs to be hydrated and salt needs to be added regularly.
There is also a more advanced horse food called "horse strong", which is made from low-quality vegetable oil mixed with some seed coats, which are bran.
According to Wang Qi's understanding, the caloric value per 100 grams is higher.
Foods are sorted by caloric density per 100 grams, and there are obvious ladders. The calories of fat/oil are around 900 calories, milk powder/dried meat/sugar are 500 to 600 calories, flour and similar seed-ground foods and oil-containing beans Classes are between 300 and 400.
The caloric value of unshelled grass seeds is less than 150 calories. The caloric value of "Ma Jianqiang", a mixture containing oil and seed coat, may be around 400 calories based on the oil-to-seed ratio.
But the price was quite expensive. After understanding the situation, I decided to bring beans and grass seeds.
The soybeans here have not been genetically engineered, and their oil content is average, which also results in their calories being lower, but at least they are stronger than grass seeds, and the gap between them and "horse strong" is not too big.
After two days of hard work, when we set off from Sour Lake, the number of horses in the team increased to 26.
Since riding in unfamiliar snow in no-man's land can easily lead to accidents, there were no riding horses among the 26 horses. In addition to the seven carriages brought by the team, two more were rented, and the towing methods were double carriages.
The remaining eight horses towed four single-frame carts and loaded them with food, leaving four horses to take turns.
Bai Xiaojiao spends his free time wandering in front or behind the team every day. As long as it can pass, the team can definitely pass.
The team followed the winding road through several cities and arrived at the haunted town.
No normal town would be called a haunted town, but there are so many ghosts around here that it has been called that for a long time. It has been so long that no one even remembers what it was called before.
Wang Qi knew that what he saw in the Fountain of Youth Library was the headquarters of the Mage Association, Annuo.
Like the name Annuo, the Mage Association has long disappeared from history and is now an illegal organization.
Today's haunted town is both haunted by ghosts and survives by providing supplies to adventurers heading to the North.
The arrival of Wang Qi's team caused a certain commotion. Compared with ordinary adventurers, this team of more than 20 horses seemed too large.
But no one asked for trouble, because this is a strong radiation area of the Church of Light, and there is a supply station of the Church of Light in the local area.
This place is very special. The Church of Light does not have a church in the haunted town. I don’t know if it is because the ghosts cannot be cleaned up or if there are other troubles.
There are so many ghosts in the haunted town that they do not require the use of special abilities, and they are so numerous that they directly affect the local temperature.
Like the ghosts that Wang Qi recognized in the exile, most of them are in a muddleheaded state. They don't know how to harm people, and they don't know how to communicate. They just wait for the moment of disappearance.
But when the base is large enough and the density is high enough, the situation becomes different.
Unfortunately, humans, even for individual "bad" ghosts, are not excellent food and would rather absorb other ghosts.
The main function of the supply station set up by the Church of Light here is to provide supplies to the team that eradicates high-level ghosts. It is said that it can also provide maintenance services to the divine warriors.
Wang Qi and his group came by chance and did not see the divine warrior.
By the way, Belanger's two maids stayed at the hotel with an excuse and did not dare to run around. This situation provides certain support for "they are not human beings", but it has not yet reached a final conclusion.
Considering that they might have some relationship with self-rescue that Wang Qi didn't know about, Wang Qi didn't want to push them to death.
The haunted town does not have a normal town industry chain. It relies entirely on caravans to import supplies from the outside and transfer them to adventurers through various stores, so things will be more expensive.
The same grass seeds for horses in cold regions are 60% more expensive here than in Suanhu.
In addition, there is a local specialty industry, which is undoubtedly related to ghost products.
There are some differences between local and penal colonies in their views on ghosts.
The mages in the penal colony generally do not regard ghosts as a continuation of death. They are just a new... thing formed by death and a high concentration of magic power.
In the main world, mages who hold this kind of concept belong to a minority group, but in the haunted town they are the majority. After all, mages who oppose ghost materialization can't do much here, so they can't come here specifically to fight magic.
The point is that even the church acquiesced, and other mages couldn't make any more noise.
The local mages will directly make the spirit bodies into puppet cores, magic crystals and other things for sale. Providing them with raw materials is the reason why most adventurers come here.
One of the purposes of Wang Qi coming here is also ghosts, but they are not the roadside goods that can be seen everywhere.
Before setting off, I visited some local ghost product stores to get information about the north and prices.
The money Wang Qi brought out was limited and he was spending it every day. The money he could use after his return home was delayed by one cycle was very limited. If he was delayed again for some reason, he might have to do some magician work to make money.
The local ghost raw materials are divided by level, which is somewhat similar to the first, second and third rings of the mage, but the evaluation standards are different. The ghost's willpower weights the level more than the magic power.
A brief introduction, if a ghost can be reshaped after being dispersed by the three-ring spiritual shock spell, it is a high-level ghost. If it cannot withstand it, it will naturally be made into a magic crystal.
Such a threshold is high enough to exclude almost all individuals with poor magical talents during their lifetime, and even include the spirits formed after the death of many mages.
Calculated in thousands, it may not be enough. The entire town can only sell two or three a year, and most of them are booked in advance.
You can jump in line, just pay more. An unprocessed high-grade spirit costs 4,200 gold crowns in Saint Anthony, which is about 18 kilograms of gold.
It’s expensive, and you can think of ways to get it together, but there are two problems.
One is that there is no local stock, and placing a deposit does not move the entire town, but is only for a single store. It is very common to wait for several years with an extremely low chance of "treasure".
Another question is that what Wang Qi wants are ghosts with high intelligence. Most of these ghosts should be high-level ghosts, but most of the high-level ghosts cannot reach the level of intelligence that Wang Qi needs.
Just find it yourself.
