The howling wind passed through my ears, and the nose and mouth of the warm scarf on my face were covered with a light layer of white frost due to the moisture of my breath.
The wool cloak was wrapped as tightly as possible, but despite this, the wind still came in through the gaps.
Snow fell on the top of the hood and shoulders of the heavy woolen cloak. Because I didn’t have suitable snowshoes, my feet sank deeply into the snow with one step. After a while, the inside of the leather boots began to be wet and wet. Worn by the sweat that seeps out, the wool socks become wet, cold and uncomfortable.
"We're almost there!" Someone's voice sounded from the front. Even though he shouted as hard as he could, it was still blurred by the sound of the wind, and he could only distinguish the fact that it was speaking Lamani.
"Almost there!"
One by one, they carried the news to the back of the long line, allowing others to regain their morale and avoid being overcome by fatigue.
The sky is dark, although the moonlight and sunlight are now stronger as we go south, but it is natural that the visibility will be reduced tonight when the wind and snow blow.
The torch in his hand was blown by the strong wind. It might seem that a glass-covered lantern would be a better choice at this time, but in fact even a lantern will be blown out by the howling wind. In addition, the falling snowflakes may melt and freeze on the surface of the burning lantern. In this case, a huge torch wrapped in thick wood wrapped in cloth and soaked in whale oil is more reliable.
Although its burning time is much shorter than that of a candle, and it will burn out in about thirty minutes, the raging fire that cannot be extinguished by strong winds has become an accurate leading coordinate in weather with low visibility.
One out of every three people was carrying a torch, and others were carrying spare torches. In addition to their heavy woolen cloaks, they carried rucksacks made of canvas and rattan frames, which were filled with all kinds of equipment. Some people even had canvas bags hanging on their shoulders to hold extra items.
A queue of more than a dozen people formed a long queue. In order to prevent anyone from getting lost in the wind and snow, they tied thick hemp ropes around their waists to connect everyone.
The person walking at the front was carrying a long strip wrapped in linen on his back and holding a large torch in his hand. He was quite tall and was obviously our Mr. Sage.
In this kind of difficult terrain, the leader must be a strong and experienced person.
Because he is not only marching with the same or even more equipment, but also shoulders the important task of discovering dangers in time to ensure the correct direction. Just walking forward in this kind of weather is exhausting. You also need to keep an eye on all directions and listen in all directions, and always pay attention to the people behind you. One person cannot move too fast alone, and the safety of the entire team must be ensured.
It stands to reason that only our wise man can bear such an important task.
But the people walking behind him at this moment were not Mira and Galeva, but members of the scholar group. The Luoan girl and the young porter, the two physically stronger and more experienced people, were placed in the middle and rear of the team. This was to avoid scholars and missionaries who were relatively less experienced and trained. It was deliberately arranged so that they were exhausted and fell behind on the road.
Place experienced players in the middle and end of the team to protect the novices from front to back. When they start to show signs of fatigue or something unexpected happens due to weather, these veterans will notice and report the situation in time and respond. .
In contrast, if you directly gather all the veterans in one place, if a newcomer in the queue gets lost or gets into trouble later, you may miss the opportunity to deal with it and the situation will quickly deteriorate.
The operation was very difficult and arduous, because the only one with good carrying ability among the group was the pure white horse accompanying the girl from Luo'an. The winter equipment was shared with most people, and the load could not be considered easy for most people.
This little guy, who has grown up a lot in more than half a year and is nearly 1.4 meters tall at the shoulders but is still considered young, is naturally our little unicorn. Now that it has grown to about 350 kilograms, it is not an exaggeration to say that it is the heaviest member of the entire team. When this little guy was taken out of the cabin, almost the entire ship had not been able to get off before. Passengers passing through the lower cabin were stunned.
As the years went by, the little unicorn showed more and more graceful posture. Now it can no longer be disguised as a donkey or a pack horse with makeup. Captain Francisco was originally unwilling to take it with him. Even if it is an ocean voyage, it is not suitable for human passengers. The situation was very difficult, and they really didn't have the energy to take care of another horse.
There is a joke among sailors that there was once a whimsical merchant captain who thought that if he could transport live livestock, he would be more competitive than others, so he brought more than twenty people in his cabin. Cow.
As a result, during the voyage, these poor cows, like humans, couldn't bear the seasickness and vomited all over the boat. The sailors on the entire ship couldn't clean up at all. In the end, they had no choice but to ask for help from passing ships. In the end, the ship, which was full of sour smell, could not make ends meet just for the cost of a major cleaning. In the end, the captain also successfully went bankrupt and ran to engage in other industries.
This incident served as a warning to future generations. From then on, if livestock were to be transported on the inland sea of Mobigas, sedative ingredients would be mixed into the feed to keep them well and not prone to seasickness. However, the Oriental Moon is an ocean-going sailing ship, and the sailing environment in the Northern Riga Sea is much harsher than that in the inland sea. Human passengers may not be able to sustain it, and they have no energy to take care of livestock.
But when Captain Francisco actually saw the little unicorn and realized its amazing intelligence, he decided to make an exception.
This made the little unicorn the first non-human creature native to the world of Rigar to set foot on the Crescent Continent, except for the rats, cockroaches and fleas that smuggled along on the sailing ships.
And this little guy, who is smart and has the same mind as our Luo'an girl, is willing to put down his pride and condescend to use the identity of the legendary holy beast as a packhorse to carry supplies. This also made the human members of the entire team, including missionaries and scholars, Their morale was greatly boosted.
"We've seen the legendary unicorns, and they even helped us carry our things. What do we have to complain about?"
The human heart is so ingenious, but the inner spirit supported by the competitive spirit and self-esteem of human beings cannot change the fact that they lack physical exercise. Many of them have been walking for many hours since landing. They are exhausted physically and mentally and just want to get up early Find a place to rest.
Being taciturn is a bad sign, and our sage obviously noticed this. This is inevitable. Firstly, the wind and snow at night make it very difficult for sound to travel; secondly, after walking for such a long time, the weight, the difficult terrain and the cold, all kinds of discomfort have made the team members exhausted just by walking. Full strength.
They need rest. If this arduous trek continues, the exhausted people will begin to become dissatisfied, blame each other and lose their temper, and conflicts will arise and the team will fall apart.
Fortunately, they followed the steps and under the guidance of excellent guides and reliable leaders, they finally arrived at their destination before 8pm.
"..." A dozen people who stopped and untied the ropes around their waists stood on the hillside and looked down. There were many houses in the lower plains, but there were no lights among them. Standing alone in the cold wind.
"All the people fled because of Kazuto's hunting." Lulu said this in the language of the Kingdom of the Moon, and the scholars in the team translated it. Not only the first mate on the Eastern Moon can speak this language, but in fact most of the sailors on the entire ship can understand it and can speak some simple sentences. After all, their transoceanic voyage had lasted for more than ten years, and since the scholars accompanying them on the ship came here to conduct academic research, they naturally had to master this language.
In addition, people who can speak this language are not surprisingly our Mr. Sage, but many of the vocabulary he mastered are actually no longer used today, so there are people who are better at it, so Henry chose Lead with peace of mind.
The mainstream languages of the Moon Country are actually very similar to Lamani. Compared with the "young" "civilian languages" such as West Coast Common Language and Avenella, which have multiple vocabulary variations and slower speech speeds and precise expressions, they are also The two languages with a long history are more demanding to learn.
One of their words will have more syllables than a West Coast language, so when a proficient speaker of Lamani or Moon Country speaks, people from the West Coast will often feel at a loss because of their too fast speaking speed. .
In fact, to this day, every time our Roan girl speaks Lamani, people from the East Coast can still tell the fact that she comes from other places, even if they don't look at the white hair. Because she was used to the speaking speed of Avenela, she couldn't keep talking like a native speaker.
Because of this similarity, Lamani speakers can learn the language of the Kingdom of the Moon with twice the result with half the effort. A dramatic result of this is that of the dozen or so members of the entire team, only Mira and Galeva can't speak the local language.
This experience was no surprise to the dull porter, but as the one who usually learned things the fastest among her traveling companions, Mira was aroused by some unyielding thoughts.
She has quickly mastered some useful vocabulary during the week of sailing. If she doesn't say anything else at this moment, she has been able to complete basic daily conversations such as saying hello - but let us return to the original point, the team started from the gentle slope. After going down the road, several people holding torches moved to the front for lighting, and Lulu found the wooden door of the largest room with ease.
"Cassita (lend me)." She turned around and said this. Henry nodded and Mira, who was behind, understood the intention from her teacher's actions and took it off the little unicorn. A snow shovel.
"Shasha——" The big long house blocked a lot of wind and snow. The low eaves were at the same level as the eyes of the sage and Galeva. The heat from the burning torch in Henry's hand made the roof dozens of centimeters thick. The snow began to melt and a gap appeared, and the water droplets fell on the snow on the ground, creating a series of holes.
"Shasha——" Lulu quickly cleared away the snow on the lower edge of the door, and then jumped into the small pit that was cleared.
"Huh--" The sage and several other people with torches came closer to provide lighting, and the small aboriginal girl found a square wooden board in the cleared snow pit, but she pulled it several times But he didn’t pull, so he turned around and stretched out his hand to Mira.
"Yes." The Luoan girl knowingly handed the torch to Lulu, and after she took it, she leaned the torch against the lower edge of the wooden door and roasted it back and forth from a distance, causing the gaps in the frozen wooden structure to The ice in between melts.
"Whoops." Then Lulu threw the torch back to Mira, then grabbed it with both hands and pressed her feet against the lower edge of the wooden door, using all her strength to pull the wooden board - "Pop -!" This time she successfully pulled it out, and then she turned it twice and then lifted it up again - "Click -" "Swiss -" The frozen door opened a crack, and at the same time the snow on the roof slid down. Some, Lisa and Galeva, who stood too close, got wet, while Mira rolled her eyes at them.
The sound of "squeaking——" was quickly covered up by the cold wind of "squeaking——", and the group of people who quickly entered the long house immediately felt much more comfortable after getting rid of the howling cold wind, but the room was dark, with only the hands of everyone The light from the torches inside was the only source of illumination.
The deserted house looked like it had been uninhabited for a long time. The Luoan girl, who was curious about Lulu's previous operations, shined a torch in her hand and understood what kind of structure the wooden door of the long house was.
On the inside of the longhouse, where you enter the door, there is a dirt floor, and some distance away is a thermal insulation layer that uses logs as the base and is supported by wooden boards. But a long granite threshold is embedded in the door frame. There are three square slots cut out on the threshold, which correspond to the tenons on the wooden door.
By operating a series of movable plates, these tenons will snap into the slots to lock the door. This structure is equivalent to the entire door becoming a lock, which is obviously stronger than having only one door lock.
In this land, pronounced "Amisi" and written as "Yidi" in the local mainstream social language, the strong brown bear is the most common beast. The thin wooden door fixed with a lock may be suitable in towns, but in such a village, the only result would be a strong brown bear breaking in.
"Fortunately, there is still firewood. It's probably too heavy and they didn't move it away!" While the scholars and missionaries sat directly on the cold floor and began to rest, Mira, Galeva, Henry and Lulu The more experienced people began to check the supplies still in the longhouse.
The young porter took off his backpack after seeing where the firewood was, while the Luoan girl began to take off the weight of the little unicorn and talk to it.
Our wise man used a torch to inspect the scene inside the house. Except for the oversized iron pot hanging in the center and some unsplit wood, the whole house was clean. The square longhouse did not have any facilities such as partitions, and it seemed that it should have existed as some kind of meeting room or canteen in the past.
"Get everything ready. Let's light up the fire first." He checked the windows made of thick wooden boards and then said.
The exhausted people responded feebly.
No matter what, this was the first night they spent in the Land of the Moon.
