How great the power of nature is. This is a topic that is difficult to cover in words, and even if you try your best, you can only show the tip of the iceberg.
If you look at history, no matter which country's history books you are in, you can look up the decisive battles that determined the destiny of the country and even the nation. Even if the recorder has selfish motives, he will pass them over and devote more space to praising human heroes. Our greatness will always be found in the impact of weather on victory or defeat.
A good commander will make use of all available natural environmental factors. Wind direction can be used to increase the range of his archers' arrows. Using visual shields such as fog and night to advance the army is also considered a basic routine operation.
After a heavy downpour, the muddy ground will make the heavy cavalry trapped in it and become passive. The hot climate will cause the supplies to rot and become moldy quickly. The water sources will be polluted, making the soldiers sick and have diarrhea. If the cold protection measures are not enough, even the swords will be frozen in their scabbards. together.
Because they are exposed to it every day, people are so accustomed to these environmental factors that they hardly notice how important a role they play in those great victories or tragic defeats.
The right time, the right place, the right people. Of the three major advantages that can be gained in a battle, the human factor occupies only one.
If the vast nature is personified, then the epic battles praised by humans are probably like two nests of ants fighting in human eyes.
If you get interested in it during your free time, you will squat down and spend some time watching. But few people care about which ant among them is the hero, king or great man in the ant colony.
Anyway, if you are in a bad mood, even if you pour a pot of boiling water on it, heroes and great men will still not be able to escape the catastrophe.
When the things that other creatures are fighting for are just small things that you can change or destroy with a flick of your finger.
Your heart will naturally not take these seriously and become indifferent.
This gap in magnitude, which is not in the same dimension at all, makes it impossible for people to hate nature like they hate high-ranking people of the same race.
The irresistible power evolved into awe, which led to the birth of polytheistic worship that personified natural phenomena all over the world. In ancient times, human sacrifices were even used to pray for a smooth climate. Even in the White Church, which claims to be more "advanced and superior" This kind of monotheistic religion also praises the greatness of the only God by describing natural disasters as the power of the great gods, and interprets all suffering as a doctrinal explanation of "this is the punishment given by gods to sinful us".
The force of nature is so closely inseparable from life and so powerful that it is difficult to resist. Therefore, when it wants to do something, people have long been accustomed to it and can only choose to temporarily stop whatever they want to do or are doing and cooperate. it.
The procession stopped.
From morning to noon, even though they had equipped themselves with snowshoes and other equipment, the soft, wet and cold ground still seriously hindered their progress.
On a clear day, they could traverse the wetlands in one day, but after walking for several hours, they only covered less than a fifth of the distance.
After lunch, seeing that it was probably impossible to cross today, Narumi decided to abandon the shortest straight route and take a slight detour to the right, heading to the volcanic lake.
Due to the erosion and accumulation of water, the terrain near the lake is relatively higher than the surrounding areas. The moisture in most areas of the vast wetland is too thick. Although it snows, it is not cold enough to freeze the snow to dryness. They couldn't cross the wetland today and had to camp, so they had to find an area with higher ground, at least so that when the snow melted, it wouldn't flow into the camp.
The team of hundreds of people came to the high ground by the lake one after another. Although they only walked a not particularly far distance to the right, because of the soft snow and difficulty, they did not reach the target area until around 1:40 in the afternoon. .
Because they were still worried after going through the first battle and could not sleep well at night, and they encountered difficult terrain today, the morale of the samurai and ashigaru was obviously low.
One morning, they returned to a state of silence similar to before. When they arrived at the lakeside highlands and faced a large area of snow that needed to be cleared, many of them stood in a daze for most of the day without taking any action.
Without a good rest, a person's mental state will become very poor. Although the samurai have horses to travel, the process of riding on horseback wearing nearly 20 kilograms of armor and weapons for several hours is not particularly easy. Ashigaru's armor is indeed lighter because it uses less iron, but they also need to carry some supplies and walk.
After all, there is a big difference between training and actual combat. Even though the samurai and ashigaru of the Qingtian family work very hard and train every day, the simulated training that allows them to rest indoors at any time in the courtyard is nothing compared to the real environment. The lack of experience in long-distance marches with heavy loads in bad weather has repeatedly pushed their abilities in all aspects to the extreme.
The Lord of Qingtian City said that it was an excuse to cover their journey to Xinjing. Thinking about it this way, it couldn't be said that it was just a pretentious excuse. When you go out, you have to rely on yourself and your companions for everything. This journey is not only a training for the young master Yajiro, but also an experience for the samurai and ashigaru.
So far, their performance is not beyond the expectations of our Mr. Sage and the Luoan girl who have relatively more actual combat experience.
Narumi and others, as the warrior class of the Moon Country, are professional soldiers who have been trained for a long time, and their bodies and minds have been polished by the abundant wisdom of this ancient country with more than 4,000 years of culture.
However, due to the long-term peace in this country, the vast majority of people, including their ancestors for more than ten generations, have trained for this all their lives but never let the knife in their hands taste blood.
Stable peace and no need for warriors to be used is indeed a blessing for the people, but when they really need to use their various skills, the gap between training and actual combat will make many things begin to fail. On the beat, there is disharmony.
This is not to say that training is useless. As a white-haired girl who came from a major and learned genuine knowledge from Henry, she knows this very well.
Training or not training is like going out into the wilderness without preparation.
A person who has been trained for a long time is like a person who has water utensils, cooking utensils, fire utensils, bedding, and food. However, due to differences in actual situations, some things will not go so smoothly. For example, a fire that can be easily lit during training may encounter difficulties when actually entering the wilderness due to variables such as wet tinder and different wood used during training.
But even so, the probability of returning alive is still much higher than that of someone who is empty-handed and knows nothing.
They will encounter setbacks and feel frustrated because the situation is different from what they have been training for, and they will not be able to fully perform and achieve the desired results. You will feel tired and sleepy because you have not encountered similar situations during training.
But over time, if they absorb these experiences, transform them, and further burst out their fighting spirit in difficult situations, then they will be reborn and become even better people than they are now.
Naturally, there are some who will collapse due to frustration, but in short, what the samurai and ashigaru are showing right now is such an uncoordinated, unable to keep up with the beat, and out of shape.
Fortunately, the team was not entirely made up of them. The Yi tribe, which was more lightly armed and had more experience in facing the wilderness than them, accounted for the same majority of the team. Because the supplies were carried on the backs of pack oxen, they still retained considerable physical fitness despite being tested in the wilderness. After simply eating the rice balls wrapped in gauze and put in their arms to keep their body temperature in order to prevent them from freezing and ruining their stomachs, the barbarians who were still energetic spontaneously began to clear the snow on the highlands and assisted the Ashigaru to load the pack oxen. The baggage was unloaded so that the beasts of burden, who were also panting from exhaustion in the snow, could lighten their burdens.
Henry, a foreign group, was neither a hunter nor a warrior, and there were several characters with no fighting ability in their team. Surprisingly, no one stayed there during this trip.
Not to mention Henry and Mira, Lulu herself was born as a barbarian and had good physical fitness. Galeva was also a porter. Since the missionary trio had the ambition to travel across the ocean, they naturally had to endure hardships and stand hard work. Although Aggie's performance was incredible. Associate him with the word.
In the end, only Aya and Sakura, two women from the upper class of Kazuto, were left. Fortunately, their lifestyles were different, and their appearance seemed to be two extremes. One was petite and the other tall, but these two women also had an unyielding heart. Although after climbing to the high ground, he couldn't help holding his knees and gasping for air, and he was still sweating in the heavy snow, but he remained silent and had no intention of asking others to accommodate him.
Of course, the two of them carry very light equipment. Only a small amount of clothing, food rations and drinking water were carried on the shoulders of the more physically strong Galeva, but his tenacity was still commendable.
The Yi people used walking sticks and snowshoes tied together with old vines to make a simple snow sweep. Although it was quite hard work, Hulan, the son of the Yi leader Temulun, who was still young at heart, played happily with other Yi people boys and girls of the same age. They laughed and put simple snow sweepers in front of them and ran to push the snow down to the high ground, providing more or less vitality under the clear sky.
I don’t know whether they were infected by the unique vitality of this young man or because they felt lazy and disgraced. In short, the samurai and ashigaru also picked up their mentality and started setting up camp and feeding horses and cattle. One pass spreads from ten to ten, and with no one idle throughout the hundred-man brigade, the problem can be solved very quickly.
Only 20 minutes after arriving at the high ground, the snow had been cleared to reveal the weeds, flowers and soil below. The camp was set up, with the cows and horses settled on one side, and the bonfire was lit, ready to burn something to drink. Warm yourself up with a drink.
Although only wild grass grows in most places in the wetland, there are still some shrubs and trees near the lake. A small team composed of barbarians and ashigaru unloaded their belongings, including armor, and prepared to go there to replenish firewood, while the remaining people began to check the equipment again and perform various tedious but necessary tasks. daily work.
It snowed heavily last night, but today it has been bright and sunny since morning.
The sun that shone all morning and noon began to melt a lot of snow, and the snow that was swept down below became sticky. Some rugged places on the highlands were filled with wet, cold water when you stepped on them.
The samurai's armor, with its paint worn away from battles, inevitably began to show some rust in such weather. The wooden scabbards of long swords and short swords also began to swell due to moisture. Some people even left them unplugged for a long time when they needed to be maintained. When I came out, I finally overexerted myself and sat down on the ground.
Even if you are well-educated and believe in dogmas that emphasize self-discipline, grumbling and some whispered swear words will inevitably overflow with dissatisfaction in your heart.
And amid the entanglement of various thoughts, the first day of the long journey across the wetlands began.
The curtain gradually came to an end.
