Crescent Continent is a continent, and Moon Country is a very huge country.
After the depth suddenly began to increase near Jeju, the more the group advanced, the more they had a realistic feeling about all this.
Under Henry's judgment, they decided to turn east.
This is based on two facts: First, the feudal army landed in Minamata and occupied almost all decent-sized urban areas in Jeju. The Chinese and nobles fled to death - but the prosperous areas of Jeju are actually mainly Gathered on the west coast, this is also the main base for the feudal army to reorganize its formation.
And this fact leads to the second point. Because of the extremely large size of the Moon Country, their actual situation is not as dangerous as they first thought when they heard the news.
From the section of the national highway where the group defeated Cerberus, they headed east along the easy road toward Wanzhou. During this period, they had roughly traveled 460 kilometers using Henry's usual Rigal measurement unit. .
The walking speed of ordinary people is about 4-8 kilometers per hour, and 10 kilometers is not difficult for those with better physical fitness, but this is the standard for walking lightly. Their team not only has to carry supplies, but also has characters such as Ken, the missionary, and Yajiro's sister who are physically weaker due to age and various factors.
Considering that you may encounter factors such as turning onto a weedy side road or even splitting bushes in the wilderness on the way, it is more reasonable to set the minimum walking distance of 4 hours per hour - and based on Based on this data, the 460-kilometer journey will take a total of 4 days and 15 hours without stopping.
This is not an ordinary journey of more than 4 days. It is the data of 4 days and 15 hours of walking without rest, eating or sleeping.
It’s common knowledge among travelers that traveling at night is not a good time, because there are so many things that can go wrong. Not everyone can see in the dark like a sage. The light of a candle can burn for several hours but can only illuminate a distance of one or two meters in front of it. The torch is brighter but has a shorter lifespan. The torch that takes half an hour to make burns. The time is often lower than the production time. Therefore, it is wise to rest at night and continue on your way while there is light during the day.
As we approach early autumn, there are still about 13 hours of daylight, from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Excluding rest and food, and deducting the time it takes to set up camp in advance with the help of light before sunset in the evening, the time that can be used to travel is about 10 hours a day.
In other words, under the condition of only ensuring trekking and not doing other activities such as fighting, hunting, gathering, etc., the minimum distance that a group of heavily armed people can travel in one day is 40 kilometers.
This is not an absolute value. It will increase when you encounter easy-to-walk sections, and even less when you encounter difficult-to-walk sections.
Naturally, it took them about 10 days to walk the 460 kilometers.
Various books 'borrowed' from Bishop Pedro of the completely destroyed refugee camp, including those related to religion, have been returned to the missionaries. Although it is quite tiring to carry these heavy hard-covered, metal-bound and locked books, their preciousness is self-evident, and the missionaries and others had complicated expressions when receiving them.
They were reluctant to give up these books, but carrying them along with the heavy church operation funds that had covered the entire journey made these people who were not good at physical fitness full of worry.
Apart from these religious books that are of little significance to non-believers, there is another item that is truly crucial to the current group of people's actions.
That's a map.
Regional maps, not national ones.
Moon Country is an extremely large country. Because it encompasses the entire Crescent Continent, the size of its national map is also quite astonishing.
Even if it is drawn into a large scroll with a length of more than one meter, the national map will still only mark each province and major provincial capitals, because more detailed content cannot be drawn.
Therefore, when planning travel routes and the like, regional maps that capture part of the area and enlarge it are more reliable.
The provincial map will include the distribution of large towns throughout the state, which cannot be drawn on the national map. Some larger towns will also publish maps of their surrounding areas. Although the quality is different.
Bishop Pedro collected a regional map of Jeju and surrounding provinces. Judging from the drawing style and textual annotations, it was obviously drawn by the Lamanites, but it may have been based on other local maps. The map contains the original place names in the Kazuto language and Lamani translations, but most importantly, it still has the characteristics of some Rigal-style maps that are based on the rich adventurer culture and are more outstanding at the application level.
For example, the scale of a map.
Maps drawn according to roughly accurate specifications are far more than just for nobles to hang on the wall to show the territory or the territory of a kingdom and empire. Rigar's cartographers will 'accurately' calculate the distances in all directions, and then - on the map - —usually the lower left corner—mark a scale bar.
'How many miles/km is this length equivalent to?'
Those who use the map need to bring their own ruler. If you don't have one, you can just take a straight branch and use a knife to cut out the scale. If you want to know approximately how far you are from one place to another, use a ruler to measure it on the scale. For example, after confirming that the length of two centimeters is equal to approximately 25 kilometers, use a ruler to measure the distance between the starting point and the destination. If it is 10 centimeters, convert it to 5 times 25, which is 125 kilometers.
Such reference distance information is very important for everyone from travelers to military commanders. Although they are not completely accurate due to many conditions, based on the distance and direction recognition on the map, combined with the team's movement speed, it can affect many key decisions and even logistics supplies. For example: If the distance between the two places they are marching is calculated to be within one or two days, they will naturally not have to carry heavy supplies for half a month or even a month, and can travel faster with light packs.
In the same way, when Henry and his party discovered the threat and the supplies were contaminated and lost in the battle with Cerberus, they also relied on the map to try to find a location that was acceptable within the existing supply range but far enough away. , try to repair it.
The journey took about ten days and covered more than 400 kilometers eastward. The vast mountain forests in western Jeju are deserted. The vastness of the central continent of Crescent Continent is not only a visual enjoyment. As the journey progresses, the nervousness that emerged in everyone's hearts when they first learned that the feudal army and civilians had defeated the threat gradually subsided.
It's so vast here.
It was so vast that even if the domain army mobilized 100,000 troops to join in, they would only be thrown into the pond like pebbles.
But even so they still can't be careless.
Lulu, who was born as a hunter, may have some experience in how to hide herself in the mountains and forests without being noticed by wild beasts, but when it comes to dealing with people, our Mr. Sage is the real expert.
The damaged wagon was chopped into dry wood, wrapped in a torn hood tarp and secured to the horses. The dry wood burns without the white smoke that can be seen from miles away like wet firewood, and it saves them the time of chopping large pieces of wood to obtain dye.
It was already common sense that the campfire should be set up downwind, but he went a step further and taught the ashigaru to choose those lowlands between bushes and trees. The surrounding raised slopes and tree roots have become a kind of cover. Even at night, the bonfire can only be seen by walking up the slope to avoid being directly noticed from a distance.
In addition, when the Ashigaru used a katana—a kind of Kazuto hatchet that is thicker and can double as a substitute for the small hand ax favored by adventurers—to get small branches for starting fires, they They were also taught to smear the gaps with soil after cutting the branches.
Cutting off branches will reveal white wood wounds, which are very distinctive marks. Applying soil to the chip is quick and easy. Although you can still notice something wrong if you look closely, it is enough to achieve the purpose.
Human attention is limited. When walking in the mountains and forests, the repetitive shrubs and trees, soil and fallen leaves are all green and brown. If you see different colors at a glance, such as light-colored traces of gaps in trees, you will stop and take a closer look.
They don't have the time or energy to clean up the traces to perfection, so they only need to erase these small details that can easily arouse subconscious vigilance.
These methods are not mainly aimed at the feudal army, but are used to guard against the mobs that suppress the superiors. Many of the mob were fishermen and hunters. If they could not defeat the feudal army, they would most likely have fled into the mountains and forests like them. The possibility that these people were eyeing their supplies, weapons, and armor, or simply tracking and attacking out of hatred for the samurai, was high, and they had to be on guard.
After cooking, some charcoal is removed from the embers of the bonfire for later use, and then water is sprinkled to completely extinguish it, and then it is covered with fallen leaves and stones to hide it.
There is really no time to clean up the horse hooves and footprints left on the forest floor, but in fact it is not a big problem, because the most indispensable thing in the woods in early autumn is fallen leaves.
These traces will be covered after a while.
The streams in the forest are flowing with clear water, and the sounds of wild boars and deer can be heard from time to time, as well as the calls of various unknown birds.
The group of people who lost their carriage tried their best to save as much supplies as possible. The warriors carried boxes that were originally designed to be carried on their backs, which contained various important supplies and armors and weapons. Master Jian and Ying also brought medicine boxes and pockets respectively. For the rest, Henry cut off about a handful of thick, fresh ash wood from the surrounding area - Kazuto called it ash - and then bent it into a U shape, adding two horizontal fixings. The pole was cut with a knife, and the rope was tied tightly. Then, a strong tarpaulin was taken from the broken carriage, cut into two long strips, rolled up, and the upper and lower ends were fixed on two horizontal bars respectively, thus making a simple but Strong and reliable carrier.
Then take off the tarpaulin, put the things in it, tie up the opening, and fix it on the back frame with ropes.
But in about 10 minutes, he made a sample. After the lesson, other people in the team who lacked carrying equipment also followed suit, and soon got rid of the dilemma of having to carry supplies with their hands.
In addition, he also made similar things for horses. After all, horses can carry far more things than people, and if horses are carried, people can have their hands free to fight. There are many recyclable hardwood skeleton materials on the damaged carriage, and the fresh trees growing around it can provide a certain degree of elasticity. Simply use a knife to cut out the gaps and fit them in, and then tie them with ropes to tighten them to create what you want. skeleton. Covered with a broken carriage tarp, it becomes a pretty good bag.
While others were chopping up unusable parts and turning them into firewood, he was able to create these racks in a few clicks, adding considerable capacity to carry supplies.
Still, they had to abandon some of their supplies. The remaining items that could not be carried, including the contaminated grain and grass, were piled together with the corpses of the three dead horses and the hellhound, and burned on the national highway. Cerberus bleeds red blood, which does not contain the suspicious and dangerous black bodily fluids. Even so, leaving a corpse weighing several tons will still cause various problems such as plague. Burning was the best solution they could do at the moment, but because the fire would attract some attention, they left the place and embarked on the road after burning.
The next ten days of marching were easy to say but also tiring. People who were accustomed to riding in carriages these days seemed exhausted every day after walking with heavy loads. But this kind of exhaustion is actually a good thing at the moment, because they sleep peacefully at night due to physical fatigue, and have no time to think about those worrying situations and future.
After all, being able to eat, drink, and walk may be enough for now.
The destination planned by the sage is a small village located in the southwest of Jeju. Its existence is somewhat similar, somewhat reminiscent of Qingzhi but not the same.
Natural disasters occur frequently in Crescent Continent, but while existences like volcanoes bring disasters, they also provide hot springs, sulfur and other resources that humans can use.
This unknown village in the southwest of Jeju is close to a river that seems to have been deeply affected by the volcano. The river water flowing in it is full of salt and alkali, and the concentration is so high that no decent life can exist in it.
There was no fish, and even fresh water had to be obtained from distant streams because the wells dug in the village were too close to the river and contained salt water. Naturally, the only output of this village was coarse salt. But salt is a very important material, and selling private salt is illegal in the Kingdom of the Moon. The prohibition of private production and sales, coupled with the remote location and inconvenient transportation, meant that the village did not develop due to its proximity to this resource. It could only be self-sufficient with a small trade at best.
And this became the reason why the group chose it as a supply point.
