A storm at night in early November announced the official arrival of winter.
After leaving the Utopia on the Lonely Mountain, the group became more streamlined and moved faster. However, the land is vast and the mountains are difficult to travel, so after walking for more than a week, we were still within the mountains.
Going south from Gushan, as the road spreads forward, the surrounding evergreen tree species become more and more scarce. Withered yellow broad-leaf trees and bright red maple forests become the background, and they are also dotted with some cherry blossoms - the weather was earlier The weather has picked up so much that some fruit trees mistakenly think that spring has arrived and are in bud.
Kazuto calls this time Indian Summer, which refers to a short period of sudden warming in winter - and this, together with the storms that follow the cold winter, indicates that they have officially entered the central continent of Crescent Continent. .
There was a violent storm all night, but luckily they had a carriage and found a cave to hide in.
However, after waking up, the surrounding scenery changed so much that it made me forget to breathe for a while.
All the bright red and withered yellow leaves fell in the storm. The colorful mountains that once appeared at a glance are now only bare brown and light yellow dotted with dead but still tenacious weeds on the ground.
When the morning sun shines down, there is even a little more snow on the top of the mountains in the distance - even though we have reached the middle, there are still some places on the mountains at higher altitudes that are cold enough for snow to fall.
Everything changed overnight.
It's like a picture scroll has been arbitrarily modified, removing the color here, and adding little bits of snow-white here.
The cold was really encroaching, but it was okay when the sun shone on my body. When the wind was strong last night, the cold wind that penetrated through the gaps made people very sensitive to the gaps in the carriage for the first time.
He was awakened by the slightest disturbance.
Not many people had a good sleep last night, with the constant whistling of the wind, the cold air coming in, and the sound of raindrops beating like war drums. After enjoying a brief moment of warmth and a comfortable bed in that idyllic village in Gushan, the pain of these days was even more unbearable.
But it is precisely because of this that they made personnel adjustments.
Some witches, two ghosts, the injured Ayong and Yajiro's sister, Kenye and others were left behind in the paradise on the lonely mountain.
Except for the ghosts who stayed as bodyguards, the rest were unfit for the upcoming trip due to injuries or youth or old age.
The eldest lady of the Qingtian family has seemed depressed since the butler's betrayal, and the group of people who had already expected that the domain would use greater efforts to pursue them did not have the extra energy to persuade a delicate eldest lady to be good. Good food.
Yajiro left another sum of his already small funds for their living expenses. With the help of the miko, their life there was completely worry-free.
Come and pick them up again when the world is at peace.
The young master made such a promise, but he himself didn't know whether it could be fulfilled.
Laman's missionaries continued to follow. Because their presence was not high, the group did not pay much attention to them. The previous merger with local colleagues failed, and they now want to follow the group of people to Xinjing. Although the missionaries are hostile to the Moon Country for a series of reasons, in order to show the tolerance of the big country, Xinjing still has many problems. A few Lamanites were active.
Once there, see if you can find the organization. If not, you can also find ships returning to the empire from the areas with the most prosperous foreign exchanges.
The streamlined team moved faster without the wounded, old and young. They became more like the mercenary group or mercenary team in Rigar, all composed of logistics and combat personnel who performed their own duties.
The dexterous former courtesan who has learned a lot about Mr. Jian is now a standard pharmacist. After a night of cooling down, she prepared refreshing scented tea for everyone who had not slept well in the morning. The white smoke from the cooking was in broad daylight. It's extremely eye-catching, but this is the risk they must take for now.
Even though it is located in the middle of the country, the temperature will become increasingly severe after winter. The physical and morale advantages of hot food and drink are important, and since they are on the move rather than hiding in a shelter, eating all cold food for the sake of concealment is not worth the gain.
As a paradise, the small village of Gushan is not rich in supplies, but it is more than enough to provide them with some things through barter.
Although they mainly focused on necessities, they still purchased a considerable amount of dried herbal teas and medicinal herbs. In addition, there are cloths for replacement and repair - weaving is a homework in the Kingdom of the Moon, although the same is true in Rigar. The ancient term of men farming and women weaving covers many things.
Pick the stems of the hemp fabric and use a scraper to remove the juicy parts, leaving a handful of hemp-yellow fibers. It is processed with lime, air-dried to enhance its toughness, and then twisted into thread by hand. This loose and breathable linen is the most common clothing fabric in Crescent Continent and has many functions.
Although its good breathability makes it difficult to keep warm in cold weather, it is excellent in that it does not smell bad when worn closely for several days. Stacked in multiple layers and used to fill in, even the air leaking gaps on the carriage can be filled with glue and linen shredded silk plugs to obtain better warmth.
There were many things that needed to be done, so everyone was busy doing their own thing from the very beginning.
While Sakura was making herbal tea, Lulu also made use of the bonfire beside her. She held a small pottery bowl with holes and put some rosin collected along the way into it.
Although the small village on the lonely mountain has most things, it does not have enough minerals. Their metal artifacts were all obtained from transactions at the foot of the mountain, so the arrows consumed along the way could not be replenished.
The large bows and war arrows used by the Kazuto warriors were not suitable for the hunting bows of the barbarian girls. The war arrows were too big and heavy, so they could only be fired from a large bow. If a hunting bow was used, it would not be able to shoot far and it would be easy to miss the target.
But she has never had to rely on these people to survive.
The integration of the Luoan bloodline that remained in the Crescent Continent with this ancient land was a story before the founding of the Moon Country, four to five thousand years ago. Their connection with this land may be deeper than that of Kazuo who claims to be civilized.
Flint, hard wood, even the horns of a previously hunted deer can all serve as her arrowheads.
Most of the arrows in Xinyuezhou are collar-mounted. This structure refers to digging a hole in the arrow shaft and inserting the arrowhead into it. It is different from the suit structure in which the arrowhead is placed outside the arrow shaft.
It has the benefit of being easier to make and requiring less equipment. The arrows of the suit often require a blacksmith to forge a sleeve, while the arrows of the boat suit only need to grind out the stem, stuff it into the arrow shaft, and fix it in some way.
This ancient way of making arrowheads can be traced back to the savage era before any civilization was born. Hunters who did not know what farming was and chased giant beasts with spears, bows and arrows used such weapons.
The ancient bloodline still flows in this land.
The arrow was hammered and polished, leaving two small grooves that were stuck into the arrow shaft. She then wrapped the twine in an x-shape and tightened it. After the rosin melted by the fire, Lulu picked up the small pottery bowl and filtered out the pure rosin from the small holes in it, leaving the branches, dead leaves and other forest debris in it.
Then add coke powder to the rosin, mix it evenly, and pour it on the arrow shaft to strengthen the arrow.
The Luoan girl was maintaining her weapons and armor and watching her operations.
Lulu then cut off a few short antler tips. She selected a relatively straight part, and then continued to polish it on the rough stone until it became a long cone shape.
"This is?" Mira asked.
"For fishing, just in case." She only made a few, not more. The antler's arrowhead was twice as long as the flint's, and its rounder and smoother shape made it perfect for shooting into the water. After descending from the mountain, they would be walking along the river for a while, and she had already begun to prepare for it.
The remaining rosin glue after making the arrowhead was wrapped around a wooden stick and solidified at one end like the candied haws that appear during Kazuto festivals. This ancient and natural glue will solidify when cooled and only needs to be heated for a while before use. It will be soft and sticky again, so you can make more at a time and save it for later use.
Compared with the glue made from grains, which is more widely used by the Kazu people, it is slightly stronger in terms of strength, so the Yi people often use it to fix arrows and even knives.
There are everything you need for survival in the mountains, but you just have to wait for no one to bring it to your door. Everything needs to be collected, processed, and made by yourself.
This is an older way of survival that is incompatible with a more "civilized" society that has adapted to division of labor and cooperation - even until now.
It's been almost a year.
They set foot on this land when it was snowing heavily, but after nearly a year of journey, they still have not reached Xinjing.
There were so many problems and mishaps that the trip was never smooth sailing, and now the importance of their delivery of the Letter of Commitment has diminished as time has gone on.
——What should we do if Xinjing has no ability to fight back by the time it is delivered?
The vassal territory failed to destroy them, but successive raids hindered their progress. At the same time, the vassal territory's army occupied one directly administered state after another with overwhelming force, which in disguise achieved the goal of the vassal territory.
But there was no way the feudal kings would let them go.
This is clear to everyone.
Hidden dangers must be eliminated, and as long as there are threats, they must be completely resolved.
Human beings have been so aggressive since ancient times, and this is the same whether in Crescent Continent or Rigal.
They will give up temporarily only if they may lose more than they gain by eliminating the threat, but this is always only temporary. And with only such a small number of people, no matter how high their individual combat effectiveness is, their overall size is absolutely incomparable to the feudal army, which boasts a strength of 150,000.
Although it is unlikely that the feudal army will always use only secular force to hunt them down.
Refreshing and quick power is like wine. After tasting the excitement and victory brought by throwing themselves into the darkness, they will only taste the marrow.
Want more, want to use more.
Unlike several other major races, humans inherently lack the firmness to resist such things.
Especially the vassal kings don't know that they are playing with fire, and they don't know the danger of this power.
"It's a ghoul." The group of people set off on their journey again after breakfast, but were stopped by the sage's fist-raising movement while going downhill in the cold wind.
Mira moved closer, as did others including Miss Doctor.
There were very strange footprints on the ground, as if a person with a big fist and a particularly thick middle finger punched the ground and walked on tiptoe with his hind feet.
But the strange shape did not make capable trackers relax their vigilance - the hunter girl stared closely at those huge footprints like a cat with explosive hair.
The footprints left by a creature are related to its running speed. The footprints left by a tiptoeing hunter trying to sneak must be shallower and shorter than those left by a long stride.
But what is this outrageous thing?
Jumping several meters at a time is still continuous. It seemed to be a leaping span, and even an unloaded horse would be hard-pressed to run away from such a monster.
"It looks completely different from the previous ones." The Luoan girl raised her doubts. She had also seen many ghouls. Although these things behaved like wild beasts, their overall body structure was very similar to humans.
"Those are, at best, incompletely transformed, degraded versions that retain too many human characteristics. This is the original version." The sage shook his head.
"In other words, this is the oldest and most original version."
"We have to stay vigilant." He said and looked up, while others followed the tall black-haired man's line of sight and looked up - a few meters above the ground, there was a huge tree trunk that almost went around the trunk. Claw marks.
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