"This winter is colder than usual."
About a month after winter officially arrived, such words began to appear frequently in communications with people and civilians.
The cold air that hit from the north in early December brought heavy snowfall, and the snow line even exceeded Pingzhou and went southward, all the way to the magnificent capital of the Moon Country, the territorial province of Xingjing.
The news about the rebellion of the feudal army seems to have cooled down rapidly after the onset of winter. Before autumn, the news that they were overwhelmingly conquering one city after another caused panic in the entire Moon Country. However, after the onset of winter, it turned into a dead silence.
News of the request for peace talks leaked out to the public, but there was no further information after that.
Whether the peace talks were successful or not, what unreasonable ideas did the feudal army put forward? How does Xinjing plan to deal with this matter? There is no way to know all this information, and the merchants who were usually well-informed are now blind. The entire New Moon Continent with Pingzhou as the boundary and further north is silent, like a forbidden land of life.
The fear and anxiety caused by the unknown once shook the market. Just like in places farther north, many people began to rush to hoard supplies, and merchants also took the opportunity to drive up prices. As a result, the warriors guarding Xinjing had to go out again and again. Make corrections.
When a disaster affects the price of rations, things seem to become relevant to everyone.
For a moment, everyone was talking loudly in the streets, as if the next second a large army of feudal lords wearing red armor representing rebellion would appear on the mountain road on the border of Xinjing.
But people will forget.
And it's very fast.
When there was no news in the first week, there were still people paying attention and waiting. When there was no news in the second week, most of these people were reduced. And when November turned into December without incident, the people in the southern territory of Pingzhou returned to their usual lives as if there had never been a war.
After all, this was not a real threat to them.
Hearing is false and seeing is believing. Before the bright knife was placed in front of them - no, maybe even the army of rebel warriors had pressed on their faces - these civilians in the Central and South Region would still stand there curiously. Watch instead of turning around and screaming for your life.
They were too far away from the war, so far away that even the samurai class who should be very familiar with it did not know the cruelty of war.
"The Great Luo of All Worlds"
But just as the undercurrents beneath the ice caps that gradually form on many riverbanks in winter are still turbulent, many things are changing beneath the calm exterior.
Our sage is a person who knows a lot. His abundant experience can infer the possible appearance of things from very small things - but that is only a possibility. There may be a correlation between it and the facts, but there is no correlation between it and the facts. Doesn't mean it's the truth.
Henry will also make mistakes. He will not make judgments when there is no information at all, and when he has a small amount of information, his judgments will naturally be based on this information.
But what he failed to anticipate this time, or what he had expected wrongly before, was the relationship between the feudal kings and the Placia believers.
The expelled Luoan people, a fighting nation who were once proud of being the bodyguards of the Great Moon God, returned to seek revenge on Xinjing. But what they want to do is definitely not to support the lord to ascend to power. What they want to bring is complete destruction and turn this continent into a land of darkness and death.
Based on his contact with the Placia swordsmen, the sage believed that the feudal king was unknowingly attracted by the military advantage brought by the dark power and was exploited by the Placia cultists.
Although the vassals have repeatedly shown that their rebellion was not motivated by passion but had a detailed and careful plan, it is human nature to be careful and sparse, and Henry himself is an example of this. In addition, matters related to the Placia Order are closely related to witches and the inner world. Under the strict control of druids, this kind of information is difficult for ordinary people to know.
We don't know the truth. Based on the derogatory name for the Rigar people as barbarians by the Kazuto nobles and a series of factors, perhaps the higher-ups in the domain were not aware of the true intentions of the Placia believers in the end. And his behavior is completely based on the contemptuous attitude of the superiors. After making use of those who are regarded as outsiders, he will kill the donkey and burn the bridge.
In short, at some point in early winter that even Henry and his party were unaware of, the lords broke away from Placia.
Perhaps because they had secured enough territory and thought they had mastered Placia's method of controlling the power of darkness, the lords sent these white-haired Luo who had traveled thousands of miles to bring their own equipment and rations, which could almost be called ascetic monks. Anren was assassinated one after another with ninja troops.
But the strange power possessed by these people who yearned for darkness allowed them to escape with a small number of people despite being stabbed in the back. After reacting, these people used ghouls and hallucinations to make the troops kill each other in revenge. This behavior caused the feudal army, which had mostly been victorious since the beginning of the war and had high morale, to fall into civil strife.
The land north of Pingzhou became a battlefield where the living and the dead fought amid heavy snowfall.
After the power of the vassal army was weakened by the Placia believers, the peasant thugs who had been suppressed from doing anything took the opportunity to take up arms. The threat of ghouls and the reality of lack of food and clothing when winter came gave them courage based on despair, and the attraction of fuel and rations in the warm military camp of the feudal army became impossible to ignore in this case. .
The movement instigated by the feudal lords to weaken Xinjing's strength finally succeeded in defeating them.
The Plasian cultists, who are few in number but possess special powers, are fishing in troubled waters. Although the domain warriors control the best equipment and the most highly trained and experienced troops, they rule a land that does not surrender to their fear.
The civilians of the directly-governed states, who were far more numerous than the samurai of the domain, were waiting for the opportunity. Like hungry wolves and rats, they would swarm up a military camp that was not well-prepared and kill them all, leaving nothing behind and stripping away everything.
However, brutal force retaliation no longer has the deterrent effect it once had in front of the mobs that have become numb and cold-blooded after the baptism of war. The deterrent effect that samurai could have by simply drawing their swords or simply appearing has rapidly weakened in the past few months.
They still thought that everything could be done according to the old routine, but they never thought that civilians would never do this again.
The cause of all this lies within themselves.
Almost all civilians in the directly-governed states under the rule of the vassal were devastated. Due to the lack of military strength and labor force, most of the young and middle-aged men were forcibly drafted into the army. Either they were used as cannon fodder and forced to fight in the front row, died in the struggle with the samurai resistance forces in the directly governed state, or they died in the construction of urban defense facilities under difficult conditions.
From time to time, women would be hunted down by troops sent by the feudal army and arrested in groups to "sympathize with the soldiers." Many of them hanged themselves in shame after returning.
Compared with the children in central and southern China who are still carefree and even look forward to the desserts at the winter festival, the generation north of Pingzhou is destined to grow up holding on to anger and hatred.
No one's family is complete, orphans are everywhere, and corpses are everywhere.
What is frightening is that after winter, many corpses can still see half-moon-shaped bite marks or cuts with flat cross-sections that are obviously not beasts.
But all this miserable situation did not make the lords decide to improve the treatment of civilians.
Civilians are not human beings, they are consumables and props.
The feudal princes clearly knew how powerful the power of the common people could be brought into play by inciting the movement to suppress the upper class, but they only believed that no matter how hard they squeezed them, they would become an exception in the movement to suppress the upper class.
They believe that they are the orthodox incarnation of the Great Moon God, invulnerable to weapons and poisons.
He is the chosen one, unique and exceptional, and this kind of thing will not happen to him.
"How dare these people?" - This was probably the first reaction of the top brass of the feudal army when they heard that thugs had attacked their military camp.
And this kind of reaction is the same as that of the nobles of the directly governed states.
If you are beaten, you must retaliate, and revenge will breed more hatred.
The civilians who lost their cherished things and broke their jars were once again set a precedent for subjugating their superiors. The realistic needs of survival and the broken spiritual shackles made them forget their fear of the samurai.
The war was raging, and the envoys from Xinjing who were waiting to communicate with the vassal territory were as anxious as ants on a hot pot in Pingzhou, while the hot blood in the territory to the north of Pingzhou was spread on the snow and was covered by Xinjing. A blanket of snow covered it, as if it had never fallen.
Abundant corpses serve as raw materials to make the Night Lord's army grow in size, and their actions that seem to cooperate well with civilian thugs make the domain army constantly try to search for hidden platinums from those civilian settlements that are still stable. Western Christians.
There was a melee between the three parties, and the vassal princes had to be vigilant to prevent news from leaking out for fear that Xinjing would seize the opportunity to counterattack.
With just a simple tear, the victory they thought was unbreakable quickly became shaky.
Exhausted and exhausted.
The ultimate result of what happened in the central and northern part of Crescent Continent was that after the war with the directly-administered state samurai troops who had defected to the vassal territory, the sage and his party did not encounter any form of conflict for a month. .
No ghouls pursue, no human warriors appear. As they walked on the smoother and smoother roads, they only needed to pay attention to concealing themselves, so that the bustling passers-by traveling with their families would not cast too many unnecessary glances.
This experience suddenly felt like a lifetime ago.
There was heavy snowfall, when the long winding road up and down between the mountains came to an end.
The destination of this trip finally appeared in their eyes after a year.
The end of the long downhill road following the mountain road is within the territory of Xinjing. From this mountain road, you can see the huge capital city and the surrounding vassal towns and villages. The wide river passes under the graceful arches of the thick stone walls, and warriors wearing gorgeous armor similar to their ancestors patrol and watch on it. Sailboats still come and go. Xingjing, which is located in the plains, is surrounded by tall city walls, and the extremely obvious long building in the middle is where the royal family lives. To the east of it is a building covered with bright orange tiles. The nine-story tower - that is the famous Tiange Academy, where Miss Doctor belongs.
"Is Xinjing so prosperous?" The warriors of the Qingtian family stayed in place, wandering around, covered in dust, licking blood from their swords - compared with them, the capital city, which was full of crowds and cries of cries, was completely different. Like from another world.
The journey has come to an end.
The missionaries will now leave the team to find their companions, and the great miko and the ghost tribe will also go to the shrine to report the situation. After receiving the token from the great shrine maiden, Henry and the others, together with the Qingtian family samurai, planned to use Aya's recommendation to hand over the certificate of surrender to the royal family, which was still of unknown validity.
The journey that started in winter finally ended in the second winter, and their mission was finally completed. Although they still didn't know where to go next, no one wanted to think about such a problem now.
With a long-lost brisk pace, they set foot on the smooth national highway again after a long time.
The wheels of the carriage rolled on the exquisite stone pavement, making a clearly audible sound. As they gradually approached the blue-tiled and white-walled northern city gate of Xinjing, the bustling street stall market outside the city was filled with the sounds of bargaining with southern accents. One after another came into my ears.
At this point, Henry and his party finally took off the covering that made it difficult to breathe, because Xinjing is the largest gathering place of Nanman people, and their faces are no stranger to the residents here.
It's not even as eye-catching as the miko, the ghost clan, and Aya in doctor's clothes.
The first snowflake that fell within the walls of Xinjing City floated in the sky, and Mira stretched out her hand to catch it.
At the same time, the guard at the gate of the city, who was wearing colorful Alisaria Weibo Pills and extremely gorgeous armor, checked the identity of the witch and the doctor and saluted respectfully, allowing them to pass.
The new capital of heaven.
The big moon shines brightly.
