When everyone is on horseback and equipped for the trip, the schedule required for the trip can always be reduced to a great extent.
The thing that minimizes time consumption is not accommodation, but food.
Dead and fallen trees can always be found in mountain forests, especially in the south where there are rains and storms after winter. These damp, dead wood are prone to decay and therefore unsuitable for firewood, and are often ignored by carpenters. But peeling off the rotten skin is enough to serve as a temporary shelter skeleton. Layer several layers of leafy branches on top. Unless the cover is too large, it can be built in only an hour or two through division of labor.
Even if you don’t bring the right tools, you can build it in a relatively short time with just experience and hands.
But that's not the case with food.
Food in the wild is mostly plants that are easy to find, but woody berries are seasonal and perish easily. Herbaceous vegetables are often only suitable for seasoning and are difficult to satisfy without picking in large quantities.
Their meaning is similar to that of mushrooms, which are often used to solve the feeling of hunger without providing real energy.
The only thing that can really make people feel more energetic is meat, and this is often what they really want to find when they are out looking for food.
However, fish, shrimps, turtles and other aquatic creatures are easy to catch if there is a river nearby. Birds and animals are often extremely alert and will disappear at the slightest sign of trouble.
Hunting for food is very luck-based, and it's not uncommon for you to be unlucky and spend a whole day searching without having anything to eat. Therefore, people who make a living by hunting are often good at preserving food, because it may take a long time to obtain a large amount of food in one hunt.
Salted or smoked dried meat to remove moisture will preserve better. The skin peeled off by prey can also be used for many purposes. Even bones are often not wasted. The thicker hollow leg bones can be made into knife handles or containers. Sometimes parts like thigh bones are thinned and polished into bone knives, spoons or bone rods for polishing. . Smaller ones can be made into bone needles or toothbrushes.
The Yi people, who are closely connected with the environment, will not discard the remaining bones carelessly. They will carefully pack them with waste cloth and bury them in the soil. When these materials decay, they will be fed back to the earth and become fertilizer.
– But let’s get back to where we started.
With food and accommodation fully prepared and a car available for transportation, Henry and his party made rapid progress on their way to Fuso.
But the presence of horses is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Because horses consume far more than humans along the way, it sounds like it is easy for herbivores to obtain supplies. However, since the energy provided by grass food is quite limited, they can only replenish it by eating more.
Wild horses spend at least half of their day eating, otherwise they will have trouble getting enough energy.
For those raised artificially, the time is shortened by adding fodder.
And almost every time the group of them stopped, one of them would go out to search for anything nearby that could be used as snacks for the horses. But even so, horses in teams without professional forage transportation and supplies will lose weight at a rate visible to the naked eye.
Human infantry can carry dry food for more than a week by eating lightweight and high-energy dried meat and nuts. But it is difficult for a horse to carry enough food for even one day if it has a rider on its back.
Therefore, the team on horseback cannot move in the same way as pure infantry. They have to move more point-to-point to ensure that they can find a replenishing inn or town within one or two movements of the horse.
It is not uncommon in history for the messenger's horse to starve to death or die of exhaustion due to continuous running and urging when the military situation is extremely urgent and there is no way to stop. The situation where people really cannot get supplies and can only starve during the journey is similar to the situation for horses.
Supplies were never a problem while in Rigal. Although horses are not cheap in Rigal, the widespread mercenary population flow and knight culture have still led to a large number of people who take care of horses part-time or full-time.
But this becomes a bit tricky in New Moon Continent. Because horses are restricted to nobles, and the nobles of Crescent Continent do not travel long distances very frequently, and when they occasionally travel, they often bring their families and servants with them, so they know how to take care of horses and open a hotel with stables and a reception space. There are existences everywhere in Rigal.
There are only a few large towns in Crescent Continent with one or two scattered ones.
It is difficult to find stables in smaller villages.
Unfortunately, most of the larger towns on the way to Fuso were located within a 5-6 day journey of horses, so they had no choice but to rest in smaller villages.
The unique configuration of the group caused quite a commotion when they rode into the village on horseback. The heavily armed foreigners rode horses that only nobles could ride. For a moment, the guard ashigaru standing guard at the entrance of the village didn't know how to react.
And their vague and confusing reports attracted the local powerful villagers. He thought that such a large formation was due to the arrival of some big shots and hurriedly wanted to make connections. However, it turned out that the only Kazuto was a noble but not a high-ranking person. After becoming a doctor from the Grand College without real power, his attitude suddenly cooled down.
After all, honorary nobles are not serious Japanese nobles with fiefdoms, connections and their own army. In addition to being able to ride a horse, own your own armor, and have rights of passage in some areas, this privilege and honor cannot be sold or passed on to other people, including your own children. The holder may die or violate the law for some reason. Recycled.
——To put it bluntly, the token seems to be rented, and it has to be handed back in the end. And the power given is very limited to the individual license holder. You cannot use this right to seek more things, nor can you develop in this way.
After all, it is just used to stop the great miko from submitting things for application. Calm down and think about it. Glory accounts for 90% of this glorious privilege. It is just more so that you can fill up the appearance. Riding a horse and wearing armor to go to a place that ordinary people can't go, just to have more talk.
The local villager obviously understood this. He looked at the group of people coldly with the eyes of the nouveau riche, and gave the order to his subordinates and the villagers that "the friendship of the landlords must be used as long as possible." This is dispensable. Very bland instructions.
No trouble, no obstruction, but no flattery either.
But this is actually what the group wanted.
Although there are no more secret missions to perform, too much attention is still not a good thing. Especially now that they, as strangers, were riding horses and swaggering through the city, they would inevitably attract some people with evil intentions.
After all, it is one thing to steal something from a serious noble, but it is much easier psychologically to steal something from an honorary noble of the Southern Barbarians who is famous but has no power or is regarded as stupid and backward.
The poor mountains and rivers are full of unruly people. Although it is not far from Xinjing, the villagers living here are different from those in Xinjing. Their clothes are full of patches and most of them have yellow faces and thin skin.
Except for the horses that the local lords and countrymen have specially taken care of, there are no special stables here. But they still have cows or donkeys.
Follow the road to the exit of the bamboo forest at the other end of the village, where you will find a livestock pen with a trough for cattle and horses to eat.
There are piles of fodder here, and cattle during non-busy farming seasons will be stored here for centralized feeding and care. And the horses of the group will be parked here now.
It's just that the fodder for the horses needs to be better, and when she heard that Galeva, who had placed the horses in the early stage, said in a somewhat stiff Japanese language that some grains and chopped fruits should be added to the forage, Mira clearly noticed Two villagers followed them sneakily, and the villagers who were listening behind the nearby shrine looked up and down at the items they carried on their saddles.
The withered, branch-like fingers clung to the wall of the old wooden awning of the shrine. The yellowed, damaged and cracked nails were filled with thick mud. They obviously did not have suitable tools to trim them, which were like saw teeth. The generally short edges are more like bitten off with teeth.
In the still cold late winter, these two people exposed their skinny legs and only used an extended robe to cover their bodies.
When they met the white-haired girl's eyes, the two villagers shuddered as if they had been whipped, and then shrank behind the shrine.
She turned her attention away and packed her luggage.
"Feed the horses with things that people can't afford." There was a hint of jealousy and hatred in her words as the cold wind drifted in. The Luoan girl turned her head again, but the two people had disappeared.
"I hope they won't be stupid," she said, while the sage beside her took down the luggage wordlessly. Different location, similar situation. Now Mira already knows what kind of things people who are poor and overwhelmed by despair will do.
And what can I do?
Now she has understood that reaching out to help and giving them things cannot save these people. It may be able to satisfy their hunger for a while, but the hatred and jealousy filled in their twisted hearts are difficult to dissipate.
Helping the urgent does not help the poor.
It can put out fires and save lives in critical moments. But problems that are more deep-seated don't have such simple and straightforward solutions.
Just like a dying tree on a land that has been dry for a long time, if it is given a lot of water at a time, it may die suddenly.
All we can do is change the soil we grow in bit by bit.
But this is easier said than done.
Even without human resistance, this is a goal that may take generations to achieve.
She is too weak. It was and still is.
The hands packing the luggage became slower and slower, and finally stopped.
Henry noticed all this.
"Accepting one's own powerlessness is a process that must be experienced in the process of growing up, but this does not mean becoming numb and turning a blind eye to them." Suddenly, our sage said this in Avenella language.
"If you feel they're wrong, change them."
“But there’s no rush.”
"There is no need to rush to find out the answer in a short period of time, because there are many things that can be pushed forward when the time is right."
"Remember those unwillingnesses, remember those thoughts, use them as motivation to hone yourself."
“That way when the times are right, you’ll have the skills and knowledge needed to execute them.”
"This is the wisdom of an elder." The sage shrugged.
Mira rolled her eyes at him, but her heart felt a lot more relaxed.
"Poor adult wisdom," she replied.
