The Jingjiu Dynasty said that the snake tribe that had been exterminated was not extinct. They were living well, and they came to your Jingjiu Dynasty's territory to engage in smuggling.
The same goes for the Long-Tusked Elephant Clan. Although they have not yet returned to the hundred thousand people they once were in their heyday, they have already begun to cultivate their health and recuperate. They are by no means extinct as they say in the country.
Even in the entire barbarian territory, there is no daily fighting between tribes as mentioned in the country. There is water and fire everywhere in the main land. On the contrary, except for the area close to the bamboo road, the food and clothing of the past have actually been restored in the depths, and the situation of tribes attacking each other has been rarely seen as early as more than ten years ago.
The reason is that the strong breeding tribes led by the wolf tribe began to form an alliance, and attacked the tribes that plundered wantonly, gathering small tribes and groups in the southeast and providing protection. Gradually, a large part of the southeastern part of the tribal area was stabilized.
A word that is mentioned repeatedly by these three snake clans is "Chaos in the northwest, stability in the southeast."
When Shen Hao saw this, his heart skipped a beat.
For the barbarians, their northwest was actually the part bordering the Jing Dynasty, including the Wanli Bamboo Sea and Bamboo Road. To the southeast is the depth of the barbarian hinterland.
According to Shen Hao's knowledge, because there is no teleportation circle in the barbarian area, the baggage burden is too heavy if they rely entirely on carriages and horses without supply points, so even the slave caravan is only a thousand miles south of the bamboo road. They hunt within a certain range, and even if they go deep, they rarely go beyond the distance of 1,500 miles.
Slave caravans in the barbarian territory must regularly feed back some news, mainly about the current situation of the barbarians. These will be released in the official report every six months. The secret level is not high, and all within the Xuanqing Guard are Can be seen.
But as far as Shen Hao knew, the descriptions of the barbarian situation in official newspapers were generally "poverty and hardship" or "chaos and desolation", and there was never any mention that the other party was slowly recovering.
Shen Hao did not believe that all slave caravans would remain silent on the matter of the barbarians. The only possibility was that the slave caravans were restricted by the scope of their activities and could only detect the situation of the barbarians within a limit of 1,500 miles, and what they saw The barbarians in the area are indeed poor and miserable.
According to records, the most fertile land of the barbarians was in the northwest, while the southeast was relatively barren.
So it makes no sense that the northwest, which has fertile land, is suffering from poverty, while the southeast, which has relatively poor land, is recovering and recovering, right? At least not normally.
There is only one possibility, that is, what the slave caravan saw was an illusion deliberately created by the barbarians. The purpose was just to paralyze the Jingjiu Dynasty behind the slave caravans. For this reason, they were willing to sacrifice part of the population and fertile land.
Is this deal a loss?
If the actual situation is as Shen Hao speculated, it will not be a loss for the barbarians but a bloody gain.
The other three snake tribes also said that the wolf tribe had set up a flag, restored its "Frost Moon" emblem, and began to forcibly incorporate more than a dozen small tribes. Now entrenched in the Moon Worship Valley, the number of clan members under his command has exceeded 400,000.
Influenced by the Wolf Clan, all powerful tribes, including the Snake Clan, settled in the southeastern region and began to incorporate the surrounding small tribes. Especially those who are good at farming.
Incorporating other ethnic groups, expanding the size of the ethnic group, and setting up flags to restore the glory of the ancestors is not a simple matter of saving face in terms of barbarian customs, but to establish one's own prestige. Generally, in this case, it only needs the support of half of the major ethnic groups. Re-establish the royal court and restore the name "Black Stone".
This news alone can basically confirm that the barbarians are gathering momentum. As long as the power of the wolf tribe continues to grow a little bit more, there is a high probability that the Black Stone Royal Court will be re-established.
Then there will be big trouble.
Shen Hao had learned about several wars between the Jingjiu Dynasty and the barbarians before. Although the Jingjiu Dynasty won every time, the price paid was extremely painful. Tens of millions of money and food were consumed, and at least 330,000 soldiers died in battle.
As a saying goes, war is never easy. It is normal to kill ten thousand enemies and suffer eight thousand losses.
What's more, judging from the history of every war between the Jing Dynasty and the barbarians, the barbarians were very powerful in combat when they erected the Black Stone Royal Court, and were by no means easy to deal with.
To be honest, Shen Hao had a premonition about the internal situation of these barbarians before.
After all, the smuggling records that can be found alone have lasted for five years. A large amount of various controlled materials flowed into the barbarian land from the Baijiang River. This amount of materials is very important to a "poor and miserable" and "chaotic and desolate" country. "It is unaffordable for the region. It must be a relatively integrated force to be able to pay such a price.
Because smuggling is all about huge profits, even if it is 20 to 30% higher than the market price, it is definitely not enough to bear the risk of losing your head while smuggling controlled materials. It must be doubled profits to make them forget the legal torture of the Jing Dynasty.
So, think about it, while a huge amount of materials have flowed into the barbarian lands in the past five years, how much money and medicinal materials will flow from the barbarians into the pockets of the bad bugs?
Of course, the Jingjiu Dynasty never stopped plundering the barbarians, which was mainly reflected in the slave caravans. Looting a population is the biggest blow to a region. But the problem is that the place where the slave caravans plundered for a long time did not reach the core, and the core was avoided by the barbarians using distance.
But the good news is that although the wolf clan is currently the strongest among all clans, it is not enough to convince the public. Therefore, even if the wolf clan restores its Frost Moon Wolf Flag and clan emblem, it still cannot rebuild the Blackstone Royal Court in a short time. Arrived.
I don’t know how long this time will last, one year or five years?
But at least Shen Hao has plenty of time. After getting the news, he could easily form a copper note and report it to Jiang Cheng face to face, and based on his understanding of Jiang Cheng, the other party would not be able to just sit idly by and ignore it. By then, if the barbarians want to secretly recover, it won't be as easy as it is now. .
In addition to the news about the barbarians, there was also news about the pseudo-evil monks that Shen Hao was concerned about, but it was beyond Shen Hao's expectations.
Originally, Shen Hao thought that the link between the barbarians and the evil monks was the pseudo-evil cultivators trained by these evil monks. But actually it's not.
According to what these three snake tribesmen said, the pseudo-evil cultivators were not contacted by them, nor did they come to them on their own initiative. There was also a group of people in the middle. It was this group of people who helped to bridge the gap and facilitated the earliest material smuggling. Later, this group of people It was the pseudo-evil cultivators who made contact with their barbarian tribes and smuggled supplies that disappeared.
Shen Hao once thought that these three snake tribesmen were deliberately misleading him and that they were nonsense. At that time, he asked the killer to confirm again and again, and then he had to accept what the three snake tribesmen said. The existence of the original group of middlemen mentioned.
