Chapter 1032 The King of Graycastle (Part 2)
The sand sea in the extreme south, the source of Yinchuan.
Brian sat in the tent, waiting for news from the front line. Opposite him were Gulz Burning, the leader of the Kuangyan Clan, and Thuram, the elder of the Aosha Clan.
The two of them have now become the spokespersons of the Mojin tribe.
Together with the commander of the Musketeer Battalion, who represents the great chief, it can be said that the leaders who can decide the fate of the sand people are all gathered here.
The cold wind in the desert made the tarpaulin rustle, but it was extremely warm inside - this sandy land seemed to be sitting on a huge fire pot. No matter how cold the surface was, burying your feet in the salt sand You can always feel the heat gushing out, and the effect is comparable to the fire pits and heaters in Neverwinter City.
The locals even invented a sand bed - dig out a shallow pit as long as one person on the ground, replace the white salt sand with sieved fine sand, and then bury yourself in it to maximize your health. Maintain body temperature. The fine sand is soft to the touch, and lying on it is even more comfortable than a quilt made of woven linen. If you pitch a tent above your head, you can live comfortably all winter long.
Unfortunately, it was this geothermal heat that destroyed the vitality of this place. The salt in the seawater continues to precipitate, turning the desert of about a hundred kilometers into a blanket of snow-white. Not to mention flowers, plants and trees, even sandworms and poisonous scorpions are hard to see.
Without an oasis, there would be no source of food. The vast plain would be no different than a dead land. In terms of desolation, the only blackwater swamp in the extreme south would be above it.
For hundreds of years, the Mojin people had only built a few scattered wooden houses at the junction of the salt-alkali land to provide temporary accommodation for those who came to collect salt from afar, but now, the situation has become different.
"You are very calm, young man," Goulds suddenly said, breaking the silence, "The Raging Waves Clan and the Bone-cutting Clan are both the most powerful clans in the Iron Sand City. The big chief can easily defeat them, but it does not represent those small tribes. They can do this too – do you have so much confidence in them?”
Seeing someone starting to speak, Thuram quickly added, "In this year, no new tribes have been promoted to the six major clans in Iron Sand City. Obviously they have controlled all the resources flowing into the city. In the extreme south, as long as there are With enough food, the clan will be able to recover quickly. Their current strength is probably even stronger than before you came here."
"Confidence? No..." Brian slowly shook his head, "I don't have such a thing for them."
"Then...why don't you use the Great Chief's troops?" Thuram said with some surprise, "You only need to mobilize a hundred people, and cooperate with the warriors of Kuangyan and Aosha, we will definitely make this group of arrogant people dare not One step beyond the little oasis.”
"Then what? Let the First Army patrol the Yinchuan Oasis forever and act as the caretakers of those small tribes?" Brian looked at him, "Do you think that is what His Majesty wants to see?"
"Uh, this..." Thuram was speechless for a moment.
Shortly after the implementation of the Great Migration Plan, development work in the extreme south also started. In addition to the construction of Daqing Port at Endless Cape, another focus was on the saline-alkali land at the source of Yinchuan. Due to the lack of river channels, if you want to transport these white industrial resources out of the desert, you can only rely on a large number of manpower and animal power to drag the trucks to the nearest tributary of the Chishui River.
For this reason, the two cities of Shuilong Ridge and Bishui Port offered generous conditions to attract enough sand people to join the army of sand movers.
In just one year, there have been many more camps and people coming and going at the junction of the salt-alkali land.
Deep wells were drilled one after another, and fresh water was extracted from the Yinchuan underground river flowing underground. It was used for drinking and for filtering and purifying salt sand.
Simple factories were also built accordingly. There was no gush of steam or roar of machines. Everything was done by human hands. The whole process was like gold mining. People condensed the wealth scattered among millions of gravels and re-crystallized it into Blocks are then loaded into trucks and transported to the hinterland of the Western Region, waiting for further processing. This repetitive and boring work has become a new melody in the salt-alkali land.
Although there are still no oasis, sandworms and poisonous scorpions, the place is becoming more and more lively.
The promise of food and clothing attracted not only the migrants but also the undecided small tribes. They often come to the junction in groups and exchange their physical strength for wheat, dried meat and cloth. Some people happily returned to the oasis with food, while some people stayed and became part of the migrants.
This phenomenon aroused dissatisfaction among the big clans in Iron Sand City. The more tribes that left the oasis, the less resources they could get. The conflict finally broke out two months ago. The Raging Waves and Bone-cutting clans dispatched cavalry to intercept and kill a group of small tribesmen setting off from the oasis, and threw their heads on the only way to the north. Their intention was obviously Warning other Mojinsha people who are ready to take action.
The big clans did not dare to be enemies with the King of Graycastle, so they aimed their butcher's knives at the small tribes that had not yet surrendered. They may have thought that this would not incur the thunderous wrath of the warchief. After all, no king of the Northern Kingdom would really care about the hundreds of tribes. The life and death of the sand people, but they did not expect that this move directly touched the nerves of Neverwinter City.
Unreasonable population reduction is undoubtedly one of His Majesty Roland's most taboo things - Brian already knows this.
Long before Gurz's letter arrived, the Musketeer Battalion Commander was ready to respond.
"What if they fail?" Gulz Fenhuo rubbed his forehead, "If I remember correctly, it only took three months for those people to receive musketry training, right?"
"Then they will be killed, and the tribes they belong to will become slaves of Iron Sand City." Brian closed his eyes, "I said before the expedition that they are not fighting for me, but for themselves. ——I gave them sharp blades that are enough to fight against the cavalry. If they still cannot protect their own people from the opponent's butcher knife, then they are not worthy of becoming a member of the Graycastle army. To me, it is just a matter of retraining a group of warriors. Just people.”
"..." Gulz showed a serious expression for the first time, as if he had a new understanding of this young officer.
"Furthermore, you have forgotten that three months is only the training time for muskets -" he continued, "In addition to muskets, they also have sabers, daggers, fists, feet and teeth, and these weapons are all from the time when the sand people were born. Training started right away, didn’t it?”
The members of the sand people army that Brian selected to form were residents from small tribes. They are different from big clans like Kuangyan. Although they choose to stay on the front lines of Graycastle, they still miss the tribes in the oasis. These people do not have a unified background, but they can also form an invisible connection between the two places. They are the best source of soldiers for the local army. And those old-fashioned flintlock muskets that were eliminated became their standard equipment.
Suddenly, rapid footsteps sounded outside the tent.
"Stop!" shouted the guard on guard.
"I am Juda from the ambush team. I have something important to report to the battalion commander!"
"Let him in," Brian's eyes shot open.
The door curtain was opened, and a man with blood on his face stumbled in. After shaking twice, he seemed to be unable to support his body anymore and fell to one knee on the ground. Although he was panting, his eyes were as bright as stars.
"Sir, we won!"