From Chief to Ball

"He said that if there was a fight, the man would definitely run away, so forty people would go to ambush behind him. We would grab the grass. The white horse would definitely not be able to go by itself, and neither would the slaves. Eighty people, 79 grasses, I caught them The longest one. Hey, my younger brother grabbed the shortest one and scolded him angrily."

"Before I left, my younger brother snatched away the little wine left in my gourd, saying that if I really caught someone, I don't know how much wine I would have when I returned to Xia City. It's okay, I just thought about it and wanted to go out with women in the city just like civet cats, if this is done, I guess that woman must think that I am very powerful."

"I don't know how the White Horse battle was fought. We set fire on three sides and left one side, and we hid on the side that didn't catch fire. In just two hours, a group of people rode horses in a panic. Run this way. At the time of the ambush, the white horse made it clear that the horses had to rest after running for two hours. At that time, they couldn’t run anymore. I saw that there were not many people, but everyone was wearing mink. The fur is made of fox fur, so they rushed over with people."

"I just stared at a woman, and I said in my heart that killing is killing. Don't get blood on that white fox fur. I found out later, who do you think this woman is?"

"Hey, this woman turned out to be the woman of the leader's brother. The leader's brother was the leader. After she died, the younger brother became the leader. The horse, the woman, became his brother's. She still looks pretty. , not very strong, but the hair is like the evening sun, and the skin is as white as a thatch root. I chased him, and the first sword was skewed and the second sword was stabbed to death. Unfortunately, the white fox skin was gone. "

"After killing a few more, I saw an old man with so many human scalps hanging around his neck, he was almost dead, holding a skull in his hand, and two young men guarded him desperately. I knew this man It must be the one that the white horse asked me to arrest."

"Those two young fighters are good fighters. I didn't fight with him. I took seven people to draw the bow together, and they were shot to death in one round. I ran over and dragged the old man down and tied him with a straw rope. gone."

"The skull he held in his hand was different from others. There was a shiny layer inside, like copper, but it was not copper, brighter than copper. It was lined inside the skull. Blood poured in, It flows out when you pour it lightly, and it is not sticky at all."

"Later I found out that this skull is really different. It was there before their tribe moved from the west. Someone picked up a yellow stone when they were playing in the water. It is very bright and heavy. Just like we smelt copper, we have to use charcoal to smelt it, and if you pick it out, it will be bright, but it will be very soft.”

"At the beginning, they made a total of seven such skulls in the west, and gave them to the most powerful witch priests in each tribe. It seems that they fought because they believed in the spirit of war or the spirit of the earth, and the tribe moved away. In addition to their occupation of the salt fields, this skull is also the reason why many small tribes who moved here followed them. It seems that the tribes in the west have come to ask for this skull several times, but they refused to give it."

"This thing is really pretty. I haven't seen it before, but the first time I saw that yellow color, I thought it was really good."

"By the time I took this live one to look for the white horse, the slaughter had already been done. There were dead sheep all over the ground, and the blood had stained the grass red. Next year the grass will definitely grow taller."

"None of the eighty of us survived, and we released so many slaves. When we left, each of us rode four or five horses. Those shepherds were coming back, and the white horse told the shepherds: They caught you as herdsmen before. Look, they actually only have one head. Now that you have horses and weapons, go catch them as herdsmen. Follow us back, you have to be wild people..."

"When the shepherds heard this, they felt that they still didn't want to follow. There were only about forty of the three to four hundred people left, and the rest were driving sheep or something and imitating us to find and kill other settlements."

"Actually, I know that the white horse is intentional. Let those shepherds lure those tribes to take revenge. They can't fight. The more people there are, the slower they walk. If they are really caught up, they will not run as fast as we have fewer people. And These shepherds don’t need us to teach them, they will definitely make the teeth of those slave owners ache.”

"We went in the opposite direction with the shepherds, and chose the best horses. Apart from the horses, there was nothing worth bringing back. When we came back, the few villages left were just enough for us to eat, and hay and other things were prepared. We just walk and kill, the village is not big, sometimes people run away before we can kill them.”

"The sick horses on the road were thrown away. There were villages at first, and then they killed horses to eat. However, horses are much bigger than sheep. Killing one is enough for us to eat, but the meat is too thick, not as good as mutton. tasty."

"Ji Xia, you left us three hundred horses when you left. We killed a circle and brought back four hundred horses. At first we didn't know how to ride horses, and we rode on the foot ropes. After riding for a few days, our thighs were all rubbed. Blood. Now all those who came back can ride horses, and the flesh inside their thighs is also scarred, and the forty shepherds brought back are also good at riding horses."

After he finished speaking happily, he took out a skull from the pocket containing the white fox fur and placed it on the stone in the conference hall.

There is a layer of gold inside the head-covering house, and the processing is not fine. It may be the dog's head gold that was picked up. After all, the metal of gold is too inert, and most of it exists in nature. It needs too fine processing, and it can also be made very thin in the sense of this era.

Even though the people in the council hall have never seen gold, and gold has not been endowed with the meaning of high-level equivalents, but the shining luster under the firelight in the evening makes people involuntarily fall in love with this metal.

In the previous life, many isolated tribes, and even the old and new continents had no connection for tens of thousands of years, but gold has coincidentally become the favorite metal of all civilization circles.

Under the flickering light, the messenger showed his teeth with a smile, put a few pieces of fox skin beside the skull, and said with a smile: "When the white horse returns, what will the city want to reward him? He said, this skull and the one caught The witch spirit priest who was in charge, will get half of the credit for the seventy people who separated."

Chapter 40 Coping

After the story of the two people was finished, the owner of the bronze sword withdrew his sword, sighed, got up and pushed the person who opened the door and left the meeting hall.

Soon, another messenger also left, and the door of the council hall was closed.The officials directly under the Six Divisions in the city are basically in the room, and with the addition of more than a dozen tribal leaders, the entire power center of the city is considered complete.

Wolfpi asked, "What should we do about this?"

"What should I do? No one can survive in a war. There are rules, and you can do whatever you want. What do you think of me?"

Several people were taken aback, and hurriedly said: "Very good."

"Then what do you think those slaves think of me?"

Several people in charge of the slaves laughed. They heard the slaves curse Chen Jian more than once, and some slaves even sang a few songs about gadflies, horses, flies and mosquitoes, but they knew they were cursing Chen Jian after listening carefully.

"The same person, the same thing, the evaluation is different. I want everyone to say that you are good, is it possible? It's like a tax officer among you. When you collect taxes, others say that you are not good. Isn't it true that you don't go there? Have you collected their taxes? Although the war is won first, the rest is not important. The city is different from the tribe. For the city, someone must hate you, but someone will respect you. The more you do, The more you hate, the more you respect."

He sighed, looked at the management of these future cities, and said solemnly: "Think about it, if you can figure it out, stay, if you can't figure it out, then don't worry about anything, be a good person, clansmen Everyone will respect him, who will hate him?"

The people below were silent for a while, no one left, the city and the tribe were no longer the same.In the past, the tribe had to be respected by the tribe, but in addition to respect, the city also had violence and rules.

Wolfpi stood up and said, "I think so too. I hate it, but the white horse has indeed succeeded. But from what these two people said, it seems that there are quite a few tribesmen on the grassland. Shall we make some preparations?"

"I'm not afraid of war. They may not be able to beat us. Now I worry about another thing."

Chen Jian gasped and stood up, and said with a wry smile: "How should I put it, it's like I am in a cave, and there is a fish pond not far away. Every day I go fishing in the fish pond and I will not die of hunger. Now suddenly there is a tiger hiding in the cave. In the nearby mountains and forests, you don’t know when a tiger will pounce, so you have to carry a spear all day long instead of a fishing net. Even if the tiger doesn’t jump out immediately, I don’t have time to fish.”

He took out a few sheets of bark from the leather pouch under the stone slab, looked at the dense numbers on them that only he could understand, and sighed heavily.

What White Horse did was not only right, but also very good.But it was precisely because he was very good that he forged a big enmity with the tribes on the grassland who migrated from the west.

It's not a so-called skull problem, but the tribes on the grassland will definitely take this opportunity to fight a war to unite people's hearts or unify the grassland tribes within hundreds of miles. It will allow those who are ambitious to take this opportunity to establish their prestige.

The ecology of the grassland is very fragile. Chen Jian and Baima walked around the grassland, killing hundreds of people and a bunch of sheep, but compared to the vast grassland, this is not enough.

Because they don't plant, they live scattered, and because they are scattered, it is impossible to kill them all at once.

Most of the people who were killed were women, old people and children, and not many light and strong men were killed. The village that the white horse attacked was only a part of the big grassland tribe, not all. village, the rest of the sons are scattered to other places, and only get together at certain times of the year.

Whether it was to give an explanation to the clansmen, to establish prestige, or to weaken those disobedient clans, this battle might really be fought, and Chen Jian could only prepare in advance.

The family background in the city is too thin, and any time is precious. Before it snows in winter, cultivate more land to harvest more food next year.

Even if we don't consider the problem of reclaiming the land now, in fact, the food of each tribe is not enough to last until next year's new wheat harvest.

The harvested wheat was not much, and nearly 18 catties were planted in the ground. Some of them were eaten, and because of the first official staple food, they ate more. At this time, the snow had not yet fallen, and all the tribes added up There are only 14 catties of wheat and 10,000+ catties of peas left; besides guaranteeing the new army, the beans must be kept as seeds.

The public output of the city is slightly more, not counting beans, there are more than 8 catties of corn, more than 9 catties of wheat, 14 catties of peas, more than 700 sheep, and smelly dried fish from the two warehouses, and more than half of the corn still exists The other cities were not brought back.

Even if the public property and the private property of each tribe are all allocated together, and a strict rationing system is implemented, it can only last for four months.

Living within one's means and finding a way to calculate every grain of grain to survive the starving spring is a must-have skill for most housekeeper women in previous lives for thousands of years.

But at this time, the leaders of the various tribes were temporarily fascinated by the accumulated grain, and did not think about what to do in the spring. Anyway, they could live without so much grain before.

Chen Jian's original plan was to use bronze tools to exchange corn, and use some of the technology he had mastered to manufacture some tools that were needed by the Acropolis of Echeng, but they could not produce them, in exchange for grain, until Xinghuang harvested wheat; Concentrating labor to block the river fork, digging ice from the pond to fish is enough to survive the winter, and everything will be solved when the wheat is harvested next year.

He thought that there were not many tribes on the grassland, but when the two messengers came back, he realized that there were far more tribes on the grassland than he thought.

One possibility is that so many people were burned and killed, and the wounds were temporarily rested in silence; the other possibility is crazy revenge.Even if the latter is only a possibility, it must be prepared in advance.

Wars cost food and affect the production of cities.

For the same hundred people, if there is no war, they can fish, open land, and trade in handicrafts.In the simplest terms, if you catch fish for three days, you can still catch a hundred catties, eat for a month, and save a month's worth of food. But if you are recruited to prepare for war, not only can you not catch fish, but you will also consume food.

The people in Acropolis of Echeng would definitely know that a war was coming, and they would definitely not exchange food for themselves at this time, and even if they did, they would keep the exchange price very low.Food is the guarantee of the city and the country. At no time should you place your food in the illusion that you can buy or exchange it from others at any time.

In addition to food, the birch poles and various materials that can be used to make feather arrows collected in the city this autumn add up to a total of more than 2 feather arrows; there are only a few copper smelters, and there is no way to prepare farm tools for melting weapons; The new army is out of production, and the rest of the people can't cultivate the land if they want to fight...

Fighting one battle a year is already the limit that Xiacheng can bear for the time being. Without him, the family background is too thin, the basic population is too small, and the productivity is too low.

In the era of gathering and hunting in the past, tribesmen were equal to soldiers, and the maintenance cost was basically zero, but the same battles were fought like children’s play house, and a battle lasted for three to five days at most; in the era of settled agriculture, tribesmen are soldiers and producers at the same time , It consumes a lot of money, but it also looks like a war. It can be fought in exchange for amazing victories, and it can also rely on logistics for several months.