Chapter 4: Drunken Country (Part I)

As soon as the patriarch Sussir left, the young shepherds immediately came alive. Someone began to talk to Li Xu, and shyly invited the other party to see the love of today's efforts, and take the time to take the holy wolf to his felt bag to drink a bowl of milk tea, adding some blessings to the felt bag. Someone befriended Xu Dayan and asked him if he could impart some Han wisdom. As for what wisdom Xu Dayan possesses, the shepherds don't know. But they clearly knew that almost all tribal elders had to add a prefix to Xu Dayan's name when mentioning him, "...... whose wisdom is deeper than the Crescent Lake." In the memory of Su Sibu's youth, no one had ever received such praise in nearly twenty years.

Although nine out of ten sentences need to be communicated with each other, smiles have no ethnic boundaries. Soon, the young people became acquainted with each other, and while happily humming pastoral songs, they completed the arrangement of the inside of the felt bag.

Duer's family was wealthy, so he gave Li Xu a set of wooden boxes whose paint had not yet fallen off to make furniture. Aslan's wife was clever and brought a few woolen carpets with flowers tattooed on the surface. Other young people, depending on their family background, gave carpets, pots and bowls. Li Xu and Xu Dayan excused themselves again and again, but the herdsmen suddenly "couldn't understand" their sign language, pushed the two aside, and put the gifts in the right place in the felt bag.

"For the new heroes of the tribe, the Heatburners must let them live as comfortably as they do!" Eru whispered to Xu Dayan to explain the traditions of the Xia Clan. Whether the two teenagers met the criteria of heroes, the elders had already come to a conclusion. If they insist on not accepting the shepherd's gift, they will appear to look down on the other person, believing that the other person's gift is not worthy of being placed in their felt bag.

"But, we don't have anything to give them back!" Li Xu said with a red face. He was very happy to have a nest of his own. But he received so many benefits from others, which made him feel very uneasy.

"You can thank them with wine, and the people will not refuse the invitation of the master's family!" Tao Kuo desi muttered a few words quietly, "As for the wine, Aunt Qing said that she still has a few jars of sand date craft there, if you exchange it with good white paper, she doesn't mind taking credit first!" ”

The two teenagers immediately cheered, no matter what nationality, wine is the best communication tool for men. Before the caravan returned south, Xu Dayan had already asked someone to bring a letter, asking his family to transport a batch of fine paper to Su Si after the spring next year. Aunt Qing is willing to borrow on credit with the sand date wine that has been stored for many years, which is a good deal that cannot be sought.

Immediately, Li Xu took the livestock and followed Tao Kuo to the patriarch's house to carry wine. When the herdsmen heard that there was a sand date wine brewed by Aunt Qing herself, they were even more happy. Some people immediately rode horses to the field to drag their fat sheep, while others quickly went home to get dried mushrooms, yellow flowers and other things collected in the summer. Dur and his wife, who were well-off, contributed a small jar of spices and refined salt, and everyone packed up the felt bags and immediately set up a fire in front of Li Xu and Xu Dayan's house and began to sing.

This meal gnawed off two sheep, drank five jars of sand date wine and a dozen leather bags of mare's milk. Since then, the young heroes of the Su Si Department, such as Ah Silan, Duer, Cao Qiutai, and Ba Ximi, have made friends with Xu and Li. Everyone competes in riding together during the day, and drinks a few bowls of mare's milk wine in each felt bag at night, and the days are extraordinarily happy.

Three days later, young shepherds from the neighboring tribes drove their cattle and dragged blankets to camp on the outskirts of the Susi tribe. Su Sisier and the others declared to their subordinates that the young people of all tribes had come to participate in the hunt, so please don't panic. Secretly, however, they began to organize the herdsmen into hunting teams according to the structure of marching and fighting, and each hundred people went to the designated area to shoot yellow sheep in separate groups, so as to train the herdsmen to cooperate with each other.

Xu Dayan immediately showed his skills, how to pass the news between the various teams, how to take care of each other, how to identify the officers who did not belong to his own clan but whose positions were above him, all through his hands. In terms of individual military applications, the people of the Yan originally had their own habits, and Xu Dayan after debating and deducing with the core figures of Su Sixier, referring to the army of the Central Plains as the standard, and taking them to the hunting team more reasonably.

Compared with Xu Dayan's busyness in training the army, the work handed over to Li Xu by the tribe was much simpler. All he had to do was walk around the front of the group every morning with the little wolf Ganro when the shepherds began training, and he would have done a great job for the tribe. Gan Luo seems to have been born to be a god stick, and whenever he appears side by side with Li Xu in front of the shepherds, he can always put on a down-to-earth and generous posture. Therefore, every morning, when a man and a wolf walk out of the camp, there is always a cheer like a mountain crack in the four fields: "Attached, attached!" ”

Detachment, in the language of the Xia people, is not only a wolf, but also represents a guard. Since Li Xu was introduced by the patriarchs as the guard of the silver wolf, it didn't take a few days for him to have the same name of the Xia clan, and he was attached. As for Xu Dayan, from the patriarch Xi'er to the ordinary shepherds, they all learned from Aunt Qing and called him Mr. very respectfully.

In order to thank the two boys for their contribution to the tribe, Susisir continued to give them the game captured by the shepherds. And through the collegial deliberation of the elders, more than a dozen horses, five cows and more than seventy sheep were transferred from the common supplies of the tribe to belong to the two of them. According to the rules of the Xi tribe, these livestock do not need to be managed by two teenagers themselves, and naturally the young people of the tribe take turns to go out every day to drive the livestock of the entire tribe to the wild to graze. As for the milk and lambs to be harvested in the future, they were counted by Burke, the elder who was in charge of the management of the baggage, and accumulated into their property.

In this way, the two teenagers leapt into the wealthy class of the tribe. When drinking with others, he is more open-minded, and from time to time he can give back some gifts to show his gratitude to the host. However, Ah Silan and the others seem to have reached a tacit understanding a long time ago, no matter what the two give, everyone will definitely return the double gift the next day. came and went, but it scared Li Xu to be more generous.

"Attached, in a few days, the whole team will go out hunting, will you participate?" One day after drinking, Ah Silan asked with a little drunkenness.

"Go, but my riding and archery skills are too bad, and I will definitely disappoint you!" Li Xu replied briskly, after more than ten days of communication, his Turkic language has made great progress. Influenced by the youth of the surrounding Xia tribe, his personality has gradually become arrogant.

Poor archery skills, this is a fact that Li Xu cannot deny. After Uncle Nine left, he tried to quickly improve his archery skills with the help of the mantras taught by Uncle Nine. As a result, when I got on horseback, I realized that the mantra sounded simple, but it was very difficult to do.

Riding on a horse and releasing arrows is not as good as standing on the ground and bending a bow, and the first thing to pass is to sit firmly on horseback. Pulling the reins with his hands and galloping with stirrups between his legs, Li Xu could do it when he was in the Central Plains. However, he lost contact with his mount at the same time, and he had never tried to communicate with the horse on his knees and heels. So every time the bow was drawn, the mount would no longer listen to the command. either ran to the opposite side of the target, or threw Li Xu off the horse. In short, against a fixed target, it is difficult for him to catch an arrow in a hundred shots. Not to mention, like Uncle Jiu, he will be able to hit every shot. Even after the bow and arrow are off the string, they are missing, and they cannot be found if they want to be recovered.

Fortunately, the feather arrows in the Katabu are well stocked, and they are all made for riding and shooting. For the sake of his morale-boosting face when he got up early every day, Elder Burke, who controlled the baggage, passed down the message that he could use as many arrows as he wanted. So Li Xu took a hundred arrows out in the morning, and only returned fifty in the evening, and no one bothered with him.

"It doesn't matter, as long as you go with Ganluo, the prey we bring back will definitely be the most in each team!" Ah Silan said very trustingly. This was the tenth day that Li Xu stayed in the tribe, plus the five days he had previously been a merchant, a total of half a month. Twelve days ago, after accompanying Li Xu to a banquet to entertain the elders, Ah Silan hugged his wife. And this month, the wife did not see red, which means that another little life has taken root in the womb of the wife.

Whether the luck bestowed by the Immortal Heaven was related to the fact that he spoke for Gan Luo that day, Ah Silan didn't dare to guess. But he believes that as long as he follows Ganluo, good luck will continue to fall in his felt bag.

"Before I go, I'll try my best to improve my archery! At least get all the arrows back! Li Xu promised with a smile.

Promises are promises, and the distance between ideals and reality is always too far apart. Li Xu's first hunting day soon came, and he and a team of Asilan, Duer, Xu Dayan, and Ganluo, with Tao Kuo who couldn't shake off his tail, ran outside all day, capturing seven yellow sheep, three foxes, and a whole bag of fat sand chickens. Aside from himself, almost everyone in the team, both men and women, had a win. And not only did he gain nothing, but he also fell off his horse several times during the gallop. On one occasion, his left leg hung between the stirrups and was dragged out by his mount more than twenty paces away, almost scaring everyone to death on the spot.

"Attached, you still don't want to ride on a horse and shoot arrows in the future!" In the evening, according to the method taught by Aunt Qing, Tao Kuo, who wiped Li Xu's wounds with salt water, prayed with some distress. I heard Aunt Qing say that Han men are proud of reading more, not being more skilled than bow horses like the Xi people, so Tao Kuo Tuosi no longer cares whether his good friend can hit the prey.

"I promised to shoot you a eagle?" Li Xu smiled and stretched out his hand and touched Tao Kuo's white and golden hair. In the Central Plains, he had never seen a woman with such a beautiful silver hair. This is not the haggard white on the old woman's head, but the luster of life bursts from the ends to the roots.

"Go, go, you deserve to die!" Tao Kuo's face suddenly turned cold, and viciously pressed the clean cloth stained with salt water on Li Xu's calf that had been rubbed with countless scars by the war horse stone.

"Oops!" Li Xu screamed in pain and jumped up, wanting to do something, looking at the other party's angry appearance, he finally decided to settle the matter.

"Only women and villains are difficult to raise, the words of the saints, I am not deceiving!" Li Xu, who suffered a big loss, shook his head and said.

"The saint has been dead for a thousand years!" Tao Kuo knew that Li Xu must not be thinking a good word in his mouth, and replied in the sharpest language he could come up with.

Li Xu shook his head again and again, not as knowledgeable as this barbarian woman. When I slept at night, I was tossed and turned by the pain in my calves, but I couldn't help but think of Tao Kuo's appearance when he was angry.

"Why is she so angry?" Li Xu thought strangely. In a blink of an eye, such a comment surged in my heart, "However, she looks good when she is angry......"

No matter how painful the injury on his leg was, Li Xu still decided to refine his archery skills first. Uncle Nine said that he can't always let others protect him. Right now, in the Xue Division, Xu Dayan and Patriarch Xi'er will take care of themselves. When he returns to the Central Plains in the future, Brother Mao Gong wants to gain fame, and he can't be a burden behind him. Besides, Uncle Nine said that there is no secret to archery, just familiarity.

He was willing to work riding and archery, and Aslan and Dur did not hesitate to pass on some of their insights when they learned to shoot. How to coordinate the body and mount, how to match the undulation of the horse's back when the bow and arrow are aimed at the target, etc. These are all truths that need to be perceived with practice, and everyone's understanding is different, and the experience obtained is also different. Therefore, it will not be summarized at all in the mantra in the book, and it cannot be mastered by rote memorization.

With the guidance of these masters, Li Xu slowly had a feeling for bows and arrows, war horses, and the wind around him. Each arrow no longer flies aimlessly, but lands in the same direction as the target. Occasionally, if you are lucky, you can also pierce the red heart with one arrow. This is his unique skill, others want to shoot through the target, even if he has so much strength, he does not have the riding bow in his hand that the Great Sui built at the peak of his national power.

He was a young man, and when he saw that he could already shoot a fixed target, he couldn't help but want to go out hunting again and wash away the shame of being left on horseback. By the way, let the little woman Tao Kuotuosi see that she is not eating and drinking in her tribe for nothing just by virtue of Ganluo's face. Several young men were gnawing on the dried meat left over from the autumn to a dull mouth, and as soon as Li Xu mentioned it, they immediately responded.

In order to harvest more prey, Ah Silan deliberately chose a morning after the snow cleared. The presence of a layer of snow on the ground is equivalent to laying countless natural traps for the beasts. In particular, creatures with small hooves, such as hares and yellow sheep, cannot step on the snow with their feet, and their running speed is less than 30% of the usual speed. For a mediocre hand like Li Xu, who has just mastered shooting a fixed target, hunting after the snow, the probability of winning has increased greatly.

After asking the patriarch of Sil for instructions, they happily left the camp. As far as the eye can see, you can only see the hills in the distance, and the grasslands near are all covered with snow, and the whole world seems to be covered with a thick layer of white felt. The light gray sky above just formed a huge dome, and the snow-white felt and the tribes on the felt were upside down under it.

Because of the thin clouds overhead, the sunlight reflected back from the snow is less dazzling. The sky and the earth are clean, and people's eyes can see farther in the snow. The little wolf Ganluo couldn't bear it anymore, let out a long howl, and rushed out first. Li Xu, Xu Dayan and others followed with their horses, and the wind swept across the snowy fields.

The air that has been washed by the snow has a sweet smell when breathing, and although it is cold, it is very refreshing. The surrounding scenery is very beautiful, with the little wolf that has just grown silver stiff hair, and a group of young hunters, and a girl with purple and red colors, the scenery can already be used in the painting. The only fly in the ointment is that there is no prey in the hands of the young man. It wasn't because of their poor archery skills, no prey was in their sight from the moment they left the camp gate until they ran and Ganro began to stick out his tongue and gasp.

"Kenneng has been hunting lately, scaring away all the beasts around the tribe!" Eru twisted her nose slightly, and the smile on her face was as bright as the sun after the first snow.

"Thousands of people take turns to hunt, and even the most daring beasts will move quickly!" Xu Dayan made a joke that was not very clever. In the presence of Eru, his wisdom always faded rapidly. Sometimes the degree of "stupidity" shown can even be compared with Li Xu.

"Why don't you guys go farther away and try your luck at Crescent Lake. The lake doesn't freeze in winter, and when it's cold, there are always wild beasts going to the lake to find grass roots to gnaw! Sudor suggested loudly. If so many people return empty-handed, they will definitely be secretly laughed at by the clansmen. Besides, there is not much dried meat in your own house, and if you kill sheep indiscriminately, you will be scolded by the old people in the family for making bad things.

"There is already a distance from our camp over there, once you meet Suotou Xi people, it will be a little troublesome!" Among the group, Aslan is the oldest, and his ideas are the most serious.

Tao Kuotuosi, Duer and the others stopped talking, and they all focused their eyes on Xu Dayan's face. This man is recognized as a wise man in the clan, and his advice is the most influential in the entire team.

Xu Dayan saw the expectation in everyone's eyes, especially Li Xu, this good brother must have held back for a long time to wash away the shame of falling back from the horse. Looking back at the gentle and considerate Eru, her heart gradually softened, she thought about it, and said hesitantly: "There shouldn't be any trouble, the distance between their camp and Crescent Lake is several times that of ours." Even if they meet Xi Ren who came out to hunt in the snow by the lake, the two sides don't know each other's details, and reasonable people will not easily provoke trouble! ”

"Okay, let's go to Crescent Lake and try to rush back before dark. Padel is pregnant again, and I just happened to go to the lake to collect some star iron and make a scimitar for him when the baby is born! Ah Silan groaned for a moment and replied briskly.

The wife has a good time to get pregnant, and if she gives birth to a boy, I hope he will be as smart as her husband and as lucky as a separated brother. Ah Silan, who is going to be a father again, has the same fierce eyes as when he heard that his wife was pregnant for the first time.