A group of strong men dressed as mercenaries walked over one after another, looking at the female ninja with anger in their eyes. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

The man with the giant sword at the head was in the same shape as an ordinary person, a little thin compared to the tall and strong Kitland barbarians like the bears behind him, the woolen scarf and goggles covered most of his face, and he couldn't see what his expression was, and his red hair fluttered in the wind like a dancing flame.

"Hi, hello!" Veronica was still waving excitedly, and Roland quickly ran over to cover her mouth and smiled apologetically at the mercenaries opposite.

"I'm sorry, my friend is from the south and doesn't understand the rules of the mountain, please don't be surprised." He deliberately slowed down his voice and lowered his voice as he spoke.

The mercenary leader on the opposite side, wearing black magic leather armor and carrying a giant sword, stopped, nodded slightly to Roland, and then turned to Veronica and said, "Please don't shout on the snowy mountain, in case it causes an avalanche, it will be troublesome." ”

Veronica realized that she had made a mistake, stuck out her tongue in embarrassment, and quickly retracted behind Roland.

The leader of the mercenaries piled the goggles on his forehead, revealing a young and delicate face, which looked no more than eighteen or nineteen years old, but his demeanor was calm and sophisticated, giving people the impression of being a young man.

Roland's "Pupil of Destiny" can see the other party's face clearly through the wind and snow, and soon notices the abnormality - the other party's eyes are crimson, like a scorching carbon fire, there is a longitudinal fissure texture in the pupil, and crimson scales can be seen at the base of the ear, which is clearly a symbol of the red dragon's bloodline.

"Guests from afar, where are you going?" The dragon vein youth asked Roland in a non-standard lingua franca, and his polite tone revealed a sense of vigilance.

Roland briefly introduced himself and his companions, and told them that he and his party planned to go to Kitland City, hoping to accompany the caravan.

The young man of the dragon vein didn't ask much, and said to Roland: "My name is Vigraf, and I am a guard hired by the caravan, you wait a minute, I will ask the leader of the team, Uncle Mikhail, to come and talk to you." ”

Not long after, a middle-aged man with a slightly chubby red face followed Vigraaf, took off his felt hat covered with snowflakes and pressed it to his chest to bow to Roland, inadvertently revealing the top of his half-bald head.

"Hello, Mr. Knight from the South, you must have come to watch the jousting tournament in Kitland, right? Recently, ten times more tourists have come to this occasion than in previous years, and with this event of unprecedented scale, the fame of our king Beowulf will surely spread throughout the Far East. ”

As soon as this guy opened his mouth, he talked endlessly, and he was very familiar. Roland finally found an opportunity to interject and asked to go with him again.

Mikhail smiled enthusiastically: "No problem, anyway, my caravan is going to Kitland City, if you don't dislike it, let's go together!" Oh, what's wrong with that lady in red, she looks a little haggard! ”

"She's my friend Nikita, and this poor girl fell ill and was very weak as soon as she got to the plateau."

"Hey! The southern girl is not accustomed to the cold air of our Lucia mountains, and it is inevitable that she will be unwell, not to mention that she has to hike on this vast snowy field, which the big men can't bear, let alone the weak little girl, you go to rest on the back of the Lothmon, and give the horses to Beria, and he will help you take good care of the livestock, Noelle, bring two bottles of wine, there is a sick person here, she needs to drink two glasses, and she will be rejuvenated in no time. ”

Nikita looked up from Lyudmila's back with difficulty: "Thank you, Mr. Mikhail, but I don't need alcohol, this stimulating drink will not relieve my discomfort, it will only hurt my brain...... "Mages are taboo in alcohol, at least most female mages do.

"Hey! Nikita can give me the wine if you don't need it! The dwarf couldn't help but jump.

"What, Mr. Dwarf is sick too?" Mikhail asked.

"That's right! I'm sick of 'getting sick if you can't drink'! ”

"Haha! Come with me, Mr. Dwarf, you can drink as much as you want, I don't have anything else here, enough vodka! ”

Under Mikhail's warm greeting, Roland and his party approached his caravan, and when they got closer, they deeply felt how huge the large animals carrying heavy goods over the mountains and mountains were.

The camels used by these caravans to transport goods over long distances were not cattle and horses, but herbivores more suited to the rear of glacial plateaus. In Roland's view, this camel beast has at least three characteristics of creatures commonly found on Earth.

Their massive size, towering foreheads, and outward-turned nostrils look a lot like yaks; The thick fur and curved horns resemble those of a sheep; Raised high from the back of the neck to the front of the back, it has the characteristics of a dromedary camel, and the raised area is used to store water and fat for long journeys in the dry and cold season - this is the "Highland Lothmon", a large herbivore that lives on the Lucian plateau.

Before Roland's travels, he had read a sociological treatise entitled "Guns, Germs, and Steel," in which he argued for the close interdependence of human civilization and geography. The author puts forward the idea that the domestication of wild beasts is an important condition for the spread of civilization.

In fact, this argument is not new, and the historian of the French school of annals, Fernand Braudel, in his classic treatise Material Civilization, Economy and Capitalism from the 15th to the 18th Centuries, has a similar view.

On the earth, there are only 30 kinds of beasts that humans can domesticate from ancient times to the present, and the most important achievement is the domestication of cattle and horses. It was precisely because of the domestication of cattle and horses that people were able to cultivate farmland, travel long distances and traffic goods with greater efficiency, and even develop cavalry troops that swept through the wilderness, and finally spread the fire of civilization in all directions.

The same applies to the world of Vares.

For these Kitlanders, who have lived in the mountains for generations, the Highlands have served as cattle and horses - they are the cattle and mules of the local people, and they are a stable source of the necessities of life, such as fur, skin, milk, meat, etc., and have raised generations of mountain people, and it can even be said that without domesticating the Highlands, it would be impossible for humans to settle and breed in the cold high-latitude mountains.

The leader of the caravan, Mikhail, was a cheerful and talkative middle-aged man. After he got on the road, he began to drink, and when he got drunk, he pulled Roland to tell him about his life experience.

Born in Kitland, he now lives thousands of miles away from his hometown on the shores of the North Sea, working for the largest chamber of commerce in the Baiou Free Trade Port, the "Pearl of the North Sea".

If the Lucia Mountains divide the Far East into north and south, then the most prosperous city in the north corresponding to the southern capital "Fort Atonement" is not Kitland City on the top of the mountain, but the free trade city "White Gull Harbor" located on the coast of the North Sea.

Roland had heard some interesting facts about White Gull Harbor. Nominally part of the Far Eastern province of the Holy Assanian Empire, this port city is in fact under the control of the sea elves of the Yangbo family, and the Chamber of Commerce served by Mikhail is one of the Yangbo family's estates.

The Lucia Mountains cut off communication between the north and the south, and the years were not peaceful, and in recent years Kitland had little contact with the southern towns, and the trade with the northern port of Baiou has increased year by year.

According to Mikhail, Roland learned that Kitland was heavily dependent on the import trade of Port Baigull for its food supply. Grains imported from the New World (mainly wheat, rye, barley and oats, which are usually used as reserve fodder for livestock for wintering), corn and soybeans were loaded by ship and landed in the port of Baigull and transported to the "Fortress of Kitland", the largest city in the mountains of Lucia; Spirits, furs, herbs, bacon, cheese, and iron ore from the northern mountains were transported from Kitland to Port Baigull, and then traded by sea to the ports of the Assanian Empire, the sea islands, and even the distant New World.

Mikhail's caravans were mainly engaged in grain, salt, furs and spirits. He signed contracts with furners and brewers in Kitland, regularly purchased tanned leather and high-quality vodka and shipped them to Port Baiou, and then shipped back the sea salt produced by Port Baigu and the grain imported from the New World, most of which was purchased by the town hall and put into storage, and a small part was sold directly to customers such as bakeries in the city - to put it bluntly, "daigou"! (To be continued.) )