Just south of the Kamui Fortress, in the clearing that connects the plains to the old river area, dozens of white soldiers armed with muskets appeared.

They didn't ride horses, which suggests that they weren't scouts in the true sense of the word, at least not the type that Adei was familiar with.

In the intervening period between the wars between the South and the North, the Kamui Fortress never sent infantry to cross the old river, which is the record of the canyon directly north of the fortress. This has been proven for hundreds of years, and the reason is simple———— because of the advantages of height and physique, the northern barbarian cavalry far outpaced the southern whites in terms of speed. Whether chasing or fleeing, the whites were left behind. Therefore, the whites will only rely on the fort to defend themselves, and will not easily send infantry.

Once their infantry moved, it meant that the war came again.

Yacheng finally understood why Lao Wei kept repeating those two words before he died, whether it was sound or silent———— he had to bring the news back, and he had to let the Great Commander of Suolongguan know about it.

I have to live, not die.

……

The god of luck favored Yacheng, and he rushed all the way back to the Lock Dragon Pass. In order to increase his speed, Yacheng threw away the sack containing heavy earth and rocks, the dry food he carried with him, and also threw away his shield and weapon. If you want to run fast, you have to reduce the weight, especially those stones. As long as you win the white man who dares to attack, you can still return to the place where the captain and Lao Wei died in battle, and get back what you lost.

"What? Whites again? ”

The great commander Hu Yongxian, who got the news, was full of surprise, he didn't believe Yacheng, but this matter was really unbelievable and beyond imagination. After all, there has never been such a short interval between wars in history among white Southerners. It has not been more than ten years since the last war.

He immediately sent scouts of up to 100 people, and immediately dispersed after leaving the customs, surrounding and concentrating on the Shenwei Fortress from different directions, searching for all information.

By the early hours of the next morning, a dozen scarred scouts had brought back more accurate information———— the white Southerners had sent a large number of troops, and the size of their troops this time would not be less than a million.

There was even more terrible news: the old river channel north of the fortress had been filled in, and tens of thousands of white laborers were stretching along the central strip that had appeared, more than five meters wide, to both sides of the river. It seems that the intention was to increase the width of the passage through the valley that was blocked in front of the fortress to allow more troops to pass in turn.

This is not normal for white people. In the past, when they sent troops, they never filled in the river, but sent large armies to detour from both sides of the valley. The reason is simple, if the war is unfavorable and you are forced to retreat to the south, Shenwei Fortress is the most important stronghold to resist the pursuit of the barbarians. In that case, there would not be enough defenses of any kind, not to mention the fact that the whites had muskets and had the advantage of range.

Hu Yongxian immediately convened an emergency meeting.

"Guys, tell me what you think, what the hell are the white people trying to do?" Faced with hundreds of officers of different ranks, Hu Yongxian spoke bluntly. His brow furrowed tightly, and he had kept that expression since he received Yacheng's report.

"Do they want to go to war?" A senior commander sitting at the head of Hu Yong wondered: "How long has it been since the last war?" As a rule of thumb, white dwarfs have to maintain a truce of at least thirty years, possibly even a hundred years. They suffered heavy losses last time, and the corpses we brought back from cleaning the battlefield alone were as many as 800,000, not counting the hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers who were captured by us, adding up to millions of people! Even if there are more whites than we are, it will be difficult for them to sustain this level of casualties. That's why I want to say that a large-scale war is impossible, at most tentative harassment. ”

"Temptation?" On the other side, a commander with a symbol of 10,000 heads on his left arm disagreed: "We've been fighting white dwarfs for so long, when have you ever seen them send someone to test them during the truce?" ”

Another commander was more thoughtful and detailed: "A million troops is a lot to us, but it's really nothing to a white man. We hadn't been to the southern continent and weren't familiar with the situation there. But I think there must be some kind of reliance on this massive white army. Their king is not an idiot, and he is not so stupid as to force a war knowing that we have the protection of our patron gods. ”

There was a lot of discussion, there were all kinds of voices, and the participants were very convincing to each other, because neither could come up with enough evidence.

Deputy Commander Shi Zhenghao pushed away the chair and stood up, he coughed vigorously a few times, and scanned the audience with a majestic and serious gaze: "It's useless to fight like this." We currently have too little information to make an accurate judgment. But one thing is certain, and that is that the scale of the white elves' troops this time is about the same as in previous wars, if not more. ”

Hu Yong, who had been silent and listened to everyone's opinions, turned sideways and looked at Shi Zhenghao: "You also think that the white people will launch a full-scale attack?" ”

Shi Zhenghao shook his head: "I don't know. But it's possible that those white people are just putting on a show. ”

"Pretending?" A senior commander sitting to his left disagreed: "A million troops is not just a rhetoric. Even if you go out from Kamui Fortress, the daily food and grass you need is a big problem. Could it be that they really have too much food to eat, and have reached the point where they can waste it at will? ”

"I just said maybe!" Shi Zhenghao said in an accentuated tone: "The white people know that we have a guardian spirit, but it is difficult to summon a guardian spirit, not to mention that to fight an all-out war, it is necessary to mobilize all the forces of each tribe. If the whites knew this, they didn't send large armies to fight, they just wanted us to get nervous and requisition a lot of resources from the rear...... In this way, they have also achieved their purpose. ”

The commander was slightly stunned, and suddenly realized: "Deputy marshal, you mean that the white people deliberately use this method to consume our food?" ”

"That's just my personal opinion." The expression on Shi Zhenghao's face was still solemn: "We must take into account all possible situations to minimize our losses." ”

Faced with the chaotic venue, coach Hu Yongxian quickly made a decision: "Order all departments to prepare, and raise the alert level to the highest." The scouts were sent to find out the route and actual number of whites. In addition, send messengers to explain the situation to the kings of the various tribes, so that they can prepare their weapons and food in advance, and recruit the army, just in case. ”

……

Heavy wheels run over the frozen ground, leaving ruts in the hard, cold surface. Men in uniforms led their cattle and horses and livestock from the south, wielding pickaxes and priing open the soil with all their milking strength, while more people worked in pairs, holding steel tongs and smashing them with hammers, digging pits into the cold and hard ground, then expanding, inserting and burying metal poles up to four meters long, and starting to build tents on this basis.

Duke Flamar has a soft facial line, his complexion at first glance seems to be between mixed and white, but when you look closer, it is actually more pale, but because of the perennial battles outside, the wind and sun are exposed, and the skin looks very rough, far less delicate and smooth than those nobles who stay in the kingdom's court.

He is very handsome, and the well-groomed beard on his upper lip and cheeks reveals the vicissitudes and heaviness. This is the charm of a middle-aged man, and the fledgling young man must fight again and again, from the depths of swords, guns, blood and fire. Those dark blue eyes are the most obvious evidence of Viking royal blood, revealing a faint indifference and a rock-solid heart in the depth.

Each kingdom has its own god of war———— Duke Calis is the pride of the Rhine, the hero of the Lord's Kingdom is Abbas, the Saxon Kingdom has the Marquis of Brakbarn, and the most famous general of the Plantagenet Kingdom is Ioriadis. As for Flamal, both the Viking royal family and the lower classes of civilians considered him the greatest military commander of all time.

The domination of the Five Kingdoms and the Holy See over the southern part of the continent did not reach every corner. At the southernmost tip of the continent, near the ice-covered and year-round cold areas, there are tribes of barbarians, large and small. Unlike the giants north of Suolong Pass, these barbarians living in the cold and snowy land of the south are similar in height and physique to white people, and the biggest difference is the color of their skin.

They are a race whose body is as black as charcoal.

Initially, it was a captain named Wilson who discovered the blacks. He was a naval officer in the Saxon kingdom and accumulated merit and rose to the rank of captain. During the war with the Lord's Kingdom, Wilson was ordered to lead three second-class destroyers on a mission to break diplomatic relations, and his "Broadsword" was lost in a storm and strayed into the inaccessible southern polar. In search of supplies, Captain Wilson led dozens of armed sailors ashore, where they discovered and captured a black tribe, obtained large quantities of seal meat, and captured up to hundreds of black men.

The book "Wilson's Travels" has a high rating in the history of white Southern culture. Wilson himself liked to write poetry, and his diary focused on the form of mixed poetry. In those distant times, discerning publishers smelled money from Wilson's experience. They converted the diary into a travelogue and published it, which became a sensation when it was listed, and both commoners and nobles rushed to buy it. This special effect is largely due to the giants of the north, after all, no one would have imagined that such a special race existed in the far southern polar regions.

From the warm zone in the south to the cold polar regions, there are also tall mountains similar to Suolongguan that block the communication between the two places. The parade of the "Broadsword" opened a new chapter in the history of the Southern Continent. As more ships traveled to the Polar Regions along the so-called "Wilson Route", people were surprised to find that there were a large number of black people living there, and that the Southern Pole was not exactly covered in ice and cold as expected, with dozens of warm basins and large islands with no snow all year round. All of this constitutes a paradise and paradise for the Negro.

How many black people are there in this world? There has never been an accurate statistic.

But one thing is certain: ever since Captain Wilson discovered the secrets of the Southern Polar, countries have been sending troops to open up contact with the polar regions. Conquerors from the civilized world used gunpowder to blast through mountains and rocks, and conquered black tribes with powerful armies. Over the past 200 years, the kingdoms and the Holy See have brought back at least five million black slaves from the South Pole.

Even rabbits bite when they are in a hurry, let alone black people. Faced with existential threats, blacks learned to unite, and they learned from the tragic experiences of countless of their fellow citizens and began to use flexible guerrilla tactics against outsiders.

Duke Vlamar fought in the south all year round to deal with the threat to the kingdom of the Lord from the black tribes. Don't underestimate the Antarctic ice sheet, which is very different from the age of civilization. Aquatic products are abundant in the ice sea, and the crops harvested in the warm-climate basins are extremely abundant enough to sustain a large population of people. Blacks were far more familiar with the area than whites, hunting seals, bears, polar wolves, and snow leopards, and harvesting large amounts of hides, which they usually ate to maintain their physical fitness by eating fatty meat and fish. With a sufficient material base and flexible guerrilla tactics, they can barely maintain the balance of combat power, and sometimes they can even seize the opportunity to attack the southern hinterland and occupy towns.

The war between whites and blacks is endless. The former needed slaves, and in the course of the conquest they would kill all the old and the young, leaving only the strong black men and women. The latter retaliated against the whites for the sake of hatred and survival, and they were likewise not spared, and the first thing they did after capturing the white ghettos was to slaughter the city. All the men, the old and the young, were killed, and the women were taken captive. This is not because of sexual (harmonious) desires, but as a flaunt of one's own military exploits. These white women would be sent as gifts to various black tribes, and they would end up in a miserable end, being humiliated and killed in public and eaten by the entire tribe. This is said to boost the courage of the tribesmen, and it is even possible to develop a miraculous immunity to bullets when facing white muskets.

Gradually, blacks also learned to use arquebuses. It's all because of the damned businessmen. They dare to sell anything in pursuit of profit, ignoring the kingdom's bans. After all, blacks are different from the giants of the north, they are similar in size to whites, and there are many similarities in language. Although they did not have much gold, they could take out a large amount of fur in exchange for other kinds of special products...... Over time, blacks also followed the example of the white army, and skilled musketeers appeared, learning to shoot in line arrays.

Flamal never thought that blacks could win the war. They may occasionally gain the upper hand, but they can't avoid failure. The reason for this is simple: the number of blacks is too small, and the Five Kingdoms and the Holy See see them as common enemies. Except for the capture of the strong and the slaves, the rest of the old and weak are caught and killed. At this rate of consumption, black people, no matter how strong they are, will not last long.

Now the main opponent of the war has become the northern giant.