87_87057 Early the next morning, the oarsmen shouted trumpets and slid eight pairs of large pulps, pushing the cargo ship upstream.

After the ship crossed the city of Leony, Bai Qi ordered the steered Gunder to steer the ship and slowly sail upstream against the north bank of the Sara River.

Fish-people are amphibian-humanoid creatures that can breathe both in the water with their gills and lungs on the shore, and they also have a wide range of diets, both catching fish and shrimp in the water for food and hunting on the shore.

They can't stay out of the water for too long, or their scales will dry up, but they don't dare to go too deep into the water, where many terrible aquatic beasts that feed on fish people hide, so they like to build rudimentary water houses near the water.

Fish-people are cold-blooded predators, they have strong bodies, simple intelligence, a certain sociality, and are able to gather the strength of the group for cooperative hunting, so their recipes are very broad, from large beasts of prey, to small herbivorous beasts, as long as they can deal with them, they will be included in their recipes.

Since humans also have the habit of living by water, the territory of the two creatures inevitably coincides, and naturally, the livestock domesticated by humans, and even the humans themselves have entered the diet of the fish-people, so the fish-people are definitely one of the intelligent creatures that humans hate the most.

Due to their abundant food sources and strong reproductive abilities, the fish-people have always posed a greater threat to humans than the gnolls, another intelligent creature that feeds on humans.

Therefore, although in terms of individual combat power, the fish-man is inferior to the gnoll, but the battle merit given by the temple to acquire the fishman's head is the same as that of the gnoll.

However, hunting fishmen is not an easy task, even more difficult than hunting gnolls.

Due to the abundance of food sources, the size of the Fish-Man tribe is much larger than that of the Gnoll tribe.

Generally speaking, the total number of adult gnolls in a gnoll tribe will rarely exceed a hundred, and beyond this number, it will not be able to feed the tribe with the range of gnolls. Only some powerful gnoll tribes that occupy rich territories will increase in size.

However, the average size of the fish-man tribe can reach more than 300, and the number of fish-man tribes with rich territory will even exceed 500.

What's even more troublesome for the fish-people is that once they are frustrated, they will flee into the water, so that humans can only look at the water and sigh, even the best sailors can't compare to the fish-people in the water.

Sitting in the captain's room, Bai Qi told everyone what he had heard from Gunder and Bode about the fishmen, and finally he said: "The fish-people tribe is not so easy to hunt, although they are small in size and not strong in individual combat, but they are extremely numerous, and there is not much difference between male and female, as long as they are adults, both male and female are qualified hunters and warriors. ”

"Although they are not good at making zuò equipment, they are born with scale armor, which is no worse than the defense of human leather armor, and they use the teeth of the black fish to make zuò's war spear, which naturally has the two enchantment effects of 'penetration' and 'bleeding'. And this creature is more cunning than the Gnoll, is better at group coordination, and is also good at using a throwing gun for long-range attacks. ”

"In terms of individual combat effectiveness, a gnoll warrior can even kill two or three fishman warriors alone, but if it is a group battle, a hundred gnolls tribe is by no means the opponent of a three-hundred-man fishman tribe."

Looking at Adrian and Barrian's surprised faces, Bai Qi said again: "What's more troublesome is that although the probability of a fishman producing a strong person such as a Chosen Warrior or Shaman is not as good as that of a human being, the probability of a tribe of three hundred people producing a Chosen Warrior or Shaman is not low. Even if there is no strong person like the Chosen Warrior or Shaman, with the strength of the three of us, we are far from being the opponent of a mermaid tribe of three hundred people, let alone three hundred, even if we encounter thirty, we must resort to guerrilla warfare to win. ”

After listening to Bai Qi's narration, Adrian and Barian couldn't help but look at each other.

Although Adrian had done a lot of homework before entering this space, the warriors who entered this space last time did not have a ship, so few people paid attention to the fishman tribe, and the space soldiers who had exterminated the sporadic fishmen who harassed human villages only felt that this creature was not too strong, and did not know that the fishman tribe would have such a scale, which led Adrian to greatly underestimate this creature.

As she was retreating in her heart, Adrian suddenly found that there was no frustration on Bai Qi's face, and she suddenly rose up with hope again, and asked, "Boss, what good can you do?" ”

Bai Qi said: "It's not a good way, it's just that the tactics we thought about before have to be changed, because we didn't understand the fish-people before, our plan was to go against the current while sweeping the fish-man tribe, but since the fish-man tribe is so difficult to deal with, then we can only change our thinking, fight steadily, choose a tribe, spend seven or eight days, and slowly clean up." When the time comes, whether or not you can succeed in exterminating a tribe, you must retreat and rush to Blackstone Bend. ”

Listening to Bai Qi's words, Adrian was a little disappointed, but after thinking about it, he had no choice but to do so, and the merit of the fishman head is not low, even if it can only destroy one fishman tribe, three hundred fishman heads, it is also a great feat.

Thinking of this, Adrian nodded and said, "That's all there is to it." ”

The water of the Sara River was gentle, and under the impetus of sixteen oars and eight pairs of large oars, the speed of the merchant ships was not slow, and they had advanced nearly sixty kilometers in one morning, five hours, but at this time, the oars were exhausted and had to stop their boats to rest.

At this time, Bai Qi finally knew why Gunde told him that no matter how strong a slave was, once he became an oar, it would be difficult for him to live longer than five years.

Even if the indigenous humans of this world are far stronger than the human beings of the earth, such a high-intensity physical labor squeezes not only the bodies of the oars slaves but also their lives.

Gund consulted Bai Qi and stepped onto the deck to give the order to stop the ship and rest, when a sailor apprentice who was on the roof of the barn was in charge of keeping an eye suddenly shouted.

When Gunder inquired closely, he found a fish-man village hidden in a river bay on the shore.

Gund immediately changed his order, and asked the steered Lenka to change course and sail the boat to the river two hundred meters away from the bay before anchoring.

Hearing Gunde's report, Bai Qi and Adrian walked up to the bow of the boat, took out their binoculars and began to observe the bay.

The opening of the bay was very small, probably less than thirty meters, and on both sides of the opening grew the luxuriant trees, and even in the water at the opening, so many unknown low trees.

Through these trees, it can be vaguely judged that the bay behind it should be very wide, and at the bottom of the bay, along the water's edge, there are many simple buildings densely distributed.

The buildings are basically the same in appearance, but they are different in size, and they are all supported by a few stout wooden pillars inserted into the water, and a simple thatched hut about a meter above the water.

Due to the narrow opening of the bay, Bai Qi saw a limited number of thatched huts, but it was not difficult to imagine that there must have been more huts in places where they could not see.

There are a number of fish-men in action under the huts, and some adult fish-men are handling their prey, using a sharp knife made of bone to cut the bloody flesh into small pieces and hang them on bamboo poles, and their prey is varied, from wild animals on land to fish. Some fish-man cubs surround these adult fish-men, occasionally snatching the bones discarded by the adults.

From time to time there are fish-people on the surface of the river bay, some of them rise up to rest for a while, and then dive into the water, while others happily catch fish or other aquatic prey and swim ashore to hand over the prey to the fish-men who handle the prey.

The Fish-Man is a hideous creature, even uglier than the Gnoll.

Visually, the height of the fish-people should not be as good as that of humans, their scales are grayish-blue, with a faint silver light, and the body shape is somewhat human-like, but the proportions of the legs are much longer than that of humans, and there are many fin-like things growing on the front and back of the legs, when the fishmen are active on the shore, these fins are lying down and clinging to the body, and only when they go into the water, will they unfold.

The fish-people have a thick and short neck, a bloated head, and a very large mouth, and when they open their mouths, their faces are split in half, and they have fins on their heads and necks, which are connected to the fins on their backs. These features make their heads look like a fish's head.

Merchant ships anchored at a distance of 200 meters from the mouth of the bay, where the water depth was more than 10 meters, and fish-men generally did not want to come into such deep waters.

The mooring of merchant ships attracted the attention of the fishmen, but they did not seem to care, the distance from Leoni was moderate, and there should be frequent ships anchoring in the vicinity.

Bai Qi and the three of them took the binoculars and observed for a long time, due to the obstruction of the trees, they still couldn't determine the size of this fish-man tribe, and finally Bai Qi decided to go and investigate, anyway, the oars slaves who were tired all morning had to eat lunch and rest for another hour before they could recover.

Telling Gunder to keep an eye on the boat, Bai Qi, Adrian and Barrian slipped down the cable into the dinghy towed at the stern, untied the cable, and rowed downstream.