"Have you ever seen the circus taming the lion? Do you think it's amazing to see the animal trainer commanding the mighty lion to jump over the fire ring and roll the ball? ”

"You can try to reason with the wild lion, and estimate that you will become food in its stomach, and wait for it to lie down lazily when it is full, so that it can quietly digest your compassionate heart with its stomach. ”

"There is a beast of prey in every human body, civilized countries tame the beast through education, and the barbarian tribes completely release the beast nature of the jungle, and what we do is the jungle. ”

"Young man, I have said so much, I just hope that you are not used to seeing it, whether you are used to it, don't hinder us from doing things, if you really can't get used to it, please go away. ”

A knight came up and tore the woman's clothes.

Every time the earth mage said a word, Shi Keqi's face turned cold, and when he saw the knight's behavior, he swung his sword against the knight's neck, and said coldly: "Go on, do you want to try to cut my sword with your neck?"

The earth mage hurriedly said: "Brother Shi, if you have something to say, you are all your own people, can you put down the sword first?"

"What is the difference between you and the barbarians, I am ashamed to be with you, who is your own man, phew. Skech spat out.

The earth mage's neck was bruised, his face was swollen and red, and he almost recited a spell to fight him. But the image of him drawing his sword and sending out fireballs flashed in his mind, and he still swallowed this breath with difficulty.

"Are you determined to save these barbarians?"

"Yes, you guys go, don't force me to abolish you. ”

"Brother, don't eat alone, it's a big deal to let you go first. The earth mage couldn't help but say.

"Zheng" Shi Keqi put the sword back into its sheath, the chivalrous man took a long breath, and the earth mage showed a knowing smile.

The next moment, the mutation was steep.

With a "boom", Scoch kicked the Flying Earth Mage, and he flew outside like a ball, knocking the tent through a large hole. and threw a punch at a very fast speed, blasting the knight outside.

Then his eyes locked on the remaining man, who was so frightened that he took a few steps back, weighed it in his heart, and walked out of the tent of his own accord.

The three of them were shouting outside, and Shi Keqi walked out quickly, and the scolding stopped, and they made eye contact for a moment, leaving a few threatening words and beating away.

Shi Keqi waited for them to go away, led the horse and wanted to leave.

A barbarian child chased after him, and after saying a few words, his mother covered his mouth with him.

Shi Keqi even guessed, and probably heard what he meant: Don't think that if you pretend to save me, you will be grateful to you, you are the same person who killed Abba as those people, and I must take revenge.

"Okay, I'll wait for you to grow up!" he left a sentence of the Dahan dialect in a straight voice.

......

In the vast grassland, the sunset is chaotic into a red circle.

Scoki rode alone, following the trail of the barbarian cavalry.

It is not difficult to track down a large group of people on the grassland, but it is not easy to say that it is not easy.

It is easy to hide the traces of grass broken by large groups of iron hooves, and the ashes of firewood burned overnight.

The difficulty is that the brute rider sometimes passes through the hard ground, leaving almost no traces, and it takes a lot of effort to find the traces. What is even more difficult is to avoid the tribal herdsmen who drive cattle and sheep, although it is difficult to meet the vast land and sparsely populated, but no matter what, you will always encounter such and such tribes.

These people who carry synthetic bows with them and become warriors on horses are not easy to match.

On two occasions, he was almost surrounded by many people, but fortunately, Shi Keqi's clothes had been changed into the robes of the steppe people, although his appearance was suspicious, but he was alone, he did not carry goods, there was no oil and water, and the herdsmen drove him away from a distance.

I rode a horse on the grassland for more than half a month, and hurried away from the wild ride for about a day, and the dry food could still support about a month, if it wasn't for the mutton that I got a few times, the two pockets of fried noodles would have been eaten up long ago.

Skech camped at night in the places where the barbarians had lived, and the barbarians had lived all their lives on the steppes and knew where the best resting places were, and where there was often water.

On the day when he slept peacefully, his eyes returned to Wangzhou, the barbarians were frustrated by the black spearmen, and suffered the biggest and most powerful blow since the invasion of the Northern Zhou Dynasty.

In July of the fifteenth year of Wude, the barbarian army that had been attacking for a long time in vain finally left and embarked on the return journey.

In this battle, the number of civilians killed and wounded in the Northern Zhou Dynasty exceeded 400,000, the army was annihilated and more than 300,000 were defeated, and more than a dozen small and medium-sized cities were destroyed.

However, because the Southern Dynasty did not capture the city of Gaozhou in time, it could not open up the road to the imperial capital of Wangzhou, forming a state of stalemate, and hundreds of thousands of troops were blocked and could not advance, and they could not retreat without worry.

In this case, it is best to surprise the army, and the most likely surprise attack --- is to take advantage of the barbarian territory farther away, and then launch a surprise attack, of course, this is unrealistic, only a theoretical possibility.

The remaining method was to send a large army to attack Changzhou in the eastern part of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, echoing with the Southern Korean army attacking the central part of the country, forming a powerful pincer attack. This plan was also on the agenda at the beginning of the war, but the emperor himself finally decided to attack Gaozhou alone, leading to the current dilemma.

Attack, you can't defeat Gaozhou, retreat, and you can't give up the fat of your mouth, how can you easily let go of the territory you occupy.

......

Shi Tian turned over with difficulty in a dark dungeon, the jailer drank through several layers of fences, and went out to run errands today, these few alcoholic addictions attacked, turned out the small wine jar in his private collection, poured it into a bowl, and took a few sips.

Don't dare to drink too much, you will be in trouble if you are drunk, and it will be difficult to deal with it if someone inspects.

The smell of wine wafted into Shi Tian's nose, and his sense of smell deteriorated a little from his long-term detention life, but he could still smell a strong smell. I still haven't figured out who caught him here.

Although there are several possibilities in mind, it is still difficult to make a conclusion when there is no definite answer.

From being tortured several times a day when he was arrested to now not bothering to ask questions for ten days and half a month, several people have participated. Now the other party seems to have forgotten about him. At first, he was held in a separate yard and was transferred here once in between.

There were many other prisoners in this prison.

What puzzled Shi Tian the most was that this group of people always asked about dragons and dragon eggs and the like, and he himself wanted to find dragons, the key was that in addition to hearing the legend of dragons, he had never seen dragons, as for dragon eggs, snake eggs had never seen them.

This explanation apparently displeased the group, and the result of increasing the intensity of torture remained the same, and after two months, they gave up.

The reason for this inexplicable arrest was a powerful dog-headed military advisor in the Taiwei Mansion, who found out that there were dragon knights in Shijia Village after reading the information many years ago, and it was also recorded that someone had found dragon eggs.

Dragon eggs, as long as you find the dragon eggs, if you can still hatch dragons, then it will be a great dragon knight, how majestic.

Even if you can't become a dragon knight, it is a great achievement to sacrifice the dragon egg to the Taiwei, and it seems that there has been no dragon in the Northern Zhou Dynasty for a long time.

So the kobold military advisor slapped his head and called a trustworthy master to complete the task.

After all, there was a dragon knight in Shijia Village, and the master was afraid that there would be unknown potential masters in the village, so he directly looked for the past to give away people's heads, so he found the four righteousness of Huangshan Mountain in the green forest and gave them a sum of money to rob and take the lead.

When the village was turned upside down by these four cannon fodder, only one Shi Tian's martial arts were still passable, and the other villagers were completely lambs.

The master, who is also the brocade man mentioned in the first article, secretly observed for a long time and did not find any potential top masters, and finally decided to take Shi Tian away and torture where the dragon egg was. After that, he also went to the Dragon Temple and other places to check, but he couldn't find any clues.

Interrogating Shi Tian didn't get an answer, and the master got tired and threw him into the prison and went back to be sprayed. Of course, there is also the process of negotiating with the petty officials in charge of the prison, and when the waist card of the Taiwei Mansion is pulled, and a few words of slight deterrence are added, things will be easy to handle.

It doesn't matter if there is no prisoner verdict, anyway, it is a way to detain more people than one person, and the government will not inspect how many prisoners are in the prison.

The master specially asked the cell boss to prepare a private room for Shi Tian and treat him as a key criminal.

Since you can't find the dragon egg, lock it up first, who knows if the old man really knows, and if he can't ask for torture for a while, he can only do this, maybe he will be recruited after being locked up for a long time.

Zhao Chaoyu, the commander of the Northern Zhou Dynasty's Zhenfu Division, read a piece of information about the barbarian cavalry vanguard not attacking other wealthy state capitals, inexplicably attacking Xiangzhou, snatching all the various sealed archives, and sending an army of 1,000 people to slaughter a remote village in Xiangzhou.

This small army stuck to the nearby mountains and did not come out, did not disturb the people and did not rob, and the imperial court encircled and suppressed several times, so they simply blocked the exit, trying to trap the barbarians.

Although the barbarians abandoned the defense and left with the army after capturing Xiangzhou, but leaving these thousand people to die? There must be a conspiracy, Zhao Chaoyu made a judgment.

It's a pity that several waves of spies were all killed, and no clearer news was received for the time being.

Whether the Zhenfu Division should continue to send manpower, but there are two most urgent things at present, one is to collect information on the various armies of the Southern Dynasty, and the other is to reconnoiter the movement of the barbarian army back to the grassland.

We can only put the problem aside for the first time, and a small army of barbarians occupies the small hills in the remote mountains, even if there is any conspiracy, it is not a big problem.

Tomorrow, I will submit a recital for peace talks with the Southern Dynasties, and it is estimated that I will be scolded to death by those ministers, although this is in line with the emperor's wishes. According to the report of the southern spies, the Southern Dynasty also seems to have the meaning of peace talks.

In the autumn of the fifteenth year of Wude, the Northern Zhou Dynasty reached an agreement with the Southern Dynasty, and the Southern Dynasty withdrew its troops unconditionally, and only leased the land of the two prefectures in Gaozhou as a place to raise horses.

The ministers of the Manchu Dynasty were dissatisfied, because everyone knew that Gaozhou had never produced horses, and the terrain was high and there was no grassland, so to find such a bad excuse, the Southern Dynasty made it clear that it wanted to occupy these two lands.

But the emperor said that whoever was dissatisfied would lead troops to recover the two places, and the Manchu officials were silent.

The agreement was bumpily passed, in fact, both families knew in their hearts, the Northern Zhou Dynasty was unable to breathe for a while because it had just been attacked by the barbarians, and the Southern Dynasty was blocked by Xiongguan. When the right opportunity arises, the agreement is like toilet paper, tear it up if you want to.

......

In the middle of the night, on the unfamiliar prairie, Shi Keqi generally did not dare to make a fire, did not dare to sleep too dead, for fear of the sudden appearance of barbarians, and for fear of wolves or other carnivores attacking.

was sleeping in a daze, some sounds came, Shi Keqi realized that something was wrong, he tilted his head slightly, and there was a whispering voice in his ears, and he couldn't hear the content clearly, as if a person was chanting.

The voice was sometimes like the chirping of a sparrow, fast and rapid, sometimes low and steady, with a peculiar rhythm.

He could clearly feel that the voice seemed to be calling for something. In the distance, a terrifying and penetrating roar could be heard, reminiscent of a demon, and the air was filled with an element of unease.

Skech left the horses where they were, discerned the approximate location of the sound, and groped for darkness.

It is an open open space with uneven shapes, and the naturally formed stones on the ground are uneven and weeds are scarce. Several fires flickered, and a group of people knelt around.

They folded their hands around the fire and prayed something in their mouths, and the palms and heads of the group, set off by the firelight, presented a strange picture, as if performing some mysterious ritual.

On the ground, the firelight flickered, as if many huge black shadows were blurred.

At the center of the fire was a tent, from which the strange sound came from. The curtain is half rolled, and you can see a little bit of the situation inside.

Inside the tent were a few makeshift beds made of wood, and a child was lying on the bed.

There was a man in a black robe, with a huge cloak on it, which covered his head so that people could not see his face, and he looked like I was a mysterious man.

The black-robed man recited a strange and low incantation in his mouth, and waved a dark wooden staff in his hand, and in the small tent, under the dim light of the horse lamp, the fog rose into a strange scene.

The group of people who looked like family members were already prostrate by the fire outside the tent, closing their eyes and muttering prayers, softly reciting scriptures that Shi Keqi did not understand.

The black-robed man walked around the bed, stopping every five steps, tapping the wooden battle against the void above the child.

After a while, a puff of yellow smoke rose from the child's body, twisting and tumbling towards the shaman's cloak. Under the cloak there is a vague mouth that cannot be seen clearly, and the cigarette is inhaled, and there is not a trace of it left.

After a few moments, the child moved and coughed.

The black-robed man stepped out of the tent and said a few words to the crowd, who stopped praying. They bowed to the black-robed man three more times, and all of them stood up excitedly, and one gray-robed woman was particularly excited, crying and going in to see the child.

Probably witchcraft cures, after watching this scene, Shi Keqi thought to himself. I felt bored, and I thought that something terrible was going to happen, and I was afraid for a while.

He walked back.

The horse was still lying on the ground sleeping, and the reins were tied to a large rock, from which it was impossible to break free with its strength. It sensed someone approaching, sniffed, it was the smell of the owner, it was slightly dissatisfied and snorted, it didn't sleep in the middle of the night, what the hell was going on, and there was no mare outside.

Hey, how did you see Xiaolan? Just now he put it sleeping next to the horse's belly, and Shi Keqi was stunned.

"Little Blue, Little Blue, where are you?" he called softly.

At night, the grassland has entered early autumn, the frost moon appears, and the lonely cold moon flies in the thin clouds, painting the endless grassland with a dim water-like light. There was no one nearby, not even the night bugs were too lazy to scream, and everything fell silent.