Sixteen hundred soldiers blocked the shore of Xiaodonghu Lake, facing Xiaodonghu City from a distance across the swamp.

On the lake, the sailors of Xiaodonghu City took advantage of the fact that the three warships of the Duke of Denia were lonely, and carried out a pursuit, and there was a boarding battle, and finally two of the warships of the Duke of Denia fled, and the sailors on the other battleship cut off the mast and surrendered to the small Donghu City. The ship with the mast cut off was no longer usable, and the fleet of Little East Lake City had to prevent the warship of the prince of Denia from returning for revenge, so they had to loot the battleship and scuttle it. The sailors and sailors of Denia demanded that the soldiers of Little East Lake accept the prisoners, but they refused. It took three hours for the fleet of the Maharaja of Denia to arrive, and it was not known how many of the soldiers on those sunken ships would survive.

Kalinin with the cavalry of Xiaodonghu City and Ryazan Fort will not exceed five hundred, plus the Valan guards, the soldiers around Kalinin should be about seven hundred. These men should have arrived at the outskirts of Little East Lake by now, but we have not heard anything from Kalinin from the lake or from the land. On the lake, the Princes of Denia had issued an official notice to the other princes that their ships were not allowed to approach the city of Little East Lake during the war, and the city had not been imported for some time. However, the panic among the citizens has not yet appeared, Kalinin has hoarded a lot of food, and it will be a long time before the citizens will go hungry. But gone are the delicate little foods, such as sweets, delicate pastries and iced milk with honey, that are now unavailable in the city. The citizens of Xiaodonghu City have begun to become simple again in the war, and they are adapting quickly. As long as the supply of food and wood is guaranteed, the citizens of Xiaodonghu City will stay in their homes with peace of mind. Won't go out and make trouble. Of course, many civic leaders see this as a sign of regression for civics. They felt that this was due to the tyranny of Kalinin, and that in the long run, the citizens would no longer dare to fight for their rights and would have no strength to defend themselves.

Although the wide variety of food in the market has disappeared, in the inner city, the kitchen is still abundant. The last time I came to Xiaodonghu City, I had already experienced it, but this time I was still surprised. The people of the inner city once ate twenty-one geese and half a cow and three barrels of wine in one day: a barrel of bitter beer and two barrels of wine.

The people of the inner city were generally optimistic about the war, they were already accustomed to hearing about Kalinin's victory. So much so that it is not very important to think about what will happen to Kalinin in the event of a defeat. The rubble on the ground, wooden railings, and other garbage left over from the construction of the inner city wall have been cleaned up, and the ground is paved with neat and dense stone bricks, which make the inner city look very tidy, but the trees that are used as a landscape look a little strange, these trees are transplanted from the forest outside the city, and they may be lush after more than ten years, but now they look sick, and the gardeners have to come and check carefully every day, and there are often things where the saplings die suddenly. In the past. There is a flower house in Xiaodonghu City, which was built by the prince at the expense of his lover. Anyway, most of the princes have this hobby, and they find lovers who either bloom houses or run small wineries, and those places are full of lazy and lazy lovers. I don't know who brought this ethos to it. Speaking of the flower house, its architecture is not unusual, but its ceiling is made of more than 120 square pieces of glass. That's a bit surprising, and it keeps the flower house warm even in the winter. Citizens can still buy flowers even when the snow falls. After Kalinin took over the city of Little East Lake, he demolished the flower house. All the glass was donated to the church, and now the church is well lit, and people say that the air always carries the fragrance of flowers and women, some say that these smells are left by the princes and lovers of the past, some say that it is left by the priests and nuns of the present, and of course, the bishop of the small East Lake City has repeatedly defended that this is a delusion.

The church is not far from the inner city, and the longest red carpet can connect the church to the inner city gate in just ten rolls.

In order to decorate the scenery along the way, Yuri ordered the citizens along the street to paint one of the walls facing the street with white paint, and to find a painter to paint false windows on the wall of the houses with windows below three sides, so as to appear wealthy. In order to make the wedding attendees look vibrant, the Romanov apothecary invented an ointment made by mixing dye with olive oil, which was applied to the face, and as long as the face was not washed, it would look red for a week. To Yuri's surprise, the apothecary, after inventing such a medicine, was so popular with the women that they gave many of the apothecaries what they wanted in order to make more ointments for them. Later, the apothecary persuaded Yuri to invest in him and opened an essential oil shop, which was built in the former Lover's Flower House, and the ointment and powder produced here soon conquered a large number of female citizens and nobles, and made the specialty of Little East Lake City one more.

During the period of preparation for the wedding, the prince of Denia launched several more attacks from the lake, but was defeated by the combination of warships and towering watchtowers, and after that, Denia's warships did not dare to get too close to the city of Xiaodonghu. A few days later, there was even a merchant ship from Riverlands that came ashore and brought a boatload of onions and beef, and the captain was very fair, and Yuri rewarded him richly. When Yuri invited him to stay, the captain said that there were many more besieged cities in the world, and that he was ready to continue to venture out and sell onions and beef to them, so that he would soon become rich. Yuri knew that he was a smuggler, so he didn't stay long, but just told him to be cautious, some unreasonable nobles were very cruel to smugglers. After unloading the cargo, the captain left the shore of East Lake, and he was never seen again.

In order to cover the dilapidated houses that the wedding procession encounters during the procession, Yuri's soldiers built a two-story wooden wall with portraits of the most luxurious cities the painters have ever seen. Although it looks a little fake because it is in a hurry, the things to be expressed on the wall can still be seen. For example, marble doors, copper handles, and mahogany window frames, you name it. For a little more realism. There are some smiling faces painted on the back of some windows, like this. At any given time, there are always countless people behind these windows looking at the street and smiling at the people on the street. The only problem is that at nightfall, on the empty streets, there is always a group of shadowy people behind the windows looking at the empty streets and smiling, looking a little scary in the dim light cast by the torches.

Knowing that there would be a wedding in the city, the merchants and nobles in the city also began to have a headache, because the wedding of the prince family must prepare gifts. Such gifts are displayed in public at banquets. So if you are too stingy, you will be looked down upon by other people. This led to a strange boom in the market, where the commoners took out their most valuable belongings and put them in the market to be selected: vases, silks, gold-painted staffs, silver-encrusted toilets, horses, beautiful armor, for merchants and petty nobles to choose from. Due to the chaos in Xiaodonghu City before, many civilians peddled things from improper sources, and they were often discovered by the original owners, which caused disputes, and such things would be confiscated by the sheriffs in the market. Then auction it off at a low price. Refugees were assigned to do dirty and heavy work, such as repairing burned towers or jumping down gutters to clean up mud and excrement, with only a few refugees of unknown origin being added to the Civic Guard.

The old aristocracy instigated several more riots. But each time it was weaker than the previous one, and since the guilds in Little East Lake City were already controlled by the Romanovs, many riots had not yet begun. It was extinguished by the Civic Guard, who heard the news.

Three weeks later, the envoys of the Princes of Denia arrived in the city for the first time. Yuri received him and politely sent him out of town the next day.

Curious citizens inquired about the soldiers stationed on the city walls. Whether the army of the Ducian Princes had retreated, but all the information received was that the siege camp of Denia was still in place. Disappointed, the townspeople shook their heads and left, and many of the merchants went bankrupt due to the shortage of goods and the time to pay their debts, so they had to swear allegiance to the Romanovs and join the Romanov merchant group in order to ask the prince to give them refuge.

There were many rumors in the city, such as that emissaries of the council had arrived in the besieged camp of the Princes of Denia in an attempt to broker peace talks. The peace talks were varied, such as the council's proposal to abolish the Varankov Princedom and split it into four pieces, two to Ryazan Fort and Chud, one to be annexed to the city of Little East Lake, and the city of Valankov itself to be made an archdiocese, and the ungrateful pimp Tom to be directly appointed bishop by the council. It was also said that the parliament only wanted Kalinin to give up Valankov's position as prince, but to retain the title of Count of Valankov, and that the parliament would divide Valankov into four baronies, which would be held by nobles arranged by the parliament, but who would be loyal to Kalinin. Of course, the most optimistic version is that Denia demands reparations for his relatives who died in Little East Lake, and that some of his business privileges be relinquished.

Citizens are talking about these gossip, and it is difficult to distinguish between truth and falsehood. In the beginning, the Civic Guard would try to track down the source of these gossip, and the spies lurking in the taverns and bazaars would nervously collect every piece of information, but later, because these rumors were so outrageous that they could not be checked, they had to give up, for example, some people said that Kalinin was actually the king of East Vekia who had faked his death many years ago, and that he was thought dead in the Riverlands, but in fact he was rescued by a reclusive monk and sent to the west for various training. Later, the old subordinates--- disguised as the Romanovs---, were summoned and returned to Eastern Wikia to reclaim the throne.

Wise scholars often believe that rumors hide truths like gold. One scholar believed that Kalinin was the king of East Vekia, so he deduced what the Romanov meant from the three languages of Chanda, Swadia, and Vekia, and finally through careful mental evidence, he came to the conclusion that Romanov meant 'lord of the throne', for which he published a sixty-page color-illustrated pamphlet called "The Immortal King", which was sold in the large library and brothel of Little East Lake City, but could not be sold at allLater, the scholar followed the advice of the bookseller and added a lot of stories about Kalinin's love affair with Queen Nord, Princess Sivicchia, and the concubines of Kugit Khan when he was in the west. The booklet became so popular that it was reprinted. Even Yuri bought a copy privately, looking at the description inside with a strange expression.

Little East Lake finally has the same temperament that most Wiki cities have: no longer enthusiastic in the face of war. and no longer afraid. The city of Little East Lake has been peaceful for hundreds of years, and has always only played the role of a patron in wars, but now after a few wars, it is starting to become less delicate than it used to be.

I don't have anything to do every day, my only purpose in Little East Lake City is to wait for the war to end, the princes of East Wikia are all involved in the current war game, and I have no possibility of interspersing it. Now I don't have to go around contacting lords or princes.

When they wake up every morning, the Kugit are already sitting cross-legged on the floor drinking tea. The Kujits always went out of their way to transform their places into familiar ones, and they went to the market to steal a three-chambered sheep from the inner city in exchange for a thick round blanket. Spread it on the ground, and cut off the four feet and back of a barstool, and made a flat table and placed it in the middle of the thick blanket. In the kitchen, they searched for two small silver kettles containing wine, and asked the cook for a handful of lamb intestines, which were made into leather tubes and plugged in the mouths of the small silver teapots. After dismantling the two lanterns, they installed a strange little fire pot under the small silver kettle. After doing all this, they managed to find a Salander spice merchant. I bought him a bag of expensive yellowed leaves, and bought a lot of flavors and spices, and after that, the two hid in a workshop and tossed for a long time. Boiled and roasted, and finally returned to the room with some small silver boxes. Now their greatest pleasure every day is to gurgle and inhale in this silver bottle, and spit out the very smelly smoke all around. If I don't go out. So they found some soft cushions to lie down on, and boasted about themselves as if they had made the house look like it had caught fire. Their approach aroused the curiosity of the servants. Finally a few daring servants tried it and soon fell in love with this way of enjoyment. It's something invented by the Salanders, which used to be considered heretical, but now no one cares.

When I'm not at home, one of the two Kujits stays behind to take care of my luggage, and the other hangs out with me.

Xiaodonghu City is tense but not flustered, and there are still many pedestrians during the day. Coming out of the inner city, there are many girls selling flowers on the streets, and these girls' flowers are sold very expensive, of course, after you pay, they will smile and take you to the alley to get the flowers, people say that the flowers they sell are very peculiar, only two petals. Among these women, there are many rich and noble people in the past, and they are good-looking, but such women are the most devastated, because the citizens always like to look for them, and these people are the most unreliable group of people in Xiaodonghu City today, and they can be bullied at will. A man who was publicly executed yesterday was a soldier who had a cruel habit of patronizing the warblers who were not protected by pimps and then cutting off their ** collections. By the time he was executed, four prostitutes had already been killed, and the citizens of Little East Lake City were amazed at the incident, but few sympathized with the women. Next to the fish market, I saw a ragged woman and an old man snuggling together, digging through the mud for discarded fish bones and looking for undigested oats in horse manure. I recognized them as the innkeeper who had nearly cost me and Giovanni's life, and who were now half-dead, with festering legs and pus from their wounds. As I passed by, the poor woman seemed to have found something to eat, and she wiped the mud off it and stuffed it into the man's mouth, and the two of them laughed happily as if they had picked up a treasure.

As I passed through the streets where civilians lived, a woman in a headscarf would poke her head out of every door and ask me if I wanted to sell a leather coat or an oil painting, or if I wanted someone to warm my bed. Many children were beating beggars in the streets with stones, or they were just going to the guards to put the beggars in carts. A beggar who had his head broken by a group of children went mad and chased after them, screaming and running away, laughing and laughing. The next day, I saw the beggar dead in a pile of mud, and it was said that he had wounded a child, incurring the child's father's revenge.

Passing through the civilian area, I arrived at the square. It was bustling with people, as the dockside market was closed during the siege and was crowded with more civilians. Many shaded sail sheds are hoisted overhead, and you can stroll through them. It's like being in a forest.

I saw Catherine, Anton. The Romanov accompanied her.

The two of them were watching a Creelian puppet show. The Creelian's ridiculous accent and the puppeteer's antics made the audience laugh a lot. Anton was more interested, but Catherine was clearly not in a good mood. When Anton noticed Catherine's expression, he gently suggested that he move somewhere else. When I was about to turn around, they had already walked over. Beside me was a wood carving stall run by a Burke merchant with many strange wood carvings, from small animals to monsters, from saints to knights. I picked up a knight and pretended to watch, wanting to wait for them to leave. I didn't expect it to be a while. A slender hand grabbed the princess wood carving beside the knight.

When I turned my head, Ekaterina looked at me too.

Anton greeted me kindly, I nodded to him, and for the next few seconds, no one spoke, and there was some embarrassment. Then, Anton smiled and said to Crusedel that he might as well go for a drink, and Crusedel immediately said that he was grateful. Anton leaned into Catherine's ear. Ekaterina nodded, and Anton took the kugit to say goodbye to me.

The Burke merchant waited patiently for us to choose, constantly recommending all kinds of wonderful things. He told us which ones were carved by the master and which ones were carved by the apprentices, and what the difference was in price.

"Victor." Catherine ignored the chatter of the Berks. "So you're really going west?"

"Yes, Lady Catherine."

“```。”

"Anton he'''''

"You know it all." Catherine's voice was ethereal. "Right."

"Yes."

She took the knight's wood carving from my hand and put it together with the princess's wood carving. Looking down quietly, the tip of the white and small nose is clearly visible, and you can even see the halo of sunlight sprinkled on it.

"I've been dreaming about the days in the west lately, where the people are dangerous" ''Why do you have to go back.''

"My home is on the other side of the mountain."

"I know, I know," she said, "and then again, I haven't been home yet." ”

"Come on, Lady Catherine, you're going home, just like me."

She smiled helplessly, "You're going to cross a mountain, and I'm going to cross a lake." ”

"Yes, Lady Catherine."

"Do you remember the songs that the sailors choreographed? I was sick of it. She frowned at me, and continued, "I didn't want to have any contact with you then, I just thought my father was old, and I had no shelter. Later things, I'''"

"It's all over, Katya," I'm too embarrassed to call her Catherine anymore, "and tomorrow you're going to marry Anton." ”

She didn't finish her sentence when I interrupted her. Her mouth opened slightly a few times, but she finally didn't continue to explain. After taking a few breaths, she smiled and held up the two wood carvings, "Will you give these two to me?" ”

I pulled out my money bag and fiddled with it with my fingers, "Okay, I'll give them to you and Anton as wedding gifts tomorrow." ”

"Oh."

Her smile slowly faded. She put the carving back in its place, then gave me a polite salute, "Thank you then, Victor." ”

"See you tomorrow, Lady Catherine."

She blinked, folded her hands around her waist, pressed the hem of her skirt slightly, and silently turned away.

I stayed at the woodcarving merchant for a while, and paid for two woodcarvings, and the merchant pulled his beard and wrapped me in a woodcarving gift.

Crucedel and I made it back to the mansion without saying a word.

The next day, Catherine. Lepnin & Anton. The Romanovs were married in the church.

The messengers immediately set out and spread the news everywhere. On the city walls, soldiers reported that the camp of the Princes of Denia had been attacked, and the flags of Fort Ryazan and the city of Xiaodonghu were spotted fluttering in the distance.

While I was in the church, I stood in the crowd and Catherine's old and faint father took her by the hand and handed her over to Anton. Romanov.

The servants scattered petals from the sky, and the petals were dense like rain.

People raised their hats or swords one after another, and in the petals of the sky, the newcomers on the high platform turned around to accept the cheers of the audience.

"Lepnin! Romanov! The alliance is forever! Yuri the Great boyar solemnly declared.

"Forever! Forever! Forever! I shouted with the crowd, drew my sword, and pointed at the sky.

The petals landed on my forehead and shoulders. (To be continued.) )