In the mountains, nearly 20 days have passed, and the number of people under Zhao Cheng's command has expanded to more than 2,000 people.

For such a long time, Zhao Cheng, on the one hand, continued to gather the remnants of the Yellow Sky who fled into the mountains and forests, and on the other hand, it took a full eleven days to take down Lianyun Village among the hundred villages in the mountains.

In this era, unless it is a real uncivilized savage, although it is in the mountains, it is impossible to completely disconnect from the outside world.

It is also this mountain, which is the junction of the Southern Wilderness and Qingzhou, the mountain is high and the road is dangerous, like a moat, the road is difficult, relatively speaking, there is less contact with the outside world.

The mountain people of this era are fundamentally different from the mountain people of modern times.

In the modern world, the so-called mountain people only live in remote areas, have the existence of household registration, and are under the jurisdiction of the imperial court, but the mountain people of this era are people under the mountain, in order to escape taxes and labor, or raise villages, or tribes fled to the mountains, without household registration, and do not accept the king.

And it is difficult to survive in the mountains, if it is really impossible to survive, ordinary people will not be able to make such a choice.

In this case, the people who can survive in the mountains are naturally the best among ordinary people, and they have been passed down from generation to generation, and the people in the mountains are naturally becoming more and more fierce.

And with the passage of time, there are always some new generation of mountain people, forgetting the reason why their ancestors entered the mountain, and longing for the outside world of flowers, but the mountain people are disobedient and unruly, and are usually regarded as an unstable factor by the imperial court, and even the matter of entering the city is very difficult.

For a long time, it is not that no one has seen the basic qualities of the mountain people and wants to use them as an army, but there are few who have really succeeded.

On the one hand, the clan concept of the mountain people is too strong, on the other hand, the mountain people are a closed circle, outside people, in the process of growing up, are always polished by various rituals and religions, better tamed, and the group of mountain people, because there is no existence of the imperial court, grow more freely, do not know authority, do not know virtue, only know themselves.

But in the army, the military order is the earliest, and all violators are beheaded, which is anti-self.

Wu Qi was able to take the mountain people as the main force and establish his own vote of tiger and leopard riding, which was the role of many factors.

On the one hand, the foundation of the Wu family was born as a mountain people, and then because of the achievements of the ancestors of the Wu family, this changed their identity.

On the other hand, the establishment of the tiger and leopard riding is not the work of the Wu Qi generation, the Wu family began to imperceptibly assimilate some mountain people as early as a few generations ago, on the one hand, still ensure the independence of the mountain people, on the other hand, it is to give grace and power, little by little to establish prestige among the mountain people, to give all the mountain people a subconscious, follow the Wu family to eat meat.

Several generations of domestication have achieved the majesty of the tiger and leopard riding.

Zhao Cheng naturally didn't have such a long time to domesticate this group of mountain people, and the Wu family used mountain people to become a strong army, passed down from generation to generation, and imperceptibly, which is undoubtedly the royal road.

As for Zhao Cheng, he went off the rails.

In addition to some villages, occasionally doing some roadblocks and robberies, there are some bold and powerful merchants, with caravans, deep into the mountains, with salt, iron, oil, spices and other scarce things in the mountains, to exchange with the mountain people for the skins of various beasts, as well as precious medicinal materials.

After a trip to business, there can be ten times the profit here.

In addition to this external exchange, there are more frequent internal exchanges between the stockade and the stockade.

Among them, a few powerful villages are the hubs for communication between the villages and the villages.

In addition to the exchange and trade between various materials, what is more important is the intermarriage between the villages.

However, the mountain road is difficult, and the basic quality of the mountain people is indeed beyond that of ordinary people, but by no means all the mountain people are strong enough, and those who want to go out of the mountains are also outstanding among the mountain people.

As for the ordinary mountain people, more of them have lived in the village all their lives, and have never left the village within a radius of ten miles.

Many mountain people, even for a lifetime, only once they get married, will follow the strong people in the village, go out to a long house, and exchange half of their life savings for a daughter-in-law.

In this case, there is no doubt about the importance of the stockade as a hub.

Lianyunzhai selected by Zhao Cheng is one of them.

The total population of Lianyunzhai is about 1,000 people, and with the soldiers and horses in Zhao Cheng's hands, it is naturally not difficult to attack, but after attacking, it is useless to go out and damage the soldiers and horses.

If the mountain people could make them submit in this way, there would be no mountain people in this world for a long time, after all, the soldiers and horses of the imperial court are not decorations.

The reason why the imperial court allowed the mountain people to be free was simply that it was difficult to use soldiers in the mountains, even if a group of people were killed, as long as the imperial court did not reduce the taxes and miscellaneous taxes, there would never be a shortage of new mountain people, and the soldiers and horses moved, and the gold and silver consumed in them were far more than the harvest.

It's a loss-making trade.

It was useless to kill, it took Zhao Cheng eleven days.

After approaching Lianyun Village, Zhao Cheng began to perform Dao techniques.

If it is outside the mountain, under the rule of the imperial court, if it is performed on many people at the same time, it will definitely trigger the suppression of the qi of the imperial court.

However, the mountain people are not the people of the imperial court and are independent, but this gave Zhao Cheng a chance.

The way Zhao Cheng chose was to use Taoism to forge the dreams of his ancestors.

Among the mountain people, the clan concept is strong, they do not worship false gods and Buddhas, but worship their ancestors, and even, if there is a big mistake made by the mountain people, it is also to be judged publicly under the witness of the ancestors' spirit cards.

Of course, the gap between the void and the earth is difficult to cross, even if the king who ruled the entire earth during his lifetime will live forever after death and master a larger territory, he will not be able to manifest himself in the world, let alone these ancestral spirits in the village.

But the mountain people don't know this, or rather, they don't believe it, they only know that the spirits of their ancestors have always protected them after they died.

For several days, first the young children in the village, as well as the old people, dreamed of the ancestors' dreams, in the dream, the ancestors first told them that the reason why they entered the mountain was because they could not live outside, so they escaped into the middle, but there was no way out for a long time in the mountains, and after a long time, how many villages perished in silence......

In short, it is to talk about the past first, and then the future, in order to create a sense of reality, as well as a sense of crisis, and most importantly, empathy.

When the sense of crisis appeared, the ancestors said that they saw a team of men and horses adhering to the mandate of heaven, wandering around here, if they just want to be safe, they don't need to pay attention, but if they want to get out of the mountains and have a wealth and glory, don't hesitate.

At the beginning, it was just some children shouting, mainly because they were scared, but the old people used it as a talk, and it quickly spread.

The people in the stockade were amazed, some of them were skeptical, and some of them already believed.

After two days, things became more and more fermented, but the matter of the ancestors' dreams did not appear again.

(End of chapter)