The power of millennia is shown in the second half of the road. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

There is hardly anything to call a road here, and when the stone slabs covering the dirt break and create cracks, the dense vegetation grows stubble after stubble under the combined action of sunlight and moisture.

Ironically, the reason why the road behind him can be relatively well preserved is, to a certain extent, a blessing to the abominable fog that does not disperse all year round. The humidity and often fluctuating temperatures of the wetlands cover the forest with fog for most of the year, and it is this that causes most of the shrubs and grasses to get enough light, and only the ones that have the least need for sunlight grow.

Other than that, there are only large perennial trees with a crown above the fog and free access to sunlight.

But in the second half of the Baka trail, this phenomenon no longer exists.

Before the classical Raman era, Mobigas was a civilization with engineering and technical strength comparable to the original Lamanite civilization, and as a typical city-state in the middle and late periods, Katigali, located in the middle of the Baka Ancient Road, was such a city-state with fortification functions and relatively complete living equipment for more than 3,000 people.

The penchant for sunlight seems to be not just the preserve of the Lamanites, but is common throughout the East Coast, even in the perennially foggy forest of Bao. The location chosen by the Mobigas for Catigali was also one of the rare highlands in the entire forest that was exposed to the sun, which at first seemed like a beautiful idea, like the land of the gods often depicted in early polytheistic beliefs.

The sun-drenched city-state stands out in the mist-shrouded forest, and the people who live in it stand on the walls and look out, and for a moment they have the illusion that they are actually above the clouds, in the kingdom of the gods.

However, even the Mobigas people never expected their civilization to decay so quickly.

Thousands of years later, the city has been exposed to sunlight and surrounded by wildly growing vegetation, and has long since become a forgotten ancient capital that even the locals of the South don't want to seek.

If it weren't for the circumstances, even Henry and his party would not have wanted to go here at all.

The threat of the undead is just one of them, and to be honest, it's not that scary considering how fast they can go. The bigger reason is that even if Luo Nuo and his group of more than a dozen people are discarded, the remaining rations are still very insufficient to distribute to more than 40 people.

Konstantin was a materialist, always thinking rationally and making decisions based on a combination of interests, even if it was a favor and a buy-off move for the sake of profit later in the future, which made him a very good leader.

And why he didn't discard Rono and the others before, in the final analysis, it was the unity of the team.

The Padrosi Empire was a highly hierarchical country, and mercenaries and merchants from the civilian class, even if they were different from Ronor's group, were to be classified into the same category in terms of status.

Yes, Rono they are mobs, bandits, villains.

But how much better is his own group than them?

Even if they are good citizens, just a mercenary and a businessman, does it really have any weight in the eyes of the nobles?

The answer is obviously no, and in such a lack of food, the most worthless people are abandoned first, so what next?

Is it possible for the noble knights to starve themselves and give them all their food?

The long-established concept of class and origin makes it easy for people to brand the entire class on their every move. If Filippo did something, the commoners would say that "the nobles are like this", and when Rono and the others were abandoned, although many merchants and mercenaries thought they deserved it, they couldn't help but wonder if their fellow commoners would be the next to be abandoned to the corpses.

One stone stirs up a thousand waves. Although Konstantin originally brought Rono and the others to be used as cannon fodder, his original intention was to let them die as strikers on the battlefield instead of giving them up due to lack of food like this.

This is the next policy, especially in his current capacity as the supreme leader of the entire team, which is more likely to make the common class feel that it is the unified will of the nobles, and when there is a bad situation, they will choose to sacrifice their lower classes.

Rao is a genius, and his personal ability and leadership ability are all superior, and Konstantin is no match for the inherent concepts that have been formed for a long time throughout the empire, as well as the instinctive cognition in people's hearts.

He can explain, but they can also not listen.

The militia had the lowest status in the Imperial Army, and the war was basically fought by professionals in the future, largely for this reason. Independent will and all kinds of inner Xiao Jiujiu, their own wild speculation, due to the limitation of ability, unable to judge the situation clearly, and so on, do not work together but start to make trouble, like this, the militia and individual subordinate mercenaries have done many times.

The food supply problem must be solved, and then it must be time to get out of this damn wilderness and return to the realm of civilization.

He had some ideas on how to do it, but first and foremost, they had to make their way through the long, dense grass.

As the terrain rises, the mountain road becomes more and more difficult, not only because the smooth stone road has long since been torn apart, but also because of the overgrown weeds. As the road rises, they grow faster and taller as the light becomes more abundant, although there are no huge trees due to the fact that the terrain is located on the edge of the Bao Forest, which resembles the edge of a cliff. But the dense weeds and the shrubs with tenacious roots were enough to make the group's path miserable.

At first, he could ride directly on horseback and wade directly through the weeds, but the closer he got to the city of Catigali, the more lush the vegetation became, and by the end he was already more than a man tall, and even Henry and Constantine could not see the road ahead without riding on horseback.

"The plants here, there are quirks. Orno, whose hair was shining in the sun, approached Henry's side and whispered, it was obvious that she would not be able to keep her identity after casting her magic last night, so she lifted her hood and showed off her blonde hair and pointed ears generously.

The fact that there was an elf in the team, and that it was an elven elemental mage, caused a small stir, but no one looked too deeply into the matter due to a series of factors such as hunger and cold, threats to their lives, and the dreams that the witch made them have.

Rather, many people were relieved to learn that there was a magician in the entourage.

Even though most of them didn't know anything about magic, even after Ornor's explanation, they still didn't understand the difference between elemental mages and wizards. But Henry and the rest of the people who knew magic weren't trying to break it down, and despite the fact that elementalists and wizards had completely different magical systems, the situation in the team was hard enough that it was better for them to harbor the illusion that "we also have companions who are good at magic and can deal with witches".

It's just that the god of doom doesn't seem to intend to let them go.

Henry had noticed the "oddity" that Orno had said, as well.

The vegetation here is a bit too lush.

Mankind.

It is humble and small.

Whether it is man's own creation or the damage caused by man to the ecological environment, it will be repaired by the power of time and nature itself, and in the end it will become nothing. This is the reason why elves, who are people of nature and have a long lifespan, do not object to human hunting and logging, as long as there is no threat of exterminating a species, even the druids will not care.

Because even if human beings cut down all the trees in this forest, it will only take "short" one or two hundred years to return to the original environment.

The idea of a long-lived race is completely different from that of humans, and it is not surprising that the Baka Trail or even the city of Katigali itself has been destroyed by the vegetation that has been abandoned for thousands of years, but Horno still says that the plants here are strange, and in the final analysis, it is a matter of species.

It's still part of the Bao Forest, and even if it's more sunny than in other places, it hasn't changed much else.

Even the species of plants are the same.

It's a natural part of the natural cycle that the local environment is changing, but even so, the plants in this area look as if they were brought from Absera, which is obviously counterintuitive, given the slight difference in light.

"Cheer up, stay vigilant, no one has been here for at least 2,000 years, and we've met nothing here. Hearing Orno's words, Konstantin raised his voice and said, his words were a bit exaggerated, until hundreds of years ago, in fact, the roads in the inner forest of Bao were actually endless, and at that time, adventurers might have come here to explore.

But it is better to be lenient than to be careless, and if there have been adventurers who have not left any records of circulation, or the ancient city of Katigali is unremarkable and has nothing of value.

Or, those who risk it will never come back.

They can only hope for the former now.

The knights opened the way with machetes that they had collected from the villagers, a one-handed tool with the center of gravity in front of the battle, which was inferior to the long sword, but it was far more comfortable than the latter.

Even in winter, it is not an easy task to open a path through the dense vegetation in a metal armor in a metal armor and wielding a machete. After a knife down, he threw the felled bush to the side of the road with his hand, and the mercenaries wearing light armor at this time had an advantage.

The team moved forward slowly, and the mercenaries all came to the front to open the way, so that the guards behind them became the Imperial Knights.

More than a dozen heavily armed nobles with spears carefully guarded the rear, for fear that in the fog hundreds of meters away, suddenly crowded, the corpses would catch up again.

Fortunately, the horse's foot strength was not comparable to that of two rotten and stiff feet, and the distance they had pulled away was estimated to take two days to catch up with the walking corpses.

However, it is not a mistake that such professionals would make if they were wary of it.

"Whew-thmm!" The hands of the knives fell, and they didn't know whether they were worried about being abandoned and worked harder or simply because they were less burdensome, and the mercenaries in the vanguard quickly opened up a little new channel again, but this time the reaction was very different.

"Whoa," a dark figure emerged from the haystack, "What's that—" Morrow was startled, and almost sat down on the trampled straw.

"Papa-" And when they looked closely, it was a wild turkey common in the south that flapped its wings and ran away, and it was not small.

"Alive, there are live animals here!" the other mercenary cheered with his hands raised in delight. A smile appeared on Morrow's face, but the next second he quickly changed color: "Hurry up and get the crossbow! Quick, don't let it run!"

The crowd, who had not tasted meat for a long time, reacted, and after a burst of chickens and dogs, they still failed to catch the wild turkey due to the dense vegetation. "Look! I found something!" But the group found something else, and in the place where the pheasants had been scared away, the mercenaries found a large nest of turkey eggs, each the size of a goose egg.

"You can cook egg soup today!" For five or six days, they lived only on dry food and wild fruits, and even the stock of salted meat had been eaten up and they could not hunt prey, and only they knew what a painful experience it was.

People often overlook how much good food can do to boost morale.

As we have mentioned in the past, "Laymen talk about strategy, insiders talk about logistics." This Lamanic idiom, if extended in popular language and understood by the public, would become: "Let the soldiers have enough to eat, so that they can fight a good war." ”

Reliable logistics can make people eat and drink enough, not only can the morale be high, but also the physical strength and spirit will be much better.

The turkey eggs were carefully put away and placed on the wagon, and the people, who were worried about the bumps, wrapped them in a lot of linen cloth. And after some distance after that, the turkey, which had come back to check on him, perhaps fearing for his offspring, also became their dinner after the loss of two crossbows.

"This is the law of the jungle, don't blame me. Morrow said with his hands folded before slitting its throat with a knife to bleed. In the case of food shortages, even the blood of the chickens was not wasted, but was filled with a kettle. After the blood was drained, they placed the turkey in the cargo pile to avoid direct sunlight.

After the road to this section was overcome with difficulty and slowness, they had not yet reached the city of Katigali, but they made other unexpected discoveries.

"Wild rice!"

The original Mobigas people also considered the problem of self-sufficiency when they established the city-state here, so they opened up many rice fields on the slope outside the city. More than 2,000 years later, most of them have disappeared due to lack of care, but there are still some left, wild and mixed with weeds, and if it were not for the mercenaries who were born as farmers, they would not have noticed that these ears of rice were much smaller than those planted in the fields.

A small patch of wild rice paddies, which were neatly cut from the highland-style machetes taken from the hands of the deceased villagers, although not particularly much, plus other food was enough to satisfy a team of more than forty people.

After confirming that they would not be able to reach the city of Katigali today, they carved out a clearing next to the rice field to prepare for camping, and after smashing open the husks of the rice with the stones they found to obtain the rice, the mercenaries also found several more sweet potatoes growing in the vicinity.

Due to the abundance of light and water, these sweet potatoes are huge.

The cauldron was set up.

After a long absence, they were finally able to eat a full meal.

There were heartfelt smiles on everyone's faces, but Orno walked alone to the dark place, pinched a handful of dirt with his fingers, and sniffed it in front of the tip of his nose.