The south of the kingdom of Krant, starting from the city of Ebbut, is already a tropical region in the definition of the Rigal Academic Association.

The vegetation here is quite different from that of the Ekasta Plains, and the first thing that is evident is that there is a greater variety of plants and a very different shape. Distinguished from the black pines of Ekka, the land of eternal spring behind them, the trees here have large, long, long leaves, and fruit trees everywhere.

The city itself is a city built in the middle of a forest, so even the materials used to build the city-state are very different from those of Sivalier and Avenella.

Due to its distance from the mountains, large limestone of the highest quality could not be mined in much of the kingdom of Crane. But the people who live here are not deterred, and they use local materials to make small bricks from these high-quality red clays. On their third day here, Mira and Henry had the opportunity to see the brick-making process of the dense Masons of Xicheng District.

The clay is lifted in one piece and slammed against the wooden table, a process that squeezes out the air inside, prevents the firing process from breaking due to cavities, and repeats this process to make the fired bricks tight and strong.

On the ground next to her, a woman pulled up the hem of her long skirt and was turning over the dirt with her bare feet, apparently much easier to handle large quantities of clay with her feet than with her hands.

After these processes were completed, the craftsmen came up with a wooden square frame, but before making the molds, they sprinkled a thin layer of wood ash on the table - this was to prevent the clay from sticking to the top and losing its shape.

Skilled workers work very fast. However, the clay must be left to dry before it can be put into the furnace to burn, and this process is in the area near Abbot. It's the hardest thing to do.

"Bang la la"

Tropical weather looks like this, and the sun can be scorching hot a second ago. But in the blink of an eye, the downpour began to fall like this.

In just two days, the weather in the city of Abbite made a deep impression on Mira, and the two of them took on a mission to go into the forest early this morning to search for the missing merchants, but as soon as they arrived in Xicheng District, they had to run to the masonry craftsmen's hutches to avoid the heavy rain.

The people here seem to have gotten used to the sudden heavy rain, and almost all of them have found shelter before the rain falls, with the masons continuing their work behind them and idle people talking to each other.

The native dialects of the kingdom of Crant are very similar to the languages of Avenella, and if you were to use a figurative analogy, the difference between them would be like that of a wolf and a dog. Therefore, some of the words Mira can be understood next to it. But if you really want to communicate with them, it's better to use the lingua franca.

The locals didn't plan to talk to the two armed mercenaries, and the girl could see that there was some vigilance in their eyes, and it was obvious that in such a war-torn area, civilians were much more sensitive to warriors.

The rain is pouring down, and I don't know when it will stop. As if he was getting bored, Henry began to introduce Mira to the place.

Living in such a long-lit area, it is unlikely that the aborigines would be fair-skinned, blond, blue-eyed Avenella-like people. In fact, the darker-skinned brown-haired and red-haired inhabitants are the true natives.

The blonde, blue-eyed, white-skinned race migrated south about four to five hundred years ago. This is not a one-time achievement, and the movement of people is ultimately due to the existence of threats. The Loans who raided and raided east from the Grigory Rift Valley have repeatedly forced the people who had lived in the Avenella and West Valier regions homeless, and the pirates who raided the coast by boat did not spare the southern inhabitants - which is why the West Coast is now multi-ethnic.

Further south, further into the vast interior, there are remnants of smaller principalities founded by outright natives. But for many years, I was exposed to various cultures that came from the north. The city-states they established were no different from other lands.

The indigenous people of the South, in the true sense of the word, may have disappeared many years ago.

This disappearance does not refer to the disappearance of blood, but the disappearance of culture.

The defeat of the Lamanite tribes and their westward migration brought the spark of civilization to the table, which in turn created many modern social orders and class systems. It also stifled the original culture to a considerable extent.

The natives who once lived in houses made of thatch and palm leaves, harvested fruits and hunted wild animals, now wear the same clothes and speak the same words as the others. Perhaps in the depths of these rainforests there are still unknown places where people live according to the traditional pattern, but in general. They have also lost to the tide of the times.

When the native culture encounters a more advanced civilization, it will inevitably be affected, and if the people who live here do not have the consciousness to protect it, it will die out quickly.

The deep meaning of the sage's words could not be understood by the Luo'an girl at this moment, but this caused her to think more or less.

The tropical weather was a bit unbearable, and Mira grabbed the collar of her leather armor and fanned the wind with her hands. There is no snow in winter, and even temperatures rarely drop below 10 degrees Celsius, but the more northerly West Valiers seem to be southern. But even the white-haired girl who had lived in Avenella for more than a decade, had only walked south for less than a month, and she was already feeling the heat unbearable.

"It's going to get even hotter in the future. Henry shrugged, and Mira gave him a blank look.

The rain dripped back to the road on the dry brown palm leaves, and the heavy rain that had been pouring for more than two hours finally stopped at this moment - the tried and tested drainage system of the city of Abbite did not disappoint this time, and there was not much water on the ground, which was muddy before anyone stepped on it. Mira glanced at them.

The sky was brighter than that of Avenella, and the clear sky blue made people feel very good. The girl unconsciously smiled and walked out of the shed to look up at the sky, but after a dozen seconds she regretted her move.

"It's so hot......"

Although the heavy rain has just stopped. But standing there in the sun for a short moment was enough to make her feel breathless. Turning over on his horse, but before he could go far, Henry pulled the reins again and stopped, and the western part of the city was not only masons in the western part of the Abbit, but also the furs provided by the various beasts that were abundant in the rainforest, making the profession of a cobbler quite prosperous.

"Let's take a little off the burden. The sage weighed the money in his pocket and said.

It's much easier to modify equipment than it is to build it, and people who have lived in such hot areas for a long time have a lot of experience.

Stripped of her heavy boots and replaced with lighter styles, and her blouse and leather armor were cut to shorter sleeves, Mira saw the shop's small leather skirts, but Henry shook her head with the shopkeeper and told her that it was not a good idea to go into the rainforest.

The upper body is ok. But trousers and leather boots must be tightened if you don't want to wade through the water and find yourself with a large circle of leeches on your legs, or if you are suddenly attacked by a scorpion or snake while walking through a bush.

The detailed description made the girl shudder after a little thought, obviously you can only make compromises in terms of protection and comfort - they are only lightly dressed, not even wearing arm and leg guards, and the leather chain mail that originally had a protective waist and hip hem also took half an hour to be truncated into a short armor that only protects the upper body.

Even this, with a cushioned lining, a lightweight set of armor was sweltering enough, for a knight fully armed with visor and sheet metal armor - plus the heat of the metal armor from the sun.

Mira felt like she was sweating profusely just by thinking about it, and the cobbler next to the girl's reaction, who spoke a lingua franca with a thick accent, laughed.

"It's not even the hottest time!"

Hearty laughter echoed through the streets of Xicheng District, and the two of them, who had spent three Ella Silvers to modify their equipment, hit the road again. Trampled on the stagnant water and walked out of the city through the west gate.

......

After leaving the city, the road became noticeably steeper and more difficult, but fortunately both men rode military horses. The place where the horses belong is Avenella, a mountainous country, if the military horses cannot walk on such complex terrain, the combat effectiveness of the scouts and cavalry will also be greatly reduced.

On the bright side. They don't have to take on this task on their own.

The westward trail passes through a hill west of the city of Ebbet, from where the foot-walking traders set off for two days before returning to the main road to Brandon Hillrick, the largest market in central Crånt.

The staff of the mercenary union introduced when receiving the task said with emotion that in the past, in peacetime, merchants walked directly from the main road without such a detour. However, after the new king took office, in order to expand his territory, friction with other kingdoms heated up in the next ten years.

A brief peace. With intermittent wars, days like these are a true reflection of the kingdoms on the West Coast. A country like Avenella that has experienced a relatively long period of peace for a variety of reasons. On the contrary, it is quite rare.

The more resource-poor an area is, the better people are at fighting. Because everyone wants more, you can be a pioneer in a well-resourced area to explore and trade, while in a barren place like this, you can only choose to plunder.

The wars between the five kingdoms may never stop, and in such a world, ordinary people have to take risks every day if they want to survive.

This is the case with the missing merchants, who carry the nuts on their backs and head west, where the big lords and nobles will buy them at a high price. But he didn't return home for ten days after a week at most, and the worried family took out all their hard-earned savings to try to hire some mercenaries to look for them, and Henry and Mira, who happened to be here, became the most senior mercenaries present, so naturally this task fell to them.

There were not many merchants on this trail, and they encountered two mercenaries, one large and one small, who were heavily armed on war horses, and they also avoided as far away as possible, for fear that the two would suddenly think that it was a good idea to rob them.

This vigilance was understandable, but it also denied them the opportunity to ask if they had seen the merchant, and they wouldn't have to be if the sage was present.

Tracing footsteps is not a good decision on such a road after years of walking, and with the torrential downpour in the rainforest, the traces of normal human walking on dirt can easily be erased and confused.

So Henry and Mira, who had slowed down, were looking for special traces that were not easy to disappear.

If a bandit robbed and killed the merchant, there would probably be some traces left in the vicinity from the panicked escape. Or a branch chopped by a knife and axe, or a large number of falling stones, as long as you know what you need to look for and look carefully.

"Teacher, here. ”

Perhaps as luck would have been for the novice, Mira spotted something on the side of the road on the right.

Henry approached, and after a moment's observation, frowned.

"What is this?" said the girl, pointing to the neat scratches on the trunk of the tree, and the sage glanced ahead, and the nearby branches showed signs of irregular breaking, as if someone had been on a rampage here recently—and Henry had remounted his horse.

"Black Panther, it seems that the situation of our merchant is not very optimistic. He said this, and then drove his horse carefully into the side of the road.

Mira followed him, and the branches on either side made it difficult for them to move forward, so the sage once again pulled out Kramer and slashed with his sword with one hand.

They moved at a slow pace, and when they were about forty or fifty meters away, they found a broken rattan basket somewhere on the ground. "Do you smell it? "The trees here are even taller, and the thorns in the bushes on the ground have scratched the horses' legs, making them look a little irritated—but there may be more than that.

"It's a little stinky...... It's like something rotten, but it's not just the smell. Mira said with a frown, and Henry nodded, raising his greatsword in one hand.

"That's the smell of panther urine, and it uses this to mark that this is its territory, and another smell ......"

The sage used the tip of his sword to pluck the branches and leaves of the trunk of the large tree in front of him, and the buzzing of flies immediately reached the ears of the two of them, and as the stronger stench and the carrion left over from the eaten corpse were revealed in front of them, Mira bent down and began to retch.

"It seems that he managed to sell those goods, and was attacked by the Panthers on the way back. The blackened and rotting corpse of the merchant hanging from the tree still had a small leather bag hooked on his fingers, and Heng took it down with the tip of his sword, then sighed.

"At least bring this back to his family. The sage said this, and Mira, who had tears in her eyes because of the stench, covered her mouth and nose and nodded. (To be continued.) )