Gao Xian was fine, giving Liu Chengzong one less excuse to laugh at him.
It took a long time to walk back because the horse was tired. Before, outside Ansai City, Gao Xian was afraid of a conflict between the government officials and Liu Chengzong, so he kept riding on his horse and watching the situation from a distance.
We rode for another half an hour on the way back, but I was too exhausted to chase the wolf and fight the horse. In the end, my legs gave out and Gao Xian on the horse fell on his butt.
Liu Chengzong was not worried at all about Gao Xian's fight with the wild wolf. They were all wearing armor. Even if the materials used in making the armor did not meet the required standards, it was still the equipment of the border army and the quality was guaranteed.
If you beat a wild wolf, as long as you don't stretch out your ankles and face for the wild wolf to bite, any other bite will break a few of the beast's teeth.
What's more, Gao Xian is a veteran who guarded the border before Zhang Wu escaped from Yuhe Fort. His skills are not bad, so there is nothing to worry about.
The result was indeed the same. Even though he was kicked by the war horse and fell to the ground, Gao Xian still fought to a draw with the wild wolf.
The wolf bit him twice, and he stabbed the wolf twice.
He's fine. The two armor plates on his left arm are a little deformed, and the sleeves of his coat were torn out by a wolf.
The wild wolf paid the price with his life.
However, the marching speed of the team has indeed slowed down. Although the red flag has not been lost in food rations these days, the physical exertion on the mounts is indeed quite large.
Liu Chengzong did not dare to ride any more, and Gao Xian's mount also lay down on its back. Even the other two horses pulling the cart rolled their eyes from exhaustion. For the rest of the journey, the two cavalrymen could only lead the horses and walk slowly.
Not daring to delay on the way, I drained the blood of the three wolves and continued on the road. It was not until dusk when I passed the Mudan River that I set up a tent camp and collected the wolf meat.
The corpse we found while passing by Mudanchuan was gone. We don’t know whether it was restrained by family members or eaten by wild animals. Things in the world are so unpredictable that no one in the carriage cared much about it.
It was said to be a camp, but in fact there were only two tents. Yang Dingrui's family of five slept in one tent, and the other one was given to Guo Zashi and his son, who were wearing thin clothes.
As for Liu Chengzong and Gao Xian, they have their own methods.
The broken door was split in half when they left. The two of them dug another hole at dusk. The ground in early spring was very hard, and they didn't bring a pickaxe. It took them most of an hour to dig out a hole big enough for the two of them to lie down.
A shallow pit.
Door panels were inserted on both sides of the pit, firewood was laid inside, and the wolf meat, which was only coated with large salt particles but not drained of blood, was roasted. After eating it, it was completely dark, but their work was not finished yet.
I gathered some firewood and charcoal and set up a bonfire nearby to keep warm. I spread the sand from the river on top of the fire in the shallow pit and extinguished the fire. This became a warm bed at night.
At night, the two of them took turns keeping watch to add firewood to the bonfire, and slept until the sky turned green the next morning.
Apart from anything else, at least when it comes to eating, few people in northern Shaanxi can eat as comfortably as they do at this time of year.
There are not many villages that can eat scallion pancakes anymore.
As for grilled wolf meat...don’t mention it.
Wolf meat is inherently fishy, so if you want to clean it up properly, you have to get some garlic.
It's best to put a lot of ornamental peppers grown in the back house of the government office into the pot and mix them with the meat to stew.
Like Liu Chengzong, he was afraid that the smell of blood would attract the crowd to miss the best time for bloodletting. He lacked seasonings, not to mention large salt particles, and Cao Yao's professional cooking skills.
The production level is at best a little more salty than the Crazy Croods, and the purpose of eating this thing seems particularly simple.
Survive.
Just for survival.
This may be a bit excessive, because Gao Xian wrapped the remaining meat in salt particles and smoked it in the middle of the night.
Smoking it overnight is not enough, not to mention there is not enough salt. After drying and antiseptic, it needs to be smoked again after taking it back to Heilong Mountain.
Maybe they have to wait until they eat those fishy and smelly smoked meat strips before they can truly feel that they are still alive.
These three wolves are not small in stature, but just like people at this moment, they don’t have much meat on their bodies. They have been miserable for a long time. When they cut open the wolf’s belly, there were hay leaves inside.
Except for the part Gao Xian took to smoke, they ate two meals, and the remaining ten kilograms were stuffed into Liu Chengzong's stomach for preservation.
It's not his own stomach. His stomach can only accelerate decay and has no antiseptic function. He stuffs wolf meat into the wolf's stomach, intending to take it back and exchange it with his neighbors in the village who still have small animals for other meat, even just for one.
Where are the chickens?
In fact, it is good luck to encounter prey or even wild animals at this time.
Go north, but you can't touch it even if you want to.
The prey was not big and had a lot of fur on it. When I got home, I soaked it in salt water swept out from the village around the Mid-Autumn Festival last year for more than a month. I could make two small coat linings. Maybe the extra skin could be used to make a helmet.
Fur lining.
The Central Plains dynasty has always had no shortage of saltpeter. It can be found in the north and south of the Yangtze River. Shandong soil saltpeter, Shanxi saltpeter, Sichuan saltpeter, southern cave saltpeter and of course the northwest is specialized in producing saltpeter.
In the port market of Mongolia outside the Great Wall, tea leaves can also be exchanged for saltpetre. The north is a country without yellow. It may not produce anything but it does not know how to refine it, but it does produce a lot of saltpeter. Unfortunately, it is useless to keep the saltpeter. They cannot make gunpowder.
The skill of tanning leather has a long history. There are tanners in Xingping. Every Mid-Autumn Festival, they collect the saltpeter soil and simmer it themselves, which is enough for tanning leather.
Walking along the bank of Mudanchuan River, you will not be far from Panlongchuan River. No strangers were seen along the way, and the horses could not hold up and continued on their way.
Setting off the next day, Liu Chengzong and his party were not in a hurry.
Anyway, no one is running a regular business now, and the external environment continues to deteriorate, which is depressing. Walking slower is just to relax.
Until they reached Panlongchuan.
The shallow Peony River merges into Panlong River at the small sandbank, and the color of the river water changes.
There was a wide pink color in the clear river water. Liu Chengzong waved to Gao Xian to lead the carriage across the bridge. He rode his horse through the water and walked under the wooden bridge. When he and Gao Xian met on the east bank again, the expression on his face was very complicated. "There is an arm under the bridge, and the clothes belong to a woman."
He turned his face to the north and nodded firmly: "They rushed down from the upper reaches."
On the carriage, Yang Dingrui's mother-in-law heard what was said outside and screamed through the bamboo curtain, causing Gao Xian to wink at Liu Chengzong.
A good-looking lady from an official family, but she looked like a little girl whom I had never seen before. I was shocked.
Yang Dingrui leaned forward and asked: "Lion, are you saying there are thieves upstream?"
Liu Chengzong shook his head silently. How could he know what was happening upstream? He didn’t have clairvoyance and ears.
What's more, Hongqi is in the process of raising his body. As a war horse, the best time to eat feed is after leaving the army, which is very embarrassing in itself.
If the mount had the physical strength of its heyday at this time, he would really want to ride along the river to the north to find out the situation, but with the virtue of the red flag, he would not be able to run away from the thieves.
"Go back first. After I get you home, I will take two horses and go to the north to see what's going on."
Seeing the severed arm in the river under the bridge, Liu Chengzong had a premonition that the short and comfortable life after leaving Yuhe Fort might be over.
Especially when he saw rows of wooden fences and figures holding long poles behind the wooden fences erected on the hills belonging to Xingpingli in the distance, he was even more convinced of this idea.