After a night of steady spring rain, the water in the creek rose a little.
On the river beach filled with morning mist, on the grass that was trampled by yesterday's training and duel, the delicate green grass and wild flowers began to grow tenaciously again.
The mountains, rivers and fields are all green, and you can see blooming flowers and flying birds everywhere.
The three flags rolled gently in the warm and humid wind of early spring.
The neat team set off in formation, facing the rising sun, stepping on the morning dew, blowing the horns and heading towards the mouth of the valley.
Xu Chen rode his beloved pony and frequently turned back and waved.
Hundreds of Uzbek women, old and young, sent each other all the way to the river beach outside the valley mouth. They watched the team drift away and slowly disappear at the edge of the forest at the foot of the lower mountain, and then they reluctantly helped the old and young back.
This inspection was fruitful. The leader of the Uzbek tribe finally bowed his head and admitted defeat, and the powerful Uzbek tribe completely surrendered.
Of course, Xu Chen would not admit that he was a sinister person who had been plotting against the Uzbek people.
This must be because his shuddering personality charm exuded the great brilliance of humanity, which finally moved the heavens, the earth, the men and women of the Uzbek ethnic group, and allowed him to finally successfully resolve the conflicts within the six ethnic groups, which can open up the next chapter.
A more distant and glorious upgrade mission.
The second stop on the tour was the Hu people.
The Hu people are in another valley half a day down the river.
The layout is similar to that of the Ba tribe. They are also a small tribe of dozens of people, living crowdedly in three small caves not far apart.
The environment here is much better than that of the Ba people.
At least the accommodations are more spacious.
In addition, there is a spring with abundant water near the cave where the Hu people live, which does not dry up all year round.
Moreover, the valley is full of various wild fruit trees, and it is the time when flowers are in full bloom. Therefore, when Xu Chen came in, he felt as if he had entered a flower valley. He saw colorful flowers all over the mountains and fields, and bees were flying throughout the valley.
The fragrance of flowers is dense.
Damn it, this is a real Feng Shui treasure!
This will definitely be a rare tourist attraction in future generations.
Comparing it with the valley of the Hu tribe, Xu Chen suddenly discovered that the valley of the Ba tribe was not very fragrant at all.
Although the current primitive era is full of super 5a natural scenery.
But this was the first time he saw such a beautiful scenery full of flowers and valleys. The mountains far and near seemed to be covered by clouds.
Even on the farthest and highest mountain tops, chestnut tree flowers can be seen like snowdrifts.
At the foot of the hillside where the Hu people live, among the flowers, a courtyard made of mud, stone and thatch also rises.
The scale is not large, at most half the size of the first phase of the Ba people. However, the craftsmanship seems to be much more exquisite than the houses built by the U people. It is obvious that the Hu people are more pragmatic and serious.
On the river beach not far from the house, there is also a piece of farmland that has been reclaimed from wasteland. The scale is not too big, about a hundred acres. It is surrounded by fruit trees and flowers. The field is green and looks fresh and pleasing to the eye.
Upon hearing Xu Chen's arrival, the Hu tribe came out in full force, led by their clan leader to greet him from a distance of several miles, and one of the well-trained hunters seemed to have a somewhat uniform momentum.
There are only about 60 people in the Hu tribe, plus more than a dozen captives. Their popularity is slightly more popular than before, but now they have become the tribe with the lowest population among the six alliances.
The Ba tribe used to be at the bottom, but after taking in more than ten people from the Uzbek tribe and robbing more than forty young women, the tribe's number has officially exceeded one hundred. If you include more than eighty other captives, it is now a medium-sized tribe.
The size of the tribe is already comparable to that of the Cang tribe.
Originally Xu Chen wanted to have a bigger appetite.
Unfortunately, food has become a roadblock that hinders the tribe's large-scale expansion.
There are few Hu people, so the situation is much simpler. There are not so many messy conflicts within the Uzbek people. Of course, there are no copper mines that make Xu Chen jealous, so the inspections are casual and even careless.
After arriving, Xu Chen, accompanied by a large group of people including the leader of the Hu tribe, viewed the newly built houses and cultivated farmland, gave some simple guidance and encouragement, and then observed the training of the Hu hunters. Confer flags and distribute armor, bows and arrows and officer badges.
Hu of the Hu ethnic group means flower, which should also be the ancient original pronunciation of flower.
Therefore, a huge red flower is painted on the Hu nationality's flag.
After the flag-presenting ceremony, a small-scale military performance was also held.
The purpose of this kind of performance is to allow hunter teams from different tribes to strengthen communication, learn from each other, and conduct some simple coordination and offensive and defensive drills to improve the quality of training.
After the inspection, Xu Chen, on a whim, went to the nearby hillside for a long time under the leadership of Hu hunters, experiencing a rare spring outing, and then held a hunting competition, which was held at the gate of the compound at the foot of the mountain in the evening. Had a lively bonfire dinner.
Early the next morning, Xu Chen said goodbye to the Hu tribe and set off for the Muya tribe.
The Muya tribe is one day away from the Hu tribe, and closer to the northwest of the Wu tribe, the road is rugged and crisscrossed by canyons, making it very difficult to walk.
However, they were lucky this time and encountered a group of wild wolves hunting goats. The team of hunters who accompanied them finally had a chance to show off their skills. They conducted a truly large-scale hunting operation in the river valleys and mountains, killing four of them. A wild wolf and seven goats, a great harvest.
When we arrived at Muya Clan, the sun was almost setting.
The Muya tribe has nearly a hundred people and lives on a hillside.
The cave is very large, a fissure hundreds of meters long, with a dripping spring inside. It is hundreds of meters away from the foot of the mountain. The living environment is the best and most spacious among all the tribes.
None of them built a house at the foot of the mountain. They just built a row of houses with bricks and stones leaning against the cave. Although they looked very simple, they were very strong.
The farmland they cultivated is also near the cave. There are no large trees around it, but a large area of low thorns and vines. After burning, the yellow-brown soil was revealed, which turned out to be very fertile. All the seeds were sown on nearby slopes with more growth. Wild beans seem to be growing vigorously.
Among several tribes, the Muya tribe is the most special.
Their living environment and habits are closer to those of some ancient tribes in the Yunnan-Guizhou Mountains. Although their lives are relatively stable, their development space is very small. The most important thing is that transportation is very inconvenient.
If it wasn't necessary, Xu Chen would most likely not come here a second time.
Although they had long heard that Xu Chen would bring people to inspect the Muya tribe after the beginning of spring, when they saw a large group of people suddenly arriving after sunset carrying more than a dozen wild wolves and goats, large and small, the Muya tribe members were overjoyed and at the same time... I was shocked.
When they learned that these beasts were hunted on the way here, the whole tribe was instantly shocked.
This much prey is enough for everyone to eat for several days.
As the spring begins and we are still in the season of not having enough to eat, this feast of flesh and blood is definitely a rare gourmet feast.
Although they had already had dinner and were ready to go to bed, the Muya people began to feel hungry again in the face of these fresh meats. The whole family, old and young, went into battle to slaughter the beasts, skin them and disembowel them, and took out clay pots to cook the minced meat.
The mutton is also hung on a wooden rack for rotating barbecue.
Whether cooking in clay pots or rotating grills, these are all learned from the Ba people, and several tribes are now using them very well.
A large group of people sat around in the wide open space in front of the cave, lighting several bonfires, eating and having fun, singing and dancing.
Xu Chen almost never participated in such purely primitive singing and dancing activities. Today, he walked on a mountain road for a day. Because the road conditions were not good, he was afraid of breaking the pony's hooves, so he walked all the way. Now he is too tired to move.
Sitting in front of the campfire, accompanied by the chief of Muya and the two male and female leaders of the tribe, a group of people ate and talked about some arrangements and changes in the tribe.
Several girls in simple linen dresses served hot water and food diligently.
The mutton was roasted. A girl stuck a piece of mutton on a wooden stick and placed it on the pottery plate in front of Xu Chen. Xu Chen picked it up and took a bite. He was slightly startled, took another bite, and then looked carefully with doubts on his face.
Watch the barbecue.
"Moxy Gaga?"
Xu Chen's weird movements made the Muya clan leader nervous, and he quickly asked cautiously.
Xu Chen looked at the mutton over and over several times, and after taking another bite, his face was filled with confusion.
He was sure there was no pepper on the mutton, but he tasted a faint peppery taste.
He even pulled out the wooden stick stuck in the meat and licked it a few times to make sure that the peppery smell did not come from the wooden stick.
“Where was this meat grilled?”
Xu Chen quickly asked the girl who brought the meat.
The girl didn't understand and was very nervous. Feng explained and gestured a few times, and the girl quickly pointed to the location of the fire pit in the cave.
"Let's go and have a look!"
Xu Chen suddenly regained his energy.
Rather than a full stomach, he seeks spiritual satisfaction.
Since time traveling, apart from leeks and wild onions, he has never seen the third familiar cooking ingredient.
Some indispensable ingredients for later generations’ cooking, such as pepper and Sichuan pepper, were nowhere to be seen even in the mountains and rivers near the Ba people.
After more than a year, he has almost resigned himself to his fate.
There should be no such plants within a hundred miles of the Ba people.
Although the current climate and environment are vastly different from the earth he was familiar with, and the species are more complex and diverse, there is nothing. He also wants to find some other plants to replace them, but his strength does not allow it.
After all, the cooking seasonings used by the Chinese are the profound heritage accumulated by our ancestors over thousands or even tens of thousands of years, and are not formed overnight.
Even though many plants have a special fragrance, who knows whether they are poisonous or not.
Mushrooms are so delicious, and there are countless poisonous ones. Even with the accumulation of thousands of years of Chinese civilization and a group of monkeys as poison testers, he can only identify seven or eight kinds of edible ones, and they are all beyond his memory.
Poisonous mushrooms and other unknown and unfamiliar species are basically avoided to be touched.
Pepper is both a condiment and a spice. In the history he was familiar with, this small plant seed had caused countless wars.
People searched for her thousands of times, but looking back at dusk, she was in a dimly lit place.
Xu Chen didn't expect that his plan to find spices, which he had almost given up thinking about, would accidentally make a discovery.