One after another, simple rafts kept crossing the river. Amidst the sound of trumpets, groups of hunters paddled and swayed in the clear river water. While going down the river, they continued to get closer to the other side.
Nearly an hour later, the team of more than 300 people completed crossing the river. Xu Chen and Gu Ju also got on the last raft and arrived at the other side with three horses, escorted by a group of big and round hunters paddling.
It was already around ten o'clock in the morning, and the sun had already risen high.
In late autumn, the mountains and river beaches on both sides of the Wulong River are colorful with red and green intertwined.
Groups of large and small wild animals forage leisurely on the river beach, and countless wild birds fly and play among the mountains and forests on the river beach.
The air is crisp in autumn and the sky is high and vast.
The hunters who crossed the river all lined up according to their respective tribes. Although the more than 300 people looked different in dress, height, short, fat, and thin, making them a completely motley army, everyone was actually the most brave and outstanding hunter in each tribe.
None of them carried many weapons today. Apart from the daggers and daggers necessary for self-defense, and some bows and arrows, almost all of them carried horse poles, ropes and other items.
Although everyone had uncontrollable excitement and excitement on their faces, no one was making any noise.
Even this time there were no flags or trumpets blown.
This is a large-scale hunting event that needs to be kept quiet enough.
Many hunters cast their eyes on the seven or eight wet horses brought over by Xu Chen, Long and others, and their eyes were even more intense.
Meat is what I want, and horses are what I want even more.
For all men, horses are the beasts they most eagerly desire to own.
As long as the roundup of wild horses is successful again today, all tribes participating in the hunt will have the opportunity to allocate wild horses.
Many people have even begun to imagine themselves riding a majestic and tall horse and galloping into the wind.
However, the mood of a group of officers such as Xu Chen and Long was indeed very serious at this time, even with a kind of anxiety and uneasiness.
Because the living environment of this group of wild horses is completely different from that of the river beaches outside the Uzu, there are no small valleys, and they are unfamiliar with the terrain. Moreover, the wild horses are distributed in a huge area, almost scattered among the hillsides of the river beach with lush wild grass for dozens of miles.
Although there are more than 600 people in the two groups this time, most of them are experienced people who participated in the roundup of wild horses last year. They have also undergone specialized training in the tribe early, and their skills and cooperation are better than last year.
times, but facing such an open and unfamiliar environment, Feng Helong and other officers actually did not have much confidence in their hearts.
I was very ambitious before I started.
But when the actual operation started, everyone felt dry and uneasy. It seemed that facing this group of wild horses was more stressful than facing the hundreds of wild wolves at Wild Wolf Beach last year.
But whether it's a mule or a horse, it has to be dragged out for a ride.
What's more, everything is ready now, and there are thousands of men, women, and children on the riverbanks of the Ba Valley waiting eagerly for their big harvest.
Therefore, when all the hunters finished checking their equipment, Xu Chen did not hesitate, got on his horse and gave the order to officially start the hunt.
More than 300 people were first divided into groups of ten according to their respective tribes, and then divided into three groups and one team. All teams were led by the hunter leader who participated in the roundup of wild horses last year. Each team and each group was mixed with horse poles.
Horse tripping ropes, rope nets, slings, nooses and other horse catching tools.
Twelve teams of thirty people set off one after another, scattered along the river beach and disappeared into the dense thorns and weeds. During the march, each team and each group would continue to be heard by the cries of wild birds or the sounds of wild beasts.
Contact each other to locate each other and facilitate support.
This roundup of wild horses is much larger than last year in terms of scale and number of participants.
Moreover, the demand for wild horses from various tribes has been rising rapidly. Not only Xu Chen was concerned about this roundup, but other tribes were even more concerned about it.
Since the success of the Witch Lords Conference in rounding up wild horses last year, various tribes have set off a craze to capture wild horses. Of course, there are almost no successes. After all, these things are fast and wild, and there is no adequate planning and rounding up plan.
Basically it won't succeed.
What's more, they are still a group of savages who have not even learned how to ride a horse.
Even for people like Feng and Long who ride horses almost every day, if you ask them to chase a herd of wild horses while wielding a horse pole, no one will succeed.
Therefore, almost everyone in the tribe has placed their hope of success in this witchcraft meeting. After all, this matter was Xu Chen’s plan on the Mother’s Day in March.
From March to September, except when the floodwaters in summer make it difficult to pass, the Bawu and Bawu people have been constantly observing the distribution and movements of the horses on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Originally, there was a group of thirty or forty wild horses gathering between the Ba and Wu tribes. However, these wild horses were very wary of people and began to disperse and flee after observing them a few times. In addition, the construction of Bawu Avenue after the fall started causing a lot of noise for a month.
, this group of wild horses completely disappeared.
According to the observations of Feng and others, some of them may have crossed the Wulong River to the south bank, while some of them entered the mountains and forests without knowing where to end up.
So now only the wild horses on the beach on the other side of the Wulong River are left.
This herd of wild horses is huge, with a number of no less than 130. They are divided into more than ten groups, large and small, gathering and dispersing, but they are all scattered within an area of five to ten miles up and down the opposite bank between Bawu.
In order to find out the number and distribution of this group of wild horses without causing unrest and vigilance in the wild horses, Feng Helong and others led two elite hunter teams and crossed the river more than ten times to secretly collect information.
It's very clear to touch.
However, clarity belongs to clarity, and difficulty belongs to difficulty. There is no conflict between the two.
The river beach on the other side forms a roughly gourd-shaped two-section area from Yelangtan to Bawu.
The upper reaches turned out to be the sphere of influence of a group of wild wolves.
Downstream is the sphere of influence of a group of wild horses.
Although wolves are ferocious and savage and are good at hunting and preying on wild animals, they actually do not pose much of a threat to wild horses because wild wolves do not have the upper hand regardless of size or strength.
"My Healing Game"
In other words, the main food of wolves is wild sheep, deer, rabbits, wild birds and other small and medium-sized beasts. They are not very interested in medium and large beasts such as buffalo, wild ass and wild horses. Even if they launch an attack against these groups, they will only target them.
cub.
It was just like the wolves that Xu Chen encountered in the Ba Valley in the first year of his travels, rounding up the foal.
Wild wolves are cunning and ferocious, and generally will not actively attack adult wild horses, because if they are kicked by a wild horse, they will immediately kneel down with a broken leg and broken bones. Moreover, wild horses have a mouth full of teeth and do not just eat grass, although they do not eat meat.
, but after one bite, a wolf is basically useless.
Therefore, the narrow gourd beach, which is nearly ten miles downstream, has become a stable habitat for the wild horses. Even if the wild wolves come, they will basically catch a few small beasts and then leave, and there will be no serious conflict between the two sides.
Moreover, the activity range of this group of wild horses is not only the river beach, but also the gentle slope area formed by large areas of low shrubs from the river beach to the nearby mountains. In winter and summer, these wild horses basically live in the gentle slope mountain forest, and their habits are similar to
The herd of wild horses outside the entrance of the Wuzu Valley were exactly the same.
Even judging from their body shape and group characteristics, the wild horses on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are actually the same population, but they are slowly separated due to competition for food and territory.
Many of these wild horses on the other side were squeezed across the river by the increasingly frequent activities of the Ba and Wu ethnic groups, and they were not excluded from living together.
Therefore, it can be seen that just as humans constantly need to communicate with other groups, the same goes for horse groups. The wild horse groups on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should interact with each other and obtain new blood through mating.
It is precisely because of this that this kind of exchange between wild horses will bring huge uncertainty to this roundup.
Because this will greatly increase the vigilance of the wild horses here towards humans.
This has been clearly revealed through previous inquiries by hunters such as Feng Helong.
In the past, even if hunters and horses met on the Uzu River Beach, the horses would be a little uneasy at most, but they would not show obvious vigilance. Large-scale escapes were even less likely. However, they occasionally encountered wild horses during their exploration.
, these wild horses are very alert and even hostile, and will neigh and neigh at the sight of others to hurry up and run away.
This shows that horses also have their own unique ways of transmitting messages.
Humans have instilled fear in these horses.
Xu Chen also believes that no matter whether this horse-catching operation is successful or not, there will no longer be large herds of wild horses on both sides of the Wulong River between the Ba and Wu ethnic groups, and it is even possible that not a single wild horse will be seen in the future.
Such large-scale and increasingly frequent human activities have posed a great threat to the survival of wild horses. Once they escape, they will completely migrate away from areas where humans live.
Therefore, this round-up operation is actually a one-shot deal.
If it fails this time, it will be too difficult to find such a good opportunity in the future.
While Xu Chen and others were moving downstream, Feng led the same group of more than 300 people into groups of the same size, dispersed into the river beaches and gentle slopes of the mountain forest, and accelerated towards the horses downstream.
In order to round up these wild horses, Xu Chen compiled the information he had gathered and formulated what he considered the most perfect plan.
Because of the vast area of the Calabash Beach, coupled with the complex conditions of the gentle slopes and dense forests, there is no place to kill the wild horses, so everything can only rely on manpower and traps.
According to the plan, after the upstream and downstream sides approached, the wild horses were surrounded on the river beach near Huluyao. Because the hillside terrain here was slightly steeper and more complicated, it was relatively difficult for the wild horses to rush in and disperse in a swarm.
The roundup area designated this time is on the edge of this hillside forest.
Each of the two groups will send half of their people to set up horse ropes and rope nets near the hillside to form a sack-like encirclement trap. Once the horses are driven in, these arrangements will cause great containment and confusion for the horses.
The other third of the people are responsible for squeezing and driving from the river beach to the mountain forest to prevent the horses from escaping to the upper and lower river beaches or even crossing the river. The tools used are nooses and slings, and they can also be used when encountering stray or lone wild horses.
Can be captured.
There are also dozens of people who are carefully selected and agile horse-roping men. Each of them has a horse-roping pole. Most of them are elite hunters of the Ba and Wu ethnic groups who are proficient in riding horses. Once the wild horses are in chaos, they can rush into them.
Entering a herd of horses and waiting for an opportunity to capture the wild horse, once the wild horse is trapped, it is basically impossible to escape.
All plans have been laid out a few days before the Witch Lord Conference, and all tasks have been assigned to the officers of each group and even the core team members.
As for the Yugong clan who have never participated in the hunting of wild horses and the invited hunters from the Youqiu, Tage and other tribes, these participating hunters mainly serve as auxiliary forces, such as pulling the ropes, driving the horses, etc.
Anyway, more than 200 people participated, which made the resources for this round-up operation much more sufficient.
Hunters from the Gonghuo tribe of the Ba ethnic group who participated in horse hunting last year have become the main force in the hunt this year.
Two hours passed in a blink of an eye.
Xu Chen, Gu Heju and others rode on horseback and stood on a slightly higher mound to look at the ambush. There were more than a dozen Ba hunters with bows and knives on their backs or spears guarding the area.
He will not participate in this wild horse roundup because the number of people is large enough, and he is unwilling to get involved in such an activity that puts his own life at risk.
In addition, the main participants in the roundup this time were the most courageous and skilled hunters from each tribe. They were much better than weakling savages like him who needed strength but not strength, and wanted speed but not speed.
What's more, he also wanted to use this opportunity to train Feng Helong and other officers in their leadership and command skills, so as to prepare for leading troops alone in the future.
Although he still didn't know the specific arrangements of the two teams, and couldn't see the horses, Xu Chen could roughly judge from the swaying of the bushes and thorns on the river beach and the sound of wild horses neighing and running.
There were signs of a large number of humans approaching. Although there were some commotions and movements in some places, there was no large-scale violent activity of horses.
While a group of people were waiting anxiously, suddenly a sharp whistle sounded from the edge of the distant hillside, and then they saw a thin line of red smoke rising into the sky.
Xu Chen's face lit up.
This is the sounding arrow he specially prepared for this roundup of wild horses. It is actually a willow flute tied to the arrow. Once it is fired, it will make a sharp sound. As for the red smoke, it is a tube also tied to the arrow.
For pill powder, if you remove the clogged cloth strip before shooting, it will leak out and form this red smoke mark when the arrow flies into the sky.
When this arrow is fired, it means that a team has fully prepared its ambush and pockets.
A moment later, on the river beach near Huluyao upstream, a similarly loud arrow shot into the sky.
The two red traces look very clear and eye-catching in the blue sky.
The horses paid no attention to these two almost inaudible whistles, and were even less likely to observe the red smoke traces in the sky. They continued to forage unconsciously in the dense weeds, riverbanks and thorny jungles.