The dark nights in winter are always longer, but for those villagers who are used to getting up early, even if they went to bed very late last night, they still got up the next day before dawn.
Then came the usual busyness, and the dark mountain village suddenly became alive.
The meat brought back by Cheng Lin filled the gap in winter tribute.
Therefore, people in the village no longer need to pick up hunting knives and go hunting in the snow-covered mountains and forests together. They only need to rely on the food they have saved to survive this winter.
This kind of life is extremely boring, but for the villagers, it is a rare rest time in the year, and they will not worry about it.
What's more, now they have a common entertainment, which is to listen to Ezreal's stories about cultivating immortals.
…
"Generally speaking, if an immortal cultivator in the weapon refining stage wants to advance to the foundation-building realm, he or she needs to swallow a pill called the 'Foundation-Building Pill'. Only when the advancement is successful can one truly enter the ranks of the immortal cultivator. However, this foundation-building
The raw materials for the elixir are extremely difficult to find, and the refining method is also quite complicated, so only large sects can make them, and the quantity is very small... That's why this Immortal Ascension Conference..."
In a small dilapidated courtyard near the edge of the mountain village.
Almost everyone in the village was sitting on their own benches, like primary school students in class, wide-eyed and listening to the story told by Cheng Lin in front of them.
After what happened last night, Cheng Lin gradually relaxed and sat down to talk. His tone was neither fast nor slow, adjusting at any time according to the direction of the story in his mind.
"Sweet potato" skillfully nestled between his legs and slept with his eyes squinted.
Lai sat next to him, holding hot water and passing it to Cheng Lin from time to time to soothe his throat.
This lecture lasts all morning.
"Okay, let's stop talking about it now and continue in the evening."
It was about noon.
Cheng Lin waved his hand, and a group of villagers left with unfinished business, discussing the plot as they walked, in a rather strange style.
After taking a sip of hot water to warm his throat, Cheng Lin squinted his eyes and looked at Udon City in the distance.
Last night, he used his mental energy to scan around Udon City and saw many dragon servants and a few giant dragons.
As for which one was the Dragon Lord, he couldn't tell clearly. Generally speaking, there was no difference with Lai's narrative.
The so-called urban civilization level is not much higher, it is only equivalent to an enlarged version of a village.
Probably because of the low status of the dragon servants, in the so-called Udon City, except for the dragon's residence, which has a gorgeous appearance, the other residences belonging to the dragon servants are generally low and ugly, and there is a lack of entertainment venues for the dragon servants, which reflects the
Strict grade gap.
At least this is the conclusion he drew from his brief observation.
This made Cheng Lin suddenly lose interest in exploring the city.
He simply stopped thinking about it and settled down in the village.
Tell stories to the villagers and entertain them.
After telling the story, do your own practice.
Yes, through many attempts, Cheng Lin discovered that although he could not absorb the spiritual energy in the deduction world, he could use the ores he had hidden in the spiritual world to practice.
"Probably because in the program's judgment, the objects in the spiritual world and I are both foreign objects."
This allowed Cheng Lin to catch a bug. Theoretically, he could "save" training time greatly in this way.
To be more precise, it is an extra portion of time created out of thin air.
"However, there are many limitations here. The biggest problem is that the amount of spiritual ore I have stored cannot support my practice for long... Once it is consumed, there is no point in staying in the deduction.
Well, it's not completely meaningless. You can also use this time to hone your skills.
But this is still feasible in peaceful deductions. For example, I had several months on Wutongxian Island.
But in most deductions, the world will undergo drastic changes, such as catastrophes. In this context, it is not suitable.
Of course, it seems that the task can also be forcibly slowed down.
For example, if you don’t execute it after publishing it, it seems that this will trigger the task time limit.”
As early as the third deduction.
Cheng Lin has already discovered that programs can set completion time limits for some tasks.
Another more emotional factor is that he couldn't bear to stay in the deduction for a long time. The time on the Fairy Island without a Trace almost drove him crazy.
In addition, Cheng Lin made another discovery.
He tried to take "Ciri" out of the spirit world, but failed.
"It seems that I still can't bring real life into the deduction through the spiritual world. I can only bring dead things, such as pepper noodles and cumin..."
Cheng Lin looked at the outline of Udon City in the distance and smiled bitterly in his heart.
As for the situation of deliberately not completing the task, causing the deduction to fail, from an experimental point of view, Cheng Lin should have tried it a long time ago.
But for some reason, he never had this idea in his mind.
Whether in deduction or reality.
It was as if he had deliberately ignored this idea at a subconscious level, and he had not noticed this phenomenon at all.
…
The productivity of the Dragon Age is undoubtedly backward.
Therefore, except for the dragon clan and a very small number of "noble" dragon servants who have the habit of eating three meals a day, most of the low-level dragon servants eat two meals a day.
One meal each in the morning and evening.
Therefore, Cheng Lin did not need to cook at noon, and he planned not to cook again at night, after all, he had used up all the seasonings.
"If I have to cook, I'm afraid I can only tear open the instant noodles I stored and wrap them with the sauce inside..."
This decision disappointed both Lai and Digua.
I practiced all afternoon.
In the evening, a group of villagers made an appointment and came to the small courtyard carrying small benches.
Sang Heke and other young men even brought dry firewood, lit a bonfire, and listened to the serialized stories together.
Five days of such a life passed in the blink of an eye.
The peaceful mountain village is almost isolated from the outside world.
Therefore, in the past five days, Cheng Lin had no idea that his portrait had been plastered all over the cities and territories of various Dragon Lords from the "Dragon City" of the Dragon Kingdom downwards.
He didn't bother to explore, he just immersed himself in this simple life leisurely and contentedly, which was quite content.
During this process, he even seemed to feel that his state of mind had improved.
finally.
In the early morning of the sixth day, when it was dawn, Uncle Sang of the hunting team and the rest of the young men pulled the car full of meat onto the small road in the village.
Today is the day when the village pays "winter tribute".
The carts are also similar to bullock carts, but people in this era have not domesticated cattle, donkeys and other livestock. They have thin dragon blood in their bodies and have strength that is not inferior to any domestic animals, so the carts in the village are all dragons.
The servant came to pull it.
"Check, are they all tied up?"
"Is the number right? Don't make it less!"
In the early morning, standing in the cold mist, the strong Sang shouted.
After all the other young men had finished confirming, he nodded and immediately looked towards the yard of Lai's house. Young Lai was also neatly dressed and was walking out reluctantly.
According to the rules, he also needs to participate in this delivery trip to Udon City.
"Okay, don't look reluctant. I just can't hear stories all morning, so what?" Sang said helplessly.
A villager next to him made a sad face:
"Don't worry, I can't bear to part with you either. Why am I the one sending you off this time? I'm going to have to listen to a lot of stories during this round trip."
Several other villagers also looked similar.
After being interrupted for a whole morning, it was as uncomfortable as reading a book and suddenly finding that several chapters had 404s.
"Look at how promising you are. I made an agreement with my wife and asked her to write down the story. We should leave quickly and try to come back as soon as possible so that we can make up for it."
Sang put the rope pulling the cart on his shoulder and said.
"With my sister-in-law's memory, can she remember it..." a villager muttered.
After being glared at by Sang, he shut up.
After talking and laughing, everyone quickly packed up their equipment and pulled the car towards Udon City.
Lai waved towards the yard, and soon heard the sweet potato's "woof, woof" farewell sound. Then he climbed into the car, cheered up, and looked at Udon City in the distance.
…
There were almost no decent roads in this era, and the village was remote and covered with snow. It was not easy to drive a car to the city. This was why they had to set off at dawn.
Along the way, people took turns pulling the cart, so everyone was not too tired. At noon, the group finally arrived at Udon City.
Although it is said to be a city, in reality, it is only about the size of a town.
The city wall is not high. In this era, wars broke out between various dragon lords' territories. The victory was decided by the dragon lord leading his dragons in a duel. They would not let their dragon servants conquer each other, and the dragons generally would not directly fight against each other.
Instead of attacking the city, they will conduct a "battle between giant dragons" according to the rules set by the "Three Songs".
Therefore, the role of the city wall has been greatly weakened.
These two days are the time for each village to hand in winter tribute, so there are many dragon servants coming to deliver the goods.
After lining up and being inspected by the dragon servant soldiers guarding the city, they entered the city slowly, and then went to the payment place. After paying the winter tribute according to the rules, Lai and his party breathed a sigh of relief.
"Now that this year has passed, the next spring tribute will be held in a few months."
Pulling the empty car, Sang showed a happy smile.
After the group paid the tribute and bought some necessary daily necessities such as salt, they pulled the cart back.
But when they were passing through the central street of Udon City, their attention was suddenly attracted by a group of people.
"What is that?"
"Yeah, what are they looking at around here?"
Right next to the most conspicuous wall of the Central Street, there are many dragon servants surrounding them. Judging from their dressing, they all come from various villages under the territory to pay winter tribute. They are huddled together at the moment, talking about something.
"Let's go take a look too."
Sang waved his hand and led the other villagers into the crowd. Now, they finally saw clearly what was on the wall.
It was a portrait, painted on animal skin, and the pattern was lifelike:
A strange-looking "dragon servant" with black hair and a hairless face was smiling quietly and looking at the world with interest.
Several villagers were immediately startled.
His eyes widened.
The villager named "Ke" was even more surprised and exclaimed: "This...isn't this Mr. Ezreal? Why did he get into the painting?"
The words just fell.
The soldiers guarding the wall immediately surrounded them.
A high-level dragon servant wearing armor walked over quickly, examined Ke, and his majestic voice resounded throughout the audience: