This is the Lenghu Province near the southern border. Among the rolling hills, large and small mountain springs and underground rivers rush down the rocks in the mountains, washing out lakes of different sizes.
The lake water seems to be transparent, and you can clearly see the various delicate rocks below. If you put your hand into it, you can feel a cold touch.
Now, under a sloping hidden rock, Charanlot woke up from her sleep.
Looking at the unfamiliar rock walls, rocks, and the stream flowing among the large pebbles not far away, the girl was a little surprised. It took her a while to realize that she had escaped from the whirlpool in the south.
.
Looking back and looking around, she saw the female knight lying not far away from her. Charlanlot sat up, put the thin blanket on her body, then came to her side and checked the injury. Seeing the sky knight
Gradually she got better, and she finally breathed a sigh of relief.
By the way, who saved the two of her that day? She didn't know the person who brought her here.
After rubbing her hungry stomach, Charlanlot tried to get out of this hidden rock crevice and go out to find something to eat.
As soon as she walked out of this huge rock, she saw several people not far away working hard. Some of them were mending clothes, some were repairing weapons, and some were cooking small clay pots.
A man wearing brown leather armor saw the girl's head, smiled a little, and then walked over.
"Are you awake? Are you feeling better? Unfortunately, there is a lack of medicine here, so you often have to deal with it on your own."
He briefly chatted with Charlanlot and then called over a girl of about 14 years old, "Nika, come here and help this sister get familiar with her. She has just arrived."
"Okay, I'll be right back, Dad." The girl was working on a woven basket, and it looked like she was just finishing the last few steps.
"This is my daughter. She knows a lot about the situation here. It will probably be much easier for you to communicate."
"Thank you." Xia Lanlot nodded, and then looked at the rock wall and the woods beside the stream. Light yellow and red brown leaves were sparsely distributed in the crown of the tree, and a few newly sprouted buds could be seen among them. The ground seemed to have been polished.
After simple cleaning, there are not many fallen leaves, and the dark brown soft soil can be directly seen.
"Hello, my name is Nika, what's yours?" This girl was a little lively and jumped over.
Then he led Charanlot to walk around and take a look.
"That night, my father received news that a companion was being hunted, so he ran over to help."
"I found you and another sister, so I rescued you."
"Maybe the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I heard Uncle Bai De say this. He taught me a lot of words and proverbs."
The girl led Charanlot along the stream, walking on the raised stones at the edge of the stream with her two feet and trying her best to balance with her hands. She seemed to enjoy this kind of fun.
Seeing how she almost fell down several times, Charlanlot wanted to help her but didn't dare to, for fear of making the little girl unhappy.
"It's okay. My balance is very good. In fact, this is also a kind of exercise." She turned around occasionally and smiled when she saw Charlotte's worried look.
"My sister was hunted down by the soldiers of the empire, so she must have caused a lot of trouble. But so did we. We escaped because we disobeyed the lord's jurisdiction, and now we are wandering around."
"Although it looks embarrassing, everyone is getting used to it."
"There are always bad things about nobles. I think my sister should also understand it. I won't recall those sad things anymore."
"This, too." Charlanlot nodded silently from behind, feeling that she was also within the range.
"I don't understand the basic principles. I used to listen to my dad's friends talking about freedom and equality."
"In their eyes, we are probably the black sheep, haha."
"Because many people saw that we were doing well, they joined us, which can be considered as poaching a lot of corners of the empire."
"Now we are scattered in this forest, and we live a semi-secluded life. Because the mountains are difficult to walk, some monsters live in them, and the nobles are not willing to spend a lot of money to hunt us down, so they gradually let it go."
"Oh, there are fish there." The girl who was talking to Charanlot pointed to a small water hole in front of her. It was a small harbor formed by several rocks in the stream. A white river fish was sitting quietly in it.
Stay in it quietly.
Then the girl approached carefully and jumped into the water.
There was a splash and flutter of water, and soon she stood up in the stream holding the big white fish.
"Sister, come help me, it's too slippery~" She said as she seemed to hold the fish down, but the fish's tail jumped and flapping from time to time and splashed all kinds of water, making Nika unable to open her eyes.
"Okay, I'll come right over." Xia Lanluo put the thin blanket on the dry stone aside and jumped in. The two of them were in a hurry and spent a while before finally getting the fish ashore.
"Huh..." Lying on the grass beside the stream, their clothes had long been soaked, and a feeling of dampness and coldness came from them.
"I'm sorry for causing trouble for Sister Lottie." Nika stuck out her tongue and then got up again.
"Let's take the fish to the camp first, and then take a bath."
"Um."
As they spoke, the two of them carried the fish to the camp several hundred meters away, and Nika was scolded by her mother for a few more words before she released it.
"I'm sorry to trouble you, Nika." A woman with brown braids came over. She was probably in her 30s or 40s. She didn't look old, but she had a lot of scars on her hands from work.
"It's okay." Charanlot shook her head. Compared to the beginning, she felt much more relaxed now.
"Hahaha, Nika is so awesome, she found another big fish today." An uncle in the camp gave a thumbs up in praise.
"Of course, that's me, hum." The girl was not shy at all, patting her chest to express that she was right.
"Haha, this kid Nika." A burst of laughter came from the shades of trees shrouded in sunshine, and several women who were busy with their work covered their mouths and looked at the girl with smiles.
Charlotte noticed the light white fiber strings in their hands, and a kind of curiosity emerged in her heart.
"Come with me, let's take a shower first." Nika came over with clean clothes and grabbed a white fruit in her hand.
The two of them walked up the hillside as they spoke.
"Although the stream is very clean, it is still too cold, and some people may not be able to bear it, so we found a place between the higher mountain walls." As they said that, the two climbed up the temporary 'ladder', which was just a few steps away.
The steps are barely built by stones to fill the gaps in the stone cracks.
After walking like this for a while, Nica pointed to a puddle and said, "We're here."
The light-colored rocks are very mottled. Among such gravels, a small pool is formed, in which a thin stream of water falls from a high place and flows into it, causing small ripples.
"The terrain here is relatively high. Don't worry about anyone peeping. I'm going to feed that big snapping turtle. This guy is always greedy." After saying that, Nika climbed up the higher mountain wall using her hands and feet.
Snapping turtle? Charlanlot had doubts in her mind, but after a while, she saw that the falling water began to emit bursts of white steam and became hot.
At this time, a flow of magic power was also felt by her.
It was probably at the level of Sequence 3, not too strong, but it seemed to be a fire-attribute monster. She analyzed it in her mind, and then she saw Nika jump down slightly.
She tested the water temperature with her hand and nodded.
"Okay, let's do some simple cleaning first. After the water in the pool is hot, we can go in and take a dip."
More than ten minutes later, the two of them finished washing and walked into the warm pool. A comfortable feeling spread from their feet and legs. At this time, the upper body was still a little cold.
Then the two of them submerged into it, and Nika also looked like she was enjoying it.
"Just now you said that snapping turtle was a monster, right?"
"Well, that's right, dad found it by chance and placed it here."
"It is an original sequence 3 fire snapping turtle. It is relatively lazy. As long as it is not hungry, it will not run around. If you negotiate with it and feed it food, it will generate heat and boil the water around it.
Very convenient.“
"It's amazing." Charlotte thought to herself, how did they achieve such a tacit understanding for the first time.
Lying in the warm water pool to relax for a while, Charlanlot felt that the fatigue and tension that had been weighing on her recently had finally dissipated a lot.
I closed my eyes and took a nap in the water for a while.
After taking a shower, the two of them put on clean light-colored linen clothes, jumped off the rocks, and returned to the camp.
By this time, the sky was getting dark, and the aroma of food began to spread in the forest.
"Come and eat." Someone waved, and Nika jumped up happily in response and took Lottie over.
"Drink some, the freshly cooked hot soup." An old woman brought the Tao Wan, in which the fish soup was accompanied by a few vegetables, exuding a delicate fragrance.
"Thank you." Charlotte thought to herself, she owed a lot of favors.
Sitting by the fire, drinking fish soup, eating a few pieces of fish, and then putting a few pieces of baked wheat cakes into her mouth. The soft and brown taste just out of the oven made Charanlot feel better than many big meals.
eat.
"I'm sorry, the food is not rich now, so we can only eat half full." After eating the small pieces of noodles, the uncle came over and explained briefly. He was still holding the unfinished fish soup in his hand.
It's very bland and has no meat.
"It's nothing, I'm very satisfied to be alive." Charlanlot shook her head.
Then he finally asked curiously about their origins.
"This is very complicated to say." The uncle looked at the bright yellow bonfire, added some firewood, and then spoke slowly.
"Perhaps many outsiders think we are an insurrectionary army, a revolutionary army or something like that, but in fact we are not like that."
"It's just that we couldn't survive in the original territory, so everyone escaped and hugged each other for warmth."
"But in order to deal with pursuing troops and possible attacks, we also had to learn to arm ourselves, so we gradually came into contact with the real rebels, and then we established a relationship."
"Now if you insist on saying that we rebelled against the empire, it cannot be denied, because our behavior does break away from the laws of the empire."
"Miss Lottie must have felt a little bit about being chased by those soldiers."
"Yeah." Charlanlot lowered her head.
Afterwards, the two of them chatted about the life here, and the uncle introduced them one by one with great interest.
"Although I am often worried, I have to say that it is indeed a happy thing since I opened a camp in this mountain forest."
"I no longer have to worry about tax collectors knocking on the door, soldiers blackmailing, or nobles interrupting me. We all live a simple and harmonious life. I feel a lot younger, haha."
"Originally there were a lot of monsters in the mountains. Although we dealt with some of them, we generally just drove away the rest without killing them."
"Why?" Charlotte asked curiously. In her heart, Warcraft are all destructive creatures.
"There are many reasons. For example, if it becomes very safe without Warcraft, it will become an ideal fiefdom in the minds of the nobles and drive us away."
"In addition, some of our needs also need Warcraft to fulfill, such as the giant snapping turtle that boiled water where you just took a bath."
"Others include the stampede elephant that helps us cut stones, the colorful feathered titmouse that will trigger a warning if a large number of outsiders enter the mountain, and the dead branch deer that occasionally lends a hand depending on the mood."
"These monsters are very smart, which means they can try to communicate simply. Although there are many failures, I still find a few that are easy to get along with."
"Warcraft also need us for their needs. For example, they have no hands and it is difficult to build a comfortable nest. They also need to clean parasites on their bodies, comb their hair, etc. Occasionally, they will also like the food we feed and are willing to contribute a little bit.
exchange."
"In this way, we outsiders who lack food and clothing can barely live in this isolated mountain." After saying this, the uncle sighed again.
"What about the future? Aren't you going out?" Charlanlot was curious and at the same time seemed to have some expectation in her heart.
It seems that as long as you stay in this isolated place, you can stay away from the hatred and disputes in the past and live a stable life.
"Maybe I will go out for a look occasionally, but most of the time I won't go out." The uncle said simply.
"I feel that something is wrong with the state of the empire. Although those nobles are still so powerful and cannot be defeated, there is always a feeling that they cannot see the future." The uncle simply sighed and added a few more firewood to the bonfire.
"By the way, I haven't said what I originally did."
"Actually, there's nothing outstanding about him. He just works as a gatekeeper for the noble lord."
"It stands to reason that with such a position, it shouldn't be bad if you can be familiar with big shots every day, but in fact, uh, the reality is a bit cruel that this is not important in the eyes of others."
"I don't think you're important just because I see you every day. After all, you're just a doorkeeper, so it's not worth taking to heart."
"However, thanks to meeting more big people, I have gradually understood it."
"That's not a place for a little guy like me to live."
"Actually, I have read a lot of books in my spare time and know about the creation and history of the empire."
"The aristocratic system has continued since the era of the True Red Empire, and 'Red Prince' Yalin has continued to improve on this basis, establishing detailed grades and a military merit system."
"I understand that he did this to deal with the country's early difficulties, to stimulate people's desires with the nobility, and to help the empire unify the continent step by step."
"I have to say that this method was indeed very useful in the early days, and it also contributed to the empire's strength in the early hundreds of years. It gradually grew stronger and annexed one country after another."
"The imperial royal family has the blessing of twins. The two emperors are mirrors to each other. This ensures that the level of rule is not too bad. At the worst, it can maintain the general stability of power and not suddenly go crazy or be too paranoid."
"Originally, all the scripts have been written, but who would have thought that the future development would far exceed the original design background."
"The territory of the empire is indeed getting bigger and bigger, and the fair military merit system has indeed slowly integrated the newly added ethnic groups into the same system. The royal family has the noble blood of both humans and elves, which also makes many people yearn for new life.
Move closer to it willingly.”
"Even such a strong and upward situation has finally reached the end of its peak."
"The time of peace gradually became longer, the population increased, and the big nobles began to absorb the small nobles, and finally reached the current situation where conflicts are everywhere."
"You asked me how to solve it. I'm sorry, I don't know. If I knew, I wouldn't hide here, haha." The uncle smiled, but there was a bit of loss in that smile.
"But, didn't you also create a new way of life?" Charlotte encouraged slightly.
"It's wonderful to be able to live in peace with Warcraft and enjoy mutual benefit."
"That's not the case." The uncle sighed, resting his hands on the back of his head and looking at the sky.
"This is just an escape."
"It's like covering your eyes and not seeing something. The mountains and forests we can live in will eventually usher in that day like the empire."
“When there are more and more people, when resources gradually dry up, when time passes and it can no longer cover its own existence.”
"The trial will eventually come."
"Cross over and usher in new life."
"If you can't cross it, you will fall. Just like the current empire, it will collapse step by step."
"You said that nobles are all very bad. That's not true. I have also met very kind and wise nobles. They have good family traditions."
"But so what if there are such people."
"The tide of the times is rising step by step and beating constantly. The conscience of this small group of people alone cannot solve the problem."
"I learned a lot about the history of Clancia, and I gradually understood the current empire."
"However, even the wisest man must surrender to the king. Empty wisdom and insights are just empty talk if they cannot be realized. Just because you know more does not make you superior to others."
"I have talked with many leaders of uprisings and rebellions, but unfortunately, although they are passionate, they have never been able to explore the right path."
"The empire is not Crancia, and it cannot be defeated and innovated just by relying on everyone's blood. It will face more severe challenges."
"I'm just a small person. There are actually quite a few people who see this as clearly as I do. But why is it still like this? It's just that everyone is in it and can't change it."
"Heroes come from millions of people, but not everyone can become a hero. The courage, perseverance, luck, wisdom, etc. required for this are all so rare and rare..."
"After I failed several times, I clearly understood that I could only do this. I was not the one chosen by fate, and I did not have that kind of vision and courage."
"I can't see through the fog of history, and I don't understand how to unite everyone willingly under the same dream."
"I just hope that when such a person appears, I will still be alive and be able to step forward, stand behind him, and run with him towards that magnificent ideal future."
"Maybe at that time, even if you can't be called a hero, you can finally have a clear conscience."