Chapter 300 – Difficulty Hurrying Along
A large group walked slowly on the endless, snow-covered prairie. Looking at the scene, it was like they were lice walking on a bald person’s head.
At this time, there was nobody else on the plains. Prairie winter was terrible; cold winds, snowstorms, and wolf packs are the most fearful things currently on the prairie.
Beastmen rarely leave their camps during winter, even more so a group of them. The group numbered about five hundred thousand beastmen. Although the snowy lands were full of perils, the group didn’t stop moving along.
If you look at it closely, these group of beastmen were not only the young and strong, there were also many elderly, children, and women present, it was like an entire tribe was moving.
The group was precisely the Herculean Bull tribe. On this expedition, not only did the young and strong go, everybody went.
There was a saying in the prairie, ‘Beastmen were long lasting’, so long as they are still breathing, they’re still dangerous. This fully explained the fighting strength of the Beastmen, some elderly beastmen were sometimes more difficult to deal with than the younger ones, this was because although their strength wasn’t as great as before, they still had experience that the young ones didn’t have.
The Herculean Bull women were also cannot be dealt with easily. Although they did not study beastmen soul techniques, they were still Herculean Bulls in the end with their innate divine strength. A fully mature female Herculean Bull would have strength comparable to a human 4th rank warrior, this made the Herculean Bulls quite fearsome among the beastmen.
The Herculean Bulls had to choice but go all out, currently, there were no child too young nor an elder too old, all of them would be unable to escape the Fighting Bulls, they can only become slaves. Under this circumstance, Wales decided to have everyone march together and fight it out with the entire clan, otherwise the clan would rather die.
Zhao Hai followed the group, but he was inside his carriage instead of riding a mount outside like other people. Their carriage was covered with thick sheepskin since Laura couldn’t handle the cold.
In fact, while inside the carriage and behind shut doors, Zhao Hai and the group went inside the space, so they didn’t suffer much. Meg immediately went to the villa’s kitchen to heat up some tea and brought it in the living room.
Laura drank her cup of hot tea, making her feel better. Laura put her cup down and sighed, “Being inside the space is good, I think I’ll freeze to death outside.”
Zhao Hai smiled and said, “Is it too freezing cold? I feel pretty fine, not really feeling anything.”
Laura looked at Zhao Hai, “Brother Hai, didn’t you always live in the imperial capital? You should be like me who can’t handle the cold, but why aren’t you a least bit affected?”
Zhao Hai faintly smiled, “You forget, I’m a mage, so I’m quite resistant to cold, hehe.”
In fact, this is only but one reason why Zhao Hai can take cold compared to Laura. But Laura was already convinced of this reason, she nodded “That’s good, I’m afraid of you becoming sick, it’ll be quite troublesome.”
Zhao Hai smiled and replied, “Don’t worry, my body is very healthy now that I drink life liquid everyday, if I were to get sick, I’m afraid all other people could only be worse.”
While Zhao Hai and the others were chatting and laughing inside the space, Wales and the others outside weren’t faring very well. Their bodies were fully wrapped with sheepskin, even their mounts were covered. On their hands were alcohol bags, the necks of the bags were exposed and if the beastmen were to feel too cold, they would chug some liquor into their stomachs to raise their body temperature, so that they could feel a little bit better.
Marching during winter was a great trial for beastmen, it required endurance and the nerves to survive the task. Fortunately Wales had prepared heavily beforehand, otherwise all of them would be long dead.
In complete contrast to the prairie’s cold weather, Iron Mountain Fort’s weather was far from cold, the people were even wearing unpadded clothes. Since it was currently winter in the prairie, Zhao Hai went to Iron Mountain fort. Compared to the prairie, Iron Mountain Fort was completely different, the grass was green here, as though the two places were from two different worlds.
Zhao Hai knew why the weather in Iron Mountain Fort was such. Firstly, because it was surrounded by the Iron Mountains, winter still hadn’t arrived here. Secondly, its because Cai’er managed to maintain the temperature, therefore place was still relatively warm.
Since Iron Mountain Fort was fine, Zhao Hai didn’t worry about it anymore, and instead focused his mind on the prairie helping Wales.
After a day’s journey, night came, Wales had everyone stop, make their shelters, and prepare for resting. They didn’t worry about dinner since they already had steaming hot mutton to eat.
This was also Zhao Hai’s idea, he told Wales to cook the mutton then Zhao Hai would store them while still warm. As long as the food was stored inside the space, it would retain its properties when taken out again.
Upon hearing what Zhao Hai said, Wales immediately changed the way they prepared rations. After they boiled the mutton, they immediately gave it to Zhao Hai. In this matter, when the time for eating came, they’ll have hot and delicious mutton which, in this winter weather, made the people happy.
After constructing their tents, Zhao Hai immediately went to give everyone their food. He was quite busy, imagine catering for five hundred thousand people, its not an easy task.
However, Zhao Hai didn’t complain since he knew that these beastmen just marched the whole day while being cold and hungry. Because of this, Zhao Hai didn’t make them leave their tents and instead he just delivered the food himself.[1]
Now that they were going for battle, the clan was not separated according to their families, but instead they were divided by gender. Each tent would have 20 people each and had separate tents for men and women.
In order to avoid accidents, there were no fires inside the tents, so they had to sleep on their sheepskins. But after eating the warm mutton and drinking the hot soup, they felt much better.
When Zhao Hai was sending mutton and soup to the people, he also had the mounts be given their fodder. This was also prepared by Wales before and had Zhao Hai store them in the space.[2]
The Herculean Bulls had developed an extreme fondness for Zhao Hao, before they went to battle, they already experienced this treatment. They knew that if Zhao Hai was present, the logistical problems was solved.
While all of these was happening, Wales was right beside Zhao Hai. He often asked his clansmen how they were. Such actions moved his clansmen, you can say that Wales had already captured the hearts of all his clansmen.
Because they had to hurry during the daytime, they could only have two meals each day, one in the morning and one in the night. They used almost all the time during daytime to travel, almost nobody had time so dismount.
This method of hurrying along, which was very taxing for anyone, made Zhao Hai view the tenacity of the beastmen.
After given the Herculean Bulls their meals, Zhao Hai and the group gathered inside Wales’ tent since they still hadn’t eaten. They ate the same as the other Herculean Bulls, mutton and soup.
Wales drank some soup and let out a long breath, “Little Hai, we are very happy ah. To be so relaxed before the battle.”
Kony smiled and said, “It it isn’t only that, even before, when we go to battles during summertime it isn’t as comfortable as this time.”
But at this time, Yale knit his eyebrows as he said, “Currently our issue is that the time for travels are just too small. In the morning we collect our tents, and at the evening we set them up, thus there wouldn’t be enough time for travelling. Now adding the occasional snowfalls, the distance that we would travel is too short.”
Wales put down his bowl and also frowned, he had no solution for this matter. In the summer, they can afford to not pitch their tents, just lie down using their sheepskin on the grass at nights. But in the winter it won’t work since one would freeze to death.
Zhao Hai looked at Wales’ expression and said, “Brother, how about this, tomorrow don’t worry about deconstructing the tents, just proceed along. I’ll go fetch the tents and store them on my space, and at night I’ll just take it out, what do you think?”
Wales replied, “How would you dismantle the tent?”
Zhao Hai faintly smiled, “They don’t need to be demolished, I’ll just store them as they were, isn’t that fine?” In fact, Zhao Hai’s tent was already pitched inside the space, so when the time for resting arrived, he’ll just take it out while Wales would still pitch his.
But now that it seems that pitching and unpitching a tent was a waste of time, so Zhao Hai decided to store them as a whole.
Wales was surprised, “Can you store them all?”
Zhao Hai shook his head, “I’m not sure, if we can store them then that’ll be best so we can save a lot of time. We still need to try.”
Wales nodded, “Very well, let’s try that, that would be the best, then we would have more time to move along.”
Mendez said, “According to our present progress, we should arrive at the old camp in about half a month or so. Little Hai, have you sent some blood hawks to monitor the Fighting Bulls that are in the old camp?”
Zhao Hai nodded, “Be relieved, Sixth Brother, they were still there at this time, it’s seems that they didn’t leave the camp for the winter.”
Wales’ eyes lit up with a cold gaze, “That is good, a chance of revenge is finally here!”
1. Now that’s just impossible, how long would it take?!
2. They didn’t know about the space, per se. They only know that Zhao Hai had space items.
