wild trail

Chapter 400 Is There a Salt Department?
Zhou Yu's hand couldn't help touching his waist. It is extremely inconvenient to use bows and arrows in the dark. If there is a battle, the waist knife is the best weapon.

After a stalemate between the two sides for a while, a rather strong man came out from among the savages on the opposite side. Looking at this fierce man, the team members suddenly felt a sense of threat.

The captain swallowed, and the hand holding the handle of the knife couldn't help but tighten a little.

"Who are you?"

the captain asked again.

The strong man stared at the captain for a while, then said, "Western! Xia!"

Although these syllables were not very standard, they heard them clearly. It was really surprising that these people could speak the language of the Xia Kingdom and even knew about the existence of the Xia Kingdom.

This place is at least hundreds of miles away from Xia Kingdom, and the exploration of this mountain range more than ten years ago was just a mark on the map, and it has not been explored in depth, and it is impossible to have contact with these mountain people.

"Do you know Xia Guo?" asked Dui Chang.

The strong man nodded and said: "Western, tribal, strong, Xia, hair, the same as you, people, live here."

Listening to the very awkward language, everyone couldn't help but look at each other, trying to sort out these words in their minds,

"Are you saying that there are Xia people living here?" The captain asked in surprise.

The man nodded and said: "A long time ago, I came here and died."

Everyone's expressions changed, and they looked at these savages as if they were facing a formidable enemy.

"How did you die?" the captain asked coldly.

The man didn't care about the nervousness of these people, and said in a calm tone: "Old and dead!"

Hearing this answer, everyone was taken aback. Just now they thought that these people had some hatred for Xia Guo. Since the Xia Guo man who didn't know his name died of old age, then these people should not have any malice towards them.

"What do you come to see us for?" asked the elder.

"Weapons, clothes, exchange these." He turned and gestured to the tribe behind him, and saw a few wild men walking out with their backpacks on their backs, and put down the backpacks. Under the light of the fire, the stone exuded a charming metallic luster.

"Captain, these are not what we are looking for!" whispered around.

The captain didn't answer, took a deep breath, and mustered up the courage to walk towards the two baskets of goods.

The savages didn't do anything threatening, which made everyone heave a sigh of relief.

The captain took out a stone from the back basket and took a closer look at the fire. This kind of ore was off-white. It was a new metal that Xia Guo had never discovered before. It doesn't matter what the specific use of the metal is, but as long as the metal is definitely a good thing, there is nothing wrong with this.

But these savages wanted to exchange weapons and clothes with him, which made him feel embarrassed. The weapons in their hands were kept for their own use. If they were given to them, how would they survive? But he didn't want to give up these metals either. , even though they can take out so much ore, they obviously know where the metal mine is.

Standing up and looking at the man, the captain said, "I can't give you weapons and clothes. These things are more useful to us now than these stones."

After listening to the captain's words, the strong man was not surprised, and said, "Let's go to the west, Xia, change weapons, worry about the danger, we go together."

The captain shook his head and said, "This won't work. We have important things to do now, and we won't be able to return to Xia Guo for a long time. I'm afraid this will disappoint you."

The man turned around and discussed with the rest of the tribe for a while, "No way, go to Xia Kingdom, or use your weapons. Without weapons, you can't live here."

The captain narrowed his eyes and said with a sneer: "What is it that you can't live? Do you want to fight us? Although we are not soldiers, but you want to threaten us with our numbers, then you may be wrong."

After finishing the long passage, the strong man shook his head again and again and said, "You are wrong, monsters in the mountains, weapons kill monsters!"

"Monster? What monster?" asked the captain.

"It's huge, and it ate a lot of people."

Seeing that the conversation continued like this, and there was nothing to ask, the captain had no choice but to say, "How about taking us to meet that monster?"

The man scratched his head and thought about it, and then whispered to the people behind him for a while.

"Yes!" The man nodded.

"Today is too late. If you agree, we will meet at the foot of the mountain after dawn, how about it?"

The man thought for a while and said, "Okay, see you at the foot of the mountain at dawn."

After speaking, he took the savage behind him and quickly disappeared into the darkness.

After these savages left, the team members surrounded them and asked, "Captain, what should we do? Can we trust these savages?"

"It's unclear whether it's true or not, but they know Xia Guo and can speak the language of Xia Guo, which proves that part of what they said should be true. We will follow them to see tomorrow, but remember, we must not leave Scatter, if something is wrong, we will take the lead, if we are in danger, we must not be willing to fight, and escape here as soon as possible." The captain said slowly.

"Captain, we can just escape now, why do such a dangerous thing?" Someone asked.

The captain pointed to the two baskets of ore over there, and said: "That thing, they must know where it came from. Our main task is to find ore. If this new ore is brought back, it may be extremely beneficial to us. "

The others looked at the off-white stones, nodded, and said nothing more.

"Be careful tonight, these people come from unknown sources, it's better to be careful." The captain ordered.

Everyone naturally knew the severity and expressed their understanding one after another.

After spending the night in fear, the next morning, after all the heat woke up, I packed up my things and walked towards the foot of the mountain.

When everyone came to the foot of the mountain, they saw those savages had already been waiting there.

In the dark night, the team members didn't see clearly how many people came from the savages. Taking a quick look now, they found that there were at least 30 people, and all of them were middle-aged men.

These people were naked from the upper body, with only a piece of animal skin around their waists. The bulging muscles under the bronze skin made them look extremely sturdy.

"We are here, let's go!" The captain said in a deep voice.

The man nodded and waved his hand. Led by these wild men with wooden spears, the expedition team slowly followed them.

The road the savages walked was very rugged. After climbing over two hills, after walking for half a day, they all came to a very secret cave.

"In the cave, our tribe." The man pointed to the cave and explained.

The captain nodded, signaling him to move on.

Walking into the cave, the vision suddenly became dim. The cave was very humid, and from time to time, water droplets fell from above and fell into the puddles on the ground, making a crisp sound.

As he got deeper and deeper into the cave, the sunlight could hardly reach here, Zhou Yu's eyes could only see a blurry figure in front of him, and he could hardly see his fingers in the dark cave.

Holding on to the rock wall, everyone followed carefully. After walking for about 20 minutes, the vision gradually became much clearer.

After a winding road, everyone finally walked out of the cave. Except for the cave, everyone found themselves in a valley.

And the entrance of the cave was on an extremely steep hillside. Zhou Yu supported the raised rock and looked down, feeling dizzy all of a sudden.

Looking down from here, there are at least a few hundred meters in height, and the hillside is full of thorns and strange rocks.

If the foot slips and accidentally rolls down, it will definitely die.

The team members were all taken aback by the sight in front of them, and watched the mountain closely to prevent themselves from accidentally slipping down.

"What did you bring us here for?" the captain asked a little dissatisfied.

"Horde, there."

The man pointed to a lake in the distance.

The captain set up a pergola to look over there, and indeed he vaguely saw that there were traces of human activities near the lake reflecting the sunlight.

He nodded and said, "Let's go, it's too dangerous here."

The man didn't say anything, and continued to walk forward with everyone.

Perhaps it is the reason why these people have lived here for a long time. Such a rugged terrain is like walking on flat ground, which made the expedition members feel terrified.

After finally reaching the foot of the mountain, everyone felt that their legs were weak, as if they had gone through the gate of hell along the way.

After repairing for a while, after walking through the creek and woods for a day, under the leadership of these savages, everyone came to the tribe of these savages.

The savages who stayed behind in the tribe stopped what they were doing and stood up to look at the outsiders like Zhou Yu.

This tribe can be said to be a medium-sized tribe, with about 100 people. Zhou Yu saw that these people even knew how to make pottery, and he also saw people fishing with nets by the lake.

But at this time, the man shouted something to them, and these people looked at Zhou Yu and the others with much hotter eyes.

"Captain, what's going on?" Zhou Yu said worriedly.

"Don't be nervous, don't do unnecessary things, so as not to cause misunderstanding?" the captain warned.

Everyone nodded and walked into the tribe cautiously.

The man led the expedition to a clearing and said, "Sit! Food, coming soon!"

Everyone looked at each other, but they didn't dare to continue. In this case, only standing can take out the weapon as quickly as possible.

"Half of the people stood guard, and the other half sat down to rest." The captain ordered.

Everyone sat cross-legged on the ground, facing those savages.

Not long after, several female savages brought clay pots, and those clay cups brought clean water to the team members.

Due to his special skin color, Zhou Yu stood out among a group of black-haired people, feeling the gazes that fell on him from time to time, which made Zhou Yu very irritable.

No one went to drink and brought fresh water, the captain picked up the quilt and put it down again, and said to the strong man, "What's your name?"

The man looked at the captain in confusion, not understanding the meaning of this sentence.

Seeing his expression, the captain immediately reacted, and asked another way, "What's your name?"

"Zhou Yan! The name given by the old patriarch." The man said in a deep voice.

"Zhou Yan, actually has a surname, and it's still Zhou's surname." The captain was a little surprised.

Zhao Qian, Sun Li, Zhou Wu, Zheng Wang, these surnames can be said to be the earliest surnames in the Xia Kingdom, but the Wang surname is the surname of the emperor, and the Xia Kingdom only has the royal family surnamed Wang.

Different from today, these eight surnames were a symbol of status more than ten years ago, and they could not be owned by just one person.

According to what this person said, the Xia people who came here should be the earliest group of people in the Xia country. In his impression, the Xia country should have just been established not long ago, or there was still salt at that time. Department is not necessarily.

"Excuse me, what's the name of the old patriarch!" the captain asked.

"Zhou Feng!" Zhou Yan said in a deep voice.

None of the team members had heard of the name Zhou Feng, which made them even more confused.

"What's the name of your tribe?" the captain continued to ask.

"There is a salt department!"

"What?" This time, not only the captain, but also the rest of the expedition team members had expressions of disbelief.

Zhou Yan looked at the crowd with some surprise, and said, "Xiaren, is there any problem with the name?"

"You can know that Youyanbu is the former name of our Xia Kingdom!" the captain said seriously.

Unexpectedly, Zhou Yan nodded and said: "The old patriarch said that his tribe has the Yan Department!"

"I want to know why your old patriarch came here!" the captain asked.

Zhou Yan was silent for a while and said: "Expedition, the fourth team, attacked by wild beasts, got lost, came here injured, three companions died, and the old patriarch's leg was broken. I learned to follow him, my father."

The captain frowned, he couldn't remember anything about the Fourth Expedition more than ten years ago.

Looking at the other people, they also had a puzzled look on their faces.

This is Zhou Yu raised his eyebrows, walked to his side and said, "Captain, I may have a guess about this matter."

"What a guess."

"It's like this. I've heard people talk about the events before the Xia Kingdom. More than ten years ago, after the Xia Kingdom conquered the five tribes of the grassland, it was still planning to establish a country. At that time, His Majesty the Emperor also formed an expedition team. It’s like what we are now, but the weapons at that time were still inferior bronzes, and many expeditions that went out did not come back, I wonder if it has something to do with this.” Zhou Yu said slowly.

"And this thing?" The rest of the people also looked at Zhou Yu curiously.

Zhou Yu nodded and said: "There is indeed such a thing. When I returned to Yucheng, I heard from those veterans that they had participated in the expedition team before. I was curious and chatted with them for a while, probably Learn something."

"So that's how it was explained. I guess it was the previous expedition team. They were attacked by some kind of wild beast. The team members suffered heavy casualties. The rest of them lost their way in a panic and finally fled here. He said three The companion died. It may be that there were four people who came here at that time. In the end, only Zhou Feng survived. However, he may not be able to return to Xia due to physical reasons. In the end, he stayed here and became the patriarch of these people. You can see Is their way of life very similar to our tribal period." The captain combined the information and analyzed.

(End of this chapter)