Mount and Blade Central Asia

But obviously, as an emerging force, the Black Sheep People have not yet fallen to that level. Abelji soon discovered the patrolling Black Sheep People's regular army near the castle. There were quite a few of them and they looked mighty, with the size of several centuries.

Abelji had to temporarily curb his ambitions, his eyes fixed on the direction of the castle, his mind filled with the scene of himself standing on the balcony, overlooking the entire city every day.

Yes, that’s right, just like Shaman Rufeng!

Chapter 481 The world's talents belong to the Ming Dynasty

"Sir Wang, we have established contact with the shaman of unknown origin. Judging from his facial features, he is undoubtedly Han Chinese, tall and handsome, but his origins are currently unknown.

Moreover, the other party has a very high prestige among the Mughals. Contrary to what I had previously speculated, he is the actual leader of this Mughal group, and no other forces have been found secretly supporting him.

This person attaches great importance to trade, takes good care of the caravans, and often reduces or exempts taxes. After preliminary investigation, we found that the other party's financial support may be the dowry of Princess Parisa, the granddaughter of Timur the Lame.

Furthermore, after preliminary exploration, I believe the future fleet's route can be extended to the vicinity of Shiraz. Li Rufeng possesses a large number of Western Region war horses that can be supplied to the Ming cavalry. This breed is exceptionally tough and far taller than the Ming's existing warhorses, possessing the advantages of both Mongolian and Ferghana horses.

As Weng Guo spoke, he was thinking about whether he had missed any information that needed to be reported. Next to him, a Jinyiwei spy who looked like a local was sitting there and wrote all the information Weng Guo had said in tiny calligraphy on a piece of paper with a red talisman drawn on it.

The room they were in was in the Aleppo market area. It was a two-story building. The first floor was converted into a warehouse for storing goods, and the second floor was the liaison hall of the Jinyiwei. Several Jinyiwei spies stationed in Aleppo were stationed here.

If they had strictly followed the requirements of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, they should not have established a fixed base in such a high-profile manner. However, this land is now considered a no-man's land, and there is no so-called counter-espionage awareness at all. Weng Guo and his men had no defenses, so they just did whatever they wanted.

Anyway, there is no superior to supervise them in this area, so as long as they don’t report themselves, they don’t have to worry about punishment.

Weng Guo looked at Liu Guangyue sitting there writing seriously, his face full of envy. He was a half-Hu man who changed his career and joined the Jinyiwei, and from his appearance, he looked more like a Han Chinese than Liu Guangyue.

But who would have thought that this colleague named Liu Guangyue, who had an Arab face, was actually a serious Ming Dynasty scholar who was born and raised in the Ming Dynasty, could speak Chinese and write Chinese characters, and was said to have passed the examination for a scholar.

However, when he thought that Liu Guangyue was ultimately unable to advance due to his bloodline and could only go on field missions with an "old Mongolian" like him who defected halfway, he felt a lot more balanced.

Other scholars have to travel thousands of miles away from home to find opportunities to make achievements. If I don’t come here, are I just waiting for a pie to fall from the sky?

"And..." Weng Guo watched the other party write down his words, and he couldn't stop. He thought of a few less important pieces of information and planned to tell them by the way, but was directly rejected by Liu Guangyue.

"Alright, old man, if you write any more, I won't be able to send it out. I didn't sleep well last night, and we're too far away. There's not even a Taoist temple or pagoda in between. If it's over 300 words, I can't guarantee it will be sent in full." Liu Guangyue glanced at Weng Guo and said unhappily, "If you envy me for being able to write, then practice your calligraphy. Every time..."

"Don't we have you? Why should I learn that thing? It's not that I can't write, I just can't write well." Weng Guo got a headache when he heard it, and quickly waved his hands to signal the other party to burn the paper quickly and not to make things difficult for himself.

Seeing this, Liu Guangyue didn't say anything more. He just washed his hands with clean water, then flipped his hand and inserted three incense sticks into a small copper tripod. Then he waved his hand again and the three incense sticks spontaneously combusted without fire.

The soil is the old soil in front of the ancestral tomb, and the incense is the message incense brought by the Jinyiwei from the Taoist temple from afar. The bottom of the incense has the genuine stuff with the temple priest's approval document. It is said that Liu Guangyue's ancestor was a Hu person who came here, which is a bit of a bonus. Otherwise, it would be difficult to send the news over such a long distance.

"The God of Wind and the God of Rain, Ji Bo and Xuan Ming, control the news of the eight winds and understand the climate of the five elements! They stimulate it with thunder and lightning, and moisten it with wind and rain! Now I have a disciple named Liu Guangyue, who is asked to deliver a letter. The God of Wind Fang Tianjun and the God of Rain Chen Tianjun, please hurry up and obey the order! Go!" Liu Guangyue chanted the spell with a subtle expression on his face.

Then he folded the paper into a special shape in his hand and drew it over the incense, and it started to burn with a whoosh.

Weng Guo couldn't help but hold his breath, because the flame was not big and the paper burned very slowly, as if it would go out in the next second.

Wisps of black smoke mixed with the green smoke from burning incense floated upwards. It took more than two hundred heartbeats to burn a piece of letter paper. You have to know that Weng Guo and Liu Guangyue were both spies of the Jinyiwei, but they had the habit of practicing martial arts, and their heart rates were slower than normal people.

So it took more than four minutes for the letter paper to burn completely. After Liu Guangyue made sure that the letter paper was completely burned, his first reaction was to directly extinguish the three incense sticks, with an expression of great loss on his face.

"I'm wondering if you people from Tongxuansi are so stingy with your superiors now?" Weng Guo felt his scalp tingling as he looked at the incense sticks that had two-thirds left but had been choked out.

As Weng Guo spoke, he pointed upwards cautiously with his finger.

"Isn't this a special case and deserves special treatment? After all, we are not in the country, so we have to use many things sparingly." Liu Guangyue was stunned for a moment, and when he saw the other party pointing upwards, he showed an expression of sudden realization and pushed open the window to let the smoke dissipate.

"And my teacher said that the relationship between humans and gods should be equal. If humans pay respect to gods one foot, gods should return the respect one foot. This is in accordance with etiquette and law. If it is not in accordance with..." At this point, a more subtle expression emerged on Liu Guangyue's face, as if he had a big secret that he wanted to share, but was forced to keep it secret and could not say it, and he felt uncomfortable.

"Okay, I understand. You don't need to say anything more." Weng Guo took one look at the other party's constipated expression and had a general idea in his mind. He immediately put on an attitude of not wanting to listen, not wanting to know, and not knowing.

"If it doesn't match, then it's an evil god. All the demons and monsters should be killed!" Liu Guangyue whispered in a voice that only he could hear, and even his expression when he looked towards the east was pious, as if he was looking at the sun.

Weng Guo didn't know whether he heard or not. He still looked dazed, leaning against the window and looking at the bustling street below. Suddenly, he pointed at a newly opened restaurant in the distance and called to his companions: "Lao Liu, look at that place and see if it's new. I don't know what kind of food they sell. Let's go there and try it. That damn shaman is really capable. This Aleppo person is really lucky!"

Liu Guangyue looked at the crowds of people on the street and felt that the shaman named Li Rufeng was a talent, and in his eyes, such talents should be used by the Ming Dynasty.

Chapter 482 Strategic Transition

After raining for a whole day and night, the rain finally stopped. Even if this damn rain had continued for another hour, Li Rufeng would have been ready to pack up and go home.

Li Rufeng poked the muddy ground with a wooden stick in disgust. Even a mediocre cavalryman like him could see that in this muddy ground after the rain, every cavalryman who galloped on horseback had to be prepared to break the horse's legs and be left with a broken brain.

Such weather was a disaster for the pure cavalry team he led, and what was worse was that Li Rufeng's artillery unit completely lost its combat effectiveness.

The cannons, which were much heavier than the cavalry themselves, left deep ruts on the ground from the wheels of the carriages, and the pack horses needed to take a deep breath every few hundred meters.

What's worse is that although the artillerymen have been carefully preserving the gunpowder, the gunpowder has become unusable due to moisture or water.

Although no matter what, Li Rufeng and his men had lost the ability to attack the city.

But there is good news. After all, the rain did not only stop on Li Rufeng's head. The Black Sheep People, who also mainly relied on cavalry, also found it difficult to move forward.

From Li Rufeng's strategic map perspective, the Black Sheep scouts could only travel light and at a slow pace, making it impossible to conduct effective reconnaissance.

"It'll take at least two days before the horses can run." Hadan Erba scooped a handful of mud from the ground and spread it evenly on his palm, saying to Li Rufeng, "Also, the grass has been too moist these days, so the horses can't just eat it. They'll get diarrhea easily. We'll have to rely on people behind to carry dry feed forward."

As a Mongol, Hadan Erba was first and foremost an experienced herdsman, and only secondarily a skilled warrior.

Two days is just enough time for the Black Sheep people to react, mobilize more troops from other places, or simply temporarily give up the attack on the White Sheep people to encircle Li Rufeng's troops.

This made Li Rufeng wonder whether this heavy rain was created by the black wizards under the Black Sheep King to temporarily block the progress of the war... However, this rain was too heavy, almost the heaviest rainfall Li Rufeng had ever seen since he traveled through time. If those black wizards were really capable of doing such a thing, he would have to consider the issue of shrinking his defense.

Damn it! Li Rufeng felt that he had just found pleasure in the war, and those dark wizards jumped out and kept bothering him. God bless you, once he takes over this place, all those dark wizards will lose their heads one by one!

But no matter how Li Rufeng vented in his heart, he had to face a realistic choice: either continue to approach Batman at a speed that was unacceptable for cavalry units, and then besiege Batman without artillery support, or shift strategy backward and transfer the phased target to the city of Mardin.

In terms of size, the Black Sheep people, who have a much larger base, have more time advantages. After all, as long as the Black Sheep King is willing to give up some interests on the border, he can always mobilize more troops from the eastern front.

Of course, Li Rufeng was not aware of the political oppression within the Black Sheep people at this time. He only knew that if he wanted to achieve the strategic goal of making a small profit with a big investment, he had to use speed to defeat slow and constantly form local advantages to suit his interests.

"Shaman Rufeng, how do we go down?" Although Hadanerba was already an experienced centurion, as Li Rufeng's personal guard, he was still used to obeying Li Rufeng's orders directly.

But it was obvious that Hadanerba was more inclined to take the city of Mardin first. Although the Mughals were accustomed to bypassing the enemy's heavily fortified fortresses and cities and invading the enemy's country and territory, the one who led them at that time was the great conqueror Timur, who spent decades proving to the world how powerful his army was.

The rangers who had crossed the enemy's line first knew that it would not be long before they would receive support from the main force. Now leading them in battle was the much younger Shaman Rufeng. Although Hadanerba was Li Rufeng's personal guard and could guarantee absolute loyalty due to the system, the human part of Hadanerba, the part that belonged to him, was still worried about the overall situation of the war.

After all, although Li Rufeng had proven himself in the war, it was still not enough compared to the great conqueror.

Li Rufeng could certainly see the concerns of his officers and soldiers. Some were about the war itself, some were about him, and some were about the heavy rain. The system informed Li Rufeng of the change in morale in a more straightforward way.

(March 26, 1409, affected by weather, morale -7)

(March 27, 1409, affected by weather, morale -3)

Obviously, after being drenched all night and then endured a whole day, the soldiers' morale is continuing to decline. Master Li estimates that if the sun does not come out tomorrow, the morale of the soldiers who cannot even dry their clothes will continue to decline.

It was no longer feasible to continue advancing, unless Li Rufeng could lead these soldiers to find a village nearby suitable for looting...

But at least from Li Rufeng's strategic map perspective, he has not yet found a village that meets the requirements. This place was originally the border between the territories of the Black Sheep and the White Sheep. Any place worth grabbing would have been visited by the Black Sheep.

"You take your men back to the direction of Mardin City temporarily. I will take a hundred-man team and travel light. We must go to see Batman to make our trip worthwhile." After thinking deeply for a few minutes in the strategic land interface, Li Rufeng finally gave the final order.

"Shaman Rufeng, they are all experienced veterans and will not get lost. Let me follow you!" Hadanerba was unwilling to let Li Rufeng take risks alone. He himself was a centurion, and the communication and cooperation between him and Li Rufeng was more convenient and tacit than the other centurions.

Moreover, as a large number of personal guards were added to the front-line troops, the defensive capabilities around Li Rufeng were greatly reduced. After all, this was a battlefield, and any accidents could happen. Hadanerba was worried about other people following him.

"No, take them back and protect the cannons at the back!" Li Rufeng said, pressing Hadanerba's shoulder. "Take those cannons back to Mardin. Don't worry about wasting gunpowder. Let Diobiya bombard me day and night!"

Martin is also a big city, so Li Rufeng did not expect that the eight cannons he had that could be loaded onto carriages and used together with cavalry could directly capture a city. He only hoped to terrify the black sheep people in the city.

Then, Mr. Li can use the secret passage that has not been discovered yet to perform another secret infiltration.

Hadanerba finally obeyed Li Rufeng's orders. After all, he was classified as Li Rufeng's direct soldier in the system interface. As long as the morale did not collapse, these guards could act as death squads and dare to charge forward even in the face of mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

In the past few years, Li Rufeng didn't feel that the system he had was so useful. He could only say that this system lived up to its name, Mount & Blade. It would only start to work when fighting broke out and blood flowed like a river.

Li Rufeng smiled as he looked at the experience points he had accumulated from the war of attrition with the Black Sheep people over the past few days. At this rate, the day when he could lead a large army would not be far away.

Chapter 483 Dark Wizard

March 27, 1409, outside Batman.

As a man with a system, Li Rufeng had actually seen the situation inside Batman City long before the team approached Batman, but the sun had not risen yet, so he could not see it clearly from the strategic map perspective.

As a typical multi-ethnic and multi-cultural city, Batman, like several other cities in the area, looks like some kind of weird avant-garde park from a bird's-eye view. On the left side of the city is an Arab-style dome mosque with a slender minaret sticking out like a spear, while on the right side is a fortress-like Christian church. A straight road separates them, and scattered small houses serve as embellishments to this cultural conflict.

This is a city with a sense of division that you can see from its external conditions. Similarly, its residents are divided into two parts by the road, symbolizing the opposition between two worlds.

But now all this has been interrupted by the Black Sheep. As an important node city for the Black Sheep to attack the White Sheep, the city wall that Batmana originally built to deal with the different religious beliefs on both sides and constantly calling for help has become the Black Sheep's defensive fortification.

Now, whether it is a mosque or a church, they have all become military camps of the Black Sheep...

The original population of this city was only over 4,000, but the number of Black Sheep soldiers passing through here for supplies during this period was more than that. As the saying goes, bandits pass by like a comb and soldiers pass by like a rake. From Li Rufeng's perspective, this city has become devastated.

Looking around, half of the houses on both sides of the road had been demolished on the spot, and some bloodstains were faintly visible in the wreckage. It was obvious that some unspeakable tragedy had occurred in the process of the Black Sheep People entering the city.

When the sun rose completely, Li Rufeng was less than two kilometers away from the city in a straight line. From the perspective of the strategic map, he could see the details of the city more clearly.

In the northeast corner of the city, in a building structure that looked like it had once been a monastery, hundreds of corpses were piled up in a small square surrounded by the monastery walls. Hundreds of Black Sheep soldiers were piling firewood inside, apparently preparing to burn the bodies.

Human blood completely dyed the small square of the monastery red. The red was so conspicuous that Li Rufeng saw the scene at a glance after dawn.

It can be seen that the Black Sheep people who were carrying out the mission were also very resistant. From time to time, a soldier fell in a pool of blood, vomiting and cursing in a miserable state, but no one dared to stop and slack off. Everyone moved mechanically like a clockwork doll.

Li Rufeng guessed that they might have been working all night, but apart from these Black Sheep men, the other Black Sheep soldiers stationed on the scene obviously knew nothing about what was happening here.

Judging from the strategic map, the garrisons in other parts of the city were some distance away from the monastery. Based on Li Rufeng's understanding of the Black Sheep, he suspected the massacre was the work of a dark wizard. The massacre in the monastery might be another blood sacrifice ritual...

And that heavy rain was most likely the direct result of this blood sacrifice.

Sometimes he really couldn't understand if the natives of this land had gone mad. Wherever the great conqueror Timur passed, all life was in ruins, and not a blade of grass remained. Now that the great conqueror was dead, the reunited Black Sheep people were showing a posture of surpassing their predecessor in maintaining their bloody rule.

From the time Li Rufeng occupied Aleppo until now, he has been worried about insufficient human resources.

Due to insufficient human resources, he did not even build a prison in Aleppo, because he had no spare staff to look after the prisoners, and even the prisoners themselves needed to work.

The situation Li Rufeng often faced was that while some people were repairing the city walls, no one was paving the roads; while while some people were paving the roads, no one was repairing the damaged buildings in the city.

Developing the blacksmith district's industry requires people, developing the wasteland outside the city also requires people, fighting wars requires people, logistics requires people, and even trade requires enough people to operate...

If there wasn't a plague in Damascus, Li Rufeng would have already taken his gold and bought slaves in large quantities.

Although he had ordered the massacre of villages during the war and condoned the soldiers' acts of burning, killing and looting, Li Rufeng still felt angry at the act of treating human lives as worthless.

This kind of anger is more derived from human instinct. Li Rufeng can accept that humans die from hunger, natural disasters, and man-made disasters, but as a time traveler, he cannot accept that humans are treated like animals and placed on the altar as some kind of sacrifice.

"Follow me!" Li Rufeng skillfully controlled his warhorse and began to speed up, moving along a small path towards the east side of Batman, while the cavalrymen behind him followed without complaint.

In this war against the Black Sheep People, Li Rufeng has consolidated his image in the hearts of the soldiers. He can always anticipate the enemy's moves and discover the enemy's position one step ahead. Many soldiers have rumored that Li Rufeng has a third eye on his forehead, and that eye represents Changshengtian, which can see things on the earth from the sky.

Otherwise, it cannot explain why Li Rufeng knew "what's happening on the other side of the mountain". Such rumors are very helpful for Li Rufeng to shape his own legendary story. If it were placed in the DND world view, he would probably give a prompt such as "Your reputation spreads in the army, regional legend degree +1".

So when Li Rufeng seemingly picked a random direction and began to accelerate, everyone, from the centurion to the soldiers, followed without a word. This was despite the fact that this was already considered the Black Sheep's territory, despite the fact that Batman was the Black Sheep's logistics center and the city was likely crammed with fully armed Black Sheep, and despite the fact that the soldiers of this centurion couldn't even afford a single set of armor, and Li Rufeng was the only one in the entire army wearing chain mail...

This is because Li Rufeng's horse is good and has a stronger load-bearing capacity than other people's war horses. Moreover, Li Rufeng himself does not undertake front-line combat missions and does not need to carry so many weapons, so he is able to wear such an extra set of armor.

Li Rufeng's target this time was a small force of less than twenty people. He had been watching them for half an hour. The team left the monastery and headed east from Batman. They were now walking on a small path.

He could clearly see from the strategic map that there was a man in a black robe in the team. From a distance, he looked exactly like the black wizard Azadirim who had caused him trouble.

He didn't know why the dark wizard had so few people around him, but this was clearly an opportunity.

Chapter 484: Catch someone alive

Judging from the appearance of the dark wizard Didier, he is still a young man, which is not common among dark wizards. After all, those who are qualified to be called dark wizards are basically old guys, and most of them are literate. The Blue Wind does not like fools, and even more so, it does not like illiterate people.

Although it is not ruled out that some masters of unique skills rely on their own "resourcefulness" to use unconventional means to be active in the ranks of dark wizards, these people will either soon obtain the knowledge they need through the rewards of the Azure Wind, or will soon become part of the unique skills.

As a Dark Wizard, you can always trust that the Azure Wind will answer your call, but how He will respond is entirely a matter of probability.

However, this probability is not completely uncontrollable. Most dark wizards have not grasped the key to this. Didier is different. He understood early on that this world is essentially a makeshift team, and saw through the slightly playful ridicule in the blue wind.

The great Blue Wind didn't care that he used various adjectives and different grammars when "making a wish" to anchor the results he wanted from different angles. Didier even felt that the Blue Wind enjoyed it, and was nitpicking with him to find loopholes in the terms.

Therefore, Didier cherished every "wishing opportunity" he got. The Azure Wind was not a bloodthirsty being. Didier could feel that He was so great that He had no interest in the so-called souls of humans. To the Azure Wind, those sacrificed humans were more like firewood in the darkness, which could briefly illuminate the lightless world and open up channels to allow more power belonging to the Azure Wind to be infused into this world.

Compared to simple killing, the Blue Wind prefers the "cleverness" in human nature, so before the sacrifice two days ago, Didier gave the sacrifices a chance. He gave three riddles and told everyone that the ten people who answered two of them first would survive.

All three puzzles were very simple. After all, Didier's goal was to allow Azure Wind to find joy in human willpower, not to show off his own erudition. So, they were basically brain teasers like, "What can run but never walk? Has a mouth but never speaks? Has a head but never cries? Has a bed but never sleeps?"

But obviously such a small puzzle was too difficult for these fools. Didier forgot that most of these people were illiterate. When he remembered this, the few literate people among the sacrifices all tacitly chose to keep silent in order to increase their chances of survival.

However, in the face of life and death, even fools will become smarter and more perceptive than before. Although these people are illiterate, they can tell which people in the crowd have taken a look at the puzzle itself and then fallen into deep thought, and which people have fallen into despair because they cannot grasp the rope of survival.

The result was that no one had the opportunity to think carefully and find the answer. Didier successfully completed the task of the Black Sheep King, and a sudden rainstorm interrupted the progress of the war.

From the perspective of these dark wizards, they have been very cooperative in fulfilling most of the "reasonable" requests of the Black Sheep, and have only charged a very "reasonable" part of the fees in the process.

But all people in the world are corrupt and vain. They are always addicted to worldly desires and cannot extricate themselves. Naturally, these black wizards noticed the little tricks of the Black Sheep people early on. The Black Sheep King praised himself as a smart man, but he was completely unaware of the greatness of the Blue Wind.

They didn't even need to carry out the betrayal that the Black Sheep King was accustomed to in order to successfully resolve this misunderstanding - the information people were exposed to was limited, but the magic and knowledge brought by the Blue Wind were infinite. They only needed to use the infinite to cover the finite in order to perfectly weave an information cocoon, allowing the arrogant Black Sheep King to completely fall under their control.

In fact, it would have been easier to simply replace the Black Sheep King with a more cooperative and obedient one, but the black wizards who believed in the Blue Wind, after wasting hundreds of years, finally came to a conclusion - those kings who could be easily controlled by them and dared not to rebel were basically trash, and the countries under their control were not worthy of the word stability at all.

The Azure Wind represents wisdom and knowledge, magic and innovation. A country that repeatedly falls into war and cannot develop stably is meaningless to its believers. Didier and his companions made a heavy bet on the current Black Sheep King because of his foresight and vision. Naturally, they are unwilling to dig the Great Wall at this time. They want to control this king in a more efficient way.

This plan had already failed once. They had tried to control the Great Conqueror using the same method, and the result was that their lineage almost disappeared from this land. Although the Great Conqueror had not fallen into the control of the Scarlet Wind, he was definitely not destined to be controlled by the Azure Wind...