"Sir, why are these winter wolf corpses that fell to the sheep rib trap just left here? Isn't it said that magic wolves habitually kill and devour their own kind?" Nos finally spoke up.
The sight before them was truly staggering. On the plains trampled to mush by the magical beast tide, winter wolves lay in various postures of death, hundreds of corpses stretching all the way into the distance. Every dead wolf had its fangs bared, looking as though it had died in extreme agony, yet not a single wound could be found on their bodies. An unknowing observer would find the scene deeply eerie, the kind that made one's scalp tingle.
However, everyone who had left the city with
"Magic wolves are actually highly intelligent creatures. Expert research has determined that magic wolves possess the intelligence of five- or six-year-old human children, and they are the most adept at division of labor and cooperation among magical beast species. The wolf nature of killing and devouring their own kind is born of necessity — a magic wolf pack must be large enough to capture prey reliably, but the larger the pack, the more prey it needs. So during times of food scarcity, even the corpses of their own kind are not spared. That is how a pack sustains itself.
Wolves are clever but also deeply suspicious. During a magical beast tide, food is plentiful, and when so many of their own suddenly die for no apparent reason, the surviving wolves will simply flee the area in terror. It's the same as us humans traveling in a group — if one or two suddenly die, we might stop to investigate. But if half the group starts dropping one after another, the survivors would leave the area first. In this regard, human nature and wolf nature are alike," Lorist explained.
"All right, everyone get moving. Toss these magical beast corpses onto the carts and bring them back. Think of how happy those fur merchants would be to see so many intact magical beast pelts," Pat shouted to the garrison soldiers guarding the carts.
After a long while of bustling about, Nos came to report: "Sir. A total of seven hundred and forty-five winter wolf corpses. Shall we head back to the city now?"
Lorist furrowed his brow. "That's not right. We set out over two thousand sheep rib rings — this is far too few. Josk, take some people and scout the surrounding area. See if there's anything else to find. Be careful on the road..."
Josk led his men in a thorough search of the surrounding area and found several hundred more corpses of various carnivorous magical beasts. Leopards and clouded leopards had even ended up hanging from trees, and fearsome predators like great-cat beasts had also fallen to the sheep rib trap, lying stiff and lifeless on the hillside. Finally, following the trail, they found something enormous.
It was an enormous iron-bristle boar, weighing a full two thousand pounds. This behemoth must have been driven mad by the searing pain of the sheep ribs straightening in its gut — it had charged wildly through everything in its path, toppling trees and shattering rocks, before plunging headfirst into a snow gully and breathing its last.
The snapped trees and scattered rocks along its path left everyone speechless. Even Lorist broke into a cold sweat, wondering whether his throwing spears would have been effective against such a beast — the near-meter-long projectiles looked like toothpicks compared to this creature's corpse.
El rode up to Lorist, watching the soldiers rope up the massive carcass, preparing to drag it out of the snow gully with a dozen horses. He asked Lorist, "Lock, are we going to keep chasing the beast tide to the central towns of the other sectors?"
Lorist shook his head. "We won't make it. When we set out from Maple Manor, the beast tide had just begun to spread, so we still had room to bypass it and get ahead. Now the tide has fanned out across the entire wasteland — there's no way around it. And look at the ground; everywhere the beast tide passed has turned into a mire. Our skis are useless now. All we can do is leave it to fate, wait for the beast tide to recede and spring to arrive."
"Don't worry, Lock. With Knight Beruneck and
"El, I'm terrified. Because we need to go check on those four villages up ahead. I'm truly terrified of facing the miserable outcome. These people followed our northern convoy all the way to reach the family's territory. They thought they could settle down and start a new life, but none of them expected the beast tide. It's my fault — I feel so terrible inside..." Lorist's body trembled.
"This isn't your fault, Lock. None of us wanted this outcome. But since it's happened, we have to face it bravely. Come on — we should head back to the city. Look, the soldiers are already hitching the horses to haul that thing up..." El patted Lorist's shoulder. "Brother, don't forget — no matter what happens, I'm right here with you."
In fact, contrary to what Lorist and the others had expected, the four villages they believed had met with disaster had not fared as terribly as imagined. At the critical moment of the beast tide's arrival, the people of these four villages had each come up with ingenious schemes to fight desperately for their own survival.
At the third village, an officer dispatched before winter with a small squad of light cavalry scouts to help defend the settlement had, upon spotting the beast tide, enclosed the entire village in ice and snow. Just as Lorist had done, he used water to freeze the surface of the small hilltop, making it impossible for the beasts to climb — thereby saving every villager's life.
After the herbivore beast herds passed through, though, the village was attacked by a dozen snow leopard magical beasts. Over a dozen people were killed or wounded, and even Paulbins was injured, but they ultimately drove the snow leopards off and the village survived intact. Overjoyed at this result, Lorist promoted Paulbins to Family Knight on the spot, fulfilling his long-held wish.
The third village was not so fortunate. Casualties were extremely heavy — the elderly, weak, women, and children mostly hid in cellars and survived, but the able-bodied men, the garrison squad, and a small squad of light cavalry scouts stationed there fought to the last under the leadership of a Silver Swordmaster against a herd of great-horned aurochs that attacked the village, and were utterly wiped out...
The second settlement village gave Lorist and the others another surprise. Though the village had been trampled flat, not a single person or any supplies had been lost. This was mainly because the village had been built halfway up a rocky hillside, right beside a large cave. When the beast tide was spotted, the villagers and their grain stores had all been moved into the cave, which was then sealed off. They had successfully evaded disaster.
The worst off was the first settlement village — of more than three thousand people, only seventeen survived. The beast tide arrived there in the middle of the night. The garrison members keeping watch on the wall assumed it was a small group of beasts come to ravage the newly cleared farmland, and began firing arrows and hurling torches from the wall to drive them off. This enraged the beast horde, and the village came under attack. The seventeen survivors had all been hiding in the gaps within collapsed wooden houses, taking shelter among the rubble, and had managed to endure until the end...
…
On the eighteenth day of the third month, on a day of ceaseless spring rain, the great hall of Penglai Castle was packed to the rafters. Every knight and civil official of the
"...This winter beast tide has cost the family nearly ten thousand subjects and over a thousand brave family soldiers, as well as seven Silver Swordmasters and three Family Knights. The person most responsible is me. Without fully understanding the family's territory and without conducting a thorough investigation, I hastily launched the Wasteland Development Plan, which caused the family to suffer heavy losses when the beast tide arrived.
Moreover, even after I received the messenger the master sent with word of the beast tide, I still dismissed it and didn't take it to heart. I even set up an ambush position near the central town of Sector Three, gathering the family's forces in preparation to destroy the beast tide. Had the master not sent Knight Beruneck and the others with the idea of dousing the city with water to build an ice wall, I would have led the family's armed forces to their doom in the beast tide. On these matters, my responsibility is inescapable. I request that the master impose punishment upon me..."
Lorist's face was as dark as water. He had never dreamed that at the height of the winter beast tide, Fatty Shi would behave like the quintessential teammate from hell. When
It took Fatty Shi and Bodfeng seven days just to assemble and set out, and because heavy snow had blocked the roads, it took them over ten more days to reach Sector Three — where they happened to run into Beruneck and the others, who had come to relay the order to douse the city with water and build ice walls. Despite the objections of both Bodfeng and Beruneck, Fatty Shi ordered twenty thousand family soldiers to pile snow and build walls, constructing an ambush position in preparation to destroy the beast tide.
When Lorist heard this, he could only smile bitterly. Fatty Shi had been treating the beast tide as if it were a human army, assuming it would be just as easily broken. His contempt for the enemy had reached such depths that he failed to consider that the longbows and crossbows in the soldiers' hands could only deal effective damage to a minority of the large magical beasts.
When the beast tide swept into Sector Three and hit the ambush position Fatty Shi and the others had set up, the family soldiers' longbows could still deal with the smaller herbivore beasts at first. But when the boundless herds of magic cattle and five- or six-meter-tall mammoth magic elephants appeared on the horizon, everyone was struck dumb. Fortunately, Bodfeng had the presence of mind to immediately order all soldiers to fall back to the central town of Sector Three, desperately dousing everything with water to create an ice city. Only then did they escape the beast tide's pursuit and save the family's twenty-thousand-strong armed forces.
Then the family armed force of over twenty thousand men that Lorist had placed such great hopes on was trapped inside the central town of Sector Three for over a month. They not only exhausted the town's food reserves but also went hungry for several days, until the beast tide receded and they could venture out to hunt some beasts to fill their bellies. Morale completely shattered, they trudged back to Penglai Castle...
"I hereby strip Knight Shrade of the title of Chief Steward of the Fengleyuan Development Project, and simultaneously strip Knight Shrade of his status as the family's Chief Knight, demoting him to an ordinary Family Knight. The position of Chief Steward of Fengleyuan Development will be temporarily assumed by
"In the family's territory, the arrival of the winter beast tide was something most of us had never heard of, never seen before. But does that mean we should lose all confidence in developing Fengleyuan? The beast tide is not terrifying. We cannot prevent bad things from happening, but we can do our utmost to turn a bad situation into a good outcome," Lorist said.
"We can even use the city walls as traps for hunting magical beasts. Of course, we must also be careful not to provoke them when those powerful large herbivore beasts are present. At the right time, we can lure those smaller, less combat-effective herbivore beasts into the city, which will not only provide us with large quantities of fresh meat and pelts, but also give our new subjects confidence in facing the beast tide without fear."
Lorist then described the situation of the four villages: "The different fates of these four villages during the beast tide demonstrate that even settlement villages can survive the beast horde. Provided they have, one, solid defensive facilities, and two, a reliable fallback route, such as a cave or cellar, they can weather the winter beast tide safely."
"So, a new year has begun. This year, our family's priority will be building city walls and civilian facilities for the central towns and villages in Sectors Two through Seven. We must ensure that our new subjects can live in peace and security. Although the beast tide has receded, a large number of magical beasts still linger in Fengleyuan. Starting tomorrow, the family's armed forces will sweep the entire wasteland clean of magical beasts — on one hand to procure meat for our provisions, and on the other to guarantee the security of the family's territory, so that our hardworking subjects can labor without worry."
"Sedekamp, your key task this year will be constructing the six central towns. I will have Miss Teresti arrange for the original City Construction Command's design team to produce six central town blueprints as soon as possible, and construction will proceed according to plans. Additionally, those settlement villages must also build proper defensive walls and establish reliable fallback routes. As for reclaiming wasteland, we can arrange for planting potatoes and similar crops to supplement our food consumption, and the family will also purchase large quantities of grain from outside for reserves."
"Furthermore, the sixteen Silver Swordmasters who distinguished themselves during the winter beast tide crisis will be promoted to Family Knights, and other meritorious personnel will each receive appropriate rewards. I hope everyone here will think carefully going forward, pool your collective wisdom, and come up with good methods to prevent the beast tide from damaging our family's territory. You may write down your ideas and send them to us. The prosperity and development of our family's territory cannot be achieved without the combined efforts of all of us. I thank you in advance."
After the meeting adjourned, Lorist kept Fatty Shi behind. Although he had stripped Fatty Shi of the Chief Steward position, that didn't mean he was going to put him on ice.
"Brother Shi, I'm entrusting Penglai Castle and the Mountain City to you. These two locations were not affected by the beast tide, so they fall under your responsibility. First, the construction of the Mountain City and the development of its farmland. Second, the planning and construction of Penglai Castle's rear quarters and the reclamation and allocation of the surrounding wasteland. Until we can find a way to prevent the beast tide's devastation of Fengleyuan, the food produced by these two locations will be critical to the survival of our family's territory. Furthermore, I plan to build a new town here, at the junction of the Blade Mountains and the Morgan Hills. This town's residents will be all the miners' and blacksmiths' families — it will be our family's industrial city, the site of our family's weapons production base. Do you understand the importance of this location?"
Fatty Shi nodded. "Lock, brother, thank you. Rest assured — as your brother, I will not let you down."
…(To be continued.)