In the mountains, nearly twenty days have passed, and the number of troops under Zhao Cheng has expanded to more than 2,000 people.
During such a long period of time, Zhao Cheng continued to gather the remnants of Huang Tian's troops who fled into the mountains and forests. On the other hand, it took him eleven full days to capture Lianyun Village among the hundreds of villages in the mountains.
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In this era, unless you are a truly uncivilized savage, you will never be able to completely cut off contact with the outside world even though you are deep in the mountains.
This chain of mountains is also the boundary between Southern Wilderness and Qingzhou. The mountains are high and the roads are dangerous, like natural chasms. The journey is difficult. Relatively speaking, there are fewer connections with the outside world.
There is an essential difference between the mountain people of this era and the modern mountain people.
In the modern world, the so-called mountain people only live in remote areas, have household registrations, and are under the jurisdiction of the imperial court. However, the mountain people of this era are people from the mountains. In order to avoid taxes and labor, they either raise a village or raise a clan.
He fled to the mountains, had no household registration, and refused to obey Wang Hua.
Survival in the mountains is difficult, and ordinary people would not be able to make such a choice unless they really cannot survive.
Under such circumstances, those who can survive in the mountains are naturally the best among ordinary people. Passed down from generation to generation, the people in the mountains naturally become more and more fierce.
As time goes by, there are always some new generations of mountain people who have forgotten the reasons why their ancestors came to the mountains, and are longing for the colorful world outside. However, the mountain people are unruly and unruly, and are usually regarded by the court as a factor of instability, even when they enter the city.
This matter is very difficult.
For a long time, it is not that no one has seen the strong basic qualities of the mountain people and wanted to use them as an army, but few have truly succeeded.
On the one hand, the clan concept of the mountain people is too strong. On the other hand, the mountain people are a small closed circle. People outside are always polished by various etiquette and education in the process of growing up, making them easier to tame. However, as a group of mountain people,
, because without the existence of the court, he grew up more freely, not knowing authority or virtue, only knowing himself.
But in the army, military orders are the earliest, and anyone who violates them will be killed, which is against oneself.
Wu Qi was able to use the mountain people as the main force to establish his tiger and leopard cavalry, which was the result of many factors.
On the one hand, the foundation of the Wu family is that they were born as mountain people. Later, due to the achievements of the ancestors of the Wu family, their identity changed.
On the other hand, the establishment of the Tiger and Leopard Cavalry was not the result of Wu Qi's generation. The Wu family had begun to subtly assimilate some mountain people several generations ago. On the one hand, it still ensured the independence of the mountain people, but on the other hand, it
It is to show kindness and power, gradually establish prestige among the mountain people, and give all the mountain people a subconscious feeling that they will follow the Wu family to eat meat.
It took several generations of domestication to achieve the majestic power of the Tiger and Leopard Cavalry.
Zhao Cheng naturally did not have such a long time to tame these mountain people. The Wu family used the mountain people to form a strong army and passed it down from generation to generation. It was undoubtedly the king's way.
As for Zhao Cheng, he took a different approach.
There are hundreds of villages in the mountains, with few external contacts. Except for some villages that occasionally engage in road robbery, there are also some bold and powerful businessmen who lead caravans deep into the mountains to sell salt, iron, oil, spices, etc.
For rare things in the mountains, come and exchange with the mountain people for the furs of various beasts and precious medicinal materials.
Once a business is completed, the profit can be tenfold.
In addition to this external exchange, there are more frequent internal exchanges between the villages.
Among them, certain powerful villages are the hub for exchange of goods and needs between villages.
Apart from the exchange and transaction of various materials, what is more important is the intermarriage between villages.
However, the mountain road is difficult, and the basic quality of the mountain people is indeed better than that of ordinary people, but by no means all mountain people are strong enough. Those who want to get out of the mountains are also the best among the mountain people.
As for the ordinary mountain people, most of them have lived in the village their whole lives and have never left the village within ten miles.
Many mountain people will go on a long trip with the strong men in the village for the only time in their lives to get married, using half their life savings to buy a wife.
In this case, the importance of the village as a hub is undoubtedly beyond doubt.
The Lianyun Village chosen by Zhao Cheng is one of them.
The total population of Lianyun Village is about a thousand. With the soldiers and horses in Zhao Cheng's hands, it is not difficult to attack by force. However, after the attack, there is no use except destroying the soldiers and horses.
If the mountain people could make them surrender in this way, there would be no mountain people left in the world. After all, the soldiers and horses of the imperial court are not decorations.
The reason why the court allows the mountain people to live freely is because it is difficult to use troops in the mountains. Even if a group of people are killed, as long as the court does not reduce the excessive taxes and miscellaneous taxes, there will never be a shortage of new mountain people. And when the troops and horses are mobilized, the gold and silver consumed is far greater.
Super rewarding.
This is a losing business.
Killing was useless, so Zhao Cheng spent eleven days.
After approaching Lianyun Village, Zhao Cheng began to use Taoism.
If outside the mountains, under the rule of the imperial court, if Taoist magic is used on many people at the same time, it will definitely trigger the imperial court's Qi Shu suppression. Under the immortals, if a hundred people are bewitched by Taoist magic, they may die suddenly.
However, the mountain people were not subjects of the imperial court and were independent from the outside world, but this gave Zhao Cheng an opportunity.
The method Zhao Cheng chose was to use Taoism to forge the dreams of his ancestors.
Among the mountain people, there is a strong sense of clan. They do not worship false gods and Buddhas, but worship their own ancestors. Even if there are serious mistakes made by the mountain people, they will be publicly judged under the witness of the ancestors' spiritual tablets.
Of course, the distance between the void and the earth is difficult to bridge. Even the king who ruled the entire earth during his lifetime could live forever after death and control a larger territory. He would not be able to show his holiness in the human world, let alone these ancestral spirits in the village.
But the mountain people don't know this, or they don't believe this. They only know that the spirits of their ancestors after death have always protected them.
For several days, first the young children and the aging old people in the village had dreams from their ancestors. In the dreams, the ancestors first told them that the reason why they went into the mountains was because they could no longer survive outside, and then they escaped, but after living there for a long time,
There is no way out in the mountains. Over a long period of time, many villages have perished quietly...
In short, we talk about the past first and then the future to create a sense of reality, a sense of crisis, and most importantly, empathy.
When the sense of crisis appeared, the ancestors said that they saw a group of people who were adhering to the destiny and wandered around here. If you just want stability, don't pay attention to it. But if you want to get out of the mountains and gain wealth and glory, don't do it.
hesitate.
At the beginning, this incident was just some children shouting, mainly because they were scared, but the old people used it as a source of conversation, and it quickly spread.
The people in the village were all surprised. Some were hesitant to believe it, but some people had already believed it.
For the next two days, things became more and more intense, but the ancestor's dream did not appear again.
