Unknown Knight

Speaking of the spice trade, since the construction of Fort Standing, Aix has also collected various information and intelligence. As far as we know, there are a total of three spice trade routes radiating from the city of Zion.

One of them is the route that crosses the Death Desert from the city of Zion and eventually leads to the city of Barieh in the Sarand Emirate. Due to the arrival of the Death Season, this route is blocked for more than half a year every year. This may be the reason why Hassan and his gang of bandits did not operate in this area after Aix and others came to this area.

Another way is to travel by sea, but this route has been almost cut off due to rampant piracy. Moreover, although sea transportation has large volume and cheap freight, spices are relatively precious and are more susceptible to moisture when traveling by sea, which greatly reduces the taste and quality of the spices, making them unable to be sold at much of a price.

Besides, those who can afford spices are all dignitaries. Although these people do not have much demand, they pursue quality and do not care about the price. The dry environment of the desert can evaporate the moisture in the spices, which well maintains the quality of the spices. When they arrive at the destination for delivery, they can be sold at a good price.

The third route is from Zion to Berbera. Since both cities are located on the seaside, the climate is relatively suitable and there are many supply points along the way. It is a spice trade route that is open all year round. Most of the spices produced in Zion are transported to Berbera via this route, and after delivery there, they are sold by merchants to Calradia or Gronia.

Hassan probably did a lot of activities on this route, so he had almost no intersection with Aix. Now he suddenly stopped doing his business and came here specifically to target Aix, doing some side job of robbing ordinary people, which means he must have accepted a commission with greater profits.

After analyzing this context, Aix and others finally had a clue. They had just arrived, and the only families that had any grudges with the locals and had the strength to hire the great thief Hassan to take action were the monopoly families in Zion City.

Excluding the Harisi family, which has already been defeated, and the Oqbai family with which it has a cooperative relationship, the remaining ones are the Sabir family, the Isam family and the Fahad family. So it must be that one of their families hired the thief Hassan to target the territory, or even that the three families joined forces to invite Hassan to target the territory. This is all possible.

If you think about it carefully, the businesses of the remaining three companies in Zion City have been squeezed to a great extent by Fort Standstill. As the saying goes: blocking someone's financial path is like killing their parents. It is not surprising that they use any means to target the territory.

Analyzing who the enemy is is a good start to solving the problem. However, the bandits led by Hassan all have mounts, and their movements are fast and erratic. For a while, Aix and his team could not find any effective countermeasures.

In the end, they had no choice but to passively send out all the cavalry in the territory to patrol back and forth on several important roads leading into the city, trying to ensure the personal and property safety of nearby residents who came to trade to the greatest extent possible.

At the same time, all camel caravans transporting ore to the iron mine and coal to the Heishitan coal mine were also stopped. In extraordinary times, safety is the top priority and production can be put on hold.

These passive strategies did have a certain effect. In the first few days, the number of people coming to Fort Standstill to trade gradually increased. However, within a few days, the number of people coming was almost extinct, and the patrols on the road became useless.

Confused, Aix had to send Bolcha to several nearby settlements to find out what was going on. Upon asking, he learned that just two days ago, the great bandit Hassan personally led a team to various settlements to warn the people in the settlements that anyone who dared to come to the Standing Castle to trade again would be massacred if discovered. This scared the nearby residents so much that they no longer dared to come here to trade.

At the same time, Bolcha also brought news that the city of Zion no longer charges a city fee. It also followed the example of Fort Standstill, offering free drinking water and halving trade commissions. These measures have attracted many people in urgent need of supplies to come and trade.

It seems that these masters in Zion City have planned everything. They did it step by step and with a sense of rhythm. But they were too obvious. It seemed that they knew that Axe couldn't do anything to them at the moment, and they had no way to deal with Hassan who came and went like the wind, which made them so unscrupulous.

Those gentlemen were probably toasting to celebrate while mercilessly mocking him. Axe got angry just thinking about it and temporarily kept this grudge in mind.

He really has no other choice at the moment. His roots here are very shallow. He can't follow Hassan's example and lead a team to threaten the people in nearby settlements to come to Fort Standstill to trade. Not only would he lose the support of the people, but even Aix himself would not be willing to do that.

However, Aix, who loves to do good deeds, always has someone to help him. His behavior of pampering his fans a few days ago was rewarded. The Bedouin Majid, who was rescued by him, heard that the business of his benefactor Aix city was affected by Hassan, so he took the initiative to find Aix and said that he had important things to report.

Majid has been eating and drinking well in the territory these days to recuperate from his injuries. He was shot in the back by Hassan's men, and he never thought that someone would take such good care of him as a stranger. He felt grateful to Aix in his heart.

When he heard his subjects discussing privately about the unpredictable thief Hassan, who had brought the entire Standstill Castle into decline and Lord Aix was at a loss as to what to do, he immediately got up from the bed where he was recuperating from his injuries and came to Aix to offer advice.

It turned out that this heroic Bedouin chief was a well-known man in his generation more than ten years ago. He also worked as a spice caravan escorter for a period of time with his bravery. Later, when he was old and probably earned enough money, he returned to his hometown to take care of the family. He knew a little about the bandits active in this area and knew a lot of information about them.

You have to know that the desert is different from other places where you can roam freely on horseback, especially in this great desert known as the Death Desert. It is difficult to move without a fixed water supply. He knew that these nearby bandits had a common destination, which was a black market eighty miles away, a town called Tianshuijing, which was a must-go gold-consuming den for the bandits.

As the saying goes, when it gets dark, birds fly into the forest, and monks who beg for alms eventually return to the temple. As the name suggests, the Tianshuijing Town is named after a sweet water well in the town that can be drunk. On the surface, it is a town where passing merchants can rest and stop for a while, but in fact it is a stronghold jointly opened by several desert bandits headed by Hassan, mainly for the convenience of the bandits to divide and sell the stolen goods.

At the same time, this is also a place for the bandits to rest and replenish supplies. No matter how erratic the bandits are in the desert, they will eventually return here.