I was a knight in the Middle Ages

"What is their purpose?" Rowling asked with a gloomy face.

"Their purpose is to sabotage Torres's anti-bandit plan. Fatalia has not only joined forces with us, but also the bandits on the Ethiopian border, in order to increase the dissatisfaction of the residents of the two countries with Torres's anti-bandit plan, thereby putting pressure on the upper echelons of the two countries." The identity of the small leader seems to be not simple, otherwise he would not be able to know such confidential information.

"Who are you? Why do you know all this?" Rowling stared at the other person with suspicion.

"I overheard it." The little leader immediately explained when he saw Rowling's suspicious look.

"They talked very loudly in their sleep, so I heard it all." The relationship between the small leader and the upper echelons must be unclear, so he was able to know such confidential information.

"How could they know in advance that this bandit suppression plan would be different from the previous ones?" Alpha knew that Grand Duke Houston would suppress bandits every year. This was not only a need for the suppression of bandits itself, but also an explanation to the Holy See and the people.

"Every time Torres launches an anti-bandit operation, Fatalia will send people to lobby for it. I just don't know why this year is different." The little leader really didn't know.

"Where is your camp? How do you find the direction in such a snowy weather?" Alpha asked curiously.

"I have a map with me. In a blizzard, we use a compass to determine the direction." The small boss no longer hides, there is no need.

"Compass?" Alpha actually saw a compass, which looked like a pocket watch.

"How did you get this?"

"I don't know about this. It was also brought by the knights of the Fatalia Empire. It seems to be an oriental sacred object." This is all the little leader knew.

"How to use it?" Rowling was interested.

"The needle always points to the north, so we can determine other directions." The little leader answered without hesitation.

"Hand them over to Yasuo and give them a quick death." Alpha was full of thoughts. This world is no longer the world of the past. Alpha has long been aware of this fact. However, there seems to be some kind of connection between them.

"Lord Alpha, I never thought that this den of thieves was only three kilometers away from us. No wonder they reacted so quickly." Rowling said while looking at the map, with a wise gleam in her eyes.

"How many people are there? Is there any secret passage to enter the lair?" Alpha smiled self-deprecatingly. It is true that enemies often meet each other. Alpha and the robbers have a destiny.

"There are about two hundred of them. From the information we have obtained so far, there is no secret passage. The only entrance is the main gate. They are currently defending very tightly." Rowling has squeezed out all the information she wanted.

"More than 200 people? The bandit group is not large, how can they be invincible when they plunder everywhere?" Alpha asked doubtfully. Living far away from civilization, a small group of only 200 people can survive, but it sounds far-fetched to be able to thrive and be invincible.

"Lord Alpha, you don't know that Portos is vast and sparsely populated, even more sparsely populated than Torres, and there is often no one living within a hundred miles. This is also the border, and a bandit group of 200 people is already one of the best groups here." Rowling explained.

"I see." Alpha knew that he had made a preconceived notion. Torres belonged to the Vatican region, and the population was already dense. Portos was a grassland tribe structure, and generally a large tribe had two to three hundred people. It was rare to have a hundred strong knights, and two hundred people could deal with most tribes.

"They occupy the Menis Mine. Even if they don't rob, their monthly income is considerable." Rowling gave Alpha another shocking news.

"Abandoned mine? What's there? I looked at the map and the mine has been marked as abandoned." Alpha looked at the map and asked in confusion: "Is there something else?"

"Lord Alpha, you don't know that the mine was abandoned two years ago because the maintenance cost was too high, not because there is really no ore," Rowling explained.

"Menis is an iron mine. Although it is not large in scale, it can meet all the weapons and equipment needs of the bandit group. It can also be sold to the outside world. It is a highly profitable industry."

"Iron ore? There's such a good thing here? No wonder they are so well-equipped. It's a pity that they were too careless, so we divided them up and surrounded them. Otherwise, we would have suffered casualties." Alpha sounded very interested. In his opinion, ironware is hard currency and can be sold anywhere. As long as it is circulated, there will be a corresponding price, and as long as the price is high enough, there will be corresponding benefits.

"Lord Alpha, do you want to take the iron mine for yourself?" Rowling understood.

"Distant water cannot quench immediate thirst, and a whip is too far away to reach." Alpha did have this intention, but all his strength was basically in Torres Province, and it was difficult for him to take care of this place for the time being.

In fact, Torres Province is a major mining province, and the mine is located in the area where my father-in-law belongs. It is not easy for a cheap son-in-law like Alpha to compete with his father-in-law for territory.

"Lord Alpha, you can ask Tasli to mobilize troops to come and deal with this group of bandits. Anyway, this place is not far from Tasli Province, so you can take this opportunity to train the soldiers." Rowling wished that Alpha would become more powerful.

"Let's talk about it when the time comes! When the wind and snow subside, we will go to the mine to investigate first." Alpha had not made up his mind.

If this group of bandits were only after money and did not harm innocent people, Alpha might have turned a blind eye.

After reincarnating into this world, Alpha knew that the people were tough and many of them were thieves when they got on horseback and became civilians when they got off horseback. So the key was how much profit they could make. If the iron ore was small and the utilization rate was low, Alpha would not be interested.

For three days in a row, the snow covered the sky and the sun, raging between the mountains. Looking around, everything was covered in silver. If Yasuo's tribe camp had not been there, Alpha and the others would have probably frozen to death in the wilderness.

"Lord Alpha, it's snowing so hard outside, could there be a monster causing trouble?" Rowling hid in the quilt like a kitten.

"It's like this every winter, don't worry." Lilia comforted him while showing her concern.

"Lord Alpha, why is your body so hot?" Rowling lay in Alpha's arms to keep warm, and there was a hint of surprise in her tone when she asked the question.

"It's so hot, could Lord Alpha have a fever?" Lilia touched Alpha's forehead and then looked worried.

Rowling looked around and found Alpha sitting cross-legged and meditating. She guessed that this was probably a state caused by practice.

Alpha was practicing the Sun Sutra, and it was already at a critical moment. If he could successfully break through, he would be able to complete the "small Zhoutian" stage of practice and enter the ranks of practitioners.

The method that the Heavenly Master passed on to Alpha was a Chinese Taoist method of cultivation. According to records, the method included five major stages: building the foundation and refining oneself, refining essence into qi, refining qi into spirit, refining spirit into emptiness, and refining emptiness into the Dao.

Alpha is still a long way from the first stage of "foundation building and self-refining", let alone the subsequent stages.

"Tianyuan Danfa" is called foundation building, and "Renyuan Danfa" is called self-cultivation. In fact, both mean foundation building. This step of the practice is like building a house, you must first lay a good foundation, which is the foundation of cultivation. The deeper the foundation, the higher the realm you can climb.

The foundation-building exercises vary from one school to another, and their core contents generally include stopping thoughts, entering into tranquility, concentrating thoughts, returning to the light, regulating breathing, breathing, swallowing saliva, guiding, etc. The purpose of foundation-building is to replenish the three treasures of essence, qi, and spirit, as medicine for practicing inner alchemy, to achieve the effect of curing diseases, strengthening the body, and harmonizing the body and mind.

Everything Alpha did was to lay the foundation. According to the book, it takes at least 20 years for an average person to enter the foundation-building stage, and the older they are, the longer it takes. Alpha is too old to reach the pinnacle of cultivation, and his peak has been limited.

Alpha's expectation is the second stage of refining essence into Qi, which is the so-called opening of the Ren and Du meridians and reaching the strength of a master of Qi. This level is already the limit of human beings, that is, the level of life and death, but it is still restricted by the natural rules of birth, aging, sickness and death.

In fact, "The Sun Sutra" is not an orthodox Taoist classic practice, including "The Broken Heart Palm" the same, it is a fusion of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, but the fusion is not sufficient. It simply keeps the strongest part without considering the coherence of the fusion, which makes it difficult for ordinary people to practice successfully.

This also means that Tianshi did not really want to pass on his pure Taoist skills to Alpha. It was because Alpha used a special method to see through the "Taixuan Sutra" that he learned the "Taiyang Sutra" instead.

At this moment, Alpha is like a constantly burning sun, consuming its own impurities and continuously transforming its body, removing the dross and retaining the essence.

After the training of the solar meridian, Alpha's body was filled with hot and intense energy, but this energy was too noisy to be fully absorbed and utilized by the body. The solar meridian continued to refine this energy until it was all absorbed.

Like a weary bird returning to its nest or a tired horse returning to its journey, Alpha soared into the sky like a Kunpeng, training his energy to open up his meridians. With the help of the blizzard and snowstorm, his body seemed to have turned into a furnace, and even Rowling and Lilia did not dare to approach him.

"Lilia, open the tent, Alpha is almost burned to death." Rowling shouted in horror.

The cold wind rushed in from outside, howling, as if this was no longer a blizzard but a man-eating monster.

A thousand meters away, a white fox was pacing at the edge of the cliff. Fierce snowstorms were spewing out of its mouth, and even the full moon changed color because of it. However, in this blizzard and severe cold, ordinary people could not see the figure of the white fox at all.

Within a hundred meters of Alpha, it was as if there was a shadowy figure that looked like a dragon but not a dragon, and a horse but not a horse, lying quietly on the top of the mountain. Heat waves emanated from it, forming an invisible force field, the temperature of which was so high that even the king of the grassland storm was eclipsed by it.

The weather was good, and a bolt of lightning fell, accurately hitting the white fox halfway up the mountain. The white fox wailed, turned into dots of light and dissipated. A ball of fire rose from the top of the mountain. It was the phantom transformed by the Pegasus. It stepped forward and devoured the white fox's light with the power of the void.

Alpha concentrated his energy and tried to break through the barrier at the end of the Du Channel.

With a loud "boom", the meridians are unblocked, Qi flows through the Ren and Du meridians, and essence is refined into Qi.

In an instant, a fire dragon appeared in the sky, and the tent that was shielding against the wind and snow was instantly blown away by the air waves and disappeared.

The wind was biting cold, but Lilia and Rowling felt hot all over. They could only stay away from Alpha to dispel the heat.

It was not until late at night on the third day that Alpha's body returned to normal. He stretched and sighed with satisfaction: "It's so comfortable. I slept so well."

Alpha is like a dream, everything seems to be a lifetime ago. The child is crying, the teenager is willful and flamboyant, the young man is passionate, the middle-aged is calm as water, and the old man is as stable as Mount Tai. At first sight, it is a love story, like being infatuated.

"What's going on? Where's the tent?" The wind was freezing cold and Alpha was freezing all over, without a trace of warmth.

"Lord Alpha, you really don't know what happened?" Rowling looked at Alpha in confusion.

"Let's go in first!" The cold wind was howling, and this was not the place to talk. Alpha pulled Rowling and rushed into the tent that had been re-set up by everyone.

"What happened? Is it related to me?" Alpha guessed that this matter was related to himself, and asked after looking at Rowling's face.

"Alpha, what happened to you just now? You are like the sun, blowing away our tent and making us shiver in the cold wind." Rowling said miserably.

"Ah! I don't know anything." Alpha pretended to be innocent.

"Lord Alpha, are you okay? I'll go find Aaron to check on you." Lilia was more worried about Alpha's physical condition.

"It should be fine, let me check it out." Alpha entered the meditative state again. This time, he entered the meditative state easily without any sense of obstruction.

You won't know until you check. Once you check, you'll be shocked. Alpha's body was like being reborn, and everything was reset. The little internal energy and fighting spirit he had cultivated with great difficulty were completely eliminated. Now, his body was as clean and clear as a big baby, without any impurities.

Alpha could only practice the technique again, but was surprised to find that the feeling that took him a month to find could now be easily grasped. Moreover, driven by the technique, the Dou Qi in his body also began to be cultivated again, and the speed was consistent with Alpha's soul cultivation before, not the slow cultivation of a new soul. However, Alpha had practiced Dou Qi for more than 20 years before, so was it worth it to practice it again?

Alpha didn't know that it was all a coincidence. If there wasn't a white fox nearby that was about to ascend to heaven and transcend the tribulation, and if the white fox hadn't failed to transcend the tribulation and its soul had been shattered to ashes, Alpha wouldn't have been able to use the white fox's energy to rebuild his true body.

It can be said that Alpha was blessed in disguise. However, he had no ability to protect himself at all, just like a young child who had just started practicing.

"There is nothing wrong with Lord Alpha's body." Aaron checked three times and came to the same conclusion each time.

"I'm fine, don't worry about me." Alpha knew his own situation and didn't explain too much. Alpha felt that human nature could not stand the test, so he just regarded it as starting over, and it was no big deal.

"Lord Alpha, how come your skin is so smooth and delicate." Rowling touched Alpha's palms and arms, and the feeling was completely different from before. As a girl, how could she not want such skin?

"Practice well, and you will get better and better." Alpha pinched Rowling's face.

"But I can't learn it, Master Alpha."