Mount and Blade Central Asia

Azadirim had no desire to test his fragile balance between life and death with the sword. His ability to revive was merely a reward bestowed upon him by the wise blue wind after another sacrifice.

It looks intimidating, but it's actually just a workaround. His soul can be resurrected using the corpse, but it grows weaker every day.

Azadirim knew that he had to do a few more things to please the Blue Wind before he completely disappeared.

But the wise Azure Wind was so mysterious, and its will was like an eagle in the sky, which no one could see through. After several attempts, Azadirim suddenly discovered that the Azure Wind's current interest was the Eastern Shaman in front of him.

Azadirim had only spoken a few words to Li Rufeng through Wusari, but his soul was nourished by the blue wind, allowing him to hold on until now.

And the same was true of the interaction between him and Li Rufeng just now.

Azadirim was not jealous of the Blue Wind's favor for Li Rufeng. The power of the Four Wind Gods was so great that most of those who received God's favor would not have a good end.

How to coordinate the distance between oneself and the Blue Wind and make more efficient use of the Blue Wind while ensuring one's own safety is a compulsory course for every Blue Wind believer. It is an art.

"There are two tons of gold in Mardin." Azadirim hesitated for a moment and sighed. "It's in the basement of an abandoned church. Most of it is gold objects, and the remaining one-third is gold bars. That's the wealth we brought from Tabriz."

Azadirim did not want to give up these riches, as they were the capital he had intended to use to settle down and make a comeback.

Azure Wind had no interest in worldly wealth, but in the material world, gold equaled power. Their followers, and their followers' followers, also needed to eat. Sacrificial slaves cost money, and even plotting and using trickery had costs...

Li Rufeng pulled the magic sword back slightly, pondering the purchasing power of two tons of gold in this era.

This is undoubtedly a huge fortune, but in this era and on this land, how much use it can make is obviously a problem. Li Rufeng has not spent much money since he came here.

They rode their horses and camels silently across the desert, the bright moonlight making it unnecessary for them to have any additional lighting.

These knights didn't need officers to shout orders, nor did they need encouragement or mobilization. Each of them had a clear goal: to wipe out the remaining members of the Eagle of Order.

"Haishaer, we can't outrun those minions of the evil god. Their camels have much better endurance than our horses." One of the knights took a look at Haishaer's hybrid horse and said, "You take the others and go ahead. I and my men will stay behind and take another route to help you divert some of the pursuers. If we can escape successfully, we will warn the brothers in the Cairo branch."

"Brother Heraton! I don't agree. Jerusalem is ahead. We can take shelter in the city temporarily." Haishar knew that the other party wanted to sacrifice himself so that others could escape.

But he could not accept such sacrifices. The headquarters of the Eagle of Order in Mecca had been burned down, and no one knew how many people had escaped.

"Stop talking nonsense, Haishar. Jerusalem is a small city and can't hide us. Don't trust anyone on the way north! Wait for the opportunity to find the traitor among us!" Heraton shook his head and whistled. Six knights like him, who only had ordinary war horses, left the team.

They were originally guardian knights responsible for guarding the headquarters of the Eagle of Order. They rarely left the headquarters, so they had no use for hybrid horses that needed to be fed with flesh and blood, which led to their current predicament.

But at least they could prove their loyalty to the Eagle of Order and allow their brothers to escape.

Chapter 99 Meeting to allocate robbery areas

On the third day of the march, Li Rufeng had to divide his troops into two parts. Piri Reyes and the more than 200 infantrymen were thrown into the second echelon with the herdsmen who were driving cattle and sheep, while the other cavalry teams began to speed up.

That day, they traveled 240 miles from dawn to dusk, and only rested for two hours at noon when the sun was at its hottest, mainly to allow the horses to drink some water and eat some feed.

As for people, they are not as important as horses.

When Li Rufeng got off the horse, he felt that the part below his waist was no longer his own. He felt as if he had just sat on a hard-seat green train for forty hours, with one foot deep and one foot shallow on the ground.

But what made him even more ashamed was Satuya... That's right, Satuya not only followed the cavalry team on the journey, but she also had the energy to take care of Li Rufeng's daily life after dismounting.

Looking at Satuya who was humming a tune and squatting there to boil water, Li Rufeng had to admit a fact, that is, Satuya's riding skills might, perhaps... be much better than his own.

Feng kissed her twice on the face and skipped out of the tent.

Outside the tent, Centurion Mengge was already waiting in line to meet Li Rufeng.

"Qinggelinayan invites you, Master Shaman." Mengge said in a teasing tone, "Let's go. I guess those old hands are here by now and are waiting for you and me."

"What happened today?" Li Rufeng put on his robe and stretched. The previous incident of breaking into the camp did not seem to leave any rift between the two of them, but in fact, what each side was thinking, only they themselves knew.

"We're about to enter Dosit's territory. Each tribe needs to send people to clear out those small settlements, which are small places with a few hundred to less than a thousand people. The main purpose is to collect food and fodder." Mengge looked at Li Rufeng walking with his legs apart and sneered, "Even these little brats are more respectable than you, Shaman!"

"Little brat, there is no need to wake up early in the morning and go to Qinggelinayan for a meeting." Li Rufeng spread his hands, not feeling embarrassed about his current situation. It was true that his riding skills were poor, but with the help of the system, he believed that he would soon become a good rider.

Humph, little brat? Wait a year or two and see who is the little brat.

Li Rufeng called on Habashibuhua and Huluchierjia to go with him to Gelina for a meeting. Habashibuhua was also a veteran and he was very familiar with this set of tactics.

Hulujirga was a latecomer in the tribe. If the old Sultan were still alive, he should have responded to the old Sultan's call as a soldier in the past two years, fought in battles in the south and the north, and made great achievements, just like his predecessors.

Those who are lucky will become Qinggelinayan, those who are unlucky will die on the battlefield, and those who are neither bad nor bad will return to their tribe like Habashibuhua and become the backbone of the tribe.

It's a pity that the old Sultan died...

Li Rufeng certainly did not miss the Sultan Timur. Not to mention his racial and civilizational stance, from the current perspective, if the old Sultan were still alive, Li Rufeng would probably find it difficult to sit in his current position.

I just went to war with the Ming Empire, and then an extremely influential Eastern shaman appeared in the border area. What's going on?

There was still a slight chill on the grassland in the early morning. The horse's hooves trampled the green grass, splashing dew on the boots. Li Rufeng yawned loudly, looking at the scattered campsites of the main camp in the distance, then looked back at his own side. The gap between the two sides was visible to the naked eye.

"How do you usually deal with civilians at gathering points in this kind of work?" Li Rufeng tilted his head and asked Habashibuhua.

"Most of the time, we will take away everything we can and burn the rest. If they don't resist, not many people will die." Habashibuhua smiled and did not mention the situation if someone resisted.

If you find a small group of enemy troops, eat them up. If you have a large group, keep a close eye on them and send someone back to report their location. "Qinggelinayan waved his hand and directly included half of the Urfa region.

Over the past thousand years, this land has been repeatedly ravaged by the Romans, Sassanid Persians, and Arabs. The local people's blood is mixed and it is almost impossible to tell who is who. After Timur's northern expedition to the Golden Horde, a large number of Armenians were relocated here, briefly forming a settlement dominated by Armenians.

In the vast wasteland, there are still a large number of uncontrollable Turkmen and Kurdish tribes wandering around. Due to the civil strife in the Khanate, in order to maintain stability, Dosit has only imposed the minimum tax here in recent years, so this area has a bit of a laissez-faire style. Compared with the sustainable fishing of the Mughals, the life of each village and stronghold is still acceptable.

But now the Mongols are coming.

Li Rufeng had no intention of being the bad guy and trying to dissuade these Mongolian military aristocrats from looting and killing people indiscriminately. That would be meaningless. Even Qinggelinayan himself probably didn't have that much reputation.

These Mughals gathered together, nominally to overthrow the bastard Doshite for the glory of the Mongols, but in reality it was for profit. For them, war was profitable, and the source of profit was these lucrative tribes.

Forget about dissuading others from committing evil. Li Rufeng couldn't even control his own soldiers from participating in looting. Without looting, what would his "army" of a thousand men eat and drink? How could he maintain high morale to attack the city?

If he didn't rob, how would he explain to the soldiers who were facing life-threatening dangers when other soldiers who returned from looting wore gold and silver and ate meat and drank wine? Was it just because of Li Rufeng's superior moral values?

He didn't have the nerve or the ability to stop all this from happening. The only thing he could do was to instruct Habashibuhua not to kill indiscriminately after Qinggelinayan "claimed" the area he was responsible for looting.

Habashibuhua nodded as usual. He had never disobeyed the shaman's will, and this time was no exception. Moreover, as a veteran, he had long passed the age where he needed blood and slaughter to satisfy his inner desires, but he could not restrain everyone.

After discussion, each department was to allocate half of its personnel to the looting area to reduce the logistical pressure of the headquarters. Li Rufeng planned to distribute the quotas equally so that everyone could benefit.

Habashibuhua will take away 150 cavalrymen from Li Rufeng's 300 men, including the 50-man teams of Huluchirjia and Wugudu, and 50 men from the 100 personal soldiers will be selected to serve as Habashibuhua's personal guards.

Saladin Muhet got the remaining spot. The Kurds will send 250 people, divided into five teams, to participate in this looting.

Regardless of whether the Mongols or the Kurds looted, one quarter was divided among the individuals, one quarter among the officers, one quarter among Li Rufeng, and the remaining one quarter belonged to Qinggeli Nayan.

"What path can you take to escape us? Our steeds are swift, our arrows are sharp, our swords are like thunderbolts, and our hearts are as hard as the mountains."

It sounded like the wind in my ears again.

But obviously, he didn't finish his sentence. The second half of the sentence should be, but it depends on the mood of the soldiers who participated in the looting.

And here, as the starting point of the looting, carries too many accumulated emotions and excitement. New recruits participating in a major operation for the first time, veterans revisiting old experiences, greed and lust are intertwined together, making Li Rufeng seem to be able to smell the sweat produced by the secretion of adrenaline when the tragedy happened.

Following the smell, Li Rufeng and his followers walked towards the largest house in the village. Most of it had collapsed due to the fire, but it was still a circle larger than the other wreckage.

This is a "granary" used to store food, and it is also the final resting place of the former owner of the village. The cavalry responsible for looting are not here to implement a scorched earth strategy, and they cannot cause trouble for the main force behind them.

All the bodies of the dead were moved here and burned clean with a big fire. The burnt bodies were inside, and through the cracks in the building, some "alien" corpses could be seen in different postures.

Those were the less fortunate "dead" who were thrown into the sea of ​​fire before they finally breathed their last. Their struggling figures were their final cries.

"Ugh!" The young Oulus vomited directly, his little face pale.

Children of his age shouldn't actually read these things, but Orus is different. He may really be a descendant of the Golden Family... At least he has passed the True Gold Test.

Currently, only Li Rufeng and Medina Tahe know about this matter. Who would have thought that the drunken boasts of Taierbahe and his son were actually true? Fortunately, Medina Tahe is a smart man. Compared with the benefits that she and her son can gain from it, the danger hidden behind it is even greater.

Even Li Rufeng didn't dare to use this matter to make a real profit.

The bloodline of the Golden Family does represent supreme glory, but the interests involved are too great, and the enemies... are too many.

"Orus, this is war." Li Rufeng stepped forward and kicked open the nailed door, revealing everything inside. "As the one in power, every decision you make has a price. I gave the orders, so these are my karma."

In my heart, Bartel felt the same way.

That night, the dark wizard Azadirim, who had taken over the bodies of the living dead, sneaked into the village alone, intending to nourish his increasingly emaciated soul. After setting up the ritual array for sacrifice, he was silent for a while and then uttered a true soul-searching question: "Where are their souls?"

Chapter 102 I once thought I had a clear conscience

Thanks to the gifts from the looting team, Mr. Li's dinner tonight was much richer than usual. In addition to a lot of pheasant meat on the table, there was also a lot of roasted bird meat for the nobles to taste. Not only that, he also got a small basket of eggs of different sizes.

In addition, because Li Rufeng had a large number of people and enough troops to go out to plunder, he brought back seventeen large carts of various supplies. These carts and the horses pulling them were also part of the spoils. Because Mengge was used to cooperating with Li Rufeng, he simply handed over the spoils on his side to Li Rufeng.

This is when Mirzan needs to take action. When Li Rufeng's unit was small, Li Rufeng could still take care of it. But now that he has a large number of people under him, he is unwilling to do this kind of thing. He simply assigns the work and takes care of the overall ledger himself.

Li Rufeng's twenty system soldiers participating in the raids didn't provide any experience points or proficiency gains. Li Rufeng figured this was out of scope. If he could recruit the in-game hero unit known as "Wanderers," perhaps he could remotely gain experience points...

Now he could only watch the experience slip away. Similarly, the looted wealth was not counted by the system and could not be converted proportionally into dinars recognized by the system.

Fortunately, the system at least allowed him to calculate the total price of these things in a systematic way. The total amount was about 8,000 dinars, of which various daily necessities were the largest in number, such as pots, pans, tables, chairs and benches. The Mongols in Li Rufeng's tribe were better off. They only wanted those colorful and novel things, as well as gold and silver utensils.

But the Kurds led by Saladin himself were different. They really wanted to scrape the ground three feet high, and even packed up the charcoal that others had made and shipped it back. The Kurds were really afraid of poverty in recent years, and they wanted everything.

Of course, in Mr. Li's opinion, the hard life of the people in this place is ultimately due to the lack of handicraft industry. Timur plundered too harshly in the past, causing the handicraft industry here to regress by at least a century.

Looking at the miscellaneous items piled up in the carriage, Li Rufeng felt a bit of a headache. If he had the capital, he could send people out to other tribes and allow them to exchange the rags for money on the spot, then pull the items back to the rear and sell them along the trade route to Aleppo. He would definitely make a lot of money.

Unfortunately, he had no money, so he could only watch this opportunity to make a fortune slip away...

However, due to the old shaman, Li Rufeng's impression of this world was more limited to the singing and dancing skills of the grassland people during this period of time.

Now that the war has begun, the bloody side is truly revealed to Li Rufeng.

He was able to face the bloody battle with the Taierbahe tribe that night without changing his expression, and after the war he remained rational and calm in straightening out his interpersonal relationships and playing the game of power.

But when Li Rufeng saw those eyes, he had to take a deep breath to show his false frankness.

This is war, Li Rufeng said to himself in his heart, but deep down, he knew very well that it was hypocritical to cover up evil deeds in the name of war. You can kill your conscience and morality in your consciousness, but you cannot change the facts.

That night, twenty-six of the twenty-seven women were distributed among the soldiers for their enjoyment, but the farmer's daughter was left in the tent by Li Rufeng. Satuya happily helped the girl dress up without a trace of jealousy, and enthusiastically told the girl how handsome and elegant the shaman was, how gentle and considerate he was, and how he smelled particularly good, completely different from other nobles.

She was so naive and romantic that she didn't realize that the peasant girl didn't understand her language at all, and that she had a small skinning knife hidden in her hand when she wasn't paying attention.

Unfortunately, the two girls with completely different thoughts talked at cross purposes in the tent all night, and the shaman did not return to the tent. He went to the Mughal camp next door and drank with Centurion Mongke all night.

The author says:

Author's Note: This is just one update today. I was stuck on the book yesterday and didn't go to bed until 3:00 AM. Today I'm so sleepy, and suddenly I remembered that I have to go to work tomorrow. My morale is low. Shit...

Chapter 103: Audacity

1408, March 18, early morning, in the city of Mardin, at Dost’s official residence.

"Lord Dost, the Mughals have taken action. Their main force crossed the Euphrates River yesterday. There are about 2,000 of them, all cavalry." On the two-square-meter sand table, stones of different colors and sizes represented different cities and settlements, Ilda, who was dressed in black, reported.

Dost even had the leisure to use different colored dyes to paint different areas on the sand table in different colors to represent various terrains.

The one who sits on the throne of Erhan is Khalil, the good son of Maharaja Milan Shah.

"Whose men were responsible for monitoring the river that day?" Duoste was already accustomed to the bunch of good-for-nothings under his command. He was not even surprised that the Mongols crossed the river so easily.

"Yes..." Ilda was about to speak when Dost waved his hand to signal him not to say anything.

"Forget it, no matter who it is, just chop him off. Now the Mughals have crossed the river and are at the gates of the city. Those soldiers from the river are more scared than I am. They are meat on the chopping board now, and they dare not even fart." A smile appeared at the corner of Duosite's mouth. If possible, he even wanted to hang every person from the river outside the city wall.

Those veteran soldiers showed no trace of the Mongols in the battles. They picked and chose during the battles and robbed their allies of their spoils twice as much after the battles. They even dared to openly disobey their own military orders, standing by and watching when they should have attacked, and deciding on their own whether to retreat when they shouldn't have.

If it weren't for the fact that Dost had no cavalry, those people in the river would have...

But now, the Mughals have come, the real Mongols have come, and compared to their own, those Mongols probably prefer the heads of those who grew up in the river.

Ilda was not interested in the Mongolian civil war. He did whatever Dost said. His main feature was his loyalty. Although he lacked ability, his loyalty was impeccable.

"Where are they now?" Doste stood in front of the sand table, holding a whole box of silver chess pieces representing the military forces at hand, and placed them one by one in the corresponding positions.

"We should be in Urfa now." Ilda pointed to a location on the sand table.

...

"That's the city of Urfa, the birthplace of the Prophet Ibrahim." Qinggelinayan, riding on his horse, pointed his whip at the stone castle not far away and said to Li Rufeng beside him, "How many days do you think it will take us to capture it?"

"I don't know, Lord Yan, you are the most professional in fighting." Li Rufeng said respectfully. This time he was not being modest, he really didn't understand.

Although he had the Engineering skill listed in his stats, and he naturally had a 45-point skill level, and even though he had acquired the "Scaffolding" specialty and knew how to build some non-range engineering equipment, he certainly didn't know how to siege...

The entire Islamic world is engaged in a game of ideas, using force to defeat cleverness, and with great vigor...

Li Rufeng's biggest question at the time was why the old shaman knew this matter so clearly. After all, he was a kafir, and knowing so much was neither scientific nor superstitious.

“Why would he ask a group of religious scholars to study this matter instead of consulting a Kafir like me about digging out someone’s orthodoxy?” The old shaman’s eyes narrowed into slits with laughter, as if he was recalling the glorious days of the past.

When Li Rufeng thought of the old shaman's audacity, he shuddered and was filled with admiration. He even had a better impression of the old sultan, whom he had never met. There was nothing they dared not do.

The author says:

Author's words: Note 1 - The place of Urfa is now called Şanlıurfa, which was renamed in 84 AD. Since there was no archaeology in ancient times, during the long Middle Ages, both Muslims and Jews believed that Urfa was the city of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham in the Torah (in fact, the real city of Ur is the Sumerian city of Tell el-muqayyar in Iraq). In order to show respect for the city, Turkish calls it "Şanlıurfa", which means "Sacred Urfa".

Note 2 According to the Bible (Genesis 10:8-12), Cush gave birth to Nimrod, who was the first hero in the world. He built cities on the earth. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, which is the great city, all in the land of Shinar (located in Mesopotamia). He was the first to form the concept of a country. As to who he was in history, some scholars believe that he may be Enmerkar in the Sumerian "Literary Work Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta" in 2100 BC.