Mount and Blade Central Asia

After all, people like this tune these days. A thick book as big as the Bible is basically full of these little jokes, just to increase its legitimacy and the degree of its impressive background.

In comparison, the belief in Eternal Heaven is too low-key.

But now the world below the stage was in chaos, and Li Rufeng no longer cared about the style. He was the chosen shaman of Changshengtian, and Tengri would surely not blame him for keeping everything simple. What's more, this ceremony did not exist before, and it originated from him.

Therefore, he has the final say on the formal procedures of the ceremony. Since it is not appropriate to make any major changes now, the ascension ceremony will be written entirely by the shaman in the future!

Li Rufeng's eyes turned red from being burned by the green flames, but compared with the other victims, Li Rufeng was already in a good situation. Those people were now burnt to pieces and had no movement.

At this time, in the Sweet Water River, the black wizard Misia, who looked like a water ghost, was also observing Li Rufeng. He was very surprised that his witchcraft did not take effect immediately. It was the first time he encountered such a situation.

"Azadirim, you have so many little secrets..." Misia looked at Li Rufeng, a hint of gloom flashed in his eyes. He knew that there would definitely be traps in making a deal with Azadirim, but he really couldn't refuse the witchcraft that could save people from death.

It has been nearly half a year since Azadirim's accidental death, and he is still alive and well. This incident itself is as big an event as the appearance of the Blue Wind in the black wizard circle of the Black Sheep.

Temporary out-of-body experiences, faked deaths, and even soul transfer and rebirth are not out of reach for these dark wizards. As long as they offer enough sacrifices, the Blue Wind will always find a way to satisfy their desires.

Although there are a few good things that happen occasionally during this process, like when Azadirim sacrificed True Seeing, those are, after all, "low-probability" events. Overall, Azure Wind is still generous...

Chapter 320 Overdone

The six Kongming lanterns changed color one by one in the sky, and then suddenly flashed collectively and disappeared!

Li Rufeng would rather believe that the Kongming lanterns were collectively extinguished, but in this dark night, it felt as if the Kongming lanterns suddenly disappeared and were taken into the Changshengtian.

Sagrichin looked at Li Rufeng in astonishment, his eyes full of surprise and disbelief. Then, after a brief hesitation, Sagrichin knelt directly in front of Li Rufeng, and reverently prostrated himself before him!

"Great Shaman Rufeng, please save the people in the river from the water and fire!" Sagrichin bowed deeply, resting his forehead on the ground for a long time and refused to get up.

In fact, Li Rufeng was also very panicked. He vaguely felt as if something was watching him in the sky. The presence of that vast will was so strong, as if an extremely huge magnet was floating in the air, and he was just a piece of iron filings.

However, this huge monster is invisible. Such a strong sense of existence and the emptiness in reality make Li Rufeng feel a contrast that the human brain cannot handle!

The contrast was so strong that Li Rufeng felt his brain was churning, and he immediately vomited out the food and alcohol he had eaten that night.

But Li Rufeng couldn't take his eyes off. He stared at the sky, as if there really was a will called Changshengtian, a god called Tengri, and endless grasslands where the god lived!

And in the abyss beneath the grassland, there is an equally boundless eternal desert!

These existences are transforming from nothingness into real things. Each of them needs to draw nourishment from Li Rufeng's thoughts. Of course, Li Rufeng is not the only source of nourishment.

At this moment, he could feel that in this world, there were other tiny existences that were contributing part of themselves to make this illusion more solid.

However, these "nutrients" from other realms are also transforming things in the sky bit by bit with their own unique will.

Li Rufeng could even feel the excitement and fanaticism in those wills. They wished they could melt themselves completely and merge into the sky.

However, it was Li Rufeng himself who triggered all this. He bore the greatest pressure and provided the most "nutrients".

But this was not his intention. Just as he vaguely realized that his uniqueness should not be explored in depth, he now also strongly felt that what was happening was wrong!

It is true that he is the shaman of Changshengtian, but he is not a devout believer. The reason why Li Rufeng is willing to accept this identity is because of the old shaman's kindness and because this identity allows him to integrate into this era at the lowest cost and gain a higher status, just to satisfy his ambition.

Or it is because the belief in Changshengtian has declined, there is no longer a systematic religious management system, no longer so many rules and constraints, which allows Li Rufeng to express himself freely.

But...what if Changshengtian really exists? What if Tengri really exists?

Li Rufeng suddenly felt suffocated. He couldn't accept this situation... and he didn't think he could make such a big impact on his own. He could clearly feel that even if he was drained dry, he couldn't complete the most basic construction of that huge will.

He doesn't want to sacrifice himself for "God", so...

Chapter 322 Fighting Fire with Fire

Li Rufeng heard a rustling sound of footsteps coming from far away. He was sure that it was not the footsteps of the bloody knight. It was lighter and obviously lower than Li Rufeng himself.

He could hear the other party's somewhat rapid breathing. For a moment, Li Rufeng suddenly felt a surge of fighting spirit in his heart. He wanted to jump up and fight the other party to the death. But when he saw his own panel attributes, this fighting spirit was like the urge to urinate in a toilet in a dream, and he suddenly became rational at the last moment.

He couldn't pee... no, he couldn't urge.

Perhaps it was the way Li Rufeng was lying on the ground, or perhaps it was the blood on his body, but the other party seemed to mistake Li Rufeng for a corpse and approached him with a bit of greed.

Then, Li Rufeng suddenly opened his eyes and stabbed the attacker to death with a sword from bottom to top.

When Li Rufeng opened his eyes, he saw clearly that the other person was a thin but muscular man who looked like an Arab. He was holding a bright silver scimitar and wearing inlaid armor that highlighted his agility.

But in comparison, the opponent's lower body has a pair of reverse-jointed knees, which gives him a considerable advantage in jumping and bursting.

Until his death, the other party's eyes still contained a look of disbelief and shock. It was obvious that he did not expect that there would be someone here using such despicable tactics.

Then a warm current flowed into Li Rufeng's body along the magic sword, instantly healing most of the wound on his hand.

"Well, fighting to support fighting..." Li Rufeng smiled bitterly. He now knew what such a place was used for. This was an illusion that the Scarlet Wind rewarded his believers to hone their skills.

Li Rufeng, who successfully killed an enemy here, has now become a formal member from an admittance candidate. He now vaguely feels the presence of several other "competitors" around him, and those people obviously also feel his presence.

At least two of them had already started moving towards Li Rufeng's direction, but what gave him even more headaches was that the magic sword in his hand seemed to be fully charged, the flames gradually rose, and the whole body emitted a dazzling red light.

Accompanied by a vibration that felt like space was being torn apart, the tall blood-red knight walked out from a crack that appeared out of nowhere. The terrifying gaze behind the heavy helmet stabbed into Li Rufeng like a dagger.

Li Rufeng felt as if wherever the other person's eyes touched, there was a burning pain...

wrong!

He had indeed been burned by flames just now, so this was not an illusion, but...!

...

Haishar frowned and filled a small palm-wide canal with his feet. It was not very long, but it just connected the two existing streams together, making the small area on the river bank a closed loop in a physical sense.

If it weren't for his sharp eyes and good luck, he wouldn't have found such a hidden canal...

call!

Li Rufeng sat up suddenly and returned to the noisy real world. Bater in front of him was wiping his tears and bandaging the wound on Li Rufeng's hand. At the same time, he looked at the magic sword in Li Rufeng's other hand with fear.

Sagrichin was still kneeling not far away, as devout as a Muslim at prayer. Li Rufeng didn't want or need such fanatics. He would rather they were a little more materialistic, bargaining with him for every penny with a little scheming within the framework of the basic goodness required by faith, than to see them be so crazy and bet everything on the possibility that faith would help them solve all their sufferings.

"Stand up!" Li Rufeng frowned and shouted with displeasure on his face.

Hearing Li Rufeng's voice, Bater raised his head in surprise: "You woke up, Shaman Rufeng! I thought..."

Li Rufeng comforted his junior brother and clenched his injured hand. The wound that was originally bandaged with the clothes he tore off was now replaced with gauze. Under the gauze, the wound had healed for the most part and even stopped bleeding.

Li Rufeng's scolding made Sagrichin raise his head in astonishment, but he did not hesitate. Instead, he subconsciously followed the shaman's instructions and stood up with a look of obedience on his face.

"Sir, is the ceremony completed?" Sagrichin asked cautiously.

In fact, this was a question he asked despite knowing the answer. He had witnessed with his own eyes when the six lamps carrying the souls of his tribesmen were accepted by Changshengtian. He even felt that he had witnessed the existence of Changshengtian with his own eyes. The sky was still the same sky, but the feeling it gave people at that time was definitely different from before!

At that moment, the green flames around him that were hurting his people were extinguished almost instantly!

Chapter 323 A friend came from afar...to give his head

What place was this? Azadim stared blankly at the busy street. Even if he were a mentally ill cultist, he could be sure this place wasn't the Eastern Dynasty...

But this is what was projected in Li Rufeng's mind. It was the thing he was most familiar with. Azadirim widened his eyes and tried to find any valuable information from it. As a result, a passing BTR wheeled infantry fighting vehicle directly stunned him.

In fact, not only Azadirim was dumbfounded, but Li Rufeng was also dumbfounded. After all, no one had thought that such a powerful weapon would pass by on the street on such a quiet morning.

Li Rufeng swore that this idea really came to him on the spur of the moment, because every time he charged on horseback, this was what he thought of. After all, this was a true torrent of steel...

On this modern street, even if a BTR infantry fighting vehicle was running on the road, it could not hide Azadirim's eye-catching outfit. He was wearing a hooded rag outfit that was very common in Asia in the early fifteenth century. Let's put it this way, even beggars in modern society don't dress so miserably.

So as soon as Li Rufeng's eyes moved away from the infantry fighting vehicle, he saw Azadirim.

Ha, there's an idiot here!

Li Rufeng now almost realized that he was in a dream. He wanted vegetables, and vegetables suddenly appeared on the table. He was thinking about the infantry fighting vehicle, and that thing appeared on the road like a sprinkler truck on the side of the road.

Azadirim looked at Li Rufeng with some annoyance. He was intimidated by the prosperity of the street and the steel monster, so he failed to react in the first time and integrate into this world. As a result, this mistake was discovered by Li Rufeng.

This is actually a battle of consciousness. He wants to take over everything of Li Rufeng, from body to soul, by possessing his body.

Even for a soul master like Azadirim, this is a huge gamble, because both parties at the table are betting everything they have.

However, Azadirim still has the advantage. This is a battle of consciousness. Strength in the traditional sense is meaningless here. This is an information battle. All they can rely on are the information they have been exposed to in their lives, the memories they have, and their imagination as bargaining chips.

Here, information technology is the sword, fantasy is the armor, the winner takes all, and the loser will have nothing. This is the spell that Azadirim demanded from the Blue Wind through sacrifice, but it is also an extremely fair confrontation. At the moment Azadirim was thinking, the relevant rules were also reflected in Li Rufeng's mind.

"I have been walking in the world for 177 years. When I was young, I witnessed the destruction of the Palace of Wisdom by the Mongols and the rise and fall of dynasties. In middle age, I joined the ranks of miracle seekers and glimpsed the truth of the world. Finally, I witnessed the power of our Lord's Blue Wind in Constantinople. Since then, I have embarked on the path of witchcraft, seeking endlessly and experiencing many miracles." Although Azadirim was surprised by Li Rufeng's world of consciousness, he was still full of confidence.

This confidence was given to him by his life experiences over the past hundred years. In terms of the amount of information alone, 177 years of life was far better than Li Rufeng's less than thirty years of life. What's more, he was also the wizard of the Azure Wind. The miracles he witnessed... Wait, what was that thing in the sky?

Azadirim looked at the huge Death Star floating in the sky in confusion, his face full of question marks.

"Why are you saying so much! You are courting death!" Li Rufeng took a few seconds to understand the so-called rules, and then... then he felt that he had a sure win!

You've lived 177 years? What a coincidence! I once played the Immortal in the game of Hezong Lianheng, planning from the Qin and Han dynasties all the way to World War II, building a vast empire!

Is the scenery of the Palace of Wisdom as breathtaking as the Black Library built between black holes? Could the miracles that the Azure Wind can display be considered miracles among the stars?

Li Rufeng smiled at Azadirim and, in between conversations, demonstrated to him what a miracle truly was. The Death Star? It was just a toy casually made to pay homage to a classic... The changing times had made the so-called insights of the old people a complete joke!

...

The next morning, Li Rufeng opened his eyes and a gleam of light flashed across his mind. The emptiness that seemed to have been squeezed out last night had long disappeared.

In that winner-takes-all information war, Li Rufeng crushed the dark wizard Azadirim without a doubt. The opponent didn't even make it to the nuclear bomb round before dying cleanly in the intensive bombardment of napalm, making Li Rufeng's victory a bit dull.

But Azadirim, or should I say the Blue Wind, still left a hook for Li Rufeng. The so-called winner takes all, naturally also includes the beliefs and knowledge about the Blue Wind in Azadirim's mind.

This made Li Rufeng finally give up his plan to become a wizard and give up inheriting the "legacy" from Azadirim.

Even so, Azadirim, who was completely destroyed in Li Rufeng's dream, also made up for his consumption last night, and even had a slight surplus. The specific manifestation was that Master Li's intelligence attribute increased by 1 point in the system judgment.

Chapter 324 Clear Route

After one tragedy, there were more tragedies. In the chaos last night, a total of nine people were burned to death by the ghost fire that appeared out of nowhere. But the entire tribe died a total of 41 people because of the chaos last night. In addition to those who were burned, most of them died from being trampled, and a few people accidentally fell into the Sweet Water River and drowned.

If it weren't for the "change" in the sky that later caused most of the people in the river to quiet down, the death toll would probably have increased further.

Karim worked almost until dawn before going to bed, but he was woken up again. With red eyes, he listened to his subordinates reporting the statistics of last night's losses and the impact. The first thing he had to face was the revival of the belief in Changshengtian among the people in Hezhongdi.

This was not really a surprise. Karim had prepared for it last night. Anyone who had seen what happened last night would definitely have a huge change in their religious views.

So Karim himself accepted all of this very calmly. After all, this was just a revival of Mongolian customs. Although they now call themselves Transoxiana people, they have never given up their Mongolian traditions.

Moreover, for them, religious beliefs are not that dogmatic. Just like their ancestors a hundred years ago gave up their belief in Eternal Heaven and embraced the Koran in order to consolidate the foundation of their rule, now they can also return to their roots and return to the embrace of Eternal Heaven under the majesty of the God-chosen Shaman.

But another thing still bothered Karim. That was that after experiencing that incident, his original plan to bind Li Rufeng through marriage seemed a bit inappropriate. Or to put it another way, he didn't dare to disrespect Li Rufeng as before.

When people used to talk about shamans, it was basically a matter of mutual respect and favor. Even the old shamans relied on the reputation they had accumulated over the years to maintain their status. But now Li Rufeng is serious about it, which makes the secular rulers very uncomfortable...

In fact, Li Rufeng was also troubled by this problem. The sudden accident last night had completely put him on Changshengtian's train, and there was no possibility of changing the route. But if he wanted to gain a foothold here, he had to make large-scale changes to the entire religious system in order to balance theocracy and ruling power.

But since ancient times, theocracy and imperial power have been incompatible, let alone a nation like the Mongols who are more accustomed to expressing their thoughts and feelings?

How did Genghis Khan handle this situation? Before he conquered the world, he killed the shaman Tongtian with a single blow... Since then, shamans have rarely interfered with secular power, and figures like the old shaman have never crossed the line.

Later, Mongol nobles began to follow the trend and convert to Islam. How did they do it? Any hardline religious leaders who dared to challenge them were killed... Moreover, the Mongol conversion was almost always a top-down process. These nobles only cared about the prestige and influence brought by the conversion itself, and no one cared about how the people below would react to this forced conversion.

Over time, this has led to the formation of the Mongolians' current relatively "modern" religious concepts. Compared with the "locals", those of them who are not extreme in this regard are a bit "unhalal".

Chapter 325 Compromise

"Shaman Rufeng, I was a bit abrupt in what we talked about before." Karim greeted Li Rufeng with a smile on his face and never mentioned his little daughter again. However, as the leader of the people in Hezhong, he still wanted to talk to Li Rufeng about the territory.

For the Mongols, the strength of a tribe depends almost entirely on the area of ​​pastures they control. Large pastures mean more livestock, more livestock mean more people, more cavalry, and stronger military force, and stronger military force means larger pastures. This is a complete closed loop that conforms to Mongolian customs.

At the same time, this is also the reason why expansionist states like the Mongol Empire and the Timurid Khanate can ignore the normal laws of development and continue to create military myths, because once they slow down, they will fall apart from within.

Timur's death was just one of the reasons for the decline of the Khanate.

Genghis Khan clearly stated in "The Great Zasa" that the goal of the Mongols was to expand territory, enfeoff brothers, and share wealth.

And now, just as Li Rufeng had to recompile the doctrines of the Eternal Heaven faith, if he wanted to use the Mongols more efficiently, he had to find a way to break this closed loop, or at least make it operate in a more reasonable way.

"Like I said, the tribes of the people of the River Land need to be divided into at least five parts. The territory we newly occupied is not as fertile as before and cannot support so many people." Li Rufeng looked at Karim with a forced smile on his face, enjoying the benefits of being the chosen shaman of God.

He can probably speak ten times better now than before.

Before, Li Rufeng had to worry that if Karim refused him very firmly and occupied a large enough piece of land by force, it would be difficult for him to do anything.

More than 10,000 people from Hezhong have basically crushed Li Rufeng's forces. After all, they can gather at least 1,800 regular cavalrymen who have served in the Khanate army, as well as the same number of armed herdsmen.

Although Li Rufeng has the support of the more powerful Mongols, Qinggelina Yanbacheng is waiting for him to ask for help. By then, the prestige of the two sides will probably be reversed.

But now, the one who should be worried is Karim. He needs to worry that Li Rufeng will use his prestige to divide the people in Hezhong.

Li Rufeng does have such appeal. With just a shout, he can attract at least a quarter of the people in Hezhong who voluntarily follow him.

Fortunately, neither side wanted to take that step. Li Rufeng was willing to support Karim to continue to serve as the leader of the people of Central River. He only required that the people of Central River must live in different places. Although this actually caused the power of the people of Central River to be dispersed, it retained enough dignity and nominal righteousness for Karim.

If one day in the future the people of Central Asia are indeed oppressed and are truly unhappy, Karim will be qualified to raise his arms and raise the banner.

With both sides willing to make concessions, the negotiations between Li Rufeng and the people of Central Asia made great progress. In just two days, they had advanced the negotiations to the point where the nobles among the people of Central Asia would live in Aleppo and how much real estate they would get after entering the area.

Overall, both the guests and the hosts had a great time.