Chapter 167: Post-Battle Matters, Spending the Night in the Wilderness

As Jier rode his horse, with the corpse of the dead Da Aokesi slung over the horse's back and a dead prairie horse being dragged behind him by the reins, he returned to the place where he had previously fought the farmers.

Looking at the corpses covering the ground, Jier sighed. He knew that many of these farmers, until the moment they died, had not realized they did not have to die. Was it worth it to throw away their lives for the ambition of the Oakes Brothers?

Could these Oakes Brothers have made such good promises to make these people abandon their stable farming lives and risk participating in such an unpredictable, life-or-death operation?

Among the corpses everywhere, there were, of course, farmers who were not as severely injured and had only fainted due to accidents during the battle. After being slapped awake by Aoni and the others and questioned, it was learned that this operation was only because the Oakes Brothers had promised them a reduction in this year's land rent, which was why these farmers from Bianji Village had joined.

Similar operations had been organized by the Oakes Brothers several times over the years. Basically, every time they achieved victory in battle with very little damage, making the participating farmers feel that it was a very worthwhile thing. After all, letting the men of the family go out for a few days when they were not very busy could reduce this year's land rent by several tenths; this was something the farmers felt was worthwhile no matter how they looked at it.

But this year, that Bianji Village would likely have to spend its time in a cloud of gloom and despair.

In just a short minute or two, Jier had killed more than twenty farmers who fought him. These people came from different families, which meant that at least twenty households would face the situation of losing a family member.

"Lord Jier, should we take the carts to pursue those fleeing guys? If we take the carts to pursue them now, they won't get far on foot; we should be able to catch back about half of them," Aoni approached and asked Jier loudly.

Jier waved his hand: "Forget it. They are just a group of ignorant and greedy farmers who couldn't see their opponent clearly. Just let them get lost. Our battle today was so tragic; not to mention our own casualties, the enemy's death and injury toll alone is already very serious. Do you remember when we first walked out of Baishi Pass, we fought a bloody battle with raiding bandits all night, and the next day we were blocked on the road by a group of Priests of the Church of the God of the Dead?"

Aoni chuckled: "I killed a bandit back then. It was because I performed well at that time that I was later able to become a Squad Leader in your Armed Squad, then later became the captain of a hundred-man team, and then became the Warrior Captain for everyone now. Although that wasn't my first time killing someone, I still have a deep impression of it."

Jier did not expect that the battle with the bandits was not the first time the seemingly honest-natured Aoni had killed someone. So, after asking around, he learned that back in his hometown, Aoni had killed a local thug because he was saving someone. Later, when the public security in his hometown deteriorated, those thugs he had offended naturally gathered many people to cause trouble for Aoni.

Aoni took his family and fled early, avoiding the trouble from those thugs. Although most of his family died on the road during the displacement, some relatives still survived to reach Baishi Pass.

However, as for Aoni himself, he no longer had any close family.

"How about finding a good girl as soon as possible and starting a family again? At least you have to let the family bloodline continue," Jier suggested.

Aoni smiled and said nothing.

Weier, who had been listening nearby, also fell silent. Compared to him, who still had a clear target for revenge, this partner of his could only live in this world in a daze, without even a target for revenge or accusation. It was hard to judge whether he himself was more miserable, or if Aoni was more miserable.

Fighting is refreshing, intense, and a matter of life and death.

But cleaning up the battlefield after the fight is a task that must be done, yet it is also a troublesome thing.

With a large number of humans dying in one place, not to mention the potentially ominous atmospheric changes, at the very least, so many corpses had to be dealt with, right? Jier guessed that by now, the Church of the God of the Dead in Dorn Town or Suishi Cheng had already anticipated this change from a distance and were complaining about gathering Priest personnel and temporarily taking carts to rush over.

Although he felt sorry for those Church of the God of the Dead Priests working overtime, Jier could only express that it had to be this way at the time. After all, facing the raid of hundreds of bandits, they couldn't just sit and wait to be captured, right?

That would only encourage the bandits to grow larger and trigger an even greater disaster.

If the security forces in Copper Mine County had been sufficient from the beginning, where would there be so many refugees everywhere, and naturally, there wouldn't be those newly formed Bandit Groups.

Even the straight and smooth important Shanglu had been cut off because these bandits grew larger, so the associated massive commercial losses were likely an astronomical figure.

But there was no way around it; the loss of population in these places and the severance of trade routes were simply unimportant compared to the Noble lords' affairs regarding the war with neighboring countries.

War is the continuation of politics, and military power will only serve the political entity that constructs it as a priority.

Therefore, the important armies of the various local Noble territories were naturally drawn away, and before the war produced a result, it was unlikely they would return to handle 'small matters' like bandit suppression and clearing the Shanglu.

"Everyone get busy. We still have countless aftermath matters to deal with. Don't be idle. Half of the people should remain fully armed and equipped to guard the surrendered bandits and others. The other half get moving. Prioritize checking all items on the surrendered bandits, tie them up again, and after feeding them water, make them sit on the ground one after another. No moving, no talking!"

Jier rode a temporarily captured prairie horse, returned to the caravan, and readjusted the forces at hand.

During this process, the Caravan he had been keeping an eye on remained very well-behaved. It seemed that Jier breaking them and bringing back the corpse of Da Aokesi, and bringing back the unconscious Xiao Aokesi, made them see the situation clearly all at once.

The potential mutiny or other changes Jier had expected did not happen. Those guys were well-behaved, and even their previous fake flattery was gone, as if they were afraid that Da Aokesi had said something before he died, or that Xiao Aokesi would wake up from his coma and accuse them of betraying them.

Jier found this somewhat intriguing. He let the old Dwarf have reliable Dwarf Warriors guard the unconscious Xiao Aokesi. After Mr. Zuojigela simply stopped the bleeding on the wound, he left it alone, letting Xiao Aokesi lie on the still-scorching wilderness ground after his armor was stripped off.

Jier instructed Weier to secretly hide around Xiao Aokesi to see what the people from the Caravan were doing and to find a way to get some evidence from them.

After all, Jier only had suspicions, although he was absolutely certain that the Caravan within the convoy was definitely in cahoots with the Oakes Brothers.

"Everyone else get moving too. Dwarves, split into several groups. Please go to the several places where we fought and bring back all the enemy corpses and enemy weapons and equipment to one place. Yes, the corpses must also be brought back. I don't know how you Dwarves handle the corpses of your own kind, but we Humans burn them with fire."

Jier shrugged: "Otherwise, I guess in a few days, among those rotting corpses, some might start moving and grab people to bite!"

The old Dwarf sneered: "Rest assured. With this big sun, if there aren't enough wild beasts to clean up the corpses, these corpses piled here will only be baked into dried corpses by the sun. The large amount of Founengliang generated by the death of living beings will be cleared away by this scorching sunlight."

He added: "Only in caves, forests, or places with a lot of overcast and rain where light cannot reach will a large number of dead bodies produce the situation you mentioned in an open environment. As for the corpses, we Dwarves generally also use fire to handle them, but we don't just simply burn them away. The dead need respect, and for Dwarf families with a heritage, the corpses of the previous generation of elders, after a series of treatments, are also a testament to the family's heritage."

He shook his head: "Only commoners rush about every day to survive, and thus lack sufficient family heritage and history."

Jier pursed his lips: "So, you Dwarves keep the corpses of dead family members in your own homes?"

The other Human Warriors around who heard this conversation all had expressions of disgust.

The old Dwarf's tone suddenly rose: "What do you mean by keeping them in your own home? You young man, do you think it's like a craft displayed in a glass cabinet in the living room for guests to see? Of course, it's in the family cemetery. Leading guests who visit home to tour the family cemetery and admire the great life achievements and glory of every deceased family member is a very normal guest etiquette, right?"

Jier touched his nose awkwardly: "I'm very sorry. Most of us Humans don't have any family cemeteries. As for creating a life resume for the deceased to leave on a tombstone, many families don't have the similar financial resources and habits."

He sighed, understanding that this had a very important relationship with the length of life between Dwarves and Humans. Generally, Humans live to be at most about a hundred years old, while Dwarves can easily live for three or four hundred years. In terms of the length of life, Dwarves are several times longer than Humans.

Not to mention that most Humans do not live to old age. Due to factors such as disease, hunger, exhaustion, and murder, most Humans only live to about thirty to fifty. Like those bandits who died today, they were clearly young people, but because they became bandits, they were killed directly by Jier while they were still young.

Of course, they became bandits; if they could live for a long time, that would be the sorrow of others. Who knows how many people would die because of them in the future. Jier killing these young bandits could be considered indirectly saving more people.

Kill one to save ten; that is the principle.

Afterwards, before the sky turned completely dark, a large number of personnel were mobilized by Jier's orders to handle all the follow-up affairs resulting from today's battle.

And the convoy gradually moved away from the position where it had stopped, leaving this wilderness land soaked in blood, and moved forward to the place where the ruins of the inn were originally located. There were many wooden obstacles used by the bandits to block the road, plus the scattered simple obstacles at the other end. These wood materials, plus a batch of trees that Jier led the team to cut down in the dark, were finally prepared as wood materials to burn all the corpses before midnight.

At midnight, in the wilderness beside the ruins, hundreds of corpses were piled up in more wood materials and felled large trees. As the kindling was lit, the small flames gradually turned into a scorching mountain of fire that could rise more than ten meters high.

The black smoke produced by a large number of corpses rose into the sky, which actually obscured the starlight and moonlight in the sky, which had not had a single cloud for the past few months.

Everyone had the experience to choose the place for burning the corpses downwind to avoid others being kept awake by the foul-smelling black smoke from burning the corpses tonight.

In fact, everyone was already having a hard time sleeping. The number of surrendered and captured bandits, inn staff, and others was even greater than the original number of people in the convoy, about three hundred people.

Fortunately, Jier did not intend to give these people food; feeding them some water was enough to temporarily ensure they wouldn't die of thirst. These surrendered people didn't eat, which also happened to make them lack physical strength due to hunger, making it easier to take them on the road to Suishi Cheng tomorrow.

The Warriors were divided into two batches to rest and guard the captives. The resting Warriors were also in no mood to sleep, discussing today's events one after another, whether they were Human Warriors or Dwarf Warriors, it was the same.

And as for Jier, he sat in front of a campfire on the side, together with Xueya Site and Mr. Zuojigela, who could write and calculate, calculating the gains and expenditures of today's series of battles.

The gains were nothing much to say. The horses plundered from the Bandit Leaders could greatly supplement the pulling power of the convoy, although it would make the drivers more tired, and the forage supply would also be more expensive.

But Jier felt it was worth it. After letting his drivers clean and feed these 'ownerless' sturdy horses, re-treat the hooves, and shoe them in the town, these horses could double the scale of Jier's convoy. Although this meant that some Warriors would need to work part-time as carriage drivers while on the road, doubling the scale of the convoy could also allow the convoy to carry more supplies.

Although it seemed useless now, after all, Jier and his men didn't have that many things, but they could be temporarily rented to some Dwarves to use. More importantly, Jier was doing this for after finding the Kendall Army, to provide these horses and carriages to the entire army to use, enhancing the mobility and material supply capability of the entire army.

For an army to wage war, basically, the demand for materials is almost infinite, and the more material supplies an army obtains, and the stronger their material transport capacity, although their combat effectiveness does not rise linearly, it certainly has a corresponding improvement.

This was Jier's first time participating in a large-scale Human war, and he would not allow himself to stand on the side of the defeated; he had to work hard.

As for the weapons and equipment in the hands of those Bandits, aside from the sets of Leather Armor collected from the Bandit Leader that could barely be taken along, the stinking clothes and rotten pants in the hands of the other Bandits could not be sold for much money, but Jier still intended to take them to the next town he encountered to sell them as soon as possible.

Most of the captured weapons and equipment were not very good; the Dwarfs had complete personal armaments, so Jier did not need to worry, and the Dwarfs themselves did not look favorably upon the messy, broken weapons in the hands of the Bandits. Jier's Warriors, meanwhile, picked out some from the piles of weapons and equipment to carry and use themselves.

Basically, according to Jier's requirements, his Warriors and drivers each had at least one set of armor, with the Warriors using Plate Armor and the drivers using the sets of Leather Armor pieced together from what was captured from the Bandit Leader.

Everyone was to have a bow and arrow. Each Warrior had to have a Soldier Bow; from now on, there would be no specialized division of archers, but rather all Warriors were to master the skill of shooting bows and arrows—it was hard to say how good their skills would be, but everyone had to know how to shoot. The Tusi Brothers would continue to use Large Bows as specialized archers and had the authority and duty to command other shooting Warriors during battle. The drivers were to be equipped with various Hunting Bows obtained from the Bandits and the Shop Assistant; everyone had to have a bow and arrow and know how to use them.

This way, when riding in the carriages, they could also hide inside and shoot arrows instead of cowering in the carriage compartments unable to do anything.

Everyone was to have a Shield. The Warriors used the Mujishibingdun captured from the Defeated Soldier, while the others used various Mudu captured from the Bandits; the remaining shields and other weapons and equipment were packed up and loaded onto the carriages to be carried along for now.

On Jier's side, after looking at the two axes belonging to Xiao Aokesi, he tossed them to Bawei, telling him to melt down these two axes made of refined steel later, as they could serve as the main material for future Magic Material Axe.

As for the rest, only the special Hunting Bow of one of the Bandit Leaders was decent; after Jier tried it out, he kept it for himself. The Soldier Bow on his warhorse was already on the verge of breaking due to high-intensity use, so it could only be used as a practice tool for the Warriors to practice archery.

Although it looked like there was a large harvest, the expenditures were equally large.

Regarding the kill records and bounties of these Warriors today, Jier and several companions calculated them repeatedly, and he called over multiple Warriors to repeatedly ask about the battlefield situation. Since Jier had the most kills himself, he actually saved himself quite a bit of money this time.

But the problem was, the bounty given for capturing an enemy alive was twice as much as the bounty for killing an enemy!

Just for this, Jier paid out twenty Gold Coins in one breath. Fortunately, the Dwarf Warriors did not charge for their efforts, otherwise the expenditure would have had to double again.

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