Chapter 474: Noisy Monkeys in the Forest

Jier could no longer remember much of this prophecy poem; even using the methods of Priest Bata'er, he could only recall the majority of the content, and some of the vocabulary even deviated from what Bio of Big Tree had originally told him.

But Jier still clearly remembered the most important term in the entire prophecy poem.

"Messenger!"

Jier said this to Priest Bata'er.

"Messenger?" The priest rubbed his chin, carefully pondering the meaning within.

Xueya Siter walked over, carrying two bowls of freshly cooked meat soup, which he handed to Jier and Priest Bata'er respectively, and at this moment he interjected: "This 'messenger', could it be someone's nickname? Or perhaps the position they held in that defeated army?"

Seeing that both Jier and the priest were looking at him, Xueya Siter explained: "I know of some organizations that have designated people to handle the delivery of important information, and the position is called a messenger. Those defeated troops likely had a similar position. Do we have to capture him to successfully rescue the villagers of Changmai Village?"

"I agree with your subsequent analysis; the existence of this messenger will certainly help in rescuing the villagers. But I don't think a broken, small group of troops of no more than a hundred people needs a dedicated messenger to do anything, and I doubt he could play any role once the defeated troops hide in the mountains." Jier shook his head, evaluating Xueya Siter's analysis with both approval and disapproval.

Priest Bata'er, on the other hand, supported Xueya Siter's view: "Jier, I did describe the scale of that defeated army to you, but you overlooked that they reached Changmai Village only after crossing the vast, uninhabited area of the Southern Mountains. The fact that there were only a hundred or so people when they arrived at Changmai Village does not mean they only had a hundred or so people when they intended to cross the Southern Border Mountains."

"That's right, perhaps they were a few hundred strong at that time, but crossing the vast, uninhabited mountains is both arduous and dangerous. Everyone knows there are countless monsters and powerful Magic Beasts in the mountains. Hiss—looking at it this way, they would rather risk crossing the mountains than fight the enemy army to the north and take the main road. Just how powerful and terrifying must that enemy army be!"

When Xueya Siter said this, he looked at Jier with concern. Jier understood what his gaze meant and shrugged in response: "Don't worry, I'm not so easily defeated. Besides, if I can't win, can't I just run?"

"But wouldn't that make you a member of the defeated army as well?" the priest asked in return.

"That's hard to say. You aren't unaware of how much strength the Southern Province gathered to fight the war from last winter to this spring. The nobles everywhere have completely ignored the security of their territories, conscripting and gathering a large number of soldiers and manpower, which shows that the scale of the Southern Province's army this year will be very, very large! Large enough to completely rely on numbers to crush the enemy's army."

Jier spread his hands, using exaggerated gestures to estimate the scale of the Southern Province's army.

Unexpectedly, Xueya Siter pointed out the state of the Southern Province's nobles with sharp insight: "Such a large scale only shows that those lords are truly afraid. They have no other way but to rely on expanding the scale of the army."

Jier pondered for a moment and felt that Xueya Siter was right.

The three of them talked for a while, and after they could no longer analyze anything more from the prophecy poem of Bio of Big Tree based on the current information, they rested.

The next day, before dawn, the entire caravan had already risen early. The drivers and Warriors who knew how to cook simply boiled some meat soup. Because the previously roasted wild boar meat would easily spoil in the current temperature if not eaten quickly, they threw meat into the soup pot vigorously, and a perfectly good pot of vegetable and bean soup turned into a pot of meat soup.

But everyone was clearly very happy to eat meat; this rare opportunity to eat meat made everyone in the team very satisfied.

To speed up the breaking of camp, Jier personally brushed, fed, and armored Tianxuecao. After all that was done, there was still a little while before dawn!

"Don't wait for dawn, distribute torches to every carriage, the caravan is leaving now!"

Jier ordered.

Torches were distributed and lit, and then the campfire that had burned all night was extinguished by the drivers' early morning urine. Then they jumped onto the carriages, cracked their whips, and let out loud snapping sounds, urging the Pack Horses pulling the carriages to move.

The morning air was chilly and even had some thin mist, but as soon as the early summer sun rose above the horizon, this mist would soon disappear. By then, the temperature and air that everyone currently felt comfortable with would be replaced by the gradually rising heat and the scorching sun.

The caravan moved south along the only dirt road that could barely be seen, and sometimes this road even passed through the edges of some Shulin. Whenever this happened, Priest Bata'er would remind everyone to be careful of the various wild animals in the forest.

"Is it dangerous?" Jier asked.

Priest Bata'er shook his head: "It's not dangerous, but many animals clearly treat the Shulin as their territory and are very unwelcoming of our Human road encroaching on their territory."

"Some wild animals living in the forest will use various methods to drive away people on the road. For example, throwing feces at us or howling in unison to intimidate us; it's easy to get startled."

Jier smiled, pointing to the road ahead and asking the priest: "Since invading the Shulin will cause trouble with the animals, why must the route pass through these continuous stretches of forest?"

Priest Bata'er pointed to the gentle land around them and the various irregular Shulin, saying to Jier: "This is because the level of development here is not high. Without enough people settling down, naturally no one comes to cut down these forests. These forests, which should have naturally disappeared during the development of Human social activities, have just existed like this and blocked the roads connecting the various villages."

Just as he finished speaking, in a Shulin the caravan was about to approach, animals let out "Woo-yo—woo-yo—woo-yo—woo-yo—" calls, and the branches in the mid-air at the very edge of the forest trembled, as if animals were jumping back and forth in the trees.

"Look, Warrior Jier, that is a type of ape that lives in the Shulin. They live in groups, but the number is usually only about twenty or thirty, so they pose no danger to our caravan at all, and they don't have the guts to attack us either."

Speaking of this, Priest Bata'er patted his head: "But the problem is, they will keep following us, shouting at us, wanting to drive us away through shouting. And when the caravan or merchants pass through the Shulin according to the road, they will think it was their actions that drove us away, and they will jump and shout with excitement."

"If they just shout at us instead of formally blocking us, I don't think it's anything," Jier smiled, feeling that it was just the shouting of some wild animals and that it didn't count for anything; the caravan would soon pass through this small Shulin and reach the next wide, gentle wasteland.

To Jier's statement, Priest Bata'er shook his head and said nothing.

"These damn monkeys! If I could understand their language, I would know how ugly their insults are," Jier said loudly and viciously.

Priest Bata'er had an expression of having seen through it all long ago, driving his horse forward to try to persuade Warrior Jier not to be angry.

But at this moment, on the large tree branches on both sides of the caravan, thirty or so black-brown monkeys were each letting out loud "Woo-yo" calls, making everyone in the caravan frown. Some hot-tempered Warriors even stood in the carriage boxes, cursing at the monkeys that jumped from one tree to another just to chase and curse the people in the caravan.

But clearly, the cursing voices of ordinary people were no match for the animals whose shouting and howling were particularly loud, and they soon lost the battle.

Everyone's ears were full of the monkeys' cursing and driving-away sounds, and many people were so angry that their faces were twisted.

Priest Bata'er's words to persuade Jier were also drowned out by the noisy monkey howling around them. Naturally, Priest Bata'er had a way to deal with this; he could use Divine Power to raise his voice to communicate with Jier, but the priest did not want to waste Divine Power on such trivial matters.

Ever since he left the Nongshen Believers who worshipped the agricultural god in the Refugee Team, the replenishment of his Divine Power had become a big problem. In the past, when he was in the Refugee Team, even if his Divine Power was exhausted several times during treatment due to fighting, as long as those Nongshen Believers were still there, he could hold a collective Prayer with the believers and rely on the Faith of the believers to restore some of the Nongshen Divine Power he had used.

But that wouldn't work now. Although there were several drivers and Warriors in the caravan who claimed to be Nongshen Believers, Priest Bata'er did not dare to rely on these guys with insincere Faith to hold a collective Prayer.

The Prayer of a devout person is like a jar of clear spring water, but if it is the Prayer of a lukewarm believer, it is like pouring a cup of muddy water from a pond into the jar of spring water; it's not that it can't be drunk, it's just a bit of a waste of the spring water.

And if the Prayer of a non-believer or a hostile person is added to the collective Prayer, it is like pouring dirty water into the spring water, and the water in the whole jar cannot be drunk. Of course, if one is extremely thirsty, it is not impossible to use, but this is not good for the deity or the priest.

The deity has a large family and business, so unless all the priests under their command do this at the same time, the impact is not great. But a single priest cannot do this. Part of the Divine Power generated after a collective Prayer must be sent to the deity. Providing such inferior, impure Divine Power to the deity will naturally cause the deity to abandon that priest, and then it will be very difficult for the priest to further improve himself.

Therefore, for Priest Bata'er, the fewer devout believers around and the more precious his own Divine Power, the less he can use Divine Power at will, guarding against the situation of using insincere believers to restore Divine Power, so as not to affect his future development.

Therefore, even though it was very noisy around, he was reluctant to use Divine Power to communicate with Warrior Jier.

But Jier did not have this trouble. He was really annoyed by these animals. First, he roared at the monkeys with an equally huge voice, but this treated the symptoms but not the root cause. The monkeys were only frightened for a few minutes, and then, seeing that the humans had no other actions, they intensified their efforts to 'drive away' the human team with louder and noisier sounds.

Jier really couldn't help it anymore. He turned and shouted loudly to Priest Bata'er: "Don't the people in the villages near you ever think about clearing these monkeys out? This is too annoying!"

"Just endure it. When passing through here, everyone used to prepare things to plug their ears. I forgot to remind everyone when I was at Big Tree Village."

Priest Bata'er rode his horse alongside Jier, leaning over to Jier's ear after Jier bent down, so that what he said could be heard clearly by Jier.

"And if you don't clear the Shulin and cut down the entire forest, but only rely on hired Hunters to clear them, it won't take two years before new animal communities appear here to fill the gap."

After finishing, Priest Bata'er shook his head, expressing helplessness. There was no one settling nearby, so it could only be like this. The first migrants who moved here probably also disliked the noisy monkeys in these forests, which is why they would rather travel south for another day or two to settle in the current Lanse-Qingting Village than settle in this place, which was more than a day's carriage ride from Big Tree Village.

And after hearing what Priest Bata'er said after leaning in, Jier could no longer hold back. He shouted loudly: "Since clearing by Hunters is still useful and can last for a year or two, then I'll help the surrounding villages. Ha, this time they saved a sum of money for hiring Hunters."

After finishing, Jier turned and took his bow and arrows from the Weapon Rack behind his warhorse, instructing the priest to lead the caravan to continue moving forward. He slowed down his horse, letting Tianxuecao maintain a stable movement while moving, and then he turned and drew his bow.

Among the noisy monkey troop, there were old monkeys who had seen human bows and arrows. As soon as they saw a Human with black-brown 'hair' aiming at them with a bow and arrow, they immediately issued a warning. But because the surroundings were full of various curses and roars from their own monkeys, the old monkey's cries were not heard by any other monkeys.

Only when Jier shot an arrow and killed a young female monkey that was closest and roaring the loudest, causing it to fall to the ground, did the other monkeys stop roaring in shock.

Only then did the old monkey's warning roar reach their ears.

But it was already too late.

Jier shot his Arrow with lightning speed, because the monkeys in the trees nearby had already gotten too close to the caravan passing through the Shulin, with the closest ones being less than twenty meters away; at this distance, an Arrow would arrive in an instant, and every time Jier drew his bow and released an Arrow, a monkey that had started to flee would fall down.

In just a few breaths, more than ten monkeys came crashing down from the trees to the ground; some were still twitching, while others had been struck in vital spots and died instantly.

Seeing his tribe suffer such heavy casualties, the only adult male monkey in the troop could no longer sit still; he swung through the branches of the Shulin like a blur, swinging from the distance to the near side in a few movements, and lunged directly from the air at Jier, who was riding his horse.

But Jier only glanced at him, then casually fired an Arrow, shooting the monkey leader dead in mid-air as he lunged.

He even had a hand free to snatch the limp corpse of the male monkey out of the air, brought it close to examine the monkey's fur carefully, and discovered that although the fur had a beastly stench, it was bright, fluffy, and soft, with no bald patches or missing fur caused by parasites, so it could be skinned and used for other purposes.

Therefore, Jier threw the male monkey's corpse in a conspicuous place, then urged the Tianxuecao to charge into the Shulin, chased after the monkey troop with his bow and arrows for a while, and shot dead seven or eight of the slowest monkeys; only then did he feel that the monkey troop—if a few remaining ones could still be called a troop—would no longer have the guts to howl at the Human caravan.

Afterward, Jier returned along the way, continuously tying the monkeys he had shot to the back of his horse with rope, and also took the opportunity to recover his Arrows.

Finally, he counted them; he had hunted twenty-two monkeys in one go, and if the fur of these monkeys was processed, it would be enough to prepare cold-resistant, warm fur clothing for seven or eight people.

Of course, it was of no use in this hot weather, but it could be used as valuable supplies for trade later on.

Jier quickly caught up with the caravan that had already exited this Shulin, and when everyone saw Jier's warhorse covered in the corpses of those annoying monkeys, they all let out a cheer for Jier; clearly, everyone in the caravan had been incredibly annoyed by these noisy monkeys.

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? (End of this chapter)