The tribal chief was puzzled. “Didn’t you come here because of…”
“Oh,” Yan Liuyuan smiled and explained, “Your tribe is too small. What I’m aiming for is control over the entire plains.”
As for why he wanted to control the entire plains, no one really knew.
At the beginning, the tribe members all avoided Yan Liuyuan and Li Xiaoyu in the fear they would offend them.
Everyone’s reverence for Yan Liuyuan was more out of fear than respect.
But everyone slowly realized that aside from the young Yan Liuyuan, the woman named Li Xiaoyu who was with him was a really good person. When the weather cleared, she would also help everyone with their farm work and even joined everyone to collect cowpies to dry for keeping warm. Xiaoyu did not mind that cowpies were dirty. She would even sing children’s songs to the kids. Her voice was sonorous and pleasant to listen to.
In Yan Liuyuan’s opinion, the cultural gap of the nomadic people in the north was far greater than what the Central Plains people could imagine. There wasn’t even the most basic of electrical power in this region, and the various tribes had to go through a lot of hardship to redomesticate livestock before settling back into a nomadic lifestyle.
The tribe Yan Liuyuan encountered did not even have a name. It was just naturally formed after a group of herders started living in groups for some generations.
However, Yan Liuyuan had heard there were also very large tribes in the grasslands. It was precisely these large tribes that Stronghold 176 was guarding against.
According to what Hassan said, their tribe was actually also part of a larger tribe. It was just that they did not usually interact with their people. However, the ruling tribe would come every spring to collect a tribute of cows, goats, and horses from them.
If they had to fight a war with the Central Plains, the large tribes would send someone over to inform them beforehand and request they gather at a designated location. Some of the guns their tribe had were given by those larger tribes, and the weapons were very old and worn. It seemed that they were stolen from the Central Plains people in the past.
Hassan looked at Yan Liuyuan and said cautiously, “When it’s spring, and they send someone over…”
“It’s alright.” Yan Liuyuan smiled and said, “I’ll handle it.”
When Yan Liuyuan first became the ruler of this tribe, the herdsmen in the tribe had been quite worried. They were worried Yan Liuyuan might be overly brutal since he was someone who had a pack of wolves following him. Just based on that, it would seem that he was extremely vicious.
Moreover, there weren’t enough cows, goats, and horses in the tribe to feed such a large number of wolves. What if this young man let the wolves devour all their livestock?
But in the end, after Yan Liuyuan took over the tribe, he dismissed the wolves and let them venture out to hunt for their own food freely. There were a lot of food sources out in the steppe, so there was no need for the wolves to eat the livestock of these herdsmen.
When some of the herdsmen saw that Yan Liuyuan had dispersed the wolves, they started thinking, ‘Could this be the moment that Yan Liuyuan is at his most vulnerable? If we kill him right now, we won’t have to pander to him anymore.’
But the tribal chief, Hassan, was more rational. “If we kill him, what if the wolves return to avenge him? Moreover, if a person can dismiss the wolves just like that, it shows that he’s very confident in himself. This means he doesn’t even see us as a threat.”
The others finally gave up on the idea to assassinate Yan Liuyuan.
After a week, when Hassan ran off to report some matters to Yan Liuyuan, Yan Liuyuan looked at Hassan with a half-smile and said, “You’re a smart man.”
Hassan immediately understood what Yan Liuyuan was referring to. As a result, Hassan became even more humble in Yan Liuyuan’s presence.
Yan Liuyuan had thought it would be a while before the people from the large tribes arrived. But on the third day after the blizzard stopped, someone arrived at the tribe on horseback with a scepter in hand.
The other party came to Hassan’s tent and announced loudly, “By orders of the khan, all of you are to make your way to the royal tent next to the Jungar River within ten days to participate in the plundering of the South.”
The nomadic tribes were not after money in their raids on the South. What they were after was the supply of daily necessities there. Yan Liuyuan had heard from Hassan that this year was too cold, so a lot of the livestock had died after the blizzard. If they did not go to the South to raid food, a lot of people would probably not survive past this winter.
They did not have to go and raid the strongholds either. After all, many of the Central Plains people’s daily necessities could be found in the factories and farms located in the wilderness. Some years ago, the large tribe’s leader was very stupid and liked to fight head-on with Stronghold 176 as they tried to rob the stronghold of their supplies.
In the end, that khan was caught in a crossfire and shot dead during a raid attempt. The firearms of the Central Plains people were definitely not something they could defend against.
But their new khan was different. He identified a route last year that allowed him to bypass Stronghold 176 and get directly behind them where they could plunder all they wanted.
By the time Stronghold 176’s garrison troops realized what was going on, they already relied on the powerful mobility of their evolved horses to detour back to the grasslands.
It was this battle that established the authority of this khan. Many of the tribal leaders were finally convinced by him because of this.
However, the supplies they had stolen that time were not considered much to the whole of the Central Plains, so they did not really attract their attention and get targeted back.
And this time, after having tasted success, the khan actually started assembling all the tribes together to fight a war as soon as winter arrived.
The man holding the scepter looked at Hassan and said, “Why aren’t you responding? Are you trying to disobey orders? It doesn’t matter. When I get back and bring news of this to the khan, he’ll wipe out your tribe. There’ll be no need for y’all to go to the Central Plains at that time. Your livestock will be redistributed to the other tribes.”
Hassan turned anxious. He quickly looked to Yan Liuyuan.
The person holding the scepter frowned. “Why are you looking at others?”
“This is our tribe’s new chief, so we listen to him,” Hassan explained.
The man holding the scepter looked at Yan Liuyuan. “He’s just a little brat. Why would your tribe elect him as the new chief?”
Nearby, Xiaoyu sighed and went back into her tent. Yan Liuyuan said with a smile, “Go back and convey this to your khan. Our tribe will go to the Central Plains, but not now. It will be after I become the khan. I’ll allow you to return with your life, but my guess is that you’ll be blinded by an eagle after this. That’s because even though you have eyes, you’re still blind to what’s in front of you.”
Everyone thought Yan Liuyuan was just giving a snide remark. But at this moment, a shadow suddenly swept over them. The person holding the scepter looked up and saw an eagle swooping down at him. Before he could even exclaim in surprise, the eagle clawed out one of his eyes!
Yan Liuyuan’s smile disappeared. “Go back and tell your khan he only has one chance to choose whether he wants to live or die.”
Next to them, Hassan fell to his knees. All of the herdsmen copied Hassan and knelt as well. From their point of view, the sight of the eagle clawing the envoy was a miraculous sign!
It was a sign that a true god had appeared!