When Zhou Qingfeng walked out of the meeting hall of Ekulun, he felt as if he was being sent off by a group of people in the city. They watched as Zhou Qingfeng left as if he was a fool or a sucker. The situation was not good, as if there was a big pit waiting for Master Zhou to jump into.
"Brother Jia, are those fellows looking at me?" Zhou Qingfeng didn't turn his head. He just asked his lackey hiding in his shadow.
"Yes," Jia Gang said.
"Why are they looking at me like that?" Zhou Qingfeng thought that if his idea of attacking west was not good, wouldn't it be better if they opposed it? But not only did they not oppose it, but they also unanimously agreed. But although they agreed, they did not act with Zhou Qingfeng. The strangest thing was that they only stared at Zhou Qingfeng. Chu Ying, who was deeply afraid that he would run away, did not say anything and let him go west.
"I don't know. I don't understand what these female leaders are thinking." Jia Gang could not explain.
Zhou Qingfeng could not help but open his Heavenly Eye in an attempt to see his luck. In the end, he found that the purple color that represented opportunity had disappeared. Instead, there was a circle of black that represented danger hovering around him.
The disappearance of the purple color was understandable. After all, Zhou Qingfeng had encountered a lot of trouble in Ekulun for a long time, and he had also gained a lot. But what was with this danger now? This was something that would bring no benefits and only harm was about to happen.
Zhou Qingfeng could not understand it no matter how he thought about it. When he returned to his courtyard in the city, he simply asked Abahai. But when Abahai heard that he was actually going to attack Jianzhou in the west, other than mocking him for not knowing what was good for him and saying that he was bound to fail, he refused to say anything else. This made him feel that something was wrong.
"Maybe I should ask Old Man Sun. The old man has been living in Herculum for a long time. Maybe he can figure out what Uța and the others are thinking." Zhou Qingfeng could not get an answer from Abahai, so he could only change the direction of his inquiry. However, when he wanted to look for Uța's butler, Old Man Sun, he learned that Old Man Sun had been sent out to contact the tribes in the north who were willing to submit after the discussion.
Moreover, he would not be able to return in the short term.
Hiss … This was troublesome. The information channel had been cut off.
Zhou Qingfeng was even more worried. He even began to doubt whether his decision to go west was the right one. He rushed to the fortress construction site outside the city, ready to gather more than a dozen slave managers he had personally promoted for a small meeting. He was now eager to hear the opinions of others in many ways. But before he could gather his men, trouble came.
As the chief of the general affairs section of the management office, the female slave Sun Ren was absolutely dependent on Zhou Qingfeng. This woman grew up in bitter water, but her old appearance was very diligent. The continuous intensive education did not train her into a talent, but at least she had some ability. When she saw Zhou Qingfeng, she said anxiously, "Chief, Dashan Beizi just sent someone over. He wants us to return his four hundred slaves to him."
When Zhou Qingfeng arrived in Herculum, he only had fifteen Han slaves that he had exchanged. Apart from Sun Ren, the rest of the slaves were not of much use. There were even two traitors who were sold off by Zhou Qingfeng. The labor he wanted to build the fortress outside the city was borrowed from Dashan Beizi. Also, Chu Ying sent his four hundred slaves over.
"Dashan wants his slaves back?" Zhou Qingfeng thought that since his fortress had been completed, it was not worthwhile to keep too many slaves, so he nodded and said, "Return them. Return the weaker ones to him."
Just as he sent Dashan away, Chu Ying also sent someone over. The other party also looked for Zhou Qingfeng to ask for slaves, saying, "Master Chu Ying is about to take action against the wild women in the north and wants all the slaves that were originally sent back."
Whoosh … Everyone was moving to get their slaves back.
Zhou Qingfeng could not help but feel lucky that he had exchanged more than three hundred strong slaves for a thousand ordinary slaves. If not, he would immediately have no people to use. The slaves that he had exchanged before had been nursed for more than a month, and their physiques were much better. Now that he had to return them to others, it really made Zhou Qingfeng's heart ache.
However, Zhou Qingfeng did not find an excuse to not return them. He only chose the less good slaves from his own hands and returned them to Chu Ying and Dashan. In this way, the manpower on his hands immediately dropped to more than four hundred.
"Chief, we don't have more than four hundred slaves." Sun Ren was in charge of the general affairs records and knew the number of slaves on the construction site the best. "We have at most one thousand three hundred people under us. Although Chief is kind and generous with food, drink, and medicine compared to other masters, more than fifty people have died on the construction site in the past month. "
Zhou Qingfeng nodded, knowing that this was inevitable. The poor physique of the slaves had a high mortality rate. More than one thousand three hundred people doing heavy physical labor and only fifty or so died was already a very good situation.
Sun Ren said again, "Three days ago, Jianzhou sent people to attack us, and Chief led the team to resist. However, more than thirty of us were killed on the spot, and then another ten or so died later. In total, we only have about three hundred and fifty people now. "
These three hundred and fifty people were all the forces that Zhou Qingfeng had gathered in Ehekulun for two months. Among them, there were more than sixty management and technical backbones, and only about seventy slave soldiers were left. The rest were more than two hundred slave laborers who were more obedient. However, to say that they were organized and disciplined, it would require a longer period of training.
Zhou Qingfeng sat in the office room of the construction site, with a list of the current slave population in hand. He frowned and redivided the remaining three hundred and fifty people. He said, "I want to go west, all the backbones and soldiers must follow me. The slaves will mobilize a hundred to follow me. The remaining hundred or so people will continue to complete the construction of the stronghold. "
The triangular riverbank stronghold was almost ready to be repaired. Although it took Zhou Qingfeng a lot of effort to repair this stronghold, he was not sure if he would come back after he went west. Therefore, he decided to bring all his direct subordinates with him as much as possible. This stronghold might not be of use, but the construction of this stronghold had trained many useful people for him.
Zhou Qingfeng gathered the backbone of his subordinates and inquired about the matter regarding the westward march. However, his subordinates were all slaves, and even Sun Ren, who had made the fastest progress, was used to listening to his orders. His subordinates did not even know what the difference was between going west and north. When Zhou Qingfeng explained his strategic ideas, they all felt that their master's ideas were good, and they had no objections.
It was useless to ask!
"How many days of food can we last? I want to move all the handcart on the construction site to load food, tools, and weapons. Let's see how far we can go this time. " Zhou Qingfeng had a headache. He did not have a detailed map in his hands, and he did not know anything about the villages in Jianzhou west of Ehekulun and east of Hetuala.
After letting Sun Ren and the others go to work, Zhou Qingfeng called Jia Gang out from his shadow and ordered, "Is it more convenient for you to move in the wilderness?"
Jia Gang replied, "It's not convenient for me to appear during the day, but I can move quickly at night. If I go alone, I can run back and forth between Ehekulun and Hetuala in six to seven days. If I survey along the way, ten days will be enough. "
"Ten days?" Zhou Qingfeng secretly calculated and said, "Ten days is more or less enough. I will use ten days to prepare for the battle. You use ten days to understand the situation in the west, including the roads, villages, enemy guards, and so on.
I believe that my judgment is correct. Heading west is the only way to survive. Waiting for Nurhachi to come to us like a turtle is the way to die. If possible, I want to escape from here. "
Although he did not understand the reaction of the Jurchen nobles in the city, Zhou Qingfeng still decided to formulate a plan according to his own intentions. He could not change it easily. He judged that even if Jianzhou planned another assassination, it would not be in the near future. Therefore, he sent Jia Gang to gather intelligence — after all, the fog of war was too troublesome.
Next, Zhou Qingfeng personally started to mobilize people for war. This was a new job for him. The better the preparation before the war, the less trouble they would encounter in battle. War was not only the moment when the two sides faced off against each other. In fact, a lot of work had already decided the outcome of the battle.
Zhou Qingfeng constantly thought of all kinds of possible plans and took his first initiative to attack seriously. There were not many opportunities to practice using wild Jurchen cannon fodder against Jianzhou Jurchen. He racked his brains for this.
As the sky slowly turned dark, Zhou Qingfeng was still sitting at his desk, lost in his thoughts. Suddenly, he felt a wave of vigilance in his mind. He felt something approaching him in the dark.
After mastering the way of military formation, Zhou Qingfeng used it for his own defense. He linked the sea of consciousness of ten slave soldiers and placed them around his office. Everything the slave soldiers heard and saw would be transmitted to Zhou Qingfeng's mind. The hearing enhancement effect of the 'Heaven Mending Stone' also appeared on the slave soldiers. This greatly strengthened Zhou Qingfeng's control of the environment around him.
A slave soldier saw a black shadow scurrying in front of him and immediately shouted. But this black shadow disappeared in an instant, and he could not determine its identity. Zhou Qingfeng was now very afraid of death. He would never let any possible attacker go. He immediately ordered more soldiers to explore the surroundings, but still found nothing.
After an hour, Zhou Qingfeng sat down at his desk again and found that there was an extra bag on his desk. He hurriedly asked who had sent this bag. No one could answer, so he could only let a scapegoat open the bag to see what was inside.
When the bag was opened, the contents were poured out. They were not explosives, poisons, or other harmful things like Zhou Qingfeng had imagined. Instead, there were stacks of talismans, more than fifty of them. Zhou Qingfeng recognized some of the talismans, but he had never seen some of them before. After confirming that there was no danger, he carefully went forward and found that in addition to the talismans, there were also a few books.
"A gift to my disciple, Jian 'er, Yun Shi." Zhou Qingfeng curled his lips. 'Yun Shi' was Gu Yuanwei's Taoist name. This was actually a book his cheap master had given to Yang Jian. "'The Essence of Talisman Making', 'The True Explanation of Talisman Characters', and 'Thirty-six Talisman Diagrams' are all books related to talisman making."
Zhou Qingfeng had copied a lot of books in the Guo family's study, so he still vaguely remembered books about talisman making. The three books in front of him all had records. They were about how to draw talismans, how to prepare materials, the meaning and changes of various talisman characters, and explanations of thirty-six common talismans.
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