Chapter Fifty-Eight: Useless People

After the Gosak scouts howled, two of them immediately split up and sped off into the distance, while the rest brazenly approached the sled caravan to conduct reconnaissance. Qin Mo could even see the bloodthirsty glint in their eyes.

"Uncle Wu, send the light cavalry out and try to kill those two messengers." Qin Mo hadn't expected them to be so quick to report; by the time she realized what was happening, they were already far away, beyond the range of her arrows. Looking at Allen beside her, who seemed completely unconcerned, Qin Mo couldn't even muster the energy to be angry. Allen never acted according to common sense, making him unpredictable.

"Woo..." A light horn sounded, and three hundred light cavalrymen swiftly passed through the east side of the column, spreading out in a fan shape to flank the Cossacks to the west. The Cossack scouts were truly elite; the moment they heard the horn, they began to retreat westward. The two groups, one pursuing and the other retreating, quickly disappeared into the distance.

"Aiya, take a hundred men and follow them to provide support. If the enemy is too strong, retreat immediately," Qin Mo instructed a blonde elf among her followers. The blonde elf acknowledged and turned to call her cavalry, who quickly set off and followed. They and their mounts were clearly more in sync, moving faster, kicking up thick snow and creating billowing clouds of mist.

The army did not stop because of this incident, and continued to advance. Aiya's skills were quite good, and she could barely hold her own against a Yellow Realm cultivator. In the Rakshasa Kingdom, cultivators were highly concentrated, and the vast majority were royalty. Even among ordinary nobles, very few were cultivators, so with Aiya leading the team, there was basically no major risk.

In the afternoon, the pursuing cavalry returned, with light cavalry in front and Qin Mo's personal cavalry following behind. Most of them were excited, some laughing, especially the few new recruits with Cossack cavalry heads hanging from their horses' necks, their faces flushed with excitement. Only a few veterans remained serious and silent.

"Your Highness, one escaped. There's a large enemy force of two thousand men thirty miles away." Aya's words were very concise, without explaining the reasons or blaming herself, only stating the result of the pursuit and the enemy situation.

"Not bad, not bad. This kind of spirit and this kind of record are very good. You take your brothers and sisters to rest!" Qin Mo showed a kind smile. Although these elves and half-elves have a stronger affinity for nature, this snowfield is really not an environment where they can give full play to their strengths.

Thirty miles away, the cavalry camp of the Gosak tribe was in chaos. A scout had just brought back news that was neither good nor bad, and the leader ordered the camp to be tidied up and ready to set off.

Inside a tent in the center of the camp, the strange furnishings were unsettling. In the corner, a bone lamp emitted wisps of smoke, enveloping two figures sitting on the ground.

“General Xinsa, my men have spotted a Xia transport convoy thirty miles to the east. It carries over a million catties of grain, and they don’t have many cavalry. If we pursue them and wear them down, the grain will be enough for our tribe to survive the winter.”

The man speaking was fully armored and dressed in military attire, while the one he called "general" was wrapped in an animal skin and dressed in a rough manner. Or perhaps he wasn't a "person" at all, but merely resembled one.

Xin Sa's blue face wrinkled, and he grinned, revealing two fangs in his large mouth. He said in a rough voice, "Dak, you should know that there are many cultivators in the Great Xia Empire. So much grain will not be without the protection of cultivators. This is not the purpose of our trip. We need to join up with the other tribes and then follow the orders of Governor Kanas."

“My men once charged to within 500 meters of the supply convoy, but no high-level cultivators from their ranks rushed out to slaughter my scouts. You should know that a general could wipe out an entire scout convoy without any doubt. Now that some of my men have returned, it is clear that there are no general-level cultivators in this convoy.”

Dak rattled off a long string of rambling words that left Xinsa somewhat bewildered. The orc generals' combat strength was equivalent to that of a Yellow Realm cultivator in the Great Xia Dynasty, but their intelligence was not even as good as that of a teenager.

Dak was the chief of a medium-sized Cossack tribe, belonging to the Don Cossack branch. He owned a territory southwest of Maimaiti, where he led a semi-agricultural, semi-pastoral lifestyle.

A few days ago, a beastman general named Xinsa suddenly arrived at the Dako tribe with a conscription order from Overseer Kanas, ordering him to immediately gather all the warriors in the tribe who could fight and assemble them on the west side of the city of Maimai.

The sudden gathering of a large number of warriors in this season must mean something big has happened. Dak used two jars of his treasured mead to extract the truth from Xinsa—the city of Maimai, known as one of the most fortified fortresses in the Far East, had fallen.

The Dak tribe was only a medium-sized tribe, and the fact that even such insignificant creatures were conscripted fueled the orcs' fury. Dak had no choice but to muster two thousand warriors, taking half of the tribe's provisions, and follow Xinsa into the snowy plains. The food supply was already insufficient, and now with half gone, the tribe's families were destined to starve.

It wasn't that Dak was heartless; he had no other choice. Although his family was starving, they still had a fire in their wooden house to rely on, but if the soldiers' horses went hungry, they could freeze to death on the road at any moment. Shortly after they set off with grief and indignation, they discovered a long caravan of sleds.

When Dak heard that there were millions of kilograms of grain, his eyes turned red. If he could get this grain, not only could his family in the tribe have a comfortable winter, but he could even give a portion to Governor Kanas. If the governor was happy, he might even change his territory next year...

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