Dawn (1)

After discussing with the Duke of Mondstadt and others for a few days, Alex and Inger decided to say goodbye for the time being and start their tour of Mondstadt.

The second son, Xilia, begged several times, but Inger was unwilling to teach him magic, and Inger was at a loss for explanation.

"Someday soon, I will, but not now."

He had never intended to keep his unique magical abilities to himself, but not now.

With hope in her heart, Celia returned to her room and devoted herself to studying magic.

Before leaving, the two went to see Fantine the White Deer.

He sat on a soft cushion, with seven or eight fruit plates and a circle of maids beside him.

They seemed to be having a particularly good time chatting.

"Alex!" Fantine stood up when she saw him.

"Fantine, I think you're doing well here?" Alex said with a smile, touching his head.

Fantine puffed out her chest. "Of course. I haven't slacked off in my training either!"

It is said that he ran circles with the knights' horses every day, and his speed and endurance were comparable to theirs.

"That's good." Alex considered, "It's not time to set off yet, why don't you rest here first? They are all trustworthy and will take good care of you."

Fantine looked at him straight in the eyes and said earnestly, "I understand. I will be of use to you. When you need me, I will rush to your side no matter where I am."

Alex was stunned for a moment, shook his head vigorously, and smiled while touching his forehead. "I know, let's go first!"

Fantine continued to chat and laugh with the maids, listening to their gossip.

Inger looked back at him deeply.

【What a wonderful fate. 】

He had a feeling that maybe they would really meet again.

Inger first took Finne, who had been locked up for a few days, back from the hotel. As soon as Finne got out of the cage, he couldn't wait to rush into the sky.

"There are a lot of hunters here. I hope he's careful." Alex said with a smile, looking up.

"With his speed, he can only hit a handful of hunters." Inger glanced at the map and said, "Go south."

Alex, acting as the coachman, flicked the whip gently, and they started their journey in the carriage sent by the Duke.

A village on the southern border of Mondstadt.

"Are you sure you want to dig this?"

Alex has always been shameless, and now, under the curious gaze of the villagers, he was also in a dilemma.

Inger sat nearby and nodded with his cane, "Yes, dig."

Alex couldn't persuade him, so he had to shovel it out from under a pile of weeds.

The earthy brown fruit is so ugly that even pigs in the village would not eat it.

Ingredients that are everywhere but no one uses them.

Inger took it, broke it open, and found a milky white juice inside, with a thick and fragrant aroma.

[Ah… it’s yam…]

He broke off a few others, which looked like potatoes, taro, sweet potatoes, and everything else. There were also some other things that he couldn't recognize, but he was sure they were tubers and fruits full of starch.

Although he didn't know why these crops all grew at the same time, these underground tubers were easy to store and provided a famine-prevention food.

At a glance, the mountains and plains are covered with the above-ground stems and leaves of these plants.

He was speechless.

【What a waste of natural resources. 】

He took a few and put them in a bag. "Let's go to some farmers' homes and cook them and try them out?"

Alex, holding the hoe, asked doubtfully, "I heard from the villagers that this thing is poisonous. Can I eat it?"

Inger said, "If you eat it raw, you will get poisoned. It's not a vegetable."

It occurred to him then that people of this period did not eat cooked vegetables or stir-fried dishes. They would occasionally add some vegetable seasoning to soup, usually mash lettuce for salad, or eat it raw. Their staple food was also cereals and meat.

High-quality fruits and vegetables were only affordable for the nobility.

He borrowed a farmer's pot and expertly cooked a pot of potato and meat soup on the stove.

The family didn't dare to taste it and looked at them with strange eyes.

Inger tried it himself and found it tasted good.

Alex took a bite out of curiosity, and then quickly finished a large bowl. The perfect match between the stewed sausage fat and potatoes was amazing.

"Oh my god, why is it so delicious but no one eats it?"

Inger nodded. "I was going to ask the same question."

Alex took another bowl and asked, "Why are you suddenly interested in this?"

"When was the first famine in Chune?" Inger wiped his mouth and asked.

Alex's spoon stopped.

People who had never experienced famine before wrote famine into history for the first time during the Demon War.

The demons' toxins polluted the land, destroyed the vegetation ecology, and the arable land for human beings decreased rapidly. Years of war led to the spread of famine, and the toxic pollution replaced the plague to cause a fatal blow. People in the rear had no food to eat, and half of the people on the front line died of hunger.

It was one thing that they didn't have more food, it was another that the food couldn't be stored and transported for long periods of time.

"These crops may look ugly, but they are easy to preserve. Each kind can be preserved for several months in the summer, not to mention the winter. Compared to wheat, which is picky about the soil, these can be grown anywhere, grow fast, are nutritious, suitable for feeding a large population, and taste good. And there are many more crops like this."

Alex's gaze changed instantly as he looked at the dirt balls.

Inger turned his eyes to the bacon drying on the rack at the door, which looked like chicken, goose, duck, pig, lamb and deer.

The color of the bacon made him feel particularly close to it.

"Auntie, did you guys take a photo of this?"

The peasant woman smiled as she knitted her scarf: "Yes."

Pigs are mainly used to make sausages, and the rest is cut into pieces and stored as food for the winter.

He had only seen such a custom in Mondstadt so far.

"Is it only the western territories that do this?" Inger asked.

Alex thought for a moment and said, "I've seen similar things when I was in the north, and there were also some large nuts. It seems that this is what the north needs to survive the winter."

In comparison, the South and the Central China only eat fresh food that is in season. No wonder their disaster resistance capabilities are different.

Alex looked around and understood what Inger wanted to say. He nodded at him to show that he took it to heart.

The peasant woman enthusiastically brought a deer leg and tried to give it to Inger.

Inger is one of the few places where deer are raised for meat.

Because in his world, after being domesticated, deer have low reproductive capacity, the amount of meat they produce is not much, the meat quality is poor and not suitable for consumption, and they have particularly high requirements for the environment.

"Can you take me to see the deer?"

The farmer took the two men to their farm where they raised deer on the hillside.

The orange-brown deer was fat and strong, eating grass happily.

"Is it because of the breed?" Inger couldn't help but mutter to himself.

Alex grabbed the food from the trough, which contained a kind of disc-shaped straw.

The leaves are thick and round, a bit like succulents. When the stems are broken, a milky juice with a fragrance will flow out.

"This is milkweed. Fantine seems to like it too." Alex fed it to the deer.

The deer chewed docilely with its mouth open.

Alex said to Inger, "I asked the locals, and they said there aren't that many deer in other places. Only in Mondstadt are there so many deer, and the deer here don't get sick that often."

Inger looked at the milkweed and nodded: "...Well, we need a botanist..."

Alex laughed. "I thought you knew everything."

Inger rolled his eyes at him.

In the next few days they visited several villages one after another.

There is a reason why Mondstadt was able to survive the apocalypse.

In this territory, the roads are well maintained, the ditches are repaired every year, the city walls and sentry posts are strictly guarded, the overall tax is not high, the people are wealthy and each family has stored food, and 80% of the farmland is well utilized. To the west is the natural barrier of the Daqiusha Mountains, and many people go into the mountains to hunt, and the average person has abundant martial virtue.

But there are not many factories, and the modernization process in the east has not yet completely swallowed up this place.

"All the Dukes of Mond in history were great." Alex sighed, and then changed the subject.

“But even so, it’s not enough.”

In the end, the Mondstadt territory was only able to survive in a barely lingering manner.

They need more weapons to give more people hope of survival.

Alex looked at Inger deeply. "Sometimes I wonder, how do you find exactly what we need?"

Inger smiled and said, "I was just reading seriously."

Comics are also a kind of books, they are not misleading.

If you really want to summarize, there is not much needed for the war. However, due to the times, many things were not built.

Since they knew in advance that the war would happen, all that was left was a race against time.

It took them more than half a month to understand the basic situation.

During this period, the wizards of Mondstadt had discovered an insulated stone and were preparing to mine it.

When he reached the southernmost part of Mondstadt, Alex stopped.

"Aren't you going home to check on him?" Inger asked.

He mentioned it before.

Alex looked at the towering mountain peaks, pulled the reins, and changed his mind. He shook his head and said, "Forget it, it's not time to go back yet."

Ahead is the territory of Viscount Gazi.

For Alex, that is where he grew up and where his biological mother is buried.

He is no longer a child who has been away from home for a few months, but a returnee for twenty years.

Seeing that Alex didn't say much, Inger didn't ask much either. He looked to the other side of the road, where there was a border checkpoint not far away.

That's the Southwest Amiaire Ridge.

"After we say goodbye to Duke Mond, are we going to the Southwestern Territory?"

"I'm a bit tight on time, maybe I can't go."

Inger nodded. He also received a letter from the eldest princess and his father. They asked them to go back.

The turn of spring and summer is the time when the nobles of the major fiefdoms gather back to the capital for the first time in the year. After handling government affairs, the royal family will hold a large social ball.

That was something Alex couldn't miss.

They left the carriage at a country inn and walked to the suburbs.

"But it would take half a month to go back and forth by train. If we can build a fixed-point teleportation array, for example, engrave the fixed array on a sufficiently large earth magic stone, and design the spell to input different levels of magic power, we can teleport to different numbers of people and different locations. The teleportation array itself is actually quite simple..."

Inger kept mumbling, and Alex listened, feeling both amused and confused.

[You are the only one who thinks the teleportation formation is simple...]

"But if it can really be done, it will be very convenient." He turned his head to look at Inger.

Inger was still saying, "Right, so both sides need the same formation. The difficulty lies in how to control the number of people, location, and distance..."

[It’s a bit like a science fiction novel…]

But the magic in this world is actually like writing a program, with its own logic. He has already understood the logical routines of the formation through constant exploration. As long as the correct magic formula is created, it is not impossible.

The magic stone is like an energy battery. A complete device requires a circuit, a switch and energy.

It would not be good if only he could use it. It would be best if anyone could activate the formation by placing the magic stone in the corresponding position.

He was talking excitedly when Alex suddenly pulled him into the bushes and covered his mouth.

Inger's heart stopped, he held his breath, and his eyes drifted back.

Seeing that he was not panicking, Alex loosened his hand and lowered his shoulders.

He signaled with his eyes, "Someone is coming."

Inger also looked over.

After a while, a cloud of dust rose on the deserted country dirt road.

“Bang, bang, bang!”

Heavy footsteps could be heard one after another.

Three huge creatures stopped in sight.

Inger and Alex both widened their eyes silently, each for different reasons.

There are three white tigers, each two meters tall, with black stripes on their bodies. The left one has black limbs and feet, the right one has white feet, and the middle one has a large and conspicuous black spot on its chest collar, shaped like a heart. The middle one seems to be a female tiger, but it is larger than the other two, and there is a person sitting on its back.

He looked very young, but was actually quite big, tall, muscular, with tight bronze skin, short gray hair, and only wore a vest of an indecipherable color and torn shorts.

Although he looked exhausted, his eyes were bright and sharp, just like the white tiger he was riding.

"Yihua?" Alex said softly.

Inger also recognized him. This boy was Alex's brother who had grown up with him and was not related to him by blood. He was also one of his future capable men - Iva Gazi.

The three white tigers are the most obvious feature.

[Wow, that height, taller than Alex now, what did he eat to grow taller? ]

Because Yihua appeared near the middle and late stages, and Alex grew very tall afterwards, it was not very obvious.

He has a body full of muscular body but not too much muscle, and looks like he can beat ten people with one punch—this guy is now 14 years old.

Yi Hua didn't seem to notice the two people squatting in the bushes. He swung his hands hard, and the people lying on the backs of the other two tigers were thrown to the ground.

“Ouch!” “Ahhhhhhhhhh!” “Tsk!”

All kinds of annoying noises were heard.

"If you want to spit the grass, do it up there, not on the road!" Yi Hua kicked them a few times in disgust.

He had chains on his hands, which tied up three people.

"Master! Brother! My eldest master! Please spare us! I will never dare to do that again!"

"Aren't you fine? Why do you have to make things difficult for us businessmen?"

“Gee, gee, gee!”

Yi Hua took the water bag and poured it into his mouth, then wiped it off, "Bullshit! The slave law in Qune has been abolished long ago! You dare to tie people up and sell them outside, your crime is even more serious! If it weren't for the fact that lynching is prohibited, I would have broken the legs of the three of you long ago!"

"Oh! We didn't sell it either!" the bruised and swollen slave trader cried.

"Who knows how many you have sold? You are quite skilled at that?" Yi Hua sneered, "If my kittens hadn't arrived in time, I don't know where you would have sold me to!"

The "little kittens" opened their mouths and yawned.

The three slave traders said in a depressed tone, "Then we will accept where you are going. Please give us something to drink and eat so that we can live to see the trial."

"Of course we'll go back to our Jiazi territory. My aunt is the lord. You're finished!" Yi Hua said with a grin.

One of the slave traders breathed a sigh of relief, while the other one's expression changed. "So where are you going?"

"Returning to the territory?"

"This is the road to Duke Mondstadt's Ridgeland!"

Yi Hua thought for a moment in confusion and said, "Okay, whatever, Mond is fine. My aunt said that Lord Mond is trustworthy. It's a good opportunity to go and see what he looks like."

“Ahhhhhhh! Please, you must go to the Ghazi territory.” The slave trader knelt at his feet and begged.

They knew all too well the methods of Lord Mond.

"Yi Hua." Yi Hua kicked the three people away and heard a familiar voice.

Then he saw a very familiar face.

The one with blond hair and golden eyes is Alex.

"Brother!" Yihua jumped up and rushed over to give Alex a bear hug.

Inger quickly took three steps back to avoid being accidentally injured.

Alex patted his brother's bear back in a friendly manner and lifted him down.

"You are taller than me, why are you still like a child?" He laughed, trying hard to suppress the sadness in his eyes.

Inger felt that the tone was too much for his uncle.