Chapter 204: The Expanded Li Tribe (Please give me that)
Luo Chong went to the residence of the Qi Tribe with several cavalrymen and guides. They had to find a way to bring back some Qi grass, preferably seeds. If not, they had to dig up some mother plants and try to plant them.
On the other side, Shu Da led a team of more than 700 people back to the Han Tribe. Their speed was very slow, mainly because the bound captives were moving too slowly, but it was safe. There were indeed captives who tried to escape on the road, but when they were chased, they would fall down before they could run far, and then they would be caught and beaten.
This situation did not last long. On the second day, because all the captives were fasting, and they had been beaten in the previous battle and walked for a day, they no longer had the strength to escape. Moreover, every time someone tried to escape, they did not get away in the end, which made them very desperate. At the same time, they still had a glimmer of hope in their hearts, hoping that the man-eating apes would come to rescue them.
They had always thought that the man-eating apes might have been led away by the enemies in front of them with a small group of people. After killing those people, they might come back. However, when they arrived at the camp at the entrance of the valley, they finally gave up.
On the battlefield outside the entrance of the valley, there were still more than a dozen corpses of giant apes lying in a mess. Although they were reluctant to face this result, this was the fact. Their fate would not be changed. What awaited them was only the unknown.
Why didn't these people with tied hair kill them directly? Where were they going to take them? What were they going to do?
The more unknown things are, the more fearful they are. Humans are always afraid of unknown things, but they are powerless.
At the same time, there were only 700 to 800 female adults and thousands of children left in the Han tribe. There were only more than 200 copper spears left in the tribe, but there were many tools that could be used as weapons, such as long-handled hoes, long-handled copper shovels, and axes of all sizes. They could all be used as weapons.
In addition, there were more than a dozen longbows and a lot of arrows. The longbows were brought back by Dashu who had just returned from Babaoshan. More than a dozen of them drove three high-top mining carts pulled by two oxen and returned by land. The carts were loaded with two carts of copper ore and one cart of flaky pyrite.
But when Dashu just drove the cart across the small bridge and returned to his residence, he saw dozens of foreigners arguing or arguing with the elders and the rat witch. Those twenty or thirty foreigners were the people of the Li tribe who came to trade.
The cause of the matter was that the Li tribe still maintained a trade of tung tree seedlings and tung seeds with the Han tribe every four days. After many transactions, the Li tribe had obtained a large number of pottery from the Han tribe, especially the pottery pots of the Han tribe. Now they have reached a scale where two or three people have one pottery pot, which can fully meet the needs of the Li tribe.
This time they wanted to exchange for more pottery bowls or white salt as reserves, but when they arrived at the Han tribe, they unexpectedly found that the large area of rice planted had disappeared, and the hundreds of men who were supposed to be building houses were also gone. Only women and children were left in the Han tribe.
This situation greatly stimulated Mao Li, who had always had ill intentions towards the Han tribe. Mao Li had always wanted to strengthen himself through trading with the Han tribe, and use the pottery and white salt obtained from the Han tribe to exchange population with other tribes, but what he wanted more was the bronze tools of the Han tribe.
They had been using the two copper axes and copper shovels that Luo Chong had traded to them, which made Mao Li realize the importance and convenience of copper tools, so he had long coveted the copper tools of the Han tribe, but when he mentioned trading copper tools to Luo Chong before, he was directly rejected by Luo Chong. But this time there were no men in the Han tribe, which seemed to be a good opportunity.
Mao Li observed the current situation for a while. He originally planned to come for a trade, but he did not bring many people with him. There were only ten adult men carrying saplings and a dozen women carrying tung seeds. It was unrealistic to rob copperware directly from the Han tribe.
The hundreds of women in the Han tribe were also strong fighters, and those women had long weapons made of copper. Mao Li knew the power of copperware very well. He knew that he was no match for them, unless he called all the adults in the tribe over, maybe he could fight.
But it would take four days to go back and forth. Maybe by the time he brought people over, the men from the Han tribe would have returned, so there was only one chance. He decided to take advantage of Luo Chong's absence to blackmail and extort, even if it was just to get more copperware.
In this way, Mao Li put forward his unreasonable conditions. He asked the elders who received him this time that the Han tribe must pay with copperware, copper axes or copper spears, otherwise he would stop trading with the Han tribe in the future, and bring people from his tribe to rob. If you don't give, we will rob them ourselves.
But how could the elder agree to such a condition? He knew that the Han tribe could develop to its current scale because of those coppers. How could he trade coppers to other tribes? Moreover, he did not have the right to do so. Coppers had always been strictly controlled by Luo Chong.
Moreover, the Han tribe had very low copper reserves, almost no reserves, mainly because the production capacity was too low. In addition, the Han tribe was currently in the development stage and needed a large number of tools. The copper that had just been refined was quickly fused into bronze alloys and made into various tools, barely meeting its own use, and it was even more impossible to trade with other tribes.
In this way, the transaction between the two sides fell into a stalemate. The elder refused to give it no matter what, and he was a little old. He was so angry at Mao Li that he was in a bad mood. He argued with each other until his face turned red. Later, he also called the rat witch, and the two of them fought with Mao Li.
"We can't trade copperware with you. Don't even think about it. Don't threaten us. If you have the guts, come and try. Even if we don't have any men in the Han tribe, you can't defeat us. You may not be able to go back when you come."
"Our leader will be back soon. Even if you want to trade white salt with us in two days, we won't trade. Our leader will take people to get your tung trees." The two old men threatened Mao Li.
"I know your Han tribe is powerful. I don't want to do anything. I just want some copperware. You have so many. What's wrong with giving us some? It's not too much.
The tung trees in our tribe grow there. It's easy for you to go and rob them. I know I can't stop you, but I can cut down all those trees and burn the forest directly. You won't get any of them. I'll see what you will do then. Tell me, will you give me the copperware or not?"
Mao Li also knew that he was no match for the Han tribe, so he changed his threat method and threatened to destroy the trees directly.
"You, you, you..."
Hearing what Mao Li said, the two old men were furious. They knew that Luo Chong liked this kind of tung tree very much, and they also heard Luo Chong say that it was a very important thing, and it was absolutely important for the development of the Han tribe. Now the other party actually wanted to destroy the tree, how could he be so shameless.
"You two old men, do you want to exchange it or not? I didn't take it for free. Didn't I bring you the saplings? Can't I exchange it for a few coppers?
Then do you still want this sapling? If you don't want to exchange it, I will assume that you don't want it. At most, we will just make a wasted trip this time. We don't want this sapling either. I will chop it down first, and then we will burn the forest when we go back."
After Mao Li finished speaking, he pulled out the long-handled copper axe that he had exchanged for it from his waist, and chopped it on a sapling that was brought in with one axe. The small tree as thick as an arm was cut in half on the spot. The tung tree was really not very strong.
This made the two old men extremely angry. The elder rolled his eyes and almost fainted on the spot. The Rat Wizard spat out a mouthful of blood, pointed at Mao Li's group, and shouted to the women around him,
"Catch them, don't let them go back, and don't let them burn the forest."
(End of this chapter)
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