Chapter 80: Mountain Barbarian (Part 1)
Translator: TeamTWO
Editor: Jun
Just as Ouyang Shuo wanted to discuss some things with Yingyu about the Business Division, the door suddenly opened. "Sire? A messenger from Qiushui Village came and has something to report!"
Ouyang Shuo was shocked, it seemed like something big happened. He rushed past the front yard and into his office, letting the messenger in.
The messenger was a teen who wore simple clothing and upon seeing Ouyang Shuo he bowed and said, "Sire, I have something urgent from Qiushui Village."
Ouyang Shuo received a message and opened it, his face instantly turned gloomy.
The letter was from the chief of Qiushui village, Zhao Dexian, and in it was written: Yesterday, when the farmers were working on some agricultural land at the bottom of the mountain, they found a stranger that was looking around and holding bad intentions. The farmers sent someone back to report and tried to capture the person but they weren't his match.
Both sides had a conflict which resulted in the farmers being injured. What was weird was those people didn't kill them.
When Zhang Daniu and his team rushed to support, they had already fled into the mountains and were nowhere to be seen. As it was already late and the village protection squad wasn't familiar with the environment, they didn't chase and instead arrange an elite soldier to follow their tracks.
This morning, Zhang Daniu led the squad and chased through the mountains. Zhao Dexian felt that something was amiss so he sent someone to report.
Based on the farmer's descriptions, they wrapped their heads with black cloth and they wore robes, their weapons were old and rusted, being simple spears. Based on these descriptions, Ouyang Shuo confirmed that these people were the barbarian tribes that lived in the mountains where Lianzhou Basin crossed with Lingnan.
During the Qing Dynasty, the people called the place beyond Changjiang as Yue. Lingnan was Nan Yue and Guangxi was Luo Yue. After the Qing dynasty, the term Luo Yue was used less and was replaced with Nan Man. Gaia followed history and placed these barbarians in the mountains and forest areas.
The mountains where Lingnan and Guangxi met had large numbers of barbarians. They were split into tribes and spread out all over the mountains. Every one of them was strong, muscular, and kept on reproducing. This and the fact that the environment was bad, food was a shortage and people were often starving to death, to survive they often attacked villages to obtain grain and food.
The Qiushui Village that Zhao Dexian was instructed to build had already aroused the interest of the barbarians who sent people to investigate.
Against these barbarians, Ouyang Shuo decided to take a soft approach. Although barbarians weren't good at production, but they were exceptional soldiers and were suitable to be heavy armored infantry. If he could persuade them to live in Shanhai town, it would have a huge benefit to them.
The barbarians who lived close to Lianzhou basin were descendants from Luo Yue. That year, the Qin emperor easily invaded the land, only facing difficulty when trying to invade Luo Yue. 300,000 troops against 10,000 Luo Yue troops, and he couldn't win.
In his past life, one of Lianzhou's 3 tyrants, Ba Dao, made use of the heavy armored infantry made up by barbarians to attack cities and sweep across the Lianzhou basin.
In this life, Ouyang Shuo didn't want Ba Dao to get ahead. Who knows, maybe because of his appearance, it would take away an important part of his army. This kind of feeling was so good!
When he thought of Daniu who had brought troops into the mountains, he started to worry that they had gotten into a conflict with the barbarians and that it might affect his plan. Hence he decided to personally visit Qiushui Village.
He told his itinerary to the 3 directors and told them not to worry. Then he rode Black Tornado to the barracks. To be safe, he wanted to bring along the infantry squadron and Military Intelligence Division. As for the cavalry squadron, it couldn't be used in jungle warfare and was useless.
The group of them rushed to the harbor and sat on boats to rush over to the opposite harbor. On the way there, Zhao Sihu excitedly asked, "Sire, are we going to fight?"
Ouyang Shuo shook his head, "Bringing you all there is to act as a threat but no picking fights."
"Oh!" Upon hearing that they were only going to be cheerleaders, he seemed very disappointed.
When they rushed to Qiushui Village, Zhao Dexian had already received the news and led the main officials of the village to receive them. This was the first time he had come so he took the chance to understand the details about the village, their plans, and their problems and answer them one by one. Seeing how their lord cared so much, all the villagers were delighted.
After the easy welcoming ritual, Ouyang Shuo led his troops into Qiushui Village's barracks. As the situation wasn't clear, he couldn't take action carelessly. He could only tell the infantry squadron to wait for orders and the Military Intelligence Division to track and find information about the barbarians.
Before they left, he specifically told the spy that if he caught up to the village protection squad, and they hadn't engaged, to order them to return. If conflicts had occurred, he had to bring kind intentions to prevent it from worsening.
After planning, Ouyang Shuo didn't slack and instead used the chance to tour the village. Qiushui village was already a grade 3 village, and its most important work was to reclaim more farmland. They wanted to rush to reclaim 20,000 mu of land before the Qingming festival.
The arrangement of Qiushui Village was the reprint of Shanhai Village. Even the harbor and wharfs were symmetrical to that of Shanhai Village's. They were like twin stars guarding the entrance to the canyon.
Of course, it relied on the population from Shanhai Town to increase its grade quickly. Similarly to Shanhai Village from before, its infrastructure was still lacking. Even Beihai Village that had upgraded to a grade 1 town still had the same problems.
The quality of people in the village wasn't sufficient to be placed in important positions. Luckily, Zhao Dexian was one of the earliest members of Shanhai Town and knew everything about its structure. With him controlling everything, the organizational structure of the place barely got set up.
Ouyang Shuo decided to use a dual-leadership mechanism. The head of the secondary base would be in charge and control everything. On the other side, Shanhai Town's various directors had more power than the directors and secretaries of the secondary bases, and could manage and instruct the various departments and divisions in the secondary base.
Out of the two, the decision lay in the hands of the head of the secondary base. When both sides had a conflict of ideas, the head would have the final say. If the directors of Shanhai Town definitely felt that a wrong decision was made, they could speak to Ouyang Shuo.
At the same time, to strengthen his control over the secondary base, Ouyang Shuo prepared two methods. The 1st was that every major decision had to be reported and approved by him. To do this he had to solve the communication problem and build a fast and efficient relay station system.
The 2nd method was the power to appoint the people in charge. In the secondary villages, the secretaries and directors were decided by him and the village chief could only recommend them.
After touring the village, he went back to the barracks. At 2PM in the afternoon, news finally spread back. The news brought back surprised and shocked him.
The scouts chased ahead and found their mountain stronghold but didn't find any traces of the village protection squad. At this time, San Gouzi made the decision to split the group into two.
The vice secretary Leng Qian led the elite men and infiltrated the mountain stronghold to collect information. San Gouzi and another group of men kidnapped a sentry to get information.
After grilling the sentry, San Gouzi had happiness but shock. Zhang Daniu was chased into a barbarian trap. As there was a difference in strength, he didn't fight back and had just surrendered.
San Gouzi remembered Ouyang Shuo's orders and sent the sentry back to the mountain stronghold with best regards from Shanhai Town, wanting to peacefully settle the hostage situation.
In such a high octane situation, the mountain stronghold replied. It said that they could return the hostages but that the lord of Shanhai Town had to personally go there.
After Zhang Daniu was captured, he purposely revealed information about Shanhai Town to the barbarians and told them that what they scouted was only an auxiliary village and the real town was on the opposite shore with a huge army.
After which the sentry was sent back to the mountain stronghold. Analyzing all the information he was fed, the leader of the barbarians decided to see Ouyang Shuo.