my age of magic

Chapter 6 6. Vermicelli for Wine

The easternmost end of the New Siakis Mountains is connected to a fertile grassland of hundreds of square kilometers. After walking 70 kilometers southeast along the edge of the grassland, you will reach the foot of the northern foothills of the Pai Plateau.

On the night of early September in the spring, there was a southeast trade wind blowing, which made this prairie extremely cold.Several bonfires were lit in the camp, and most of the people in the caravan sat together around the bonfires. This was a rare moment of relaxation.

If you are lucky, you will see the young dancers in the dance troupe come out to perform their newly choreographed dance, and there will be cheers everywhere, even if you simply dance a few steps or sing a few lines, It doesn't matter, there will be no sarcasm or sarcasm here, because such people will be driven out of the camp by Master Leipas, and they will never come back until the bonfire is burnt out.

Many charioteers still wear thick sheepskin jackets in winter, but the long winter and long journeys make the men in the caravan look like a group of stinky beggars, and these stinky men will sit in two piles .

Mr. Payles will also join in the chat at this time, he always has a faint smile on his face, even if there is no funny thing, he has never seen him laughing, he is such a person with a very good sense of proportion .

He will not despise you, even if you have never showered for more than a year, and the collar and cuffs of your leather jacket are worn black and shiny, he will not frown, and will still talk to you cordially.

The women of the dance troupe will gather together alone at this time, talking and laughing for dinner.

They seldom sit together with men. Even if a certain dancer finds a mistress during this lonely journey, she would never dare to sit together openly at this time. It's always been the same in this dance troupe.

Rules are always a simple bondage.Only at dusk and night like this, the dancers with the most status and fame in the dance troupe will come out of the caravan. It is said that in such a dance troupe with more than 300 people, there are girls called dancers. More than 30 people.

Uncle Fred has seen a dancer named Qige. It is said that everything is beautiful from head to toe. His skin is as smooth as suet white jade, his eyes are like clear lake water, and his eyebrows are like distant lines In the mountains at the northern foot of the Pai Plateau, these beautiful women only come out at night to breathe.

I have always wanted to find an opportunity to sneak into the dance troupe to meet the beauties in this world, but I have never had the opportunity, and I am not too daring, for fear of being caught.

Sometimes I really can't bear the consequences of making mistakes in the business group. I cherish everything I have now.

The women's dinner is mutton soup and cold wild vegetables, and each person has a piece of browned wheat cake.The aroma of the broth and the smell of mutton spread far away, as well as those tempting wheat cakes.

In normal times, there would be people from business groups who couldn't bear the temptation of food, and would exchange their copper coins for some leftover food from the dance group.In this regard, the head of the dance troupe's top leader didn't care too much. It was not too much for the women to exchange the saved food for some imperial copper coins.

Tonight is definitely an exception. Originally, the dance troupe got some fresh antelope meat, which was received by the hunters in the mercenary regiment during the day, and was given to the dance troupe by someone.

Maybe it's just to win a smile from a dancer.

During this kind of journey, it is not possible to eat fresh meat every day, even if the status is as high as Master Payles or those dancers with high status.

Every time such a dinner party, there will be men in the business group exchange poor copper coins for bowls of hot and delicious broth, or fragrant wheat cakes.

But tonight is different. The men in the entire business group are eating the rough black bread in their hands with relish. The copper basin in front of everyone is full of stewed meat. The sweet and salty aroma mixed with spices almost conquered everyone.

Half a washbasin-sized black bread is eaten with a small pot of braised pork and stewed vermicelli, which can almost make a grown man unable to move. He can only lie half-ly by the campfire and slowly savor the soft and smooth deliciousness.

After the main course and bread filled their stomachs, each of them had a bowl of wild vegetable soup with a light fragrance in their hands. The men in the business group gulped down the hot soup, with beads of sweat on their foreheads. This beautiful night seemed to be gone. It looked so cold.

The talking point at the men's camp tonight was one: good dinner.

The old Kuru orc would sit quietly outside his tent, where a small coal stove would be lit, and the old man would sit on the side with a stone pier, and there would always be a pot of herbal medicine soup on the stone stove.

At this time, a pot of stewed vermicelli with braised pork was warming up on the stove. I couldn’t hold even a grain of rice in my stomach. Kuz was lying on the hard cowhide mattress and humming. Old Kuru was like It is a weathered stone, sitting in front of the coal stove, has been silent.

Looking up at me for a long time, there was a slight fluctuation in the muddy and dark yellow eyes, and then asked me in the orc language: "Did you come up with this?"

I honestly shook my head, looked at the steaming delicious food on the coal stove and said: "I don't know why. This taste seems to be in my memory. A pair of invisible hands have been guiding me, and I don't even need to exert effort." If you just think about it, you know how to make it, it’s delicious, isn’t it?” I had to attribute it to God’s guidance, and I really couldn’t explain it, and it was a bit embarrassing.

"When I picked you up, you were only that big." Old Kuru spread his hands about half a meter, and then said with a little recollection: "At that time, you couldn't even speak a word, whether it was imperial language or orc Dwarven language, dwarven language. I know you can't understand. At that time your bone age told me you were almost 5 years old. I thought you were not very smart and didn't learn any language. I even suspected that was one of the reasons why you were abandoned one."

I didn't know what to say, I opened my mouth and the words stuck in my throat, and I didn't make a sound after all.

"Later, I found out that whether it is your bloodline talent, or your comprehension and learning ability, you are the best I have ever seen, none of them." The undisguised admiration in the old Kuru's eyes made me a little ashamed, I cheated ah!

"Jijia, you brought this thing to us, do you know what it means to me and the orcs?" Old Kuru looked a little excited as he stared at the stewed vermicelli with braised pork on the clay stove that was shining with oil.

Did he mean braised pork or vermicelli, or this dish?I'm completely confused, where is this?No matter how good a dish is, what will it have to do with the orcs?However, the old Kuru has been mentioning my talent recently, which makes me a little excited. The blood is brought from the mother's womb, which shows that I am born with a higher starting point than others. This is like cheating on monsters. I can’t do it, but my brother can do it, I have a lot of experience, and I have a lot of equipment, so the upgrade doesn’t increase slowly, it’s so good~
"Teacher! I actually didn't do anything." I told the truth, obviously I didn't think there was anything outstanding about me, and continued: "Actually, Kurtz also helped me a lot. We are very happy with everyone's recognition of us."

Although Kuz couldn't move, he still nodded his head fiercely, wanting to get the old Kuru's approval, and hurriedly said: "Master, I also put in a lot of effort. But after all, this vermicelli is really delicious. Ji Jia, you said the sweet potatoes..."

"Hey!" This kid couldn't control his mouth after all!
The air froze in an instant, and I felt a strong dizziness as if time was about to stop. My chest was so stuffy that I couldn't breathe, and my heartbeat stopped at this moment.Kurz's mouth was wide open, but he couldn't make any sound. He and I were weirdly like a photo, completely frozen at this second.

The old Kuru sat quietly in front of the clay stove, his hands were quickly making all kinds of wonderful handprints, and the dim light of light blue flashed from his fingers, forming a strange and complicated picture in front of him. He kept murmuring the ancient orc language, and I could clearly distinguish his pronunciation, but I didn't know what he said at all, as if he was praying.

Oh, is that a magic circle?I suddenly felt that the patterns formed by the blue light in front of the old Kuru were like some complex graphic arrays, and the blue light flowed slowly inside.

It was a round cover like a small upside-down bowl, protecting our small camp inside. The faint blue light array only appeared for a moment when it was formed, and then disappeared. And Kurz and I recovered after the light circle disappeared.Kurz opened his mouth in the same way and continued: "How can it be so delicious?"

Kuz wanted to continue talking, but was interrupted by old Kuru's stern eyes and said: "Kuz, you can't say these words in the future, even if we communicate in orc language, we are not the only ones in the business group who can speak orc language .

Of course I know that those delicious vermicelli are made by Jijia with sweet potatoes, and the production method is related to some application of herbal medicine.

Using a very simple method to extract the essence of sweet potato and turn it into another kind of food, it's not that we witch medicine scholars who have mastered pharmacy can't do it, but we never thought of doing it.

For a long time, mainstream societies such as human kingdoms, dwarf kingdoms, and elf dynasties have not accepted low-level plants as food. Sweet potatoes grow in large quantities on every inch of barren land on the Pai Plateau and the Roland Continent. The tenacious vitality invades any place that can be invaded.

The proud Silvermoon elves despise all underground creatures, and the human and dwarf worlds also followed in the footsteps of the elves, listing sweet potatoes and ghost mushrooms as foods that only slaves would eat.

Hey, if those people in the caravan know that these vermicelli are made from sweet potatoes, you two boys will be sent to the gallows.Those people don't care about my thoughts, you two have touched the laws of the human kingdom.my child! "

I didn't know there would be such a saying, and I stared at old Kuru with round eyes in surprise.

"The monks in the Temple of the Kingdom of Man believed that the plant, the sweet potato, would desecrate the soul and make people unclean and depraved.

Hehe, it's ridiculous that some of the poorest orc tribes in our Pai Plateau still rely on the plant of sweet potato to survive the long cold winter.

So these sweet potatoes are eaten only by slaves, except poor orcs.Eating sweet potatoes is a sin, except when the coldest and hunger is at stake. "What the old Kuru said made my back a little cold. I really don't know if anyone in the caravan knows that I made these vermicelli from sweet potatoes.

Kuz was also a little scared, and then asked the old Kuru with some confusion: "Grandpa, don't we usually eat some in winter? Although the taste of this food is not good, it is very hungry and thirst-quenching, isn't it very good?" what?"

Only then did I realize that Kurtz was a child who grew up in the orc tribe after all, so he didn't understand many things.Then I winked at old Kuru: "We didn't actually eat sweet potatoes!"

At this time, the old Kuru had a smile on his face: "We really don't have any! Those vermicelli are actually the most unique thing bestowed on us by the Beast God. They are actually a kind of food, which is unique to us orcs."

"Yes, then Kuz and I gave these orc-specialized vermicelli to the people in the caravan, and had the most delicious dinner. But there are not too many of these vermicelli..." I understood what old Kuru meant. , he propped up the magic hood as fast as he could at that moment, and told us about the sweet potato and the significance of vermicelli to the orc race.

The old Kuru said a lot next to Barabara.

The Pai Plateau of the orcs is very large, and most of the orcs live a nomadic life of half herding and half hunting.

This kind of life based on God's face is very unstable. If you can meet a large herd of sheep or cattle and follow them, the orc tribe will obviously have a good life. They will not worry about food. Every orc is A born hunter.

If some tribes lost their flocks of wild sheep and lived only on the cattle and sheep of their own tribe, obviously the food would not be enough, and the long winter would cause the whole tribe to face famine.

So for a long time, this kind of sweet potato that grows everywhere has become the life-saving food for the orcs to survive the famine.No orc has ever felt bad about eating sweet potatoes.

The Pai Plateau occupied by the orcs is not rich in many things, but it is still self-sufficient.

It's just that as human caravans continued to enter the Pai Plateau, they brought cotton, hemp, various exquisite iron daily necessities, fine wine that tasted like sweet spring, fine flour, and those enchanted weapons and equipment that were sought after by the orc nobles. , These things exchanged for various rare metals and gold and silver ores accumulated by the orcs on the Pai Plateau for hundreds of years, as well as a large amount of magic antelope skins and low-grade medicinal herbs.

I don't know when, the old Kuru found that the nobles in the orc tribe lived more and more extravagantly, while the ordinary orc tribe gradually became poor, and the luxury goods exchanged for a lot of resources did not help the orc tribe. , Many orcs began to starve, and the inequality between the rich and the poor became more and more serious. For the orcs, this was a disaster, a war.

Shamans became aware of this problem more than 20 years ago.

Old Kuru has been working hard to study a problem: how to exchange resources on an equal footing, instead of being plundered by human dwarves and elves in a peaceful way.Business is a big topic. What almost makes old Kuru desperate is that apart from rare metal gold and silver ore, leather and herbal orc slaves, the outside world has no interest in the output on the Pai Plateau.This is why the old Kuru followed the human caravan in these years and was willing to be an orc witch doctor. He was looking for a way out for the entire orc world.

After hearing this, I gradually understood.

There was also some glimmer of hope in the old Kuru's cloudy eyes.Looking at the steaming stewed vermicelli with braised pork on the tandoor, he said: "This dish is delicious!" He seemed to be asking me, and he seemed to be talking to himself.

The old Kuru looked up at the cheerful crowd sitting around the bonfire outside, and then turned to me: "They all like this taste."

I knew what old Kuru was thinking, and said with a grin, "Maybe we can trade vermicelli for their fine wine and other things!"

Kuz stared at me and the old Kuru with puzzled eyes, and said to me pitifully after a while: "Jijia, I want to drink another bowl of wild vegetable soup!"

(End of this chapter)