Distant Mountain Battle Song

Chapter 26 A sense of responsibility is the core of social cohesion.

The relationship between the red beast, the savage, and the caravan forms a triangle, and the instigator of this relationship is always an event.

An event can act as a catalyst, bringing all relationships closer together. However, closeness is not always a good thing; for example, an overly intense hatred relationship can also be considered a close one.

Yun Ce speculated that the caravan should be the instigator in this round of relationship integration, because no matter how you look at it, the caravan doesn't seem to be in the right.

After making this decision, Yun Ce's gaze towards the longbow in the warrior's hand became even more intense.

After arriving on this planet, he finally found something he wanted. If the warrior was a good person, Yun Ce would feel a little guilty for taking his things by force. If the guy was a bad guy, Yun Ce felt that his things were equivalent to his own.

The little bit of kindness in Yun Ce's heart was cultivated by Yun Linchuan with great effort. In the old man's view, only those with kind hearts are qualified to do evil.

Once such a person begins to do evil, his first priority is to prevent his evil deeds from affecting too many people and thus impacting the stability of the entire society, or at least, from affecting the survival of ordinary people.

If this line is crossed, then they should be killed.

Seeing the warrior kick Zhao Jin like a football, making him roll on the ground, Yun Ce was very satisfied. Such a vicious person could not be left unkilled to quell the hatred in his heart or to appease the gossip of the world.

Seeing the warrior leader kick Zhao Jin, the man with the broken leg, the other warriors seemed to have discovered a new toy. Seeing that there were many people with broken legs in the village, they all joined in. In no time, the whole village was filled with balls of flesh that had been kicked and rolled around.

Yun Ce ignored Zhao Jin and the others who were being kicked and rolling on the ground, ignored E Ji and the others who were crying their eyes out, and ignored the children who were crying their hearts out. Driven by intense curiosity, he took advantage of the guards leaving the sheep cart and opened the tightly covered sheep cart.

"Roar--"

There was a thunder on the ground.

Before Yun Ce could react or see what was inside, he was forced back hundreds of steps by the stench. As he retreated, he threw the villagers he encountered onto the rooftops. As for E Ji, he threw her onto a tall tree, where she was unlikely to come down anytime soon.

Only then did we have a chance to look back and see what we had actually released.

After seeing it, I was somewhat disappointed. It was a bear, a bear that was at least three meters tall when it stood up. It was brownish-yellow in color and had sharp teeth, making it look very fierce. The wristband on Yun Ce's wrist twitched a few times and then quieted down.

The wristband fell silent, but the bear wouldn't stay still. It showed no intention of running away. It grabbed a fellow who rushed over, chewed on his head for a bit, and then smashed the fellow's head against the ground like a bean.

The samurai leader was astonished as a donkey whose genitals had been rubbed with salt. He jumped three feet high, his longbow already strung. Almost simultaneously, an arrow appeared on the bow, and a moment later, an arrow was stuck in the brown bear's nose.

“┗|｀O′|┛Ouch~~”

"You fucking bastard. 100%"

Yun Ce didn't have time to listen to the dog's translation of the animal language. He picked up the furious Zhao Jin, who had been beaten, and backed away. The enraged giant bear overturned the sheep cart next to it, revealing a huge metal cage containing a pig, a giant wild boar that was over three meters long.

The giant bear used its claws to tear at the cage, and two of the uprights of the cage, which was already deformed from the fall, were torn off immediately. The wild boar hissed and first poked its huge head out of the cage, and then used its powerful body to squeeze out of the narrow gap.

As soon as it emerged, it charged like a tank towards the already formed group of warriors.

Yun Ce didn't understand why they were forming a battle formation. Wasn't dealing with wild beasts about free cooperation?

The short men with broken legs are actually quite fast runners. With their two strong arms, which they've developed over time, they can get away from danger as quickly as possible if they keep moving around.

It turns out that tanks cannot be dealt with in formation; just look at how they were sent flying by wild boars – it was a terrible move.

When Yun Ce carried Zhao Jin back to E Ji's house and closed the door, E Ji had already slid down from the tree. Back home, she wrapped her precious cured meat in a clean and pretty bag and said to Yun Ce, who had just entered, in a panic, "Wu Li Wa La."

"Let's run! 100%!"

Zhao Jin angrily retorted, "Do you want to be a vagrant, or do you want to be captured and enslaved? 93%"

"I don't care, I'm running away with A-Ce, we'll have good days ahead. 98%"

"What about the people in the village? Aren't you just going to leave them? 92%?"

"I'll take just one piece of meat; the rest are yours. 97%."

"Yun Ce, what do you say?" Zhao Jin held up the wooden tablet he had just written and presented it to Yun Ce. Yun Ce was looking through the crack in the door at the scene in the village, which looked very much like the ancient hunting rock paintings he had seen on the cliffs of the northwest. A group of stick figures holding sticks were fighting two huge wild beasts, which was quite romantic.

“We’re about to get rich,” Yun Ce wrote on the wooden tablet.

"You're leaving, aren't you? You won't even talk to us anymore. 97%" Zhao Jin's expression was sorrowful, with a hint of despair.

With a loud crash, a mangled, bitten corpse smashed open the door of Eji's house. Eji screamed and shrank behind Yun Ce.

Yun Ce, holding the few clean clothes on the corpse in one hand, threw him out, then wiped his hands and wrote on the wooden tablet: "Do you think they can buy all the bark fiber I've accumulated these past few days?"

Zhao Jin scratched his head frantically a few times, as if resigned to his fate, and wrote on the wooden tablet: "Impossible. Every purchase of bark fiber is limited. The caravan only guarantees you a little bit of money."

Yun Ce wrote again: "Even if I clean the bark fibers and make them look nice, it still won't work?"

Zhao Jin shook his head and wrote: "If we have more money, we will think about going to Dingbian County, Chuyun Prefecture, or even Chang'an and Luoyang. If this continues, no one will be willing to continue expanding outwards."

Yun Ce was surprised for a moment, then continued writing: "The government is very supportive of expanding the borders, is that right?"

Zhao Jin wrote: "Under the whole heaven, all land belongs to the king; on the shores of the whole land, all people are subjects of the king."

Yun Ce nodded, turned his head to look at the wild boar and bear fighting the caravan guards for a while, and picked up his pen to write: "What if I build a city in the wilderness?"

Zhao Jin sighed and said, "First, you must become a public servant."

"Is the only way to become a Gongshi (a high-ranking official) by defeating the enemy five ranks high in a direct battle? Can saving the life of a nobleman earn one the qualification of Gongshi?"

"No, no one dares to disobey the decree of promotion from the champion king."

Who is the champion?

Zhao Jin glared angrily at Yun Ce, then fell silent, seemingly unwilling to discuss this absurd issue with Yun Ce.

Eji kept poking at Yun Ce on his back, it seemed she really wanted to leave Hekou Town and wander outside with him.

Yun Ce grabbed E Ji's calloused hand and squeezed it, then wrote on the wooden tablet: "If, I mean if, all the caravan members are killed by wild beasts, can we take the caravan's property and leave Hekou Village to live in Dingbian County?"

Zhao Jin shook his head and wrote: "I will not leave Hekou Village."

Yun Ce continued writing: "The appearance of Fa Tian's body should be a very thorny issue. It seems you can't handle this matter. Now, you have a reason to leave Hekou Village. I think we can give it a try. We have the merit of escorting the caravan's goods back to the county city. The worst outcome is that we will be exiled to Hekou Village again. I think by then, the matter of Fa Tian's body should be over."

“You can take them away, but I cannot. The chief of a village shall not leave the garrison unless he dies.”

Yun Ce understood Zhao Jin's words. The concept of mission is irrelevant to free people. In fact, it can be said that free people have a low sense of mission or none at all. The sense of mission that comes from oneself is different from the sense of mission that is given by the collective.

The former is only responsible for themselves and has a high degree of freedom, while the latter is responsible for the collective and has almost no room for compromise.

Nowadays, even a lowly chieftain like Zhao Jin, who isn't even a Gongshi (a low-ranking official), is willing to risk his life to protect his territory. In a broader sense, could we say that this Han Chinese dynasty is still on the rise, meaning that the dynasty here hasn't completely collapsed?

At this point, trying to persuade Zhao Jin to leave would be futile. Therefore, Yun Ce decided to wait and see how things developed. After all, everything needs to be viewed within a context of events. What couldn't be done or done a moment ago might be easily accomplished the next.

The battle outside was still fierce. Five or six wild boars and four or five giant bears were guarding a caravan of nearly three hundred people, and the men were fighting fiercely.

Yun Ce discovered that the wild animals in this place were smarter than those on Earth. They at least knew that after escaping, they had to free the rest of their kind to join the battle in order to greatly increase their chances of winning. That's why eight more wild animals suddenly appeared in the village.

The caravan was initially panicked and made the foolish mistake of forming ranks. However, once the warrior leader took control of the battlefield, the situation quickly changed dramatically.

One group of people used ropes and fishing nets to restrain the wild animals, another group used long poles and hooks to constantly hinder the limbs of the wild animals, preventing them from running freely, and the last group used bows and arrows to attack the wild animals from a distance.

The bear that Yun Ce released first was already dead. Two arrows were stuck in its huge head, one of which had pierced its brain, and it was completely dead.

The other wild boar, riddled with arrows, continued its rampage, but judging from its appearance—resembling a porcupine—it probably wouldn't live much longer.

(End of this chapter)