Chapter 305 – A Splash of Cold Water
Zhao Hai’s words were like a splash of cold water. It made Wales calm down from his happy att.i.tude. Wales put down his wine gla.s.s and closed his eyes, after a few moments he opened his eyes and turned to Zhao Hai, “Little Hai, I need to thank you. This victory made me complacent, but fortunately you reminded me that we still have more things we need to do, we shouldn’t be too proud.”
After hearing Wales, Zhao Hai couldn’t help but let out a long breath. This time when he approached Wales it was to first, persuade Wales, and the second was to see his att.i.tude. If Wales listened to his advice, then it meant that he wasn’t a person who let his victories go to his head, that he was a man of value, and Zhao Hai will help him as he did before.
But, if Wales didn’t listen to his advice, then Wales wouldn’t be someone significant, and Zhao Hai wouldn’t help him anymore.
Fortunately Wales listened to his advice, he can now follow up with his words, he looked at Wales and said, “Brother, we need to quickly take care of West Wonder King, then deal with the other runaway Fighting Bulls. I’d like to hear brother’s opinion, what do you want to do? Will you make sure that the Fighting Bulls will never rise again, or would you like to give them a trace of hope?”
Wales coldly snorted, “Trace of hope? Why would I give them a trace of hope? Didn’t you see how they treated my clansmen? They were children and the elderly, but they actually thought of freezing them to death, and I still want to give them a trace of hope!?”
Hearing what Wales said, Zhao Hai nodded, “Good, there are a few more words that I need to tell big brother. After taking care of West Wonder King, you should report the collusion of the Fighting Bulls and the Radiant Church to the Warring clans, you should also tell them about the Radiant Church’s Ultimate Weapon program. At the same time, you should spread the word across the prairie that no matter which race, as long as they bring back a head of a Fighting Bull to the Herculean Bull camp, then they would be rewarded with a thousand jin of grain, for women and children it would be half, five hundred jin of grain.”
Wales and Yale’s bodies couldn’t help but shudder, to be honest, hunting the Fighting Bulls was very difficult. Even though there was a cooperation between the Radiant Church and the Fighting Bulls, the refugees can declare that it was their chieftain’s decision, and it didn’t have anything to do with them. But now, with Zhao Hai’s idea of trading grain for the head of Fighting Bulls, exterminating them would be possible, although extremely ruthless.
For the Beastmen, grain was too valuable, especially to the small tribes. If these small tribes meet some Fighting Bulls, they would never let go of this opportunity of getting grain. One could say that due to this announcement alone, the Fighting Bull tribe may even perish from the entire prairie.
Wales and Yale looked at Zhao Hai and cannot help but swallow their saliva, they hadn’t seen this ruthless side of Zhao Hai before.
Zhao Hai looked at the two people, “What’s the matter? Big Brother, we already have grain on hand, and on the storehouse there were more. Adding the Fighting Bull’s supply with ours, there would too many, so why shouldn’t we make use of these excess grain?”
Bang! Wales slammed his hand on the table, “Good, Little Hai is right, I have to make the Fighting Bulls disappear from the prairie. But I also wanted to make the Fighting Bulls into slaves and gift them to you, so this idea won’t work.”
Zhao Hai showed a faint smile, “You can just give those Fighting Bulls from West Wonder King’s camp to me as slaves, wouldn’t that work?”
Wales smiled, “Right, then it’s done, Sixth Brother, send my orders, in three days we would march towards West Wonder King’s camp. I want to take a look at that ungrateful West Wonder King, let’s see how he will resist the might of our Herculean Bull army.”
Zhao Hai smiled faintly, he didn’t say anything, to be honest he actually hadn’t thought to be this ruthless towards the Fighting Bulls. But after he saw how they treated the Herculean Bull captives, he changed his mind. Additionally they were also in collusion with the Radiant Church, and the church was Zhao Hai’s mortal enemy, so Zhao Hai couldn’t possibly have any pity towards his enemies.
It has been a long time since he had arrived at the continent, he also slowly experienced many situations, his heart has slowly developed its ruthless side. He knew that if he were too kind to his enemies, then he would only be harming himself. So what he needed to do was to totally exterminate his enemies so save him future trouble.
Zhao Hai looked at Wales and asked, “Brother, what are our losses? Also how many supplies did we gain, how many argali, these had to be known, did you manage to calculate it?”
Without waiting for Wales to respond, Yale interjected, “I already had these listed. Before the family was attacked, we had a total population of 1,329,000 people. Now, our population has been reduced to about 800,000, but this is only the number of Herculean Bulls currently with us, I’m quite sure that there are still some Herculean Bulls out in the prairie that has yet to come back. They should come back if the message of our victory were to spread. From what I prophesized, our total population should be about one million, a total loss of about three hundred thousand from our original numbers. This time’s battle, we didn’t lose too much people, only ten thousand, many were elderly and children. Currently we were unable to count the exact number of our argali, since we didn’t count how many argali we had in the beginning and now adding the Fighting Bull’s argali, the quant.i.ty was already too large, enough for our people to not worry for the next ten years. Our grain stores also can last us for five years. Lastly, the Fighting Bulls had left behind nearly five hundred thousand slaves. All in all, the amount of people we currently have in the camp amounts to about 1.3 million people.”
Wales nodded, he wasn’t surprised that they couldn’t count their argali. Beastmen almost never count their argali one by one, typically they count it by groups. But when they trade with Humans, they actually wouldn’t count the argali, they just do clas.h.i.+ng.
What is clas.h.i.+ng? When Humans trade with commodities, the beastmen would lead the humans to a flock of sheep then have their hors.e.m.e.n clash into the flock. How many argali your horseman can manage to herd would be the amount of argali that you would receive. Thus, if your horseman was good, then you would obtain many, but if your horseman was bad, then you couldn’t complain if you only gained little.
But such trading method is only used by big tribes, this method would not be applicable to small tribes which have fewer argali. They need to count their argali when they trade, they cannot afford to do clas.h.i.+ng.
This was also one reason why Humans were very willing to trade with beastmen, if they have someone with good riding skill, they can often obtain argali many folds more than their goods’ value.
The reason why the beastmen were also more kind to their slaves was also these argali. For the big tribes, they needed slaves to herd their ma.s.sive numbers of argali. Therefore, the big tribes would not count their argali individually but in herds. In the end, n.o.body actually would know exactly how many argali they had, but one can be sure that the big tribes’ number of argali would reach tens of millions.
And now, on the Herculean Bull’s hands were their original argali added by the Fighting Bulls’ argali. This was akin to having two big tribes worth of argali, this quant.i.ty is beyond astonis.h.i.+ng.
Zhao Hai nodded, “Currently I still have a lot of mutton and mutton soup, we can say we are safe for food this time. Brother, earlier I was kidding about handing West Wonder King’s people to me as slaves. The Fighting Bulls can be considered to be one of the fiercest warriors among the Cow-headed race, it would be a pity if they were only to be used as slaves by me. If you really wanted to provide me with slaves, then just give me some ordinary slaves, the Fighting Bull slaves would be better if they were in your hands. It can also help you manage the entire Cow-headed race by increasing your fighting strength.”
Wales knit his eyebrows, “As the matter stands, do we need to carry on the plan to trade Fighting Bull heads with grain we made before?”
Zhao Hai smiled faintly, “Naturally. West Wonder King’s people can be turned to captives or slaves, but those who had escaped don’t need be treated politely. I also believe that no one in their right minds would come the the Herculean Bull camp to kill your slaves and trade them for grain, no?”
Wales laughed, to be honest, he also thought that giving the Fighting Bulls to Zhao Hai as slaves wouldn’t be appropriate. The strength of the Fighting Bulls was formidable and they also had their issue with temper, handing them off to Zhao Hai would be troublesome for him. Wales didn’t want to give annoyances to his brother Zhao Hai.
Adding onto what Zhao Hai said, the Fighting Bulls were still of the Cow-headed race, and there were only a few strong tribes inside the race, so if the Fighting Bulls were to be completely removed, then the impact would be huge for the Cow-headed race’s overall fighting strength. Listening to Zhao Hai decline receiving the Fighting Bull slaves,Wales didn’t have any objection, on the contrary, Zhao Hai’s importance was further raised deep inside his heart, almost everything was given to him by Zhao Hai.
The group still talked about the matters of the Herculean Bulls, so Zhao Hai returned to his tent. Since there were many missing people, or even dead, in the clan, they need to re-appoint some new managers for various areas. Because this was a Herculean Bull internal matter, even though Zhao Hai was their Crown Prince he was still a human, so he didn’t want to meddle into things like these. He did not want the Herculean Bulls to think that he only helped them so that he could s.n.a.t.c.h power.
Zhao Hai returned to his tent. This tent was bigger and placed at the center area of the camp. Inside was a lit brazier making the tent very warm. This time Laura didn’t need to wear thick clothes anymore.