The easternmost end of the Neosiakis Mountains is bounded by hundreds of square kilometers of fertile grassland. Follow the edge of the grassland to the southeast for 70 kilometers, and you will reach the foot of the northern foot of the Pai Plateau. The south-easterly trade winds blow in the early spring evenings of September, making the prairie exceptionally cold. Several bonfires were lit in the camp, and most of the caravans sat together around them, which was a rare moment of relaxation.
If you are lucky, you will see the young dancers in the company run out to perform their new dance, and there will be cheers everywhere, even if you are simply dancing a few steps or singing a few words, it does not matter, there will be no sarcasm, sarcasm, because such people will be driven out of the camp by Master Leipus, and they will never come back until the bonfire is burned.
Many of the drivers were still dressed in their heavy winter sheepskin jackets, but the long winter and the long journey made the men of the caravan look like a bunch of smelly beggars, and the smelly men would sit in two piles, and Master Pailles would join in the conversation, always with a faint smile on his face, and he never saw him laugh at anything funny. He is such a man of great measure. He will not despise you, even if you have not taken a bath in more than a year, the neckline of your fur jacket and the sleeve of your sleeves are worn black and bright, he will not frown, and still talk to you kindly.
The women of the dance company will also gather alone at this time, talking and laughing at dinner. They rarely sit with men, and even if, on this lonely journey, one of the dancers finds a lover, they never dare to sit together openly, and the ladies of the company are always very strict about such things, and in this company they always say no. Rules are always a simple bondage. It is only on such twilight nights that the dancers of great status and fame in the dance company will come out of the caravan, and it is said that in such a dance company of more than 300 people, there are more than 30 little ladies called dancers. Uncle Fred had seen a big dancer named Xiu Xiu, who was said to be beautiful all over, with skin as soft and smooth as goat fat and white jade, eyes like clear lake water, and eyebrows like the distant pale line of the northern foot of the Pai Plateau. These beautiful women only come out at night to breathe, and I have always wanted to find an opportunity to sneak into the dance company to meet the beautiful people in this world. But I never had the chance, and I didn't dare, for fear of being caught. The consequences of making mistakes in the business group, sometimes they really can not bear, I cherish everything I have now.
The women's dinner was mutton soup and cold wild vegetables, and a brown wheat cake for each person. The smell of the broth and the smell of the taint spread far away, along with those tempting wheat cakes. In normal times, there will constantly be business groups can not bear the temptation of food, to exchange their copper plates for some of the remaining food of the dance company. In this regard, the head of the supreme leader of the dance company is not too concerned, and the women use the saved food to exchange some imperial copper plates, which is not too much.
Tonight was definitely an exception. The original dance troupe got some fresh antelope meat, a day's haul from the mercenary hunters, and someone gave it to the dance troupe. Maybe just to get a smile from one of the dancers. It is not every day on such a journey that you can eat fresh meat, even if you are in a high position such as Master Pailles or those who are in a high position. At each of these dinners, the men of the business group would exchange their poor copper plates for bowls of hot, delicious broth or flavorful wheat cakes.
But tonight was different. The whole group of men were munching on their rough brown bread, and the copper basins in front of each were filled with stew, the crispy meat of the stew mixed with the transparent and bright vertices, and the sweet and salty aroma mixed with spices almost conquered everyone. Half the size of a washbasin of black bread with a small pot of braised meat noodles to eat, almost an adult man can not move, only half lying next to the campfire slowly taste that soft smooth delicious. When the main course and bread will be full of stomach, each hand has a bowl of faint fragrance of wild vegetable soup, the men of the business group gulped down the hot soup, sweat on the forehead, this beautiful night does not seem to be so cold. The topic of conversation at the men's camp tonight is the same: delicious dinner.
Old Kuru would sit quietly outside his tent, where a small coal stove would be lit, and the old man would sit beside it with stone pillars, and there would always be a pot of herbal soup on the stone stove, while a pot of braised meat and vermilion would be warm on the stove, and I would be too full of rice, and Kurz would be lying on his hard cowhide plate and groan, Old Kuru, like a weathered stone, sat in front of the coal fire and remained silent. He looked up at me for a long time, with a ripple in his dark yellow eyes, and then asked me in Orc language, "Did you come up with this?"
I shook my head honestly, looked at the delicious steaming on the coal stove and said, "I don't know why. It's like the taste in my memory, there's a pair of invisible hands guiding me, I don't even have to think about it, I know how to make it, it's delicious, isn't it?" I have to attribute it to God's guidance, which I can't explain, which is a little embarrassing.
"You were only that big when I found you." Old Kuru extended his hand to about half a meter, and then said with a faint recall, "You didn't even speak imperial or Orc or dwarf then." I know you don't even understand. Your bone age at the time told me that you were almost five years old. I thought you were too clever to learn any language, and I even suspected that this was one of the reasons why you were abandoned."
I don't know what to say, an open mouth words stuck in my throat, after all, no sound.
"Then I realized that both your bloodline talent and your ability to understand and learn are the best I've ever seen." The undisguised admiration in old Kuru's eyes made me a little ashamed that I had cheated!
"Giga, do you know what it means to me and the Orcs by bringing this to us?" Old Kuru's eyes looked excited as he watched the stewed vermicels of braised meat glistening on the clay stove.
Is he talking about braised pork or vermicelli, or this dish? I'm totally confused. Where is this? There's no way a dish is going to have anything to do with Orcs. But recently the old Kuru has been referring to my talent, let me have some small excitement, blood this thing is brought from the womb, which shows that I was born to start higher than others ah, this is like hanging up a strange, others can not do, brother can do, experience, equipment, that upgrade is not slow to rise, good flow than the way oh ~
"Teacher! I didn't really do anything." I told the truth, obviously I didn't think I was any good, and continued, "Actually Kuz has been a great help to me, and we are very happy for everyone to recognize us."
Although Kutz can not move, but still in one side of the strong nod, want to get the old Kuru's recognition, busy said: "Lord, I also a lot of power." But then again, these vermicelli are delicious. Giga, you said this sweet potato..."
"Hey! The boy can't keep his mouth shut after all!
The air froze instantly, I had a strong sense of dizziness that time would stop, my chest was so tight that I could not breathe, and my heart stopped at this moment. Kuz's mouth is wide open, but he can't make any sound, and he and I are weird like a photo, completely frozen at this second.
Old Kuru sat quietly in front of the clay stove, his hands quickly knotted with all kinds of wonderful handprints, the pale blue dim light from between his fingers, forming a strange complex picture in front of him, he kept on speaking the old Orc language, I can clearly distinguish his pronunciation, but have no idea what he said, as if he was praying.
Oh, is that a Dharma array? I suddenly felt that the pattern formed by the blue light in front of old Kuru was like some complex graphic array, and the blue light flowed slowly inside. It was a round bowl that kept our little camp inside, and the blue light was only there for a moment as it formed, and then it disappeared, and Kuz and I recovered after the light disappeared. Kutz opened his mouth and continued, "How can it be so good?"
Kuz tried to go on, but was cut off by old Kuru's stern look and said, "Kuz, we must not speak such words again, not even if we speak Orc, we are not the only ones in the group who speak Orc." I know, of course, that those delicious vermicelli are made by Jijia from potato, and the method of making them involves some use of herbology. Using a very simple method to extract the essence of sweet potato and turn it into another food is not that we, the witch doctors who master pharmacy, cannot do it, but that we have never thought of doing so. For a long time, whether it is the human kingdom, the dwarf kingdom or the elf dynasty, these mainstream societies do not accept lower plants as food, a large number of plants grow in the Pai plateau and Roland continent every inch of barren land, with their unique tenacious vitality to occupy any place that can be occupied. The proud White Elves despise all underground creatures, and the human and dwarf worlds follow in the footsteps of the Elves, listing earth potatoes and ghost mushrooms as foods only slaves would eat. Well, if those men in the caravan find out that these vermiculli are made from potato, you boys will be hanged. Those men don't care what I think. You two have touched the laws of the human realm. My child!"
I didn't know there would be such a statement, staring at old Kuru with round eyes of surprise.
"The monks in the temple of the Kingdom of Man believed that this plant would desecrate the soul and make people unclean and corrupt. Well, it's funny that some of the poorest orc tribes in our Pai Plateau still rely on this plant to survive the long winter. So these potatoes were eaten only by slaves, except poor orcs. Except in the most desperate cold and hunger, it is a sin to eat potato." What old Kuru said made my back chill, and I didn't know if anyone in the caravan knew that I made these vermiculli from potato.
Kutz was also a little afraid, and then asked old Kuru with some confusion: "Grandpa, we usually have to eat some in winter, although the taste is not good, but it is also hungry and thirsty, isn't it good?"
It occurred to me then that Kuz was, after all, a child of the Orc tribe, and there were many things he did not understand. Then I winked at old Kuru: "We didn't actually eat potato!"
Then the old Kuru smiled. "We didn't! Those vermicels are the most unique thing that the beast God has ever given us. They are a kind of food, peculiar to us orcs."
"Yes, and then Kuz and I gave the caravan these vermiculli, a specialty of the Orcs, and had a most delicious dinner. But there are not many vermicelli..." I understood what old Kuru meant, and as quickly as he could in that moment, he put up the magic hood and told us about the potato and what vermilion meant to the Orcs.
Old Kuru then Bala Bala said a bunch of things.
The Orcs' plateau of Pai is large, and most of the orcs live a nomadic life of half-herding and half-hunting, but this life is very unstable in the face of God, and if you can meet large sheep or cattle and follow the horde of Orcs behind them, they will obviously do well, they will not worry about food, every Orc is a born hunter. However, if some tribes lost their wild sheep and only ate their own cattle and sheep to live, it was obvious that food was not enough, and the long winter would make the whole tribe face famine, so all along, this kind of ground potato grown anywhere has become a life-saving food for the Orcs to survive the famine. No orc ever thought there was anything wrong with eating potato.
The plateau of Pai occupied by the Orcs does not produce much, but it is still self-sufficient. However, as human caravans continued to enter the Pai Plateau, they brought cotton, hemp, all kinds of fine iron and daily necessities, wine that tasted like sweet water, fine flour, and magical weapons that were sought after by the orc nobility, and these things replaced all kinds of rare metals and raw gold and silver that the Orc tribes on the Pai Plateau had accumulated for centuries. For a lot of antelope skins and lower herbs. I don't know when, the old Kuru found that the life of the aristocrats in the Orc tribe became more and more luxurious, while the ordinary Orcs gradually became poor, a large number of resources in exchange for luxuries for the Orc tribe did not have any help, many Orcs began to starve, and the wealth inequality became more and more serious, which was a disaster and war for Orcs.
When shamans began to realize this problem, more than 20 years ago, the elder Kuru had been working hard on a problem: how to exchange resources in a reciprocal manner, rather than being peacefully plundered by human dwarves and elves. Commerce was a big issue, and to old Kuru's despair there was no outside interest in the output of the Pai Plateau beyond rare metals, gold and silver ore, leather, and herbalist orc slaves. This is why old Kuru has been with the human caravan all these years, willing to be an orc witch doctor, he is looking for a way out for the whole Orc world.
Hearing this, it dawned on me.
There were glimmers of hope in old Kuru's cloudy eyes. Looking at the steaming stewed vermicelli with braised pork on the mud stove, he said, "This dish is delicious!" It was as if he were asking me, as if he were talking to himself.
Old Kuru looked up at the cheerful crowd sitting around the campfire outside and turned to me. "They all like the smell."
I knew what old Kuru was thinking, then smiled and said, "Maybe we can trade vermicelli for their wine and something else!"
Kuz stared at me and old Kuru with puzzled eyes for a while, and then said to me pitifully: "Giga, I want another bowl of wild vegetable soup!"