There were no women or old people in the Quanrong tribe, only children. Young and middle-aged men acted collectively like wolves, and the mission of passing on the offspring was completed by women from other tribes, sometimes Qiang, sometimes Jiemo people, and sometimes even Han people. Adult men in the tribe were used to walking alone along the Great Wall on full-moon nights, wandering between the prairie and other tribes, and courting the foreign women they liked.
After courtship, they had sex, and then the man left.
Seven years later, the father would return to the tribe. If his wife gave birth to a son, the man would take the seven-year-old child away, give him a pony, and take him to fight together, running on the prairie. If it was a daughter, the man would give her a sum of money as her future dowry.
The mother would be killed by the man himself.
Li Zhifeng rarely smiled and said, "No."
This was too unbelievable. You Miao said, "Of course not. How could he kill his own wife?"
You Miao looked at Li Zhifeng and said, "Did he make this up?"
Li Zhifeng shook his head slowly and explained, "Part of it is."
"He would not kill his wife." Li Zhifeng said, "He would court on the night of the full moon. After the act, he would hand his wife a wolf tusk as a proof. He would come back seven years later and bring his son back to the tribe. The father would train his son wholeheartedly, take him hunting, and teach him how to survive on the grassland. If it was a daughter, he would give her ten sheep, five wolfs, and ten rolls of animal skin as a dowry. If the daughter was bullied after her marriage, she could ask for help from the Quanrong tribe with the wolf tusk. If the son-in-law could not support his family, he could also ask the Quanrong for living supplies. Therefore, the proudest thing of the 42 tribes outside the Great Wall is to have a Quanrong father-in-law."
"Then what?" You Miao said, "What about the wife?"
Li Zhifeng: "When the son of a Quanrong grows up to be independent, the father will retire and return to the tribe where his wife lives with the spoils."
You Miao nodded slowly. It made sense. Li Zhifeng said, "But not many people do this now. Some people will bring their wives back to the tribe."
You Miao asked curiously, "Do you have a wife?"
Li Zhifeng shook his head and said, "We call courtship "Gulang Chuguan" and it has to be seventeen years old. I was not yet an adult when I was captured in the Central Plains."
You Miao understood that this was probably a kind of adulthood ceremony for the Quanrong people, just like the Han Chinese men's capping ceremony and women's jiu ceremony. Gulang Chuguan, this term is quite appropriate. Thinking of the seventeen-year-old Quanrong boy who was strong and strong, riding a warhorse, galloping along the Great Wall, the moon shining for thousands of miles, the grassland like the sea, I was immediately fascinated.
"How to courtship?" You Miao asked.
"Some people sing, some people play the Qiang flute." Li Zhifeng said.
Under the vast moonlit night, a young man from the Quanrong tribe wandered outside the girl's village, playing the Qiang flute, which was indescribably romantic and unrestrained.
You Miao asked again: "Does the Quanrong tribe only have one son?"
Li Zhifeng shook his head, and You Miao said: "Two or three?"
Li Zhifeng thought for a while and said: "Not necessarily."
You Miao hummed and said: "How many brothers do you have? When you were young, did you all go hunting with your father?"
Li Zhifeng did not speak. If this kind of thing were normal, You Miao should not ask more, but since he was going to let him go, it didn't matter. You Miao asked again: "Where are your wolf teeth?"
Li Zhifeng did not answer. When You Miao picked him up, Li Zhifeng was naked, so naturally he had no wolf teeth. Now his only valuable thing is the jade pendant on his neck, which was left by You Miao's mother and You Miao lent it to him to save his life.
You Miao lay in Li Zhifeng's arms, reached out and picked up his jade pendant, stroking it with his fingers, without speaking. At this moment, he suddenly felt a little strange towards Li Zhifeng, feeling that he was very pitiful, and a little reluctant to let him go.
But the lone wolf had to return to the place where the wolf group was outside the Great Wall. You Miao suddenly felt that such a person should not be a slave. When Li Zhifeng was fifteen years old, how should he be caught, his claws sharpened, his teeth pulled out, whipped and beaten, tortured until he gave up all resistance and was willing to be a lowly sex slave.
You Miao was born to play, and he did a lot of pranks, but he never did anything to torture others. Before his mother died, she told him that everyone in this world has their own destiny. Sometimes, you can't blame yourself for your bad fate. Everything is destined by heaven, but as a human being, remember not to be too full when you are in glory, and don't be self-deprecating when you are down and out. When you see someone down and out, help him if you can. The virtues accumulated in this life will be rewarded in the next life.
Although the Quanrong and the Han people have been at war for years, they are all for their own masters. The blood feud has accumulated year after year and will never end. You Miao flipped back in the book and saw that Wang Zhi mentioned at the back of the book that the barbarians must be conquered by virtue and educated and assimilated. "The barbarians have no luck for a hundred years." All the races from the outside of the Great Wall that enter the Central Plains and are unwilling to be assimilated will be annihilated, and those who are willing to be assimilated will eventually become part of the Han people.
You Miao read this book in the car for three days. He set off before dawn during the day, and stayed in a post station when the moon was at its highest at night, or stopped in the wilderness to spend the night. The peddlers driving the car were all poor people. Some of them brought their own small things to do business, and some were hired by rich merchants to transport goods. They were all from all walks of life, all from the bottom of the society. When staying in the hotel, Li Zhifeng served You Miao all the way, and those peddlers drank and roasted fire in the post station, finding a warm place anywhere and squeezing together to spend the night.
As we continued to head north, the weather became colder and colder. When we crossed the Yangkou Mountain in the Qinling Mountains, the biggest snowstorm since the beginning of winter broke out. The sky was covered with heavy snow, and the wind was like an angry ghost surrounding us. Layers of snow whistled in. The rolling mountains were covered with thick white flags, which looked like the clouds across the Qinling Mountains and the snow blocking the Blue Pass.
"It's freezing cold!"
"God, please don't block the road!"
"Come home soon!"
All the drivers were covered tightly, with their heads and faces covered, leaving only their eyes exposed, shouting hoarsely and driving forward. Even though You Miao was sitting in the car, he could feel the cold wind coming in from all directions through the doors and windows. After passing Yangkou Mountain, it took another few days. The weather cleared up in an instant, and God's face was as bright as if it had never snowed. After passing Yangkou Mountain, under the winding Great Wall, a prosperous and noisy border city suddenly appeared - Yanbian.
As the largest economic and trade distribution center on the border, Yanbian has existed for nearly 400 years. The 42 tribes outside the Great Wall all do business here. Over the years, no matter how many wars there were, the Hu people who invaded the Central Plains would deliberately avoid this place.
Even if the Han or Hu people who were being hunted fled into Yanbian and hid in the city, even if there were thousands of troops and horses, the foreigners could not chase them, let alone rush into the market to kill and arrest people.
This was a thousand-year agreement made by the Xiongnu King and the Emperor of the Celestial Empire four hundred years ago. No matter what the diplomatic relations between the two countries were, Yanbian City would serve as a buffer zone and would never go to war for thousands of years.
The drivers outside the carriage cheered. You Miao had slept all night and now looked out in a daze. Halfway up the mountain, the cold wind was still biting. Looking down at the plain below, Yanbian City was endless, surrounded by the Great Wall that went east like a dragon. The city was crowded with people and shouts came from afar.
In the distance outside Yanbian City, the huge ice lake was like a gem shining in the sun. The cattle and sheep team formed a tortuous team on the snowfield and led to the city.
This is Yanbian City. You Miao thought that although the prosperity was not as good as that of the capital, it had a unique flavor outside the Great Wall. The caravan left the Yangkoushan area and went down the plain. You Miao glanced at Li Zhifeng again.
Li Zhifeng rested his elbows on the window and looked into the distance nonchalantly.
You Miao: "Have you been to Yanbian?"
Li Zhifeng nodded slightly, turned to look at You Miao, and seemed to have something to say.
You Miao wondered if he would run into Li Zhifeng's people in Yanbian. If Li Zhifeng wanted to escape, this would be the best place and the best time.
Li Zhifeng: "I'll take you to play."
You Miao could see that Li Zhifeng was in a good mood, and asked tentatively with a smile: "Did you come here often before?"
The caravan approached the city gate. Li Zhifeng turned his head to listen to the conversation of the Hu people in the distance, and said: "Not really."
You Miao nodded. The caravan would stay in Yanbian for three days. After three days, when they left here, You Miao decided to let Li Zhifeng leave and go back to his home. Everyone went back to their own homes, and there was no need to be slaves anymore.
On the first day of arriving in Yanbian, the caravan submitted customs documents and went through formalities. More than 40 people checked into the inn, unloaded the goods, and took them to the market to sell. You Miao finally stopped traveling and breathed a sigh of relief.
It's good to stay at home for a thousand days, but it's hard to go out for a while. You Miao rarely went out since he was a child. The only time he traveled a long distance was from Liuzhou to the capital. The scenery was beautiful at that time, needless to say, but it was not as bad as it is now? After thousands of miles of bumpy journey, with Li Zhifeng serving him, You Miao still couldn't help complaining.
The group settled down at the largest inn in the city. The merchants went to do business on their own. You Miao took Li Zhifeng out for a stroll. They saw that the goods from the outer frontier were mostly animal skins, rare medicinal materials, animal meat, deer antlers, deer penises, deer tails, etc., wolf heads for guarding the house, tiger skins for paving the ground, precious fox furs, wine from the Western Regions, ambergris, thousand-year-old ginseng, strange stones from mines, and refined steel sheets... Any of these items could be sold at a high price in the capital, enough to be considered a rare item in the Imperial Treasure Hall, but in the market in Yanbian, they were sold in large quantities, like a common street.
On the contrary, candles, silk, salt, southern medicinal materials, and even inferior pearls, coral scallops, and tea from the East China Sea brought by merchants from the Central Plains were snatched up as soon as they entered the market.
Even the New Year paintings of people from the Central Plains can be sold at sky-high prices. You Miao thought to himself that he had lost money. If he had known earlier, he would have brought some things from the capital to sell. Hao Sanqian was really asking for a high price. Inferior tea that was not even drunk in the teahouses in the capital was only five copper coins for half a catty, but it could actually be exchanged for a medium-quality fox skin in the market!
You Miao had seen the dude brothers buy this fox skin more than once. Whenever there was a new stock in the Imperial Treasure Hall, Li Yan would take a group of people to see it. No matter how much he tried to negotiate with the boss, he would still ask for five taels of silver per piece.
Five copper coins for five taels of silver, You Miao finally saw the profit of the merchants, and couldn't help but be amazed for a long time. He couldn't help but say that he had lost money, he had known earlier! Just bring a car of goods to Yanbian to resell, and you can easily get thousands of taels of silver. It's really worth knowing earlier.
The market was full of people, holding large piles of skins and bundles of ginseng, rushing up and stuffing the goods in front of the Central Plains merchants. Some people saw You Miao's identity and handed him things privately, asking him to receive their goods.
"Slow down! Slow down! Don't rush! I'm not here to sell anything!" You Miao shouted.