Volume 1: Farming Chapter 31: Gray Dwarf
Hongye and Ashan chased out of the tribe not far before they saw the staggering back of a lonely gray dwarf. The speed of this gray dwarf couldn't be said to be very slow, but his posture was quite awkward. He was jogging with his waist bent and his hands on his stomach. His steps were weak and he was staggering, and it looked like he would fall at any time.
Hongye's heart tightened, and she quickly shouted, "Wait a minute!"
The gray dwarf looked back blankly, and when he saw the two snow wolves chasing him, he was immediately terrified and turned around and ran for his life.
"Don't run, hey, you're going to fall!" Hongye was startled.
The gray dwarves are running faster...
Unfortunately, no matter how fast his short legs moved, they could not be faster than the two snow wolves. He was caught up by Hongye and Ashan in less than half a minute. When Hongye stretched out his big hand and grabbed the back of his collar, the young gray dwarf turned around to look at the two snow wolves with grief and anger, his eyelids fluttered and he fainted.
"?!" This reaction frightened Hongye again. She quickly reached out to feel the other person's breath. Fortunately, he was still alive.
Hongye picked up the gray dwarf with one hand, weighed the weight and felt his anger rising: "He is very thin and light. It turns out that he was rejected by the other gray dwarves and was not given any food."
"How pitiful! I didn't expect the gray dwarves to be this kind of people." Ah Shan was a little unhappy. "Hurry up and take him back to Ah Yun to see him."
The two men carried the gray dwarves and turned back to the Tauren tribe. When they passed the courtyard where the gray dwarves were staying, Hongye and Ashan glared at the gray dwarves hiding in the wooden houses with unfriendly faces.
...Baru didn't dare to peek through the window. He and his tribesmen huddled in the innermost part of the cabin, shivering.
When the chieftain came over in person, Xiao Yun was still among a group of Tauren women and was his female friend. When he heard that the gray dwarves had expelled the sick tribesman and that he was picked up by Hongye and Ashan, his expression suddenly became very interesting.
"The gray dwarves expelled their people?" Xiao Yun was stunned. Why did this script seem so familiar?
The chief pulled him back and said seriously, "We all saw it with our own eyes. A sick young man was driven out and walked outside alone. I saw what he took away. The gray dwarves didn't even give him much food."
Xiao Yun frowned. He should be happy to have picked up a gray dwarf for free without paying any price, but this style of expelling sick tribesmen really lowered his expectations of the gray dwarfs... If the gray dwarfs had all the bad habits of humans (there was nothing wrong with this), he would still feel uncomfortable even if he took him in.
If Thrall runs away, he will die and can only rely on the Snow Werewolf. As for the Gray Dwarf, he can still be alive and well if he escapes in a healthy state.
Thinking about adjusting the safety level of the gray dwarves, Xiao Yun returned to the wooden house where the snow wolf people were staying. He saw what the living gray dwarves looked like.
Uh... a bit like the Halfling in the Lord of the Rings, with the height of an upper elementary school student to a junior high school student. Although he is short, his body proportions are not too awkward, and he does not have the incoordination of dwarfism, and he is quite sturdy; his skin is grayish white, and his facial features are not as old as the dwarves in Warcraft. He still looks quite young, and can be said to be handsome, with a cute fleshy tip on his ear... As for the pleasing to the eye, according to Xiao Yun's aesthetic point of view, this gray dwarf is definitely pleasing to the eye than the Tauren, Snow Werewolf and others.
He was indeed not in good health. When the gray dwarf huddled in the corner raised his head in fear, Xiao Yun found that he was sweating all over, his eyes were dizzy, there were bloodshot in the whites of his eyes, his breathing was shallow and rapid, his face was a sickly blue-gray color, and his hands were still covering his stomach.
"He refuses to eat, and won't let us get close." Hongye stood a little further away, holding a small bowl of meat floss in her hand... There wasn't much of it left, and Hongye was willing to take it out only because Niu Jiao was no longer around.
Xiao Yun looked at the gray dwarf who was shivering in the corner and looking around with frightened eyes from time to time, then looked at several tribesmen who were surrounding him not far away, and suddenly realized a problem - this gray dwarf seemed not only to be seriously ill, but also to be frightened... It was inevitable that he was frightened, because except for him, the size of the others in the room was quite intimidating.
Taking the pottery bowl from Hongye, Xiao Yun asked the tribesmen to step back a little. It was not just because he was afraid of scaring people, but mainly because he didn't know whether the gray dwarf's disease was contagious. Xiao Yun squatted more than three meters away from the gray dwarf, with a kind expression on his face like the aunties in the neighborhood committee who care about their neighbors: "Dwarf's friend, don't be nervous, we want to help you... What's wrong with you?"
The gray dwarf stared at him in horror, for one second, two seconds, and suddenly staggered back and fainted again.
Xiao Yun: "..." Damn, are you so timid? !
Xiao Yun moved forward a little bit, and immediately smelled the strong and complex stench of this gray dwarf...
"Body odor?" Xiao Yun covered his nose. "Body odor doesn't smell like this. This seems to be... Shit! This guy has pooped his pants!!"
…It was chaos.
After stripping off this guy's pants and washing him with warm water obtained from the Minotaur woman, and then wrapping him in animal skins, this guy woke up in a daze. When he saw the snow werewolf so close, his eyes suddenly widened, and the stress reaction of a small animal was clearly manifested.
"Don't faint. If you do, I'll boil you in the pot and feed you to the dogs... Why don't you try to taste the saltiness!" Xiao Yun was so angry that he pointed a finger at the man's forehead. "What's wrong with you? Did you eat something you shouldn't have eaten to make you poop like this? Tell the truth!"
The gray dwarves were horrified. Other tribes captured them as slaves, but the snow werewolves actually ate humans? !
"I, I ate the rotten meat I picked up, don't eat me!"
Rotten meat? Xiao Yun immediately recalled the time when he first came here, when the venison he hunted was covered with flies... He almost vomited.
"Are you vomiting, having diarrhea, or having bloody stool?"
The duergar nodded in horror.
"Okay." Xiao Yun looked disdainful and turned to teach his tribesmen, "That's why I always say that you should eat less raw meat and don't eat spoiled meat. You must eat it cooked. Otherwise, you will end up like this guy, eating a bunch of germs and parasites and having terrible diarrhea."
"Eh?!" The clan leader, Hongye, Ashan and Ayue, who had eaten raw meat many times before, were all confused.
If you eat something unclean and get dysentery, it will really kill you if you don't take the right medicine to treat it quickly. It's only because the gray dwarves are stronger than humans that they can hold on for so long. Of course, this guy is also lucky to fall into Xiao Yun's hands. Since coming to this world, Xiao Yun has been doing work to prevent dysentery for the hygiene habits of the tribe. When he came out to change seeds, he didn't forget to bring plantain and purslane, which happened to save the gray dwarf's life.
I boiled dried plantain and purslane into water and fed it to this guy every four hours. He didn't go to the toilet that night and didn't vomit after eating the stew given by the minotaur. On the next morning, he regained some energy and was no longer as sick and fainted as he was yesterday.
"Wait, are you saying that you weren't expelled by your tribe? You want to sacrifice yourself to attract the enemy's attention, that is, ours, and then leave the main group first?!" Xiao Yun pointed at his nose in disbelief.
Dysentery is contagious. To be on the safe side, after rescuing the gray dwarf, Xiao Yun did not let him sleep with his tribesmen. He took him to another warehouse borrowed from the tauren. In the morning, he came to check on the situation, but he did not expect to hear such a shocking truth.
The gray dwarf Charles nodded embarrassedly, not daring to meet Xiao Yun's gaze.
Xiao Yun: “…” Except for the Holy Mother Tauren of the grassland and the Snow Werewolves who don’t have this habit and whose people are struggling on the line of food and clothing, other grassland tribes have the habit of capturing slaves...but he happened to have forgotten about it.
"Wait - in this case, our act of rescuing you will be seen by other gray dwarves..." Xiao Yun was shocked and turned around and rushed out without waiting for Charles to reply.
I ran to the courtyard where the gray dwarves were staying, and... these guys really escaped in the night, taking away all the food piled in the yard.
Niu Jiao followed him panting. He just couldn't understand the situation. "What's wrong, Ayun? Why are you running away all of a sudden? Hey, where are those gray dwarves?"
"...ran away overnight." Xiao Yun was not giving up. He walked into the yard and looked at the empty wooden house before he let out a breath.
"Ah? Escape?" Niu Jiao was startled and quickly stepped back a few steps to look around. "An enemy has sneaked into the Tauren tribe? Didn't the Tauren notice it?"
"Don't look at it blindly. The enemy they are hiding from is us." Xiao Yun said angrily.
Niu Jiao: “???”
"I said I would find a chance to contact them, but now it seems I have missed the chance." Xiao Yun gritted his teeth, "Damn it... these dwarfs have short legs and carry a lot of food, so they can't get far even if they run. Niu Jiao, go and take Xia Er out, I'll go call the tribe leader and others, and we'll give chase!"
The tauren who had gotten up early to work saw the snow wolf people running out of the tribe aggressively, and greeted them with a smile: " Friends of the Snow Wolf Tribe, are you going back?"
"No, we are going to chase the gray dwarves and will be back soon. Don't forget to prepare our lunch!" Niu Jiao shouted back in the midst of his busy schedule.
Xiao Yun, who was running in front, staggered and almost fell.
All dwarf tribes are a race with extraordinary endurance. Although they are small in stature and size, their load-bearing capacity is indeed very strong. Dwarves, who weigh an average of 50 to 60 kg, can carry objects that are two to three times their own weight and move them at a certain speed.
"Hurry up, everyone, hurry up!" After walking for more than four hours, the strongest of the Gray Tribe, Baru, was sweating, but he didn't dare to stop to rest. He kept urging his tribesmen, "Moli, keep up, Elba, don't fall behind! Faster, faster!"
"Balu, everyone has worked so hard. We can't go any faster." Sarah, the oldest female gray dwarf in the team, panted. "We have come this far. We should be safe now."
"No, not yet." Baru wiped the sweat from his forehead. "The Snow Wolfmen have fighting forms just like the Cats and Tigers. We will be caught up soon if we walk this short distance... Have you forgotten what the goblin said? The sixty Snow Wolfmen warriors that the Tigers got in exchange for five thousand cattle and sheep almost reached the city of the Elf King. The Snow Wolfmen are monsters! We must stay away from those monsters as much as possible!"
Sarah shuddered. The capital of the Dwarf Kingdom was known as the Unconquerable City, while the Elf Capital was nicknamed the Unassailable City... Only sixty Snow Wolf Warriors almost touched the walls of the Elf Capital. This was indeed a major event that shocked all the tribes on the entire continent - and at this moment they were unlucky enough to be targeted by such ferocious Snow Wolf Warriors!
Suddenly, Baru showed a look of horror on his face. He quickly put down the huge package on his back, lay on the ground and listened attentively. In just a few seconds, the horror on his face turned into fear and despair: "It's over... The Snow Wolf Man is catching up!"
The wolf form of the Snow Werewolf, which is called the fighting form by the outsiders, is really fast. This group of Gray Dwarves traveled for more than four hours overnight and ran more than 30 kilometers, but they were caught up by the Snow Werewolves in just half an hour. Riding on the back of the tribe leader, Xiao Yun saw the Gray Dwarves, each of whom was carrying a mountain of luggage and was trembling with fear. He was furious and pointed his finger angrily:
"Where are you going to run to, you guys who abandoned your people?!"
The tribe leader and Hongye who turned into wolves, and Ashan, Ayue, Niujiao and the gray dwarf Xiaer who was carried by Niujiao all looked at him with dull faces.
Surrounded by two fighting-style snow werewolves, the group of gray dwarves basically gave up struggling. They all sat down on the ground and waited to be tied up. However, they did not expect that... the snow werewolves directly pushed their tribesman Charles into their faces. The cub among the snow werewolves even pointed at them and cursed:
"Your own patients should be taken care of by your own family. You still require relatives to accompany them when they are hospitalized. Why do you just leave it to others? Is there any humanity?! I still have to change the underwear of your people!"
Baloo hugged his nephew who looked confused: "?!"
Other gray dwarves: “?!”
Xiao Yun pointed at Xia Er: "You, explain it to your people!"
Charles quickly looked at his uncle: "Baru, the snow werewolves didn't catch me, they cured my stomach."
"Your stomach doesn't hurt anymore?" Baru was shocked. "Wait, Snow Werewolf? Cure you?!"
...So it is, after a thorough explanation.
Baru knelt upright, tilted his head back, and stared blankly at the snow werewolf cub sitting cross-legged.
Xiao Yun had the warm smile of a neighborhood auntie visiting low-income households on his face. His expression changed so quickly that it was amazing in every way. "Well, you gray dwarves can't engage in production activities independently. If you accidentally encounter cats or tigers, you will be captured and enslaved. You might as well follow us and live on our land of the Snow Werewolves. We won't give you pastures and cattle and sheep, but you are free to mine and smelt on our territory, as long as you give priority to trading the ironware you smelt to us. When our Snow Werewolf caravan sets out to trade elsewhere, you can also send a team to follow. As long as you go with us Snow Werewolves, you don't have to worry about being captured or hurt."
"Well……"
Xiao Yun put his hand on the other person's shoulder. It was the first time since he came to this world that he could look down at people... He had no choice. The only people he met were the size of animals. Even Qingyan was taller than him. "The gray dwarves will not be slaves of the snow wolves, nor will they be vassals of the snow wolves. You are still an independent tribe. We guarantee your safety without any additional conditions. We, the snow wolves, will never interfere in any internal affairs of your tribe, and will not threaten you with force to do anything you don't want to do for us. We will slowly build friendship and trust in the long-term, nearby and convenient trade of food and ironware. We will become an unbreakable community of interests... This is a good thing for us and a win-win situation. Friends of the gray dwarves, are you willing to accept the friendship of our tribe?"
Gray dwarves are quite intelligent. As a long-lived species, they can live to be over 200 years old if they don't encounter any natural or man-made disasters. Baru, who looks relatively young and has no beard, is already over 70 this year. He can naturally understand what Xiao Yun said. This made him very confused... The Snow Wolf Man went through so much trouble just to make them his neighbors? Why couldn't he understand the logic of this kind of thinking?
If the adult were not sitting behind the cub and did not show any objection, Baru would definitely think that the cub was mentally ill - if he wanted the gray dwarves to smelt iron for him, wouldn't he just capture them and make them slaves? That's what the cat and tiger tribes did, right?
Hmm... Baru probably didn't expect that the adult snow werewolf sitting behind the speaking cub actually didn't understand what they were saying... Niu Jiao even started yawning.
In any case, there was no reason for Baru to refuse the olive branch extended by the seemingly friendly snow wolf man. They were lucky that the other party was willing to negotiate politely instead of tying them up and taking them back. Baru was not so stupid as to not be able to see through this.
Xiao Yun gave Hongye a look, then looked at Niujiao. Hongye understood immediately and took Niujiao away with the excuse of "catching some prey and eating before going back". Then Xiao Yun took out cheese and the remaining meat floss to treat the group of gray dwarves who were tired, hungry and thirsty after running for more than four hours all night, and he made good use of the time to enhance his relationship with Baru.
Anyone who has watched talk shows knows that the first step to narrow the distance between two parties is to start by caring about the other party's past and letting the other party talk about themselves; Xiao Yun, who offered cheese and meat floss to lead the way, induced Baru to speak with a "sincere" look on his face, and easily got the origins of this group of gray dwarves.
Dwarves are also a very combative race. The royal city of the Dwarf Kingdom is known as an unconquerable city, and the Dwarf King is a powerful existence with the same status as the Elf King and the Beast King. Over the past thousands of years, the Dwarf Kingdom is the only one that has launched an attack on the Dark Elves Mistress in the underground world due to competition for . The elves, who have a mortal feud with the Dark Elves, are not as stubborn as the dwarves. At least the elves will definitely not send their troops to the meat grinder in the underground world.
But... compared to the dwarves who conquered the world and occupied the land, the gray dwarves and black dwarves, as a minority, are a bit inferior to the public. For example, they are like the blacks, yellows, and browns in Washington's time. Even if you are also human, but your skin color is different, we can treat you as a slave or consumable...
The Gray Dwarves and Black Dwarves were first driven into the underground world by the Dwarf Kingdom under the pretext of being "underground vanguards". As a minority group, with much inferior combat effectiveness and armaments than the orthodox dwarves, the Gray Dwarves and Black Dwarves were no match for the Dark Elves in their home turf. For thousands of years, they had either survived by hiding in cracks or were directly captured by the Dark Elves and made slaves. Basically, they were in the same status as the goblins and the unintelligent spore people.
Unable to see the sun in the underground world and not daring to return to the Dwarf Kingdom, the two colored dwarves had no choice but to run desperately to the uninhabited areas of the aboveground world. Baru's tribe came to the grassland a few years ago. The vast grassland was dotted with tribes of less than 100,000 people, which was a place for the gray dwarves to survive - but life on the grassland was not easy. Even with the assistance provided by the Tauren, the tribe's population lost one-fifth in just a few years due to hunger, illness, and attacks by monsters...
Baru was crying as he told the story, and Xiao Yun also cooperated at the right time and gave a friendly and sympathetic face, but he was frantically thinking about it in his heart -
He discarded the idea of directly incorporating the gray dwarves into the tribe from the beginning, because the main ethnic group of the Snow Wolf tribe has not yet formed a scale, and it is not suitable to absorb outsiders as "veterans" in the start-up period at this time. This will plant the hidden dangers of uneven distribution and uneven benefits for the future co-prosperity strategy of the Snow Wolf tribe.
It is ridiculous to talk nonsense about racial equality before the base of the main ethnic group can be guaranteed. It is not that there cannot be equality, but the prerequisite for integrating other ethnic groups is that one must have the capacity to accommodate all rivers.
Even if Qingyan tricked... uh, coaxed the cat people to come here, Xiao Yun didn't intend to let them be on par with the Snow Wolf people right away. Before the population of the Snow Wolf tribe could form a scale, Xiao Yun would not consider racial integration. This is not just a skin color issue on Earth. You can't get past the reproductive isolation.
Of course, Xiao Yun was not so cruel as to strictly divide the races other than the Snow Wolf Man into different levels. What he wanted was a peaceful and co-prosperous grassland. The Snow Wolf Man wanted to develop, and so did the other tribes on the grassland. However, he sat on the side of the Snow Wolf Man, so in this development process, he certainly had to ensure that the Snow Wolf Man was the leader. It had nothing to do with being a saint or cold-blooded. The more people who had a say in any group, the harder it was to get things done. Political group struggles on Earth had proven this countless times. Everyone could shout the slogan "I'm fine, you're fine, and everyone's fine", but apart from the five big hooligans, who was really qualified to keep their word in the United Nations?
So… when Baru was lamenting over the plight of the gray dwarves in front of him, Xiao Yun, who seemed to be sympathetic and compassionate, had his mind spinning wildly: How many colored dwarves have the tiger tribe and the cat tribe escaped from the underground world?
Regardless of the chaotic cat tribe, where is the tiger tribe’s technology tree?
If you think about it carefully, it was more than forty years ago that the Tiger Tribe separated from the Cat Tribe. Ten years ago, when the Orc Empire came to borrow troops, the Tiger Tribe did not contribute but instead poached a group of warriors from the Snow Werewolves to die - these guys seemed to be quietly increasing their troops and upgrading their technology trees while preserving their strength... Could they be planning to make a big splash?
This thought made Xiao Yun sweat a few drops on his forehead. Strategically, he had to underestimate the enemy, but tactically, he had to take the enemy seriously. This tiger tribe was not the same as the cute snow wolf people...
Exhaling softly, Xiao Yun raised his hand and stroked Baru's shoulder with an emotional look on his face, saying gently: "Those are all things of the past, my friend the Gray Dwarf. Our tribe was once forced to migrate to the west of the grassland to survive. Although it is remote, it is also a vast world waiting for us to conquer. There are no other tribes on the entire land. All the land and rivers that can be seen belong to us. The Snow Wolf People will cultivate and graze on that land , and you, my friends the Gray Dwarf, can also establish a foothold that belongs only to you in that world."
Baru was a little excited, but he didn't quite believe what Xiao Yun said: "Are the Snow Werewolves really willing to become... friendly neighbors with us Gray Dwarves?"
"Of course, we are already friends from the moment we decided to work together to create a new life of our own." Xiao Yun said with a smile.
Baru was excited: "That's great... My people and I will always be grateful for your friendship - we will definitely work hard to find the best quality ore veins and smelt the best ironware. As long as the Snow Wolf tribe has any needs, we will definitely spare no effort."
Xiao Yun smiled, smiled, smiled. Did the serfs before liberation work harder for their masters or did the farmers of New China work harder for themselves after liberation? This is something that does not need to be compared. It is really stupid to use shackles and whips to urge the gray dwarves. It is obvious that they should be fed whether they are slaves or free people. The consumption is equivalent to paying extra supervisors. It is better to use some nice words such as hope, future, friendship, etc. to tap the subjective initiative of these miners and blacksmiths who have their own talent points - exploiting labor also requires means, okay!
...The patriarch suddenly felt that there seemed to be something wrong with this scene, but he couldn't tell what it was.
