Chapter 276, Biting Cold Wind
Shu Zhan has recently encountered a little trouble, well, maybe not a little trouble, but a big trouble.
His appetite will obviously not be satisfied just by swallowing two provinces.
But if he wants to continue to move forward, one place becomes an obstacle, a very tricky obstacle.
After the Golden Province, there is a hard bone between Lianyan Province and the province where Shu Zhan is stationed now.
Three of the four provinces in this area are classified as grain-producing areas because of the suitable climate. Only this place in the middle is not only extremely unsuitable for the climate, but also a real trouble.
The earth rises in this central area, and a plateau that overlooks the four directions is lifted up.
Cold, harsh environment, barren, and covetous.
If you want to continue to move forward, then this plateau is something that cannot be avoided. After all, the human army on the plateau can easily cut off the logistics line of the Eastern Expeditionary Force.
It's not that Shu Zhan had never fought a surprise attack. In the second war of gods, which established his position as the leader of the ratmen, he launched a very radical surprise attack on the lizardmen wetlands.
But the situation is different now. The scale of the Eastern Expeditionary Force has once again expanded to an extremely outrageous level.
Logistics has become a constraint.
This plateau has become a nail that is hard to ignore.
Of course, there is actually another option, which is to capture the Lianyan Province and then slowly deal with the humans on the plateau in a siege.
But Shu Zhan is an arrogant guy, an extremely arrogant guy, and an overly impatient guy.
Those rat warlords rushed into the Lianyan Province in unison in a posture of fighting for rotten meat.
Will he become the dog that snatches food? No.
And this is too slow.
His choice naturally became clear.
In the waving black flag, countless ratmen began to climb towards this piece of land that was lifted high.
This is not easy. After all, the most prominent feature of the plateau is that it is high.
At the beginning, there was a path to climb up, but in the end, the path became steeper and steeper. At this time, the ratmen had to put away their weapons and began to move forward with their hands and feet.
Along the way, the ratmen did not encounter any enemy attacks, no passes, no outposts, no fortresses, and even no proper roads.
It was not surprising. For a long time, it was always these people on the plateau who launched looting against the people below the plateau, but there were almost no opponents who rushed to the dangerous plateau. Naturally, there were no outposts, fortresses, and passes. These things were useless.
In the human empire, the most remote gold province was famous for its richness, but there were obviously two grain-producing provinces behind the gold province. They all belonged to the same area and had similar environments. Why were gold and richness crowned in the most remote province?
Lianyan can be said to be too chaotic. The nobles who rule the province and the mountain people are not harmonious and in constant conflict. But why did the province that was easily captured by Shu Zhan not get the reputation of gold and wealth? It is obviously closer to the heartland of the human empire.
The reason lies in these people of the plateau. They are robbed every year and have been robbed a little bit. Shu Zhan can take this province so easily, and it is also because some of the plateau barbarians have just left.
The nobles who rule the plateau are not polite to their neighbors. They always rob whenever they want. Even when the human empire was the most powerful, they had no special way to deal with these people of the plateau. Three expeditions only exchanged for a verbal surrender, not to mention that now this huge empire is becoming increasingly corrupt and on the eve of disintegration.
The reason why the human empire has no way to deal with these plateau barbarians, the rats are now gradually realizing it.
As they went up more and more, the whistling cold wind appeared, not just ordinary wind, but the biting elemental wind.
In fact, the difficulty of the ratmen's challenge is even greater than that of the human empire.
The sun no longer rises, and the moon disappears with it. Under such circumstances, the world should be heading towards a dead silence, and the wind and tide should gradually disappear.
It should have been like this, but the elemental tide appeared, and the huge and terrifying elemental torrent burst into the world every moment. This thing is much more powerful than the sun and the moon.
It replaced the missing sun and moon laws and began to inject vitality into the world, and it was much stronger than the sun and the moon.
Many things began to become a little disordered, the tides and winds became more violent, and began to be infected by magic.
In the process of climbing the plateau, this phenomenon was more intuitively demonstrated. The whistling wind was freezing cold. No, this has transcended the simple cold. The cold wind contaminated with magic will really penetrate the bone marrow.
In the process of climbing the plateau, countless ratmen fell from the cliff and the steep road because they could not bear such cold wind.
The higher we go, the colder it gets. Spring hasn't been here for long, and the warm summer should be here. Why is it so cold?
Shu Zhan wrapped himself in a blanket, and the soft leather wrapped around him. He was a hairless mouse, and was particularly afraid of the cold.
This arrogant guy is not afraid of many things, but this biting cold wind is definitely one of them.
The rats are not without ways to deal with it. Every time they advance for a period of time, a simple cave will be dug out. Hiding in the cave, all the rats gather together and curl up into a ball. This is the only way to temporarily drive away the ubiquitous cold.
But this also brings a problem, the speed of advancement is greatly slowed down.
There is no way, because the leader of the Eastern Expeditionary Force, the Dragon Slayer, the Skinned Rat, the God-favored, the great rat commander, he can't bear it.
For example, at this time, in the excavated cave, the bright flames are jumping, but it seems that they can't bring warmth. A guy wrapped tightly in white fur is still shivering, unconsciously moving closer to the fire, and the white fur is burned black by the flames. He doesn't care.
Just want to get closer to the flames and want to get warmer.
Well, it seems that even if Rat War has received many blessings and become a hero, with power far beyond that of ordinary mortals, he still can't cope with the biting cold.
Who said he was a hairless rat?
The commander-in-chief has become like this, and ordinary ratmen are naturally not much better. Even if they will dig a cave for a short rest every time they climb up for a while, and a large number of ratmen curl up to barely resist the cold, but after each rest, those who did not grab a good position and were pushed to the periphery of the group of ratmen are still very likely to never wake up again.
Frozen stiff, abandoned in the caves dug out everywhere.
These frozen guys even lost their value of being eaten. They were too hard, and even biting was a difficult behavior.
In this case, the despised cave mushrooms are shining.
These dried mushrooms that were dried and hard by the sun have become the food that is more suitable for eating than blood mushrooms in this case.
The dry cave mushrooms became brittle in the cold, but the blood mushrooms were frozen hard.
Why is it so cold? Perhaps looking up at the sky will give you the answer. The sun is out and the world is dark. Although the elemental tide has re-injected vitality into the world, it has not brought the lost light and warmth in the light.
The Eastern Expeditionary Force has been quiet during this period.
Rat Zhan has already regretted it, but the plateau has been climbed halfway, and it is too late to regret it now. The Eastern Expeditionary Force is indeed large enough and threatening enough to even dye the steep cliffs into a large area of gray-brown during the climbing process.
Countless ratmen hummed and climbed up, and then they were constantly frozen to death, and constantly fell and died.
The loss reached an extremely terrifying level.
But even so, Rat Zhan was unwilling to give up.
Perhaps there is another way, such as a short pause, waiting for the subsequent arrival of the Great Claw Priest to repair the steep road, or simply digging a wide cave in the cliff leading directly to the plateau.
This will take too long.
Perhaps this is why Shu Zhan led the Eastern Expeditionary Force to climb up regardless of everything. He was unwilling to accept a long wait.
Even if he was shivering in the cold, he was unwilling to give up.
Continuously digging caves on the cliff delayed the speed of advancement.
But Shu Zhan's progress was not slow, at the cost of countless rats falling off the cliff and countless rats freezing to death.
A very anxious guy.
An impatient guy.
Also a very confident guy.
He was convinced that he could defeat the humans entrenched on the plateau in such a harsh environment, and everything would be fine as long as he could climb up.
But is it really so?
It is unknown, at least Shu Zhan is still climbing the mountain with the Eastern Expeditionary Force.
………….
Just as Ratman was climbing up with a grunt, an army started to move, setting out from the city of the sun that humans called.
The prince did not break his promise, he really summoned the royal guards and began to go down the river.
The arrival of this army will bring many variables, but the prince chose a very good time. At least now, the ratmen are corrupted, but have not completely spread out of control, so his arrival is generally welcomed.