Chapter 583 Turquoise's obsession: There is only one way to save all the tribesmen!
"Go! Go! Take them away!"

Shen Le looked to the left and saw five remnants of the army, and to the right and saw three defeated generals. In the few minutes that he was hiding, rolling, and trying to save Gesang, there were only nine people left out of the group of twenty-nine people, including him.

Among them was an old man, and there were three child soldiers with childish faces, between children and teenagers. There were only five young and strong men, including him, and all of them were injured.

Even the one with the least serious injuries, like himself, was still bleeding from the wound on his shoulder.

Shen Leguang felt dizzy just thinking about the difficulty of crossing thousands of miles of snow-capped mountains to return home with such injuries and limited supplies.

Why should he?
The advance team into Tibet at that time consisted of more than a hundred people, with mounts, leather clothes, and most importantly, guns.

Having a gun means you don't have to drive for miles. Having a gun means that as long as you have the courage to pull the trigger, you can kill prey and replenish food on the way.

In this way, 136 of the 63 soldiers in the advance team died gloriously during the short one-year period of advancement and garrison...

"I see."

He took a deep breath, bent down, and touched the leader's eyes, which were wide open. He took off the scimitar and hung it around his waist:
"Let's find a place first, treat the wound, and eat something..."

Find a cave, a cave where smoke doesn't rise, collect firewood to make a fire, boil water, boil clean cloth, and use it to clean the wound.

Relying on common sense that everyone has today but few people knew in ancient times, Shen Le treated the wounds of a group of wounded soldiers and barely filled their stomachs.

A group of people huddled in the cave, and by the light of the fire, they began to scratch on the ground, wondering about their future direction. The old man spoke first:

"We can't go back like this. Langga is dead, Gesang is dead too, we've lost so many people, and our tribe is short of warriors... If we go back like this, the Guge tribe will swallow us up and we'll all die!"

The handle of the knife felt slightly warm, and the two turquoise stones jumped in Shen Le's palm as if they were very excited.

Shen Le didn't even need to search Wangdui's memory to know that this was true. The plateau was not a pure land, nor did it have any effect on purifying the soul.

In fact, the various Tibetan tribes were constantly expanding and conquering, attacking and plundering the Qiang, Huihe, and Han peoples, and attacking each other internally...

The big tribes swallowed up the small tribes, and as the small tribes grew, they in turn formed alliances, divided, and swallowed up the big tribes. That happened every day.

The skulls, spines and leg bones offered to the gods and Buddhas, the so-called "dharma instruments are made from the bodies of nobles, not serfs, and the serfs are not harmed," the truth is this -

It was the bones of the nobles and warriors who died in these battles and annexations that were offered to the temple and made into ritual implements...

"Then what do you think we should do?"

He followed suit and asked softly. The old man said coldly:

"We must go down! We must find a way to go down! We must rob and get good horses, good weapons, gold and silver, and beautiful slave girls..."

Shen Le calculated and calculated, but he couldn't figure out a way to survive this way. However, the handle of the knife in his hand shook slightly, conveying a sense of joy:
The Guge tribe was just a small or medium-sized tribe, about the same size as theirs, and they only dared to annex them because their tribe's strength had declined.

If they present the looted items to the Yangtong tribe, the leader of this area can get protection from the Yangtong tribe, and then get a respite for twenty years, or at least fifteen years.

In just fifteen years, a new generation of children will grow up and become warriors... If that doesn't work, they can all be incorporated into the Yangtong tribe. At least, they won't be reduced to slaves...

"I understand." Shen Le nodded slowly. Perhaps this is the obsession that has settled in the turquoise, an obsession that has not been given up or changed for thousands of years?
How can the tribe survive?

In the end, how can the tribe develop and stop falling into the cycle of robbery - getting rich - robbery - death, or farming - starvation - death?

He led the remaining eight wounded soldiers and carefully headed for another road. Hiding during the day and moving at night, relying on the cover of darkness, he managed to sneak out of the pass and down the mountain:

He would definitely not rob the Tang people, but there are many other tribes on this land:

The Huihe people, the Xi people, the Turks, various small tribes, and the caravans on the Silk Road...

You can easily rob a few, or even rob a few, and you can return with a full load. Well, female slaves may be a little difficult, but gold, silver and jewelry are really not difficult...

The warriors who could rush down from the snowy mountain were quite capable. If the beacon towers were not filled with elite soldiers and had strong bows and crossbows that could fire continuously, this group of people would not have suffered such a big loss.

At this moment, he was lurking at the foot of the mountain and swept through two oases in succession, killing two gangs of small-scale horse bandits.

Seeing that the gold, silver, pearls and jade had already filled up the backs of the three horses, Shen Le had no choice but to stop them:

"It's time to go back! With so many things, it's already difficult to sneak into the mountain pass. If there are more, how are you going to carry them through the snowy mountains?"

By this time, he had gradually adapted to the battle. To be more precise, he had adapted to the method of mobilizing supernatural powers in his memory. His combat effectiveness directly soared to a higher level.

Small-scale attacks, successive victories, one person killed seven or eight horse bandits. At this time, he gave an order, and the other warriors obeyed with awe, turned their horses around, and returned honestly.

After sacrificing two more lives, they finally returned to the tribe after crossing thousands of miles of snow-capped mountains.

However, before they could ask for shelter from the Yangtong tribe, the sound of horses' hooves tore through the army tents, and the entire tribe was engulfed in flames...

"Don't!"

Shen Le sat up suddenly. Several cloth strips broke around him, and his shoulders slid off, and two turquoise stones fell onto the moisture-proof mat...

"This is... not clearing the customs? So what is the standard for clearing the customs this time?"

Shen Le held the helmet in his arms for a while, then he rubbed his hands and tried again. He injected heat into the shoulder and turquoise, re-set them, tied them with cloth straps, and barely put them on his shoulders.

Once again, I entered into a state of meditation and returned to Zamamangbao, the Gobi desert with camel thorns everywhere:
"Langga, I don't think we should go down to rob." When setting up camp at night, Shen Le approached the leader of the team and whispered. Almost immediately, he was greeted by a ferocious face:
"Wangdui, what are you talking about? Are you scared? Are you weak? If you don't dare to kill people, then you can be a slave. You are not worthy of being a warrior!"

Langga stood up with a fierce momentum, drawing his sword. Shen Le jumped up and backed away:

"That's not what I meant! What I meant was that you can't make a tribe strong by just robbing!
——Every time we rob, we can only get a little, which can only allow the tribe to live a good life for one or two years. If we fail once, more than ten warriors will die..."

The whip was already coming down on him. Shen Le ran and dodged, all the way out of the range of the fire. The next moment, Langga stood by the fire, bow and arrow drawn:
"Either we work together or go back to being slaves!"

"I--"

Arrows rang out. Shen Le turned and ran, rushing into the darkness. One zhang, two zhang, five zhang, ten zhang, until the bonfire became a tiny point of light on the Gobi Desert, until the fire could no longer be seen...

I can get out. He thought, even if I can't go back to the tribe, I can at least go to the plains, to the Central Plains, learn some skills, and then come back to benefit the tribe... There is always a way...

He bent down, braving the cold wind in the middle of the night, and took long steps. His steps became bigger and bigger, and he ran farther and farther. After an unknown amount of time, his eyes went dark, and then bright again:
"Huh? Failed to pass the level again? Why this time? Is it because I'm too far away from the turquoise?"

The two turquoise stones rolled down again, and he picked them up and held them in his palm, spinning around. Shen Le tried hard to input heat flow and communicate with it, but he couldn't stir up any ripples.

He held his head in distress and staggered around for two rounds before falling directly onto the mat. He turned around a few more times before struggling to get up and trying again:
This time, Shen Lexin was determined and started a quarrel with Langga. The two quarreled more and more fiercely, and finally drew their swords against each other.

Shen Le swung his sword to block, and then blocked again, trying hard to block, and finally found a flaw and smashed Langga's scimitar out:

"Listen to me! This won't work. This way, we won't be able to make the tribe stronger...ah—"

There was a sudden pain in his abdomen. Shen Le looked down and saw a small knife, less than half a foot long, used for cutting meat, deeply inserted into his ribs.

Langga held the knife handle tightly, his face full of ferocity, and twisted it vigorously:
"die!!!"

The third attempt to pass the level failed. Shen Le got up helplessly, feeling his head buzzing and the part of his ribs where the knife had pierced was also aching.

He tried several times but still couldn't concentrate, so he fell headfirst onto the moisture-proof mat, rustling and wriggling himself into the sleeping bag:

Go to sleep, go to sleep. Sleeping is the best way to restore your spirit and relieve mental exhaustion. Maybe you can try again the next day?
The next day, his mental strength was restored. Shen Le adjusted his mindset and treated the illusion provided by the turquoise as a game, playing it over and over again, trying to pass it:

Try to assist Langga, get down the mountain with minimal losses, and try your best to steal and bring back things.

If you stand by the river often, you will get your feet wet. In the third year of the robbery, they finally suffered heavy losses and the whole team collapsed.

Try to kill Langga and all those who oppose you, and rule the tribe yourself. Work hard to develop planting and breeding industries, and work hard to carry out farming games.

The result was very bad. Nothing grew on this broken plateau. After sowing 250 kilograms of barley seeds, only kilograms of barley could be harvested - it was so miserable that Shen Le felt like an idiot.

Composting was useless, fertilizing was useless, and making silage was useless. The entire tribe was starving year after year, and before the third year, it was destroyed by a white-hair wind.

He tried to rely on his own strength to annex the surrounding tribes. The result was not very good. Without leading troops to plunder and without external supplies, he could not develop at all. Shen Le tried his best to struggle back and forth, but he only expanded a small burden into a huge burden, from ten people starving to death a year to hundreds of people starving to death a year...

Was it because too much killing was done? Too much supplies were consumed?

Shen Le made up his mind and went to the temple to try to guide the surrounding tribes in the name of Buddhism. He tried to develop medicine and production three times and failed three times:

The harsh natural environment of this snowy plateau can only support such a small population. If we work hard to govern it, we will hit the Malthusian trap...

"So, what should we do..."

After failing the ninth time, Shen Le fell on the bed, holding his head and groaning:

"I really have no other choice... Based on the conditions at the time, if I go down the mountain to rob, I will die in the long run. If I don't go down the mountain to rob, I will die immediately in the short run. Could it be..."

Should I take them over the Himalayas, through the Zhangmu Pass, and go directly to live in Nepal?
Or, cross the Pamir Plateau and go directly to live in India?

That's incredible...

The turquoise emitted a green light, covering Shen Le and his two shoulders. Shen Le sighed countless times, got up, assembled his shoulders, and sank into meditation again.

This time, countless lights flowed around him, but he kept his mind calm and was completely unmoved, and he did not step into the river of memories.

After a long while, the scene in front of him changed again:
Wang Dui picked up the turquoise-inlaid scimitar and wore it on his waist. He brandished the scimitar and led his tribe down the mountain to plunder a lot of money, then took a detour and returned directly to the Yangtong tribe.
Although his tribe was destroyed, Wangdui himself was appreciated and became a warrior of the Yangtong tribe by donating this gold and silver treasures.

Tents, sheep, yaks, slaves, one by one they all came into his hands, and the wealth accumulated by the warriors through force became increasingly rich.

However, he never figured out the problem until he was old and died:

"So, how can I make the entire tribe live a good life?"

Wangdui did not find the answer, and neither did his descendants. The scimitar was passed down from generation to generation by warriors, from the Tang Dynasty to the Song Dynasty, and from the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty.

Most of the time, the warriors on the plateau would submit to a king on the plains, but sometimes, they would only worship their own leader.

The people who nominally rule them are the Xuanzhengyuan, the U-Tsang Regional Administration, the Minister Resident in Tibet, or something like that. What does this have to do with the tribal warriors and the lowest-level serfs?

Anyway, those who are not full will always be hungry, and those who are starving to death will always starve to death. Those who can only lick zhame honey will not be able to eat honey or rock honey.

Even those who were beheaded, skinned, and had their intestines dug out would still be killed... Whether they were dedicated to the gods or to the Buddha, they were dead anyway...

The time and memories condensed in turquoise keep flowing, becoming more and more sluggish, more and more confused, and more and more sad.

From the knife handle to the jewelry, and then from the jewelry to the wooden box for worshipping Buddha. Finally, a ray of light quietly shone in:

There was a pile of unknown things that were carefully put in. Those things were very strange, like a pile of stones. No matter how the turquoise waves were soaked, they could not be affected;
However, after being put together for a long time, the fluctuations of those things have turned around and permeated the turquoise.

After a long, long time, fifty, sixty, seventy years, their powers finally merged together.

And when the half of the red five-star in the box was combined with the other half of the red five-star, large swathes of light and shadow suddenly rushed into the turquoise like a flood:
It was a small team of more than a hundred people, wrapped in fur coats, leading donkeys, walking step by step with difficulty in the snow-capped mountains;
They built huts with red willow branches, boiled water and cooked with camel thorns, and huddled in the cold wind of more than 30 degrees below zero;

They provided guidance to the large group of people, and the large group of people brought cheers everywhere!

"From today on, you are free!"

"No one can bully you anymore! No one can take away your wives and children. Cut off their heads, peel off their skins, and offer their intestines to the gods and Buddhas!"

There were many more people, carrying heavy equipment over mountains and ridges, blasting rocks, and building railways and roads on the snowy plateau.
That's a lot more people, bringing materials, technology, education, and medical care...

[So that’s how it is… So that’s how it is…]

In the palm of my hand, half a red star and two turquoise stones beat and vibrate gently together:

[I want everyone in the tribe to have enough to eat, I want them to live well, I want the children to have something sweet, I want the elderly to die of old age...

It turns out that it is not through war, not through going down the mountain to rob and kill... only these good people can save our people...】

The brilliance of the turquoise gradually dimmed and shrank. Finally, on the wooden box, the white elephant opened its eyes, and the brilliance of the two turquoise stones disappeared, rolling obediently into Shen Le's palm.

Shen Le sat cross-legged, immersed in long memories, his breathing was extremely shallow, like a solidified stone statue.

After a long while, he finally opened his eyes and sighed:
"I understand……"

Condensed on the turquoise are the sorrows of generations of plateau warriors, as well as the doubts they have never resolved.

Fight hard, develop hard, rule hard, try everything, but there is no way to make the people live a good life - what should I do? Where is the way out?

When he tried again and again, when he struggled again and again, when he exhausted all possibilities, when he said, "I really have no other choice..."

Only at this time can the second half of Turquoise's memory be opened, and only then can he see why the memories and sorrows solidified in Turquoise are finally released...

Shen Le lowered his head and sat cross-legged, rubbing the two turquoise stones in his palm with the side of his thumb, without saying a word for a long time.

After a long while, he stood up and walked out of the tent, holding out the items in the wooden box and the box to the experts of the exploration team:

"It's like this... I got these things from the local people. They have kept them for a long time... It was with the guidance of these relics that we were able to find the remains of the martyrs..."

You see, we take these things and study them to see if we can find DNA;

Or after matching, try to return it to the surviving family;
Or put them in a local museum?

I'll leave the follow-up processing to you guys, okay?
"Don't worry, we will handle this carefully." The professor leading the exploration team stood up and shook hands with him:
"Thank you for helping us find the remains of the martyrs. There are still several remains that need to be excavated. The follow-up work, including DNA identification and skull restoration, will take a long time."

You mean to let me go, right?
No need to waste time here, right?

Shen Le understood what he meant, bowed slightly to the professor, bowed towards the cemetery, and told the guy from the Special Affairs Bureau to leave quickly.

Rushing back to the capital of the snowy plateau, Langga was still quietly painting thangkas and tutoring the children regularly. It was no surprise to see Shen Le coming back:
"found it?"

"Found it. Well, I've entrusted the relics to them, and only this box is left—"

He took out the box, turquoise, and seal, and placed them one by one in front of Langga Tashi. He quickly took out a micro electronic scale and placed the turquoise on it:
"These two turquoise stones are both high-grade porcelain, and the market price is 3000 yuan per gram. The total weight of the two turquoise stones is 25.87 grams, and the market price is 77610 yuan..."

At this point, Langga Tashi began to shake his head and backed away. Shen Le quickly increased his speaking speed:
"They have a stronger spiritual reaction. According to the practice of the Special Affairs Bureau, spiritual gems are generally 10 to 100 times the price of ordinary gems. Take a middle value, 50 times, and I will transfer the money to you?"

"Ah, no need." Langga Zhaxi hugged the wooden box tightly, leaving the turquoise in its place, and stepped back into the inner room. As if he was afraid that Shen Le would force him to give him money, he slipped into the door, clicked it, and immediately locked it:

"You have helped me a lot! These relics were left by my great grandfather. My great grandfather's biggest regret is that he can't find them.

I can’t take your money! I’ll give you these two turquoise stones!”

One wanted a large reward, the other wanted to give it away as a gift, and the two sides were deadlocked behind the door. Shen Le knocked on the door, hammered on the door, and tried to persuade him several times, but Langga Tashi was as hard as iron and refused.

As the sun was setting, if no agreement was reached, everyone would have to spend the night in the old house opened by Huang Yutong. Shen Le sighed and turned to the two brothers from the Special Affairs Bureau:

"Well, can you please help me check his account? I know you have a way..."

The two guys rolled their eyes at the same time. Shen Le, are you trying to get us fired?

Because of this reason, if we retrieve citizens' personal information without authorization and receive complaints, we will be immediately fired. If there are no complaints but the internal inspection finds out, we will also be immediately fired!
"Um...Mr. Shen, if you don't..."

The local boy smiled and tried to persuade him. Before he got to the point, Shen Le sighed again:

"Discipline doesn't allow it? I've already asked you to help me, but you didn't allow it. I can only sit here and meditate, using my mental power to investigate - it's just a card number, you know I can definitely find it!"

So you are using courtesy first and then force? The local guy's smile froze. The one who came to support from the mainland sighed and smiled more sincerely:
"You gave too much, it scared him, and he can't accept it. How about this - you pay according to the market price of non-spiritual gems, and with the extra money, you donate to a Hope Primary School here?
Or how about donating some books, teaching supplies, and daily necessities for students? Mr. Langga Tashi? Please come out and say something!!!"

If you still refuse, Shen Le will probably offer a high price and buy back all the thangkas here!
(End of this chapter)