Chapter 175: Information Leaked

The Orcs had no choice. Their current position was very awkward; it would take 20 days to go back, nearly a month to go to the Beast Race, and the same to go to the Barbarian Plateau. As for going to the Kingdom of Dwarves, they would have to pass by Old Xie’s Wuwei Castle. And their fresh water was only enough for 10 days at most, so if they didn’t want to die, they had to agree to Old Xie’s demand. In this way, Old Xie even saved the effort of cleaning up the battlefield; otherwise, just collecting the bodies of 2,000 people here would have been enough to depress him.

To prevent them from being lazy, Old Xie threatened to count the number of iron items specifically, and if any were missing, he would let them die of thirst. This made the Orcs roll their eyes in anger. Finally, under Lan Fake’s mediation, their anger was quelled, and they obediently began to clean up the battlefield.

Afterwards, Old Xie couldn’t be bothered to waste words with them and directly rode the Wyvern to fly back. After a night’s rest, the Wyvern’s stamina had almost recovered, and after a few more hours, he finally returned to the castle around noon.

Next, after finishing lunch, Old Xie began to continue teaching the Imps the casting of Refined Steel Bows. However, Old Xie was a bit annoyed this time; steel with good elasticity kept failing to appear, which made him somewhat depressed. He simply decided to use the steel at hand, which did not have very good toughness, to cast another type of Pulley Bow.

The pulleys of this bow were standard small wheels, which could be mass-produced, unlike Old Xie’s first bow, which used eccentric wheels. Those wheels required very high curvature and were difficult to make. These ordinary small pulleys, however, did not need to be very standard; as long as they could rotate smoothly, it was fine.

This Pulley Bow was composed of four small pulleys, with a long bowstring wound between them. When the bow was drawn, the distance the bowstring pulled was several times the curvature of the bow body. In other words, the bow body only needed to bend a small distance for the bow to be fully drawn. This way, even if the steel of the bow body did not have very strong toughness, it could still do the job.

Old Xie spent a great deal of effort and finally managed to produce a few qualified Refined Steel Bows. He tested them a few times and found them very handy. Everyone else, including Lan Fake, praised Old Xie’s work. Moreover, Lan Fake discovered a problem: it seemed that Old Xie’s bow was not limited by materials and could be made very large, so that even strong Orcs could use it.

One had to know that human bows generally had low power and could only be used by humans. Orc races with low strength could barely use them, but those powerful Orcs, such as Minotaurs and Trolls, could only use throwing spears or flying axes as ranged weapons; ordinary bows were useless to them. Only occasionally, if they obtained materials that could make large bows, could they create super strong bows for Orcs to use. Unfortunately, those materials were too rare, so there were almost no decent strong bows in the Beast Race.

Old Xie’s metal bow solved this problem, making it possible for powerful Orcs to form bow and arrow formations. As an old fellow who had experienced countless battles, Lan Fake naturally understood better than anyone the significance of a large number of ranged troops. So, after seeing this thing, he almost immediately grabbed Old Xie’s hand and said urgently, “I changed my mind. Besides those weapons, you must give me 500 of these metal bows!”

“Hey, hey!” Old Xie immediately smiled bitterly. “How can you be like this? We had a deal, and you want to raise the price temporarily?”

“Well, hehe!” Lan Fake gave a slightly embarrassed bitter smile and then said, “I know this isn’t very honest, but I’m really poor. You’ve cleaned out my family fortune, I have no choice!”

“Come on!” Old Xie curled his lips in disdain. “You’ve lived for hundreds of years, and you’ve lived a glorious life with people surrounding you for most of that time. You only have that little family fortune? Who would believe that?”

“Cough, cough!” Lan Fake coughed in embarrassment and then said, “How about this? At worst, I’ll get you some more Thunderbird eggs as compensation. How about it?”

“How many can you get?” Old Xie asked with a smile. “I’m telling you, after these bows are made, the cost is very high. Each one costs dozens of Gold Coins. If you give too little, I won’t do it!” Actually, Old Xie was bragging; perhaps the first bow cost that much, but the cost would gradually decrease later, until in the end, it would only cost a few Gold Coins at most.

Lan Fake, of course, did not know Old Xie’s scheming. In his view, such a good bow could easily sell for 100 Gold Coins, so he directly and readily said, “Give me a few years, and I will get you at least a hundred Thunderbirds for an airborne unit!”

“A hundred?” Old Xie’s eyes lit up upon hearing this, and then he hurriedly asked, “You’re not fooling me, right? As far as I know, the eggs of this thing are very hard to get. One reason is that Thunderbirds protect them well, and another is that Thunderbirds have a very long egg-laying period, lasting ten years. In just a few years, where will you get so many Thunderbird eggs?”

“Sigh!” Lan Fake sighed helplessly and then smiled bitterly. “How else can I get them? Naturally, I have to go get them one by one. The Beast Race Kingdom has over 10 million square kilometers of land, and there are over a hundred areas where Thunderbirds exist. Each area has thousands of Thunderbirds. I just need to get one Thunderbird egg from each place!”

“Listening to you, it seems Thunderbird eggs are easy to get?” Old Xie immediately asked in confusion. “If that’s the case, why didn’t you get some earlier and sell them in the Griffin Kingdom? You’d definitely make a fortune!”

“What do you mean easy!” Lan Fake jumped up in anger upon hearing this. “Do you know what a group of Thunderbirds is? I tell you, a hundred adult Thunderbirds together, even a solitary Behemoth wouldn’t mess with them! Going in to steal eggs is life-threatening. The most critical thing is that I have to use precious dragon dung to mask my scent, which is very expensive!”

“Ha, so you told the truth. It turns out you rely on dragon dung to mask the scent!” Old Xie laughed loudly. “And you, kid, have quite a lot of goods, even having dragon dung!”

“Oh!” Lan Fake realized he had slipped up and could only make an excuse. “Only a little bit. If you take it, I won’t be able to get Thunderbird eggs anymore!”

“You’re ruthless!” Old Xie knew he couldn’t squeeze any good stuff out of the old fellow, so he shrugged helplessly and said, “Alright then, if you don’t get me 100 Thunderbirds, I’ll settle the score with you!”

“Okay, okay!” Lan Fake hurriedly agreed.

Next, Old Xie selected ten Imps who had learned to make this kind of Refined Steel Bow, took them and the few finished bows, returned to the Mage Tower, and sent Chris Chen to deliver them to Fatty.

…

While Old Xie was working on the Refined Steel Bows, another group appeared on the vast Great Gobi. They were entirely composed of Dwarves, led by the Master Smith Piritz, who was coming to attend the Thunder Sword auction. He had stayed in the Griffin Kingdom for a while, just to meet Master Thunder, but unfortunately, he failed in the end and could only leave with regret.

However, when these people were within a few hundred li of Wuwei Castle, they suddenly discovered thousands of corpses ahead. The Dwarves carefully approached the battlefield, and after confirming there was no threat, they began to observe carefully. They finally reached a shocking conclusion: most of the dead were border soldiers of the Griffin Kingdom. And the attackers seemed to be those mercenaries. Eventually, they found some damaged water carts and roughly inferred the whole process. First, someone destroyed the water carts, and then the two sides fought over the water source. From the traces left at the scene, it seemed someone had survived and left with the weapons of the dead. This surprised the Dwarves, and they couldn’t figure out exactly what had happened.

However, after a brief thought, Piritz finally decided to send someone back to report this to the border troops of the Griffin Kingdom. After all, the Dwarves had a good relationship with the Griffin Kingdom, and he couldn’t just pretend he knew nothing after discovering such a tragedy. As for himself, he followed the remaining traces and continued to advance toward Wuwei Castle. He wanted to see who exactly had done such a thing.

In this way, the news of the expeditionary force’s total annihilation spread quickly, much faster than Old Xie had anticipated.

…

While Piritz was rushing toward Wuwei Castle, Old Xie, who was temporarily free, received an invitation from Constantine. The two met in a very quiet and high-end restaurant in the Imperial Capital.

This was an old shop with hundreds of years of history. What attracted people here was not only the highest-grade cuisine in the entire Griffin Kingdom but also that elegant atmosphere. Dining here, you would not only hear pieces played by master-level musicians but also appreciate rare ancient famous paintings, which might even outnumber the Imperial Palace’s collection! Only nobles with true taste had the right to enter; ordinary upstarts didn’t even know such a place existed.

Normally, a rough person like Old Xie would not be qualified to enter. But for Constantine’s sake, the haughty manager, who looked full of artistic flair, reluctantly let him in. This made Old Xie feel quite injured, and he couldn’t help thinking whether he should call Sven and the others to come and smash this place up?