Chapter 21: Chaos on the Prairie

  "Hey!"

  After walking out for over a dozen steps, Li Xian heard that uniquely flavored whistle again.

  But he didn't plan to stop, Li Xian concluded that the only way to deal with non-mainstream girls in his previous life was to ignore her, which was more effective than doing her. Li Xian wasn't in the mood to stop, even if he couldn't shoot down the flying dragon, he would shoot back some relatively fat prey to fool Du Gu Ruo Zhi, even if it was just a stupid rabbit, otherwise Du Gu Ruo Zhi would definitely not talk about how to poison tonight.

  "What's your name, Han!"

  The white-clothed girl wiped away her tears, picked up the whip from the ground and ran after him in small steps. Although she wasn't running fast, but the way she was running with her legs bent inward on the snowy ground looked lovely and pretty.

  "Han people, I'm called Ousiqingqing, what's your name?!"

  She persisted in chasing after Li Xian.

  Li Xian stopped in his tracks and turned around, asking coldly: "What exactly do you want to do?"

  The girl was startled by the coldness in Li Xian's tone, and subconsciously stopped in her tracks. Her big eyes sparkled, with long eyelashes that curled upwards, but tears began to well up again in her eye sockets. Li Xian had no immunity to girls crying, which is why he chose to retreat so hastily. Now, seeing the girl struggling to hold back her tears, looking even more pitiful than before, Li Xian couldn't help but ask: "What do you want to do?"

  The same words, without a single change, but the tone has softened greatly.

  "Actually... I just wanted to ask you, have you seen my little grey?"

  "Little Gray? What thing? The son of Grey Wolf?"

  "Not at all!"

  The girl who called herself Ousiqing hastily explained: "Not a wolf cub, but one that's about this big..."

  She gestured with her hand and continued to explain: "Especially white, the fur is as smooth as your Han people's satin-like sable."

  Li Xian thought of the snow leopard he had prepared for hunting earlier and nodded: "I saw it."

  "Where?"

  Ou Si's eyes sparkled brightly.

  Li Xian shook his head: "I don't know, when I saw that ermine, you just arrived, so I climbed up the tree and then jumped down. I didn't notice where it ran off to."

  "Oh..."

  Ou Si's face fell and she looked very disappointed.

  "Little Gray has never left me before. I'm afraid it will get lost by itself. What if it encounters a bear? What if it encounters a snake?"

  She talks incessantly.

  Li Xian sighed sorrowfully: "Now is winter!"

  Ou Si's face turned pale for a moment, then she burst out laughing: "Right! How could I forget that in winter, you can't see bears and snakes? But... what if we run into bad people? What if they use bows and arrows to shoot it and catch it to make stew, or grab it to sell its fur?"

  From laughter to sorrow, her transformation was as sudden as turning a page.

  Li Xianxin said, "I'm the bad person you're talking about. If you were five minutes late, I guarantee that little grey would have become Du Gu's dinner meat by now." But he couldn't bring himself to be angry with this young girl, so he could only ask helplessly, "So what do you think we should do?"

  Upon hearing Li Xian say this, Ou Siqing immediately picked up where he left off: "Will you help me find Xiao Hui?"

  Seeing Li Xian's face, she lowered her pretty little head and explained: "I left the tribe for the first time, came out so far for the first time, had no one by my side for the first time. I got angry with Ye Ye and ran out myself. Da Lang Ge and others brought people to find me, but I hid behind a snow pile and didn't let them see me. But I didn't hold onto Xiao Hui, it jumped down and ran away itself. So I chased after Xiao Hui, chasing here and there until I got here..."

  She raised her head and looked at Li Xian with an innocent expression: "The key is... I don't know the way back."

  Li Xian finally understood that the person standing in front of him was absolutely not a white rabbit spirit: "Are you stupid! Don't recognize the road and run out so far by yourself!"

  Ou Si's eyes sparkled with tears again, and her eyelashes fluttered as she struggled to hold back her emotions.

  "Don't cry!"

  Li Xian waved his hand irresponsibly: "I'm not going to take you to find that little gray thing, if we run around all over the place, I might get lost too. If you want to go back, it's easy, just follow your footprints and return, isn't that enough?"

  "The footprints are gone..."

  "It has just snowed, how can there be no footprints!"

  "Answer Brother brought people to find me, at first I didn't want them to find me, so I used branches to sweep away my footprints. Then I jumped and jumped on the tree, so I shook them off. But... you know, the trees on this mountain are almost all the same, I jumped and jumped and forgot where I came from, you know, I climb trees very quickly."

  Li Xian listened to Ouyang Qing's repeated words, and with a painful knock on the forehead, he said: "What do I know? I've even forgotten your name now!"

  "I climb trees fast... you know."

  "I won't!"

  Li Xian shouted two words and sighed: "This can be known."

  Perhaps because he came from another era, Li Xian didn't have a good impression of this girl who would leave home for no reason at all. But he also knew that Ouyang Qingqing wasn't the nonconformist type. The nonconformists could travel the world with just a box of condoms and never worry about food or drink, whereas Ouyang Qingqing was the natural white type who would actually struggle to survive in society without her family's care. The difference between them lay in that the former looked pure but was actually foolish, while the latter looked foolish but was actually pure.

  "Why did you come out by yourself?"

  Li Xian pulled out a white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it over, the handkerchief was so clean that it was infuriating. It didn't belong to the same world as the clothes on his body, if his clothes were from hell, then this handkerchief was from heaven. Just like, his hair was clean and refreshing like a woman's, but his feet rarely got washed seriously.

  It was astonishing that Ousiqing didn't refuse, she naturally took the handkerchief and wiped away her tears, then put it in front of her nose to smell, after confirming that the faint herbal scent on the handkerchief was something she liked, Ousiqing vigorously rubbed her nose. The biggest advantage of a beautiful girl is that even if she uses your clean handkerchief to wipe her snot, you won't think it's unacceptable. Li Xian wouldn't be petty about lending out his handkerchief, he furrowed his brow because after Ousiqing finished wiping her nose, she naturally tossed the handkerchief onto the snowy ground.

  She is a spoiled little princess.

  And she must have been unable to tell what material this handkerchief was made of!

  The Khitan people were originally very vague about the distinction on fabrics, and they preferred thick brocade to soft and beautiful silk. They distinguished the value of clothing by whether it was durable or not, rather than whether it was light or thin. The cloth that Li Xian handed over to Ouyang Qingqing was a piece of ramie fabric, softer than hemp fabric, with good water absorption. Although it's not something particularly rare, there's no doubt that the Khitan people had never seen it before!

  This is what they call a Khitan noble, but he clearly hasn't seen the world.

  Li Xian can guess a lot of things from Ou Si's actions.

  Ou Si Qing picked up the embroidered handkerchief that had been thrown to the ground, and Li Xian folded it neatly before putting it into his waist pouch made of deerskin: "After using it, you should return it to me instead of throwing it away. Although I don't mind that you used it to wipe your nose, I still want to take it back and wash it."

  Li Xian raised his head and said seriously: "I only have this handkerchief."

  Ou Si's face turned blue as she stared at Li Xian, clearly at a loss for what to do. She hadn't expected him to pick up that soft cloth used for wiping noses, because in her opinion it was too small and not as beautiful or thick as the Shu brocade, so losing it wouldn't be a big deal.

  "I'm sorry..."

  Ou Si's face turned red as she spoke, just like a child who had smashed her mother's favorite porcelain vase.

  "It's nothing"

  Li Xian waved his hand: "You haven't answered me why you ran out yet."

  "It's all because of those damned Khitans!"

  Ou Si's eyes suddenly filled with anger and hatred, turning her into a goddess of justice: "Those damned Khitans, I don't know why they suddenly started migrating north, taking over a large pasture from our He Da He tribe. Our He Da He tribe has 10,000 brave warriors who can fight on horseback, but the Khitan leader, Ye Lü, brought at least 50,000 people this time! We've fought the Khitans several times, killing many of their bandits, but we're still outnumbered and can't defeat them."

  Ou Si Qing Qing waved her small fist and said angrily: "Ye Ye contacted other tribes to form an alliance to resist the Xianbei people's northward advance, but the Ejin of other tribes were unwilling to fight against the Xianbei people. Ye Ye had no choice but to come north to find the Suli tribe of the Xiongnu people to discuss and jointly send troops to drive the Xianbei people back."

  Although she spoke somewhat incoherently, Li Xian still understood her meaning.

  No wonder earlier when I said Ou Si Qing was a fairy she got so angry, it turns out she misheard and thought I said Yi person!

  Xī and xì have the same pronunciation!

  Li Xian suddenly became clear and had a feeling of sudden enlightenment.

  What's going on in the north?

  After Ou Si Qing finished speaking, his second reaction was that the Great Wei would take military action against Liao Dong! What's coming is still coming, and the three conquests of Liao Dong were almost the direct cause of the downfall of the Great Wei. It seems that the trajectory of history cannot be stopped. Su Chui had just become the Da E Jin of the Xi Ren tribe, and a few days ago, he heard that the Xi Ren tribe was killed in a bloody battle with many deaths. Ou Si Qing's father came to ask him at this time, and it's likely that he would also find it difficult to bring back good news.

  What department?

  Could it be that her father is a Muslim?

  Li Xian thought of the Khitan leader Mohe who surrendered to the Tang Dynasty during the Zhenguan era, but he only vaguely remembered that Mohe was from the Dahe tribe of the Xie family, and did not know how old Mohe was when he surrendered to the Tang. If it were really him, then Ousiqingqing would be around 14 or 15 years old, which means her father would be in his thirties at most.

  The Xianbei people's territory is too close to Liaodong, and if the Sui dynasty sends troops to Liaodong, they will definitely drive away the Xianbei tribes. The Xianbei have nowhere to go, so they will naturally head north to seize the pastures of the Khitan or Xi people. However, the Khitan are currently in disarray, with constant warfare between different tribes as they vie for leadership of the tribal alliance. Several larger tribes, such as the Dahe Mohe and the Xi, are fighting fiercely. At this time, if the Xianbei head north to attack the Khitan, the latter will definitely be unable to resist. A disunited nation that is in chaos due to internal power struggles will certainly be unable to withstand another nation that has banded together in unity for survival. Moreover, the strength of the Khitan and the Xianbei are roughly equal, but one is united while the other is not, so the outcome is already clear.

  The Khitan people were originally divided into ten departments, and it was in the continuous war of contending for dominance that several tribes were destroyed. By the Tang Dynasty, they were re-divided into eight departments. However, there is a great difference between the eight departments of the Khitan during the Tang Dynasty period and the ancient eight departments of the Khitan.

  No!

  Li Xian suddenly thought of something, Emperor Yang Guang of the Sui Dynasty should not have done such a thing. He always claimed to be a benevolent emperor and was known for his kindness to foreigners. Just think about that ridiculous decree he announced two years ago, allowing all foreigners who came to the Sui Dynasty to eat, drink and take things without paying, it can be seen that he is a very vain person.

  He is a Turk!

  Li Xian let out a long sigh, and it seemed that with the great Sui dynasty's expedition against Goguryeo, the Turks also couldn't sit still.

  Note!: The tribal leader of the Khitan people should be called Jieyu Zhu, but one of the five tribes of the Xianbei people is also called Jieyu Zhu, so in order not to cause confusion, the leaders of the steppe tribes are all referred to as Ejin, except for the Turks.