Though dozens of Bear Goblins had been dealt with, there were still over a hundred left. Liu Zhenhan circled them for a long time.
Each Bear Goblin was cold to the touch, in silent plea that the merciless Overlord Piegel would not break their spines and leave them to be devoured by Cave Wolves in the wilderness as well. ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ noveⅼfire.net
Liu Zhenhan was actually appreciating the robust build of these Bear Goblin robbers. It’s a pity there were no mines like those in Bog Village; otherwise, these heavy-lifting slaves would have been a good choice.
A pit was turned into their prison, with the entrance symbolically fenced off with wooden railings.
Jaza, the skunk leader from the Kunke Tribe, bravely volunteered to stand guard for the night. Jaza’s arm was just broken in the fight against the Bear Goblins, and his head was wrapped in bandages as well.
After Liu Zhenhan agreed to his request, the poor skunk fell to the ground, kissing Liu’s boots and praising him incessantly, shooting off flattery like Katusha’s Magic Water Arrows.
Liu Zhenhan unceremoniously commandeered Andulan’s ike kilns, tucking the two little brats in for the night, and immediately began interrogating two Bear Goblin leaders who appeared slightly more civilized and better armored. He wanted to know why his family and people were attacked by these robbers as soon as they arrived on the Red Earth Highland.
He hoped it was just a coincidence, Liu Zhenhan thought.
By the time the two Bear Goblin subordinates had been brought in separately, they were already terrified to the point of wailing and begging. After exchanging a hundred slaps and rupturing one’s eardrum as an appetizer, they had no intention of withholding any information and gave full accounts.
Given the Bear Goblins’ disorganized narration, Liu Zhenhan had Ning Yu act as the secretary, using a goose quill pen to note down the key points he sifted out on the rush paper.
Rush paper is the cheapest of all papers in Bimon Kingdom, but it is still quite expensive, priced at a gold coin per sheaf. It doesn’t feel as good as the lamp wick grass paper from the Great Tang, nor does it have the same bleached color as parchment.
Out of everyone present, Ning Yu had the most beautiful handwriting. The graceful and elegant Bimon script written with her delicate fingers made the little vixen both envious and jealous.
Liu Zhenhan found some strange red ink from somewhere. The finely disjointed accounts given by the Bear Goblins were recorded one by one onto the rush paper by Ning Yu’s elegant hand.
The Goblin robbers on the wasteland have their factions based on the differences between their tribes.
This group of Bear Goblins belonged to the Kosen Tribe, located fifty kilometers to the south of the Red Earth Highland. The Red Earth Highland and the south bank of the Sanggan River were within their territory. The name of their tribe came from their leader - the unlucky large-sized guy who had his mouth torn open and spine broken by Liu Zhenhan.
What distinguished this tribe from other Goblin tribes on the wasteland was that they were all Bear Goblins. One hundred and eighty adult Bear Goblin warriors constituted their armed power. In addition to that, they also had about fifty female Bear Goblins and more than a hundred children in their camp. The reason there were so few female goblins in the Kosen Tribe was because goblins and gnomes could reproduce like rats, and an excessive population would mean unnecessary food burden. Thus, fifty or so female Bear Goblins were enough to produce offsprings for the Kosen Tribe.
Most Goblin tribes follow the same rules for survival and reproduction. They only require male offspring who would become future warriors. The female babies, aside from a few healthy ones reserved for continuing the bloodline, were abandoned on the wasteland to fend for themselves just like they do with the old, weak, sick, and disabled.
In this aspect, the Kosen Bear Goblin Tribe was on the same page with Liu Zhenhan. However, Liu Zhenhan would break the victim’s spine before banishing them.
Because of their lack of pure Goblin blood, the Kosen Tribe didn’t possess the ancient Goblin skill of nurturing giant beasts. Their strong bodies, comparable to ogres, were their greatest asset.
The descriptions given by these Bear Goblins raised the eyebrows of the girls, and even the down-to-earth ascetic monk, Damai, felt a chill, though he already had some idea about it. Listening to these Bear Goblins narrate it firsthand unnerved him.
There was no united front among the robbers on the vast wasteland, they each had their territories and often conflicted over territorial disputes, sometimes against Ogre Tribes, sometimes against other Goblin Tribes.
The attack on the Red Earth Highland this time was, oddly enough, a coincidence that would only appear in novels.
About five or six days ago, this group of Bear Goblins was wandering in their territory in preparation for "resource stockpiling" for winter. They surrounded a group of human traders protected by Bimon Knights.
Normally, they wouldn’t dare to touch human traders guarded by a large group of Bimon Knights, but strangely, the Bimon Knights escorted the human traders only a short distance. After crossing the Sanggan River, they turned a blind eye to the strong protests from the traders and headed back on their journey, even more surprisingly, the Bimon Knights refused the human traders’ request to return to Witherspoon, simply leaving these unarmed human traders in the vast wilderness.