Chapter 2: After the Neutrino
As midnight approaches, the temperature becomes colder.

A cold wind blew on the rural roads in the far suburbs, and the trees on both sides of the road had long been cut down by rebel soldiers and refugees and burned for heating.

Now there is not even any low shrubs left, as they have all been burned up by firewood collected by nearby residents.

A figure was walking quickly on the road carrying a sack on his back, looking back from time to time.

When he turned around, he saw a white figure suddenly appear in his sight, like a sneaky creature crawling up.

Before he could react, his feet were tripped and just as he was about to shout, he was tackled by a skinny, dark-black figure. He struggled and struggled, but was unable to break free.

Soon the black bear ran over and pressed the man's neck with a sharp bamboo stick. The man immediately gave up struggling and looked at the blurry naked figure with sidelong glances.

"thief?"

Seeing that the other party didn't speak, the black bear thought that the other party might not understand and was too lazy to communicate anymore, so he punched the other party hard on the temple.

After I punched him, he shook his head and I punched him again. After the third punch, he finally fainted.

He immediately untied the man's waist belt and tied his legs and feet. Regardless of whether he was really dizzy or not, he took off his coarse linen outer and inner clothes, leaving only a coarse silk inner garment.

Then he untied the waist belt and tied the other person's hands behind his back, took off the left and right trouser legs, and immediately put them on his own legs. Then he put on his inner and outer clothes, and untied the other person's waist belt and put them on his own.

There are hanging ropes at the top of the two pairs of trousers, which can be tied when putting on the shirt.

Seeing that the other party was shivering from the cold in shorts and underwear but still pretending to be unconscious, Black Bear's eyes fell on the other party's hemp shoes, and then he looked down at his own feet.

I am strong and others are weak, so at times like this I just think for a moment and then follow my instincts.

After a dozen breaths, the black bear jumped on the spot in his warm hemp shoes and glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw something squirming in the sack.

When he went over and untied the bag, he saw a white goose's head sticking out. Its beak was entangled in a thin hemp rope so that it couldn't make any sound, let alone peck at people.

"Good baby!"

He wished he could kiss this big goose with its shiny white down. He left the Yinshi servant to continue suppressing the bandits, and he continued walking in the direction the bandits came from, carrying the three geese in the sack.

When he was out of breath, he stopped and raised his hand. The servant card appeared in his hand and he threw it in front of him again to summon him, but the two bamboo thorns in the servant's hand were gone.

The bamboo thorns had not been refined by magical power, so naturally they could not be integrated into the card.

But that bandit must have fainted from fright.

He immediately hung the sack on the servant's back, and they walked along the night road one after the other.

After passing a small town and two miles, we finally arrived at the edge of the reed-covered river. The path led to the riverside pier.

There was a bonfire burning at the dock at night, probably because there were soldiers on duty.

Near the dock, several sampans could be vaguely seen docked. Black Bear decided to slow down and recover his strength before stealing the boats.

My heart was still beating fast. I took a short break and raised my right hand, and saw four more mana cards.

Mana cards are refreshed and provided all at once at midnight every day, rather than being provided in different time periods.

He picked up two Yin Cards and slapped them directly on the servant beside him. The body of the Yin corpse servant shattered and the advanced card immediately appeared in front of him.

"Inferi servants, good at labor, lacking tools. Can be strengthened and combined."

The card fell to the ground, and a new Yin corpse servant appeared. He was obviously taller, and his bare feet were nearly eight feet tall. His body was still dry, and his muscles and skin were tightly wrapped around his bones.

"Negative and positive don't sound very nice, and infernal corpses are not good-looking either."

As he was thinking, he saw the handwriting of the card information change. The two unused positive mana cards became white mana cards. Maybe Black Bear was not satisfied, so the name was further simplified to white card. The servants were also dissolved and the condensed cards also updated their information, becoming "black servants".

Black Bear couldn't help but raise an eyebrow when he saw this, and threw the servant card on the ground to summon it out.

Throwing cards is like a fixed spellcasting action or ritual; it doesn’t matter now, but it will be inconvenient in the future when there are too many cards, so combination cards are inevitable. I wonder if there will be legion cards.

Paint the servants in gold and silver, shout "Throw beans and turn them into soldiers", and smash the beans visible to the world and an invisible legion card together. This scene should be very interesting.

After waiting for a while, the black bear, having recovered its strength, cautiously moved closer to the dock, crouched on the ground and listened carefully through the wooden fence.

There was a bonfire burning inside the fence, crackling in the night breeze.

There was no barking of dogs, which was very good news.

But you can't hear the neighing of horses, and there is no inherent stench of horse manure... Although cows, horses, and sheep all eat grass, horse manure is more fishy and pungent, especially for horses that eat better feed.

Slowly approaching the boat berth, we saw five sampans moored at an old dock built of logs. When we got closer, we saw that the boats were empty, with no fishing gear or even oars.

Returning to the original place, the black bear weighed the pros and cons and decided to give up his greed. He was lucky to be able to steal a boat.

No one knows how many soldiers are in the dock sentry post, and whether there are any powerful men among them. If you can't be frightened by the servants who are suddenly summoned, then you will be unlucky and passive.

Leaving the servants there, he picked up the sack and walked towards the dock. He successfully threw the sack onto the boat and untied the thick hemp ropes that tied the boat one by one.

After watching the other four empty boats slowly drift downstream, he untied the one he had chosen and jumped on board. The boat also left the dock and drifted towards the center of the river.

Feeling his heart beating faster, he lay on the deck and looked up at the dark night.

Wooden boards have poor thermal conductivity, so I didn't feel cold lying on the deck. It would have been nice to have a blanket.

After thinking about it, he got up again, took out the three geese from the sack, and seeing that the orange goose feet were tied together, he put them at the other end and then put the sack on his back.

There was no time to sleep. The boat drifted downstream, but he had to paddle on both sides from time to time to adjust the bow.

After another moment, perhaps because of the great distance, the servants lurking near the dock disintegrated and returned as cards.

On the Weishui River, as the black servant returned, the black bear was also freed. The Weishui River under our feet should be a famous river in the Central Plains. Compared with memory and common sense, the Rushui River, Yingshui River, and Jishui River are larger, and perhaps the Suiyang Canal, which is about to be dredged and restored to flow.

Therefore, the river is wide and there are basically no wooden bridges connecting the two banks.

There are probably floating bridges connecting boats in places with heavy traffic, and transportation on both sides of most river sections is by boat.

The flow rate of rivers is always fast in the middle, with the water in the upper layer flowing faster than that in the lower layer. After the remote-controlled servant controlled the boat, the black bear began to use white magic to study the three white geese.

It's a pity that I can't refine the white goose. It's not that I can't refine it, but I don't have enough mana, unless I refine it into a gosling.

When I had nothing to do, I held the white geese in my arms and practiced... These were three old geese. The gander was very obvious. Taking the gander as a reference, the other two geese were female.

I heard that there are other ways to identify them. When hatcheries sell goslings, they often pass off male goslings as female goslings, so Black Bear wanted to study this technology.

After touching it again and again, I finally found some key points.

The white goose in his arms felt as warm as an electric heater. The tired black bear was about to close his eyes and take a nap when he vaguely heard some noises and became alert.

Looking around, I saw someone running with a torch on the south bank upstream, and seemed to be shouting.

The other side has no horses...but has oars.

Should we continue drifting now, or quickly approach the north shore, tow the boat ashore and hide?

With the light from the torches, even if the other party rowed downstream, it would be difficult for them to discover any traces of their towboat. After the other party withdrew, they could push their boat into the water again, and before daybreak they would have drifted at least fifty or sixty miles, which would have put them out of their jurisdiction.

After thinking for a moment, he immediately threw his servant into the water and ordered him to swim towards the north bank. As a result, he sank as soon as he hit the water, without even a bubble.

Then he put the three geese, which were easily recognizable at night, back into the sacks, called out his servants, and began paddling, one on each side.

If they catch up with you, you can abandon the chariot to save the king, and throw your servants to the north bank to create traces and attract pursuers.

In the rear, the soldiers stationed at the dock were running breathlessly with torches in their hands. In such cold weather, more than a dozen people from top to bottom could only watch the boat drift downstream.

It was cold at the end of February, and anyone who dared to go into the water to salvage the boats had to be prepared to catch typhoid fever and die.

Losing a boat is just a matter of beating and fine, why should you risk your life?
If we go into the water to salvage the boat now, we will inevitably lose our lives.

The loss of the boat simply meant some inconvenience in fishing and food shortage; as for the people on both sides of the river's need to cross the river, what did that have to do with these soldiers who were temporarily stationed there?
But we couldn't just sit there and do nothing, so we sent a few people to walk quickly downstream, so that we could use our boats to intercept the boat that was washed away by the current.

It is impossible to feel the passage of time at night. Black Bear didn't know how much time had passed before he passed by a pier again. The pier was attached to a village where dogs were raised.

When the boat was approaching, the dogs kept barking. The young men immediately woke up and came out with torches, shouting at the young men to prepare equipment. They just climbed up the earthen wall built by the village community to keep watch and did not take any other action.

I continued to drift, not knowing how far I had drifted.

When it was getting light, Black Bear looked around and chose a patch of dry and dense reeds. He and his servants paddled closer and dragged the boat into the reeds. After clearing some traces, he created a clearing in the reeds.

There were four or five layers of reeds folded beside the boat. After giving the three geese a little water, their mouths were tied again. The black bear hugged one of the geese, closed his eyes, and fell asleep immediately.

As the sun gradually rose, the black servants guarding the other side of the boat slowly disappeared under the sunlight. When about one-tenth of them disappeared, the whole thing collapsed in an instant.

When I woke up, it was already afternoon.

The black bear opened his eyes, felt the white goose squirming and struggling in his arms, and suddenly felt very peaceful.

It is always better to wake up naturally than to be startled or woken up by someone... Given the current situation, being woken up by someone is really terrifying.

He calmed down a little and struggled to get up. He raised his hand and threw the card to summon the servant. The warm sunlight fell on the servant, melting at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the body collapsed and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Feeling a little hungry, Black Bear took out another card.

'Wrong willow branch, produces one magic berry every day; its potential is about to be exhausted, but it can be used twice more.'

Take out the willow branches and watch the white buds bloom and the green fruits grow into bright red berries.

Swallow it, disperse the willow branches, lie down lazily, and savor the sweet taste of the berries.

After lying comfortably for a long time, he stood up and first checked the condition of the three geese. Then he looked outside the reeds and saw that the fields on the north bank were barren. There were several villages in the distance with a rich network of large and small irrigation canals. Unfortunately, they had all become ruins.

He escaped the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the anti-Dong coalition forces, but there was still a fight between Lu Bu and Cao Cao, and then the Battle of Guandu.

This is the core of Chenliu County. In prosperous times, it was rich in resources, densely populated and had a prosperous economy. But in troubled times, this place of contention immediately became deserted.

After looking for a few more times, the black bear used the only remaining bamboo thorn to dig the wet soil on the shore, and dug out some reed roots and fresh reed stalks and leaves that had just emerged from the water from the cold mud.

After chopping it up reluctantly, the three geese didn't show any interest in eating it, so he just stuffed it into his mouth himself.

A goose of this size should be able to digest such crude fiber.

After finishing all this, he began to wash his face, hands and feet carefully.

I guess she hadn't washed her hair the entire winter. After the hair towel was taken away, the greasy bun showed no signs of loosening. I touched it and found that there was a string tying the bun.

After untying the rope covered with oil and dirt, one can vaguely recognize that it is a colorful ribbon hand-woven with five-colored threads.

It was a hand-woven gift given by a woman during the Dragon Boat Festival last year, with the meaning of blessing and warding off evil spirits.

Not daring to wash his hair, Black Bear casually tied his hair up and looked carefully at the face reflected in the water. He understood his original body's popularity with women.

He has a fair face and rosy skin, sharp eyes and handsome features.

Some information also came to mind. This branch of the Hei family was the descendant of Weizi of the State of Song. The Hei family had the surname Zi. The main branches were in the State of Liang, and a small part was in the State of Pei.

(End of this chapter)