Chapter 51: Can the Great Yuan Kobold Defeat the Fourth Wildboar Prince? (Part Two)

"What kind of story is this again?"

Lama Wang delivered this with a straight face, leaving Guo Kang quite speechless.

"Perhaps this record is just rather obscure," Lama Wang said, showing little surprise at Guo Kang's reaction. "Most people's impression of the North begins and ends with Mobei and the Jurchens. In truth, far to the north, there are still many places."

"In the northern part of Liaoyang Province, there are numerous mountains and rivers, vast expanses of undeveloped wilderness, and marshes everywhere. Especially in winter, the climate is bitterly cold, so it is sparsely populated. There are only a few native stockaded villages there; in the summer, they grow some cold-resistant crops and hunt all around to sustain themselves. These places are basically inhabited by Jurchen-speaking tribes and villages, which we collectively call the Wild Jurchens."

"And the place even further north than the lands of the Wild Jurchens is called Nurgan. In this place, agriculture can no longer be sustained at all, but the local water network is developed and fish are abundant, so the people make a living by fishing. Yet, this remains a territory once administered by the Great Tang. Local guides and merchants can be found there, as well as passable routes."

"The Yuan Dynasty established administrative organs here, and the Ming Dynasty also wanted to control it. In this way, they could extend their sphere of control northeastward to the shores near the ocean, cutting off the routes of merchants and envoys from the Pacification Commission of the East as they traveled toward Mobei."

"However, this is still not the furthest north," Lama Wang tapped the map with his horsetail whisk. "It's just that there is little information further north, and I didn't know how to draw it."

"Previously, successive dynasties basically just waited for distant tribes to come pay tribute, but later, the Liao court was not satisfied with passively waiting for visitors to arrive, and decided to send out expeditions."

"The Liao exploration team traveled all the way north, passing through more than forty small states and tribes, until they reached a place called the 'Dog Country.' It was extremely cold here; the urine of the horses brought by the Liao people would instantly freeze into solid blocks of ice. The locals wore animal skins and lived in houses built of snow and ice."

"The expedition recorded that the locals did not raise horses, but instead raised a large breed of dog abundant in those parts. They would craft six-inch-wide, several-feet-long wooden planks, harnessed to the dogs to travel across the ice. These dogs had a wide variety of uses, so the Liao people simply called them the Dog Country."

"Further north than the Dog Country, the local language became completely incomprehensible, and not even a single translator could be found. They had no idea what the names of those countries and tribes actually were."

"Later, the expedition encountered someone who spoke a bit of Tiele, and that person told them that further north was a place ravaged by dragons, serpents, fierce beasts, and malicious spirits, where ghosts ran rampant, and they could go no further. Believing they had reached the end of the northern wilderness described in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the expedition turned back."

"How does this sound just like a demon realm out of a myth?" Li Xuanying expressed doubt. "In the earliest times, people from the Central Plains also thought the deserts of the Western Regions were the end of the world. In reality, beyond this 'end of the world' there is still a vast expanse; even we ourselves are situated outside this original 'edge of the world.'"

"That person who spoke the local language and Tiele was probably just a traveling merchant. Was it to monopolize trade, not wanting the Khitans to discover a trade route, just like the deceitful Persian merchant who frightened Gan Ying to prevent him from reaching the Great Qin?" he guessed. "Or perhaps the Khitans simply didn't want to walk any further and made up a story to report back to the court?"

"The story of the Dog Country is actually true, because similar records exist from the Tang Dynasty," Lama Wang explained. "It is said that during the Zhenguan era, there was a Ligui Kingdom in the north that sent a prince to submit and pay tribute, and Emperor Taizong appointed him as a Cavalry Commandant. According to the surviving records of that time, it was quite similar to the situation of this Dog Country. Even if they weren't the exact same country, they were ethnic groups with similar lifestyles. So this place is actually also Tang territory; it's not too far-fetched or heavily exaggerated."

"Just how big is this Tang territory of yours?" Oltrifus looked like he had been listening until his head spun. "How is it that everywhere you look is Tang territory?"

"Geographically speaking, it was naturally like this to begin with," Lama Wang said, speechless. "What can I do about it? Should I have stopped people from becoming vassals of the Tang?"

"Mainly, these stories sound far too mythical," Borjan remarked. "It feels like some prehistoric superpower where its domains are everywhere. Beyond the borders lie directly monster-infested, chaotically unknown demon realms. This world... feels more suited for a fantasy story."

"There's nothing to be done about that. Those distant places with scarce information are inherently semi-mythical in nature," Guo Kang smoothed things over. "We can just take a look at them as a reference. If we really take action, we'll certainly have to send people to thoroughly investigate anyway. At the very least, regarding the situation of the Dog Country, I believe the Khitans weren't making things up."

"I've already selected the more reliable sources. I haven't even mentioned the more distant and magical ones," Lama Wang stated. "In fact, according to materials from the Song and Liao periods, there might be a true 'Dog Country' in an even more remote area beyond the Dog Country."

"It is said that the men there have human bodies but dog heads. They wear no clothes, relying on the fur of their bodies to keep out the cold, speak like barking dogs, and eat their food raw. The local women, however, have human appearances, can speak Chinese, eat cooked human food, and can communicate with Chinese people who have traveled from afar. These people intermarry, and the boys they give birth to are all dog-headed men while the girls are human, thus passing down the generations."

"We have no way of verifying whether such a tribe of dog-headed people truly exists, or if merchants and explorers distorted the tales and turned the Dog Country into a fantasy," Lama Wang shook his horsetail whisk and said helplessly. "However, what is certain is that the local inhabitants can indeed be communicated with and won over."

"During the Yuan Dynasty, the Kaiyuan Circuit once built one hundred ships for the garrison troops of the Dog Country; history books have records of this. As for specific details, the secondhand materials I have here cannot make it clear. But whether these were garrison troops dispatched by the Yuan Dynasty or native chieftain armies organized by the Dog Country itself, they were in a cooperative relationship with the local government of the Yuan Dynasty and could requisition military equipment and supplies."

"What on earth did they need so many ships for? And they even organized an army? Where were they planning to go?" Guo Kang had not known about such a thing before and grew curious as well.

"That, I truly do not know," Lama Wang shook his head frankly. "Anyway, I only know that there is no problem considering them as armed forces subordinate to the Yuan court. Since such a thing once happened, it should be possible for us to contact them, right?"

Li Xuanying, Cao Jian, and the others looked at each other in dismay. They had indeed never heard of such obscure intelligence in the past, and this claim was truly unexpected.

"If that's the case... perhaps we could give it a try?" Li Xuanying began to waver.