Chapter 130 The Ghost of Summer Hall

"What? All the bandits near Summer Hall have escaped?" Linde looked at Rosso who had just returned from a nearby village with a blank look on his face and asked, "Why did they suddenly escape?"

Two days ago, Linde was thinking about being gentler on these bandits in the future, instead of annihilating them all like before, capturing them alive and throwing them into the mines in the Crimson Mountains to mine.

There are a lot of mineral deposits in the Crimson Mountains, but because there are no suitable transportation roads here, and there are savage tribes and bandit groups everywhere, it is difficult to ensure safe mining, so no one has been willing to develop the mineral deposits here.

Lind had just thought of using these bandits to mine, but the bandits escaped, which made it difficult for him not to wonder if someone around him had leaked the information.

Daisy looked at Lind and smiled: "They were scared by you and ran away."

Linde was stunned and motioned for Daisy to continue.

"They thought we came to Summer Hall this time to destroy them..." Daisy then recounted the news she had heard from the village just now.

After hearing this, everyone around them looked at Linde with strange expressions on their faces. Obviously, in their opinion, this could definitely be regarded as a legendary story.

After all, even those heroes in ancient legends have never appeared. The deeds of a group of bandits with more than 3,000 warriors have never appeared. Just based on their reputation, there is no doubt that based on this story alone, Linde can already be compared to, or even Beyond those ancient heroes.

Linde couldn't laugh or cry about this, and at the same time he also realized that this matter had both advantages and disadvantages for him.

The advantage is that he no longer needs to worry about the bandits in the Crimson Mountains around Midsummer Hall, because as this incident spreads and he becomes the Earl of Midsummer Hall, soon the bandits in his territory will Leave by yourself, or simply disband, which can speed up Linde's integration of territorial forces.

The shortcomings are also very obvious. It will be difficult for him to obtain strong and high-quality free labor force like bandits.

Linde could only comfort himself at this moment: "There is also a savage tribe. The savage tribe is not bad. It would be good to meet a gravel tribe."

The people of the Gravel Tribe have now become the most important residents of Tengshi Town. They are all skilled miners, and the silver mined has become an important part of Tengshi Town’s finances. For a long time in the future, Tengshi Town will It is necessary to rely on gravel tribe mining to maintain the prosperity of Tengshi Town.

Linde did not completely believe the news brought by Daisy, because the bandits might also deliberately use the people in the village to pass false news to confuse themselves. In fact, they had gathered people and ambush secretly.

So when setting up camp at night, Linde sent Glory out to check the bandit camp that had been found by following some bandit spies to see if there was anyone else there.

The result was without exception. Glory ran to four camps in one night. All of them were empty. Only some old, weak and sick people who could not move remained in the camp. Everyone else ran away. It is not difficult to see from the situation in the camp that they left in a hurry. A lot of daily necessities were left in the camp.

However, although the bandits have all escaped, the number of people spying on Linde's team has not decreased much. They have just changed from a bandit group to a savage tribe.

Just like he did with those bandit groups, Linde did not attack the ears, eyes and spies of the savage tribe. He still asked Glory to track these people and find their tribe's location, leaving it to be dealt with in the future.

Perhaps because he arrived and drove away the bandits, the villages he passed on the road, whether they were free people's villages or the villages of the subordinates, showed strong goodwill towards them. Some relatively wealthy villages even took the initiative to give some money to them. Give them fresh vegetables to enjoy.

There are a very large number of free people in the territory of Summer Hall. Almost all of them were civilians who fled here to avoid the war during the Usurper's War. However, after the war subsided, their lands were confiscated by their respective lords. He became a landless free citizen and had to continue to settle in the area around Shengxia Hall.

For them, although living in the area around Summer Hall is a helpless move, it has to be said that it is a lucky choice.

At that time, the Targaryen royal family wanted to make their stay in the summer palace more comfortable, so they greatly developed the land around the Summer Palace to grow various flowers, fruits and vegetables, and also built a winery specifically for the purpose. To brew royal wine.

However, with the fire of Summer Hall, everything was abandoned. Except for Prince Rhaegar who would run to the ruins of Summer Hall from time to time to play the harp, no Targaryen royal family has ever been here again. They all thought that this place Full of curses.

The original flower fields and orchards were abandoned, and the wineries were closed. The people who were originally placed in the wineries became farmers here.

But no matter how abandoned the land here is, there is still a foundation. As long as it is cultivated carefully, these lands are still very fertile. The annual harvests of the free people who are forced to stay here can guarantee daily rations, even if they are not abundant. .

And more importantly, neither during the war nor after King Robert sat on the Iron Throne, no tax collector came here to collect taxes, as if this land had been deliberately forgotten.

It’s just that there are no tax officials to collect taxes, but bandit groups entrenched in this area still appear from time to time and steal various harvests from the villages. Especially during the months of extreme cold and natural disasters, the bandit groups almost robbed The food reserves in all the villages caused many people in these villages to starve and freeze to death. Naturally, they all hated the bandits.

Now that Linde's appearance has driven away the bandits, they naturally regard Linde as their savior, but they don't know that when they know that Linde is the lord of Summer Hall, they will take them as subjects in the future and make them pay taxes. , will they still love Linde as much as they do now?

After walking on the road for about seven or eight days, Linde and his party finally arrived at the Summer Hall, the first stop for patrolling the territory.

Because it was built according to the standards of a palace, the Summer Hall is very large in area, almost comparable to the Red Castle. From the remaining foundations and main building beams and columns, you can see how exquisite and gorgeous the Summer Hall was when it was complete.

There are no city walls in the entire Summer Hall, but there is a tower for observation. The streams drawn from the surrounding mountains converge in front of the Summer Hall, forming a lake. A moat was dug on both sides of the lake to wrap the Summer Hall.

However, this moat is only a dozen meters long, and the water is not very deep. It is almost at the height of an adult's waist. It seems to have more ornamental significance than practical application.

The bridge across the moat has been dismantled. It seems to have been dismantled by locals, possibly to prevent children from nearby villages from accidentally entering the ruins and offending the cursed ghosts here.

In the past, Daisy and the others might have scorned the so-called ghosts, but now they have some faith in these legends. After all, magic as mysterious as ghosts has appeared around them, so what's the point of having ghosts in this world? Strange.

"Those bandits were pretty good. At least they left us a camp that we can use directly." Asha was not interested in the ruins of Summer Hall. She just wanted to set up the camp quickly and have a good rest in her tent.

In the Iron Islands, she spent most of her time learning to drive a boat and rarely rode a horse. The number and time she spent riding horses in the recent period has far exceeded her total for more than ten years.

The past few days of horseback riding have made her inner thighs miserable. Even when walking, she has to spread her legs to prevent her pants from rubbing against the broken skin. In her words, she is now like a pregnant woman waiting to give birth. .

"That camp is too dirty. There is excrement everywhere, both human and horse. You cannot let the Earl directly use such a camp." Brienne skillfully controlled the war horse under her crotch, as if to show off. spinning around Asha and objecting to Asha's suggestions.

"Brenne is right, choose another place to camp, use our own things, don't use those bandits' things." Nymeria was also smelled by the stench around her and covered her nose with her hands, and looked at Daisy He and Rosso gave instructions, then looked at Linde who was standing by the moat looking at the ruins of Summer Hall, walked over, and asked: "What's wrong? It's just a ruin. You have been standing there since you came here just now. Looking here and there, it seems like I am attracted by something. Are there really ghosts in the Summer Hall? "

Lind looked away, looked at Nymeria, nodded with a smile, and said, "You are right, there really are ghosts!"

"Ah?" Nymeria was stunned for a moment, and after confirming that Lind was not joking, she asked again: "Are you serious?"

Lind didn't answer her anymore, and moved his gaze back to the ruins of Summer Hall. He looked at the ruins of Summer Hall without saying a word, as if there was some kind of magic in the ruins that always attracted him. If Nymeria turned to him at this time, From the front, you can see that his eyeballs have completely turned into gold and silver.

Just as Linde said, after he came to the Midsummer Hall, he saw the energy of resentful souls entrenched in the ruins of Midsummer Hall. However, the spiritual energy of the resentful souls in the ruins of Midsummer Hall was completely different from what he had seen in other places before. different.

The energy of the resentful souls in other places is a black mist-like energy that wraps the entire area. Countless faces of the resentful souls are looming in the energy, and from time to time they make screams that cannot be heard by ordinary ears.

However, the energy of the resentful souls in the Summer Hall formed an illusion. In the illusion, the Summer Hall remained intact, and all the resentful souls lived in the illusion according to their habits during their lifetime. He even saw Aegon V, Tall Duncan appeared in the courtyard of Summerhall.

Although he didn't know Aegon V and the tall Duncan, their physical characteristics were very obvious. One was wearing a crown, and the other was unusually tall. They were almost the same as Nymeria. They could easily be compared to each other. They identify.

Also, in the past, Linde could only see the details of the resentful soul energy very clearly through the eyes of Glory. Otherwise, he could only see a vague outline with his eyes alone. But now the situation is completely different. Even if he does not rely on Glory's eyes can also clearly see every detail of the resentful soul's energy.

However, the most unusual thing is Glory. Previously, Glory only had a strong desire to devour the energy of resentful souls with dragon souls. It had always scorned those resentful soul energies without dragon souls, just like the resentment of Harrenhal. The soul energy was the same, but now that it saw the environment where the resentful soul energy was generated in front of it, it also developed a strong desire to devour. This desire to devour was even stronger than the time in the dragon's lair.

So much so that Lind needed to give repeated orders in order to control Glory, who was affected by the devouring instinct. For this reason, he had to send Glory to patrol far away from the Summer Hall to prevent it from getting too close to here.

Linde could feel that Summer Hall should be hiding some secrets, so Prince Rhaegar would come to Summer Hall repeatedly, and practicing the harp was just an excuse.

The resentful soul energy in front of him may be able to help him find out the secret of Midsummer Hall, so before he finds out the secret, he will not let Glory swallow up and destroy the resentful soul energy here.

Because there are still some wooden stakes that can be used in the bandit camp, there is no need to find additional trees suitable for tent support, which saves a lot of time and makes the camp set up much faster. It is not dark yet, and the camp is already complete. It's built.

Some servants began to set up tents. Rossos led his people to lead the horses to a simple stable, took out beans and forage picked on the road, and fed the horses. Russell took the people to hunt in the surrounding forests and hunt game. , Daisy led the people to light the bonfire, and the cook directed his men to set up large pots on the bonfire. Various processed ingredients were placed in the pots, and soon the aroma filled the camp.

When it got dark, Russell and his men returned to the camp with a dozen or so processed prey, large and small, and roasted the prey directly on the campfire with a fork, and soon the meat began to sizzle out. Oil coming out.

Although Linde did not allow drinking during the march, he still relaxed some rules in this situation and asked people to bring out some sweet fruit wine that was not easy to get drunk and distributed it to his men.

"I'm going to stay in the ruins for a while tonight. Let's rest by myself first." After eating some food, Lind returned to the tent, changed into casual clothes, and then said to Nymeria.

"Are you looking for dragon eggs?" Nymeria asked curiously.

"Dragon egg?" Linde was stunned and asked, "Why do you think so?"

"The Great Summer Hall fire burned everything, and the stones used to build the palace were burned to ashes. It is said that even the dragon eggs were burned in such a fire." Nymeria explained: "However, as we all know, dragon eggs are It is not afraid of fire, so there are rumors that the dragon egg was not burned and is still preserved in the ruins. "

"Does anyone believe this rumor?" Linde shook his head and said, "Even if the rumor is true, the dragon eggs should have been found by the Targaryen family. When they collected the ashes of the victims after the fire, they must have turned over After searching the entire ruins, we still can't find the dragon egg, which only means that the dragon egg has been burned, and it has always been just a rumor that the dragon egg is not afraid of fire. No one knows whether it is true. "