Chapter 214 Encounter with the Bachelor of Sphinx Academy

The name Flatlands is very common, but it fits the geographical environment very well. Flatlands is located on the northwest side of Myr and on the east and south sides of Pentos. Its environment is just like its name, it is a huge plain. There is no obstruction as far as the eye can see.

Different from the disputed land where various city-states have always competed with each other, the ownership of the flat land has always been in the hands of Pantos.

Because of its favorable geographical environment, it has become the largest grain-producing area in the Free Trade City-state. More than 70% of the various types of food required by the entire Free Trade City-state daily come from flat farmland.

It is precisely because there is no danger to defend here and the plains are flat, so the Dothraki often ransacked it in the past.

However, the people of Pentos had unique ideas and believed that there was no need to use force if things could be solved with money. Therefore, after they were plundered by the Dothraki, they did not think about going back for revenge, or building fortifications and forming a powerful force. The army and so on, on the contrary, they used a lot of money to worship those Dothraki LS, and spent money to pray to the Dothraki not to loot them.

The most exaggerated thing is that not long ago they even wanted to build a palace for Khal Drogo in Pantos, specifically to please Khal Drogo.

Although his behavior is humble, the effect is extraordinary. After regular tribute and flattery to the Dothraki, the looting of the plains has been greatly reduced. Even those powerful Dothraki LS who accepted the tribute will take the initiative to maintain the stability of the plains. , warning other card LS that most of them regard the plains and Pentos as their own territory.

Because they know that the Flatland area is relatively safe, Myr merchants will give up taking the Valyrian Avenue, which has stone roads and is convenient for carriages, and instead take a detour and take the dirt road on the Flatland side.

"Master Onstein, further ahead is the Silver Bird Inn. We will stay at the inn for one night today and continue on the road tomorrow. We should be able to reach Pantos in the afternoon." A caravan manager pointed to the front of the road. Lin De, who put on his lion armor and vest again, introduced the situation to the side, and then looked with a sense of awe at the carriage full of heads behind Lind and the merchants following closely on the road with no end in sight. Team team.

The heads piled up in the carriage have undergone special antiseptic treatment, which basically prevents them from rotting within more than ten days. However, the strong smell of corpses still exists, which makes a circle around the carriage empty. No one will come close.

These heads all have great origins, and each one of them is a bandit wanted for a long time in Pentos and other Free Trade Cities.

The weak ones among the wanted thieves have long been eliminated by bounty hunters and mercenaries. The remaining thieves are powerful enough that they cannot be solved by individuals or small groups of mercenaries alone.

The Free Trade City State also had a huge headache with these people and wanted to deal with them. They even spent a lot of money to hire large mercenary groups such as the Golden Group and the Wind Blowing Group to deal with these bandits. However, the result was a huge cost and very little effect. They will not confront the powerful mercenary group head-on. Once the mercenary group appears, they will flee far away. When the mercenary group leaves, they will return to their own territory and start over again.

Some people also suggested that we simply deal with these bandits like we dealt with the Dothraki, but this suggestion was rejected as soon as it was proposed.

It was already very embarrassing to bribe the Dothraki with money, but now even a group of low-level bandits need to be bribed with money. I am afraid they will not be able to hold their heads high when dealing with people from other city-states in the future.

After that, they also tried to increase patrols to deal with these bandits, but the effect was still insignificant.

I don't know if it was because they had nothing to do, or because they discovered that these bandits actually did not cause much damage to their interests. In the end, they simply regarded these bandits as annoying fleas and stopped paying too much attention to them. Make a show, change the bounty amount regularly, and let mercenaries and bounty hunters deal with them.

Linde had no intention of dealing with these bandits, but it was a pity that these bandits were not discerning along the way. When he saw Linde covered in golden armor, he thought he was a fat sheep, but in the end he was faced with a god of death.

Along the way, there were more than a hundred bandit heads in the carriage behind him, and these heads were all named and had bounties on them in various Free Trade Cities. As for the heads that did not have bounties on them, Linde had no intention of harvesting them.

It was precisely because of this idea and behavior of harvesting the heads of bandits and collecting bounties that Linde suddenly discovered that he had some problems with his personality from unknown time. These problems were not very serious, but he was playing games in his previous life. The collecting habit of picking up rubbish was awakened.

In fact, this situation had already occurred during the war on the Stepped Stone Islands, but it was not very serious at the time. Some pirate ships that could be scrapped were only brought back to the port to see if they could continue to be used.

But now that he has come to the continent of Essos, the situation is a little different. On the road before, he collected war horses and fancy items, but he didn't care much about money. This is simply a replica of when he played games in his previous life.

Now after meeting a thief, he cut off the thief's head and transported it on a carriage because of the reward. This seemed very strange to him. After all, the reward for these thieves was too small, more than a hundred heads. The combined bounties were no match for the loot he had discarded from the Dothraki in the Disputed Lands.

But it was such a pile of worthless and troublesome heads that he felt extremely reluctant to throw away when he wanted to throw them away. He felt that throwing away the heads was like throwing away a huge wealth.

In the end, he was unable to overcome his collecting habit and could only take these heads with him on the road.

Linde's behavior naturally attracted caravans on the road. When they saw that Linde had solved so many thieves that made the city-state difficult, they all thought that Linde was a powerful knight. In addition, Linde This lion armor is very similar to the night lion they believe in, so they take this as a sign that they don't have to worry about the threat of bandits if they follow the opponent.

In fact, this is indeed the case. As long as bandits appear, Linde will take the initiative to greet them and kill them without the need for anyone from the caravan to do anything.

However, after dealing with the thieves, Linde would let the people in the caravan identify which of these people had bounties on them and which ones did not. Then the people in the caravan would be responsible for embalming the heads without him having to do it himself.

It is precisely because of this that Linde is willing to take so many caravans on the road without bothering him.

However, as more and more caravans joined on the road, their team had become very large. The advantage of the large team was that the bandits did not dare to provoke them anymore, and the disadvantage for Linde was that the bandits did not dare to provoke them anymore. Don't dare to provoke them again.

Although the team did not move very fast, they still arrived at the Silver Bird Inn before dark.

From the flags hanging on the inn, it is not difficult to tell that this inn belongs to a governor of Pentos. Not only this inn, but also the surrounding farm fields also belong to this governor.

Although judging from the architectural shape of the inn, there is not much difference between this kind of inn and other inns he saw on the plain road. The only difference is that this inn is big enough to accommodate all the people who are following Linde. Caravan.

Of course, this does not mean that everyone has a room to stay. In fact, most caravan members can only pitch tents in the open space around the inn and stay for one night with horses and other livestock.

Linde did not stay in the inn, but came to a small hill outside the inn. It is not correct to say that it is a small hill. It is more accurate to say that it is a buried ruins.

In fact, when he saw the Silver Bird Inn, Linde discovered that the inn was built on an ancient ruins. The buildings on the ruins had been destroyed, but the foundation of the building had been preserved, and the stone used to build the foundation had been preserved. The material turned out to be black stone, the same kind of black stone used at the base of the towering tower in Old Town.

Linde could tell from the trend of this black stone foundation that this foundation should be part of a huge building, and part of the main body of this building was on the hill next to the inn, so he chose to stay on the hill for one night.

Although people were curious about Linde's choice, they did not dare to ask more questions, because Linde's performance along the way was enough to awe them, and they also knew that asking random questions would only bring trouble to themselves.

So they not only didn't ask why Linde didn't live in a nice room, but instead lived on a hill. They even had people guarding the hills to prevent anyone from getting close to him and disturbing Linde.

I don’t know how many years have passed, but the main body of this ruined building has been completely covered by a large amount of soil. Only a part of the beams and columns belonging to the roof are exposed.

From the patterns carved on the beams and columns, Linde speculated that this building should belong to the Gith Empire, because there are many symbols with the meaning of harpies on it. This is a symbol unique to the Gith Empire and will only appear in the Gith Empire. On the beams of important buildings to show that the buildings are protected by harpies.

Before the rise of the Valyrian Freehold, the Empire of Gith was a massive empire that ruled the western part of Essos, and its object of worship was the harpy.

Just like other ancient civilizations, the Gith Empire also built a large number of buildings in the places they ruled, leaving countless monuments. It is obvious that this ruins are the remains of a Gith Empire building.

In addition, Linde could also see a large number of traces of melting caused by high-temperature burning on the surface of the stone pillars. He thought that this building should have been destroyed by the dragons of Valyria, and the dragon kings of Valyria should not be bored enough to use dragons. He burned a building alone, so there should have been a city from the Gith Empire on the land under his feet. Perhaps this city was the predecessor of Pentos.

"Get out of the way, who allowed you to surround this place without permission? The land here belongs to Governor Pross..." Just when Linde wanted to use the power of dragon runes to explore the ruins buried under his feet to see if he could When he was unable to unearth some ancient and interesting things, a quarrel came from below the hill, interrupting his thoughts.

It is not difficult to tell from the content of the quarrel that it should be caused by the caravan people surrounding the hill. Although surrounding the hill to prevent others from disturbing them is completely wishful thinking of the caravan people, since the dispute has arisen , then Linde felt that it would not be good to pretend that he didn’t know anything.

So, he walked down the hill and came to the outside of the arguing group.

The moment he appeared, all the people in the caravan fell silent and looked at Linde with some embarrassment.

Next to them, seven or eight people dressed like scholars looked at Linde in lion armor in surprise. Apparently Linde's outfit scared them.

Linde glanced at the crowd and said in a deep voice: "I just spent the night on the hill and didn't ask you to block the hill. Don't be too fussy. Go back and do your own thing. We have to travel tomorrow."

After saying that, he ignored the others and turned back to the hill.

However, at this time, he was no longer interested in studying the condition of the ancient buildings below. He directly took the firewood from the carriage and piled it into a bonfire. After lighting it, he casually placed an animal skin blanket next to the bonfire and sat on the naked On the beam coming out.

At this time, the scholars who were arguing with others at the bottom of the hill also came to the top of the hill. When they saw Linde, they all looked a little scared. Apparently the people at the bottom of the hill had said something to them.

"Ah! Human heads." At this time, someone saw the carriage piled with human heads and exclaimed.

A few timid ones were so frightened that they sat on the ground. Only one white-haired old man whose long beard was dyed, bifurcated, and braided into two long braids looked very calm.

The old man raised his hand to signal those around him not to be afraid, then walked to the carriage and looked at the human heads piled outside, not caring at all about the stench of corpses emanating from the human heads.

"The blood duck Dakfei, the wild dog Lango, the forked tongue Kalika..." The old man seemed to be very familiar with these heads, and he could tell their identities one by one after seeing them.

After looking around the carriage, the old man walked to the Linde bonfire, sat down very casually, and said: "Not counting the heads buried inside, the outer layer alone is worth more than fifty God's Choice Golden Dragons. , It seems that you have gained a lot!”

Linde didn't look at these foreign scholars seriously just now, but now he looked at the old scholar seriously. After sweeping his eyes over the other person, he landed on the golden buttons on the old scholar's cuffs and said: "Sphinx Academy The golden scholar.”

The old man followed Linde's line of sight and looked at the buttons on the cuffs. He smiled and said, "This dress belongs to my friend. I am not qualified to wear gold jewelry." As he spoke, he revealed the silver necklace and The silver badge hanging on it said: "I am just a Silver Bachelor."

The Sphinx Academy was built more than two hundred years ago by a governor of Pentos who had studied in the city. He wanted to build an academy similar to the city, and even imitated the apprentice bachelors, bachelors and doctors of the city. There are three levels: gold scholar, silver bachelor and black iron student.

Although the idea was good, and indeed the Sphinx House became the academic center of the Free Trade City for a period of time, with the death of the Governor of Pentos, his successors lacked interest in knowledge and did not continue to study. Continuing to invest in the bottomless pit of the academy, and other governors were unwilling to take over, the Sphinx Academy soon declined.

However, in the past two hundred years, there are still some businessmen in Pentos who are willing to donate some property to support the normal operation of the Sphinx Academy, so that the Sphinx Academy can still engage in the collection and learning of various knowledge.

The reason why Lind knew about the Sphinx Academy was that among his officials there were several Silver Bachelors from the Sphinx Academy. Compared to the bachelors from the Academy, these Silver Bachelors from Pentos knew how to adapt. , are very skilled in matters such as trade, and Linde is very easy to use.

However, what really made Lind want to learn about the Sphinx Academy was that Moroya once mentioned that the Sphinx Academy collected many books about the mysterious ancient civilization of Essos. The number of these books may be It cannot be compared with the Academic City, but the depth is not much worse than the Academic City. It can complement the related books of the Academic City.

Therefore, Linde came to Pantos specifically because he wanted to visit the Sphinx Courtyard.

However, what he didn't expect was that he would already meet someone from the Sphinx Courtyard before he arrived at Pantos.