Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Because of the uniqueness of a warhorse’s job nature, most of the stallions will be gelded. Gelded warhorses were more docile and easier to tame, making them simpler to control.

A small number of stallions of excellent bloodline would be kept for breeding purposes to ensure that the next generation produced would be of the best possible quality.

The present king of the royal court of the northern kingdom couldn’t really be considered a wise and brave man, but he was ambitious, and he was open to accepting advice from other people. As suggested by the Sage, he reformed the business alliance, and the resources of the ranches were tightly controlled in the hands of the Royal Court. Sale of warhorses was regulated.

The former measure protected businesses from externally induced impacts and strengthened local competitiveness, while the latter boosted the military power of the northern kingdom as well as the prestige and ruling power of the royal court. In the past, as long as one had sufficient money, one could buy as many warhorses as one wanted to from the ranches of the northern kingdom, and the horses could be of whatever quality one desired.

To provide better warhorses for the warriors of the northern kingdom and to improve the overall combat effectiveness, the royal court of the northern kingdom would allocate a sum of money to purchase Ferghana horses from Shalan every year, then they would loan the Ferghana horses to the major ranches. External sale of second-generation warhorses bred from the Ferghana horses was prohibited.

The military forces of three tribes of the northern kingdom had always consisted mainly of cavalry troops to begin with, and so their combat power soared rapidly with the said method.

Before the fall of the great Xia Dynasty, the three northern tribes were tributary states to Xia, their suzerain. They would bow down and present tributes to Xia every year.

But at the moment, the Xia Dynasty had fallen, and nine states were divided into five countries.

The four factions of Nanman, once tributary states just like the three northern tribes, wiped out the royal family of Nansheng a year ago, and occupied half of territory of Nansheng. From a tributary state, it had turned the tables and occupied the territory of what was previously its suzerain. The incident boosted the confidence of the three northern tribes and their ambition grew even stronger.

Surely there was no reason for them, the three northern tribes, to fail, seeing that even the barbarians of the four factions of Nanman had succeeded?

Dongqing was disappointing, and it was constantly in civil war. It was a great opportunity for the northern kingdom to advance towards the Central Plains and conquer the world!

To further develop its military force, the number of Ferghana horses purchased by the royal court was increasing every year.

At first, they tested the water by purchasing one or two horses. At the moment, they would purchase dozens of horses each time.

They had planned to buy 35 horses this year, but it couldn’t be helped that Ferghana horses were high maintenance and some died on the journey here, having failed to adapt to the weather and environment.

Despite so, the northern kingdom still bought 19 Ferghana horses, and they were all lent out according to the scale of the ranches.

Then —

As with what had been done in the previous years, the ranches bred the stallions with the local mares. Because of the excellent management of the ranches and the fine climate of the northern kingdom, the mares were on heat all year long. The Ferghana horses from Shalan were all about four years old, the golden age for breeding.

The Ferghana horses were rented out by the royal court of the northern kingdom for a certain period of time only, so the ranches dared not waste time.

The ranches were almost always the busiest, bustling with activity, at this time of the year.

Of course, the slaves taking care of the horses on the ranches were the busy ones.

They could only take a break for a very small amount of time, and a few slaves gathered together, whispering among themselves. “Do you all feel that something strange is going on — Why do the Ferghana horses seem extraordinarily listless this year?”

Another slave said, “It’s probably because they haven’t adapted to the weather and environment here yet, moreover, the horses were sent here in spring and summer in the past, but the batch this year is sent late, so they’ll naturally be listless.”

“True —”

Life was not easy for stud horses. A ranch had hundreds and thousands of mares of suitable age, but each ranch would only get one or two Ferghana horses, and they would certainly become exhausted.

After slightly less than half a month, the slaves taking care of the Ferghana horses were horrified to find a Ferghana horse fallen on the ground without prior signs.

It was only discovered that the Ferghana horse was seriously ill after the vet was called over.

“It was okay before, how could it be —” The slaves were so anxious that they were drenched in cold sweat, their teeth chattering out of fear.

As slaves owned by the ranch, even a single strand of hair of a Ferghana horse would be more valuable than all of them combined together.

At the moment, the precious Ferghana horse was sick, and they could hardly absolve themselves from the blame!

What happened next made them even more worried. The sick Ferghana horse even vomited blood, and bruises kept appearing on its skin.

The ranch operators thought that the slaves were secretly beating up the Ferghana horses, and they were incredibly enraged. A group of slaves were immediately disposed of.

The veterinarian tried everything in his power to cure it, but the horse still died of sickness.

The body quickly rotted, and it stank. The smell was extremely strong, attracting many insects such as mosquitoes and flies.

A Ferghana horse costed up to four or five hundred thousand strings of coins. That much money was lost when one died, who wouldn’t feel the pain?

As the Ferghana horses were rented from the royal court of the northern kingdom, the ranch also had to take full responsibly and compensate the court for the loss.

In the end, the slaves taking care of the Ferghana horses were all deemed responsible. None escaped the fate of being cruelly killed as grave goods for the horse.

The three northern tribes practised the custom of sky burial. The vet determined that the Ferghana horse had died of a strange disease and not of any other cause, so it was also given a sky burial.

It was like a beginning to something sinister. Only half a month after the Ferghana horse died, from another ranch came the news that a Ferghana horse was seriously ill.

The second horse’s symptoms were exactly the same as the first one’s.

No horse plague had ever occurred in the northern kingdom, so naturally, no one linked the symptoms of the two horses to it. Even if they had, they would have denied the possibility.

As far as they knew, horses that had contracted the horse plague would fall sick after seven or eight days at most, and the horses would be seriously ill in one or two days in the acute cases.

They had also only heard about the horse plague from the horse dealers from Shalan, as there had never been such a thing in the northern kingdom.

The Ferghana horses came all the way from Shalan, and they had travelled for almost a year. After arriving in the three northern tribes, they had been breeding at the ranches for more than half a month, and showed no sign of illness at all. At most, they were somewhat listless. Surely many would have died if they had contracted the horse plague?

Unfortunately, they did not know that there were different strains of horse plague too.

The horse plague in Shalan were of the acute variety. Symptoms would definitely occur within half a month of infection, and the death rate was as high as 90%.

But the source of the horse plague was not from Shalan this time round, but from somewhere along the journey, and even the horse dealers of Shalan did not know when the horses were infected.

The incubation period was extremely long, varying from one to four months depending on the horse’s physical fitness and resistance to disease.

Of course, once the symptoms showed up, it meant that the condition had already become so severe that it was almost impossible to treat.

For example, the internal organs of the first Ferghana horse to die of the plague were almost entirely filled with extravasated blood and pus, and the skin was covered in bruises.

It was because of that that the owner of the ranch suspected the slaves of secretly venting their anger on the Ferghana horses and beating up the Ferghana horse to the extent that it sustained serious internal injuries and became critically ill.

More importantly, the body of the sick horses must be cremated, otherwise the mosquitoes and flies would spread the disease to other hosts.

Horses, mules, and donkeys were all susceptible hosts, while pregnant mares and weak colts were especially susceptible to infection.

After a second horse fell sick, a third and a fourth naturally followed, each case occurring not long after the previous one.

At that point in time, the breeding at the ranches had almost reached the end.

The successive deaths of the Ferghana horses attracted much attention from the royal court of the northern kingdom. The king of the royal court ordered a thorough investigation of the matter.

Then only did everyone remembered the horse dealers from Shalan, but they had already left two months ago after receiving the payment.

Before they found out what was happening, various bad news came from the ranches, all 19 horses bought at a high price had died, leaving no survivors.

The 19 Ferghana horses each costed between 450,000 and 600,000 strings of coins. The royal court had paid at least 10 million strings of coins’ worth of gold,silver, and jewelry. Who would pay for the losses seeing that they had died after just one round of breeding?

Faced with the loss, the king of the the royal court of the northern kingdom roared furiously.

Is Shalan conning our money by selling us 19 sick horses disguised as horses of fine quality?