Anyway, the Tang people always manage to achieve the final victory. Even if the Hu people gain a temporary advantage, soon, more and even fiercer Tang people will arrive and uproot those who just won.

Ethan Brooks scratched his itchy butt and turned his gaze back to the bar-headed goose that had just fallen into the water.

This time, the only reason he was near the battlefield was because his tribe was once again going to help the Tang army fight.

The Uyghurs always bring their families along when they go to war.

The reason Ethan Brooks turned his head was because he was now a Uyghur, and it wouldn’t be right to laugh at his own tribesmen.

In just a little while, just a little while longer, the Uyghur cavalry would appear. They would start fighting over the heads of the Hu people who had been killed by the Tang army.

The heads could be taken back to show off, or piled up into a tower of human heads to frighten other Hu tribes, making them think that these Uyghurs had killed countless enemies again.

Although every head was always missing a left ear, the Uyghurs didn’t care or mind. After all, when a head rots, the ears are the first to fall off, so whether they’re there or not doesn’t matter.

The thunderous sound of hooves was already ringing out. It must be that the Uyghur cavalry, hiding somewhere, had seen that the Tang army was about to win, so they decisively and bravely launched an attack on the last remaining enemies.

Ethan Brooks didn’t want to hear the screams of the Uyghurs being whipped by the angry Tang generals, so he covered his ears on his own.

The name “Grasshopper Lake” was given by Ethan Brooks. The Uyghurs had another name for this lake, which covered a full ten thousand mu, but he didn’t like it and didn’t want to remember it. So, he came up with this interesting name, and as long as he and the bar-headed geese that came and went with the seasons knew it, that was enough.

Ethan Brooks was actually a migratory bird too, having stayed in the Western Regions for a full thirteen years.

The bar-headed geese had returned, and for him, that meant a new beginning.

The green shoots quietly sprouting beneath the grass that hadn’t been eaten by cattle and sheep last year were now edible.

Ethan Brooks liked those tender shoots. He would part the wild grass, pinch a shoot with his fingers, and pull out a stalk that transitioned from green to pale yellow to pure white.

The stalk was plump and juicy, and when held in the mouth, it had a faint sweetness with the fragrance of fresh grass. But you couldn’t bite it with your teeth—if you broke the stalk, it would turn bitter, completely masking that hint of sweetness.

Just as he finished sucking the sweetness from the stalk, a big fat-tailed sheep, over a meter tall, walked over gracefully and snatched the stalk from Ethan Brooks’s hand, swallowing it in a few bites.

This big fat-tailed sheep, with beautiful black eye patches, had a pair of spiral-shaped hard horns a foot and a half long, and a high-bridged nose. So, it was a ram, and also Ethan Brooks’s favorite lead sheep.

In this respect, Ethan Brooks was very different from other Uyghur boys. Ethan Brooks liked the ram’s bravery, fierceness, and strength—it could carry things. The other Uyghur boys, however, devoted all their affection to the ewes with the plumpest rumps and the most alluring gait in the flock.

Such ewes were not only loved by the boys, but also by some grown men—especially when the grasslands were covered in snow. Many would drag one or several sheep into their tents to hug for warmth.

This was actually a very ordinary thing. It was just that the winter was so long, and people were so lonely, that all sorts of strange feelings inevitably arose.

However, the strangest feeling was that the Uyghurs loved to slaughter sheep, and the ones they prioritized for slaughter were often the ewes that had kept them company through the winter.

The legend of the sheep-headed man had been circulating in the tribe for a very long time. If a sheep-headed man appeared in a tribe, it was never a good thing, because once one appeared, the tribe’s sheep would die off in droves, the grass would wither in patches, and even the water sources would dry up, with no more fresh water bubbling forth.

This legend put enormous pressure on the tribespeople, so much so that the prettier and fatter the ewes were, the faster they died.

The big fat-tailed sheep in Ethan Brooks’s family was the most famous lamb-bearing ewe in the whole tribe. Only their family’s ewes had the beautiful physique to produce quality lambs, as well as rich experience in lambing!

So, the way he herded sheep was different from other boys. Others guarded against wolves and lynxes, but he had to guard against the energetic boys in the tribe who had nowhere to vent!

Really, if he dared to doze off while herding, his family’s sheep would be short by one or two… Even though the lost sheep would eventually come back, Ethan Brooks still felt his sheep were no longer clean, so when herding, his eyes were always wide open.

Even though he knew that humans and sheep couldn’t produce sheep-headed people due to reproductive isolation.

But, the Uyghurs claimed to be the swiftest, bravest, strongest, and wildest heroes on horseback in the world—who knew where their limits lay?

If, by any chance, a ewe from Ethan Brooks’s family gave birth to a terrifying sheep-headed person, not only would their reputation be ruined, but his mother would never be able to trade their quality lambs for someone else’s fat sheep again.

If the Uyghur boys made Ethan Brooks keep his distance, then the Uyghur girls left an even worse impression on him.

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Chapter Two: Uyghurs Cared for by Heaven