"Da-da-da."
"Thud-thud-thud."
"Da-thud! Da-thud! Da-thud!"
The black waters surged north, rushing from the endless black forest toward the boundless Outer Northeast. And bands of Jurchen cavalry rode south, like dingy gray storm clouds, galloping upstream from the edge of the gray-brown tidal flats.
Looking closely, these Jurchen cavalrymen were dressed in a very peculiar fashion. They had the long braids and bone ornaments of the Wild Jurchen of the Forest Sea, but also the armor and iron weapons of the Tame Jurchen of the Han lands. Though they carried great bows and had long arrows like Short Spears slung across their saddles, they were not outstanding mounted archers like the Mongols, nor could they manage difficult circling horse-archery. They had no charging lances, only lengthened blunt Maces, but they were indeed among the most savage and tenacious shock cavalry of the north. Especially when they put on three haphazardly pieced-together layers of armor and took up heavy long Ironware weapons, that death-defying charging power was perhaps the strongest cavalry in Northeast Asia, bar none.
Of course, the fishing-and-hunting life of White Mountain and Black Water, while tempering the individual barbarians of the Tungus tribes, had also brought the disadvantage of an extremely sparse population. The population scale of the Jurchen Tribes—let alone compared with the astonishing bulk of the Han lands and Joseon—was not even on the same order of magnitude as the Mongol tribes to the west, who roamed with Water Grass on the steppe. And now, the thousand-strong Yi'erguli Guard was already the largest Tame Jurchen great tribe everyone had seen since heading south!
"Sky God, Great Spirit, Great Spirit of the Eastern Sea, grant us blessing! Yi'erguli Guard is here! Look, up ahead are their riverside pastures, where they're raising horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs! Hah, they've