Multiple villages in the desert regions of Wheller Star have erupted into village warfare. These are spontaneous conflicts between neighboring villages, but they are large-scale and driven by a simple objective: the struggle for water sources.
In the Sherri Desert, three villages clashed over water. In just two days, over five hundred people died, ten thousand were injured, and more than twenty howitzers were deployed. Jiang Ye was surprised that villages possessed howitzers.
In the Xize Desert, five villages engaged in combat, resulting in seven hundred casualties in a single day. Each village dispatched desert motorcycles, employing cavalry-like tactics for fierce charges.
In the Browning Desert, a name that immediately suggested conflict to Jiang Ye, seven villages successively joined the struggle for water. They fought with firearms, crossbows, and long swords, with women and children participating. Over six hundred people perished.
There were also more than ten smaller skirmishes with fewer than a hundred casualties each.
An intelligence officer penned a lengthy article explaining the sudden surge of village warfare in these desert areas.
These deserts are all characterized by shifting sands, where dunes are not fixed and change positions daily with the wind.
In such deserts, a peculiar phenomenon occurs called "haizi."
When Jiang Ye was a child, his understanding of the word "haizi" was twofold: first, the poet Haizi, who wrote "Facing the sea, with spring blossoms," and second, inland lakes in the southwestern regions.
However, on Wheller Star, "haizi" refers to small, mobile lakes in the desert.
There are small lakes in these areas that are quite remarkable, behaving like mercury on the sand's surface without seeping into it.
As the dunes shift, these small lakes move with them, becoming mobile haizi.
Initially, those lost in the desert would mistake haizi for the hallucinations of the dying, as a lake seen in the morning would disappear by the afternoon, only to reappear the next day, sometimes even as two.
Travelers on the verge of dehydration in the desert would suddenly encounter a haizi, nearly drowning from their desperate drinking. Afterward, they would become so exhilarated that they would begin to believe in gods.
Some individuals crafted small wooden boats and floated in the center of the haizi. Upon waking, they might find themselves tens of kilometers away, carried by the haizi, or the haizi might have vanished, leaving their small boats stranded in the yellow sand, surrounded by unfamiliar sand dunes.
In short, the haizi in the desert regions of Wheller Star is a very bizarre phenomenon.
Many locals have attempted to understand this phenomenon, but after so many years, there is no authoritative explanation.
Some theories suggest that underground springs continuously supply water to the haizi, preventing them from drying up, and as the underground channels shift within the sand, the haizi move accordingly. Other theories propose that the surrounding desert has an unusually abundant supply of groundwater, with only the surface sand being dried by the sun. In low-lying areas, water automatically collects to form haizi, making the entire desert seem as if it were built upon an ocean. Some theories focus on the sand's composition, suggesting that a large amount of water forms a resilient shell within the local sand, preventing the haizi from seeping into the desert, and that the water in the haizi is merely rainwater.
The villagers in the desert settlements are often those who fled from external wars into the desert.
Initially, many would have died of thirst or been trapped. However, those who survived by chance discovered the secrets of the haizi.
The seemingly unpredictable locations of the haizi actually follow certain patterns with the seasons. Haizi in a particular area will move back and forth within a specific zone. By establishing camps near this zone, one would never lack water.
Most importantly, a type of shelled worm found in the Wheller Star deserts secretes an expensive spice when it drinks. Therefore, near where the haizi stop, digging into the sand can yield a large amount of worm spice. This is the primary source of income for the desert villagers.
Consequently, the desert villages of Wheller Star are quite similar to the nomadic peoples of the grasslands.
Nomadic peoples, following the seasonal changes, ride horses in pursuit of pastures.
Desert villagers, following the seasonal changes, trek in pursuit of haizi.
Nomadic peoples wage wars to claim pastures, and it is natural for desert villages to erupt in warfare over haizi.
These battles occur almost annually because the location of the haizi shifts significantly with the change of seasons each year. Whoever can secure a haizi can survive without worry for a considerable period. Thus, village warfare is inevitable, with men, women, old, and young all participating. They are willing to sacrifice any number of lives, as victory allows for rapid recovery, while defeat leads to utter annihilation.
Jiang Ye's army dispatched peacekeeping forces to the desert regions, attempting to persuade the locals to cease their fighting, but the peacekeepers were captured and killed.
Many officers submitted reports to Jiang Ye, requesting to lead troops to forcibly quell the unrest and avenge their fallen comrades.
Jiang Ye was overwhelmed; such matters were exceedingly difficult to handle.
The desert villages, with men, women, old, and young fighting together, could be classified as warlord forces, yet they were ordinary villagers in their daily lives. If one considered them civilians, then upon taking up arms, each had taken lives.
If one deemed them wicked, they were driven to such actions by their environment. If one considered them not wicked, they were nonetheless bloodthirsty.
There was no way to judge them, nor could they all be killed, nor could they be ignored.
Jiang Ye felt that this situation, where everyone was an antagonist, was more challenging than the trolley problem. Jiang Ye would never agonize over the trolley problem, but these desert villages were truly difficult to manage.
In addition to Gante, the two major warlords, Walter and Rao Cheng Zhou, were also making moves. Although direct confrontation with human-operated hot weapons was not permitted, other methods of engagement existed.
Walter initiated economic warfare by printing a massive quantity of counterfeit currency from the Arctic region and flooding Rao Cheng Zhou's territory with it. They distributed money to anyone they encountered and even dumped crates of cash on the roads. Walter also purchased significant services from an alien hacker company to conduct remote cyberattacks on the online financial systems of the Arctic region.
Rao Cheng Zhou began cultural warfare, organizing a large number of experts to write fake news, propaganda, and pseudo-scientific analyses. These were disseminated through the internet, newspapers, and private channels into Walter's territory, aiming to erode the trust of Walter's civilian population and increase their yearning for Rao Cheng Zhou. Intelligence indicated that Rao Cheng Zhou had also infiltrated Walter's territory with numerous illegal immigrants, whose task was to assist people in Walter's territory in illegally crossing into the Arctic region.
The number of spies sent by both sides increased, leading to frequent street gunfights and causing unrest in major cities. However, these clandestine engagements by unidentified spies were difficult to classify as military conflict, thus falling within the loopholes of Jiang Ye's rules.
Diplomatic struggles were even more intense, with all warlord factions engaging in diplomatic efforts with unprecedented fervor, either forging distant alliances and attacking nearby enemies or uniting surrounding forces. Smaller factions attempted to band together with other small factions to form groups with greater influence. Larger factions hoped that smaller factions would not unite but would instead submit to them.
The aforementioned were the disturbances in the temperate and frigid zones of Wheller Star. Although chaotic, they were generally stable, with no excessively devastating events.
However, the new disturbances in the tropical regions were characterized by mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and they had the potential to shake Jiang Ye's rules.