abnabooks Chapter 66: One Month Later
Chapter 66: One Month Later
The sweet potato planting area in Fengshou Town was harvested by Tang En himself, leading the agricultural workers.
In the 300-acre rock-wall planting area, vines hang down from the cliff face, with heavy yellow fruits hanging between them.
The rock potatoes are great in every way, but the only problem is harvesting them during the harvest season. They are harvested from cliffs at least 25 meters high, and a slight misstep could lead to a fatal fall.
However, the Grin are very skilled at these jobs. In the tribe, these Grin mainly did the most dangerous work, but nowadays, although the work of harvesting ground yams is dangerous, the work points are very high.
Picking twenty catties of ground sweet potatoes earns a few work points, which may not seem like much, but the vines are densely covered with fruit, and a skilled worker can pick two hundred catties in half a day. On a good day, one can earn twenty or thirty work points, which is much better than doing manual labor in the workshop.
And now things are different. To facilitate the harvesting of rock potatoes, Old Hall has transformed the cliff into platforms where two people can rest. In addition to resting, these platforms can also be used to tie safety ropes, minimizing the risk of accidents.
For at least several days, apart from a few unfortunate Green people getting injured, there were no deaths.
When the eighth Grimmman accidentally lost his footing and fell off the cliff, then was caught by a safety rope and swayed in mid-air, Thun breathed a slight sigh of relief.
The man spun around in mid-air, braced himself against the rock face a few times to regain his balance, glanced down at the abyss below, swallowed hard, and then grabbed the safety rope and began to climb.
Not only Thun, but many Green people who were summoned to harvest the ground potatoes were both excited and grateful.
The lord truly treats them like family.
"You all better watch out, do you even want to earn work points?" Feeling much more confident, Thun crossed his arms and yelled at the Green people dangling in mid-air, "Check your safety ropes before you go up again."
The Green man gave an awkward smile, quickly turned around, grabbed a protruding rock, and rushed to the nearest safety platform. After re-checking the safety rope and confirming that it was not damaged, he resumed his harvesting work.
The estimated yield from the first two days of harvest made Tang En's voice tremble as he reported the numbers at the dinner table.
Old Hall has arranged a transport team, led by the Women's Team, to travel daily between Harvest Town and the main city, carrying bagged ground potatoes into the main city's granary.
The arrival of ground potatoes has temporarily eased the pressure on grain reserves.
With the addition of grain regularly transported after Harland expanded trade, the reserves increased from enough to last for twenty days to forty-five days.
Tang En marked the grain storage figures with an asterisk and added a note: "Autumn reclamation needs to be accelerated."
The lord has given Tangen a new order: the cliffs of the entire Harvest Town must be planted with ground sweet potatoes before autumn, and the planting target must be expanded to at least 1,000 acres.
If Tang En can complete the mission, he can become the town official of Harvest Town. Although there is only one word difference between the two, the difference is like heaven and earth.
Township officials receive a salary, an office, and a new uniform each year.
Most importantly, the town magistrate has the authority to manage the daily affairs of Harvest Town, including personnel, procurement, and security.
With these, he could train his own son to become a knight; if his son couldn't, then he could train his grandson.
In the kingdom, town officials are kingdom officials, while agricultural officials are essentially high-ranking farmers' leaders. They do not receive any salary, but their annual grain tax is reduced by 20%.
Having spent his entire life as a peasant, Tang En naturally wouldn't give up the opportunity to change his life.
In an open space in the main city, Schulte drew four large characters on the stone wall with charcoal.
The characters were written crookedly, with uneven horizontal and vertical strokes, but each stroke was thick and dark enough to be clearly seen even across an open space.
"Ashwood." He pointed to the first word and read it aloud, then repeated it again, until the dozens of Greens sitting behind him echoed it.
Schulte took a thin stick and tapped each of the sand trays on the ground, instructing each Greenman to trace the words on the rock wall with the stick.
If you trace it wrong, erase it and rewrite it; if you trace it correctly, nod and move on to the next one.
He teaches slowly, but very steadily.
Ron stopped as he passed by and leaned against the rock wall for a while.
An elderly man named Green was tracing the radical of the fourth character on a sand table with a twig. His hand was trembling, and the lines he drew on the sand table looked like earthworms crawling.
Ron walked over, squatted down, smoothed the sand table with his hand, and then rewrote it stroke by stroke with his fingertip.
The old man looked at the words on the sand table, his lips moved, and he uttered a stiff syllable.
"My lord... thank you."
Ron stood up and dusted the sand off his hands.
"You're welcome! Once you learn to write your own name, I'll allocate you an acre of land outside the city."
The old man understood the last three words. He lowered his head and continued to draw, the twigs making even more forceful marks on the sand table than before.
Schulte stood at the foot of the rock wall watching this scene, without going forward, but slowly traced the last stroke of "Ashwood" on the rock wall with the charcoal in his hand.
A month has passed since the Earth Dragon tribe was wiped out.
During this month, Ron built the first two of the three walls of Harvest Town, and only laid the foundation for the third.
It's not that he didn't want to build it, but that it was sufficient for the time being. The sudden increase of several thousand people was a big deal.
Harvest Town still has the same two city walls. As for houses, Ron didn't build any new ones and mainly relied on the existing buildings.
Harvest Town was only garrisoned by a militia of one hundred men and a knight guard of ten men, all of whom were official knights and were in charge of Hilden.
Apart from the army, only three hundred people settled in Harvest Town, fifty of whom were old Green people who were responsible for assisting Tang En in cultivating new land for yaks.
Standing atop the city wall, Tang En gazed into the distance and suddenly said, "At the end of the month, the lord will send a new batch of residents."
"What's the use? She's still a woman." Hilden muttered in dissatisfaction.
The gender ratio in the territory is now severely imbalanced, with almost all able-bodied men joining the militia. The hundred militiamen here are considered veterans of the territory.
The remaining three hundred militiamen are still in training. As for those with special skills, they naturally cannot become militiamen. Therefore, most of the other affairs in the territory are handled by women.
The women's corps has now expanded to three hundred people. In addition to transporting supplies, these three hundred people have also begun military training.
They were trained by Melissa, Eileen, Velma, and Anna from the Women's Guard.
It's worth noting that Anna is a professional mage, not a knight.
Due to a lack of weapons in the territory, the women's team mainly trained with weapons made of wood. Perhaps because of the stimulation from Melissa and her three companions, the women's team trained very hard, sometimes even overpowering the militia in terms of momentum.