Lord of Rot

"Cinderella" Lily held a board in her left hand, a stack of paper clamped to it with a metal clip.

In her right hand, she clutched a quill pen.

SCRITCH, SCRATCH.

The feather tip quivered.

"Tell Steward Hay to gather everyone willing to work for pay tomorrow. Group them by their expertise. I need people to repair roads and people to build houses. Also! Craftsmen will receive higher wages."

Suddenly, a shadow fell over her.

Lily looked up, her heart skipping a beat.

It was the Lord. He had walked up beside her and was tilting his head to look.

Leech offered a word of praise. "Very neat handwriting."

He'd only had the sudden whim to find a literate secretary to take notes for him; he never expected to unearth a real treasure.

The young woman had clearly read many books, and she was able to grasp his meaning with precision.

Lily lowered her head, using her hair to cover her burned cheek. Her eyes, however, subconsciously shifted to Leech's boots.

She didn't dare look up, afraid he would see her scarred cheek, but keeping her gaze low showed she was listening to her lord's assessment.

Her mood brightened. She could be of great use and had earned the Lord's appreciation.

"Find some chickens and ducks," Leech said. "And while you're at it, find someone who knows how to raise them."

SCRITCH, SCRATCH. Lily wrote quickly.

Leech glanced at the words on the paper. After confirming that she had recorded his instructions without error, he nodded, quite satisfied.

He needed capable people. Good looks were secondary; the world never had a shortage of pretty faces.

"When Lacy returns from his cleanup operation, have him come see me."

"Keep an eye out for messenger ravens. Have a male servant wait in the castle and bring any message to me the moment it arrives."

"And one more thing!"

Leech suddenly raised his index finger. He looked at Lily with grave seriousness and said, "Have Lidun the butler find a few skilled chefs, preferably ones who can understand my instructions and cook accordingly."

He cleared his throat and said, "We have celery, don't we? Use it to stir-fry some meat. The method is very simple…"

Lily wrote furiously. When all of Leech's commands were finally recorded, she could at last stop and rest.

Her wrist ached, and it felt as if her entire hand was no longer her own.

But her admiration for the Lord only grew. She was merely recording these things. Whether they could be accomplished, the effects they would produce, and the ultimate consequences—all of it was a burden the Lord had to bear himself.

Take his order to put everyone to work and pay them according to the difficulty of their labor, for example.

Thousands of people would be working, not farming. Their food, drink, and all other needs had to be shouldered by the Lord alone!

Lily still remembered how her father, when he was alive, had been driven to distraction by a poor harvest. Their village only had a hundred or so people back then. The population of Iron Wall Castle was dozens of times larger than her old Maoshan Beech Village.

Leech didn't go for a stroll on the castle walls. His mood was far from optimistic.

By his calculations, Guy should be on his way back to Longship Castle.

'I wonder what the Monkey Clan plans to do.'

After changing chefs, Leech finally got his stir-fried celery and meat. The celery was a bit tough and the meat was cut as thick as a pork chop, but that didn't stop him from being moved to tears as he ate.

'Being the lord of Iron Valley is even harder than being the lord of Porcupine Territory!'

The conditions inside Iron Wall Castle were rather unusual. The study was like a garbage heap—moldy and riddled with mouse holes. Every now and then, he could see a few rats scurrying out from the cracks.

Leech had no choice but to work in the council hall for the time being.

On the paper spread before him was a line of text: "Iron Valley Development Plan (Phase One)."

Even with his experience planning for Porcupine Territory, drafting the plan for Iron Valley was still giving him a headache.

The two territories were completely different.

'The soil quality here is terrible. It's not suitable for growing grain.'

While out culling corpses, Leech had dug a few test pits.

Beneath the hard soil lay nothing but small rocks and earthen clods. Trying to grow grain here was just asking for trouble.

It wasn't truly impossible, of course. He could do it by force—tilling the soil, digging out the stones, and breaking up the clods—but the cost and labor involved would be too high. It wasn't worth it.

'If I could open up some terraced fields, I could plant rice, though.'

The rice on the Lu Leiyi Continent hadn't been hybridized, so the grains weren't plump. Leech had asked the locals about it. They said they sometimes found wild rice near puddles in the wilderness, which offered a meager supplement to their diet.

'It's impossible to rely on rice for sustenance, but it's better than having Porcupine Territory constantly prop this place up.'

There was still some distance between the two territories. Relying solely on Porcupine Territory for food was like putting all his eggs in one basket. If Porcupine Territory ran into the slightest trouble, both territories would collapse.

He wanted the two territories to develop in tandem, ideally helping one another—they were both his assets, after all—but they couldn't be completely codependent.

The distance between them was the fundamental reason for this.

'Then there's village reconstruction.'

Leech roughed out an outline, planning to organize it into a coherent, readable document later. 'Hazelnut Village's Petroleum Ore is the main reason I came here. That stuff is incredibly useful in sieges, both for attacking and defending, and in warfare in general. Selling it could quickly generate development funds, but I have to choose my buyers carefully.'

The biggest problem facing Iron Valley right now was a lack of money. A year or two of the rampaging corpse plague had left the territory's development completely abandoned and stagnant. It was only marginally better than starting from scratch in an untamed wilderness.

'Maoshan Beech Village must also be rebuilt, especially that field of mysterious herbs. If they can really help one break through their limits, their value might be no less than the Petroleum Ore. I won't sell them, but I can use them myself. The problem is that the two villages—one south, one north—are far apart and remote… Build a road?'

"To get rich, first build a road," as the saying goes. But when it came to rebuilding villages and planning development, the cost of road construction was not low.

'I can start by sending a team to log timber, clear a path, and pave it with some crushed stone.'

Leech lowered his head and scribbled a few more notes, making a tentative decision on the development of the two villages.

"Lord!"

"Lacy. You're here." Leech nodded, gesturing to the chair in front of him. "Have a seat."

"Yes, my Lord." Lacy sat.

"How is the cleanup operation going?"

"It's mostly clear," Lacy said. "The Iron Valley People are impressive. They have a certain resilience, probably related to the hardships they've suffered these past few years."

Leech agreed wholeheartedly. "Hardship does indeed make people stronger, but I don't believe anyone would willingly endure hardship just to become strong. That's why our purpose here is to develop this land and give the Iron Valley People a better life."

Lacy nodded firmly. He believed Leech.

Although he hadn't followed Leech for long, he could see his lord's dedication to developing the territory. He wasn't one to scrape money from his people to line his own pockets. On the contrary, he often spent his own funds, all for the sake of improving the lives of everyone in his domain.

Leech picked up a roll of paper from the table beside him. It was a simply drawn map showing only a few major landmarks.

Though simple, its distances and bearings were absolutely accurate.

After all, there were probably few people in this world besides Leech who could draw a map while looking down on the land from above.

Unrolling the map, Leech pointed to Hazelnut Village in the south, then traced a line to Iron Wall Castle. "I plan to build a simple road connecting Iron Wall Castle, Hazelnut Village, and Maoshan Beech Village. The current paths are all crooked trails worn by foot traffic. They're very inconvenient. It would be better to plan a new, flat, straight road. What do you think?"

"My Lord, why not include Lilac Village?" Lacy asked, puzzled.

Leech glanced at him, thinking, 'Of course it's because Lilac Village has no special features. Even if I wanted to build an outpost closer to Waterfall Land, I could just place it near Maoshan Beech Village.'

In his eyes, Lilac Village's location was undesirable. It would be better to rebuild a village elsewhere than to go to the trouble of building a road to it.

"Well, Lilac Village's location is…" Leech pointed to its spot on the map. "It's very remote. In the initial phase of Iron Valley's development, our focus should be on rebuilding and settling the freemen, getting them back to productive work as quickly as possible."

Lacy shook his head gently. "My Lord, rebuilding a road to Lilac Village wouldn't be a waste of manpower or resources. I only learned this from some of the others a few days ago, but Lilac Village is known for producing a plant called the Purple Clove Mushroom."

"I know," Leech nodded.

'The Purple Clove Mushroom. Poisonous and inedible.'

But Lacy continued, "It's said that consuming a small amount of this mushroom can prevent and treat beriberi."

Beriberi was a common affliction among the nobility, not the fungal infection of athlete's foot, but a disease caused by a vitamin B1 deficiency.

'So it's a natural vitamin B supplement,' Leech thought. But the details weren't important.

"What's the price?" That was what Leech cared about.

Lacy said, "I've heard they sell for Silver Moons. Some wealthy merchants will buy them."

Leech's eyes lit up. 'Anything that makes money is a good thing!'

'Some mushrooms have a growth cycle of twenty to thirty days, or a few months for slower ones. If we can cultivate Purple Clove Mushrooms on a large scale, that would effectively be Iron Valley's own agricultural industry.'

'The difference is, instead of wheat, we'd be growing mushrooms.'

'No wonder a territory as large as Iron Valley only had villages built in these three specific places.'

'This place is a gold mine!'

'Once the roads are built, the money will come rolling in.'

Leech jotted down a few more notes and nodded. "Mm, I'll have someone look into the Purple Clove Mushroom in more detail before making a final decision on the road."

Putting down his pen, Leech looked at Lacy. "What about the Petroleum Ore at Hazelnut Village? What's its output?"

Lacy replied, "About eighty pounds a year."

"That little?" Leech frowned. "How deep are their wells? How are they extracting it?"

"Well…" Lacy paused, stunned. "My Lord, Hazelnut Village doesn't have any 'wells' like you describe. Petroleum just seeps out of the ground, and they collect it in jars."

"So they're just skimming what seeps to the surface," Leech said, breathing a sigh of relief.

The little bit of oil that seeped from the ground was like pus squeezed from a pimple on a pig; you could hardly call it a proper yield.

"In other words, the Petroleum Ore at Hazelnut Village hasn't been properly mined at all!"

A wave of ambition suddenly washed over Leech. 'Should I just pave all the roads in Iron Valley with asphalt?'

Of course, he didn't let the impulse go to his head. Never mind fractional distillation, he hadn't even solved the problem of extraction yet. 'Let them keep collecting it in clay pots for now. But we need to establish a protected area. We'll discuss it further once I figure out a proper extraction method.'

Lacy sat to one side, occasionally answering Leech's questions. It was a good thing he had been so busy running around the territory; otherwise, he wouldn't have had the answers.

"Lacy, do you have any other friends?" Leech suddenly asked. "People with knowledge and talent, who are looking for a better opportunity?"

"I do!" Lacy nodded.

He was now fully confident that following Leech would lead to unprecedented success.

"Perfect. In a little while, we'll be returning to Porcupine Territory and then taking a ship to East Port. You should come back with me."

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