When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

#180 - Agricultural Survey of Daze Township

After confirming the two major topics of "the establishment of the United Kingdom" and "the end of the Thirty-Day War," the crisis finally passed peacefully, but Horn couldn't relax.

He dismissed most of the queens, asking them to take their hundreds of bear children home.

Horn, in his capacity as Emperor of the Elven Empire, Pope, and Emperor of the United Kingdom, retained several of the more powerful queens.

Among them were Queen Amazon of Hithia, Queen Dido of Gadaki, and Queen Gatha of Wolf Fang, all key figures in their respective factions.

Having received Horn's invitation, the queens rose from their small stools and approached him.

There was a stone slab on the ground, and they stood in a row directly on it.

Faintly, Horn seemed to hear the sound of the stone slab cracking, and several centipedes scurried out from under it.

Looking at Horn sitting in the carved armchair, their gray furry ears twitched, driving away the flies and horseflies that landed on them.

These queens were mostly large and stout, after all, female warriors also held power within the beastman kingdoms, and most of the previous elite divisions were female warriors.

However, unexpectedly, the two commanders, Dopia and Hariba, happened to be male, while the commanders on both sides of other battlefields were mostly female warriors.

Scanning the beastman lords, Horn cleared his throat and said, "I've kept you here mainly for two things."

Currently, the two main issues Horn needed to discuss with them were the offering of Autumn Dusk Island and food.

The issue of Autumn Dusk Island was relatively easy to resolve, since even if they didn't give it, they couldn't stop Horn from going there.

Moreover, Horn promised that once it was accomplished, he would provide them with two-story villas with gardens and gold on the island.

As for the food issue, the beastman lords were troubled, they looked at each other, none of them speaking.

Horn slowed his pace: "You can tell me any difficulties, and we can solve them together, is there not enough food for the winter?"

"It's not that," Queen Amazon of Hithia scratched her scalp with her dark fingers, "We just don't know how much twenty-five thousand is? And we don't know if we can afford your food."

"Have you never calculated these things before?"

The queens shook their heads, Queen Dido of Gadaki shaking her head: "We harvest rice fruit in late summer, fish in autumn, hunt in winter, and everyone is helpless during the spring famine, so we can only endure it."

What kind of civilization level is this? You dare to call others barbarians with this?

Usually, Horn saw that their clothes and conversation were quite polite, although simple, they did have some of the style of the ancient Elven Empire.

But now, this level of civilization is not to say knowledgeable, at least it is raw and bloody.

"Alright," Horn stood up and said to the queens, "Which of your kingdoms is closer, I'll go and investigate."

The queens looked at each other and focused their attention on Queen Dido of Gadaki.

"Your Majesty, our Gadaki Kingdom is nearby," Queen Dido said straightforwardly, not declining.

Under the leadership of Queen Dido, Horn and several guards walked along the small path in the swamp towards the capital of Gadaki.

The lead-white sky of early winter pressed down on the misty mountains in the distance. Among the withered yellow leaves and weeds, Horn rode his horse, while Queen Dido rode in a sedan chair.

This sedan chair was essentially a small wooden stool mounted on two wooden poles, carrying people forward.

On the mirror-like water on both sides, each swamp island was like being hung on the foothills and banks by paths and bridges, swaying in the wind, making it difficult to distinguish whether it was the ripples on the water or the ripples in the sky.

The wind in late autumn and early winter was a bit cold, with a rotten fishy smell, it blew from the foothills and hit Horn's face.

The fishy smell and water vapor, coolly bypassed Horn's cheeks, giving him a bit of the feeling of sea breeze.

Horn closed his eyes and took a light breath of the free air, the air of Daze Township was so fresh and sweet, it seemed particularly extravagant.

In his ears came incomprehensible fishermen's songs, Horn looked to the lakeside, where several fishing boats were casting nets, and the King's Hand of Gadaki, the Queen's own father, began to introduce him.

"This is our Gadaki Kingdom's deep-sea fishing boat," the old man explained, pointing to the raft on the lake, "We will catch enough fish for the whole winter and pickle it into salted fish for the winter."

"Why not pickle a little more, is there not enough fish?" Horn asked, looking at the baskets full of fish of all sizes.

The old man shook his head: "There are plenty of fish, to be honest, there are a bit too many, we can catch enough for a winter without much effort.

It's just difficult to preserve, if we make salted fish, we lack salt, if we make dried fish, the swamp is too humid, either it doesn't dry in the shade or it molds easily.

The previous war between our two major factions was not only due to the religious factors of the Gore Brothers and the political factors of the Blackra Kingdom, but also resource factors, what we wanted to compete for was the salt wells in the foothills."

Keeping this information in mind, Horn and others continued to walk for a while on the narrow path, and several pieces of land divided by rivers appeared in front of everyone.

The most surprising thing for Horn was the square fields in the swamp, they were clustered in layers by the lake, forming a maze-like waterway.

This standard shape was obviously man-made.

Seeing that His Majesty the Emperor was interested, Queen Dido took the group to the polder fields.

Arriving near these polder fields, Horn stepped forward to observe carefully, and found that these polder fields were more sophisticated than he had imagined.

These polder fields were all made by driving long wooden stakes into the shallow water area, then covering them with fishing nets, digging out the silt on both sides of the polder fields and laying it on the fishing nets, then laying a layer of withered branches and leaves and fine sand dug out from the mountains.

Then repeatedly, the polder fields were piled up more than a yard above the water surface, so that the surroundings of the fields were dug out with enough deep waterways to facilitate the passage of small boats and water irrigation.

Horn lowered his head and thought, seeing this situation, the beastmen mostly live a fishing and farming life.

They eat farmed livestock and cultivate in spring, barely survive by hunting in summer, harvest and fish in autumn, and use this to survive the winter.

Queen Dido stood beside Horn and said with pride: "This polder field has been built since my great-great-great-grandfather, or even earlier, at that time there were fewer people in our kingdom.

Although we don't know how much land is needed, we know that the more land there is, the more people there are, and the more people there are, the more polder fields are built.

Give us a few hundred years, and we will eventually turn the entire Black Bone Swamp into polder fields."

Looking at the high-spirited Queen Dido, Horn didn't say much, just responded with a smile: "I believe that day will come soon."

Following the Queen and the King's Hand to the fishing boats, confirming the output of fish and farmland, Horn calculated slightly, and found that there were definitely enough fish in the swamp to eat.

But the problem is that they can't preserve it for too long, because they lack salt, although there was a lot of salt in the supplies Horn brought, it was not enough to pickle enough fish for 25,000 people for a month.

Or use primitive canned food, boil the fish in a pottery pot with water, plug the mouth of the canned food with a wooden stopper, heat it in a steamer, and then seal it with mud.

This method can extend the shelf life by two or three months, but the premise is that there must be a pottery workshop.

But is a pottery workshop so easy to make? They don't have skilled workers, and it takes about ten days to make pottery.

By the time they can stably produce pottery jars, they have to produce enough pottery jars, although Horn didn't count them carefully, but he estimates that they need three or four thousand pottery jars.

They don't know what the yield of the pottery jars is, and where the clay for the pottery jars comes from.

By the time the pottery workshop has fired those pottery jars, it is estimated that it will already be winter.

Horn suddenly had a headache.

Or think of a way to solve the salt mine problem over there?