Teeming with Life

Teeming with Life

Pricked by Lynn's sharp gaze, Albert immediately shuddered. "My lord, how would I dare deceive you? At least in No. 1 Manor, I'm certain every serf household keeps a draft horse."

After unlocking the Territory System and gaining planting experience, Lynn had inexplicably acquired a great deal of agricultural knowledge, greatly deepening his understanding of farming and land.

Naturally, he knew full well how important draft horses were to agriculture.

He had originally assumed this Territory at the northernmost edge of the Northern Border was worthless land.

But if Albert was telling the truth, and every serf household in White Bear Territory owned a draft horse, then White Bear Territory's agricultural potential needed to be reassessed.

To verify it, when they passed through a small village where serfs lived together, Lynn insisted on entering the village himself to investigate.

"My lord, places like this are very dirty."

"No matter."

Lynn entered the village with Albert and several manor stewards. The children playing in the mud in the street immediately scattered in all directions.

He stepped across the muddy road that gave off a faint stink and randomly knocked on the low door of an earthen house. A young woman in a sheepskin coat answered it.

Though she was rather dirty, her cheeks were still rosy, showing that she had not gone hungry over the past winter.

Lynn ducked into the dark, damp house. The rank smell of livestock hit him in the face, accompanied by the low sounds of draft horses, pigs, and goats.

In the Northern Border, serfs generally lived in the same house as their livestock during the cold season, mainly to help keep the house warm.

Under such circumstances, the sanitation inside was easy to imagine.

Though this earthen house, built from mud, straw, and stones, was low, filthy, and disorderly, with exceptionally crude furnishings—

the gentle black draft horse lowering its head to eat grass and the simple plow resting in the corner proved Albert had not lied.

Lynn then visited several more serf households in succession. Besides the draft horses every family possessed, he also saw two female serfs with slightly swollen bellies.

During winter in the Northern Border, huddling indoors to make children was practically the serfs' only form of entertainment.

Outside, ice sealed the land for a thousand miles and snow drifted across ten thousand. Firewood blazed brightly, while inside the warm, springlike earthen house, draft horses neighed, goats bleated, children played, and two serfs nurtured new life.

When Lynn left the village and looked back at the chimneys trailing wisps of smoke, a beautiful scene of exuberant life and all things flourishing inexplicably rose in his mind.

The agricultural age generally followed the habit of working at sunrise and resting at sunset.

In the Northern Border, the sky turned completely dark shortly after five in the afternoon in early March. The sun was already beginning to sink westward, spilling orange-red light over the village like a dreamlike veil.

A cold wind swept past, and Albert could not help shrinking his neck. "My lord, it's getting quite late. I've had the kitchen prepare dinner. Please return to the Castle first."

Lynn swung onto his horse and quickened his pace toward the Castle in the north.

After traveling for a short while, he suddenly praised, "Albert, you've done very well."

Albert did not react for a moment. "Ah? My lord, you mean...?"

"I mean you've done an excellent job as Territory Steward. In White Bear Territory, where the land is vast, the population sparse, and the climate bitterly cold, you've ensured that every serf household has enough to eat and even owns livestock such as draft horses. That alone proves how competent and outstanding you are."

Lynn had once "visited" dozens of Territories of all sizes in the Northern Border as the leader of horse bandits.

No more than one or two out of ten had serfs whose living standards could match or exceed those of White Bear Territory.

In most Territories, serfs barely struggled along at the edge of subsistence.

This was either due to the Lords' unsustainable policies of squeezing the land dry, or to the poor management of Territory administrators.

Over the past half year, White Bear Territory had been without a Lord, while the knights responsible for protecting the Territory had fled with the funds. Yet even in such a crisis, Albert had still managed White Bear Territory in perfect order, and the serfs throughout the Territory had all survived the winter unharmed.

This was enough to demonstrate his exceptional

Territory management abilities, and it also directly confirmed the Territory System's ability to judge people.

Albert truly deserved his two-star rating, and the [Pacifying the People] trait had indeed been assigned correctly.

"Watching over the Territory for my lord is my duty to begin with. As long as my lord is willing to keep trusting me, I will never betray that trust!"

Receiving such straightforward praise from the new Lord, Albert's old face immediately flushed bright red.

Heaven knew that Old Albert had worked diligently for White Bear Territory's development all these years, yet he had never received even a single word of praise from any Lord.

Whenever a Lord summoned him, nine times out of ten, it was to demand money and order him to levy additional taxes on the local residents.

If Old Albert had not found ways to increase income and reduce expenses, while repeatedly urging the previous two Lords to show consideration for the local residents, White Bear Territory would inevitably have suffered the miserable fate of being squeezed dry.

"Of course, you may continue serving as Territory Steward. But remember this: all matters, great and small, within the Territory must obey my orders. I am the Lord."

Lynn did not mind continuing to employ the Territory's lower- and mid-level administrators. After all, the horse bandits under his command only knew how to kill people.

But so long as he firmly controlled armed force, he possessed absolute authority within the Territory.

Albert nodded fervently. "Of course, my lord. You are a baron. Even birds flying over the Territory must obey your orders."

The party continued onward. As Lynn surveyed the farmland on either side of the road, he repeatedly pondered the agricultural knowledge he had acquired today.

In his view, White Bear Territory's current level of agricultural development did not even qualify as barely acceptable.

With the current yield per mu, feeding his twenty-odd horse bandits along with a group of Territory administrators was certainly more than manageable.

But that was all.

Even if Lynn wanted to raise fifty more full-time soldiers, it would be extraordinarily difficult.

But if he did not expand his army, what would he use to protect the Lordship he had seized?

What would he use to resist the Marsh Duke's possible reckoning?

And what would he use to smash this backward, decaying kingdom?

He had no desire to be like the vast majority of other Lords in the Northern Border, clutching a Territory and idling away his days.

Whatever he did, he intended to do it properly.

If he was going to be a horse bandit, he would be a great outlaw who roamed the Northern Border. If he was going to be a Lord, he would be the Lord with the biggest fist in the Northern Border.

From Lynn's perspective, White Bear Territory's serfs could eat their fill and possessed usable animal labor, but that only earned them the assessment: "The basics are decent."

They were still a hundred Photoshop experts away from being a true "beauty."

Lynn suddenly asked again, "When do people usually plow and sow here?"

Albert quickly replied, "In answer to my lord, the fields are still frozen at present. Plowing is scheduled for the last week of March, while sowing is generally done in the second week of April."

In other words, there was still a full month before sowing.

Lynn had to come up with a workable improvement plan within that month and raise White Bear Territory's yield per mu as quickly as possible. Otherwise, he would have to wait until the following year.

(End of Chapter)