Farmers Who Came in Handy

To modern people, the method Li Ang had taught Sarah was indeed an effective marketing strategy.

This camp was of little use to Li Ang, but it was quite important to the Horn Summon Ranger Corps.

Selling the right thing to the right people was the basic logic behind getting something for nothing... uh... "resource integration."

The next day, Li Ang began inspecting the construction site.

That was, the unfinished wooden bridge.

Two rows of wooden piles had just been driven into the riverbed, and the piles had been connected and reinforced with timbers.

The longitudinal beams connecting the piles had also been set in place.

Only the deck planks had yet to be laid, so it could not be crossed normally—unless one crossed on the beams as though walking a balance beam.

Li Ang stood beside the bridge and pondered for a long while, but he did not order the nearly completed bridge torn down.

Instead, he had more than a dozen carpenters work together to make some subtle "technical adjustments" to it.

After carefully explaining the work to the carpenters, Li Ang left Kloze and his Charge Squad behind at the camp to guard the prisoners, while he took the crossbowmen and the remaining carpenters farther west.

Since he intended to sell this camp to Ralph, he had to build another Gatu nomad camp within Lion Lake City's territory.

In other words, he had to complete his previous deal with Ralph.

No matter how much wool one sheared from a sheep, anything one promised to do had to be done—and done to the customer's satisfaction.

That was a principle.

The tough men of Meitengheim were useless when it came to construction, and half of them were injured anyway.

This was nothing like a game. Wounded members of the party would not heal automatically; they needed a doctor's treatment and rest.

Perhaps the only advantage was that injuries and illnesses healed a little faster—Li Ang had already confirmed that when he first arrived in this world. It might have been the greatest benefit that this half-baked system brought to the party.

West of the camp, as far as the eye could see, lay wasteland.

It was much like the fog-shrouded uninhabited region south of Long River Town: a vast wilderness, only at a higher elevation and with more gently rolling hills.

According to the map Ralph had provided, this land had not originally been wasteland. There should once have been many villages here—quite a few small circles had been marked on the map.

But Li Ang did not see a single village. All along the way were lush grasslands and gentle slopes, with the occasional patch of woodland. It was quite suitable for nomadic peoples.

After traveling for half a day, just as he estimated that the caravan had entered Lion Lake City's territory, Li Ang finally found an abandoned village.

Like Long River Town, Lion Lake City was also a large county. Several decades ago, it had even been the largest county on the entire continent.

But unlike Long River Town, which had continued expanding outward over the years, Lion Lake City's outer territories had been steadily encroached upon by the Gatu people over the past few decades.

Because Brave Shield Fortress had blocked the Gatu people's advance, they had been able to do nothing but raid in the direction of Lion Lake City for all these years.

Lion Lake City, once a county in the northern center of the Lionheart Kingdom, had now practically become a front line. Beyond a hundred li from Lion Lake City itself, not a single village remained; it had all become uninhabited land.

This abandoned village was now nothing but crumbling walls and ruins, overgrown with weeds. It looked as though no one had lived here for at least a dozen years.

Comparing the site against that exceedingly crude "detailed map" and confirming that it belonged to Grand Duke Alma's Lion Lake City territory, Li Ang ordered a Gatu nomad camp built in the abandoned village.

These ruins had probably been left behind by the Gatu people's iron hooves in the first place.

They were perfect for framing them.

He sent two mercenaries to keep watch from the tops of nearby hills, while everyone else began unloading supplies. The party sprang into action.

"My lord, forgive me, but what exactly does the Gatu nomad camp you described look like?"

Just when he thought everything would go smoothly, the carpenters—the main force behind building the camp—ran into a problem: they had never seen a Gatu nomad camp.

In fact, very few people had. More precisely, very few men had.

After all, the Gatu people generally left no survivors. Most men who had seen a Gatu camp were no longer among the living.

The women who had been taken captive might have seen them, but they could not return.

Li Ang was, after all, from the information age of the twenty-first century, and his way of thinking had not fully changed. He had instinctively assumed that many people would be familiar with what a nomad camp looked like...

But people in this era had no internet. How could they know so much? A traveler like Sarah was already among the most knowledgeable intellectuals on the entire continent.

The problem was that Sarah was not here, and she probably did not know what a Gatu camp looked like either. As a woman, she would never dare travel through Gatu territory, or she would surely become a unit of value.

For example, one Sarah might equal ten horses or two iron pots...

The mercenaries from Long River Town looked at one another as well. Most of them had seen Gatu people before, since they were enemies who had fought around Brave Shield Fortress for many years.

But when it came to their camps... they could only shake their heads.

Just as everyone was at a loss, two timid figures stepped forward before Li Ang.

"My lord... we've seen Gatu camps..."

Li Ang looked up. Before him stood two men in leather caps, wrapped in all sorts of messy, low-quality gear.

They had light crossbows on their backs—equipment Ralph had previously "sponsored."

They were the two loafers who had falsely claimed to be crossbowmen, the only two "farmers" on the party list.

Perhaps because of their hardship-filled lives, the two farmers had extremely rough skin, making their ages impossible to tell. They could have been in their thirties, but they also looked like they might be in their fifties.

Li Ang was somewhat surprised. "You've seen them before?"

One of them nodded and pointed at the crumbling ruins beside Li Ang, his voice extremely low. "My lord, this village... used to be our hometown..."

"My lord... I remember, more than ten years ago, the day before the village was raided, the knight lords had just come to collect taxes... After paying them, we didn't have enough food left, so we went into the mountains to hunt... We never expected..."

The two farmers' eyes were red-rimmed, and their whole bodies trembled as they spoke of the past. That was not something they could fake. Anyone with acting skills like that would either be an Oscar-winning actor or some big shot on the level of a president.

Li Ang spat and cursed, "Whose territory was this village? They collected taxes but didn't protect the village? Those bastards are really no good!"

From the two farmers, he learned that this village, now reduced to wasteland, had once been called "Horton"—meaning a gray settlement.

Moreover, it had been the place where the Horton Family had risen to prominence centuries ago!

Duke Alma's surname had actually come from a patch of ruins overgrown with weeds, a place utterly destroyed long ago.

These two farmers were among the last villagers of Horton Village.

More than ten years ago, the place had been thoroughly plundered by the Gatu army. At the time, the two villagers had been hunting in the nearby mountains.

The Gatu people had temporarily camped nearby. The two had discovered the Gatu camp and hidden far away in the mountains, narrowly escaping disaster.

The families of the two farmers had long since been buried beneath the earth, but their deep hatred had left them with vivid memories of everything related to the Gatu people.

Li Ang felt as though his luck had finally turned around. Goddess of Order Eunomia was probably watching over him.

Originally, he had taken in these two hooligans because he thought they might come in handy when it was time to grow grain in his territory.

After all, farming was an innate skill that every person of the Celestial Dynasty thought about constantly, no matter the time or place.

Farmers were good at farming, weren't they? They could also count as two subjects—when the Noble Council inspected a territory, it required a certain number of subjects and fields within it.

Besides, he had issued weapons to these two farmers.

Yet after receiving light crossbows and infantry swords, they were still listed as "Farmers" in the party roster.

So Li Ang had assumed they must have exceptional agricultural talent, which was why their combat ability was so terrible. Otherwise, with a full set of equipment, they should at least have upgraded into "Militia," right?

But he had not expected them to reveal their special value so quickly.

Then, when the two removed their equipment, took off their hats and coats, and began working up a sweat alongside the carpenters, Li Ang suddenly understood.

—After taking off all the things wrapped around them, their entries in the party roster had changed to "Refugees"...

Fine... the lower limits of counterfeit goods these days really could exceed anyone's imagination...