Reform

Leiluo fell into deep thought upon hearing Delong's words. Seeing the chieftain remain silent, Delong did not dare say anything more and simply stood quietly to one side. After a long while, Leiluo finally spoke. "Delong, do you want your fellow laborers to live like clan members?"

Leiluo walked over to Delong and patted him on the shoulder, continuing in a low voice, "I can make all the laborers into clan members. In return, you must repay me with loyalty."

Hearing Leiluo's words, Delong dropped to his knees with a thud. "Chieftain, all the laborers will forever be your most loyal subordinates."

"Very good!" Leiluo tore the beast fangs from around his neck—the fangs of a Thunder Giant Lizard—and patted Delong's shoulder. "Take this string of fangs. Find Saxi tomorrow and have him give you some meat first. Don't worry. No one will die this winter anymore. No one!" Then he turned and waved a hand, signaling Delong to leave.

Delong bowed respectfully as he backed out. He kept staring at the beast fangs in his hand, still scarcely able to believe that everything he had experienced tonight was real. Leiluo's words filled him with overwhelming joy. Perhaps no one really would die this winter.

It was not until noon the next day that the Pebble Clan truly began their migration. They proceeded in an orderly fashion until nightfall, when they finally arrived at Bandar City—the Thunder Lizard's valley, to which Leiluo had given a name.

When the Pebble Clan members saw the Behemoth lying in the valley by firelight, cries of astonishment rang out. Once Saxi told them that Leiluo had subdued the Behemoth, the clan members began cheering Leiluo's name again.

Leiluo had deliberately not told the clan members about the Behemoth beforehand in order to achieve this effect. Looking at the cheering crowd, he knew that his prestige had completely surpassed that of his nominal father. He also knew that the opportunity had come.

Leiluo climbed to a high place and shouted, suppressing the clan members' cheers. Then he said loudly, "Clan members, our Pebble Clan has found a place where we can rise. This is the blessing of the Ancestral Spirit. However, we have too few clan members and too few warriors. The clan's development will be far too slow this way. Therefore, I want all the laborers to become clan members..."

Before Leiluo could finish, some clan members objected from below. "Chieftain, then who will chop wood? Who will mine?" "That's right, Chieftain!" "Exactly, Chieftain, you can't..."

Seeing the crowd descend into chaos, Leiluo let out a thunderous shout. How could the clan members withstand the battle cry of a Gold Tier warrior? One after another, they were left dizzy and disoriented by the shock.

Only after the clan members below had recovered did Leiluo continue. "There is no need to worry about logging or mining. These new clan members will still do those tasks. But I want them to have the same right as clan members to receive food, and I want their children to train alongside the children of clan members. Of course, rest assured—there will certainly be no shortage of food."

Hearing Leiluo's assurance, learning that the laborers would still handle the miscellaneous work, and knowing that food would be plentiful, the clan members agreed to the proposal.

Leiluo knew that such things could not be rushed. If the laborers became full clan members all at once, then because of the orcs' social structure, no one would be willing to do the dirty and exhausting work. Meanwhile, the children of clan members were all trained as warriors. At that point, no one would make siege engines, and the Pebble Clan would collapse. That was why Leiluo called the laborers new clan members.

Leiluo first ensured that the laborers could survive, then gradually used the children to subtly change the orcs' social structure.

After carrying out the first reform, Leiluo summoned both Saxi and Delong. He had them gather the children of both clan members and new clan members for training, while also having Delong organize people to begin building a stronghold.

When all the orc children had gathered together, Leiluo felt even more strongly that his reform had been correct. Excluding the infants still in swaddling clothes, there were only seventeen children among the clan members, while the new clan members had an astonishing one hundred and eighty-three children. Together, they made exactly two hundred.

Without the reform, who knew how long it would have taken for the clan members' children to reach such a number.

More than ten days passed like this. Delong led the highly motivated new clan members in constructing the framework of Bandar City. At the entrance, they built a wooden wall from logs, leaving the middle hollow for stones to be filled in later. Along the mountainside, they erected the spiked barricades at which orcs excelled, because Leiluo feared that the Twilight Hammer Clan might cross the mountains to attack.

Over those ten-plus days, Leiluo ordered Saxi to lead twenty warriors in training the two hundred orc children. In terms of technique, the children of the new clan members were now no worse than those of the clan members, though they still lagged far behind in physical strength.

Therefore, in order to help these children narrow the gap, lessen their differences, and integrate more quickly, Leiluo led ten warriors on constant hunting trips across the wilderness.

One thing worth mentioning was that when Leiluo promoted the laborers to new clan members, his Chieftain Hall also upgraded. The tax revenue increased to one thousand per month, and the population requirement for upgrading became ten thousand. Nothing else changed, leaving Leiluo deeply disappointed after he had initially thought the warehouse could be upgraded as well.

On the wilderness plains, Leiluo's hunting party.

"Chieftain! Chieftain! We found a large orc hunting party ahead—around a hundred of them. They spotted us too. What should we do?" Two orc warriors hurried back to report to Leiluo.

Hearing that the other side had a hundred men, Leiluo was not afraid. He picked up his axe and said, "Warriors, come with me and take a look." With that, he headed in the direction indicated by the two orc warriors.

Before long, Leiluo saw the hunting party. Most of them appeared to be hunters, since each had a wolf following at their side. Judging by their size, they could only be hunters' war wolves, not the mounts of wolf cavalry.

Knowing that they were not cavalry, Leiluo relaxed somewhat. The other side was also secretly observing Leiluo's group. Seeing their clan banner and realizing they were not wandering orcs, they too appeared to relax.

At that moment, the leader on the opposite side stepped forward. "Orc brethren across from us, which clan are you from? Why have you come to the territory of our Moknasa Clan?"

"Moknasa Clan? That name sounds so familiar. Why can't I remember it?" Leiluo truly felt like blaming himself at this moment. Why was he only a fake Warcraft fan? Think of the protagonists in all those novels he had read—every one of them remembered the plot of the world they went to perfectly. But him? Aside from knowing a little about characters he particularly liked, he knew nothing else.