Crab Bay lay under Gulltown's jurisdiction, and over the past few months, more and more large cargo ships had been coming and going.
Because the lord here was building infrastructure!
And he was filthy rich!
AC 275
Second weekly meeting of October
In the first-floor meeting hall, Su Qin sat expressionlessly at the east end of the long table, drinking. The table had been replaced with an enormous one ten meters long!
Even the balls on it had been replaced with glass ones! Seating ten ministers on either side was no problem!
Before long, the officials arrived one after another.
Three sat on the left, and three on the right.
They were:
Aila, commander of the Qilin Guard-the official name of the personal guard!
Kelun, minister of intelligence!
Gery, minister of craftsmanship!
Telang, right minister of finance!
Luke, minister of patrols!
Nack, minister of logistics!
A department's highest official was called its chief officer, while its left and right officers were deputies!
Kerry, the youngest person present, also wore a specially designed secretary's uniform and sat in his assigned seat, ready to record the meeting minutes!
At just nine years old, he already knew the deliberations behind many specific policies! Su Qin was also gradually reshaping his thinking!
Su Qin looked at the ministers watching him and said, "The second weekly meeting of October begins now. This meeting's subjects are food and refugee intake! Telang, first give everyone the details of our refugee intake."
Telang nodded, holding a list in both hands.
"We expect to take in 2,000 refugees this month, mostly adults, with a small number of children-an estimated 400 new households! We need eighty new five-household farms every month. From July through mid-October, we built a total of 260 farms. Under our policy of settling people as construction proceeds, 1,300 refugee households have already received new homes.
"Including the later arrivals who have no housing, another 1,800 households need food relief from the Qilin Faith!"
Su Qin nodded. There were too many people!
Su Qin silently grumbled about the cost of building houses!
I've spent about 1,300 gold so far. With the profits from reselling weapons, I've repaid my wife's family 2,000 gold. After setting aside administrative salaries through the end of the year, I only have 300 gold available!
Su Qin nodded.
At this rate, they would have to stop building farms in November because there would be no available money left! They could probably complete 300 farms by the end of October, and some refugees would have to live temporarily on the farms already built!
But he had to consider when construction could finally keep up!
So Su Qin asked, "Then, if we add more workers, how long will it take for construction to outpace refugee intake?"
Gery thought for a moment. "My lord, we currently have a hundred craftsmen. Assigning sixty of them to lead 2,500 male construction workers would let us build a hundred farms a month."
At Gulltown's current monthly refugee intake, they needed a hundred new farms every month, costing 500 gold, to house the 2,000 refugees arriving each month! But the problem was that many refugees from the previous months still had no homes!
There was a backlog!
According to Gery's estimate, to give every household a home, Su Qin would have to employ 3,000 male workers to build 120 farms each month, allowing them to house just a hundred additional households per month!
At that rate, it would take a year to fully resolve the housing problem! And he would have to allocate 500 gold every month to buy materials.
"My lord, buying materials is far too costly!" Gery reminded him!
Su Qin nodded. He really did need to solve the materials problem. He was already planning the construction of brick kilns!
But the problem was gold income. He couldn't keep selling weapons forever! He might even end up selling weapons to his own enemies! He needed to find a stable source of revenue!
"And what about food consumption? How much do we have left?" Su Qin asked Nack, the minister of logistics. Nack thought for a moment and said:
"My lord, there are too many people we have to feed for free. We used 2,000 units in July, 4,000 in August, and 6,000 in September. By that calculation, all 16,000 units of food will be gone by the end of October."
"There's still a month and a half until harvest, leaving a shortfall of at least 4,000 units of food. At the current price of seven copper per jin, we need 800 gold to buy food! Only then can we feed the newly arrived refugees through the end of the year!"
These were actually the most critical months! The corn wasn't ripe yet, and there were too many people to feed for free!
Su Qin currently had only 300 gold he could actually use! He could only borrow another 1,000 gold from Delia! He had already repaid the previous 2,000-gold loan with the money from selling weapons!
He would have to trouble his wife's family again!
"Then buy all of it! Once the year-end harvest comes, we won't have to feed them for free anymore."
He sighed inwardly. He was always in debt!
Only by borrowing a little from his wife's family from time to time could he keep himself from dying of poverty!
Everyone discussed the specifics of assigning rooms, while Su Qin considered some other issues.
He pondered this question until midnight!
The question was how long it would take before he had workers with spare time!
If they kept accepting refugees, they would need 3,000 men to meet construction requirements. The women and children could help tend the farmland for now. With four hundred more men arriving each month, their current 1,800 men would reach 3,000 next year, just enough to meet construction needs!
But the problem was that it would also be time to clear land and sow new fields then!
At that point, they could only plant the main fields belonging to the 1,500 farmer households already settled!
Construction of new farms would have to stop at the end of October! Exactly three hundred farms!
After the corn was planted, Su Qin also assigned people to begin the second round of infrastructure construction!
By the end of the year, 1,500 households should have homes! Another 1,500 would not!
Fortunately, winters here were rather unusual!
It was still Long Summer!
And during his routine inspections, he actually found a talented man!
Leike had been caught by Telang for poaching!
Su Qin had no aversion to this sort of poaching. It was actually very common, but once it was brought into the open, a light punishment was necessary!
After Leike spent three months in prison, Su Qin appointed him minister of military affairs!
As for why?
[Leike: Command: 8, Martial prowess: 7, Special skill: Eagle Eye (Archery experience +50%)! Great accomplishment in archery!]
Here was an archery instructor he could get for free! Su Qin desperately needed one!
So Su Qin overrode all objections and backed him, formally putting him in the position of minister of military affairs at a salary of ten gold a month!
He proved very capable, too. In just one short month, his loyalty reached 92, and some soldiers had mastered their longbow-drawing posture to perfection!
At the end of October, Su Qin took Leite, the minister of military affairs, to the armory to inspect the redwood longbows they had made!
In September, the craftsmen at Large Smithies One and Two had made spears for sale. Throughout October, they had been making redwood longbows!
These longbows were 1.5 meters long and required several redwood boards to craft carefully. Their strings were made of multiple strands of ox sinew! They had a range of two hundred meters, or four hundred with high-angle shots! Within fifty meters, they could pierce some thinner iron armor!
They were divine weapons!
The problem was that only warriors with a martial prowess of 5 could draw them! Grabbing any able-bodied man didn't make him a warrior or a sharpshooter! Over these past few months, Su Qin had fed his three hundred spearmen well and made them exercise every day, finally producing a force with an average martial prowess of 3! Each could fight three adults!
Reaching a martial prowess of 4 would probably take another half year! Moreover, multiples of 5 were bottlenecks in ordinary people's attributes! Without the enhancement of noble blood, breaking through was difficult!
Training a good army required not only good food and drink, but sufficient pay and diligent exercise. Those were all basic requirements!
Every one of Su Qin's soldiers mattered. Giving farmers spears didn't make them soldiers. That made them militia!
Still, if Su Qin raised a militia, it would be quite formidable. Morale was high, and once battle drew blood, with someone unafraid of death to lead them, they could probably defeat many armies!
So Su Qin's soldiers had never numbered just three hundred, but the several thousand farmers who supported him! This was also the foundation of his rule!
Su Qin entered the storeroom with Leite. It was empty, though it had been filled with spears just last month!
Only twenty redwood longbows stood at the very back! A master craftsman could finish just one powerful bow a month!
Su Qin hefted one in his hand. It weighed about six jin-quite heavy!
He handed the longbow to Leite and said, "Leite, try it. See if it suits your taste!"
Leite picked up the longbow and lifted it a little. "My lord, it's so heavy, and the draw weight is far too high! An ordinary person couldn't possibly draw this specially made longbow!"
Su Qin smiled. "It weighs six jin! Only soldiers with a certain amount of strength and skill can keep shooting arrows with it."
"Six jin? My lord, my bow probably weighs only a jin and a half. What's the effective lethal range of this six-jin heavy bow? A hundred meters? A hundred and fifty?"
Su Qin smiled.
"Two hundred meters of effective lethal range with direct fire. It can pierce ordinary iron armor within fifty meters. Four hundred meters with high-angle fire, and from a forty-meter-high fortress, its effective lethal range is four hundred meters!"
Leite was astonished to hear this!
"Two hundred meters with direct fire!"
"My lord, in the hands of a sharpshooter, with protection, this thing could probably let one man fight fifty!"
"My hunting bow has an effective range of fifty meters at the absolute most! This is a divine bow!"
Su Qin patted the astonished Leite!
"This longbow is intended for people like you, but we have another kind of bow suited to people in good physical condition."
Su Qin took him to a weapons cabinet and picked up a bow from the platform inside.
[Redwood horn bow: Made of redwood, 80 centimeters long, 3 jin, strung with multiple strands of ox sinew. Effective lethal range: 100 meters. Usable by people with martial prowess above 3!]
Leite hefted it. "My lord, this bow feels very well balanced, too. At three jin, ordinary people could use it. What's its range?"
"An effective range of a hundred meters, or three hundred with arcing shots!"
"This bow is simply perfect! My lord, how many do you have?"
Su Qin thought for a moment. A master craftsman needed half a month to make one such perfect bow, so twenty master craftsmen could make forty a month!
"About forty a month!"
Leite nodded. Seeing how much he liked this newly made powerful bow, Su Qin said:
"This first horn bow is yours. You'll have to find your own arrows. The territory's craftsmen have a lot of work right now. Even the feathered arrows I use were bought from weapons merchants!"
Leite nodded. "Thank you, my lord! A powerful bow like this would cost at least ten gold elsewhere, and you couldn't find one even if you had the money!"
Su Qin smiled. Spears could be sold, but bows could not!
Besides, others couldn't copy the forging process. The mechanisms connecting the bowstring to the hundred-forged iron at both ends of the bow-the hundred-forged internal clasps-couldn't be replicated!
Even though one large smithy working at full capacity on horn bows could earn at least four hundred gold every month,
If he kept summoning and setting up large smithies, and kept dealing in arms, he could probably make money quickly! The snowball would grow very large!
But everything had two sides. Selling fine weapons in bulk would definitely change the continent's balance of military power! It might even attract covetous attention!
Without sufficient strength, Su Qin had no intention of displaying powerful weapons like redwood horn bows in large numbers!
With horn bows, he could train mounted archery!
Longbows were too long to use on horseback at all!
Once he had trained mounted archers, kiting tactics would be very powerful!
This was his trump card!