Knight Lord: Start with Daily Intelligence

The new information reveals quite a bit about the surrounding forces.

First, there's the Sweet Kiss Cult in Green Meadow Village. This village is unremarkable and quite far from Black Forest Territory.

If they aren't naturally occurring, it means they are a territory under another pioneering lord.

If Su Li burns this village to the ground, he will inevitably have conflicts with the surrounding lords.

After settling down in his territory for a few months, it seems it's time for external conquest.

These matters involving the purification of Chaos demons are bound to create conflict and war.

Because the so-called purification in this world isn't about using holy water to cleanse the evil on the peasants. This world doesn't have such powerful items. Even if it did, the greedy nobles wouldn't waste such valuable items on the lowly, filthy peasants.

The so-called purification in this world often refers to knights discovering Chaos corruption and burning everything in the village related to the demons to ashes, including farmers, houses, land, and everything else in the village.

The Slaaneshi Daemonette Xaxier only appeared for a few minutes, yet it caused a large amount of Chaos corruption on all the knights. The brothel business boomed for many days as a result.

If a remote village is corrupted by Chaos, by the time the knights discover them, it's already too late.

So the knights won't allow anyone who might have come into contact with Chaos corruption to remain.

Of course, this also exacerbates the peasants' distrust of the nobles. For well-known reasons, when imperial peasants encounter problems, they always tend to resolve them internally and unite to conceal the existence of the problems from the lord, because the noble lords always take the most barbaric and convenient way to solve the problems caused by the peasants.

For the lower classes, this whitewashing is a reasonable choice to protect themselves from power, but it also creates an illusion in the eyes of the ruling class that the peasants are a happy, content, peaceful, and docile… trash, after all, most nobles are instilled with this idea from childhood.

So when peasant uprisings occur, the nobles carry out extremely bloody suppression, and the uprising peasants resist desperately (though to little avail): from the peasant's perspective, the uprising is already a desperate last resort.

But from the noble's perspective, they have never heard of any problems encountered by the peasants in the territory and are therefore dissatisfied, so they naturally can't figure out the cause of the uprising and attribute all peasant uprisings to insatiable greed and ingratitude.

It's hard to say who is right or wrong. In this desperate world, despair is equal to everyone. Nobles must ensure that Chaos corruption is completely eradicated and that no possible omissions occur. Because compassion and false hope often lead to more tragic results.

And the lower classes naturally dare not expose their problems in order to survive. Like the Battle of Red Cliffs, although there was already a plague in Cao Cao's army, the lower-level soldiers did not dare to report the situation in order to survive, resulting in a large-scale spread of the plague.

In the current situation of this world, the situation in Green Meadow Village has completely deteriorated, but their lord probably doesn't know what's happening in this village.

Moreover, the Slaaneshi demons and their followers will pay sufficient taxes to maintain the village's peaceful image and maintain the stable and harmonious atmosphere of the entire village.

In the lord's eyes, these are a group of villagers living a happy, content life, peaceful and uncontested, and they can't imagine that they have become so chaotic that they have begun various chaotic couplings with Beastmen, barbarians, and mutants.

Of course, for those wise lords, this is actually an important reference for judging whether Chaos corruption has occurred in the territory.

If a village starts to diligently cultivate, pay all nineteen taxes on time and in full, and the atmosphere is positive and harmonious, then there is no need to think too much, it must be Chaos corruption, and most likely Slaaneshi followers control it.

However, most lords are foolish and have nothing to do with wisdom and brilliance, so if the knights suddenly burn a village corrupted by Chaos, it often means disputes, conflicts, and even war.

Unless the one burning the village is a famous, renowned Chosen Knight or Legendary Knight.

Black Forest Territory doesn't have a Chosen Knight, so he can only let the famous Pegasus Knight Fastric try.

So after he finished eating, he instructed the High Steward Hild: "You arrange for a team of knights to follow Fastric to the village southeast of Mirror Marsh. There is a Slaaneshi cult lurking there. Let Fastric purify the Chaos corruption here."

The Chaos corruption here is a bit too serious. People have already interbred with orcs.

So much so that the Goddess of the Sun could not stand it and sent down divine grace. Whichever force can purify this place will have a group of Sun Goddess immigrant believers who will immigrate to that territory according to the will of the gods. Black Forest Territory must seize this divine grace.

The Sun Goddess immigrant believers are not the same as peasant mobs. Their qualifications are higher, and they are more loyal and devout.

To make an analogy, peasant mobs belong to the most mediocre gray quality, which is the garbage that most territories don't like. Even if they are caught, they are directly thrown into the slave camp and consumed as cattle and horses.

But the Sun Goddess believers are not this kind of garbage. They are talents, elite immigrants, and not only are the personnel of higher quality, but it is also easy for some elites to appear.

This elite is the literal meaning of elite-level talent, such as elite knights and elite believers.

So generally, when territories encounter Sun Goddess immigrant believers, they will happily accept them and directly grant them the status of freemen in the territory.

Purifying a place of Chaos corruption, eliminating the risk of Chaos spreading, and welcoming a group of Sun Goddess immigrant believers, Su Li is naturally willing to do it.

Hild was surprised when he heard this and asked, "Lord, are we preparing for war with the outside world?"

Su Li nodded and said, "The harvest season is coming, and harvest and plunder are inevitable. We must not only plunder a large amount of wealth from other territories, but also deal with the plunder of other forces against us."

"Do you mean the mountain people?" Hild was intelligent and immediately guessed the key.

The geographical situation of Black Forest Territory is actually relatively good. The threat in Blood Pine Forest to the east has just been cleared, the west is a vast blank area between power centers, and the south has the wide Mirror Marsh, so the only thing that can threaten the territory is the mountain people to the north.

Su Li said appreciatively, "That's right. Demons are rampant in the Gray Mountains, and I'm afraid the local forces will not be too stable. The Zani people, who are already short of food, will definitely go down the mountain to plunder."

The Zani people are the empire's general term for mountain people, roughly similar to hillbillies, perhaps even one level lower.

After all, the most famous hillbillies in the empire are halflings, who carry a strong rustic atmosphere and rude temperament. The halflings themselves do not deny this.

These Zani people, wearing horned helmets and full of masculine spirit, do not fight like a well-trained army, nor do they always gather in a large tribal alliance to listen to the great chief until they have to face considerable force, so usually a small group of attackers ride fierce Aurochs to launch raids.

Although the mountain people are always repelled by the armies defending the duchies, their herds trample all the farmland in their path, and the chaos caused by this invasion is inevitably exploited by all sorts of local bandits, who seize every opportunity to rob and plunder.

A Zani tribe of 200 people is already considered a large size. If their continuous invasions fail year after year, they will organize an alliance tribe to go south.

Su Li also had to consider how to weaken their population.

After all, in addition to forming an alliance, they have another option, which is that the population is sparse enough that the bushes in the mountains are enough for them to graze Aurochs.

So it is especially important to wipe out the population they plunder each time they go down the mountain.

Su Li was considering which army to arrange to go over when Agriculture Minister Fandal came to the manor excitedly.

His wrinkled old face was twisted together today, like a blooming flower: "Lord, good news! Good news! Our territory's wheat fields have ushered in a huge harvest! One acre of wheat has already been harvested in the threshing floor, and we have harvested a full 190 catties of wheat!"

190 catties?

Su Li was also overjoyed. This number is already one-third higher than the feudal era on Earth! Equivalent to about a quarter of the yield of modern society with chemical fertilizers.

And considering that there are blood sacrifice wheat fields, the output increases tenfold, that is, 1900 catties per acre, that is, the blood sacrifice wheat fields are 2 to 3 times higher than modern society.

Su Li also temporarily put aside the summer defense three days later and immediately left the manor with Hild and Fandal on horseback and came to the farm on the east side of the territory.

Here, the endless wheat fields sway gently in the breeze, the wheat waves roll, like a golden ocean. The ears of wheat are heavy and drooping, and each grain is full and firm, indicating a harvest season.

The joy of this harvest even infected the serfs in the fields. Their faces were filled with satisfaction and joy, and they were wearing straw hats, holding sickles, and enthusiastically harvesting the wheat in the fields.

In the distance, halflings were noisily cheering and driving harvesters to quickly harvest the wheat in the flat wheat fields. These harvesters pulled by battle rams perfectly matched their characteristics, harvesting heads on the battlefield and harvesting wheat in peacetime.

Under Su Li's gaze, they harvested more than 30 acres of wheat fields in less than an hour, an efficiency equivalent to dozens or even hundreds of serfs!

The more than 400 acres of wheat fields here can probably be harvested in less than half a day.

Fandal said with a smile, "Lord, the terrain here is flat, and the halfling harvesters are very convenient. They are the first batch of farms to complete the harvest. The territory's serfs are mainly in the direction of the forest farm, where there are more than 1,000 acres of wheat fields, which are expected to be harvested by tonight. When all the wheat is harvested, we can get at least 240,000 catties of wheat!"