Knight Lord: Start with Daily Intelligence

When Laun threw the millstone-sized Magic Tide Clam into the reservoir, Su Li felt as if the entire lake had become clearer, and he could see two radiant Lightscale Fish swimming happily towards it beneath the surface.

Although they hadn't reproduced, they seemed to have grown a bit larger, even fatter than the big, plump fish in the Baotu Spring. Their huge mouths were devouring the fine moss, algae, snails, and small insects in the water. Su Li felt like their mouths could swallow his fist.

They were very sensitive to energy and kept trying to get their mouths close to the location of the magic pearl, swimming happily around the Magic Tide Clam.

At this moment, the Magic Tide Clam, feeling that it had regained its freedom, finally stopped closing up and opened its shell, swimming happily towards the depths of the reservoir.

Seeing its open shell and the tender clam meat inside, Su Li instantly understood why there were legends of clam maidens. It really did look like one. The ancients must have seen this scene.

Su Li couldn't help but smile, feeling good. He turned to Laun and asked, "Was the harvesting of this Magic Tide Clam smooth?"

Laun smiled and nodded, saying, "Very smooth. Thanks to your precise orders, Lord, the sea women saw this huge clam as soon as they went into the water and worked together to pull it up. They pulled the rope at the same time, and the fishermen on the boat thought they had encountered some danger underwater. But in the end, it was thrilling but safe, and no one was injured. We successfully brought back this huge clam."

This result was even more perfect than Su Li had expected! Before they started, he and Grand Chancellor Laun had thought that several sea women might die underwater. The territory was truly prepared to spare no expense.

But now, no casualties were the best possible outcome.

Su Li continued walking along the reservoir, asking, "Do you have a clear idea of how many fish are in the reservoir now?"

Vandal followed behind Su Li, immediately answering, "Our fishermen have had six rich harvests, and have cumulatively released more than four thousand fish into the reservoir. Calculating at three to four pounds per fish, that's more than ten thousand pounds of fish meat."

These were all food reserves. As the population of the territory and the number of slaves increased, the consumption of food would increase in the future.

Today and tomorrow would bring an increase in the number of slaves. An extra hundred slaves would consume 6,000 pounds of food a month, and two hundred slaves would be enough to consume all of this fish meat.

There was no way around it. The territory didn't have a large amount of grain right now, and the slaves were eating meat hunted and berries gathered.

In other territories, it was considered generous if slaves could eat 7.5 pounds of meat a month.

But in Blackwood Territory, it was rare for slaves to eat 7.5 pounds of grain and vegetables a month.

This wasn't actually a good dietary ratio. Various fibers contained in plants couldn't be produced by humans and animals themselves. So a person could survive by only eating coarse grains and vegetables, but they couldn't survive by only eating meat. If they didn't supplement any plant fiber for a week, then their body would basically have problems. That's why even cats and tigers sometimes eat grass.

The slaves of Blackwood Territory were also eating wild grass and drinking wild vegetable soup in addition to eating meat.

Currently, the slaves were able to maintain their living needs by relying on a mixture of wild vegetables and hunting.

But Su Li didn't take it lightly, and instructed Laun, "Having food in hand means peace of mind. Let the ogre engineering team continue to expand this reservoir. This concerns both our fishing and agriculture. We can continue to dig a new reservoir next to this one to store water. After it's built, we'll open a gap in the middle of this reservoir."

Laun quickly agreed, saying, "We are already preparing for this. We plan to connect this area with a shallow bay in the northeast and carry out land reclamation. If all goes well, we can increase the irrigation area of the reservoir to more than a dozen imperial miles in a short period of time."

"Take me to see it." Hearing about such a large project, Su Li was immediately excited.

Water conservancy, dam construction, and land reclamation were in Su Li's genes.

At the thought of being able to build a large-scale water conservancy project to irrigate dozens or hundreds of acres of fertile land, he felt full of energy, completely different from his state of going to work as if going to a grave.

Laun immediately had a servant bring over a horse and led Su Li eastward at a gallop for four or five miles.

At this time, they had already left the cultivated farmland area and the abandoned dam built by the previous lord. Ahead was a prairie shallow bay, with a large amount of wetlands in a state of waterlogging.

In fact, this was the normal state of the grassland. Many areas had large swamps and shallows in areas that had not been reclaimed into farmland. Moreover, the grassland looked flat from a distance, but in fact, there were a large number of undulating mounds and depressions up close.

Laun pointed to the shallows ahead and said, "Lord, this is the area that the previous lord didn't have time to develop. Don't look at the large amount of silt and swamp here now, it's actually the next area most suitable for us to reclaim."

"I discussed it with the Minister of Agriculture, and we plan to build a dam on the high ground of the shallows to form a reservoir. Then, we'll set up drainage ditches in these lower shallows under the dam to drain the accumulated water. We'll take advantage of the summer to dry out the accumulated water and make the land suitable for cultivation. The reservoir formed above the dam can accumulate rainwater and snowmelt for irrigation during the dry season."

Su Li nodded slightly. In fact, the smooth development during his month in office was largely due to the legacy of the previous lord.

The previous lord had built a water conservancy facility east of the farmland, and the embankment blocked the rainwater that spread from the shallows during the rainy season.

Without this embankment, the 1,200 acres of farmland he had worked so hard to plant would have been directly flooded by the rainy season.

But the area reclaimed by the previous lord was basically developed to the limit by Su Li. To continue expanding the cultivated area, he needed to have the spirit of pioneering and enterprising.

Su Li was very satisfied with Laun and Vandal's idea, saying, "Your measures adapted to local conditions are very good. Let's implement it like this. We'll build a dam on the high ground of the shallows first to increase the area of the reservoir. It's already late spring, and the summer rainy season is coming soon. If we don't store water, not to mention reclaiming new fields, our cultivated farmland may be destroyed."

The previous lord's water conservancy facilities were basically all destroyed. Instead of repairing the small embankment, Su Li might as well take advantage of the turn of spring and summer to pick up a larger dam and open up a fertile area of dozens of miles.

Lord was ambitious and supported his career. Laun was of course excited, but he couldn't help but frown slightly, saying, "But there's also a problem with this project, that is, we lack construction personnel, both experienced dwarf engineers and a large number of ogre workers. If we could have a construction team of a hundred ogres, that would be at least equivalent to one or two thousand of our human workers."

This was indeed a problem. Su Li thought for a while and said, "The project will proceed as you envisioned it. Since we're going to do it, we might as well do it in a big way and create a grand undertaking. Don't be petty and make changes to the expansion before the project is over. I'll figure out the manpower problem."

As he was speaking, a knight galloped up and reported to Su Li, "Lord, Knight Frederick has asked me to report to you his victory. He has successfully destroyed a goblin camp below Moonlight Heights, capturing a total of 23 dwarves, halflings, and human women. In addition, we successfully found the shepherd tribe. They submitted to our powerful force and are willing to submit to you as loyal subjects. We found 35 nomads in their tribe, as well as 3 horses and more than 200 sheep."

Su Li instantly smiled: "Isn't that where the labor force comes from?"

Today, the addition of various bandits, prisoners, and shepherds had added up to a hundred people to the territory!

If he added the population of the halfling territory and the Wolfgang farm, the population of Blackwood Territory now exceeded 600 people.

This was already three times the size of the 50 knights and a squadron of armed attendants when Su Li set out.

Although the pressure on food had increased a lot, 600 people would consume 3,000 pounds of food a day without doing anything, but the speed of development in the territory would inevitably increase.

Su Li then said to Laun, "Leave the work of the pasture mainly to the shepherds. The remaining manpower, except for the necessary work, will be put into farming and water conservancy. I expect that by summer, this dam and reservoir can take initial shape."

The focus of the territory's work was arranged. Over the next week, the territory was steadily advancing in this direction.

With the increase in slave manpower, the dam of the water conservancy project was being built and lengthened at a rate visible to the naked eye every day.

The increased slave manpower mainly came from the bandit groups in the forest. Within seven days, four bandit groups had come to the Blackwood Territory and were found and successfully defeated by Su Li.

According to the confessions of the prisoners, the forest was very uneasy now. In addition to the rampaging centaur tribe wreaking havoc everywhere, the powerful Goblin Broken Toe tribe was also rising. The outer area west of the Blood Pine Forest was in turmoil.

The bandit groups had already fled, wanting to launch a wave of looting around the area during the rainy season. It was said that a castle of an unlucky territory had already been breached by a bandit group. A pioneering lord only had a few knights and a dozen attendants, and a little carelessness would allow these bandit groups with dozens of people to succeed in a sneak attack.

Of course, thanks to the assistance of the daily intelligence system, this looting by the bandit groups had become the biggest opportunity for Blackwood Territory to grow.

These four bandit groups had more than seventy people, and the smaller ones had more than twenty people. In addition to the nearly fifty people killed, the remaining one hundred and fifty bandits all became Su Li's prisoners.

This not only increased his number of slaves, but also greatly enhanced his military strength.

Because he obtained three formal knights, five trainee knights, and an elite knight named Beastslayer Gerold!