Lord of Rot

Leech rubbed the paper. It was a bit thick.

Just a little thinner than parchment.

The young maids’ craftsmanship left him a little exasperated. Making thin, soft paper would require a great deal of practice, and their tools would have to be upgraded. Even so, this thick paper was incomparably cheaper than parchment or cloth scraps.

He picked up his pen and wrote a few block characters on the paper.

”Porcupine Territory Population and Occupational Planning”

The population was over two thousand. Two to three hundred were commoners and Soldiers, and the rest were all slaves.

The ratio was fairly normal. Some minor lords didn’t even want commoners, only serfs who could farm the land and generate more tax revenue. How to raise taxes and line their pockets with more Silver Moons and Jinri—that was all these lords ever thought about.

Minor nobles thought about how to squeeze their own people dry, while major nobles schemed to plunder the wealth of other territories.

”The slaves who came to Porcupine Territory earlier will all be converted to serfs and put to work reclaiming and farming the land. The area upstream along the river is fairly level.”

He put down his pen and took out the development plan for ”Porcupine Territory: Phase Three.”

With the population having doubled, the previous construction plan would have to be scrapped.

Maitian Village, which was right next to the castle, would need to be relocated. He planned to create a commercial and entertainment district with the castle at its center, which meant farming in Maitian Village would eventually have to stop.

However, there was no need to relocate them just yet. That was farmland allocated to the commoners; arbitrarily reclaiming it and forcing them to clear new land would surely cause discontent.

’Let them farm it for another year. We’ll focus on development and revisit this later.’

The specific agricultural plan couldn’t be decided with a single decree, but the importance of developing agriculture was beyond question. People needed to be fed, after all. A pity the weather was currently too hot to plant potatoes.

Leech then pulled out the Phase One plan. Comparing the simple diagrams made it starkly clear just how rapidly Porcupine Territory had developed in the last six months or so. He had transmigrated here last autumn, and it was now mid-August in the summer. The population had swelled from just over two hundred to more than two thousand, though they were all slaves acquired from the outside.

The people were well-fed and had jobs, even if he was personally footing the bill to support them all.

’But what did that matter? The initial investment was essential!’

’Money that just sits in your hand isn’t really yours.’

It was just that now, he had to change this model of the lord personally bankrolling everyone. There were simply too many people, and he was starting to feel the strain.

For the Phase Four plan, he provisionally designated a large swath of land for farming.

”We can build houses directly on that uneven land southeast of Livestock Village.”

He’d plan a residential district outright, settling people in batches into ”human pens.” If not for the difficulty and speed of construction, he would have had them all live in ”pigeon coops” several or even a dozen stories high to save land.

Still, he had a humane side. Porcupine Territory had plenty of unused land anyway, so they could afford to build slowly.

If other lords saw Porcupine Territory constantly building and tearing down houses, they would definitely think Leech had a screw loose.

’Does he have more money than sense?’

Leech could only call them short-sighted. Building houses didn’t just give the residents a sense of well-being and boost their work ethic; it also simplified management and planning. Most importantly, it temporarily solved the unemployment problem.

In its current undeveloped state, Porcupine Territory had little use for much of its labor force beyond construction and farming. Therefore, creating jobs for some of these people was crucial.

They could build houses and roads at a slower pace, gradually assigning people to other tasks to ensure stable development.

The sailors and fish-farmers hired from Waterfall Land could be used to expand another kind of aquaculture. You live by the sea, you eat from the sea. How could Leech possibly forget about Pigtail Bay, his greatest asset?

He took another piece of paper and began to write, this time in the Lu Leiyi common tongue.

He included drawings and annotations as well.

A heavy plow, fitted with a moldboard for turning the soil. A plowshare would be fixed horizontally on it, with a coulter mounted in front of the plowshare to facilitate cutting into the earth and controlling the furrow’s direction. It could even be fitted with wheels.

”Draft horses or oxen could be used to pull it.”

Back when they were making the light plows, Leech had already noticed how difficult farming was for the peasants. They had to stomp on the plow, using their body weight to force it into the ground, and had to go over the fields repeatedly to loosen the soil. The inefficiency was staggering.

Additionally, there was the port construction plan, but that would have to wait until he had a chance to speak with Captain Piri. There was no rush on that front for now.

Once he’d written a rough draft, he rolled the paper into a tube and tossed it into a cabinet.

It wouldn’t matter if someone came in and rummaged around. They were just development plans. He wrote his real secrets in block characters. Even a true Divine Favored couldn’t possibly decipher a written language from a completely different world.

’Better than any encryption.’

He stood, stretched, and walked out of his study.

The moment he pulled the door open, he heard the young maids chatting, ”Oh! So, you’re saying that after Simon is gone, Hayfork might be the new butler?”

Little Eyes was already starting to pick up her mother’s conversational habits—the exaggerated gestures and the way she started every sentence with ”Oh!”

’The castle’s etiquette lessons hadn’t changed her much. Looks like I’ll need to limit her trips home, lest she be further influenced.’

Wineglass nodded. ”Hayfork gets along with us. He definitely wouldn’t always be finding fault with us.”

The door opened with a CREAK.

”My Lord!”

Hearing the door, they immediately fell silent.

Leech nodded but didn’t say anything more.

’Fire Simon? No, no, no. Absolutely not.’

’Simon wasn’t loyal, but I was injured and on the brink of death back then. There was nothing he could do... right. Those are just excuses. To be honest, having a disloyal subordinate pisses me off, but I have to keep Simon around.’