Chapter 50

“Village chief, a cavalry troop has made their way inside. You should run away now!”

The people of the Level 2 village were on tenterhooks as the light cavalry of Xia Town breached the village gates by force and the silver-level commander collapsed under the enemy’s knife.

The light cavalry of Xia Town was heading straight for the office of the Level 2 Village’s feudal lord, the village chief having fled amidst the chaos.

Hua Mulan had dismounted her horse and led her soldiers to destroy the stone tablet of the Level 2 village.

The destruction of the stone tablet meant that this village would become desolate very soon.

“Get all the people back to Xia Town.”

Hua Mulan chased the several hundred villagers of the village toward Xia Town, accompanied by her cavalry.

Xia Town needed to increase its population to get an upgrade and Hua Mulan’s mission was to kidnap people from all over the place, giving the population of Xia Town a boost.

They had been short on military forces in the past, so all Chu Tian could do was wait for refugees to slowly stream into his village. After being upgraded to a town, the rules of the game had changed, and it was clearly much faster to plunder nearby villages for people than to passively wait for refugees to show up.

This wasn’t just the case in the Eastern Han alone. The great feudal lords in other civilizations also devoured small feudal lords in their vicinity in the same manner.

The strong preyed on the weak. It was the infallible law of Feudal Lords.

The village chief, who had just barely escaped the village by climbing over the wooden palisade, was in shabby shape. Wretched, he watched the cavalry who had invaded his village out of nowhere leave after ransacking the place and taking people and bullion.

“I can’t believe that the village that I went to great lengths to develop was just destroyed. Who on earth are these cavalrymen?”

The village chief couldn’t help but shiver when he recalled how his hero had been killed by the opponent’s hero with just a few strikes.

The opponent left no mercy, their goal very clear- destroy the village and seize the people.

Ordinary horse thieves would not have taken the villagers away. Hence, there was only one explanation left: there was a big feudal lord behind Hua Mulan, who was manipulating the entire situation.

Xia Town was only 50 kilometers from Langya City, the villages it plundered also located near Langya City.

With that, the tale of a cruel, heartless female butcher spread around Langya City.

It was said that a female butcher who led a troop of ferocious, hideous cavalrymen was active in the South of Langya, having destroyed 81 villages altogether. The free players of Langya City no longer had the courage to venture into the South of Langya City.

In fact, Hua Mulan did not destroy 81 villages, simply because there weren’t that many villages around Xia Town to begin with. Hua Mulan had devastated eight villages in total and had captured people from 916 households, which came to a total of 4,713 people.

The population of those eight villages were shifted to Xia Town at once. Xia Town could not accommodate that many people, so some of them were moved to Yunlai Village, Xiaozhu Village and Shangbi Village.

The 4000-people population requirement for upgrading Xia Town to a Level 2 town had been achieved in such a short time.

“Hua Mulan is very capable.”

Chu Tian only gave one command to Hua Mulan, and she completed the mission in a clean-cut manner.

Now that the population requirement had been fulfilled, there was the prosperity level requirement to deal with.

The level of prosperity referred to the overall prosperity of the territory. A Level 1 town with four client villages required a prosperity level of 3000, while the prosperity level of the town itself had to reach 1200.

There were many methods through which the prosperity level could be enhanced. One of those was to increase the population. Apart from that, it could be enhanced by developing the economy, building more constructions, or raising the status of the constructions in the town.

Chu Tian retrieved the bullion robbed from Lingyan Town and the other eight villages, using them to purchase construction drawings and resources. Then he launched a grand-scale construction in Xia Town.

In order to personally supervise the burgeoning of Xia Town, Chu Tian appointed Liu Sandao to keep Lingyan Town suppressed with the aid of a small troop, while he took the captives back to Xia Town and imprisoned them.

The purpose of the grand-scale construction wasn’t just to enhance the prosperity level, but to raise the employment rate of the citizens of Xia Town too.

The population of Xia Town had increased from 2000 to 5000 in such a short period of time. Elder Li was already in a great bustle due to allocating the new citizens, let alone contending with the employment issues present.

Back then, Xia Town used to enlarge its population by attracting refugees on a small scale, so the number of new citizens was manageable, and their dwellings and jobs could be arranged with ease. However, the population of Xia Town had doubled overnight, which meant that they had to deal with twice as many homes and jobs as before.

Capturing people from villages also had an adverse effect- popular sentiment and public security had declined marginally.

These newcomers had only lost their homes because Hua Mulan destroyed their villages with her cavalry, so they were strongly against assimilating into Xia Town and its community.

Try to imagine that you are living happy lives on your own when a cavalry suddenly dragged you over to a new place, and you had to start everything all over again. You would surely be displeased.

The popular sentiment of Xia Town had dropped to 55 and public security to 51, which meant upheavals and riots could occur at any time.

The reason riots had not happened yet was probably because they feared Hua Mulan’s power and the military strength of Xia Town, as well as the supervision of the original citizens.

However, if Xia Town was under siege by enemies, Chu Tian thought that these newcomers had a 90% chance of rioting.

The methods of raising popular sentiment were simple too. First, prepare dwellings and jobs for them. Second, implement policies that were beneficial to recovering popular sentiment. Lastly, recover it over time. They were humans after all, with a tendency to forget pain once their wounds healed.

The commerce center of Xiaozhu Village had established branches in Xia Town to enhance the prosperity level of Xia Town. Chu Tian could go straight to the commerce center if he wanted to consign them to purchase construction drawings from Langya City.

He upgraded resources such as farmlands, minelands, stone quarries, logging lands, and so on to Level 3, and then upgraded economical constructions like the celadon factories, orchards, hoggeries, chicken farms, fishponds, and so on.

He also upgraded military constructions including the arsenals, the Level 3 drill ground (experience gained from training the army), the Level 3 infantry camp, the Level 2 navy camp, and so on. And finally, cultural constructions like private schools and Tudi temples…

All of Xia Town had transformed into a large-scale construction site.

The residences of several hundred households and a few dozen large buildings were being expanded. Carpenters, masons, and refugees were everywhere.

The only minister of internal affairs, Li Kui, had become very occupied recently. He was busy distributing the newly cultivated lands to the newcomers.

The “each farmer has his own land” policy had been tremendously useful in recovering the popular sentiment, which had increased from 55 to 61.

While Xia Town was caught up in its grand-scale construction, the busy sowing season in early October had also arrived. The farmers who participated in the grand-scale construction were forced to leave the construction site and return to their farmlands in order to sow.

Chu Tian was in a battered state because there were just too many things to deal with. Controlling Lingyan Town, upgrading constructions, building new constructions, supervising farmers in sowing, managing the client villages…

The client villages also encountered the problem of declining popular sentiment, which was due to the influx of refugees into the population.

If the matter wasn’t properly handled, the villagers of the client villages would hold the village chief hostage and proclaim the slogan, “generals and dukes were not born more noble than us”.

These problems belonged to internal affairs. In preparation for the first historical warfare, Chu Tian even had to take the training of troops into consideration.

Recruiting soldiers and training soldiers were two very different concepts.

The initial status of the recruited soldiers was Level 10, but they could be trained to a maximum of Level 100. That was the difference between new soldiers and experienced veterans.

Chu Tian came to Hua Mulan’s place, the sound of running water coming from inside. When Hua Mulan came out, her long hair damp, it was obvious she had just come out of the shower.

She seemed a little anxious when she saw Chu Tian, quickly drying her hair with a towel. “Master, you could have just sent someone to summon me if you need to talk.”

“I am going to build a small troop of a hundred light cavalrymen, and the training of the light cavalry will be assigned to you. Two months from now, the average status of this cavalry has to reach Level 35.”