60 Cotton, You Idiot (2)
Of course, Mu Qing Lang cannot say it this way towards the satyr. Out of his kindness, Mu Qing Lang decided to try his luck to obtain more information about the known cotton plant.
The satyr was also too straightforward and took out a few kinds of item from his backpack. In an exchange with Mu Qing Lang, the satyr took out a smaller sack holding about a hundred cotton seeds, another holding a pair of horns, and the last has some leaves inside them.
In return for his kindness, Mu Qing Lang gave a Healing Ointment, Spiritual Ointment, and ten Recovery Ointments to the satyr to bring back. Due to satyr's solitary nature, they prefer living with a small group instead of making their own villages.
At night, after the busy day of working, Mu Qing Lang tasted the first experience of exhausting himself completely from a day full of work. Although the business in Fengbu Exchange Store is good, they only cover a few products at most due to the limitation forced on themselves.
As an example, the orc villages will never sell an entire boar as their numbers came from those successfully evolve into orcs during adulthood. This cause the supply of meat from them to be inconsistent. That was not healthy for a business that tries to promise the availability of a product at any time possible.
Furthermore, to expand and continue with the business, Mu Qing Lang must put this "Sucking the river dry for the sake of my farm's irrigation" should not be practiced at all. If the surrounding village had been forced to poverty due to trading with him, what kind of benefit he gave to the others?
Worst case that might happen, the villages that accepted his effort to introduces currency into their life may be backfired. Eastern Changzhou will be blamed for exploiting them using tricks and deceit, cheating their wealth away for the sake of contributing to Eastern Changzhou's own growth.
Small case, he will only get blamed and lost a partnership or two, but worst case scenario, they might gang together for the sake of bringing Eastern Changzhou to destruction.
Reason?
Who needs a reason to bring down somebody else?
Day Sixty-Three...
Four...
Five...
Six...
Seven...
Day Sixty-Eight.
Seven days passed very quickly. By helping Fengbu and himself in handling the businesses, Mu Qing Lang understands the importance of working in a team much better. Except processing multiple products for the daily exchange, Mu Qing Lang also has to fill their stores with sufficient stocks for when he was away.
The business also helps Mu Qing Lang arranged and train two individuals to be given to Fengbu when he's back. A male and a female, he named them Fengyi and Fengyue for the sake of making it easier to remember.
Also, in these seven days, two more goblin child is born. Unfortunately, their talent was too low to be given a name. But that was the only disappointment. Altogether, twenty-two goblins evolved in this period.
Fourteen of them became Hobgoblins, five into Goblin Gatherers, and three into Dark Goblins. In total, 46 out of 100 goblins had evolved, leaving 54 of them remained. Based on how the Recovery Ointment program proceeds, it might take two more weeks to fully develops everyone.
Meanwhile, the Tiezu-Orcs had explosive growth. 466 Iron Skin Boars successfully went through their adulthood, with 450 of them as Young Orcs and 16 as Strong Orcs. This kind of growth can be said to be ridiculously overpowered amongst the Orcs-Village.
As one of the three largest Orc Tribes in Yan Emperor Grassland, the previously glorious Tiezu-Orcs only have three High-Orcs in their rank, along with ten Strong-Orcs and over two thousand Young-Orcs.
Compared to their current status of two High-Orcs, eighteen Strong-Orcs and nine-hundred and eighty Young-Orcs, they're not too far apart. It might take them another twenty to thirty days to had three to four batches of adulthood to reach their previous number, but it will not be any weaker than the other three tribes.
After going out for so many days, Fengbu, Ka-Ba, and Han Yu finally completed their mission and came back.
Starting with Fengbu, his mission to convince the people from Mushan Village to cooperate with them went off very well.
One hundred strong male followed the trio back to Eastern Changzhou. Also within the group is two survivors that explored the cave before and had an idea on how it expands inwards.
Since the employment promised them both food and shelter for the contracted period, Mu Qing Lang made the contract one steps further to expand their knowledge in regards to education. With Xiao Qing here helping, Mu Qing Lang may teach him first on how to count before he explained to the others.
With all of them knows how to count, everyone will be trained on how to calculate their contribution. Everyone would be given with a bamboo stick written with a number on top. Through this bamboo stick, food and bed can be claimed.
As for the record of attendance, Xiao Qing will be the one responsible. Their contribution will be recorded before allowed to enter the city. And to help in handling the measuring task better, Bamboo Basket of the same size will be distributed.
Each team will have two workers. The one hundred workers will be divided into fifty pairs to be guarded by a soldier from the first Changzhou Platoon.
After the preparation work like food, shelter, and bringing the worker to visit the Eastern Changzhou, Mu Qing Lang allowed Fengbu, Xiao Qing, Guan Yi, and Yulan to continue with their works,
Ka-Ba reported their expedition carefully, along with what happened on their way to Wenchao Village. On their way, Ka-Ba encountered two smaller groups of Young-Orcs. He warned them to leave the trading path open for access but was rejected harshly.
Given no choice to choose, Ka-Ba launched an attack towards the hundred Young-Orcs. Against the group of militia lack of training, Ka-Ba's half platoon is capable of one against three opponents. The size double what Ka-Ba has in his command was nothing but a paper tiger that torn into pieces easily.
But his confidence made him acts recklessly. Instead of killing all of them in one battle, Ka-Ba allowed twenty-five Young-Orcs to return to their village naked. The provocation leads to an attack of two-hundred and fifty militias towards Wenchao Village.
And in this battle, Ka-Ba won himself a winning point. Five squadrons split into three sections, two left, two right, with one in the center which is the Wenchao Village, behind the walls.
The moment two hundred and fifty Young-Orcs attacked, the left and right Squadron flanked them from two sides, causing a hefty amount of damage to their lack of training militias. It was almost no effort needed to destroy the pile of muscle-mass grouping up outside of the entrance to Wenchao Village.
Then, to a questionable decision, Ka-Ba ordered the people to open the village gate. The wide-open gate caused the Ashen-Orcs to question the reason behind this act, not knowing how to run from danger. That fight ends with a thorough slaughter with about one-fifth of their own people injured.
With the Recovery Ointment always by their side, it was applied for almost instant recovery. It did not take them to long to recover into a physically fit platoon once again.
After this battle, the name of Platoon Leader Ka-Ba and his Changzhou Platoon is going to be repeatedly spoken everywhere people go.
As for Han Yu, his accomplishment is nowhere lesser than Ka-Ba. Although there's less fighting against their opponents, he did recruit a total of 300 human settlers combined from the three villages, along with 150 immigrants from Goblin Tribe, and 100 from the less known Bronzeskin-Orc Tribe.
Only fifty when they departed, Han Yu returned with 600 immigrants altogether. This brings their number to 1,978 settlers living in the Eastern Changzhou. This is a piece of good news for Mu Qing Lang who has the intention to expand his reach further outside of the Chang Emperor Prairie.
Based on their total number after the six hundred additional immigrants, the Eastern Changzhou can be recognized as a [Large Village] which given to those with settlers between 1,500 to 2,500 headcounts.
If he can increase their number further to past 3,000 settlers, then it won't be difficult for the Eastern Changzhou to be conferred as a Half-Completed Town. Such a title can bring Mu Qing Lang multiple meaning as they continue to expand further.
It also means that he and the Eastern Changzhou are qualified to participate in the fight to rule the entire piece of land, known as Chang Emperor Prairie. Such is the minimal requirement for him to start his path to become one of the hegemons ruling over a small piece in the uncharted continent.
He was not the first, but he's not the weakest, Mu Qing Lang understands this simple matter of fact. After the meeting is over, he gave Ka-Ba the task to train the three hundred newly conscripted soldiers, while Han Yu will handle the security both inside and outside of the cave.
"Everyone should make your preparation tonight. I will meet all of you in the morning so we can make our way to the cave together." Mu Qing Lang ends their meeting with a simple sentence and lets the two platoon leaders excuse themselves.
With all of them left, another subordinate gave the door a few knocks before Mu Qing Lang approved him to come in.
"Master, is there anything you need from Xiao Qing?" the Goblin Teacher made his way over after he got the summon earlier while they were having their meeting.
"There's a hundred seeds here. The seed can be removed from the fluffy ball when bulb explodes. After you separate the seeds from the fluffy ball, continue to plant the tree for next harvest, and remove the wood because the plant will never continue to produce seeds."
"I will have other uses on the fluffy ball called cotton, as for the wood, I'll teach you how to make charcoal when I came back from the Yulan Mountain Forest." Mu Qing Lang instructed Xiao Qing on what to do before he leaves.
Thinking about what was describes at the information related to the cotton earlier, it made Mu Qing Lang get even more interested at them.
"Hahaha... Guncotton is never too much if you can make them."
