Urban Sims

Chapter 45 Actual Combat
Soon after the beginning of spring, Solo and other traveling merchants entrusted by Zhou Ming sold thousands of tons of grain from Grandland to the Iron Fort Kingdom in the south, and returned with many iron ingots one after another.

These iron ingots, about 5000 pieces (1 piece 10kg), can be used to make 3000 heavy plowshares, or 2 spearheads, or 20 arrowheads, or 100 pairs of iron armor.

The amount of these iron ingots seems to be very impressive, but considering the results of a year of hard work, I only got five tons of iron ingots, and an average of 1000 tons of grain = 1 ton of iron. This exchange ratio, Zhou Ming I'm really speechless.

Of course, if you buy it within the Iron Castle Kingdom, you will definitely not need thousands of tons of grain to buy a ton of iron ingots, and you can pay at most one or two hundred tons.

The real big consumption was the "tolls" collected by various lords when Solo and other traveling merchants passed through various territories. This brought huge additional expenses to Zhou Ming's cost of buying iron ingots.

"When the defense forces of Granland are trained, we must clean up these lords who charge fees! It is best to go to the Kingdom of Iron Castle to occupy a mine and start a furnace to make steel by yourself, and the entire amount will be tens of thousands of tons a year. Steel, not afraid of those lord kings."

However, compared to this long-term plan, what Zhou Ming urgently needs to do now is to quickly turn these iron ingots into weapons, and fully arm the 180-strong Garland defense force.

Midsummer and June are the seasons when animals breed and prey are fat.

Baron Garcia of Bordeaux in the west sent a knight to Grandland, saying that the prey in his territory was not as good as Grandland, and he wanted to come to the forest on the side of Grandland to hunt for a while, until there were enough prey. After that, I went back to Boduoling and asked Lord Downey if he had any questions?
"Garcia, you old bastard! You want to take advantage of Gran's leader again. You are not allowed to fight. The prey of Gran's collar belongs only to Gran's collar, and you are not allowed to kill any of them!"

Downey yelled at the knight led by Bodo, and wanted to use the strongest stance to defend the interests and dignity of Granland.

"Baron Downey, so you're planning to start a war with us Bodoland? I seem to see that you don't seem to have any knights around you? You also trained a group of farmers outside the castle. You don't mean to think, rely on Are these farmers going to defend your game?"

The knight said in a triumphant tone, as if asking, little guy, do you dare to break your wrist with Baron Garcia?

"you--"

Donnie stood up angrily, pointed at him for a while, but couldn't say anything harsh.

That's right, if the farmers outside the castle had been trained for less than half a year to fight Baron Garcia's cavaliers, they would probably lose a lot, right?

He also complained about Zhou Ming, and Ryan really did. He insisted on training some kind of defense force and recruiting a few knights to Doriso, otherwise how could he be reduced to the point of being ridden on his head to shit and piss?
"Donnie, don't be angry, calm down, and leave this matter to me."

Zhou Ming comforted Downey for a while, and said to the knight below: "This honorable Mr. Knight, Mr. Downey agrees that Baron Garcia is hunting in the forest of Glanland. I wish him a happy hunting. be safe."

"Lian, you—"

Downey stared at Zhou Ming, and even wanted to ask him loudly why he was so weak. At most, he could only kill a few people. There are so many people in Granland, so what if dozens of people die?The dignity and decency of Grandland was lost, and from now on, he would always be a weak and coward in the eyes of others.

But seeing Zhou Ming winking at him continuously, as if he still had something to say to him, he had no choice but to hold back his attack. After the knight laughed and left the living room, he said with a cold face: "Lian, You just embarrassed me, Grandling, what else do you have to explain to me now?"

"Sit down first, Donnie. Baron Garcia just wants to kill a few prey from Granland. Just give them. Compared with the lives they are about to lose, it's better to give them a little compensation."

Zhou Ming helped Downey back to his seat, and whispered a plan in his ear in a cold tone.

"Okay! Just do as you said! Hmph, Garcia, you bastard, take your prey to hell with you!" The excited Donnie seemed to have seen that Baron Garcia died. The kind of tragedy in the pit.

……

The next day, Zhou Ming dragged all the defense forces who had been doing basic training to the forest on the west side of the territory. Under the guidance of a dozen veteran thieves who dug holes and buried people, Zhou Ming set up the defense force in less than two days. Set up a nearly perfect trap and wait for the prey to take the bait.

Not long after, Baron Garcia took more than a dozen of his knights and ran into the forest of Grandland. The autumn wind for the prey was coming. Jumping and fleeing inside, he suddenly sighed with emotion, "If you want to talk about prey, there are really a lot of prey here, and I can't even see the bigger wild boars in my territory."

Suddenly, Baron Garcia's eyes lit up, elk, there is a rare elk in front of him.

Be sure to capture it!
Baron Garcia chased after him with his troops.

However, when chasing the elk and passing through a steep canyon on both sides, the ground in front suddenly sank down, and Baron Garcia, who rushed to the front, fell into the pit with his man and horse.

"No, there are traps!"

"Save the baron quickly!"

"Not good! A lot of big logs rolled down the mountain."

"Ah!" A knight suddenly fell down covering his face, and a poisonous arrow was deeply inserted into his eye socket.

After a while, Baron Garcia and his dozen or so knights suffered heavy casualties in an instant under the heavy blows of the big pit trap on the ground, the thick logs rolling down the mountain, and the densely shot poisoned crossbow bolts.

Even if the three or four knights who didn't die immediately, under the heavy siege of the strong net, lime and mace, they quickly turned into corpses.

Baron Garcia, the lord of Bodo, was attacked by thieves in the wild and killed all of them, which made the already famous "Alibaba Thieves Group" more famous. Earl Lausitz issued a reward order of [-] rewards for his head, hoping that some A hero in the rivers and lakes, who can wipe out this gang of thieves who have been entrenched in Ross for a long time, and return Ross to a stable and peaceful place.

However, this group of thieves came and went without a trace, and they did things cleanly without leaving anyone alive. They couldn't catch their traces, so they could only issue a warning, urging those barons who like to go hunting not to go hunting, and must pay attention to safety in the wild .

After this incident, Granling experienced a two-year period of steady development.

But in the third year, Baron Sean of Nathan Land, after not seeing his daughter and granddaughter for three consecutive years, finally sent someone to Grand Land to find out that his daughter and granddaughter had been infected with the "plague" for a long time. The news of his unfortunate death made him very sad and shocked immediately, and he also noticed something was wrong. After a secret investigation, he came to an angry conclusion.

His daughter, son-in-law, and two lovely granddaughters, most likely, all died of Baron Downey's shameful conspiracy!
Faced with repeated questions from the envoys sent by Baron Sean, Downey denied it categorically, claiming that there was absolutely no such thing!Baron Sean naturally didn't believe it, and said that he would report this matter to Earl Lausitz, prosecute him for murder in the earl's court, and demand that the earl deprive him of his territory and title, hang him, and avenge his daughter and son-in-law's family!
When the matter came to this point, Downey discussed with Zhou Ming, and decided not to do anything, and simply killed Baron Sean, so as to avoid future troubles.

The next day, early in the morning.

In the past few years, the Ali Baba bandit group, which has expanded to more than 300 people through recruitment, set out first and divided into ten small teams. They burned, killed and looted everywhere in Nathan's territory, doing all kinds of evil, which caused Nathan's knights to encircle and suppress them. A dozen knights, how could they be opponents of cunning thieves who outnumbered them by more than 30 times? After losing half of the knights in the field battle, the remaining six knights had to hide in the castle of Nathanland, with the city gate closed. I dare not take half a step.

The thieves tried to attack a few times, and after leaving behind a few corpses, they were helpless to take this tall castle and sighed.

Just at this time, Zhou Ming brought his Gerald defense force, whose number had expanded to 600, over, and it took only half a day to break down the castle.

The method Zhou Ming adopted was very simple and rude. He piled up the 60 catties of black gunpowder that he had accumulated and prepared over the past few years at the gate of the city, then sealed the back with dense earth and rocks, and then detonated the heavy city gate.

After the castle was captured, the robbers were ordered to kill all Baron Sean's family. The remaining servants in the castle and the more than 2000 people in the entire Nathan Land, as long as they had healthy hands and feet, were all moved to various major cities in the Grand Land. In the manor and workshop, they serve as slave labor for Granland.

Yes, Zhou Ming found that honest development is really too slow. The population growth rate is only 6% a year. It will take until the year of the monkey to build Granland into a super territory with a population of more than 10 and more than 5000 soldiers. I am afraid that only crazy plundering is the fastest effective.

Not only that, Zhou Ming is not going to let Earl Lausitz take back this piece of land when Nathan takes it back. As long as Earl Lausitz sends a baron over, he will let the thieves intercept one, so that this place, on the surface, is a piece of land occupied by thieves. It is a chaotic place, but secretly, it still accepts the management and control of Granland.

At this time, Earl Lausitz finally realized the seriousness of the problem. In the Earl of Rhodes, within a few years, one heir to the baron and two barons died at the hands of thieves. It has completely fallen. If this gang of thieves in the territory is not wiped out, there will never be a day of peace in Earl Ross' territory!

After the lord's call was issued, the fourteen barons in the Earl of Ross responded to the call one after another, and within half a month, they assembled a team of 130 knights (including ten knights pretended to be by Granland thieves) , 300 mercenaries, and more than 3000 farmers (mixed with 600 Glenland defense forces), a huge encirclement and suppression force went straight to the Nathan Territory where the thieves were entrenched. Rogue, completely smashed to pieces!

However, on the night when this huge encirclement and suppression force set up camp, under the control of Gran's leader, they first poisoned a large number of knights and mercenaries with more than a dozen barrels of poisoned wine, and then burned them all to death. Gathering all the food, grass and horses, while fleeing in chaos, they fell into a large number of traps set by the thieves, and the entire encirclement and suppression force completely fell apart in less than a day.

Except for one baron who escaped by chance, twelve lords, including Count Lausitz and eleven barons, all died in the chaos.

The Earl of Rhodes fell into unprecedented leaderless and extreme panic.

In this extremely chaotic situation, Zhou Ming desperately searched for all the population and resources in Earl of Ross's territory. It didn't take long for the population of Granland to break through the 2 mark. The number of soldiers has also reached the minimum requirement for forming an army that he expected, that is, 1200 people.

(End of this chapter)