When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

The military judge was right; the fighting did indeed stop at night.

As if by agreement with the Holy Father, the rain, which had been falling all day, stopped almost at the exact moment the fighting ceased.

Not only did it stop, but the moon even came out in the evening.

The Besser Infantry Regiment was divided into three groups.

One group of wounded soldiers returned to Feldheim, one group of quartermasters stayed behind to salvage the Griffin cannons, and the rest followed the convoy to the temporary camp on the east bank of the Iron Rust River.

Inside the camp, warhorses were panting heavily, their skin and pupils twitching and reddening unnaturally.

This was a side effect of drinking the potion; for this battle, Andrei, the commander of the Iron Fist Battle Group stationed nearby, had put in every effort he could.

The Iron Fist Battle Group was the new army established by Molyatti in Hottam County, with mountain knights as the main force and officers, and Andrei as the battle group leader.

As for the other leader of the Holy Sun Army, Valentine Tyler is now the chief priest of the Hottam County area.

At this moment, Andrei had jumped from a Falange deserter to the battle group leader of the Iron Fist Battle Group, while the once high and mighty Redwood Duke was being led into this abandoned village hall in a sorry state.

The Redwood Duke was wearing a beaver fur robe, with a bruise on his forehead and a lot of dried blood in his nostrils.

When Andrei saw the Redwood Duke come in, he stepped forward with a smile and untied his ropes: "Duke, it's been three years. How have you been?"

The Redwood Duke's chiseled cheeks twitched, and his eyes almost popped out of their sockets: "I should have killed you directly back then."

"We are close friends who have been to the brothels together. How can you say such a thing?"

Back when Andrei committed the crime, it was the Redwood Duke, who was then the second son of a noble family, who let Andrei go.

After that, the Redwood Duke's elder brother died of illness.

Nearly fifty years old, he had almost become a senior officer, but he still chose to retire and go home to inherit his family business.

Now the two of them were reunited here, one a prisoner of war with a noble status, the other a commoner and a victor, which was truly ironic.

After untying the ropes, the Redwood Duke touched his head: "Your soldiers are as rude and impolite as you are. I have already surrendered, but they still insulted me."

"That was a body search to prevent you from carrying weapons."

"I already surrendered."

"There's nothing I can do about that. That's how it's written in the manual, and I can't change it," Andrei said, shrugging.

"You managed to catch me. A small skirmish, and you seized the opportunity to turn it into an annihilation battle." Rubbing his wrist, the Redwood Duke sighed, "If you could stay in Falange, you might even become a knight commander."

"I don't have noble status, how is that possible?" Andrei still had a smug smile on his face, "Here, I am a senior officer commanding four or five thousand people."

The Redwood Duke didn't speak, and after a long while, he continued, "I don't understand."

"Don't understand what?"

"Where did you get so many spare troops to surround me?" The Redwood Duke still couldn't figure it out.

"It's simple. Just pull out the garrison troops."

"Then wouldn't the garrison outposts be empty?"

"As long as I win against you, I can return the troops before the enemy discovers our weakness," Andrei said casually.

But someone like the Redwood Duke, who had commanded armies, knew how difficult this was.

He wrote more than a dozen letters asking for help, hoping that the nearby troops would come to the rescue.

They were much closer to the battlefield than Andrei, but the battle was over and they still hadn't appeared.

After holding it in for a long time, the Redwood Duke seemed to have lost all his strength: "You're really a genius, Andrei."

Andrei smiled slightly, but did not explain.

The genius was not him; he was just the user of this tool, not the creator.

"I still don't understand."

"You still don't understand what?"

"Why would a lawless, reckless genius bastard like you not go to Norn to become a prince, but stay in this small Thousand River Valley?"

When the Redwood Duke served in the Falange army in his early years, he was once Andrei's superior.

He both loved Andrei's ability to accurately seize opportunities and command large groups of troops.

And he hated his disobedience, always acting recklessly and disregarding military orders, not to mention the undisciplined soldiers under his command.

This Andrei was, at his core, a slippery realist.

In this Thousand River Valley Holy Alliance, a country full of idealism, he was clearly out of place.

"Have you read 'The Holy Path Salvation Training'?"

"You don't really believe in that so-called 'Holy Path Salvation Training', do you?" The Redwood Duke was shocked.

Andrei half sighed and half smiled: "I have memorized 'The Holy Path Salvation Training'. If you want me to act, I can be even more fanatical than a fanatic."

"Then... why? You have to know that Leia can't clean up the Thousand River Valley, and the Falange and Norn people will also clean it up," the Redwood Duke still frowned, "Since you don't believe in the Holy Path Sect, and the Holy Alliance obviously can't give you the status and honor of a lord, why are you still fighting for them?"

"Because there is no way out for lords."

Looking at the Redwood Duke's puzzled eyes, Andrei dragged a chair and sat opposite the Duke.

"Before forming the new army, I went to the Saint Danji War School for three months of training," Andrei looked up slightly, as if in recollection, "Once, that Holy Sun himself came to give us a lesson called 'Why Do We Expel Demons?'"

"I thought he was going to say some cliches about lords oppressing farmers, but what he said still remains fresh in my memory."

Sitting in front of the Redwood Duke, Andrei seemed to return to that class.

"...Lords, or rather landlords, do not work themselves. What they engage in is not agriculture, but rent collection, or even finance.

For landlords, they don't care about the harvest. Their only purpose is for the farmers to pay rent on time, and there is no intention or need to improve.

Like the Kush people, because their land has been greatly encroached upon, in order to maintain their livelihoods and kinship, they are willing to invest and improve the land.

Count Enrico is a typical example.

Generally speaking, whether it is a count, a knight, or even a slightly larger landlord, they do not care about the grain yield and agricultural situation.

Perhaps for them personally, this path is the most stable and suitable.

But for everyone, it is eternal stagnation. Do you know why?"

The Redwood Duke, like Andrei back then, asked the same question: "Why?"

"Do you know how many years it takes for a knight to recover the cost after occupying a piece of land through war?"

"Uh..." The Redwood Duke, who left all the family affairs to the housekeeper and only knew how to attend banquets and socialize, was naturally dumbfounded.

Andrei shook his head helplessly: "It only takes three years to recover the cost of a good field, and five to ten years for a poor field.

Based on the current tax rate, the annualized rate of a good field is more than 30%."

"Annualized rate? 30%?" One after another, Elvish words he had never heard before popped out of Andrei's mouth, causing the Redwood Duke's brain to overload.

"You can simply understand the annualized rate as how much the annual income has increased. Thirty percent is three tenths," Andrei picked up a branch and drew a few incomprehensible formulas in the sandbox.

"In other words, the lord's daily routine has become merging land, collecting rent to save money, launching wars, merging land..."

The more the Redwood Duke listened, the more he felt something was wrong: "What's wrong with that? Isn't that how it's been for thousands of years?"

"The problem lies here." Dropping the branch, Andrei wiped his hands, "The population is growing, but the land is limited. The precious metals and cheap grain from the royal court have also overwhelmed the grain market.

Knights and people are even more eager for land and money.

The empire is full of refugees, and they have to be suppressed from time to time.

It's like the lemmings that kill each other on the Roaring Corridor. If they don't kill each other, no one will survive.

"Only 5% of the empire's population takes 95% of the empire's wealth. What can they consume? How much can they consume?

The Holy Alliance reduced agricultural taxes and suppressed usury, spreading the money in the hands of lords and churches to most people.

With money in their hands, the consumption of the majority of civilians is a hundred or ten times that of that small group of people.

Only the consumption of the majority will create enough demand, and with demand, enough jobs will be created.

With jobs, workers and citizens will have something to do.

With work, they have money, and with money, they can buy grain, and then the money returns to the farmers.

Everyone gets what they want.

Therefore, the Holy Alliance wants to suppress all industries with annualized returns higher than industry, and the two thorns are land rent collection and usury.

This is entirely the result of reality and reason, not out of his personal preference."

Looking at the Redwood Duke's mouth, which was mumbling and unable to speak, Andrei patted him on the shoulder: "I don't know if you believe it, but I believe it."

Straightening up, Andrei looked directly into the Redwood Duke's eyes: "Lords are bound to be eliminated, and I have a feeling that the Thousand River Valley will definitely grow into a monster that will make the empire tremble in the future.

The phoenix will not fall on a dead branch. Although this is a new seedling, I believe it will be a towering tree."