Lord: Starting from the Pit-Dwelling Courtyard

Chapter 139 Development (Third Update)

Ron nodded after listening.

"Second is De Gea's territory, third is Haaland's territory, fourth is my Hall territory, and fifth is Padrick's territory."

Ron's lips twitched slightly after hearing this. He really didn't expect to be so unlucky, with his territory located right between the second and third princes.

"Tieling Town is the place I want to rebuild, not no man's land." Ron did not dismount. "You've made a mistake, but I can give you a choice."

"Submit or die?"

'

Amy never expected the lord to be so domineering and forceful from the start, but she still stood obediently to the side.

Matic looked at Ron.

"What if I refuse?"

Without saying a word, Leonardo da Vinci pinned the prisoner next to him to the ground.

"Then kill them all."

Matic glared angrily at Leonardo da Vinci: "Do you have any chivalry left?"

'

Leonardo da Vinci said with a disdainful look, "That thing doesn't work in the wasteland."

Ron took out a crystal pillar.

"Come here, infuse me with life force, just a little bit will do."

Under Killian's threatening gaze, Matic obediently did as he was told.

The crystal pillar lit up for 9 seconds.

Ron narrowed his eyes slightly. If he was properly trained, he would have a high chance of breaking through to become a Sky Knight. Moreover, he had also obtained a set of Xuan-grade Earth Shield Breathing Technique.

Others also took turns to do the test.

""

After the test, the first group of residents and convoys from the main city arrived, totaling over a thousand people and more than fifty oxcarts.

Seeing Adriano's army approaching, Matic's last hope was extinguished.

If the enemy only has thirty-odd people, the two hundred of them might have a chance to escape if they split up and break through; but if there are thousands of people, they simply cannot escape.

Of the more than two hundred people, more than one hundred were found to have the aptitude for knight training. Most of them only took one or two seconds to pass the aptitude test, while more than ten of the other forty people took four or five seconds.

This made Ron exclaim: As expected of a knight family, the members' overall talent is truly outstanding.

Those hundred-plus people with cultivation aptitude, even if they weren't particularly talented, could become qualified soldiers after training.

Ron carefully put away the list. These people would be the main force of the city guard. As for how many of them would become knights, that was up to fate.

Matic: "Lord Adrian, what is this?"

""

Ron was reluctant to kill such an excellent knight and tried to persuade him: "You did quite well in the knight training talent test. It would be a pity if you died here. If you are willing to submit, I will help you break through to become a Sky Knight and you can rebuild your territory in the future."

Matic's eyes lit up immediately. He never expected that Lord Ad would have such a good thing.

Ron's offer was simply too tempting.

Although he will become Ron's vassal in the future, he will still have the opportunity to regain his fiefdom and become a lord.

It doesn't matter who you serve as a vassal, as long as you have territory.

Although Mattich had already made his decision, he did not immediately agree: "Lord Ron, could you give me one night to consider?"

Ron thought for a moment and then nodded.

"Okay, then you should cooperate with the militia and follow their instructions."

""

Just as Matic was about to say thank you, Leonardo da Vinci revealed a sinister smile and bound Matic and all the official knights in the crowd, while the knight apprentices and ordinary people were taken into the city by the militia.

Upon entering Tieling Town, there are still about ten simple houses inside.

Ron didn't rush to build a house to rest in, but instead headed towards the mine.

There were a dozen or so houses in the town, all built of stone, with roofs covered with dry thorns and ballast.

The largest one was an abandoned blacksmith shop. The anvil was still there, but the bellows were broken, and there were a few pieces of slag scattered on the ground.

There was a smell in the air that was a mixture of rust and animal dung, not strong, but it wouldn't dissipate, like part of this place.

The mine was located north of the town; it had no walls, only a huge pit.

The pit was excavated in the open, with a diameter of about fifty paces, a funnel shape, and a maximum depth of nearly five meters.

The exposed rock strata of the pit wall are dark brown, with a high iron content that can be seen with the naked eye. The rock surface has a dark red oxide crust that does not reflect sunlight, resembling dried blood.

Ron stood at the edge of the mine and looked down.

Occasionally, a bubble would rise from the surface of the water at the bottom of the pit, and the rust-colored water ring would spread out and disappear.

The territory's old blacksmith, Bloom, squatted at the edge of the mine, picked up a piece of ore with his hand, weighed it in his hand, and nodded back to Ron.

"My lord, these are all rich mines. They don't need to be sorted; they can be used directly after being mined."

Ron nodded in satisfaction.

He not only wanted to mine ore in Tieling Town, but also to smelt the ore there, using makeshift blast furnaces to produce pig iron, which would then be transported back to the main city for secondary smelting. In this way, the territory could become self-sufficient in steel.

As the territory grows faster, steel becomes increasingly important, and the monthly purchases from Gavin and the iron ore mined from Iron Ridge are no longer sufficient to meet the territory's needs.

Ron said, "Bloom, take a good look at the surrounding environment and roughly estimate the area of ​​the iron ore mine, then I will build you a makeshift blast furnace."

""

Bloom was the first blacksmith to learn the earthen blast furnace smelting technique taught by Ron, and now he can be considered a smelting expert in the territory.

Ron, on the other hand, began surveying the terrain of Tieling Town, preparing to rebuild it, or at least to build the outer city walls.

Tieling Town sits on a hill less than 20 meters high. The hill is small and has a gentle slope. From a distance, it looks like a mound of earth rising from the wasteland. However, on one side of the cliff of this mound, dark brown rock layers are exposed, which are the outcrops of open-pit iron mine veins.

This area was blocked by a wooden wall long ago, and it was not visible from the outside. Judging from the fault line above, Wenger would not have discovered this iron mine if the landslide had not occurred. After all, this place has existed for so long and was unoccupied before Wenger came. This shows that no one paid attention to this place before.

The top of the hill was leveled to form an irregular plateau, about 400 meters long from north to south and about 200 meters wide from east to west.

The remaining dozen or so stone houses are built on this terrace and are scattered haphazardly.

In the center of the plateau is a deep well with a low wall built of rubble around its mouth. The well water is murky, but in a house not far away, there is a water purification system that is usually buried in a wooden box on the ground and only taken out when needed.

The hills slope gently to the west, making them suitable for farmland cultivation. Unfortunately, the land here is unsuitable for growing crops. In the future, Tieling Town will become an important industrial town and a major grain importer.

To the south lies a vast wilderness, suitable for building residential and industrial areas.

The north and east sides are mine pits and slag heaps, which are suitable for building smelting areas and warehouses.

Ron plans to build Iron Ridge Town like the Castle District, making it an easily defensible fortified city. After all, once he becomes a formal building mage, his building speed increases twentyfold, so he believes he can build a brand new Iron Ridge Town very soon.