Knight Lord: Start with Daily Intelligence.

Chapter 79: Building the Bjorn Shallow Bay Farming Area
When Lawn threw the millstone-sized Demonic Tide Clam into the reservoir, Su Li felt that the entire lake water seemed to become clear, and he could see two light-scaled fish swimming happily under the water.

Although they hadn't reproduced, they seemed to have grown a bit bigger, even fatter than the big fish in Baotu Spring. Their huge mouths devoured the tiny moss, algae, snails, and small insects in the water. Su Li felt that their mouths could almost swallow his fist.

They are very sensitive to energy and constantly try to use their mouths to get close to the magic pearl, swimming happily around the magic tide clams.

At this time, the Magic Tide Clam, feeling that it had regained its freedom, finally stopped closing its shells, opened its shells, and swam happily towards the depths of the reservoir.

Seeing the open clam shell and the tender clam meat inside, Su Li instantly understood why there was a legend of the clam girl. It really looked like this. The ancients must have seen this scene.

Su Li couldn't help but smile, feeling good. He turned to Lao En and asked, "Did you collect the Demonic Tide Clam smoothly?"

Laun smiled and nodded, saying, "It went very smoothly. Thanks to your precise command, Lord, the divers spotted the giant clam as soon as they entered the water and worked together to pull it out. They pulled the hemp ropes simultaneously, and the fishermen on the boat thought they were in danger underwater. But in the end, there was no danger, and no one was injured. They successfully brought the giant clam back."

This result was even more perfect than Su Li had expected! Before the start, he and Minister of Seals, Lawn, had both assumed that several divers would die underwater. The territory was truly prepared to spare no expense.

At the moment, the best outcome is no casualties.

Su Li continued walking beside the reservoir and asked, "Do you have a rough idea of ​​how many fish are there in the reservoir now?"

Fandral followed behind Su Li and immediately replied, "We fishermen have had six good catches, and have released more than 4,000 fish into the reservoir. Assuming each fish weighs three or four kilograms, that's over 10,000 kilograms of fish meat."

These are all food reserves. As the population and slaves in the territory increase, food consumption will become greater and greater in the future.

The number of slaves will increase today and tomorrow. One hundred more slaves will consume 6000 kilograms of food per month. Two hundred slaves will be enough to consume all the fish and meat.

There was no way around it. The territory didn't have much grain, so the slaves had to eat meat caught from fishing and hunting, and berries picked up.

In other territories, slaves could eat 7.5 kilograms of meat a month, and that was considered generous by the lord.

In the Hessen Territory, it was rare for a slave to eat 7.5 kilograms of grain and vegetables a month.

This isn't actually a good dietary balance. Plants contain a variety of fibers that humans and animals cannot produce on their own. So, a person can survive on a diet of whole grains and vegetables, but not on a diet of meat alone. A week without any plant fiber would essentially cause problems for the body. That's why even cats and tigers sometimes eat grass.

In addition to eating meat, these slaves in the Hessian Territory also dug wild grass to eat and cooked wild vegetable soup to drink.

At present, slaves can still maintain their living needs by relying on a mixture of wild vegetables and fishing and hunting.

But Su Li didn't let his guard down. He instructed Lao En, "With food in hand, there's no need to panic. Have the Ogre Engineering Team continue to expand this reservoir. This is related to both our fisheries and agriculture. You can first dig a new reservoir next to this one to store water. Once it's built, you can then create a gap in the land between the reservoirs."

Laun quickly agreed, saying, "We're already planning this. We plan to connect this area with a shallow bay to the northeast for reclamation. If all goes well, we can quickly expand the reservoir's irrigated area to more than a dozen empires."

"Take me to see it." Upon hearing about such a big project, Su Li immediately became interested.

Developing water conservancy projects, building dams to store water, and reclaiming land are in Su Li's genes.

The thought of building a large-scale water conservancy project to irrigate dozens or hundreds of hectares of fertile farmland made him feel full of energy, which was completely different from his state of mind when he thought going to work was like visiting a grave.

Lao En immediately asked his servant to bring the horse over and took Su Li on a gallop of four or five miles eastward.

At this time, they had left the vicinity of the cultivated farmland and the abandoned dam built by the previous lord. In front of them was a grassland and shallow bay with a large amount of wetlands in it that was flooded.

This is the norm for grasslands. There are no cultivated fields, and many areas have large swamps and shallows. While the grasslands appear flat from a distance, they actually have numerous rolling hills and depressions up close.

"My Lord," Lawn said, pointing to the shallows ahead, "this is the area the previous lord hadn't had time to develop. Don't be fooled by the large amount of silt and swamps here; this is actually the next area best suited for reclamation." "I've discussed this with the Minister of Agriculture, and we plan to build a dam high up on the shallows to form a reservoir. Then, we'll set up drainage ditches in the lower shallows below the dam to remove the accumulated water. This will be done in the summer, making the land suitable for farming. The reservoir above the dam will store rainwater and meltwater for irrigation during the dry season."

Su Li nodded slightly. In fact, the smooth development during the one month since he took office was largely due to the legacy of the previous lord.

The previous lord built a water conservancy facility on the east side of the farmland, and the embankment blocked the rainwater that spread from the shallows during the rainy season.

If there were no dike, the 1,200 acres of farmland that he had worked so hard to cultivate would have been directly submerged by the rainy season floods.

However, the area of ​​farmland reclaimed by his predecessor was almost exhausted by Su Lifa. To continue to expand the area of ​​arable land, he needed a pioneering and enterprising spirit.

Su Li was very pleased with Laun and Fandral's idea and said, "Your move, adapted to local conditions, is excellent. Let's do it this way. We'll first build a dam higher up on the shallows to increase the reservoir's area. It's already late spring, and the summer rainy season is about to arrive. If we don't store water, not only will we not be able to reclaim new farmland, but our already cultivated fields may also be destroyed."

The water conservancy facilities of the previous lord were basically destroyed. Instead of repairing the small dike, Su Li might as well build a larger dike at the turn of spring and summer and open up a fertile farmland of dozens of miles.

Laun was naturally excited to see the lord's ambition and support for his cause, but he couldn't help but frown. He said, "But this project also has a problem. We are short of construction workers. We lack both experienced dwarf engineers and a large number of ogre workers. If we could have a construction team of 100 ogres, that would be equivalent to at least 1,000 to 2,000 human workers."

This is indeed a problem. Su Li thought about it and said, "Let's proceed with the project as you envisioned. Since we are going to do it, we might as well do it in a grand manner and accomplish something magnificent. Don't be so timid and expand or modify the project before it's even finished. As for the manpower issue, I'll find a way."

As he was speaking, a knight rode up and reported to Su Li, "My Lord, Knight Frederick asked me to report a victory. He successfully destroyed a goblin camp beneath the Moonlight Highlands and captured a total of 23 dwarves, halflings, and human women. We also successfully found the shepherd tribe. They succumbed to our powerful military force and are willing to submit to your loyal subjects. We found 35 nomads in their tribe, as well as 3 herdsmen and over 200 sheep."

Su Li smiled instantly: "Aren't the workers here?"

Today, the addition of various bandits, captives and shepherds has added hundreds of people to the territory!

If the population of the Halfling Territory and Wolfgang's Farm is added, the population of Hesse Territory now exceeds 600.

This is three times the size of the 50 knights and one squadron of armed servants that Su Li had when he set out.

Although the pressure on food has increased a lot, and 600 people doing nothing in a day will consume 3000 kilograms of food, the speed of territory development will inevitably increase.

Su Li then said to Lao En, "Leave the main work of the ranch to the shepherds. The rest of the staff, except for necessary work, should be put into farming and water conservancy. I hope that by summer, the dam and reservoir will be initially completed."

The focus of the territory's work was arranged, and over the next week, the territory progressed in this direction in an orderly manner.

As the number of slaves increased, the dams of the water conservancy project were being built and lengthened at a speed visible to the naked eye every day.

The additional slaves mainly came from the bandit groups in the forest. Within seven days, four bandit groups came to the territory of Hessen and were found and successfully defeated by Su Li.

According to the prisoners' confessions, the forest is now in turmoil. In addition to the mad centaur tribe wreaking havoc everywhere, the powerful goblin tribe with severed toes is also on the rise. The outer area west of the Blood Pine Forest is in turmoil.

Bandits have already fled, hoping to exploit the rainy season to launch a wave of looting. It's said that one unfortunate territory has already had its castle breached by bandits. A pioneering lord, with only a few knights and a dozen retainers, could easily fall prey to a surprise attack by these bandits, which can number in the dozens.

Of course, with the assistance of the daily intelligence system, this robbery by the bandit group became the biggest opportunity for the Hesse Territory to grow stronger.

The four bandit groups had more than seventy people at most and more than twenty at least. Except for nearly fifty people who were killed, the remaining more than one hundred and fifty bandits all became Su Li's prisoners.

This not only increased the number of his slaves, but also greatly strengthened his military strength.

Because he gained three official knights, five apprentice knights, and an elite knight named Beast Slayer Gerold!
(End of this chapter)