Chapter 309: A Unified Method

"His ideas are always novel and practical." To Elder Lanwen's exclamation, Su Nai nodded in agreement.

"War Mother, how should we deal with these caught rats?" Elder Lanwen asked again.

"After the interrogation is finished, send a letter to their tribe," Su Nai thought for a moment, finally recalling the term Gao De had used, "let them bring Ice Marrow to ransom the people."

"Twenty drops of third-rank Ice Marrow to ransom one person. The Frost Wolf Clan is the exception; tell them to bring twenty drops of fourth-rank Ice Marrow to Phoenix to ransom their people," she said nonchalantly.

"Twenty drops of fourth-rank Ice Marrow to ransom one person?" Elder Lanwen hesitated. "That is too expensive. Will they accept it?"

Twenty drops of fourth-rank Ice Marrow require a fourth-circle early-stage Ice-Born mage to spend twenty years to condense, and fourth-rank Ice Marrow is the key material for "man-made fourth-circle Ice-Born mages."

For every tribe, it belongs to the category of strategic resources.

To ransom an informant who is not exactly unimportant, but also not exactly crucial, the Frost Wolf Clan is highly unlikely to be willing to pay such a great price.

At least, that is what Elder Lanwen believed.

"They will definitely accept it," Su Nai affirmed. "In the letter you send to the Frost Wolf Clan, explain in detail that their people stole our tribe's Northwest Barley No. 1, and introduce Northwest Barley No. 1, indicating its importance to our tribe."

"War Mother, what do you mean?" Elder Lanwen could not help but widen his eyes; clearly, he had understood her intentions from Su Nai's instructions, but he found it hard to believe.

"Among the three major tribes, the Frost Wolf Clan has the greatest demand for food, and food has always been their most troublesome problem."

"As a food crop, Northwest Barley No. 1 can be used as a staple food after harvest, and it can also be used as feed for poultry like snow pheasants. If the Frost Wolf Clan learns of this, how could they not have ideas?" Su Nai said nonchalantly.

The Frost Wolf Clan started by training snow wolves and developed until it is now on par with the Enduring Zhenbing Tribe and the Winter's Hammer.

Snow wolves are the foundation of the Frost Wolf Clan.

Snow wolves are not ordinary beasts; each one is agile, majestic, and possesses powerful strength.

It is just that as powerful ley-line creatures, the amount of food a snow wolf consumes daily is even more than that of a sturdy adult man.

For the Frost Wolf Clan, this is a huge burden.

Of course, if it were not for the constraint of food, given the number of snow wolves on the snowfield, the Frost Wolf Clan should have continued to develop, with its scale continuously expanding.

It would not have stagnated so much after becoming a large tribe.

"What we want is for them to have ideas," Su Nai tapped the table with her fingertips and said decisively.

"This is also the King's idea."

"For those small tribes, we only need to wait until the yield of Northwest Barley No. 1 increases enough to support more people. We won't even need to go to great lengths to scheme; as long as we simply release a signal that we are willing to accept them, those small tribes will come to surrender on their own."

This sounds a bit exaggerated, but in the northern realm, the situation is indeed like this.

The risk-resistance ability of small tribes is very low, and they are fragile under the harsh natural environment.

A single beast attack or casualties during a hunt can lead a small tribe into the abyss of destruction.

Therefore, in the northern realm, 99.9% of small tribes are willing to join a powerful tribe to seek stable protection.

Everyone understands the principle of leaning against a big tree to enjoy the shade.

But the problem is that food on this frozen land is always a scarce commodity, limited, and even large tribes that seem to have deep foundations are actually "landlords with no surplus grain."

Every bit of food is hard-won; accepting a small tribe means having to share precious food rations.

By comparison, those small tribes often have only two or three Ice-Born mages for the entire tribe, making them far too weak.

The effort and the harvest are completely disproportionate.

Who would be willing to engage in such a losing business? Just like the Duo'erbian tribe Gao De encountered when he first entered the northern realm, that was exactly such a small tribe.

If the Enduring Zhenbing tribe were willing to take them in and provide them with shelter and food, let alone any psychological resistance, they would simply cling on directly, the kind you couldn't drive away even if you tried.

Su Nai continued: "But for other tribes, especially large tribes, it is not so easy to conquer them."

"They often have a strong sense of identity with their own tribe. Furthermore, although the food of large tribes cannot be said to be abundant, it is relatively stable. Even if they encounter a year of freezing, they will not let their tribesmen starve to death."

Su Nai tapped the wooden table lightly and emphasized, "In such a situation, they cannot join our tribe just for food."

"Therefore, to deal with these large tribes, we must use some methods. Military unification is ultimately the worst strategy," she smiled slightly as she said this. "This is the King's original words."

The term "military unification" is also a very novel term for her.

However, compared to "subjective initiative," "military unification" is much simpler and more intuitive; at least one can understand its meaning at a glance.

"These rats are racking their brains to figure out how to secretly pass the news of Northwest Barley No. 1 back to their own tribes. They never imagined that we intended to release the news proactively, letting all tribes know of the existence of Northwest Barley No. 1," Su Nai said, her thin lips parting slightly, her voice cold.

"Are we preparing to sell them Northwest Barley No. 1 at a high price and fleece them?" Elder Lanwen asked after hearing this, stunned for a moment.

"We are preparing to sell them Northwest Barley No. 1, but not at a high price; it will be at a fair price," Su Nai gave an answer that Elder Lanwen did not expect.

"Ah?!!" Elder Lanwen opened his mouth wide, suspecting he had heard wrong.

"This is the King's decision," Su Nai raised the corner of her mouth; she was not surprised at all by Elder Lanwen's reaction.

Because when she first heard this resolution, she was also very puzzled.

"Why is that?" Elder Lanwen couldn't help but ask. If he could understand the previous words, he was completely confused by this operation of selling grain at a fair price.

"The King said that military unification is the most direct method, but it will also result in the heaviest casualties. Population is the most precious resource, and wasting it for nothing is too stupid."

"Winning without a fight is the most ideal way of unification."

"Winning without a fight? How is that possible?" Elder Lanwen blurted out.

He had just said that large tribes would not easily surrender, and now he says he wants to conquer large tribes without a fight. Isn't this contradictory? "The King knows a way of unification called economic warfare, which happens to be able to achieve this."

"Economic warfare?"

"He didn't explain it in detail, but told me a story," Su Nai said.

"What story?" Elder Lanwen was curious.

A flash of light passed through Su Nai's deep blue eyes: "In the King's hometown, there was once a country called Pampas, which possessed vast, boundless grasslands. The local people lived by nomadic herding for a long time and possessed a brave and skilled cavalry force. Their power could not be underestimated, and they performed very tenaciously when defending against foreign enemies."

"Another country called the Sun-Never-Sets took a fancy to this hard bone called Pampas, but feared the attrition of a head-on conflict, so they came up with a brilliant plan: as a nomadic country, the animal husbandry of Pampas was very developed. The ruler of the Sun-Never-Sets let their own merchants purchase wool from Pampas at a high price. Seeing that raising sheep could yield huge profits, the Pampas herdsmen followed suit one after another. A large number of pastures were opened up for raising sheep, and the number of sheep soared in a short period of time."

"Sheep are different from warhorses. When sheep eat grass, they pull it out by the roots. As the sheep flocks became rampant, the vegetation of the Pampas grassland was severely damaged. High-quality pastures gradually became desertified and degraded, and the land and forage available for cultivating fine warhorses became less and less."

"The cavalry force that Pampas once took pride in lost its combat effectiveness because it lost the support of sufficient and high-quality warhorses. Facing the massive army of the Sun-Never-Sets at the border, they no longer had the confidence to resist. After weighing the pros and cons, they had to choose to surrender."

"He said this trick is called the Trojan Horse."

"Trojan Horse?" Elder Lanwen repeated the name in a low voice, frowning, full of doubts.

He could not understand why this trick could be related to a wooden horse, and what Troy was.

However, he had already understood the deep meaning hidden behind "selling grain at a fair price."

"What a ruthless trick..." Elder Lanwen muttered to himself unconsciously, his voice filled with a bit of exclamation.

He took a deep breath and said with conviction, "I understand."

His tone was crisp and decisive, and there was no longer any hesitation in his eyes, only excitement.

After sending Elder Lanwen away, Su Nai shook her head and picked up the parchment on the table again, reading it line by line.

In the version with no errors!

On the parchment, several large characters conspicuously marked the key information of the farm: 【Name: Jin Hui Farm】

【Currently cultivated land: 20,000 mu】

【Yield per mu: 140-150 kg, one harvest every four months】

【Land to be cultivated: 280,000 mu (first step target)】

【Current number of people participating in land cultivation: 6,689】

【Progress: 3,000-3,500 mu per day】

This is the specific data summarized according to Gao De's wishes, which Gao De also quite novelly called a "self-made panel."

Although she didn't understand why it was called a panel, summarizing it in this format indeed allowed her to understand the situation of Jin Hui Farm more intuitively and clearly.

And for the strange vocabulary that often popped out of Gao De's mouth, Su Nai had gradually begun to get used to it, and even learned to use these new terms.

In the past two months, under the guidance of Fu Luo La and the urging of natural arts, the yield per mu of Northwest Barley No. 1 had increased from the initial 120 kg to 140-150 kg, an increase of nearly 20%, which can be called a leap-forward improvement.

"Still too slow." However, Su Nai was not satisfied with this.

Because she knew in her heart that whether it was absorbing those small tribes like scattered sand or using the clever "Trojan Horse" to conquer large tribes without a fight, the core foundation of all plans was "food."

This is the foundation of everything. Without it, no matter how brilliant the strategy is, it is just a phantom castle in the air.

And the current output of Jin Hui Farm is far from enough for the internal consumption of the Enduring Zhenbing tribesmen themselves.

The Enduring Zhenbing Tribe needs to consume about 90 million kilograms of barley a year.

Even with the yield per mu increased to 140-150 kg, it would take nearly 210,000 mu of land to achieve self-sufficiency in food.

At the current progress, it would take another two months to cultivate 210,000 mu of land.

Moreover, it takes at least four months from sowing to the harvest of Northwest Barley No. 1, and this process also requires a large amount of manpower.

"Increase manpower input, expand the number to..." Su Nai picked up the bone pen, the tip hovering over the parchment, thinking for a moment, and finally dropped it heavily, writing "20,000 people."

After the first batch of Northwest Barley No. 1 was harvested, the tribe finally had its first batch of reserve grain.

And the existence of this batch of reserve grain was enough for the Enduring Zhenbing Tribe to temporarily "detach" 20,000 people from production, putting down their usual hunting and animal husbandry, and throwing themselves into the great cause of land reclamation and farming.

Of course, this is just the beginning.

After the second batch of Northwest Barley No. 1 is harvested, she will further expand the manpower.

Because according to Gao De's calculation, to take care of 300,000 mu of land, given the current conditions of the Enduring Zhenbing Tribe, at least 40,000 full-time farmers are needed to barely make do.

Po Er stood in the crowd, her small face flushed by the cold wind, and at this moment, her eyes were wide open, looking at the busy and energetic people around her and the green wheat seedlings growing in the fields.

She didn't expect that one day she would really be able to see this scene that only existed in her dreams on the permafrost tundra.

And all of this actually came from that outsider brother from a few months ago.

She still clearly remembered that after hearing his introduction about the outside world, she exclaimed, "If only the northern realm could also grow food," and was "mocked" by her companions for it.

The instructor comforted her at the time, saying that the land in the northern realm absolutely could not grow food, and told her to work hard to become a powerful guardian and protect the snowfield.

But in just a few short months, everything had become true.

It wasn't just her who had wide eyes.

The other children beside her were also dumbfounded.

Even the stern guardians and instructors who usually walked at the very front now had expressions of astonishment on their faces that were no different from those of the children.

"Lady Kaelin really didn't lie to us," Po'er thought silently to herself, her gaze involuntarily drifting toward Kaelin, who was leading the way at the front. Throughout this journey, Kaelin had demonstrated her formidable strength more than once, leaving Po'er feeling deeply awestruck.

But the reason everyone was willing to follow her to Phoenix was not just out of fear of her strength; the Phoenix described by Kaelin, and that new king Gao De, were the primary reasons they had come.

Kaelin walked with a steady gait, leading this vast, surging crowd toward the city gates of Phoenix.

Before they had even approached the gates, the Enduring Zhenbing guards at the entrance had already noticed their group.

Amidst Po'er's somewhat nervous and worried thoughts—after all, in her understanding, these people were the "big villains" who had wiped out their sect—two Enduring Zhenbing guards had already trotted over, bowed respectfully to Kaelin, and said loudly: "Deputy Director Kaelin, welcome back!"

Po'er blinked her eyes.

Although she didn't know what "Deputy Director" meant, she could clearly feel the respect they held for Kaelin from the guards' tone and expressions.

At the very least, judging by this, Kaelin had not lied to them.

The new king Gao De was very friendly toward those of them in sects unrelated to forbidden necromancy.

He even treated them as equals, truly granting Kaelin, an outsider, an extremely high status.

(End of chapter)