Chapter 29: Territory Grand Survey

Back in Agrik, Sakavi issued an order that all races under his rule must submit maps of their activity ranges and population registration forms within one month; anyone who failed to comply or omitted names would be dealt with personally by Sakavi, who would “resolve” any work-related issues.

If you want to know the detailed map of your territory, it’s best to ask the local powers—they’re the ones who truly know the land, and anywhere habitable inevitably has people living there.

After a chaotic month, Sakavi’s desk was piled with crooked population registration forms; as for the maps, he assigned Tali Lightfeather—who had graduated two years prior and trained with the Rosen Empire’s Adventurers’ Guild under a mercenary company—to verify each form and draw a complete map of the territory.

Who else was there with professional cartography training? Whether she was good enough or not, he had no choice. After verifying all the population forms, Sakavi finally learned exactly how many people were under his command.

This territory was roughly the size of India on Blue Star, yet its population was pitifully small—only a little over one million. It had once held over three million, but after the War Cry Tribe migrated to the richer Loka Plains, only low-grade subhumans remained.

The land was utterly barren: half of it could only support luoluo grass. In this high-altitude wasteland, only races capable of subsisting on grass, starchy grains, and meat—such as minotaurs, centaurs, and boar-men—managed to survive. Of course, countless wolf-men were also absent.

Luoluo grass resembled dogtail grass, but its seeds were wrapped in a starchy layer like sweet potatoes, giving it the appearance of a hybrid between dogtail grass and banana, infused with wheat starch genes. After peeling and grinding it into flour, it could be baked into flatbread or boiled into porridge, or simply steamed and eaten directly.

The fruit of Luoluo grass was extremely bitter, yielded very little, and was indigestible raw—it required high-temperature cooking to be edible. In summer, the wasteland races survived on green grass; in autumn, they fed on wild berries; in spring and winter, they relied on Luoluo grass alone to barely survive.

The remaining land consisted of the Bohe Plains, occupying one-fifth of the territory, and the hilly region, covering two-fifths—all of it utterly uneven. Another two-fifths were flood zones of the Bohe River, with severe soil salinization.

Sakavi felt it was necessary to see his territory firsthand; listening to these troublesome subjects would only lead to being deceived. This land had clearly been fiercely guarded by the War Cry Tribe for reasons beyond the thirty-thousand-square-kilometer farmland of the Bohe Plains—only a dragon would find the single-crop climate here appealing.

Grap had once led the earth giants to slaughter one hundred thousand orcs by the banks of the Bohe River, forcing them to migrate; legend says the river’s waters turned red, and it took five days for the color to fade. This was mainly because Grap, to intimidate the orcs, left the corpses where they fell, allowing blood to continuously seep into the river.

The Bohe River did not originate in the wasteland but from the northernmost, isolated Dragon Spine Mountains. The millennia-old glaciers atop the highest peak, “Crying Snow Peak,” melted under sunlight into trickling streams, forming the river’s source. These icy, pure streams cascaded down steep black basalt cliffs, converging into a river.

On the steepest, most desolate southern slopes of the Dragon Spine Mountains lay a sheer cliff face known as “Screaming Cliffs,” the core nest of harpies. The cliff surface was riddled with thousands of natural caves and weathered rock ledges, densely packed like a beehive, inaccessible to ordinary creatures.

Harpies were outright bullies; they did not delight in killing itself, but in the process of instilling fear and dominating the weak. Their methods were varied and targeted: they would dive from above into camps while adult warriors were away, attempting to snatch minotaur calves or boar-woman women.

During centaur migrations, they would circle low in the air, emitting piercing shrieks to panic the herds, preventing them from feeding or resting, purely for amusement.

Kobolds and goblins needed to transport minerals via the Stoneblood River. The harpies would blockade the airspace above stretches of the river, demanding the shiniest ores or coal as “sky tax”; otherwise, they’d smash the rafts with rocks.

Scattered across the foothills were boar-man tribes, their simple enclosures built from mud and thorns. Their dwellings were semi-subterranean mud huts: shallow pits dug into the ground, supported by wooden poles, plastered with mud, and roofed with grass and moss.

The huts clustered haphazardly, connected by narrow, muddy paths. Around the tribe, countless boar-men were busily digging up any edible plant roots.

They were the primary miners of obsidian, using iron hammers or picks traded from the minotaurs as their main tools. They wove coarse vine nets or simply wrapped obsidian fragments in animal hides, then dragged the bundles across the mud or let them roll down slopes to collection points—inefficient, but labor-saving for them.

Mud Anchor: Located on the edge of Ironhoof Wasteland, at a slow-flowing, muddy bend of the upper Bohe River. The air reeked of boar-man musk, rotting garbage, and the cold dust of obsidian powder. There was no proper stone riverbank—only a vast, knee-deep black mud pit trampled by countless hooves.

A rough, muddy slide extended from the mine site. The boar-men simply kicked their obsidian-wrapped hides down the slide, letting them roll and slide to the riverbank, saving the effort of carrying.

The so-called “dock” had no fixed structure—only dozens of unbelievably crude rafts, hastily lashed together from unpeeled logs, stuffed with moss and mud. Many had been submerged so long that half had turned black and rotted, sprouting mushrooms. They looked less like vessels and more like floating piles of garbage about to fall apart.

A group of boar-men stood waist-deep in murky water, grumbling as they received the sliding bundles and haphazardly piled them onto the rafts, ignoring balance. Rafts frequently capsized from uneven loading, triggering furious roars and curses.

Flying downstream along the Bohe River, overlooking the Ironhoof Wasteland below, this vast expanse was not pure grassland but a cold, arid rocky plateau. The ground was covered in black gravel and sparse, iron-hard thorn grass. Wind was the eternal master here. Barren as it was, it held rich surface iron ore and basalt veins, like black veins exposed on the earth’s skin.

Flowing from the rich iron ore zone on the wasteland’s western side, the Rustblood River carried a faint reddish tint. In the central-southern Ironhoof Wasteland, it cut through hard iron ore rock, forming a deep gorge before merging into the Bohe River.

The confluence formed a small but striking reddish-brown delta due to silt deposition. The delta had no dense vegetation—only metal-tolerant, twisted thorn shrubs, their roots deeply anchored in iron-rich soil, their leaves tinged with unhealthy dark red.

Here was a violent clash of power and color: the rust-red water of the Rustblood River, rich in iron oxide, met the clear blue-green flow of the Bohe River, forming a sharp, unblending red-green boundary—clear as day and night. The gorge walls, exposed and iron-rich, glowed crimson in the sunlight, shimmering with metallic luster.

In the gorge stood minotaur war totems built from solid obsidian and giant beast bones. Simple black basalt huts were irregularly scattered throughout, each furnace belching thick black smoke, the sound of hammering never ceasing.

In fact, the entire tributary was occupied by the strongest race on the wasteland—the minotaurs—who amassed great wealth through vast iron ore deposits. Finished iron ingots and simple farm tools were shipped down the Bohe River to orc towns or dwarf kingdoms.

Stoneport lay on a relatively calm stretch of the Bohe River upstream of the Crimson Delta. There were no artificial piers. The minotaurs used natural, massive rocks jutting into the water as loading platforms. These black-red boulders had been polished smooth by countless hooves, covered in deep hoofprints and axe slashes.

Across the vast eastern region were scattered centaur tribes, their large, easily assembled leather tents. Their frames were arched structures made of tough wasteland shrubs, covered in multiple layers of hardened bison hide or thick felt. The tents were teardrop-shaped, with the narrow end facing the most common wind direction to reduce resistance and prevent being overturned.

In truth, centaurs were bandits of this land, famed for their superior mounted archery and mobility—they were every merchant’s nightmare. Sometimes their curved blades also swung against orc villages on the Bohe Plains.

The transitional zone between wasteland and plains was the Claw Hills—a rolling expanse with slightly more vegetation: low shrubs and drought-resistant coniferous forests. Beneath these hills lay coal, tin, and small silver deposits.

The countless hive-like caves in the hills served as entrances to kobold mines—often abandoned shafts reinforced with broken mine carts and timber. They lived permanently in sunless tunnels, emerging only to trade with merchants or goblin coal dealers. Their presence ensured the minotaurs along the Rustblood River had ample coal.

The Blackwater River originated in the hillside coal seams; its water was ink-black, carrying fine coal slag and rock powder. Its confluence completely altered the Bohe River’s appearance: the clear blue-green and rust-red waters were swallowed and mixed by the Blackwater’s obsidian hue. From this point onward, the lower Bohe became a murky, dark, nearly charcoal-gray torrent.

At the junction of the hills and plains in the southwest, the gradually flattening terrain caused the Blackwater River’s coal slag and black rock debris to settle, staining the river mouth a filthy black, mixing with the Bohe’s waters to form a sinister “Blackwater Marsh.” Bubbles rose from decaying plants, and the air reeked of sulfur and swamp gas.

This impassable marsh had been cunningly turned by goblins into their coal trading dock and toll station. They built crude, dangerous floating bridges and wobbling watchtowers from rotten wood, ropes, and stolen metal parts along the narrow waterways. Any upstream ore raft or small merchant vessel passing through had to pay a toll—usually ore, food, or shiny trinkets.

The “Blackclaw Dock” on the edge of the Blackwater Marsh had no fixed structure—only countless wobbling wooden planks and logs extending from shore into the water, caked with black coal dust and mud, slick beyond measure.

Countless slender rafts, crudely lashed from logs, drifted down from upstream mines, piled high with mountains of coal. Swarms of goblin laborers surged onto the rafts and docks like a black tide, using crude vine baskets and backpacks to unload the coal with hands and feet. The entire process was filled with shoving, screams, splashes as overloaded rafts sank into black water, and the crack of overseers’ whips.

Goblin Town was a shantytown built from every scrap of trash imaginable: rotten planks, rusted iron sheets, rags, and beast bones—all materials. Structures were bizarre, devoid of beauty, appearing ready to collapse at any moment, leaning on each other in unstable formations. Goblins knew where to walk, but outsiders entering were like stepping into a minefield.

Next came the most captivating—and most ironic—region of the territory, located in the middle reaches of the Bohe River. The land was flat, the soil so fertile it could be squeezed into oil, enriched by minerals washed down from the upstream hills and wasteland.

In ideal conditions, this should have been the kingdom’s granary. But in reality, the plains were vast and sparsely populated. Scattered native villages clustered only around a few stable water sources, cultivating negligible fields. Most of the land was overgrown with wild grasses—abandoned farmland teeming with deer, wild boars, and hidden dangers.

At the boundary between plains and saline land, an unremarkable, nearly perennially dry riverbed appeared only during heavy rains or when snowmelt from upstream hills surged, briefly flowing into the Bohe’s final, spreading channels.

Normally, it was merely a deep erosion gully, cracked with parched earth. But when water came, it instantly became a muddy, raging debris flow, sweeping away the fertile topsoil of the plains and violently dumping it downstream, worsening siltation and salinization.

This ravine became a blurred boundary between plains and saline land creatures. Lizardmen scouts monitored plains movements here, while plains predators occasionally came down to drink. It was a frontline of conflict and exchange between two ecosystems—full of danger and opportunity.

Sakavi continued flying downstream, where the river met the sea. The terrain was extremely flat, the current slowed drastically, causing massive silt deposition and raising the riverbed above ground level, forming an “elevated river.”

Historically, this river had undergone cyclical flooding and channel shifts. Seawater surged inland during storms, and after floods receded, evaporation left salt layers on the soil surface. Over centuries, this formed the vast, sickly white-glowing saline flats.

Lizardman tribes built their villages on deeper waters or solid islets, using mud bricks, rammed earth, and woven red willow branches, coated with sun-resistant clay. Their structures stood on water, connected to shore by log or stone bridges, with retractable drawbridges. Inside, raised stone platforms stored food, weapons, and eggs, keeping them dry.

Lizardman fisheries centered on natural deeper pools or slow-flowing zones, surrounded by concentric or spiral artificial channels of varying widths, guiding fish like a maze. Thick logs were driven into the riverbed as pillars, woven with tough vines and aquatic plants as fences and nets, then plastered with thick mud to reinforce and blend with the environment.

Flying further downstream, the cracked land was covered in white salt crusts, with only the most salt-tolerant red willows and alkali grasses scattered sparsely. The air carried a salty, lifeless stench. Amid the wasteland lay seasonal saline marshes and lagoons—scars left by the last great flood.

Fishman villages were built on shallow shores of saline marshes, their huts constructed from bundled reeds tied into arched roofs, plastered with thick mud to repel salt. Built on wooden stilts to avoid flooding, each hut had a dugout canoe tied beneath, ready for water-based escape or attack. Villages were connected not by roads but by intricate, narrow waterways—only wide enough for one boat—making outsiders Jiyimishi .

In the distance, a fenced-off area was the fishmen’s salt field. Viewed from above, this region at the edge of the saline flats, adjacent to the saline marsh, resembled a massive, ugly scar embedded along the pale coastline.

The salt field consisted of dozens of irregular, uneven shallow pools—not carefully planned, but dug by fishmen along natural depressions, with earthen embankments built from mud, resembling random splashes of greenish-black sludge on the ground.

Simple waterwheels made from giant beast ribs and broken planks, driven by enslaved slaves or tamed swamp beasts, creaked as they pumped saline water from the marsh into the highest reservoir.

In the final crystallization pools, rough, impure gray-white salt crystals had already formed along the edges and bottom of the murky water. Low-rank fishmen workers, hunched over, scraped the slippery crystals together with scrapers made from tortoiseshell or large shells, piling them into small heaps.

The fishmen’s low-quality salt could not be sold overseas by sea; it could only be transported via Bohe River merchants into the Bohe Plains and the northern wastelands upstream. It was precisely because this inferior salt fetched no price that the fishmen could continue surviving on this territory.