Chapter 1135: Sentenced to Death

Changle left the position of the last Engineering Team and then stepped onto the road toward the Western Development Group; along this road, markers could be found everywhere, guiding the direction of their advance.

This was also to provide Yishang with some advance mental preparation, because once they left the Western Development Group, the road would be entirely this kind of primitive path; there was no shadow of a road to be seen at all, and they could only follow places where it was relatively safe to pass, moving toward the established direction.

Changle and Ayuduo were well-versed in this and felt no discomfort at all, because they had walked through such places too many times and were very familiar with them, yet it had been a long time since Yishang had entered the Wasteland.

After groping through the Wasteland for two days, they finally encountered people from the returning exploration team; meeting humans here was originally a tense matter, but the faces of Changle and Yishang were truly too iconic—there was no one in Huaxia who did not recognize them—so the exploration team, originally a bit nervous, instantly relaxed their emotions and enthusiastically went to greet them: "Prince! Prince!"

Changle did not recognize them but knew they were people of Huaxia, so he also responded enthusiastically: "Hello, brothers! You are the route surveying team, right!"

"Yes, yes!" A team of people quickly passed through the woods, walked to the front of Changle, and immediately wanted to kneel and salute Changle; Changle hurriedly helped them up: "Hey, don't, don't. Your journey has not been easy, so don't kneel. If you kneel down on this ground, you probably won't be able to stand back up."

The Soldiers hurriedly thanked Changle and were very grateful to him; only the King and Prince of Huaxia would be so considerate of them, these ordinary people.

"How is it? Has the route been surveyed? How much distance is there still from here to the Western Development Group?"

"Prince, the route has been completely surveyed. Just follow the places we marked, and in about three more days, you will be able to see the location of the Western Development Group. After another day, the view will be very open, and there won't be such dense vegetation." The people from the surveying team explained to Changle in detail.

After hearing this, Changle had a bit of mental preparation for the road ahead, and his current position was also the territory of a Noble; it was not before, so the road was planned up to here, and now this place had been partitioned into a Noble's fief.

However, it was impossible to stop the construction because of this and not pass through the Noble's fief; as the saying goes, first come, first served, and such a road passing through his fief was his good luck, not his bad luck.

If you want to be rich, build roads first; although this saying did not exist yet, it was equally applicable. In this era, roads were not smooth, and one could even say there were very few roads. Currently, Huaxia was only gradually beginning to have the appearance of transportation lines, and a road like this, which was important and connected two large cities, could be said to be very impressive.

With such a road passing through one's own fief, then one would not need to spend a great price to slowly build such a road within one's own fief. Such a road could be used by anyone who was a person of Huaxia, and the standard was so high; as long as the Noble's brain was normal, they certainly would not do something like refusing to have this road built in their territory.

Changle was also carefully observing; after walking for half a day, he would pinch a bit of soil to see what the soil quality was like, whether it was suitable for farming, and look at whether the terrain was flat; even if it were just a forest, he had to see if there was enough usable timber.

Looking along the way, it was not that good; the soil quality was a bit poor, and the trees were mostly pine. In some places, the pine needles under the pine trees were thick enough to trap a person. If the pine trees were used as construction or furniture timber, one could only say it was not too bad, but it was not particularly good either.

The pine cones were also basically mature and many had fallen, but the pine nuts were not very plump; most were empty and relatively small, but the quantity here seemed quite large, and if one were to collect them vigorously, one should still be able to collect quite a few.

The squirrels were mostly beauty pines, which grew thick and tall; horse-tail pines were relatively rare. Changle had already passed a death sentence on this territory; at least most of the area was completely unsuitable for development.

Now they had also entered the city planning scope of the Western Development Group, and it could not be used as a fief; in this last bit of distance, it was completely impossible for a miracle to occur.

And this place was precisely the fief of Changxu; if he were only raising pigeons and birds here, it would be quite good, as the forest was so dense and there were many pine nuts, enough to support many birds; as for farming, forget it.

Changle silently noted this in his heart; after arriving at the Western Development Group, he would have to use the little time he had to go around and take a look, so that after returning, he could give these Nobles some explanation.

Yishang was no longer anxious about his fief; his own fief was already being cultivated, and such a large fief produced enough to support himself and his increasingly large family.

Moreover, a family could not rely solely on the output of their own fief to live; all the young people, all his children, must produce a few who were successful—meaning even if they could not attain Nobility, they must be able to support themselves.

The output of Yishang's fief was used to subsidize those who did not yet have enough ability to survive, and to provide all the children with a set of property. Yishang's requirements for his family were very clear: as long as a child was married, they could move out to live. When they moved out, he would provide a house and one year's worth of food; after that, they would have to rely on their own struggle.

If they had no ability or skill, then go farm; anyway, under Yishang's subsidies, it was impossible for any child to starve to death; it was just that he would not let children without ability acquire too much wealth.

His other fief had indeed followed the trend and was changed to be near the Western Development Group, because everyone had changed theirs, and he would be at a loss if he did not; as for people like Xiong who did not know about this, the King would definitely provide subsidies in the end and would not let them suffer losses.

But Yishang also looked at the environment here and felt a bit disheartened; it was indeed not as good as Huaxia City, and the land was not even flat. What could be done about this? It could not be used at all. If used as farmland, it could only be cultivated into terraced fields, but how much effort would that take? It was estimated that the initial costs might not be recovered for several years.

If it were not for the fact that conditions did not allow it, who would be willing to farm terraced fields? Not to mention the steep slopes, which made farming and harvesting inconvenient, and mountain land itself could not retain much nutrition, and the soil was not fertile, unless it was such a dense forest; but turning a forest into farmland would only be more troublesome.