Pioneer Lord: Starting From Daily Intelligence

Chapter 146: Chapter 87: Harvest Ceremony · Creating a Wonder

The arrival of the harvest season is undoubtedly the most devout moment for the followers of Reya, especially in the countryside, fields, and farms where Reya’s faith is most widespread.

Even the most heartless ruler would feel heavy-hearted due to a poor harvest.

In contrast, when abundance descends, everyone feels joyful and elated.

In the Hesse Territory, the Dawn Goddess Reya is especially revered, and the people believe that the prosperity of the territory’s population and the abundance of wheat are blessings from Reya.

So, after the crops are gathered in the wheat fields, the priestesses and nuns of the Dawn Church hold a grand harvest ceremony for the crops in the fields.

At Su Li’s request, these nuns arrived at the Golden Ears Farm, attracting a large number of people who cheered and followed along the way, watching.

Amidst the people’s excited cheers, the nuns of the Dawn Church slowly untied their corsets, and their loose green nun robes fell to their feet, revealing their pure and spotless white bodies.

Su Li joined in the excitement, sitting at the most open vantage point under the protection of the knights, taking in the entire content of the ceremony without missing a thing.

Who doesn’t love such excitement?

Especially when the nuns slipped off their loose magic robes, dropping them by their ankles, his heart began to race, and the blood in his chest surged faster.

Reya is also the goddess responsible for fertility, governing love and reproduction, so sometimes her followers would use some means to increase the birth rate of the people.

However, this goddess has a sharp conflict with Slaanesh, and her followers vehemently oppose the Prince of Lust, as what it corrupts is exactly what the goddess protects. Slaanesh twists love and pure physical pleasure into a cruel mockery of Reya’s divine powers.

There is a delicate balance between Reya’s abundant gifts and Slaanesh’s desire for indulgence.

Thus, the priestesses of Reya learned to temper the desires of the faithful to prevent them from falling.

In practice, although these nuns devoted themselves devoutly to the goddess, they also wore mythical masks decorated with wheat straw on their heads.

So watching the whole harvest ceremony, aside from the initial excitement when they took off their magic robes, there wasn’t much of the allure and licentiousness Su Li initially anticipated.

Instead, the ugly and terrifying masks made the men replace them with the faces of their lovers, eagerly wanting to be intimate with their lovers.

This is also an important part of the harvest ceremony, where lovers go to more private places to do intimate things after the ceremony ends.

As the harvest ceremony reached its climax, Vandar excitedly said to Su Li, ”Lord, I can clearly feel the divine grace the goddess has bestowed upon us.”

”One of our nuns has transformed her divine office into the Mother of Grains. The Mother of Grains is a secret female assembly within the church. They secretly gather to protect Reya’s most important secrets, secrets not shared outside her clergy. During meetings, the Mothers of Grains wear masks made of woven straw to hide their identities and discuss unique ways to increase grain yield.”

Hearing this, Su Li was overjoyed, not expecting the devout ceremony to produce additional effects.

Now the territory has the Father of Grains and the Mother of Grains, and the output of grains is sure to continue increasing!

Currently, there is an income of 240,000 jin of wheat, enough for 3,000 people to last for over 80 days, sufficient to last until the next harvest.

After all, the territory’s population, excluding the dwarves, is far from 3,000, and the territory also has a substantial income of cabbages, carrots, and fishing and hunting.

Fishing and hunting, although unstable, sometimes yield substantial results, especially under Su Li’s intelligence guidance, obtaining fresh meat fish, and many livestock and live fish.

With proper management, the territory’s grain storehouses will inevitably see a gradual increase in food.

Su Li then looked at the shrine and stone monument built by Reya’s followers in the field and said to Vandar, ”It is time for our territory to form a holy land for Reya. After the ceremony ends, send this shrine and stone monument to the pool at the center of the Star Meteorite Basin. The surrounding area is full of wild fruit trees, and when the stone monument sinks to the bottom of the water and combines with this natural wonder, it will become a holy land for our territory to worship the goddess.”

Reya doesn’t lack her own statues, but most of her temples are composed of Ogham stones and divine shrines.

Currently, the followers have already hung garlands made of wheat spikes on the stone, placed flowers and fruit on it, and farmers, herbalists, midwives, food merchants, lovers, and tree hedge wizards surround the stone monument and shrine singing and dancing.

In the future, this first stone monument blessed by Reya will be moved to the Star Meteorite Basin, and when it sinks and entangles with the aquatic plants, divine grace will favor the entire area, becoming one of the holy lands of the entire Reya Church.

Vandar excitedly said, ”The Dawn Goddess is always so generous. Perhaps we can name this area.”

With the direct favor of divine grace, there is no need to impart more myth to it.

Su Li directly said, ”Let’s call it Starlight Pond, or it can be called Star Abyss Fairy Pool.”

A holy land having many beautiful names is quite normal. For the same mountain range or scenic spot, different regions and different powers have different names.

By then, those who prefer the Western style can call this place Starlight Pond, symbolizing Reya’s sunlight at dawn illuminating the Hesse Territory, shining like starlight.

People from the distant Eastern realms can call it Star Abyss Fairy Pool, considering Fairy Pool is also the abode of a goddess.

Vandar eagerly nodded, saying, ”The goddess will protect us. With the presence of the Willow Silkworm Butterflies, the pollen of those wild fruit trees will continuously improve. With the blessing of divine grace, these wild fruit trees will soon transform into an orchard, perhaps even this summer.”

That would be perfect!

Su Li said with a smile, ”I hope to have a Ten-Mile Peach Garden or a Ten-Mile Pear Garden.”

This will further deepen the impression of the followers on the Goddess’s generosity.

If there were a Ten-Mile Orchard, everyone who goes on a pilgrimage could enjoy abundant fruits, wouldn’t it lift their spirits?

Of course, such a feat as the Ten-Mile Peach Garden might still be far off.

But around the Star Meteorite Basin, three dozen acres or even hundreds of acres of orchards are entirely within expectation.

An acre of apple trees can yield over a thousand pounds of apples, by then a hundred-acre orchard would mean a harvest of a hundred thousand pounds of fruit.

As Vandar led the believers to the Starlight Pond, Su Li arrived at the threshing floor and mill beside the farm.

This batch of mills is one of the masterpieces of the dwarves, their arrival helped establish over ten hydraulic and animal-driven mills in the territory.

This significantly accelerated the harvest progress of the territory’s agriculture.

Bundles of golden ears of wheat were sent into the threshing floor, and then baskets of wheat were sent into the mill.

Today is the harvest day, bags of flour were delivered to the castle, and a large portion of the wheat bran was kept, which is the main ingredient for the black bread, the primary food of the serfs.

The territory’s bakeries use wheat flour, bran, wheat husks, and wood shavings from the carpentry workshop to make black bread for the residents.

Then mixed with wild vegetable soup, wild berries, and occasionally meat soup and fish soup, it constitutes the serfs’ primary food.

Of course, more wheat was loaded onto carts and boats and stored basket by basket into the castle’s and towns’ warehouses.

Seeing the storage barns get filled one by one, Su Li felt a surge of joy in his heart.

Each warehouse can store more than thirty thousand pounds of grain, and the castle alone is brimful with three granaries full of food.

The rest will be transported to Hesse Town, providing for an even larger population and the Free People.

The abundance of this grain harvest means that Su Li’s territory will smoothly cross a lengthy period.

Even if hunting yields no results, he would not be anxious.

This is the reassurance of having grain at hand!

More importantly, it signifies that his strategic industry planning for the territory has successfully taken shape!

When Su Li first entered the territory, he pondered what the territory’s advantageous industries and specialties would be.

The dwarven blacksmith shop in the territory is undoubtedly one of them, so extensive now, accommodating a large number of Mountain Dwarves.

A set of fine level dwarven armor sells for a minimum of 20 Golden Crowns, equivalent to the annual output of 20 farmers.

This is the advantage of industry, as the saying goes, without industry, there is no prosperity; the value created by industry is unmatched by small-scale farming.

But this does not mean agriculture cannot generate value.

In fact, another featured industry planned by Su Li for the territory is agriculture!

By elevating farming to its pinnacle, becoming the first strong agricultural territory nearby, making agriculture the signature of the Black Forest.

Especially those vast fields, if he can cultivate tens of thousands of acres of fertile land, yielding several million pounds of grain every season, he can sell substantial amounts of grain externally.

The sale of hundreds of thousand pounds of grain is sufficient to exchange for considerable wealth, especially with a canal in his territory, enabling the shipment of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pounds of grain per boat.

From the beginning, he was determined to be different from other Pioneer Lords who rely on merchant groups to transport grain to the territory.

He wants to develop the farming industry so that the territory exports grain externally!

Only then can he more peacefully grow his power and recruit armies without worrying about grain shortages.

Of course, farming in the fantasy world cannot solely rely on those basic crops.

His agriculture also includes some spirit medicine fields, such as those heavily reliant on the Wind of Jilun to produce Calming Flowers and Swift Grass, etc.

These can allow for the production of a considerable scale of potions in the territory, with a minimum price of 50 Silver Coins per Healing Potion.

The territory now has two pharmacy workshops and a monastery capable of outputting potions, already producing over a hundred ordinary potions for the territory.

With Divine Grace descending, he can acquire even stronger Blood of the Earth.

Over the year, it can generate over a thousand Golden Crowns for the territory.

All in all, he can comfortably earn five thousand Golden Crowns annually, even without any wars or miraculous encounters.