The World Online

Gaia first year 9th month 9th day, 9:20 AM

Tianfeng Town’s lord Xiaofeng Canyue died in battle.

Xiaofeng Canyue’s miserable smile became Ouyang Shuo’s deepest memory of this whole battle. Ouyang Shuo could totally understand the feelings a lord had towards his territory.

Xiaofeng Canyue didn’t choose to escape, and in the final moment, he made the choice to die together with his territory. Territory warfare didn’t have anything to do with righteousness or justice, good or bad. There was only survival, the strong live, the weak die.

Ouyang Shuo walked into the meeting hall, ordering the Guards unit to clean up the rest of the soldiers. He walked to the front of the Tianfeng Town stone steele, retrieving his Tang blade, rotating his golden internal strength, imbuing it into the blade before hacking down. Ouyang Shuo didn’t know any blade arts so he could only use pure strength to destroy the stone steele.

The territory stone steele had a certain defence and durability, which was correlated to the grade of the territory and the grade of the village creation token.

For a grade 1 village built using the lowest copper village creation token, its durability was 100, and its defence was 10. For each grade the token upgraded by, its initial stats would increase by 20%; each grade the territory increased, the stats would double; for every huge upgrade, the stats would increase by 5 times.

Tianfeng Town was a grade 3 town, and was made using a copper creation token. Its durability was 8000, and defense was 800. Every time it was attacked, the durability would drop. If the combat power was lower than the defence of the stone steele, one would be unable to break through, but you’d deduct durability points.

Ouyang Shuo’s knife removed only 12 durability points. Helplessly, he could only ask his Guards to launch an attack on the stone steele.

Half an hour later, the stone steele was finally destroyed.

The moment that it happened, a notification sounded in his ear.

”System notification: player Qiyue Wuyi has conquered Tianfeng Town. Please choose whether to conquer, hand over to another player, or destroy.”

”I choose to conquer!”

Tianfeng Town had a strategic location, so Ouyang Shuo would obviously conquer it. Not only Tianfeng Town, but he chose to conquer the 4 other territories.

”System notification: after conquering, you may rename the territory, would you choose to do so?”

”No!” Ouyang Shuo didn’t have the interest and wasn’t in the mood to think of another name.

After conquering the territory, Ouyang Shuo finally had time to deal with the mess.

The battle in the back courtyard of the lord’s manor had already ended, and with Xiaofeng Canyue’s death, the remaining soldiers surrendered. As for Ba Dao and the others, they were all killed and no one was left alive.

Ouyang Shuo sat in the lord’s manor, taking control over Tianfeng Town and giving out a series of commands.

He ordered the 2nd unit of the 2nd regiment to be in charge of removing the military power of the affiliate territories of Tianfeng Town. he informed the residents that Tianfeng Town was under the rule of Shanhai City. He ordered the Guards unit to be in charge of the law and order in the city to prevent looting. He made some of the residents clean up the lord’s manor and gave instructions, restoring law and order.

In the afternoon, Tianfeng Town had basically returned to normal.

Ouyang Shuo ordered the 1st and 2nd units of the 2nd regiment to immediately return to Shanhai Town and bring back his orders. He ordered the 1st unit of the Beihai naval fleet to go up the Friendship river and rush to Xila lake to defend it. He appointed Construction Division secretary Zhao Dewang as the head of Tianfeng Town, choosing a group of elite workers and officials to come up together with the naval fleet. He ordered the shipyard to send a batch of shipmakers to Tianfeng Town to build a shipyard.

After they left, Ouyang Shuo started to receive all the officials in Tianfeng Town.

The lord’s manor was already cleaned up and the bodies were removed, buried in the mass grave outside the city; the bloodstains were cleaned up, and only the air had the thick smell of blood.

Tianfeng Town being a grade 3 Town, amongst players it could probably be ranked in the top 300. Xiaofeng Canyue could also be considered a good leader who had run the territory well.

Tianfeng Town had a total of 23 officials. There were 11 black iron, 2 silver, 1 gold and no historical people.

After two battles, the Tianfeng Town army was nearly wiped out, causing the population of the town to lessen tremendously, totalling only 7000.

After Tianfeng Town was conquered, it would be unable to have any more refugees spawn. Ouyang Shuo would rather migrate all the people from the affiliate territories to the main city to help it break 10 thousand.

As Tianfeng Town was outside of Shanhai City’s territory, Tianfeng Town couldn’t be considered Shanhai City’s, unless Ouyang Shuo moved all of them to Shanhai to live.

Ouyang Shuo obviously wouldn’t do that, as he had big plans for Tianfeng Town.

He started to make changes the the administrative structure of Tianfeng Town, similar to that of an affiliate territory of Shanhai City, with 23 officials as the base. This was to build an Administration Department, Internal Affairs Department, Financial Department, and Material Reserves Department. Once Zhao Dewang had brought the elite officials over, Tianfeng Town could immediately start running again.

Out of the officials, the only gold talent was Pu Zhidao, who passed the imperial exams. He was 42 years old and was an important assistant to Xiaofeng Canyue.

Ouyang Shuo was in the lord’s office alone with Pu Zhidao.

Civil servants had a backbone such that they wouldn’t want to serve a second master, especially so quickly after their old one died. When he entered, he was cold, not willing to discuss with Ouyang Shuo.

Ouyang Shuo smiled and he didn’t mind, asking him to sit before saying, ”Tianfeng Town and Shanhai City does have some conflict. Im sure you know, but I hope you can make your judgement on whoever started it.”

Pu Zhidao was a bit emotional. As Xiaofeng Canyue’s assistant, he was clear that Tianfeng Town picked the fight, which resulted in today’s disaster. Since they lost, there was nothing they could say.

Since it was a knot, it wasn’t so easy to remove it. Their stand was different so the points which they considered were also different. In his mind, Tianfeng Town’s actions were correct, just that their strength wasn’t enough.

Ouyang Shuo obviously didn’t think that it would be so easy to convince him. ”A good official learns and improves, I hope you can consider the wellbeing of the residents. If you don’t do anything because of your pride and backbone, they would lose a good official, so why would you do that?”

Pu Zhidao let out a long sigh and bowed, ”I greet my lord.”

Ouyang Shuo helped him up and said, ”With your help, Tianfeng Town will have no worries!”

Ouyang Shuo appointed him the Administration director, with a person who was familiar with the runnings of Tianfeng Town, it would make it easier for him get used to.

The next day, the Guards units got out of the city and started to clear up the raider camps along the border. Ouyang Shuo gave specific instructions that they were not only to clear those around Tianfeng Town, but also all those in the Xila Lake region.

The goal was first to make all the residents live peacefully at night and prove that their ruler had the power to protect their safety; second was to make use of this to gather a bunch of prisoners to build the city protection unit of Tianfeng Town. The Guards units couldn’t be sent here for long periods of time, so before leaving, Ouyang Shuo had to ensure that they could defend themselves.

Tianfeng Town’s recruitment ability was totally squeezed by Xiaofeng Canyue, so the only method was the raiders.

Ouyang Shuo brought four guards, and after leaving the city, walked towards Xila Lake.

As the brightest pearl to the west of the Lianzhou Basin, the Xila Lake was 3150 square kilometers, much larger than the size of a grade 1 county. Its deepest depth was 35 meters, and had an average depth of 25 meters.

The lake water was clear, such that one could see the bottom. The temperature was good and there was an abundance of fish and grass. Apart from that, many birds rested around the lake and depended on it for survival.

On the surface of the lake, fishermen were rowing their boats and tossing out fishing nets.

Xila Lake was a treasure trove, but Ouyang Shuo temporarily didn’t have a plan to make use of it. As he looked towards the water, his heart felt happier instantly.

During the following week, the guards went out in all directions to clear the raider camps. Within a five thousand square kilometer radius, many camps of different sizes were all cleared by them.

This operation earned them 4100 gold, 1020 combat prisoners, 2250 non-combat prisoners, and many different resources, filling up the arsenal and warehouse of Tianfeng Town.

The battle successes of the Guards units awed the residents of Tianfeng Town.

To think that whenever Tianfeng Town tried to clear raiders, they were very careful and planned well, unlike these guards who effortlessly cleared them. Such a strong army brought these residents a sense of security.

The large addition of prisoners made Tianfeng Town’s population increase significantly, Ouyang Shuo upgraded the town to a City, becoming the 4th city grade affiliate territory of Shanhai County.

Making use of the funds he gained, Ouyang Shuo chose a bunch of elites from the combat prisoners in addition to the prisoners from Tianfeng City to build Tianfeng City’s city protection unit.

The unit included a sword shield soldier unit and an archer unit, a total of 1000 men. Ouyang Shuo chose a few key men from the Guards unit and left them here to be the major and sergeants.

The job of the city protection unit, apart from protecting the city, was also to continue to clear raider camps.

Based on his thinking, since there were no more refugees spawning, they had to use wild raiders to raise the population.

After the class change of the city protection squad, Ouyang Shuo kept 1000 gold. He kept the remaining 2700 gold to build a branch of the Four Seas bank to boost Tianfeng City’s economy.

A short week after conquering Tianfeng City, Ouyang Shuo’s many plans and solutions had breathed a new life into Tianfeng City.