Warlord: King of All Clans

Because of the wall, Count Tyron could not see the figures of the dungeon guards.

But his words clearly piqued their interest. The guard cleared his throat and asked, "How much arable land does your county have? How many tenant farmers? How many serfs?"

"In your manor, how much land is each serf responsible for cultivating?"

Count Tyron was also a ruler skilled in management, otherwise he would not have become the second largest count in the Province of Caroling.

Hearing this, he answered one by one.

At first, Count Tyron could still chime in with a few words, such as how to manage serfs, grant manors, and allocate taxes.

But as the conversation deepened, Count Tyron could no longer keep up, and only the guard was talking eloquently.

It took Count Tyron an entire afternoon to barely understand why his county lagged behind others.

Not to mention comparing it to Riverrun or the County of Brutus, even the neighboring County of McDonald was far more developed than his.

The county, with an area of 50,000 square kilometers, equivalent to half a province, had only four county-level cities, and the rest were all manor economies.

Was this reasonable? It was not reasonable!

Relying on a group of manor serfs to farm and mine, how could it be possible to compare with others who comprehensively developed agriculture, industry, and commerce.

After chatting for a whole afternoon, Count Tyron suddenly woke up when dinner was delivered.

I have encountered a great talent for governing the world!

Without hesitation, he said loudly, "Count Riverrun abuses alien races. How can he be a wise ruler? A talent for governing the world like you is buried here, only able to be a mere jailer. It's a pity. Why not come with me to the Southern Border? Success is just around the corner."

The guard chuckled and said nothing.

Count Tyron gritted his teeth and actually bowed down, "Sir, you are very talented. I am willing to worship you as a family retainer, entrusting all the political affairs of the Governor's County to you. I implore you to condescend."

Apart from a Duke of the Northern Border, there were no other enfeoffed dukes or marquises in the empire, and the matter of an Elector Marquis had not been resolved even now.

A border count like him already held a position second only to the Southern Border Emperor, and he did not even have to kneel when he met His Majesty the Emperor.

This action was definitely sincere.

At this moment, the guard did not speak, and after a while, he curiously asked, "Are you really willing to worship me as a family retainer? Don't you dislike my background?"

Count Tyron vowed, "Absolutely not!"

According to the rules of the game for imperial nobles, the people of Riverrun would never dare to risk the world's disapproval by beheading him, a Southern Border Count. In the end, they could only demand a ransom and then respectfully send him back.

Although he suffered the humiliation of being captured, it was all worth it to be able to obtain such a capable minister.

At this time, the guard delivering dinner approached and said to the guard speaking outside, "Little Liu Wang, you're bragging here again. It's time to change shifts."

Along with his voice, the guard who had been chatting with Count Tyron finally revealed his figure, approached the dining table with a "Woof" sound, "Can I steal a chicken leg?"

"Eat it, anyway, the Count can't finish it."

Count Tyron looked at this scene in horror. The dungeon guard whom he regarded as a great talent for governing the world was actually a Kobold!

Outside the prison door, on the guard's table, there was a thick stack of Riverrun newspapers.

The black and white characters on it were extremely eye-catching.

"The Three Elements of Productivity."

"On Productivity and Relations of Production."

"The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Manor Economy."

"On Queen Lola's 'Theory of Enfeoffment Harming the Country'."

The dungeon in New Tao City held important figures such as Count Tyron and Viscount Duncan. For this reason, the guards were all replaced with a group of elite musketeers from the Riverrun Lord's Mansion.

Little Liu Wang, who graduated from the Central Plains Middle School, had no other interests after coming to Star Tao City. He just loved reading newspapers. He could almost recite the official government gazette of the Riverrun Lord's Mansion.

Don't look down on him just because he is a Kobold. He is now a lieutenant in the Riverrun Lord's Army and an instructor in their elite musket company.

Of course, although the company commander said that the instructor was there to provide them with spiritual guidance, most of the musketeers believed that Little Liu Wang was there to provide them with spiritual comfort.

After Little Liu Wang happily left with the chicken leg, the newly arrived human guard delivered the food to Count Tyron's prison door, then pulled up a stool and sat down, curiously asking, "What were you talking about?"

Still in horror, Count Tyron subconsciously replied, "We talked about how to liberate productivity."

The new guard said "Oh" and flipped out a newspaper, "This is simple. I'll read it to you."

"To liberate productivity, first you must understand the three elements of productivity..."

"To reform the relations of production, improve the quality of laborers, and promote technological progress..."

Listening to the babbling in the school, "Vegetable Dog" Edgar used a small wooden knife to focus on scraping the corner of the wall, collecting the wall salt on it bit by bit.

This was the school public toilet in Karl Territory. The wall skin had been scraped over and over again, and there was not much wall salt left to be found.

But Edgar inherited the Kobold's amazing sense of smell and was always able to find the location of the wall salt in the first place.

In addition to public toilets, there were also the village stables and the canal walls outside the village.

Some human children also said they would take him to collect saltpeter in the caves in the mountains, but Edgar remembered his mother's instructions and refused this tempting invitation.

The invasion of the Southern Border was not without any impact on Riverrun, because a large amount of gunpowder in stock was quickly emptied, and the production capacity of the saltpeter mines began to fail to keep up. Therefore, the Lord's Mansion issued an announcement to purchase saltpeter from the people.

Although saltpeter was far inferior to pure saltpeter, it was abundant, readily available, and could provide a lot of gunpowder raw materials when collected.

Especially those Kobolds with a keen sense of smell would drill into the deep mountains to find caves rich in saltpeter, directly boil the saltpeter inside, and then sell it to the Lord's Mansion in exchange for food.

The Southern Border did not have saltpeter mines. Their gunpowder workshops basically relied on this method of collecting saltpeter to support them. The labor costs were astonishing, but it was better than nothing.