Chapter 99: Bald Qiang

In the next few days, Ethan's territory was crowded with people every day.

In this cold winter, the earth was silent, but only here, there was laughter and excitement.

Inadvertently, the severe cold of winter was also dispelled.

A large number of fresh fish were salvaged from the sea and transported to various fortresses through dozens of sled teams.

Countless people ate delicious and cheap seafood in this food-scarce winter.

Everyone's face was full of smiles.

Especially the people living in Baron Fortress, they felt the most deeply.

Usually in winter, apart from potatoes, there are potatoes, and at most some dried meat.

But this year, there is suddenly a supply of seafood, and the price is affordable. How can they not be happy!

After learning that it was supplied by the nearby Lawson family, people kept rushing here.

Because Ethan offered people who work here a silver coin a day and a 3 to 5 jin fresh fish.

They came here to find a job and get more fish.

Most of the people who come here to work are relatives of the soldiers of the fortress. Even in the warm season, they basically have no income, let alone in this cold winter.

Therefore, when they learned that there was not only money to be made here, but also fish to be shared.

Barron Fortress was boiling.

However, Ethan did not want these people, because it was a small business and he really couldn't afford it.

In addition, the people working in the territory now are already skilled and can basically meet the daily supply needs, so he is not going to add more people.

But Ethan didn't want to add, and many people were not happy.

Ethan would meet the extraordinary knights from Barron Fortress in the captain's room from time to time.

In this world, there are two types of extraordinary knights. One is like Ethan, who was born with the title of knight, and then promoted to extraordinary through family inheritance.

The other is the group of people he met.

They may not have a good background, but because of their military merits, they got the opportunity to awaken the extraordinary, and they successfully awakened, and finally became knights.

It's hard to say how powerful the former is, but once the latter awakens, he will definitely be very powerful.

However, because of his poor background, he is likely to be a knight in terms of status.

Now, they come to Ethan to ask him to help them find a job for their relatives.

Ethan knows that these people are real talents. Although he knows that it is impossible to recruit them, he is still willing to give them face.

After all, no one knows what achievements they will make in the future.

A little thing can make a good relationship, which is a good deal no matter how you look at it.

And seeing their shyness when they opened their mouths, Ethan can understand their difficulties in coming forward to ask. After all, who doesn't have some relatives? When they encounter difficulties, everyone helps each other, which is humane.

Of course, there is another reason why Ethan is willing to help.

These people are willing to put down their face and come to ask. If Ethan doesn't agree, they will lose face in front of their relatives.

Once they lose face, how do you know if they will hold a grudge?

Once they hold a grudge, many things are hard to say.

Although Ethan was not afraid of them and they were not close friends, it was not a good thing to provoke them. How could you know if they would trip you up?

Therefore, Ethan decisively agreed to their request.

In their request, in addition to arranging personnel, they also hoped that Ethan could allocate some territory for them to build houses.

Of course, Ethan agreed.

But this agreement was a big deal. People kept applying for housing land from him.

Because the people who came to work here also understood that this was a long-term job and they couldn't always live in tents!

Therefore, when they saw Ethan approving land, they immediately followed suit and submitted applications.

This stumped Ethan.

Small batches of land approval are not important, but large batches of land approval involve many issues.

For example, the issue of the ownership of the people, tax issues, specific planning issues...

The most fatal one is the issue of the ownership of the people.

According to imperial law, the residents living in your territory are the private people of the lord.

But these people are the subjects of the duke. If you approve one or two people, the duke will not say anything.

But if you want to grant land in large quantities, it will cost the Duke his life for the sparsely populated North.

If the Duke knew about this, he might not be able to save his life.

But then again, these people really have to work here for a long time, and they can't always live in tents!

Especially in this cold winter, no one can stand it.

For this reason, Ethan thought of a way.

He granted the land, but he couldn't recognize them as residents, nor did he ask them to pay taxes, and he issued them temporary residence permits and work permits.

Only those who hold these two certificates can live in the territory.

Ethan's definition is: labor dispatch!

And before granting the land, write a letter to the Duke to avoid possible risks.

This matter was handled by Andy, and he received a reply from the Duke soon.

Just two words: "Yes!"

After receiving a positive reply, Ethan marked out an area on the side close to the Anji Mountains for everyone to build.

Once this land was marked out, the territory became more lively.

All of a sudden, thousands of people came.

Why did so many people come at once?

As I said before, who doesn't have relatives these days?

When there is something wrong with the family, naturally the whole family will come together.

Of course, they only come to build houses and will have to go back later.

Because it was a relative bringing relatives, and it was in a special place like the North.

Therefore, there were all kinds of people.

You can often see some fully armed and noble extraordinary knights rushing here during the free time of shift change.

Then after changing clothes, they carried axes and went to the forest to cut trees.

Some knights even came on eagles!

No matter how glorious they are outside, when they come here, their old man points his finger and they still have to carry axes and go into the forest obediently.

Most of these knights are very polite and sensible.

Knowing that the trees here are nominally Ethan's, they all come to Ethan with real money to buy them before cutting them down.

Unlike those people whose families don't have knights, they dare to carry axes and cut trees without saying anything once they get a batch of land.

However, Ethan did not collect the money and told them to cut them at will.

Because everything is valuable in the North, except these trees.

Although Ethan was penniless, he was unwilling to ruin the knights' good impression of him for such a small amount of money.

It was worth it no matter how you looked at it!

And they were cutting down trees, in fact, they were helping.

Ethan thought it would be better if they could cut down all the trees, so that there would be more open land, which could be used as compost and farmland.

With the addition of these extraordinary knights and so many people, the speed of building houses was comparable to that of rockets.

With a whoosh, the houses rose from the ground, and it took only a few days to build a piece.

Although they were all simply built with stacked logs, they were very simple, but compared with tents, they were hundreds of times better.

Just when everything in the territory was developing in full swing, Ethan received bad news.

To be precise, it was news that would destroy the development of the entire territory.