He knows me and is waiting for me. Could it be that... Griffith spit out the water he had filled his stomach with, rubbed his hair and saluted the knight in front of him: "Who is your Excellency?"
“Knight Roland, the lord of Qiming Town and the surrounding valleys and forests.” said the visitor.
Roland? The legendary warrior and dragon slayer, Roland, the protagonist of the story I heard when I was a child, was right in front of me... Griffith thought for a while that he had drank too much swamp water and was hallucinating.
The knight in front of him was of extraordinary aura, with blazing eyes, and his blond hair was starting to become sparse. There was a strange heraldry drawn on the armor and the shield beside the saddle - a raised fist pointed at a five-pointed star. This kind of knight-errant had no rules or origins.
The design looks like it was made by hand.
Seeing Griffith's lack of reaction, the legendary warrior in simple attire added: "There are also a lot of titles for Barabara. If you want to hear the end of me, I'm afraid it will be dark today."
“Why are you here, Your Excellency?”
“Out of interest.”
Griffiths had many thoughts running through his mind in an instant.
The Chevalier Roland in the story has disappeared from public view for nearly ten years. He has no relationship with the heroine of the story. Well, this issue is controversial, but the most common theory is that Tidwige is the heroine, happily ever after.
Together. He gave up the honor bestowed by Bijelan and the Holy Light Holy See, left behind his military and priesthood, and tempered his talents.
Griffith originally thought that this great knight lived leisurely in some pleasant place, lived in seclusion, invented mutton hot pot, wrote novels, and published books...
I didn’t expect him to appear near the desolate swamp.
According to the legendary ranger, the schistosomiasis in the swamp has been eliminated by Roland. Since her original intention was not to kill Griffith, then she really wanted to let the prospective knights come out to gain experience and broaden their horizons.
It seems that when Galadia contacted this place to coordinate the itinerary, the legendary ranger lady had already made preparations and notified her Knight Roland to wait here.
Why did Roland do this? There are large areas of uncultivated wetlands and wastelands near Tulan Marsh. It is not very difficult to obtain a large fiefdom. But it is very barren here, and mutated creatures and beasts in the valleys and forests will also harass border settlements.
It is not easy to attract enough residents to burn the wasteland and colonize it. The knights and lords who are stationed here will move to the more comfortable and safer south as long as they have some money.
“Which ruins do you want to explore?” Knight Roland suddenly asked.
"The ruins of Bellomon, Lord Paladin." Griffith answered respectfully. According to the original plan, which was not comprehensive, the travel group would set out from Ty Nephes to avoid the dangerous swamp plague and pick up the passengers at the designated location.
Guides and hired workers came from the roads around Qiming Town to go to the Bellomont ruins.
This plan has no meaning now. Firstly, the blood-sucking disease that worried everyone seems to have been eliminated, and secondly, Griffith has been thrown out of the elven colony.
"Tidwigi will arrange for your companions. The team starting from Dinefis can take a boat; for those who are not welcomed by the elves, they need to transfer to another ferry through the valley near Qiming Town in the southeast.
, that place is under my jurisdiction, your friends will come to the town to find you," Roland raised his riding crop and pointed from a distance, "."
"I can introduce you to a small job. It's very safe. You can increase your knowledge and do some local side tasks at the same time," Knight Roland said with a kind smile. "Don't reject me in a hurry. Those of you who have left behind
The fact that your companions in the elf castle didn't fly out at this time means that they received decent treatment, unlike you."
“How did you know?”
"Of course I know. I am Knight Roland, the guardian of the swamp." Mr. Knight led a horse and handed it to Griffith. "Forget about Ty Nepheus and follow me. Young people must work hard on themselves.
In this world, don’t think that you can get a good ending by taking different girl lines. This is a little life experience that I give you as an elder."
I didn’t quite understand what he said. Sure enough, the thoughts of legendary heroes are so different. Well, sometimes I couldn’t understand Sonia and the others’ chats. It’s not surprising. Griffith quickly convinced himself and was grateful.
He accepted the Paladin's kindness.
…
The two of them rode horses and headed towards the town near the swamp.
There are dense rivers along this road, and there is a long fleet of flat-bottomed boats sailing on the widest river that flows through the Tulan Swamp. Although the boats are of different shapes, the word "Qiming" is written in white paint on the bow and stern.
With numbers added, they were connected end to end like centipedes, sailing out of the swamp from north to south. These ships were surprisingly ugly, so gray that you couldn't tell what kind of wood they were. They were flat and low, and there were sailors in shabby clothes on the bows, and on their backs.
Warning with a dark stick.
"These are cargo ships. We are the supplier of the plate armor of the Bayerland Legion," Roland explained, pointing to the south of the river. "What comes over there is the sugar, saltpeter and various minerals we purchased. So and so
There are staggered round trips, there are five or six flights every day.”
There is no food in the goods? Can the manpower in this area be sufficient for iron smelting and planting at the same time? Griffith had a small question in his mind, but he did not raise it immediately.
Speaking of manpower, Griffith was still very curious about the plague in the swamp. Those nasty blood-sucking bugs were even beyond the control of extraordinary beings. I wonder what secret method Knight Roland used to cure them.
The two borrowed a ferry boat to cross the small river and walked along the road to the southeast. The flat-bottomed boat gradually disappeared from sight, replaced by patches of flat farmland. The fields extended from the plains to the south and were swallowed up in the swamps.
It covers a large area.
There are large and small waterwheels located in the farmland, and the water lifted up is continuously poured into the ditches and flows to the vast fields.
“To be able to build so many waterwheels, it’s no wonder that we have enough energy to produce plate armor.” Griffith looked at Knight Roland. “It must have taken a lot of effort to build these waterwheels.”
“Years of hard work have led to such a scene,” Roland said calmly, pointing into the distance, “To be honest, those stoves are still troublesome.”
Where his riding whip pointed, near the distant hills, tall chimneys looked like woods, with black smoke billowing straight into the sky.
Griffiths had seen coal and iron mines in various places. The chimneys there worked day and night, sending pig iron to various places. But he didn't expect to see it on the edge of this swamp? He thought for a while and asked: "These
It's an ironworks, right? Would it be more convenient to build water transportation here?"
"That's right, if we take the land route, we may not be able to reach even Chengdu," Roland nodded, "When it comes to steel forging technology, we in Qiming Town have many original creations, and the iron factories in all provinces are our students.
"
"Why?"
"what why?"
“As the technology of forging steel spreads, your territory may suffer some losses from trade, right?” Griffith asked.
“That’s right, as technology improves in various places, we have lost some market share, and the price is no longer easy to negotiate,” Roland chuckled. “As for why I want to do this, I’ll leave it to you to think about.”
The two of them walked side by side on the road for a while, and Griffith suddenly noticed something strange. He lowered his head and looked at the road extending from the ferry to the town in the distance.
There is water on the road, and water drops are still hanging on the branches and grass blades on the roadside. It has just rained here, but there is no mud and depressions that are common in the countryside. The place to stay is solid and flat, and the splash of water is quite clear.
Griffiths would naturally not be curious if it were in a city like Bayerland. The streets there were paved with beautiful cobblestones and stone bricks, which was pleasing to the eye.
But the foot is just a wild road, and I don’t know what material it is made of. It looks dusty and inconspicuous, but it can avoid the trouble of muddy water splashing on the trousers.
"What built this road?" Griffith asked, "It's really smooth."
“Cement,” Roland glanced at him and said slowly, “it doesn’t look good, but it’s practical.”
Looking at the gray road, Griffith suddenly thought of the flat-bottomed boats he had just seen in the river. The type of wood in those slow-moving boats could not be seen, but they looked very similar to the cement road in color.
…
Roland took Griffith to a town. It was separated from Turan Castle by wetlands and bushes, and to the east was a large area of cultivated fields that spread to the foot of the rolling mountains.
"Welcome to Qiming Town," Luo Lanle spread his hands and said, "This place used to be called Gray Marsh Town. It was a small place worth mentioning. Now it is my territory."
The core area of the Sebasto region is concentrated in a narrow area along the coast. Although the middle reaches of the Tirne River and the swamps are not far away, the broken terrain divided by rivers makes transportation very inconvenient and sparsely populated. Except for the elves' territory, it is
There are no large towns.
Qiming Town on the edge of the swamp grows alone between the gloomy sky and the earth. From a distance, it looks like it is made of building blocks. The buildings in the town are as neatly placed as measured by a ruler, and the straight roads crisscross each other.
There are detailed signs at the intersections. The architectural style is very simple, and the residents' houses are gray two-story buildings made of featureless cement, with no gardens or elaborate terraces.
Griffith followed Roland as he walked to the Administration Hall. Along the way, he saw the post office, chamber of commerce, hotels and hospitals, and even schools and theaters.
For an ordinary small town, a street market, an administrative hall, a few pubs, and a few residential areas constitute a complete town. However, the population and facilities in Qiming Town are beyond imagination, and all kinds of businessmen wear all kinds of clothes.
Clothes went in and out of several markets, and carts loaded with goods were transported to the port outside the town, where they were put on flat boats for shipment.
Roland took him to the executive hall, sat in the conference room for a while, and then left for the office.
The conference room is very tidy, but the furnishings are very simple, with gray floors, gray walls, simple tables and chairs with teapots and teacups, no carpets and lattice wall panels, no incense, and even a faint smell of dust.
It was far from comfortable. On the bookshelf nearby, Griffith found some books and newspapers, and even a bound volume of Qiming Weekly, which looked like a local newspaper.
The paper of this newspaper is very rough. It should be a cheap print for civilians. It cannot be compared with the "Homonworth Magic Post" with moving pictures and the beautifully printed "Byeland Daily News".
However, it is not easy to have a newspaper in such a remote place. It is a window to understand the local social governance and structure.
Griffiths was a good intelligence officer. He would not ignore the value of this newspaper and read it quickly.
The content of newspapers is very complex, covering everything from announcements from the Executive Office, municipal planning, trade reports, theater plays to side stories.
On the front page of a newer newspaper, he noticed an article by a commentator signed "Lingao"——