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 nearby valleys and forests." The visitor said.
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 moment that he had hallucinated because he drank too much swamp water.
The knight in front of him was of extraordinary majesty, with blazing eyes, and his blond hair had begun to thin. There was a strange crest drawn on the shield beside the armor and saddle - a raised fist pointing at a five-pointed star. This design with no rules or origins looks like it was made by hand.
Seeing Griffith's lack of reaction, the legendary warrior in simple clothes added, "There are also a lot of titles. If you want to hear the end of me, I'm afraid it will be dark today."
"Why are you here, Your Excellency?"
"It's out of interest."
Griffith had many thoughts running through his mind in an instant.
The Knight Roland in the story has disappeared from public view for nearly ten years. He did not marry the heroine of the story, well, that is controversial, but the most common theory is that Tidwige was the heroine and they lived happily ever after. He gave up the honor bestowed by Bijelan and the Holy Light Holy See, left behind his military and clerical duties, and curbed his sharpness.
Griffith originally thought that this great knight lived leisurely in some beautiful place, lived in seclusion, invented mutton hot pot, wrote and published a book...
Unexpectedly, he would appear near the desolate swamp.
According to the legendary ranger, the schistosomiasis in the swamp has been eradicated by Roland. Since her original intention was not to kill Griffith, then she really wanted the would-be knights to gain experience and broaden their horizons.
It seems that when Galadia contacted here 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 wasteland near Tulan Swamp. It is not that difficult to obtain a large fiefdom. But this place is very barren, 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 were stationed here would move to the more comfortable and safer south as long as they had some money.
"Which ruins do you want to explore?" Knight Roland suddenly asked.
"Belomont Ruins, Lord Paladin." Griffith answered respectfully. According to the ill-conceived original plan, the travel group would set out from Tynephes to avoid the dangerous swamp plague, and pick up the guides and hired workers who came via the roads around Qiming Town at a designated location to go to the Belomon ruins.
This plan makes no sense now. First, the blood-sucking disease that worried everyone seemed to have been eliminated, and second, Griffith was 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 whip and pointed in the 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 shows 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 brought a horse to Griffith. "Forget about Ty Nepheus and follow me. Young people must work hard on themselves. In this world, don’t think that taking different girl lines will lead to a happy ending. This is a little life experience that I give you as an elder."
I didn’t quite understand what he said. Sure enough, the legendary hero’s ideas were so different. Well, sometimes I can't understand Sonia and the others' chats. It's not surprising~ Griffith quickly convinced himself and gratefully accepted the Paladin's kindness.
…
The two rode horses towards the town near the swamp.
There are many rivers on this road, and a long procession of flat-bottomed boats is sailing on the widest river that flows through the Turan Swamp. Although the ship types are different, the word "Qiming" is written in white paint on the bow and stern, followed by numbers, connected end to end like a centipede, sailing out of the swamp from north to south. These ships are surprisingly ugly, so gray that you can’t tell what kind of wood they are, flat and low, and there are sailors in shabby clothes on the bows, carrying black sticks on their backs to guard them.
"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 trips, with five or six flights a day.”
No grain in the cargo? Is it possible that the manpower in this area can satisfy both iron-making and planting? Griffith had a small question in his mind, but he didn't raise it immediately.
Speaking of manpower, Griffith was still curious about the plague in the swamp. Those nasty blood-sucking bugs can't even be affected by extraordinary people. I don't know what secret method Knight Roland used to cure them.
The two borrowed a ferry boat to cross the river and walked along the road to the southeast. The flat-bottomed boats gradually disappeared from sight, replaced by patches of flat farmland. The fields extended from the plain to the south, swallowing up a large area in the marsh.
There are large and small waterwheels located among the farmlands, and the water they lift is constantly 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."
"It took many years of hard work to achieve such a scene," Roland said lightly, pointing into the distance, "To put it bluntly, those stoves are still troublesome."
Where his riding whip pointed, close to the distant hills, tall chimneys looked like woods, with black smoke billowing straight into the sky.
Griffith had seen coal and iron mines in various places, where the chimneys worked day and night to deliver pig iron to various places. But didn’t you expect to encounter it at the edge of this swamp? He thought for a while and asked: "These are iron factories, 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 in trade, right?" Griffith asked.
"That's right, after the technology improvement 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 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 was water on the road, and water droplets still hung on the branches and grass blades on the roadside. It had just rained here, but there was no mud and depressions that are common in the countryside. The place to stay is solid and flat, and the splashing water is quite clear.
If it were in a city like Beyeland, Griffith would naturally not be curious. The streets there are paved with beautiful cobblestones and stone tiles, which are a delight to the eye.
But the foot is just a wild road, and I don’t know what kind of material it is made of. It looks dusty and inconspicuous, but it can avoid the trouble of muddy water splashing on the trouser legs.
"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 is practical."
Looking at the gray road, Griffith suddenly remembered the flat-bottomed boat he had just seen in the river. The type of wood on the slowly moving ships cannot be seen, but the color is very similar to that of cement pavement.
…
Roland took Griffith to a town. Separated from Turan Fort by wetlands and bushes, there is a large area of cultivated fields to the east that extends to the foot of the rolling mountains.
"Welcome to Qiming Town," Luo Lanle spread his hands and said, "This place was originally called Gray Swamp 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 the river makes transportation very inconvenient and sparsely populated. Except for the elves' territory, it is not far away. There are no large towns.
Qiming Town, on the edge of the swamp, grows alone among the gloomy sky and earth. From a distance, it looks a bit like it was built with building blocks. The buildings in the town are laid out as neatly as measured with a ruler. Straight roads crisscross the area, and each intersection has detailed instructions. The architectural style is very simple, and the residents' houses are featureless gray two-story buildings made of cement, with no gardens or elaborate terraces.
Griffith followed Roland as he walked to the Administration Hall, seeing the post office, chamber of commerce, hotels and hospitals, and even schools and theaters along the way.
For an ordinary small town, a street market, an administrative hall, a few taverns, and a few residential areas constitute a complete town. The population and facilities of Qiming Town are beyond imagination. All kinds of merchants wearing all kinds of clothes go in and out of several markets. Carts transport the goods full of goods to the port outside the town, and put them on flat boats for shipment.
Roland took him to the administrative 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's really not comfortable at all. 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 into the local social governance and structure.
Griffith 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 plans, trade reports, theater plays to side stories.
On the front page of a newer newspaper, he noticed a commentator's article signed "Lingao"——
"Sending the God of Plague".
