Once on the wall, Lorist discovered that what he had taken for a towering ten-meter structure was actually a row of buildings erected atop the battlements, their rooftops merely modified into crenellations to blend seamlessly with the wall. Some of these buildings stored weapons, others served as quarters for the defenders, and before one building lay a siege ballista split into several pieces—no doubt the one Chosk had toppled with a single arrow.
Chosk was already waiting on the wall and hurried over when he spotted Lorist.
"You got lucky this time," Lorist said unhappily. "You ran into nothing but cowardly mercenaries. If the wall had been held by a proper garrison unit, you wouldn't have captured it so easily without a single casualty."
Chosk smiled. "My lord is too kind..."
"And another thing—don't ignore me like that anymore. It makes me lose face completely..." Lorist continued to grumble.
Chosk just chuckled.
"Oh right, what important thing did you find?" Lorist finally remembered why he had come.
Chosk pointed ahead. "Right in that building over there. Go take a look and you'll see, my lord."
He was pointing at five buildings in the center of the wall that stood two meters taller than the others on either side. Several guard squad members stood outside, watching over a group of captives.
The middle building of the five was the largest, roughly six meters long and three meters wide—the same width as the other buildings on the wall. The moment Lorist stepped through the door, he saw an entire wall lined with massive wooden-and-bronze gears and a large rotating wheel.
"Is this the mechanism for raising and lowering the iron portcullis?" Lorist asked.
In larger cities or among wealthier lords, a heavy iron portcullis was often installed in the gateway passage. Normally raised out of the way, it could be dropped in wartime to form a new defensive barrier once the enemy had breached the main gate.
Chosk nodded.
"Damn it—is this Viscount Kenmais showing off his wealth? Spending this kind of fortune to build such a lavish defensive wall in the middle of nowhere? If he wanted to block the
"My lord, turn around. The answer is to your right," Chosk said.
Lorist turned. To his right was a small adjoining room, its walls covered with maps of various sizes. In the center stood a large table holding a sand table and several castle models.
The sand table revealed a mountain city nestled between mountains and water, surrounded by farmland. Not far from the city was a mine entrance, and beside it lay a sprawling complex of workshops. At the far end of the mountain ridge where the city sat stood a heavily fortified military fortress.
"This sand table is well made. Where is this mountain city?" Lorist asked.
Chosk shook his head. "I don't know, my lord. I wasn't asking you to look at the sand table but at the castle model beside it. I believe they're planning to build a castle here."
Beside the large sand table sat an incomplete castle model that had not yet been fully assembled, but the two walls—one in front, one behind, one long, one short—quickly made it clear to Lorist that he was currently standing on the longer front wall of the model.
"Heh, this Viscount Kenmais really has invested heavily..." Lorist stamped his foot. "Look—both the flooring here and the outer wall surface are plastered with green adhesive clay. To actually finish building a castle like this, the green adhesive clay alone would cost tens of thousands of gold Fordes. Oh, where did the big-bearded one run off to?"
Green adhesive clay was the premier building material for constructing palaces and castles across the Galentea Continent, functioning much like cement from Lorist's previous world. The composition was quite similar—lime and clay fired into ash, then mixed with fine sand. The difference was that cement was cheap while green adhesive clay was prohibitively expensive. Cement was mixed with water, but green adhesive clay required a special adhesive solution.
Lorist's squire Reidi hailed from the Roman Empire, where there was a famous mountain region that served as imperial forbidden territory—trespassers were put to death. This was because the area was the continent's renowned source of glue vines. Legend held that glue vines were not native to Galentea but had been transplanted from a sub-plane world by mages thousands of years ago. These vines thrived in shade and moisture, growing as thick as large wine barrels. A single incision on the surface would yield a pale blue-green sap.
This pale sap looked like plain water but became extremely sticky when heated, and once hardened, was virtually indestructible. People would take this glue vine sap, dilute it with ten parts water, heat the mixture, then combine it with lime, clay, and fine sand to produce green adhesive clay—the finest bonding material in Galentean construction and also the most expensive. A single barrel of glue vine sap weighing a hundred jin cost one gold Forde. The Roman Empire earned hundreds of thousands to millions of gold Fordes annually from selling glue vine sap alone.
In Galentea, those who could not afford green adhesive clay used earth dragon skin fat rendered into a bonding material. While structurally sound, houses built this way carried a faint earthy smell that attracted insects, requiring periodic lime washes and pesticide spraying. The second alternative was a type of black glutinous rice, boiled into a thin porridge and mixed with clay, lime, and fine sand—another effective bonding material. However, buildings constructed with this material were prone to mold during the rainy season and needed frequent washing.
Green adhesive clay, fragrant and insect-repelling. Lorist had spent considerable time in
"My lord, Ovikis took half the guard squad out to round up people," Chosk said.
"Round up people?"
"Yes—the slave laborers who built this wall. The mercenary captain who surrendered said that the supply of green adhesive clay materials had run short, so the overseer in charge of castle construction sent nearly a thousand slave laborers out to gather lime, dig clay, and sift sand. Ovikis took the men to capture those slave laborers," Chosk explained.
Only then did Lorist recall that he indeed hadn't seen any construction workers when he arrived—they had all gone out to gather building materials.
"Those prisoners outside—were they mercenaries? Bring the one in charge to me. I have some questions," Lorist said.
The surrendered mercenary captain was soon brought before Lorist.
What Lorist wanted to ask about was the Norton Family.
The mercenary captain thought for a moment before answering. "My lord, I was hired by Viscount Kenmais less than two months ago. But I heard that about half a year ago, the viscount sent troops to seize the mine, then went on to attack the Norton Family's manor castle. They lost several dozen men and stood off for over half a month before withdrawing without result. After that, the viscount began building this wall here. When I was hired and arrived, the wall had only just been completed. In these past two months, I haven't seen anyone from the Norton Family come by, and the patrols we sent out never encountered Norton Family scouts. However, during one supply run to the mine, I heard the mercenaries garrisoned there say that they had spotted Norton Family members a few months earlier—right after the viscount had withdrawn. When they found the mine occupied, the Nortons left, and after that, there was no further word about them."
"Do you know what happened to the Norton Family's people who used to manage the copper mine?" Lorist asked.
The mercenary captain shook his head. "I'm not sure about that, but I imagine they were all thrown into the mine to dig for ore. Last month, over a thousand jin of copper ingots were shipped from there and stored in the warehouses here."
Just then, a commotion arose outside. A guard squad member came in to report that Ovikis the big-bearded had returned with the slave laborers.
Lorist and Chosk climbed to the roof-level wall for a look. In the distance, a long column of laborers snaked its way toward the gate, flanked by guard squad members on tall horses posturing importantly. Ovikis the big-bearded led the procession at the front.
Settling nearly a thousand slave laborers into place took the better part of a day, aided by the fact that these workers had been slaves for so long they were quite docile, and their old encampment from when they had been building the wall was still intact.
Lorist gathered Chosk,
When Sedekamp and Pat arrived and saw the sand table, they immediately cried out—it was the terrain of their family's territory, the Morgan Hills.
"My lord, look—that mine is our copper mine, and here..." Sedekamp pointed to the military fortress at the lower corner of the sand table. "This fortress stands where we are right now. But there's no mountain city here, and none of this farmland either. This should all be forest, and this river doesn't exist here..."
Hearing this, Lorist grew interested and ordered Ovikis to bring up the master architect and chief overseer they had captured.
The so-called master architect was a middle-aged man in his forties who bluntly admitted that the castle model was his handiwork. However, he refused to answer any of Lorist's questions about castle design details and angrily denounced Lorist's despicable conduct in sneaking in to seize his construction site. He demanded that Lorist apologize immediately and leave, otherwise all consequences would be borne by Lorist.
Lorist and the others exchanged bewildered glances, wondering if this architect had lost his mind. Finally, Lorist was so amused by the man's incessant ranting that he laughed: "You come onto my property to build yourselves a house, and when I, the owner, come out to stop you, somehow I'm in the wrong? Guards—tie him to the flagpole outside and give him fifty lashes to clear his head."
Next came the chief overseer. Sedekamp and Pat recognized the old man with the goatee—he was Boris, the head steward of Viscount Kenmais. They had met him several times during past negotiations over the copper mine dispute. They never expected to find him here, appointed by the viscount as the chief overseer of castle construction.
This goateed Boris was a coward. With the screams of the master architect being lashed outside, he stood trembling from head to toe, answering every question without hesitation. He quickly confessed everything—the details of the sand table, the reasons behind Viscount Kenmais's castle construction here, and the viscount's family background, all laid out in thorough detail.
Viscount Kenmais hailed from a merchant family. His father had been the president of the largest construction guild in the former Krisen Empire. During the civil war, his father had pledged allegiance to the
Though the Kenmais Family now held land in the Northland, their Red River Valley manor castle had no natural defenses and could easily fall under attack. So the family dispatched large teams of surveyors to conduct extensive reconnaissance of their territory and the surrounding regions. In the end, they discovered that the Morgan Hills area in the adjacent Norton Family territory was the ideal location for building a castle and establishing the Kenmais Family's legacy for the next hundred years. To seize the Morgan Hills, the family bribed the officials responsible for drawing territorial boundaries, having the Norton Family's copper mine land reassigned to Viscount Kenmais's territory. This deliberately sparked the conflict with the Norton Family, intending to exploit the Nortons' vulnerabilities to seize the Morgan Hills and erect their castle.
Boris the goatee explained that although the castle model had not been fully assembled, all the design drafts and renderings were complete and stored beneath the table. Once finished, the castle could accommodate ten thousand people. The Kenmais Family would relocate here as their ancestral seat, and with a garrison of just three thousand, even an enemy ten times their number would be unable to breach it.
As for the mountain city on the sand table, the Kenmais Family planned to build it after completing this castle—a town that could house fifty to sixty thousand people, focused on developing resources like the copper mine, timber yards, and quarries. Once the surrounding forests were cleared, the land would be leveled and merged with the wilderness for cultivation, with the potential to yield hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland. Farmsteads would then be established, along with irrigation infrastructure. Even if the Northland allowed only one harvest per year, it would be more than sufficient to ensure food supply.
To realize this grand development blueprint, the Kenmais Family planned to invest three hundred thousand gold Fordes over five years to establish a century of prosperity. They simply hadn't expected that barely four months into the plan, Lorist would arrive.
"Do you know what the Kenmais Family intends to do about the Norton Family?" Lorist asked.
"Then why did they attack the Norton Family's manor castle half a year ago?"
"That was because the young lord heard that Baron Norton, the head of the Norton Family, had been dead for half a year. He sent an envoy to negotiate with the Nortons, proposing to purchase the Morgan Hills to settle the dispute between the two families. But the envoy was humiliated by the Norton Family—they tore up his letter and said that not an inch of Norton Family territory would ever be sold, told our young lord to abandon the idea, and sent the envoy packing. The young lord was furious and sent troops to attack the Norton Family castle, but failed to take it. That was why the young lord decided to immediately begin implementing the plan—besides, it would also keep the Norton Family pinned down to the north, and once they couldn't take it anymore, they would naturally come begging for mercy," the goateed Boris answered.
"Oh, and what about that master architect?" Lorist recalled the apparently unhinged middle-aged man.
"My lord,
"Heh heh..." Lorist laughed. That architect really was out of his mind. He could afford to look down on those dukes and marquises who held court titles, since they were all ceremonial nobles without real power. But being this arrogant and rude before a landed lord like himself was simply asking for trouble.