The Mighty Dragons Are Dead

The banquet ended.

“I plan to build a new village on the East Coast to settle some serfs as fishermen for coastal fishing,” Li Si Te said.

Planters are busy during the planting season, but once the crops are planted, they become idle.

Li Si Te felt this was an unreasonable allocation of human resources. It would be better to reassign some planters to focus on developing nearshore fisheries, no, coastal fisheries.

Now without boats, even if we wanted to fish nearshore, we couldn’t do it.

“Such delicious food, we should indeed catch more. However, Li Si Te, the town’s population is too small, we don’t even have two thousand people. The agricultural production of each village can’t do without the labor of serfs.”

“I’ll figure something out about the population,” Li Si Te didn’t elaborate.

In fact, he had already discussed with Levis, using the shared profits from the Black Tulip as payment, to buy serfs from Levis—the Earl’s fleet went out to trade and could load quite a few serfs on the return journey. These serfs might come from war-torn islands or from the continent.

Goltai seemed to have understood, “Since you’ve said so, I will start planning for the new village immediately.”

“Baron, what will the new village be called?” Isaiah asked.

“Let’s call it… Oyster Village,” replied Li Si Te.

Li Si Te had high expectations for Oyster Village. He hoped that, once the village was established, it could transform a group of serfs into fishermen, continuously harvesting seafood, providing food for Fresh Flower Town, and offering a material basis for future construction—one where the residents of Fresh Flower Town could hibernate at home during winter to reduce food consumption.

With sufficient food, the cold of winter wouldn’t matter at all.

A large amount of construction could begin in winter.

In the evening, Goltai came to the castle again, “Li Si Te, Corn Grass has been found! The Patrol Team finally did something worthwhile. They discovered a bunch of grass similar to Corn Grass at the edge of Thorn Ridge, southwest of the town.”

“Take me to see it,” said Li Si Te.

Before dark, Li Si Te personally saw the large expanse of Corn Grass, mixed among other wild grasses. They appeared much shorter than the three wild corn plants in Little Wheat Village, probably due to poor nutrition.

Li Si Te took a tour and felt somewhat disappointed.

This was probably indeed the original habitat of Corn Grass, but there was no sign of Elf Bug nurturing—without the Elf Bug, the development of Corn Grass would be hard to thrive.

And it also couldn’t improve the variety gradually with the help of the Elf Bug to become more like a corn cob.

“Guard it well and be sure to collect the seeds carefully. Later, when we clear the fields in town, choose a suitable place and plant some to provide new varieties of forage for the horse farm and dairy farm,” Li Si Te instructed.

At night, after bathing, Li Si Te read in his study.

Before his eyes, the Smoke Serpent Script condensed: “Task completed, reward with new information on the Formless Dragon.”

Suddenly, the smoke twisted, and a new mission was released, “Task: Fisheries have been scheduled by the Landlord, and a group of serfs will soon be driven to the sea. It’s a Landlord’s essential skill to drive the people, but sustainable development is more important. Please update the equipment for the fishermen. Reward: A large patch of Smoked Grass.”

“A large patch of Smoked Grass, what is that, tobacco?” Li Si Te mused.

Updating the equipment for fishermen was a simple task. Even if the Smoke Mission wasn’t assigned, he would have done it anyway. One can’t expect fishermen to fish with their hands if they lack tools.

After the tide receded, the rocks became extremely sharp, able to cut a finger with just a careless slip.

The task reward was no longer the information about the Formless Dragon, which somewhat relieved Li Si Te (Liszt) and made him start to look forward to what Smoked Grass might be.

Smoking was fashionable among nobles, and the Tulip Family had planted many tobacco plants and even had a Tobacco Minor Elf.

“So, Smoked Grass probably isn’t tobacco, since there were tobacco seeds among the seeds traded from Tulip Castle. I could plant them anytime I wanted.”

Li Si Te (Liszt) decided not to dwell on it, certain that he would eventually find out what Smoked Grass was.

He waved his hand to disperse the Smoke Serpent Script and continued reading. The Earl had kept his word; upon Liszt’s return, he was gifted a cartload of books.

Now, he was reading an autobiographical novel called “The Adventure of Ranger Griffe”.

The story was told from a first-person perspective, recounting the experiences of an Earth Knight named Griffe as he journeyed through the Maple Leaf Duchy. The story was amusing, although Liszt thought many parts of it were simply the author’s wild fantasies—like having an affair with the wife of an Earl, eloping with a Marquis’s daughter, or conversing with the Duke of Maple Leaf in high spirits.

Such experiences were certainly not for someone who wasn’t even an Honored Knight, let alone a fallen noble descendant.

However, the author must have been someone with a wealth of experience, as he described many customs different from those in Coral Island, along with the decadent lives of nobles and numerous hearsay stories.

Quite interesting.

Li Si Te (Liszt) enjoyed novels that provided both stories and knowledge.

“Hm?”

As he read, the story abruptly shifted to a chapter on a dragon-slaying battle, in which Griffe arrived at a town being invaded by an invisible entity. The town’s landlord had fled, and the townspeople were unable to resist; at that moment, Griffe decided to save the suffering people.

After observing, he concluded that it was a Formless Dragon—though the book didn’t explain how he observed and came to that conclusion.

“The Formless Dragon is a mystical Giant Dragon that hides in another world; only the most courageous and upright knights can see it. I’m not courageous enough. If I want to see it, I must muster my courage! I need to find it and confront it, to discover its weakness!”

Thus, Griffe went off to meet his end before the Formless Dragon, got beaten to the point of vomiting blood, but it was also because of this that he saw the Formless Dragon.

“Ah, what a beautiful dragon it was, like a flowing crystal, colorless, its entire body transparent. I spat out a mouthful of blood, and it passed right through its body; yes, I could not touch it. I am very despondent because I may never be able to ride it.”

Li Si Te (Liszt) admired Griffe’s brazenness; nearly killed by the Formless Dragon, yet still lamenting the fact that he couldn’t ride a dragon.

Fortunately, Griffe was still somewhat self-aware.

“I knew it wanted to kill me. I couldn’t see its eyes, I could only see a blurry mass of water, but I knew it aimed to end me, I could sense its emotions. I had forgotten life and death, and in that last moment, all I wanted was to take a couple more puffs of a cigarette. Oh sorry, I was out of tobacco leaves, so I just grabbed a handful of grass nearby and chewed it to fight the craving.”

At this point, Li Si Te’s (Liszt’s) brows twitched.

He continued to read on.

“Later, I found out that the grass I grabbed was called Smoked Grass, similar to tobacco but with a unique flavor, akin to my socks that I’d worn for either sixteen or twenty-six days without washing. I almost threw up; yes, that moment successfully cured me of my addiction to smoking, I swore never to smoke again!”

“I’ve had a smoking addiction for seventeen years, since my father liked to roll his own tobacco leaves. He used to ask me, ‘Hey, Griffe, do you smoke…’”

The next large section was all about his remembrances of his father teaching him to smoke.

Li Si Te (Liszt) read on, frustrated: “Stop beating about the bush, I want to see how you slay the dragon!”