Chapter 2 Second-rate Family
Du Yu’s upper body was naked. As he breathed in and out, a familiar heat emerged from his chest. Under the guidance of his thought, it was circulating in the body he was unfamiliar with ten times.
Small sweat beads dropped from his forehead.
Although it was in the cool late autumn, there was a thin layer of mist around Du Yu's body as if he was standing in a steaming bathroom.
"Break!" As Du Yu put his hands on his waist and calmed his qi, he let out a loud shout.
The Qi in his body had accumulated to the limit, and it had reached the point that he had to let it out,
The shout that was made with the inner strength resounded around the peak of the mountain, hovering between the mountains endlessly,
"Ah!" The old butler, who was almost sleepy next to him, was startled by the sound. Since the idiot young master captured Lady Kelly Moore, every morning the young master would come to the nearest mountain near the castle to practice this strange breathing exercise.
From the hoarse sound in the beginning to the current sound like a metal blow, although the old butler couldn't understand what it was, he also knew how big the difference was here.
“Condense inward, radiant outward; the heart of an innocent, the body of spiritual root."
Du Yu swung his arms and legs with satisfaction, and the whooshing movement almost made the old butler on the side fall over.
Du Yu was very satisfied with Stan's body. It was merely a month, this body’s movement speed could already catch up with his thought.
Although there was still a long way to reach the requirements of "Spirit of the heart", it was much better than before.
Seeing that the young master's strange daily routine had finally been completed, the old butler wiped the saliva from the corner of his mouth and hurriedly walked forward to report, "Master, Lady Kelly Moore's family is here again. They want you to release Lady Kelly Moore. What is your decision?" The old butler raised his head and looked carefully at his young master's expression.
No matter how dumb the old butler was, he also knew that the fat man in front of him was definitely not the master who was always fooled by others in the past.
Everyone thought that the young master was still the idiot before, but the old butler who had followed Du Yu for more than a month knew that he was acting. However, he still didn’t understand why his young master would make such an exorbitant demand this time. For him to release Lady Kelly Moore, he asked for the most fertile town of Ekari in the fief of Lady Kelly Moore’s family!
That was the second largest town in the entire Realm of the Falcon, and it was the home of the entire Kelly Moore family.
Of course, when he made such a request, he said that this was a suggestion made by the old butler. This made the loyal old butler feel gloomy. Fortunately, he did not encounter some chivalrous traveling knights, otherwise, they would definitely challenge him to a duel for making such an evil suggestion to his master.
The old butler shook his head sadly. His young master has changed a lot. Compared with before, he felt like a different person. The old butler felt a headache when he thought about this.
"They still don't give up?" The young master said with a slightly silly voice, interrupting the old butler's thoughts.
"Give me Ekari, I will release Lady Kelly Moore." Du Yu stretched out a fat finger and shook it in front of the old butler. He took the clothes from the old butler, and then said, "this condition is very fair. Money or her, their choice."
"This is probably very..." The old butler's ]was embarrassed.
But Du Yu interrupted with a wave of his hand. "You tell them, don't bargain with an idiot. Unless they are stupider than an idiot "
‘It's actually a good thing to be an idiot lord!’ Du Yu was feeling smug in his heart. With the title of idiot, he could save yourself from the cumbersome etiquette that many nobles should follow.
"Master! Your coat hasn't been buttoned up yet!" The old butler had been nagging at Du Yu, making Du Yu feel very annoyed. But he also couldn’t do anything about it. After all, the old butler was the only person in the world who really cared about him. After coming to this world for a month, Du Yu had a new understanding of this world. In the previous world, walking on the street without a shirt was not a big deal.
But in this world, a nobleman walking on the street without clothes would absolutely make the King want to cut off his head. This was an insult to the dignity of the entire aristocracy, a betrayal of the royal order. The King would have no mercy for this kind of person.
There was a precedent. Lawrence IV, the King of Swadian, the most powerful kingdom on the continent, was such an unrestrained dissolute prince when he was young. In the Swadian Civil War thirty years ago, to everyone’s surprise, he kicked his uncle off the throne and became the first king of the continent.
There seemed to be no connection between those two things, but the aristocracy always liked to see things in detail. The paranoid and stubborn Vaegirs royal family naturally attributed all this to Lawrence's rebellious behavior when he was young.
After completing the morning exercise, Du Yu was ready to go down the mountain.
This mountain was behind Falcon Castle. Standing on the mountain path, a panoramic view of the area around Falcon Castle appeared in his sight. The villages surrounded by the morning mist were distributed to the west of the castle. Around the winding gray dirt roads, the houses with thatch roofs were built closely against each other. A building with a pointy top was very conspicuous amongst those houses, and that was the town center hall. A large meandering river flowed across the town, like a silver belt and flowed around the castle.
After the introduction of the old butler, Du Yu knew that this was Tahchee, the largest town in his own territory, with a population of one thousand two hundred.
‘This is my territory! This is where I will live in the future!’
Du Yu felt like a rich man in the countryside, who was currently counting his fortune. He felt very depressed. He was a marquis, but he only had such a small place!
"Get out of the way! I have urgent military affairs for the head of the Falcon House." Du Yu suddenly heard someone arguing from the mountain pass. At the mountain pass, a middle-aged knight was arguing with the guard of the mountain pass.
"I am a messenger from the Ministry of Military Affairs. If you delay important matters, the Ministry of Military Affairs will chop off your heads.” The knight’s loud voice even reached halfway up the mountain.
“Without an order, even your Majesty the King cannot enter!” The guards looked at him indifferently while holding two simple and rusty spears.
"You!" The knight's face turned red in anger, but he didn't dare to rush in in the face of more than a dozen squires. Since the last time someone broke into the castle, the old butler deliberately selected a dozen of the most loyal guards from the family's squires to follow Du Yu at any time.
"I am the head of the Falcon house, what military affairs is it?" Du Yu waved his hand to let the guards step aside and let the knight come over.
Seeing the guards stepped aside to reveal a fat man dressed in ordinary clothes. The knight looked at the fat man condescendingly.
“Uncouth country nobleman!" The knight curved his mouth in disdain, and from his rucksack on horseback, he took out a sealed scroll of sheepskin and handed it to Du Yu.
"This is signed by His Majesty the King himself. The Kingdom will conquer the mountain barbarians in the eastern region in two months’ time. Lords of all regions must recruit at least two hundred soldiers and march to the Tyre region in the east by the end of October to participate in His Majesty’s conquest "
The Knight’s formulaic language contained an obvious trace of disdain.
"This is the plan the Ministry of Military Affairs made for this operation, please have a look." The middle-aged knight took out a letter sealed by wax from his arms and handed it to Du Yu.
“If you have no objections, this will serve as the plan for this battle!" The middle-aged knight impatiently left the plan behind and steered his horse around. Without even the most basic salute, he rode away.
"A conquest? A war?" Du Yu held the order in his hand. He was stunned. Even a small lord like himself also needed to go to war?
"He clearly wants us to die!" The fat man muttered indignantly, and suddenly shouted loudly, "Screw the king, he can go to hell!"
"Master, you can't say that!" The old butler by his side almost fell over in fear. He looked around cautiously, and was relieved to see more than a dozen guards were standing far away.
"I thought we wouldn't receive an enlistment order this year," the old butler sighed in frustration. "Unexpectedly, we still can’t get away. These nobles in the royal capital really didn’t like peace. It is rare for us to have such a good harvest year, but they want us to go to the war again. I really don’t know what the poor barbarians can possibly have that they always want to attack them. We have fought them for so many years, but we still can’t take back a piece of land. Apart from leaving behind so many children and widows, we didn’t get anything from the wars.” the old Butler complained sadly.
“Are the barbarians really poor?” Du Yu held the order in his hand and asked curiously.
“Of course!” the old Butler said with a certain face, “Those barbarian men are all shirtless, and they don’t even have a decent animal skin, but it is said that the women of the barbarians are very good! Especially the Hulin people in the southern sea.” The old butler was drooling as he talked. He who had spent his entire life in the Realm of the Falcon could only use his imagination to picture the barbarians in the east.
"Old pervert!" Du Yu saw the look of the old butler, and secretly despised him, "this is the military order." The fat man opened the scroll carefully. A round of red thread was embroidered on the rough sheepskin scroll. The sheepskin was quite soft and smooth. It reminded Du Yu of a genuine sheepskin satchel he had before.
The old butler looked at the military order and said helplessly, "His Majesty the King does this every year. After the harvest in autumn, mobilizing lords from all over the kingdom to participate in the battle for the outside kingdom is already a tradition in the kingdom. I thought that due to the young master’s illness this year, the Falcon House would no longer be recruited, but I did not expect that we would still receive His Majesty’s order. Now that we don’t even have a single knight, what should we do.”
"Knights? Soldiers?" Du Yu was confused by the words of the old butler. After the old butler explained in detail and patiently, he finally understood it.
It turned out that in this world, soldiers were recruited by knights sent by the nobles to the villages. They were usually recruited on a ratio of twenty to one.
That was, a village of two hundred people must allocate ten young adults to participate in the battle. Moreover, this kind of soldier would not get paid, and their family would not receive any compensation if they died in the battle.
To put it bluntly, it was they had to work for their lord for free.
No wonder that His Majesty the King was so keen on fighting!
Anyway, after the harvest, there was nothing for them to do. And since there was food and soldiers, why not start a war that could take other people’s land, money, and women? This could be regarded as a kind of entertainment in the life of aristocrats.
"What is this?" The plan was finally unfolded under Du Yu's curious eyes.
Looking at the rough red lines above, Du Yu really felt like he was about to puke blood.
"What the heck is this shit!"
Du Yu saw a piece of simple parchment paper with a dozen lines roughly drawn with red paint. And the lines were sparsely marked with texts. Du Yu carefully looked at it. Soon, he found that it was the positions of the lords and soldiers and the direction of the attack.
The entire plan was a pre-war army layout. Of course, this was not something that made Du Yu feel the most depressed.
"Master, look." the old butler was embarrassed. His rough finger suddenly pointed to a corner on the map, where a blue dye was used to paint something that looked like a falcon.
Du Yu was speechless.
The painter of the military department was really not ordinary!
The Kingdom Falcon looked like a chubby hen on the layout!
"Sigh! In the past, we were always arranged in the front row." The old butler's voice was filled with disappointment.
"This year our position has been arranged in the last row. It seems that we have fallen to the third-class family." Seeing Du Yu's face was puzzled, the old butler quickly explained.
"Master, you may not know that in the front line of the kingdom’s army, the farther ahead and the closer to His Majesty’s main force, the more honorable and status it represents. In the past, the cavalries of the Falcon House were always arranged in the upper right position of the King’s main force, like a war eagle standing on the right arm of His Majesty the King, ready to kill its prey at any time. As long as His Majesty the King gives an order, the cavalry of the Falcon House will tear the enemy apart with their swords. This is where the name of the Kingdom's Falcon House came from. But now..." the old butler shook his head sadly.
But now it was placed in the bottom right corner of the last row by the military department.
No matter how stupid Du Yu was, he could still tell that it was completely different from the prestigious family before.
"This is great! It’s the safest position."
After listening to the old butler’s explanation, Du Yu was relieved instead of complaining. If they were really deployed in the first row, they would be wiped out completely by the enemy on the other side, if they had a decent force.
This was a real sword and spear fight. It was not a game.
No matter how great his martial arts were, he would not be able to defeat an entire army. In case he encountered the ruthless enemy, the life of the little lord that he had just started would be gone!
Even if I was lucky, and he didn’t meet those scary heavy cavalries, those arrows flying all over the sky were still enough to kill him.
Du Yu could imagine the tragic image of himself falling down with arrows all over his body.
"Damn. That’s a horrible situation to be in!" Du Yu shook his head.
Although he was a little lord that only had a small piece of land, he was still better than some comrades who became peasants in the other world. He didn’t want to die that quickly.
‘Stay safe, and stay low-key!’ Du Yu secretly cheered herself up.
"Can I avoid this thing? For example, tell them that I lost my mind?" Du Yu looked at the old butler hopefully.
"Master, it won’t work." the old butler shook his head helplessly.
"It is the lords' duty to assist the king in battle. If you don’t go, the other collateral branches of the house will go. At that time, His Majesty the King will definitely think that the Falcon House doesn’t respect the royal family, then you will lose your title!"
‘Damn it! It is like I will have trouble either way!’ Du Yu scolded indignantly.
Since he couldn’t hide, then he could only face it. Du Yu took the family seal from his finger and handed it to the old butler.
"Issue the enlistment order, I need an army of 200 people."
As a lord, it was important to carry his seal all the time. For convenience, many families engraved the seal on the ring.
Du Yu felt pretty good about this kind of setup. It was like taking an ATM with you. Unfortunately, the bank of the Falcon House had no money.
"Master, it's very difficult." The old butler looked at his master with embarrassment. He hesitated and said, "In the Battle of Sacco Canyon last year, we have lost more than three hundred soldiers. We originally planned to compensate some of the dead, but it was delayed because of the internal conflict. Many people were still angry about it. So it's very difficult to recruit two hundred soldiers now. Even if we count the family guards, we will still not be able to gather two hundred men.”
“His family was broke.” This was the only thing Du Yu could see from the old butler wrinkled face.
"Damn it! Are you telling me that my family is in a financial deficit!" Du Yu frowned. Then an idea appeared in his mind. Looking at the old butler’s sad face, he asked, "as a lord, I should have the power to issue decrees, right?"
"Of course! Master is a lord! As long as it is in your own territory.” The old butler nodded.
"That's good!" Du Yu waved his hand and said, "then immediately issue a new decree. If anyone kills an enemy in battle, I will reward them with a silver coin! If they kill a knight, I will give them a gold coin! If they kill a lord, I will give him a piece of land! You write this as a notice and publish it immediately.""
"This... "The old butler was stunned. He didn’t know what the young master wanted to do at all.
"Just do it!" Du Yu turned away impatiently. If the reward offered was attractive enough, there would always be one who was brave enough to take the risk. Du Yu didn’t believe that no one would want to come when such a high reward was offered.
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