Struggle in the Steam Age

After listening to Orchid Iron Hoof's story about how she met the enemy before and how she ran away, Lawrence showed a rather embarrassed smile on his face. "I'm sorry, but we seem to be responsible for your situation. Because we defeated and nearly wiped out all the goblins on this plain a while ago."

"At that time, the group of goblins also recruited many goblin fighters from outside the plain. After they were wiped out, the tribes that provided the fighters chose to migrate away from the plain for fear of our revenge because of the loss of their main force. The batch of goblins is likely to be the migrating goblin tribe"

"Ah, so it's like this!" After hearing Lawrence's explanation, Lanhua Tiehoe didn't look very angry, but showed an expression of sudden realization. "It's no wonder that when I killed the two goblin patrols, I felt that the opponent's level was much weaker than the ones I encountered before. I thought it was because I suddenly became stronger during this field retreat."

After everyone finished communicating about the changes in the surroundings, especially the reasons for the recent changes in the nearby goblins, the dinner was over. This tauren girl is also worthy of her large size, at least eating the food equivalent to a meal of six to seven adult men.

"Sorry, I seem to have eaten a little too much." Although the change of expression could not be seen because of the fur on her face, Lawrence could hear some embarrassment in her voice. "Actually, I usually don't eat so much, this time it's just because I was hungry for three or four days before."

"Did the people who sent you here not feed you?" Lawrence asked a little strangely, because he remembered that he had prepared a lot of food for that fortress, so it shouldn't be impossible to feed the tauren in front of him.

"Although they couldn't understand what I was talking about, they enthusiastically took out a lot of food and water for me to eat after confirming that I was not hostile." Lanhua shook her head and said that it was not the guards who were there. To abuse her, but as a shaman who is often active in the wild, she knows that she can't eat too much at once after being hungry for a long time, so she only ate the ration equivalent to an adult male along the way.

After eating, the four of them sat in a room next door and exchanged information they knew. After figuring out that Lawrence became the new owner of the island, the tauren girl bluntly stated that for the tauren, they have no objection to having a human lord on the island, but the prerequisite is that the human lord must be fair.

"That is to say, as long as you are willing to treat us tauren as fairly as you treat humans, then we tauren are also willing to recognize you as our lord." Lan Hua stared at Lawrence with her bull's eye and said very seriously.

"Of course I can treat you fairly." Lawrence said, "For example, in addition to humans, there is a group of ratmen who have obtained their own living space in this land. They are willing to bear the same taxes as humans and live in When fighting, they send their own armed forces and are willing to obey the laws of the island. So they have the same rights as humans here."

Perhaps because he studied law in the university in his previous life, the policy that Lawrence implemented on the island was to reciprocate rights and obligations, and treat everyone equally as long as they abide by the law. And this kind of policy is very attractive to the tauren who tend to be orderly by nature.

"We will actually investigate these situations." After hearing what Lawrence said, a smile appeared on the face of the tauren girl. "If this is really the case, I think the elders of the tribe are willing to offer you water and soil."

Speaking of this, the tauren girl's face suddenly became a little ugly: "Since we are friends, we should give you a gift according to the etiquette when we meet for the first time. But this time it was just an accident, so I didn't It can bring a welcome gift."

"It doesn't matter, as long as you want to. If you feel really sorry, you can make it up next time." Lawrence said with a smile, and then he asked. "By the way, can you tell us about your life in the hilly area of ​​the island?"

In the next half hour or so, Lanhua Tiehoe talked about the life of those tauren people. Even on the island, the tauren still adhere to the traditional nomadic economy. According to Orchid, their tribe breeds a certain type of bighorn buffalo and a special type of island goat.

By raising these livestock, the tauren can obtain leather, wool, a large amount of dairy products and meat from them. In addition, they can also obtain a large amount of plant food and resources through collection, so the overall life of the Tauren people is pretty good.

But this does not mean that they do not need any foreign economic ties, especially the region where the tauren are located is not rich in resources, so they have a lot of supplies that cannot be self-sufficient. For example, according to Tauren Orchid, what they need most urgently now is pure salt and enough metal tools.

"The hilly area we are in does not have any metal mines at all, so apart from a small amount of metal products that were traded with humans in the past and loot that was even rarer, the only tools we can use are left tools of stone, bone, and wood."

"As for the salt, there is a small salt mine in the hilly area. But there are some impurities in the salt that are obviously harmful to the human body. If you humans eat that salt for a long time, it is likely to cause irreversible damage to some organs. Although our tauren are strong enough to avoid those serious injuries. But after eating the salt, there will be many small problems on the body. For example, my father became bald because of the salt. .”

"Uh—" Laurence had an image of a bald bull's head popping up in his mind, and it took a lot of effort to keep himself from laughing. Of course, he also figured out the reason why these tauren were poisoned by eating salt from Lan Hua's narrative. "There are too many harmful impurities in the salt you eat, but in fact, most of the toxic components in it can be removed by melting and filtering."

After all, this era is an era of industrialization, and salt is not as scarce as it was in ancient times. At the same time, for Lawrence, the profit of selling salt to those thousands of tauren is far less than the benefit of letting them recover to himself. So Lawrence immediately decided to reveal the secret of how to remove the poisonous impurities in the salt to the tauren girl.

However, the complex chemical reaction made the tauren girl confused, especially for these tauren, it is more convenient to buy salt directly from Lawrence and the others if they want to buy several chemical raw materials. But from this incident, the tauren girl realized that Lawrence was indeed a person who treated everyone equally as he said.

So without Lawrence's knowledge, he inexplicably received a good card from the tauren girl in front of him. But that should be a good thing.

Then the two sides discussed a series of things about the future trade between the two sides. Obviously, the tauren are short of daily necessities to production and living tools, so they urgently hope to re-open trade exchanges with humans.

"Can you tell me what special products you have?" Lawrence asked, "Aside from livestock, leather, dairy products and wool?"

Because the tauren needed to purchase a lot of things, Lawrence wanted to know what kind of goods they could sell. After all, the core of trade is to get what they need, and both sides can benefit. Too bad if one party can't afford it.

"Other than these, we only have some handicrafts that are not very valuable to you." Lan Hua said with a look of frustration after thinking for a long time. "However, if you are willing to pay, we can provide you with a team of 150 tauren mercenaries, and 1/10 of them are guaranteed to be extraordinary."