It has been eight days since Luo Ming became a lord.

Since there is still a short period of time before the official start of spring ploughing, the farmers are still idle.

As long as a little food is produced, they can be driven to work, and they do not need to be scolded with a whip, which is the right season for the lord to engage in construction.

Luo Ming instructed them to clean up the garbage on the road, smooth the road a little, and let some people cut down a dozen trees on the territory and cut them into planks under the guidance of carpenters.

Some of these planks are stored as reserves, and the other part is used directly to build public toilets – which is not difficult at all according to the model of the Celestial Empire's rural areas.

The cost is not high, and it can even be said that it is quite cheap, basically similar to a shack.

In the past few days, there have been people who have sent the rats they caught, and Luo Ming has also presided over the work of "rats for food" twice, just like Shang Ying did when he changed the law, and gradually established his prestige by keeping his promises.

Although wild rats are likely to carry infectious diseases, Luo Ming will completely become scum after a cangyan, and all fleas and germs will be purified.

Although the waste of rat meat still makes him a little distressed by the big foodie empire, after all, this is something that most people dare not eat in this era, and he himself does not need to eat other rats.

After the construction of the public toilets, he directed the people to dig a small brick kiln, and by the way, repaired a few real shacks, and then sent most of them home in batches.

The potters then fired the bricks, which were used to prioritize the construction of the blacksmith's shop.

There is no huge project, and there is no forced leap ahead of the times, but in just a few days, the territory has changed a lot, Sherlock came around, and directly praised Luo Ming's governance skills.

Today, Goth personally led a group of slaves to this territory of Lomin.

After counting, there were ninety-nine slaves, one of whom died on the road, and the price of these slaves accounted for the bulk of the loan of one thousand gold coins.

Even with discounts, the price of slaves was not cheap. The male ** subordinate is about seven gold coins, and the female *** subordinate also needs four gold coins.

To be honest, this price is higher than the price of life in the minds of most civilians. If a serf could be sold at will, a serf would never have the price.

But the aristocrats considered the land and the cultivators to be their precious assets, and even if the laws of the principality allowed the serfs to be turned into complete slaves, not many would sell them in large quantities.

But this high price is not just the result of price gouging.

The plundering of slaves from neighbouring countries or even distant foreign countries required organized armed groups, and a slave hunting team could often fight a small regular army.

Some veteran slave catchers have even fought with cult forces -- plundering the good people of neighboring countries will be condemned by some people, but plundering those who are wild lands and even cult-controlled areas is completely "in line with justice" actions.

In some areas, there have even been cases of self-proclaimed righteous holy warriors and priests participating in slave catchers.

In either case, however, the slave trappers would not have been paid much less than the regular army.

Temporarily subduing the slaves, and then monitoring them all the way here, there will be a lot of expenses on the way - many lords have maintained the habit of setting up cards to collect tolls, plus lodging and food...... Even by the minimum standards, this is not a small number.

Add to this the part of the profit that the slave trader himself needs, and it is no wonder that the price of slaves has become inflated.

Seeing that Luo Ming's territory had undergone a lot of changes, Goth had some more confidence in Luo Ming's ability to repay, but before leaving, he still warned Luo Ming to spend money carefully.

Luo Ming disagreed. He now has several ways to pay back the money smoothly and even make an extra one.

When the goths left, Luo Ming immediately turned to the slaves in front of him.

He'd mustered all the armed forces at hand, and even the steward of the manor had a sword in his hand, but it was just a head.

If the slaves wanted to escape or rebel, in fact, Luo Ming could suppress them all with one person and one sword - Hengzhi was just defenseless, and he didn't even have cloth armor on his body, and he lacked a little cannon fodder.

But he didn't want the slaves to feel that the supervision was not strong enough, so they had any intention of running away or rebelling - killing even one in the crackdown would be equivalent to Luo Ming losing a few gold coins himself, which was completely worthless.

Luo Ming repeated the same trick again, releasing a small cloud of cangyan from his hand, and then easily lit a bundle of firewood that had been stacked there in advance.

Supernatural abilities are always fearful, and even if the slaves are lucky enough to see other spells, they will never be disrespectful to Luo Ming.

There are only two kinds of people who can master spells in their minds: priests who represent gods or mysterious and powerful magicians.

Under this deterrence, the slaves were also quick to remember the saying "benevolent and powerful master Lomin".

Then the task of driving the slaves was left to the steward.

He laid down his sword, took the whip in one hand and the parchment scroll in the other, and as soon as he said "in the name of his master, Lord Roman," the slaves obediently went to work.

Originally, the slaves were caught here and left their homeland, and they experienced many beatings and scoldings on the way, and they had become almost numb.

If they weren't careful, they might have thought otherwise, but under the supernatural powers, they were almost as docile as sheep.

In fact, even the commoners, who were not slaves, were mostly docile and lazy at best under the whip of the nobility, and few dared to resist orders.

There were no defeated nobles or out-and-out nobles among these slaves - these two were expensive, and Luo Ming couldn't afford them now.

But it just so happens that they are all ordinary people - ordinary people in this era, which means that they can all farm.

The weakest slaves were in charge of cooking a large pot of porridge on the flaming pyre, and the remaining slaves began to dig the channels and ridges of the water, which was exactly what was going on to clear the wasteland.

In fact, the so-called wasteland is not necessarily undeveloped, it is nothing more than the lack of manpower in the hands of the nobles, poor agricultural tools, lack of cattle, and the care of the existing cultivated land is already stretched, and no one is willing to open up further.

Most of the aristocracy did not understand the importance of infrastructure and improved agricultural production. Many farmers use wood, bone, or even manual ploughing the land, so naturally there is not much land to cultivate.