Mount and Blade Central Asia

Because the blacksmiths he had moved from Mardin were all the ones left over from the old Sultan, no one could really tell which were the rumors and which were the truth...

After all, Da Mir, the best blacksmith in the entire Aleppo blacksmith guild, firmly believed the truth of these rumors.

Their skills may be considered qualified as blacksmiths, but in terms of thinking, they are still a long way from being true master blacksmiths.

The old Luo Kan in front of him was obviously a person of another level. He was wearing a leather jacket that was well-fitting and exquisite. Li Rufeng was sure that this suit was designed by him, because from the shape, it was very similar to the jumpsuit of later generations.

"Rokan Darno." Old Rokan's voice was low and hoarse, sounding like a bellows. "I presume you are the shaman governor from the East, the ruler of this city?"

"I'm afraid you are talking about me." Seeing that his identity was exposed, Li Rufeng picked up Lao Luo Kan's work and looked at it.

It was just an ordinary sickle, but in terms of toughness and recognized sharpness, it was much better than the scimitars used by the militia of Li Rufeng's army, which was enough to prove the forger's superb craftsmanship.

"Ham, Morigen, come out and meet your lord." Following the call of old Rokan, two apprentices who were also wearing leather aprons walked into the hall from the direction of the forge. After seeing Li Rufeng, they saluted.

One of them was a teenager from the Tel Baha tribe, and the other was a local kid from Aleppo. They were only thirteen or fourteen years old. It was too late for them to go to school, and too early to join the army or work hard. They were just the right age for them to learn a craft.

Li Rufengle also paid for their food and accommodation, hoping that after this generation finished their studies, they would change the city according to his wishes.

Children of this age already have their own worldview. They know very clearly who has blessed them so that they can live the life they have now and learn a craft from others. Therefore, their eyes looking at Li Rufeng are clear and full of gratitude.

But right now, the children really couldn't get a word in when the adults were talking, so Li Rufeng showed some concern for the two children, made sure that the benefits he distributed were actually used for them, and then let them go back to work with satisfaction.

In fact, Li Rufeng was not worried that these officials or followers in the city would go against his will and engage in corruption secretly. If it was a minor mistake, Li Rufeng did not intend to pursue it.

And if the problem is serious, they will definitely not be able to hide it from Li Rufeng.

The personal guards under his command are not only the best soldiers, but also his best spies. In addition to those personal guards, he also has members of Li Rufeng's tribe, including the top members of the Eagle of Order.

So Li Rufeng actually knew exactly what happened in the blacksmith area.

He knew that the Blacksmith Guild headed by Da Mier was secretly trying to resist his industry reforms, but Master Li was a magnanimous man and he didn't take this level of confrontation seriously at all.

He gave the Blacksmith Guild a psychological expectation of five years. After five years, if they could train these apprentices into "talented people" and complete assembly-line work according to Li Rufeng's requirements, Li Rufeng would then easily turn the page.

But if someone thinks that they can treat the child that Li Rufeng raised with money as a servant, making him fetch water for five years, mop the ground for five years, and transport ore and coal for five years, then he will probably have to let the Mongols demonstrate their cruelty.

However, the appearance of Rokan Darno disrupted all this. He suddenly appeared in Aleppo with exquisite craftsmanship and open mind, which perfectly met Li Rufeng's needs.

So just a few days after returning to Aleppo, Li Rufeng noticed the blacksmith and made a special trip to talk to him.

"I heard about your measures in Aleppo in Mersin, so I think you're an enlightened lord. I want to change my way of life and live in a more relaxed environment." Old Rokan pointed to his head. "I mean, it's more relaxed here."

Li Rufeng could roughly understand what Lao Luokan meant. Just from the other party's conversation, he knew that the other party was definitely not just a blacksmith.

How does the saying go? Some people are full of stories as soon as they open their mouths. Old Luo Kan is that kind of person.

But Li Rufeng had no habit of prying into other people's privacy. In his opinion, as long as Lao Luo Kan could maintain his current status and remain a blacksmith with superb craftsmanship, open-mindedness and willingness to train apprentices, then Li Rufeng would only have one identity in his eyes - a generous lord who was willing to develop industry and commerce.

"In that case, if you need any help, just come to my mansion to find me. I am happy to communicate with technical talents like you." Li Rufeng turned around and said goodbye to Lao Luo Kan in such a casual manner.

"Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you. Three months from now, I plan to hold a blacksmith expo. I'll let you know in advance. Whoever creates the best quality ironware at the lowest cost will receive a large order from me." Li Rufeng smiled and emphasized, "An order so large that someone could eat more than they can chew in a lifetime."

After Li Rufeng finished speaking, he left without looking back, leaving old Luo Kan to think for a while and suddenly laughed. He thought that the young Eastern lord's idea was quite interesting.

The other party was indeed open-minded, even a little too open-minded. Even he could not catch up with the other party's wild and imaginative ideas. This was the first time that Lao Luo Kan had encountered such a situation in his life.

You know, the reason why he left the Ahch Brotherhood was because some of his ideas were too extreme.

Chapter 367 The storm is rising

Li Rufeng spent about a week organizing the strength of his subordinates.

Thanks to the tradition of this war-torn land, although Li Rufeng actually manages a population of less than 30,000, he has an armed force with a total number of more than 3,000 people, accounting for 10% of the total population.

Let me put it this way, to give an inappropriate example, the proportion of the army under Li Rufeng's rule was more than twice that of North Korea, which is very unhealthy.

But considering that a considerable part of the forces under his command were nomadic forces, the distinction between military and production groups was unclear, and more than half of these 3,000 people were militiamen who served as soldiers in wartime and farmers in peacetime. In addition, Master Li had been subsidizing the entire administrative system, so the forces he led did not collapse.

And what is the cost?

Mr. Li secretly transported two tons of gold from the city of Martin. As of today, in just half a year, he has spent nearly two hundred kilograms.

With the combined revenue capacity of Aleppo and Hama, it would take the two cities about five to ten years to accumulate this amount of money.

This is the price Li Rufeng paid for his rapid growth and the price he paid for maintaining his own safety, but this is obviously not a state that a normal force should maintain.

Therefore, reorganization and reduction of troops seem to be the most correct options, but in fact it is impossible to do so. In order to maintain his own existence, Li Rufeng even needs to continue to increase investment in the military.

The arrival of Bardock's Thousand-Man Squad greatly expanded Li Rufeng's power in terms of military strength. The entire Thousand-Man Squad consisted of professional soldiers who were born for war and grew up in endless blood and killing.

In war, they are the sharpest scimitars and the strongest shields, but if there is no war, every member of this thousand-man team can be regarded as a cancer of society.

The reason why Li Rufeng brought them back from thousands of miles away and recruited them to his home was not to let these people farm. The hands that held the knife could not hold the hoe. Li Rufeng needed to use them to create more value. He needed them to return to their old jobs and do their old profession.

That's why Li Rufeng needs the blacksmith area to enter production quickly and produce more weapons, armor, arrows and everything else the soldiers need.

You know, Timur occupied the entire Asia region in order to support the sixty or seventy thousand-man teams under his command, so Li Rufeng also needed more territory and cities to keep the Badak thousand-man team in the best condition.

There are two expansion paths before Li Rufeng. The first is to the northeast, seize Manbij, Gaziantep and other areas, deploy troops in the east and rule across the river from the Black Sheep People, and threaten the Ramazan Bey Kingdom in the west.

In this direction, Li Rufeng had to face the threat of the Black Sheep People. The good thing was that the land along this direction was fertile, and it was the vast agricultural area once known as the Fertile Crescent.

Due to years of war, the population has declined and large tracts of fertile land have become barren due to the war. All it needs is some policy support and preferential treatment for immigrants to absorb the population, and this place will soon supply Li Rufeng with large quantities of food again.

In addition, as a border force under the banner of Timur, a head-on conflict with the Black Sheep People would allow Li Rufeng to gain more political benefits within the Khanate and lay a solid foundation for his future march into Samarkand.

The downside is that the Black Sheep People are in their prime at this time. Even though they are fully prepared for the counterattack of the Timurid Khanate, and have deployed heavy troops in the eastern region and only maintained the most basic surveillance of the southern region, they are still much stronger than Li Rufeng in terms of hard power.

So Li Rufeng faced the dilemma of not being able to hold on even if he won.

The other route is to the south, along the oasis belt, starting from Hama, taking the city of Homs, heading straight for Damascus, and controlling the entire coastal area of ​​​​the west coast of Syria.

The advantage of doing this is that he doesn't have to worry about being attacked from both sides. The vast desert Gobi outside the oasis belt blocks the prying eyes of other forces for Li Rufeng, and he only needs to face the threat from the Syrian emirs alone.

In addition, if the Knights Hospitaller were bewitched by Li Rufeng and were willing to intervene, then the Kingdom of Cyprus would become Li Rufeng's potential ally.

The entire sea area will become a help to Li Rufeng. He can quickly mobilize troops along his narrow territory, and he will be invincible whether in attack or defense.

Moreover, the remaining influence of the Eagle of Order in this land cannot be underestimated. If Li Rufeng can convince them to stand on his side, he can easily gain a lot of intelligence advantages and even find potential allies among the emirs.

What's even better is that Li Rufeng's actions may not anger the Mamluk Empire, as the Nasir Sultan had long lost control of the Syrian region.

The disadvantage of expanding southward is that the soldiers under Li Rufeng are mainly Timurids. Not to mention that the main demand of the Badak Thousand is to go home, even the most loyal Mongols do not want to continue to go deep into the Mamluk territory and stay away from their homeland.

Even Li Rufeng himself hoped to expand northeastward and open up the land route to Asia, so that he could return to the land of that great Eastern country during his lifetime.

However, the road ahead is long, and many things are not determined by Li Rufeng's will. He is now waiting for the decision of the Knights Hospitaller to see if he can use their power.

At this time, in Samarkand, thousands of miles northeast of Aleppo, the life of Sultan Khalil was becoming increasingly difficult.

The long military confrontation with his uncle Shah Rukh consumed a lot of Samarkand's financial and material resources. It is true that this is one of the most developed and prosperous cities in the world, but compared with the vast fiefdom controlled by Shah Rukh, Khalil is still at a disadvantage.

The dilemma facing Khalil was almost the same as Li Rufeng's. They also used several isolated cities to maintain the existence of a large number of troops. The existence of these troops guaranteed their independence, but these troops themselves were big spenders, consuming the only nutrients in the city, causing the people to live in dire straits and full of resentment.

Shah Rukh, with the city of Hari as his base, had more financial and material resources. He remotely controlled his army in the Central Asian region and formed alliances with the landlord clans. At the same time, Shah Rukh was also a solid ally of the powerful figures in the Islamic Church.

Khalil felt that Shah Rukh's spies were everywhere around him, and his biggest supporter in Samarkand, Hudaida, also had his own motives. He had been very close to the generals of the Samarkand defense forces recently, which made Khalil feel a little uneasy.

Chapter 368 I think you have the appearance of Timur

After a short voyage, the Glorious Glory soon docked at a port in the Kingdom of Cyprus.

Captain Gastino Aurelio hurriedly got off the ship and handed a letter he had written on the ship to the Knights' messenger at the port base, requesting that the letter be delivered to Rhodes Island as quickly as possible for the Grand Master to sign in person.

Gastino thought for a long time on the way, and collected some information about the recent situation of the Mamluk Empire through his connections in Cyprus. He realized that this was indeed a good opportunity for the Knights to recapture Jerusalem.

But the Knights Hospitaller were no longer the fanatical Crusaders they once were. They could not fight an endless war with the Muslims at all costs.

However, supporting a pro-Knights force near Jerusalem is obviously a very cost-effective option. After all, what the Knights really want is to nominally own Jerusalem again.

So he planned to start promoting this cooperation now, so that when the Grand Commander made a decision, Gastino would have already taken the lead.

And Gastino didn't want to hide his ambition. He wanted to profit from this and climb higher in the Knights' ranks. Besides, it wasn't just the Knights who were interested in Jerusalem...

Gastino had connections in the Kingdom of Cyprus. His family was originally a noble family in the kingdom and had considerable power.

When the Third Crusade ended, Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem, bought Cyprus from the Knights Templar and established a kingdom. Since then, the Lusignan family has become the ruler of the island of Cyprus.

Gastineau's family was a branch of Lusignan, with its fiefdom in the province of Lacana, facing the west coast of Syria. Whether for glory or profit, his family hoped to have a reliable partner in the Syrian region.

But Gastino did not dare to openly call for cooperation with Li Rufeng to return to the holy city of Jerusalem, because in the past hundred years, the emperors of the Lusignan family had always been obsessed with the throne of Jerusalem (Note 2). They had launched countless wars to recover the Holy Land, but all ended in failure.

These wars cost the Cypriots countless financial and material resources. Finally, the Cypriot nobles, who could no longer tolerate it, rose up in resistance in 1365 and armedly intervened in the court, killing the then King Pierre I in his own palace, thus ending the Lusignan family's ambition for Jerusalem.

From then until today, for nearly half a century, the Cypriots have never launched a war against Jerusalem again, and precious peace has descended on the island.

But peace is not all flowers. As the island with the most advantageous geographical location in the eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus is inevitably valued by the two hegemons in the Mediterranean.

Both the Venetians and the Genoese were eyeing Cyprus.

A hundred years ago, as Cyprus prospered, Genoese began to immigrate to Cyprus in large numbers. They had a great impact on the Cypriot feudal system. These businessmen gradually eroded the territory and property of the Cypriot nobles through commercial investment methods such as purchase and usury.

It was during that period that Gastino's family lost a lot of land, and even the family castle was sold.

Fortunately, they suppressed the expansion of the Genoese in Cyprus through the power of the church. However, as the Genoese were defeated by the Venetians at sea, new threats appeared on the island of Cyprus. The Venetians began to "torture" the "local" lords on the island of Cyprus with a more mature commercial system.

As a member of the Knights Hospitaller, Gastino had a broader vision and was more aware of the threats to the Venetians, so he knew that the power of the island's nobles alone could not stop those lawless merchants.

There have even been recent rumors that the Venetians are secretly in contact with the Mamluk Empire, trying to instigate the Mamluk Empire to invade Cyprus and then directly control Cyprus through money purchase.

Gastino knew that the main reason why Cyprus had fallen to the point where it was bullied by others was that it had no status in the Christian world.

As part of the Christian world, they were too far away from the areas controlled by the Christian world, so far away that no one cared about them, so far away that if the Genoese and Venetians wanted to, they could block all their news in the eastern Mediterranean.

That is why they need to regain control of Jerusalem and, in the name of the Holy Land, restore the Kingdom of Cyprus to its former glory as the Latin Empire.

But to do this, Gastino needs to be extremely careful. What he needs to do first is to test the attitude of King Janus, and then consider whether to let his family make a big bet.

In the process, if his purpose was discovered, Gastino would be killed without a burial place even with the protection of his identity as a member of the Knights Hospitaller.

However, Gastino would not give up this opportunity, so he wrote a few more letters at the port and handed them to his trusted sailors, who then delivered them to the nobles he trusted.

In addition, Gastino also has the "ransom" sent by Li Rufeng. This money is his start-up capital. No matter what you want to accomplish on this island, you need money to pave the way.

Especially during this period, many nobles were drained of their pockets by the Genoese and Venetians and were heavily in debt.

Sometimes what they want and what they believe in are not important. As long as you can satisfy their financial needs, they don't mind acting as a human stamp.

Of course, the gold in Gastino's hands was definitely not enough. He planned to do some things first, and when he saw the first signs, he would go and have a good talk with the foreign lord under the banner of Janus.

He can't do all the work and pay all the money by himself. Isn't that unfair?

Because in this matter, if everything goes well, Li Rufeng will be the one who benefits the most, and he should contribute to his career.

As Gastino thought about this, he boarded the carriage that had been prepared in advance and prepared to move around.

Just like that, it seemed as if a new chapter had been opened.

At this time, Gastino Aurelio on the island of Cyprus, Li Rufeng in Aleppo, and Sultan Khalil far away in Samarkand were still troubled by the problems before them.

Li Rufeng raised his head from his busy work and glanced at the Khanate Princess Parisa who was sitting opposite him. The other party had a smile on her lips.

"What are you laughing at?" Li Rufeng asked.

"You used to be like this when grandpa was busy." Parisa said shyly, but her eyes did not avoid Li Rufeng at all.

Chapter 369 Testing

On December 11, 1408, the order that Li Rufeng had placed at the Port of Mersin was finally completed and arrived at the port smoothly.

Although the order was only for twenty scimitars, Olado personally delivered the goods and escorted them all the way to Aleppo.

"Lord Rufeng, these are the goods you ordered before. I guarantee that they are all genuine materials." Olado said respectfully to Li Rufeng. Before coming, he himself had never thought that he could really meet the lord of Aleppo because of an order for twenty scimitars.

"How about it? Have you thought about it? Are you planning to move the blacksmith shop to my place?" Li Rufeng patted Orado's shoulder enthusiastically. Although he could tolerate the inaction of the Blacksmith Guild, he could not allow this situation to continue to spread.

Old Luo Kan's one catfish was not enough to convince these blacksmiths to change their ways. Li Rufeng urgently needed to introduce more blacksmiths with higher skills from other regions to enrich his industrial zone and prevent the situation where bad money drives out good money in the future.

Orado pretended to smile innocently, scratched his head, and grunted for a long time before finally saying, "But I've heard that you have quite a few blacksmiths here, and there's also Rokan. My craftsmanship isn't as good as his, and I'm worried I won't have enough to eat after coming here..."

"How much money can you make every year in Mersin Port now?" Li Rufeng had invested a lot of money, so he naturally didn't need this much, so he asked directly with a strong sense of wealth.

"When business is good, we can make about seven dinars." Olado said with some pride.

He had reason to be proud, for the dinar was made of gold, and Orado's annual income was almost equal to the total wealth that a small village of a hundred people could save in a year.

"Small vassals" like Marida under Li Rufeng usually have to take care of various issues such as food, clothing, housing and transportation for the entire village. When fighting, they have to bring their own dry food and fight for their lives. This is all they can save in a year.

Even this income was earned by Li Rufeng, who was generous enough to exempt them from many obligations.

Of course, this is enough to show that Orado's craftsmanship is quite good. After old Rokan left, he filled the gap in the high-end blacksmith market in Mersin Port. It is estimated that he often receives orders from nobles.

"We can sign a contract and stamp it with my private seal. I guarantee that you can get at least this amount every year. If it's less, the Lord's Mansion will pay you to make up for it. How about that?" Li Rufeng looked at Orado and promised with a smile.

However, Orado was frightened by Li Rufeng's smile. He was not sure whether the other party was making a sincere promise or was just trying to taunt him.

So Orado hurriedly explained, "That's not what I meant, Lord Rufeng. What I meant was that there are already enough blacksmiths in your territory. Even if I came, I'm afraid I can't provide you with any additional help in this regard. Besides, the supply of ore and fuel is also a problem."