Chapter 163: The Enormous Expense of Forming the Eagle Cavalry!

The Ye Immortal Village considered the formation of an Eagle Cavalry its foremost undertaking. All the trusted cultivators racked their brains, looking for ways to support the effort from every angle and ensure it succeeded.

The weapon-forging workshop, overseen by Wang Hu and Yang You, began designing spirit artifacts suited to mounted spirit eagles: saddles, Redfire Dark-Iron spears, and the like.

The Alchemy Pavilion, under Huang Yi’s care, was preparing to refine Beast-Feeding Pills that would be easy to carry.

Though they had resolved to raise a formidable force of mounted spirit eagles, carrying out this arduous plan still posed many difficulties.

No newly established Immortal Village could raise a force of spirit eagles on its own. Eagles took a long time to mature—decades, a century, or even longer—and required vast amounts of time and grain to raise.

So the only way to acquire spirit eagles was to buy them. In the marketplace of Qingyun’s main Immortal City, a single third-tier spirit eagle cost as much as three thousand spirit stones.

Ye Mo personally oversaw the Spirit Eagle Pavilion. Within his Ancient Painting Immortal Village, he could raise fledglings to maturity quickly, saving an enormous sum that would otherwise have gone toward buying eagles.

Besides, he kept the accounts himself. No one else in the village knew how many spirit stones he had spent on the eagles, and so no one could discover the secret behind it.

The number of spirit eagles was not the problem.

The grain required to feed them, however, was a formidable challenge.

A fully grown third-tier spirit eagle needed ten pounds of spirit grain a day to maintain its fighting strength. That came to three thousand six hundred and fifty pounds a year. Spirit grain sold for one spirit stone per pound, meaning more than three thousand spirit stones annually.

They could not rely on outside purchases alone. They would have to grow spirit grain in their own village on a large scale to reduce the cost.

An acre of spirit fields yielded only thirty pounds of spirit grain a year. To feed a single third-tier spirit eagle, they would need to cultivate more than a hundred and twenty acres.

For the Ye Immortal Village’s Eagle Cavalry to pose a powerful deterrent to the other great Immortal Villages, they needed at least thirty eagles. Each Eagle Cavalry squad would have five, for a total of six squads. Deployed separately, the squads could harass the enemy; brought together, they could fight a pitched battle.

Thirty spirit eagles would consume a hundred thousand pounds of spirit grain each year, requiring more than three thousand six hundred acres of spirit fields to sustain them.

Cultivating fields on such a vast scale would take an enormous workforce of Qi Refining cultivators. Each cultivator could tend only a few dozen acres, so they would need at least a hundred people to manage the fields. And these cultivators had to be paid; they could not be expected to work for nothing.

In the end, the cost of feeding the eagles alone would be staggering.

Given the Ye Immortal Village’s current financial and human resources, this was clearly a tremendous challenge.

The cost of purchasing thirty spirit eagles, followed by an annual expense of a hundred thousand spirit stones to feed them, would be beyond what almost any Immortal Village could bear.

The Ye Immortal Village’s Redfire Mine Island held ore worth at least a hundred thousand spirit stones, and they had recently made a fortune ransoming prisoners. With a hundred thousand spirit stones in their coffers, they were not short of money in the near term—but they could not afford to spend so extravagantly.

If they poured all their spirit stones into the eagles, the rest of the village would have no room to develop.

That was not what Ye Mo wanted.

“Thirty eagles in six squads is the bare minimum. Any fewer, and we won’t have a force large enough to matter. An Eagle Cavalry without proper numbers won’t do much to intimidate a powerful Immortal Village like the Lou clan’s.

“My Ancient Painting has only one acre of spirit fields, barely enough to feed three eagles. But now we’re planning for thirty. The fields in the Ancient Painting Immortal Village clearly aren’t enough.”

Seated in his study, Ye Mo calculated where he might find enough spirit grain to feed the eagles. The thought left him at a loss.

His Ancient Painting Immortal Village could provide enough eagles, but it could not solve the problem of feeding them.

Two figures, one dressed in green and the other in yellow, entered the study.

Ye Mo looked up. It was Mo Ling and Huang Yi.

Mo Ling smiled. “Brother Ye, what are you thinking about? You’re so absorbed.”

“What else? I’m worrying over how to feed the spirit eagles.” Ye Mo smiled and beckoned them over. “Sit.”

He turned and took two teacups from the small table behind him, then poured them each a cup of spirit tea.

The two women sat down. Huang Yi lifted a slender hand to take her cup, inhaled its fragrance, and sipped delicately, her expression blissful. Only then did she smile and say, “The few ounces of tea you gave me last time were all drunk up by that fellow Gao Jian. I only got two cups.”

Ye Mo could not help laughing. “Brother Gao is far too fond of tea. Next time, I’ll have to forbid him from touching it.”

Mo Ling gave a little laugh. “Brother Ye, are you pretending not to understand? You must have more stashed away. Hurry up and bring it out so Huang Yi and I can split it.”

“I hardly have any left. You two have already taken most of it.”

Ye Mo gave a wry smile.

He had gotten this Snow Mountain spirit tea from Lu Tong, and now these two had their eyes on it. It looked as though he would not escape their clutches. He took out two small packets and handed them over. “Here, take it. I’ve got so much on my mind that even tea has lost its taste.”

The two women exchanged a smile and put the tea away.

“Brother Ye, we came to discuss the staffing problem at the Spirit Planting Workshop.”

Mo Ling’s smile faded, and she spoke seriously. “A Qi Refining cultivator with a Water Spirit Root who has mastered the Spirit Rain spell can tend an average of only twenty acres of spirit fields. To plant a thousand acres of spirit grain, we need at least fifty cultivators who can use the spell.

“Huang Yi and I have spent the past few days taking a census of the entire village. We have more than a hundred registered citizens, but only thirty or forty cultivators have Water Spirit Roots and enough potential to learn the Spirit Rain spell. That includes the city guards and the cultivators assigned to several other facilities. We certainly can’t transfer those people to farming.

“Even counting them, we could barely cultivate a thousand acres of spirit fields, yielding thirty thousand pounds of grain a year—enough to feed only eight eagles. If we planted less, we might manage only three or five.

“A thousand acres is already our limit. To be safe, we should plant five hundred. Any more, and the village’s normal operations will suffer.

“Of course, we could hire wandering cultivators who know the Spirit Rain spell to irrigate the fields. But they come and go as they please, traveling from place to place. They’re unreliable. We can’t place all our hopes on them.

“The gap between the workers we have and the number needed to raise thirty spirit eagles is enormous.”

“We have so few people?” Ye Mo’s expression darkened further.

He could not pull the city guards, whose primary purpose was combat, or the cultivators who made pills, forged weapons, and prepared poisons away from their duties to plant spirit grain.

He would never patch one hole by tearing open another. Moving people into jobs they were unsuited for would waste manpower and leave the village without income from its other activities. Forget about one day advancing to an Immortal Town—even making a living would soon become a problem.

The spirit eagles’ advantage in the sky mattered only while facing Qi Refining cultivators.

Once the village advanced to an Immortal Town and a large number of Foundation Establishment cultivators appeared, the eagles would lose their aerial advantage. They could not abandon the village’s other avenues of development just to feed the eagles.

Ye Mo tapped his fingers lightly on the spiritwood desk, frowning. “A thousand acres can feed only eight eagles. We need at least thirty, which means nearly four thousand acres.

“Here’s what we’ll do. Organize the martial artists to clear a thousand acres of new fields. If we don’t have enough people, recruit more. I’ll post a notice seeking cultivators who are skilled in the Spirit Rain spell. We need fifty in all. The two of you will vet the applicants and report your selections to me.

“We won’t be able to gather all the eagles at once, so the grain consumption won’t be too great in the short term. We still have time to prepare. In any case, get started on the fields immediately. The sooner, the better.”

“All right,” Mo Ling said, nodding.

After they had settled the number and location of the new fields, the two women left.

Ye Mo immediately summoned Chang Fei and assigned him the task of recruiting workers.

Half an hour later, a notice seeking cultivators skilled in planting was posted on the announcement board at one of the village’s taverns. It caused little stir among the wandering cultivators.

Most wandering cultivators focused on hunting monsters and rarely bothered to learn the Spirit Rain spell needed to cultivate spirit fields.

Only cultivators from the Immortal Academy who had specialized in planting came to apply. They were in an awkward position: established Immortal Villages already had their own regular farming cultivators and rarely needed more.

Many newly graduated cultivators who had learned the trade could not find work. A great many had no choice but to turn to monster hunting instead.

The notice attracted several assistant cultivators from the Qingyun Immortal Academy.

Ye Mo, meanwhile, left through the teleportation array in the City Lord’s residence and went to Qingyun Immortal City to resolve the problem of the golden eagle eggs.

He had three golden eagles. Now that he intended to increase their numbers, he would have to breed them. But getting them to lay eggs quickly involved more than simply pairing them. The spirit beasts’ bloodlines and their strength upon maturity also had to be considered.

A bad pairing could weaken the bloodline and greatly diminish the offspring’s power when it matured.

Ye Mo knew nothing about the finer points of the matter. He would have to consult a cultivator well versed in breeding spirit beasts.

Using his City Lord’s token, he entered the Hall of Inheritance at Qingyun Immortal Academy.

Without looking around, Ye Mo went straight to the stone chamber housing the Beast Taming Hall.

As before, the place maintained its excellent standard of service.

The moment he entered, a young cultivator in a green robe hurried over to greet him. He was at the Qi Refining stage.

“Ah, City Lord Ye! It’s been a long time. What can I do for you?”

The green-robed cultivator beamed as he spoke.

Ye Mo was somewhat surprised. He had only visited a few times, yet this man already knew who he was. He could not help looking at him with fresh respect.

“I have a question. I own three Golden-Feathered Spirit Eagles. Do you have any of their kind here, so I can breed them?”

Ye Mo could not bring himself to smile, knowing that this man would soon be taking a large number of spirit stones from him.

As he spoke, he released Big Gold. The fully grown Golden-Feathered Spirit Eagle was enormous, making the already spacious hall seem cramped.

“Good heavens—a purebred Golden-Feathered Spirit Eagle! Fellow Daoist Ye, every feather on this bird is pure gold, not a single one of another color. Its bloodline is remarkably pure. Such a bird is exceedingly rare in Qingyun Immortal City. You can find purebreds like this only in remote seas!”

The green-robed cultivator’s eyes lit up at the sight of Big Gold. As he spoke, he tried to approach and stroke its feathers, but the eagle’s keen eyes glared him back.