Today, more than four-fifths of the empire's territory is under their control.

If it weren't for the orders of a certain magic star, the speed of attacking and clearing a city at a time would have been much faster.

However, the benefits of doing so soon became apparent in public security, and there were almost no large-scale rebellions in the imperial cities they captured.

This was also due to the fact that during the previous battle in the Holy City, Ella sacrificed countless bishops and devout believers in one go, which in a sense cleared the obstacles for their rule.

"Do we have enough food reserves?" Lin En turned to the congressman in charge of food production and asked this most important question.

As long as there is enough food, there won't be too much trouble in the cities occupied by the kingdom! "The remaining food reserves can probably last about three or four months." Councillor Tixia said with a headache. "If we want to build factories in those occupied imperial cities and implement the same food rationing system, the food will be far from enough."

The daily food consumption of the kingdom's subjects is more than twice that of the empire's poor. After all, white bread is not mixed with sawdust and straw.

Although they had long anticipated that there would be food shortages after regaining the empire, and had begun stockpiling in advance, the empire's 20 million people meant 20 million mouths to feed, which was not so easy to feed.

The food reserves they prepared were simply not enough. Even if all the elemental wizards of the parliament used the bread-making technique, it would be difficult to fill the gap, unless the parliament was willing to use its precious nuclear fuel reserves to produce food.

"Why is there only this much? There shouldn't be such a food shortage in the empire, right?" Vittorio couldn't help but frowned.

"That's true, but those damn church remnants and nobles burned all the food and equipment they couldn't take away when they evacuated the city. Some people even set fire to the city to block our pursuit..." Councillor Tisha said helplessly.

"Have these bastards been caught? They must be severely punished, their bodies should be hung at the city gate, and their souls should be imprisoned and tortured..." The hot-tempered Arad couldn't bear it anymore and roared loudly.

He believed that the strategies of the parliament in the past must have been too mild. If people knew that going against them would result in a punishment ten thousand times more horrible than death, no one would dare to do such a heinous act.

"Not yet, but these people probably won't be able to escape for much longer." Councillor Tixia shook her head and said, "Besides, all the food has been burned, so even if all these people are caught, it won't make up for the loss."

"It seems that we need to speed up the development of new land..." Lin En pondered and asked someone to bring a special large map. He directly circled an area of ​​200,000 square kilometers around a large river in the central plains of the empire.

This large area has fertile land and was originally the granary of the empire. Half of it was directly governed by the imperial royal family, and the other half was the territory of a powerful grand duke. Now of course, it was all owned by the parliament.

Lin En plans to turn this area into a special farming area, integrate all the fragmented arable land, and implement magical planting and harvesting.

If it goes well, this area alone can solve the food problem of the entire empire! "It's best to finish it before this year's autumn planting. In this way, as long as we survive a few months and wait for this batch of wheat to mature, the food problem will be completely solved!" Lin En said encouragingly.

"This is too big..." Councillor Tixia felt a little tingling as she looked at the big circle drawn by Lin En.

The entire empire, including the barren northern border, only has an area of ​​less than 7 million square kilometers. It is simply a fantasy to transform 200,000 square kilometers at one time! Not to mention this year, in his opinion, it would be good to catch up with the autumn planting next year, or even the spring planting the year after!

“It just looks big. As long as the planning is good, it is not impossible to start construction in multiple areas at the same time. You underestimate the power of machinery and magic.” Lin En said with a smile.

They don't need to use manual labor to cultivate the land. The days of a group of farmers using hoes to reclaim wasteland are long gone. The Kingdom Alchemy Research Institute's agricultural tillage machines have already been developed to the third generation.

Not to mention that a large number of armored vehicles were produced before the meeting. With the current war situation against the Empire, there is no need for these things to go to the battlefield. All idle vehicles can be modified, and all the troops can be sent to open up wasteland, and by the way, they can train there and blow up the several unsightly hills in the plains! "Allocate another 4,000 elemental wizards to help. After the wasteland is opened up, let them be stationed there to protect this grain-producing land and regularly cast magic to increase the fertility of the land..." Lin En said again.

On this planet, wizards are the greatest productive force. Especially when doing some delicate work, wizards with atomic-level control capabilities are much more useful than machines.

In this way, it should be possible to barely complete the reclamation before the autumn planting season - even if only half of the goal is achieved in the end, the wheat produced will be enough to alleviate the problem of food shortage.

As for the recent few months, we can only consider collecting some emergency food from the merchants. Anyway, the establishment of workshops in various cities must not be stopped.

They must quickly advance reforms and allow the people of the empire to break away from the previous inefficient and outdated production methods so that they can give full play to the advantages of a large population.

However, Lin En's idea was very beautiful, but it was rejected by Vittorio. "Four thousand wizards are too many. We also need manpower in other places. The parliament can only dispatch fifteen hundred people at most!"

Although there are now more than 20,000 official wizards in the parliament, the problem is that manpower is needed everywhere! First of all, the newly occupied cities in the empire need powerful and management-savvy wizards to be stationed there to cooperate with the local affairs officers to stabilize the situation.

Secondly, many alchemy workshops require formal wizards as senior workers to produce some precision parts.

Finally, there are many wizards doing magic research in each school, and they cannot force these people to put down their work and go to cultivate the land.

"Then let's change it to 1,500 official wizards and 3,500 wizard apprentices with more than ten years of study." Lin En had to settle for the second best. These wizard apprentices with rich spellcasting experience could also be used as official wizards as long as they obtained the computing power of the magic network.

"By the way, I remember that the church has a magic spell called Rain of Grace, which can make plants grow quickly. Why don't we copy it and improve it!" Lin En suddenly thought of this.

Although the clergy of the church have limited cultural level, they have developed many interesting divine arts over hundreds of years of accumulation, and the Rain of Blessing is one of them!

After half a day of discussion and improvement by the members of the parliament, the Magic Kingdom's first half-year plan was officially released! In the final analysis, it can be summed up in eight words: stabilize internal affairs and prepare for war! I just hope that the so-called Lord of the Dead can discover the time-space gate later, giving them more time to prepare.

Lin En thought that maybe he could ask the crow again after returning to see if he could get some new information.

…

After finishing today's meeting, Lin En went straight back to the manor in the royal capital, and then partially opened the cage, changing the cage wall from being completely sealed without any gaps to a columnar frame structure with neatly arranged columns.

The black crow tried several times and found that he couldn't escape at all. He became so angry that he kept jumping in the cage and shouting all kinds of ugly curses.

"How dare you, a foolish native, offend the messenger of the great God of Life and Creation? Your soul will be enslaved by the Lord of the Dead, and your world will be turned into a lifeless hell because of your foolish behavior..."

Lynn had no intention of refutation. He just leaned back in his chair and listened calmly to the crow's curse.

After the previous detention and verbal testing, Lin En discovered that apart from verbal threats, the crow seemed to have no other way to deal with them.

Lynn thought there might be three reasons.

First, this universe is not completely connected to the so-called main world, so even if the other party is a god, he cannot kill or punish himself across the world.

The second is that the divine realm connecting this universe is under the control of the Lord of the Dead. If the other party wants to come over, they must pass through there and bypass the Lord of the Dead. This may cause the war between gods to happen ahead of time!

Third, this crow is not as important as it says. It is just an ordinary messenger. Being offended is not enough to anger the God of Life and Creation.

Lin En's mind was full of thoughts, and he waited for more than an hour, until the angry crow had cursed enough and was tired of it, and completely quieted down. The sharp crow's cry could no longer be heard in his ears. Lin En then came to his senses belatedly and spoke with a smile.

"In fact, we have no ill intentions, great Star Messenger. On the contrary, we are very grateful for the news you brought."

The black crow looked at the cage that locked it in with a strange expression, and glared at Lin En outside the cage angrily.

Is this how you express your gratitude?

Lin En shrugged and continued, "As ignorant natives, we know very little about the gods and the main world you mentioned, and we cannot confirm the truth of this news for the time being, so please stay in the residence we specially built for you, Great Star Messenger."

"Besides, this is not an offense or imprisonment, but a... well, a rather special custom!" Lin En looked at the cage he made and said very sincerely. "Yes, in fact, putting crows in cages is the custom of our world!"

The black crow rolled its eyes in a very human way, obviously not that easy to fool, but it was really tired of scolding and didn't even want to talk.

Lin En smiled and skipped the topic, asking, "Great Star Messenger, you came to our world with a mission, right?"

The black crow held its head high, too lazy to respond to Lin's words.

"I think this mission should be related to dealing with the Lord of the Undead. That is to say, our goals are actually the same and we can cooperate." Lin En said solemnly. This is also the attitude of the parliament, that they can cooperate but not accept unilateral command.

"Cooperation?" The black crow said contemptuously, as if he had heard the funniest thing in the world. "The power and greatness of God are beyond your comprehension!"

Only when there are entities of the same level can we talk about cooperation.

Lin En didn't care about Black Crow's disparagement at all, and instead admitted it. "Please forgive the limited vision of us natives. I want to know, can God completely destroy a world?"

The black crow paused for a moment, then cackled. "In previous wars between gods, the destruction of a plane was not uncommon."

Lin En was somewhat surprised. Conquering a world and destroying a world are two completely different concepts. His evaluation of God in his heart could not help but rise to a higher level.

Neither they nor Ella, who had attained godhood, had the ability to completely destroy a planet.

I just don’t know if this plane is the same as a planet. It can’t be a universe, right?

"How did you find our world?" Lin En asked the second question after thinking carefully.

According to the crow, the Lord of the Undead who controlled the opposite divine realm should not have found any time and space gate yet, otherwise he would have invaded long ago. However, the God of Life and Creation was able to send messengers to warn them first.

This is also the reason why Lin En has always been suspicious of this Star Messenger.

"The God of Life and Creation is great. He knows everything!" said the black crow arrogantly.

Omniscient? All-knowing?

Lin En had deep doubts about these words, because the Lord of the Undead, who is also a god, obviously does not have such ability.

If the gap between the two gods is very large and there are considerable conflicts, then the Lord of the Dead would most likely have ceased to exist long ago, unless he has some special ability similar to prophecy.

As Lin En was thinking, there was a gentle knock on the door.

"Mr. Speaker, Ms. Ivana said she wants to see you for something important. She also brought a prisoner with her, probably a knight of the God's Punishment Army."

Lin En glanced at the crow in the cage, thought about it, and decided not to lock it up again, so he said directly, "Let her in."

(End of this chapter)