Naturally, the Pope wasn't traveling alone. Accompanying him were three cardinal archbishops clad in red robes, along with several purple-robed bishops. In addition to these high-ranking clergy, nearly a hundred lower-ranking clergymen formed part of the entourage. Guarding this impressive array of religious figures were not only the Pope's guards but also the renowned Templar Knights, one of the Church's three great knightly orders.
The entire group numbered over a thousand people, with half of them belonging to the guard corps and the Templars. Such a massive procession disembarking at the royal port, marching in orderly ranks into the capital—it was easy to imagine the kind of uproar this caused.
News of the Pope's visit to Pradi quickly spread across the entire empire. In recent days, it has become the topic of every conversation.
So, naturally, even in Sardinson County, word of the visit and the delegation's size had reached them.
Upon learning that the delegation consisted of over a thousand people, Wei Wei once again felt deeply relieved that she had firmly rejected the Pope's request to visit her territory. With so many people—half of them knights and soldiers—if they came into Sardinson and decided to stir up trouble, she wasn't sure Felix's knights could hold them back.
As a Count, Felix's military forces were standard for his rank: 120 knights and 120 mounted squires formed his knight corps, while the rest consisted of 700 regular soldiers—these were villagers he had begun training last year and had selected for conscription based on performance. Before that, the castle's garrison had only about a hundred men.
The total size of his knight corps and standing troops came close to a thousand, which on paper appeared to outnumber the Pope's delegation. But in terms of combat strength, the two sides weren't even comparable. The Pope's private guard were experienced mercenaries, and the Templars were regulars on the battlefield—both units were among the most formidable in all of Europe. Felix's troops, unfortunately, were mostly inexperienced rookies, apart from the trained knights.
Moreover, those knights and soldiers weren't stationed in the castle full-time. Just as before, only about a hundred soldiers were assigned to guard Sardinson Castle daily. The rest were posted to various factories or assigned to garrison three towns. The knights, too, rotated in squads of twelve with their squires, taking turns guarding the castle. When not on duty, they were either carrying out assignments or handling affairs on their lands.
When comparing both sides, it became increasingly clear that Sardinson's position was quite precarious.
If the other side had any ill intent, could they be stopped?
"Don't worry too much," Felix said, trying to calm Wei Wei's nerves. "Though our official standing force may be limited, I can assemble an army of no less than five thousand on short notice."
Standing forces weren't the same as true military strength. Any Count with a decently sized fief could summon thousands of troops within days. Vassals had a duty to fight for their lord during times of war. Once the call was made, even without real weapons, they would come armed with farm tools. If anyone refused, they would face one of two choices: forced conscription—or death.
As long as there wasn't some irreconcilable enmity between them and the Church, the visiting delegation would never risk launching an outright attack.
And even if they did lose their minds and start a fight, the soldiers of Sardinson were no pushovers. While they lacked battlefield experience, they had been trained according to Wei Wei's carefully designed regimen and had benefited from enhanced nutrition. Compared to soldiers of other nobles, they were far more capable. With superior numbers and the advantage of home territory, there was no reason they would lose to the Church.
Besides, while King Pradi had accepted the Pope's visit, according to the information Felix had received, most of the soldiers accompanying the Church weren't even allowed to enter the royal palace—clearly, even the King feared something might go wrong.
After all, a diplomatic meeting turning into a sword fight over a disagreement wasn't unheard of in Europe. Naturally, the King wouldn't allow too many foreign troops into his palace—especially since his relationship with the Church wasn't exactly cordial.
"If even the King can say no, then so can we. The Church isn't as overbearing as you think."
Sometimes, Felix couldn't understand why Wei Wei was so wary of the Church. In her eyes, they were domineering and unreasonable, as if they could kill someone at the drop of a hat.
What he didn't know was that in Wei Wei's world, the Church had a long history of using accusations of heresy to justify murder—and the signs of that behavior were already emerging here.
She hadn't studied history in depth, but she'd watched enough films and dramas to form a vivid impression of the infamous witch hunts. Naturally, she had little trust or goodwill toward the Church.
To be honest, what she feared most was being randomly accused of witchcraft and dragged off for trial one day. She knew that was probably paranoid—the Church couldn't convict a noble in Pradi on baseless charges—but she knew too much about the Church's dark past. And worse, many of the typical "witch" criteria applied to her. That constant unease was impossible to suppress, no matter how she tried to relax.
Still, knowing that Felix had prepared for this and hearing his reassurance helped ease her anxiety.
"When do you think they'll arrive?"
"Mid to late June at the earliest. I heard the King has invited the Pope to temporarily stay in the capital, and he agreed."
Regardless of how good or bad their relationship was, such formal gestures were necessary. For now, Pope John wouldn't be leaving the capital.
"They sure picked the perfect time—just as the wheat harvest begins."
June marked the wheat harvest season. Not only would the winter wheat be ready, but the oats and barley sown in March would also mature by early July. Recently, the winter wheat had finished filling out and was entering the ripening phase. Though not yet harvested, the villagers working in the fields could already tell this year's wheat grains were the fullest they'd ever seen, with almost no empty husks. They didn't need to wait for the harvest to know that this would be an unprecedented bumper crop.
Other crops were also visibly healthier than in previous years. Some were even maturing early to align with the wheat harvest.
And of course, a good harvest meant taxes. Originally, Felix and Wei Wei had planned to pay the Church's tithe at the usual minimum rate—nothing extra. Nobles, unlike commoners, wouldn't face punishment for underpaying or even skipping the tithe entirely. A simple "bad harvest" excuse would suffice. Even the priest stationed on their estate would be unable to argue against it, and even if he knew the truth, he wouldn't dare offend his lord.
The Church might be powerful, but it still couldn't outmatch the local nobility. If a lord was angered, they could send troops to tear down the church, drive out the clergy, or even kill them. At most, the Church headquarters would issue a condemnation and demand an apology and fine. Even kings struggled to control such powerful nobles—especially those not directly sworn as vassals.
In other words, if the medieval Church was corrupt, the nobility wasn't any better. They were all part of the same rotten system. No one had the moral high ground.
So even if the Church knew a noble's tithe was suspiciously low, it often had no choice but to look the other way.
However, if the Church saw the bountiful harvest firsthand, then claiming a poor yield would be too much. There'd be no fooling anyone.
Just imagining how much more tax they'd have to pay made both Felix and Wei Wei feel the sting.
"We can't wait. Let's harvest the early wheat fields now. Send the grain straight to the pasta factory and replant those fields with oats. Don't leave them empty."
While oats were usually sown in spring, planting them in June wasn't too late. With proper care, they could yield another harvest in three to four months. Then, after the oats were harvested and the soil replenished, they could plant winter wheat again.
Wei Wei had been planning this all along—just after the wheat harvest. Though people of this era looked down on oats as mere animal feed, they were nutritious and even had medicinal properties. The belief that they were unpalatable came partly from poor varieties but mostly from poor preparation. Of course, oats would taste bad if you just boiled them plain. In her world, Westerners ate oats daily for a reason—add milk and sugar, and it wasn't bad at all.
For now, sugar was still a luxury. This preparation method could wait. The primary goal was to increase animal feed.
Last year, Sardinson opened a meat paste factory, and this year it was expanding. They needed a lot more meat. Chickens, ducks, sheep, pigs, and even older cows and horses were sent to slaughter for meat paste. Felix had expanded livestock production and loosened restrictions on serfs raising animals. He allowed them to take piglets from the castle to raise. These piglets were provided for free, and once grown, two-thirds of the meat would go to the castle, while the remaining third was theirs to keep—and they paid no tax on it.
If the piglets died, they had to repay the cost.
Naturally, this policy excited the serfs. In the past, they had to pay taxes just to earn the right to raise animals. Many couldn't afford young livestock, and the best they could manage was hatching chicks from traded eggs. Yields were limited.
Now, the Count was footing the bill and waiving the taxes, and they still got a third of the meat. For these overburdened serfs, this was an incredible deal. All they had to do was invest a little time to forage for the pigs—something even children could handle when the piglets were young.
And so the news spread quickly, and the estate erupted with excitement. Serfs rushed to the castle in droves, worried the piglets would run out.
There were plenty of piglets to go around. Some were wild boar piglets captured by Felix's team, while the rest had been ordered in advance from merchants, with the numbers carefully calculated. Most of them were male, with a smaller number of females. The wild ones were kept at the castle under the care of slaves, while the bulk of the male piglets were distributed to the serfs. A select few—along with the female piglets—were sent to the breeding farm in Uke Town.
At the time, rumors had already begun to circulate in Sardinson County that the Countess had a particular fondness for castrating piglets. The serfs, curious and cautious, peeked at their assigned piglets and, sure enough, each one bore a wound in a rather unfortunate location. They exchanged helpless, complicated looks.
One of them couldn't help but ask the steward in charge of distribution, "These piglets have been castrated—won't that make them more likely to die? Can I swap mine for one that hasn't been cut?"
Other serfs silently echoed the same concern—if the pigs were destined to die, they couldn't afford the risk.
The steward snapped at him impatiently, "If you don't want it, put it back. Do you want one that hasn't been castrated? Fine, pick one from over there—just don't come crying when it dies and you have to pay."
The serf looked in the direction the steward pointed and saw a cage filled with smaller piglets, all squealing noisily, making a chaotic racket. They were nowhere near as quiet or docile as the ones they'd been given.
This particular serf had previously raised pigs for the Count and could tell at a glance that those in the cage were likely around a month old—just weaned, weighing under ten pounds. Though noisy, they were healthy, quality piglets.
The ones they were given, in comparison, looked closer to two months old and weighed around fifteen pounds. They were extremely calm, barely making any noise—also excellent pigs. From experience, he knew calmer pigs were easier to raise.
After comparing the two groups, he quietly gave up on asking for a swap.
Seeing that he had gone quiet, the steward grunted a few more complaints before saying, "These pigs are all around forty days old. Can't you tell which ones are better? The Countess is being generous, giving you the healthier, easier-to-raise ones. Don't be ungrateful just because you got a good deal."
The other serfs were stunned. These pigs were the same age as those? No way.
"These are forty days old too? You've got to be joking! How could they be the same age?"
They flat-out didn't believe him. The size difference was too dramatic.
Many of the first to show up had experience raising pigs. They could estimate the pigs' age based on their weight. A one-month-old piglet usually weighed about seven or eight pounds—ten at most. The caged ones seemed about right for that. But the piglets in their arms had just been weighed—and none were under fifteen pounds. No way these were only forty days old.
"Why would I lie to you?" the steward grumbled. "Believe it or not, castrated pigs grow faster than the uncut ones. If you don't want it, hand it over. My family got piglets too. When mine grow bigger and yours stay small, don't blame me for not warning you."
He wouldn't have said so much if he hadn't been a serf himself, or if the ones in line hadn't included his relatives.
Once they heard that even the steward's family had taken piglets, the others didn't press the issue. Even if they still had doubts, the evidence was right in their arms—these piglets were big, chubby, and quiet. Nothing about them seemed hard to raise.
Sure enough, after taking the piglets home and raising them for a while, they found that the steward had been telling the truth. These castrated piglets put on weight faster and grew stronger than their uncut counterparts. Their temperaments remained mild, which was a huge relief to families without pigpens who had to keep the pigs inside the house. As piglets matured, they could grow tusks—not as sharp as a wild boar's, but still dangerous.
Of course, before long, the serfs were no longer keeping pigs in their homes. Wei Wei sent people to teach them how to raise pigs properly, and the first step was to build pigpens. Free-ranging was banned; they were instructed to use pen-raising methods. She also provided specific feed recipes and required that all pig food be cooked before feeding. Pigpens had to be cleaned regularly. With this two-pronged approach, the pigs grew even faster.
Some initially thought cooking pig feed was a waste of time and ignored the Countess's instructions. But once they saw their neighbors' pigs growing noticeably faster, they had no choice but to take things seriously. Unfortunately, by then, they had already missed the prime period for rapid growth. Their pigs lagged in weight, losing several pounds of meat—something they regretted deeply.
By June, most of the piglets had survived and reached about fifty pounds, which was the typical weight after seven to eight months of raising pigs in the past. Beyond this point, pigs usually stopped gaining much and just consumed extra feed.
But now, with pigs reaching slaughter weight in only three months, everyone realized these pigs could continue growing—and the bigger they got, the more profit the serfs made. They became even more attentive, grinning from ear to ear every time they fed their pigs.
Their enthusiasm for foraging also caused another problem—wild piggrass was nearly wiped out. Feed for horses, cows, and sheep became scarce. Since livestock numbers had increased this year, the pasture was running low on fodder. Until alfalfa could be planted at scale, Wei Wei decided to sow another batch of oats after the wheat harvest as backup animal feed.
Of course, oats were edible for people too. The grain porridge eaten by serfs during their service to Felix was a mix of beans and oats. Oats make up a large portion. It was free food, and nobody cared much about the taste as long as it was filling. Compared to the gritty, rock-filled black bread, oat porridge—especially when cooked in bone broth with a bit of fat—tasted heavenly.
Felix had always left the management of the fields to Wei Wei. Though replanting oats after wheat had never been done before, he trusted her judgment. If she said it would work, then it would.
The serfs who farmed for Felix trusted her even more. After witnessing how her fertilizer improved yields and how fast the castrated pigs grew, they had started to believe—almost religiously—that their Countess had some kind of divine power when it came to agriculture and animal husbandry.
But what truly stunned them was the early harvest wheat yield.
"Two thousand two hundred pounds! Two thousand two hundred!" someone shouted in disbelief.
The stewards and serfs tasked with weighing the grain were beyond excited. In the past, 1,200 pounds per acre was considered a bumper harvest. But under Wei Wei's guidance—starting with seed selection and meticulous care—they now had a plot yielding 2,200 pounds. Other plots came in at no less than 1,800 pounds.
This unprecedented bumper crop nearly sent everyone over the edge. As the steward stammered out increasingly staggering numbers, the gathered serfs first stood frozen in shock—then broke out in wild cheering, hugging one another, laughing, leaping with joy like children.
Wei Wei had been standing to the side, mentally comparing these yields to China's average—which in this era ranged from 300 to 350 jin per mu. She'd been pondering how to raise that even further. After all, if wheat varieties were similar across continents, how was China reaching 400 jin while they were still at 300+? There was room for improvement.
She made a mental note to save better seeds from this harvest and also thought about seeking out alchemists to see if they could develop chemical fertilizers…
She didn't get far into her train of thought—she was startled back to reality by the wild celebrations of the serfs.
Wei Wei jumped, nearly throwing the folding fan in her hand. Thankfully, everyone was too distracted by their happiness to notice her slip-up.
Not wanting to interrupt their joy, she quietly told a guard beside her to return to the castle and inform Felix of the good news, then stood patiently by as the commotion settled.
Fortunately, the steward remembered the Countess was still present. He raised his voice to get everyone back to order. Once the shouting died down, he directed the serfs to load the wheat onto carts and send it off to the pasta factory.
Half of this wheat had come from Felix's private lands, the other half from land leased to the serfs. The tenants owed over half their crop in taxes, and whatever remained was theirs. Now, the Count was buying up that portion, letting them choose between cash or an exchange for beans and rye.
In the past, this stage of the year had always left the serfs grim-faced. After taxes, even if they traded their wheat, it often wasn't enough to feed a family for a year. But this time was different. The yield had practically doubled. If the rest of the fields produced similar results, they would not only be able to eat two meals a day all year long, they might even have extra grain to sell.
Naturally, the news of the harvest spread through Sardinson like wildfire. Wei Wei had initially hoped they'd keep it quiet, but the surprise and excitement were too much to contain. The serfs shared the joy with their families, who passed it on to others until soon everyone knew.
While this first batch of serfs joyfully replanted oats, the rest of the estate—serfs and freeholders alike—began staring at their wheat fields with blazing eyes, wondering if they could achieve the same harvest.
No one dared hope for the miracle of 2,200 pounds per acre, but they would be more than happy with 1,800.
And outside the estate—where less fertilizer had been used and field management was inferior—the freeholders set more modest goals, praying every day for at least 1,500 pounds per acre.