Chapter 37: Basic Eradication of Illiteracy

It wasn’t until the final group of craftsmen brought out individual copper pots and charcoal that Su Na followed behind, going table by table to teach them how to use them.

That’s right, it was hotpot.

She didn’t believe for a second that any muddle-headed minor noble could cause trouble while eating hotpot.

“I won’t even let you show off with knives and forks; all of you will use chopsticks to pick up your food!”

She planned to serve hotpot for the first three days to weed out those with aristocratic germophobia.

Afterward, she would use standardized uniforms, standardized dormitory sizing, standardized cafeterias, standardized training, and standardized rewards and punishments to slowly weave collective thinking into their minds and souls.

She would use military standing postures, folding blankets, and collective training to grind away their temperaments, making them understand that obeying orders is a soldier’s most sacred duty.

Su Na’s training methods were completely different from the traditional training methods of the nobles in this world, and they caused them unspeakable misery from the very beginning.

This was especially true for those pampered noble ladies, as Su Na stood face-to-face with them, ensuring they dared not slack off.

It was common to see them standing in the military posture with tears streaming down their faces.

Su Na was actually quite accommodating to them; the noble ladies generally received twenty percent more training than the men.

Without Su Na needing to say a word, they consciously removed all excess weight from their bodies.

She collected seventeen or eighteen corsets just from that alone.

The men generally had better physical constitutions, but they didn’t have it easy either.

They were all teenagers at an energetic age, and having to stand perfectly still for a minimum of two to three hours at a time was incredibly torturous.

Even with Su Na’s initial sharp tongue, they couldn’t hold on, preferring to bear the title of “coward” and slink back home.

In the first three days, over seventy of the two hundred members in the initial batch ran away—a full third chose to quit.

However, a new batch of recruits was quickly supplemented through a general selection from the commoners.

At this point, the commoner youths became the majority.

There were only about forty noble youths left, and among them, less than five were noble girls.

This was a stark contrast to the commoner side, where nearly half were girls.

Logically, since girls generally had weaker physical constitutions, they shouldn’t have had such a high retention rate, but they had no other choice.

During the recruitment expansion, a large number of girls from impoverished families signed up, and Su Na specifically allowed them in.

In this era where physical labor was highly valued and people were bound to the land, the status of women—who generally could not match men in heavy manual labor—was very low.

Even when food was available, the men and boys were fed first.

These young girls could only eat the leftovers or simply reduce their meal frequency; if their families ate two meals, they would eat one.

This situation was not dictated by individual will; grain and the production of grain were the psychological red lines of all commoners.

Under the constant fear of starvation, anything could be sacrificed.

The fact that they were given a bite of food to grow up and not abandoned was already a massive act of mercy.

And this was the result after the territory’s food sources had been diversified.

In the past, the number of girls standing before her now would have been at least halved.

Because Su Na did not restrict recruitment by gender and provided food, new clothes, and new shoes, these girls, desperate to survive, naturally flocked to her.

They might have had weak constitutions, but having no way back, they generally possessed far stronger endurance.

Even when they stood until their legs were numb or ran drills until they fainted, they didn’t utter a single sound.

Su Na said nothing about this; she only had the accompanying Church priests treat them.

However, Su Na delayed the end of the first phase by two months.

The greenhouses Su Na had invested in earlier were beginning to show results.

The higher hatching success rate had put the territory’s broiler farming on the right track.

All of the output was diverted by Su Na to the meals of this unit, ensuring they had sufficient protein intake.

Two months of adequate nutrition was enough for those with substandard physical fitness to begin catching up with the progress.

Su Na borrowed a group of mercenary knights from her mother to teach them basic martial arts.

Taking advantage of the brief free time during this period, Su Na rushed the craftsmen in an independent workshop to work overtime and produce two small, preliminary cast-iron cannons.

The cannons were cast using the clay mold method.

First, a mixture of clay, binder, and anti-seepage liquid was pressed over the cannon model to create a half-body clay mold.

The same operation was performed for the other half.

When the two clay molds were joined together, the hollow cavity in the middle served as the pouring mouth for the molten iron.

Once the cavity was filled with molten iron and solidified, the rough cannon blank was complete.

Then, using a low-volume, high-cost steel steam drill, a bore of the appropriate caliber was drilled into the barrel, essentially completing the cannon’s basic form.

Because of various reasons, the quality of cannons cast this way was not particularly high, and they were overly thick and heavy while lacking power.

However, they were certainly more than adequate to serve as training cannons.