Chapter 152 Walton's Confusion
It is November 20th, Earth time, and the second round of internal testing has been open for half a month.
It is September in the other world, and it is time for farmers to pay agricultural taxes.
Master Parker Chapman Odysseus, who was forced to "stay overnight" at Westham Town Hall, had a nightmare all night.
In the nightmare, there was a man with flying black snake hair, who looked like a resurrected devil. He stood on a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. The mighty sound of curses shook the bloody sky.
That was the terrible curse that accompanied Master Parker throughout his youth. Just like the image in the newspaper clippings, it was deeply engraved in the depths of Master Parker's soul...
"You can do evil while I am away ."
"You can do evil when no one knows."
"But please remember that all evil deeds will be punished."
"At the time of reckoning, all the suffering of the victims shall be repaid tenfold!"
"The pain of shattered bones and the torment of skin and flesh being peeled off will accompany your wails and serve as a belated funeral for the victims!"
"——The reckoning will be late, but definitely not absent!!"
Master Parker was sweating profusely. He seemed to be in the palace where his grandfather had stayed, which was filthy with blood and minced meat. The terrible madman seemed to be standing among the corpses less than 20 meters away from him, roaring at him.
The sound was getting louder and louder, and closer...
"Good night." The devil in the nightmare stretched out his bloody claws, held his hand, and said with a grin, "You seem to know me?"
"ah--!!"
Master Parker suddenly opened his eyes.
Strange ceiling, strange room.
If it weren't for the familiar butler standing by and the butler opening the door with a concerned look on his face, Master Parker might have called out a few more times...
Master Parker let the butler help him sit up, and asked the butler to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead. He asked weakly, "Why is it so noisy outside?"
"It's the villagers paying their taxes," the housekeeper said reluctantly, "The yard is full of people, so it's bound to be a little noisy."
"Pay tax?" Master Parker's mind was a little confused. He paused for a moment before he suddenly came to his senses. "We are still in Westham?!"
"Yes, Master." The butler quickly reached out and held Parker's shoulder. "Calm down, it's daytime now..."
Master Parker shook off the butler's hand, jumped off the bed, ran barefoot to the balcony and opened the curtains.
As a big customer who spends a lot of money, Master Parker naturally gets the best room to rest after he passes out... This room is in the middle of the third floor of the Town Hall building and has the largest balcony. Standing on the balcony, you can overlook the entire Town Hall courtyard and the street view outside.
Outside, the streets and courtyards were crowded with local villagers carrying food on wooden trailers, wooden carts, and flatbed donkey carts.
There were so many people, vehicles, and goods that the buzzing noise made people's heads hurt, but it didn't look messy.
A wide wooden barrier was laid on the street outside, and the villagers who came to pay grain taxes lined up and moved forward in an orderly manner in the area separated by the wooden boards. Similar wooden barriers were also placed in the courtyard, separating three passages, which divided the villagers entering the courtyard and their carriages into three groups, and weighed them at three tax payment points set up separately.
Master Parker really didn't like this noisy scene, but seeing so many lively people within his sight... he still breathed a sigh of relief and felt at ease.
He had really had enough of those dangling skeletons and the demons that came out of his nightmares.
As his eyes glanced at the balcony below, Master Parker breathed a sigh of relief.
The open space right below the balcony and in front of the town hall building... is full of undead.
The grain weighed from three tax points is being moved by these undead to the warehouses on the left and right sides of the building.
Master Parker felt dizzy again when he found that there was a "belt of the dead" between him and the lively crowd of living people.
"What's the difference between day and night in Westham?" Master Parker muttered to himself in despair.
At the northernmost intersection of Martin Street, Captain Walton and his capable scouts were squatting on the side of the road, observing from afar the dense flow of people from the town's main avenue to the town hall compound.
Every year during the autumn harvest season, farmers from all over the country need to pay grain taxes to local towns. Captain Walton is no stranger to similar scenes.
But... this kind of scene where the farmers waiting to pay taxes are full of anticipation, and the farmers who have completed tax payment are all excited, is indeed the first time that Captain Walton has seen it.
The knights who were given titles all had territories and subjects. Even the family knights of ordinary nobles could obtain one or two small villages as their territories, and a dozen to dozens of farmers as their subjects. As the leader of the Knights of the Fiery Sun Church, Walton certainly also had a fiefdom - his fiefdom was in the central and eastern part of the Kenyan Empire, a small town with a population of nearly 10,000.
Of course, there is a difference between knights and proper nobles after all. If there is no qualified heir among the descendants, or the title is taken away, the fiefdom will be taken back; so knights usually do not spend too much time on managing the fiefdom, as long as they can ensure that they can get the 10% of the grain tax that belongs to them every year.
Walton was away from home all year round and seldom went to his own fiefdom. Every time he went to collect his "dividends", none of the tax-paying farmers he saw were as relaxed as he was now - not only were they talking and laughing with each other, but the farmers lining up in the long queues also seemed quite anxious, as if they were afraid that if they were too late, it would not be their turn to pay taxes.
Walton had never heard of anyone being so active in paying taxes, especially among the most ignorant farmers who never understood the difficulties of the tax collectors. Although they were told that taxes must be paid before November, no matter where they were in the territory, these farmers would always wait until the last few days to cooperate.
This was very difficult for Walton to understand... Rex could influence the townspeople in the town, so could he also influence the villagers who did not live in the town?
When such doubts arose in his mind, another voice was quietly sprouting in his heart.
In the short one and a half days since he entered the city, the Westham he saw with his own eyes... was quite different from the Westham he had imagined.
He thought Westham was desolate, chaotic, and lifeless.
But the Westram he saw was full of energy and vitality.
When he walked out of the stronghold, he saw that none of the townspeople and villagers were living in fear as he had imagined.
Walton had worked as a church watchman for many years and had witnessed countless fools bewitched by cultists. He certainly knew very well what those who had gone astray were like - unlike what most people imagined, the fools bewitched by cults did not actually appear to be bitter and resentful. On the contrary, they looked more positive, confident, and optimistic than ordinary people, but also more irritable, easily angered, and easily excited. They were in a delicate and strange state of walking a tightrope between madness and calm.
But that's not the case with Westram's people.
The people here are ordinary no matter from which angle. Housewives quarrel over whose house littered the garbage. Stall vendors haggle with customers over how many potatoes they can buy with a copper coin. Dirty wild children stare at the empty rum bottle that has been casually placed in the corner. Young girls walk by with their heads held high, proudly showing off their newly made skirts...
They were not much different from the Innadri people... no, they were not much different from the Kenyans in Walton's memory.
But there are still differences after all.
It's just that Walton couldn't tell .
He saw a family of villagers coming out of the town hall courtyard with rosy faces, and running happily towards the main street in the town.
Walton stood up and walked a few steps away from the entrance of Martin Street, watching the family disappear around the corner.
Almost all the villagers who came out of the town hall went towards the main street in the town.
After hesitating for a moment, Walton asked his subordinates to continue watching the place, and he pulled down the brim of his baseball cap and walked along the roadside towards the main street in the town.
After walking a few steps, Walton discovered the secret of why the villagers gathered on this street -
On this street, some of the street-facing buildings that have been rebuilt have started to open for business.
Near the intersection in the direction of the town hall, there was a two-story building with the first floor completely opened up. Dozens of baskets filled with eggs and padded with hay were displayed. A woman wearing a town hall clerk's uniform stood on a stool at the door of the store, waving her arms and shouting, "Eggs on sale! Four for one copper coin! Take your pick!"
When Walton heard the price, he thought there was something wrong with his ears - when did eggs become so cheap?!
Obviously, Walton's ears were fine. This egg shop, where even the salesperson was a part-time clerk from the town hall, sold eggs at such a low price...
Nearly a hundred people surrounded the store and rushed to buy eggs. Some sturdy peasant women even occupied a basket and did not allow others to pick eggs. The housewives in the town who could not squeeze in were so angry that they cursed loudly.
Some people were dissatisfied with the incredibly cheap eggs. Walton saw a housewife complain to the clerk who was selling them: "Ms. Jenny, why are these eggs so small? They are smaller than the ones sold by Ms. Mia and Ms. Shirley on Martin Street yesterday."
"Don't be too greedy. Yesterday, three eggs were for one copper coin, and now they are for one copper coin, the price is so much cheaper!" Before Ms. Jenny could say anything, someone came up to explain.
"Yes, because the eggs in this batch are smaller, we're reducing the price." The sweaty Ms. Jenny said with a hearty smile, "It's still a good deal to give one more egg. The taste is the same, and it's suitable for making soup or frying."
"But it's still too small. I've never seen eggs this small. When I was in the countryside, the hens I raised laid much bigger eggs than this." The complaining housewife said this but her hands did not stop at all, and she kept putting the carefully selected larger eggs into her basket.
"Make way, make way, don't break it!"
A strong peasant woman picked out two large baskets of eggs and squeezed out of the store with a happy face. However, her movements were quite rude and everyone she passed by complained about her.
"What's wrong with these country folk today? Why are they so generous? Normally when you buy potatoes from them, they would haggle for a long time just to get an extra potato the size of a finger." The housewife whose skirt was stepped on said angrily.
"Don't you know? They have money today. Look at those villagers queuing on the street outside. They are all coming into the town to sell food." An enthusiastic townsman explained.
"Selling grain? Isn't it paying agricultural taxes?" The housewife asked Walton's question as he stood at the door.
"Because Mr. Rex abolished the local tax, and abolished the population tax in our town at the same time." The enthusiastic townsman knew a lot and boasted, "My aunt works in the Logistics Department. I heard from her that Mr. Rex bought grain at the most expensive price this year. Unhusked wheat was four copper coins per pound, soybeans were six, and even corn could be sold for one copper coin per pound."
When this "inside information" that had already been made public came out, the townspeople in the egg shop were stunned.
The villagers who were selling grain proudly puffed out their chests and showed off their wealth by buying eggs crazily...
Westerham is close to the Sorensen Mountains and has a high terrain. In addition, the water conservancy projects are very close to zero, so the agriculture is quite backward. It is completely impossible to grow rice, which requires a lot of water. The staple food is mainly wheat, soybeans (this thing is indeed counted as grain), and corn.
Lacking water support and fertilizer, the yield of crops must be quite disappointing... Rex and Ji Tang personally went to the countryside to investigate and found that the local wheat yield per mu was only about 300 kilograms, soybeans were between 100 and 200, and the easiest corn to grow only had a yield of 700 to 800 kilograms per mu.
The food in this world is far from being in surplus, and the price of food is not cheap. Logically speaking, as long as farmers are not lazy and work hard to cultivate the land, their lives should be comparable to those of small town residents (in fact, the handicraft industries in most small towns are not very developed); but the fact is... even farmers who produce food cannot guarantee that they will have wheat to eat all year round, and often have to rely on corn and potatoes to fill their stomachs.
The reason is the fluctuation of grain prices during the autumn harvest.
In other words, it was a matter of conscience for the local lords - the peasants, or self-help groups composed of civilians, did not have the ability or funds to store grain or intervene in fluctuations in grain prices.
Whether farmers can have enough food to eat next year depends entirely on whether the local lords are willing to relax and not push down grain prices too much during the autumn harvest and tax period - who says that agricultural taxes cannot be paid in kind and must be paid in cash?
Walton, who had been standing at the door and listening for a while, moved his feet and slowly left.
The voice that had just sprouted in his heart, which he himself was reluctant to admit, sounded again.
Charlie Rex...could it be that he is an extremely kind, rare and good lord?
Walton denied this ridiculous thing from the bottom of his heart. That was a noble illegitimate child who was willing to be followed by even black magicians and was carried up by the nightmare butcher!
This kind of guy who is despicable to the core, given such a good opportunity, how could he not make money wantonly, but instead show some mercy!
