Chapter 194: Noble Strategy
The security team members followed behind the undead and sealed off the club area, bar area, casino area, and hotel area one after another. They put the last batch of hotel practitioners to be arrested into jail. More than two hundred strong young men were so tired that they could not even straighten their backs.
There is no other way. All the city police officers have been put in the prisoner camp. All the work has to be done by these security guards themselves...
After taking a short rest and quickly eating a few biscuits, Jimmie Voss, who had just been promoted to captain by the Rockets, wiped the sweat off his face and rode his bicycle to City Hall.
At this time, it was already dark in Innadli, but the city, which had been bustling all day, was still noisy.
It’s not that there are suddenly more people engaging in nightlife... There are basically few living people on the streets, and the only ones making the noise are the undead running around.
As soon as Jimmy left the West City area and entered the road leading to the Central City area, several undead ghosts ran past him with a roar.
"The modeling of this city is so fucking awesome, with all the details."
"This is what we call a main city. Our exile town is nothing like that. Even refugee settlements aren't that shabby!"
"There are no mission points. I can't even see any professional guilds..."
As usual, Jimmy ignored the noise of the undead and continued on his way on the bicycle that originally belonged to the city police chief .
Although there were not too many undead appearing in Westham on a normal day, the few times he had dealt with them were enough for Jimmy to learn to ignore these guys - during his patrol duty, he heard the undead discussing things like "This person's clothes are quite nice, but it's a pity that we can't steal them" and "That house is really unique, but it's a pity that we can't get in" on the street more than once... If he took them all seriously, he wouldn't be able to do his job.
The Midtown area is a city within a city, and the access control is very strict. However, now that all the city police officers have been taken prisoner and the National Guard has been unable to resist and has surrendered... there is no difficulty in entering and exiting the Midtown area.
The city hall, which was deserted during the day (the former officials were collectively captured and the former staff and clerks were absent from work), was now very lively. As soon as Jimmy entered the door, he saw that the courtyard with lights on was filled with iron-shell carriages, and many familiar and unfamiliar faces were busy unloading goods; many rooms of the three city hall buildings spliced together in a triangular shape were brightly lit, and occasionally you could hear voices like "XX file cannot be found" from a room.
"Jimmy, this way!" Rex, who was standing downstairs in the left annex building, saw Jimmy's uniform and immediately waved at him.
Jimmy trotted through the crowd quickly: "Mr. Rex."
"This is Agent Monk." Rex pointed to a man standing stiffly beside him, holding his bowler hat in his hand. "Tell him about our job requirements."
Jimmy, a young man, was promoted to the position of captain because of his quick mind and pragmatism. He instantly understood Rex's intention and politely asked the nervous Agent Monk to move aside...
The so-called detective refers to the staff under the sheriff, who is a civil servant in charge of urban security; the city police is responsible for maintaining order in the city, and solving cases and investigating are the jobs of the detectives.
The sheriff was arrested along with other high-ranking city hall officials. The detectives affiliated with the public security system still had value for absorption and transformation, just like the operators and clerks - this was the decision made by Ji Tang, Zhao Zhenzhen and Rex after humbly listening to everyone's opinions.
Maintaining the operation of a city with a population of 300,000 is no small matter. It is impossible to dismiss all the people in the city hall, and Westerm does not have that many people to transfer over...
Jimmy knew that there was a great possibility that he would be assigned to participate in public security work in Innadri. Mayor Jitang had also revealed that the structure of the existing public security system would be adjusted (reorganizing the city police and the public security team). In this way, the detectives who might be retained would become his future colleagues. No matter what, Jimmy had to be polite.
After briefly introducing the rules and regulations that need to be followed when working for Lord Rex, Jimmy kindly reminded his future colleague: "Tomorrow morning, Mayor Jitang will ask for an operation to begin. We are a little short of manpower at the moment. If we can get more people to help, we can settle down sooner, which will be good for everyone."
Agent Monk was a middle-aged man in his thirties. He understood Jimmy's goodwill and nodded repeatedly in gratitude. "I understand, Captain Voss. My brothers and I are willing to help."
After bowing deeply to Jimmy, Agent Monk put on his hat and hurriedly said goodbye to tell his brothers the good news - it was not easy to find a job these days. Even if the new mayor was a bastard and the new mayor might be a ghost like the one in Westham Town, no one was willing to give up their job at City Hall.
After dealing with the agents, Jimmy was instructed by Rex to contact the agents in various departments... Innadelli's several administrative departments, there are more than a hundred regular agents and hundreds of temporary agents; among these people, there are those with good reputations and those with bad reputations. Due to the current shortage of manpower, there is no condition for screening, so they can be brought in first and used for a while, and then they can be removed if they are really not suitable.
Jimmy worked until the moon was at its highest point in the sky before he finally came out of the office of the Dongcheng District Commerce Department, exhausted...
With weak legs, Jimmy rode his bike through the Midtown area and returned to the prison dormitory in the West City area to rest. On the way back, waves of undead passed by him happily.
Some of the undead are wearing stolen clothes and posing in front of beautiful houses (actually they are taking screenshots); some of the undead are fighting in the street, with a large group of undead watching nearby (actually they are sparring); some of the undead are chattering and jumping around on the roofs of residents facing the street (actually they are playing parkour); some of the undead are laughing and chasing after drunks who come home late (actually... well, they are just harassing NPCs).
When passing by the inner city wall of the Midtown area, Jimmy even saw... a group of undead carrying something that looked like paint or paint buckets, scribbling on the inner city wall.
Young Jimmy sighed, full of experience.
A city filled with undead will not be scary even at night. For this reason, don't worry about whether they often do crazy and stupid things.
On the other side, Rex was so busy that he was almost exhausted before he had time to meet Yang Qiu.
Yang Qiu, who pushed all matters to Rex and hid away to meditate comfortably, certainly would not complain that Rex came too late.
"Tomorrow, find some time to summon the nobles in the city." After Rex sat down to catch his breath, Yang Qiu continued to throw the burden on his shoulders without any hesitation, "These guys will probably have trouble sleeping tonight. You have to comfort them to some extent, so that they won't cause trouble for us if they are idle for too long."
"But you can't make any promises, right?" Rex said.
"Of course." Yang Qiu smiled rudely, "You were very polite by not letting the undead charge."
Rex imagined the scene... Well, Yang was telling the truth, and said immediately: "I'll try my best, but I can't guarantee it will work."
"You can give Westram to Tattle Joe." Yang Qiu said nonchalantly, "That guy has a good image and I heard his family background is not bad, although he doesn't have noble blood, but that's not important... You are so generous to 'those who follow you', even if you leave more room for imagination for those nobles."
Rex knew that Yang looked down upon the standards of the aristocratic circle, and he couldn't help but smile bitterly.
After thinking seriously for a while, Rex said, "We have closed down the gray industries on St. Joseph Street today, which has offended the local nobles. It is not enough to just let them have room for luck. If these people unite and take extreme measures to test our bottom line, it is likely to cause unnecessary casualties."
Rex's father is the Viscount, and he knows one thing very clearly: the nobles who talk about honor and respectability on the surface can be really shameless when they become shameless!
The shameless "common sense" of not feeling sorry for the death of other people's children was known to the children of the nobility when they were still children!
Yang Qiu thought about it and said, "How about this? You promise them all the high-ranking positions in the city hall and let them compete for it themselves."
Rex was stunned.
"Anyway, the City Hall's presence is strongest when the autumn tax comes, so they have nearly a year to wrestle." Yang Qiu said happily, "As the referee, you just need to try to play it safe so that they don't decide the winner so quickly. It's easy, right?"
Rex was at a loss for words again: "Well... okay."
Yang Qiu smiled and said, "Go to Zhao Zhenzhen for advice. She will give you enough interesting ideas. As for the Gold Coin Church, you don't have to worry about it. I will take care of it."
Rex thought of the reliable Ms. Zhao, and his expression suddenly relaxed a lot.
Innadri does not need nobles, or in other words, it does not need nobles who can dictate and obstruct the development direction of Innadri. This is the consensus of everyone (instilled by the national team).
Weakening, dividing, and if necessary, driving out or even eliminating some of the nobles were things that had already been decided before the decision to go to war with the Bartles family.
Yang Qiu was pleased to see the success of this "noble strategy" led by the national team, and was happy to contribute.
The "Tarantan family" and the nobility cannot coexist. Yang Qiu was very clear about this when he allowed players to step onto the land of the Rhine Kingdom in the form of an expedition mission.
Without saying anything about the compassionate remarks, just say that the land area of Innadeli is about half the size of G Province, and more than 50% of the ownership of the arable land is in the hands of local nobles (and a small number of foreign nobles). This contradiction is impossible to mediate.
The periodic collapse of the Chinese feudal dynasties was caused by land annexation. In Nadeli, there was also land annexation. The reason why it was still able to allow a large number of self-cultivating farmers to survive and had not yet triggered a large-scale peasant resistance movement was both cruel and realistic:
First, religion exists as a painkiller.
Although the brainwashing ability of the Gold Coin Church is actually much worse than that of many man-made sects on Earth, and cannot make the poor masses wait for death in peace, it can still play a role in calming emotions and diverting conflicts, such as making the lower-class people believe that the suffering of the masses comes from the omnipresent devil, and blaming their own misfortunes on invisible evildoers.
Second, the lower-class people are changing too quickly.
More than 70% of the world's lower-class indigenous people have a life expectancy of no more than 40 years, and their infant mortality rate and child poverty are even worse than those in India. No matter how numbly the lower-class women of childbearing age who have no right to refuse sex give birth, it is difficult for them to create a baby boom like the one that has occurred on Earth. The countries on Earth that experienced a baby boom after World War II at least had a certain public medical foundation, a more stable domestic environment than before World War II, and a higher food self-sufficiency rate.
With a land area of half a province, there are only less than two million agricultural population and less than 300,000 industrial population. Even if the agricultural potential of Innadri has not been fully tapped, the remaining arable land snatched by the nobles is indeed enough to barely feed the lower-class people...
Third, there was fierce infighting among the nobles.
The Bartles family seized Innadri in a territorial war more than a hundred years ago. The previous lord of Westram, Baron Marcus, also became the lord of Westram forty years ago.
As for where the losers went, no one knows... The fight between rentiers is assumed to be winner-takes-all, and no one really cares about the fate of the losers.
In short, Innadeli is a place where you can't say there are starving people everywhere, but it's not a very convincing place to say that you can have some small happiness. It's not that good, but it's not so bad that people can't survive. As long as you're lucky and there are no major natural disasters or man-made disasters, you can still survive...
But did Yang Qiu release the natural disasters to keep them company?
It must not be.
Killing a person with a single knife, and locking a person in a cage and slicing their flesh with a small knife to drain their blood, leaving them covered in bruises but at least allowing them to live a few more days, months, or years, are both injuries and oppression, and both must be corrected.
Those who hate the former but believe that they can coexist with the latter, and even feel grateful for the latter's "tolerance and kindness", are pitiful and hateful.
Can we tolerate oppression as long as the conflict has not escalated to the point where the weaker party can no longer survive?
Leeches and mosquitoes only suck a little blood and won’t kill people, but who can really tolerate leeches and mosquitoes lying on their body for a long time?
Anyway, Yang Qiu doesn't want to.
The next day, when Ranger Tattle Joe woke up and heard that he had become the new master of Westram and the second puppet lord after Rex, he almost stuffed the entire cup of milk into his mouth.
