Chapter 304: The Queen's Crisis
After selling out the last teammate, Brook was finally able to report the mission to Zhao Zhenzhen with peace of mind.
"——Are all involved?" Zhao Zhenzhen said seriously.
"Yeah." Brooke nodded vigorously, eyes sparkling, and said, "Ms. Zhao, can we wipe out the Central City area this time?" As he spoke, Brooke couldn't help but waved his arm excitedly. Young people are always more prone to radicalism, even those from another world are no exception.
Zhao Zhenzhen thought for a moment and said, "Don't worry. You have to walk one step at a time and eat one bite at a time. Finish the task at hand first. Check the green-covered account book on your right, and then help me fill in the form."
Brook: “…”
All teammates have sold out, so there is no time to relax, right?
After helping Ms. Zhao check her accounts for half the night and filling in the figures in the statistical table, Brooke finally finished and put down his pen. Then he helped Zhao Zhenzhen go downstairs and help count and hand over the property deeds and house deeds that he had copied back from Frank's house...
When the Bartles family fell, the Tarantan family was busy stabilizing the situation in the city. In addition, they had to stabilize the local nobles to prevent these guys from fleeing with their property and causing the loss of local wealth. They could only hold their noses and let these vultures divide up the Bartles family's property.
When Viscount Darcy's family was brutally murdered by vampires, everyone in City Hall was crazy about Darcy's property... However, for long-term considerations, not only could they not eat this piece of meat, but they also had to try their best to help China Darcy keep the family business.
When Baroness Virgil committed suicide, the City Hall was finally able to get a small piece of the pie - the fiefdom of Everlook was taken back, and the Baroness's two estates in Everlook were naturally taken over.
Until now, when the traditional aristocratic sign of Baron Frank's family ran into the gun of Lord Yang and exposed their dirty old secrets that even the local nobles rejected and spurned, the City Hall was finally able to open its belly and eat meat to its heart's content.
"One manor, eight farms, a horse farm, a coal mine, a grain processing plant..." Brooke read out the confiscated Frank family properties, his eyes widened and his mouth became dry. "Twenty-three properties in the city, including a villa by the artificial lake in the Granser District, two apartment buildings, a residence in the middle city, and twelve street shops..."
When Brooke was reading the list of confiscated property, the agents and clerks who were manually counting the confiscated property in Frank's house all smiled happily.
"With so many farms, as well as coal mines and grain processing plants, how many people can be employed?" a clerk from the Civil Affairs Department said happily.
…It seems that the employment rate indicator is really putting a lot of pressure on the people in the Civil Affairs Department.
The officer from the Public Security Department smiled and said, "It's not certain how many people can be arranged. There are people working on these farms."
"Hey, hey! Stop gossiping! Hurry up and finish your work and go to the farm to count the population!" Zhao Zhenzhen, who was in charge of statistics in the next room, urged by slapping the wall.
A group of people hurriedly buried their heads in work...
Before he knew it, it was dawn. Brooke, who was yawning all the time, wanted to find a place to rest, but before he even touched the ground, he was dragged into a carriage and rushed to Frank's farm...
The Frank family, who had been engaged in the slave trade for many years, did not keep slaves beyond the standard. Roughly speaking, there were about six or seven thousand slaves; nearly 30% of them were orc slaves, more than 2,000 of them were "voluntarily" dependent local free people, and the rest were either "hereditary slaves" or transferred from other places.
All serfs must be registered, and those with urgent health conditions must be treated immediately; dependent freemen must immediately be restored to Innader citizens and re-sign legal employment contracts with the city hall that takes over the farm; the orcs must have separate files; the trafficked outsiders must be asked about their willingness one by one, and those who are willing to stay will be treated the same as the locals, and those who wish to return home must complete the formalities and be sent back...
The task of absorbing and converting Frank's slaves alone was enough to make countless semi-professional and professional operators exhausted.
And this is not the end. There are thousands of farm workers, coal miners, food processing factory workers, male and female servants, etc. waiting to be classified and arranged for work...
On the day of the incident, the Frank family urgently sent away two outstanding sons of the family. The other family members did not have time to move and were all arrested. This group of men, women, young and old had to be packed up together with Master Dennis Frank and the family's private soldiers who were brought back from the manor by Lord Yang, and sent to Tarantan - the men went to build roads, and the women and children were sent to the wasteland station to reclaim wasteland.
Together with the various civilian human traffickers captured by the players, the prisoner road construction team has been replenished with a group of fresh labor.
When the city hall was working hard to absorb the old aristocratic Baron Frank family that had been operating for hundreds of years, Yang Qiu, a heartless guy, sent another death notice: prepare to take over more than 10,000 orc slaves and more than 30,000 human slaves.
Orc slaves refer to the orc population hidden in various places in Innadri that Ossirian Jin found by using himself as bait through the guidance of Adler merchants.
The human slaves included the serfs that originally belonged to the Bartles family, as well as the serfs that had been transferred to the Frank family.
Brooke and his gang of teenagers traveled to hundreds of farms of all sizes in Innadri over the course of several months, and the hardships of sleeping in the open air were not in vain.
Rex had been suffering from this for several days in a row, his eyes were red and his brain was numb, and he didn't react to Yang Qiu's words.
Zhao Zhenzhen said with some regret: "You also think it's more appropriate to be more stable?"
"Don't worry, time is on our side. The highlight will be after the autumn harvest." Yang Qiu said calmly.
Zhao Zhenzhen thought about it and nodded in agreement.
Neither Yang Qiu nor the national team planned to keep the local nobles until the New Year.
There are so many fat pigs there. If you eat them all at once, you will die of bloating. It is better to slice the meat slowly... Just be careful with the knife and don't scare the pigs away.
"Then let's use courtesy first and then force." Zhao Zhenzhen made the decision.
In the alien world, at the end of March in 1032, when the students among the players started school one after another, the noble houses in the central city all received a private letter from the city hall, signed by Lord Charlie Rex.
This letter from the Lord is divided into two parts. The first part is to ask for a large number of orc slaves and human slaves from farms, manors, coal mines, iron mines or other industries in Innadri:
——Dear Viscount/Baron XXX, you must have known what happened to the Frank family. There is evidence that the orcs/humans your family settled in XXX came from the Frank family’s illegal business. In order to protect our friendship, please return the illegal gains to the city hall in a timely manner.
— Your dear friend, Charlie Rex.
The second paragraph of the letter asked for human slaves:
——Dear Viscount/Baron XXX, I wonder if you still remember that the Bartles family was defeated by the Tarantan Undead led by me. The Bartles family hastily resold the XX farm/manor located in XX to you. I have seen the relevant transaction documents at the city hall later. Congratulations on your acquisition of the farm/manor.
I learned recently when I was looking through the documents that XXX farmers were stranded on the farm/estate without any arrangements. I also heard that you generously resettled these farmers in XXX. The City Hall has the responsibility and obligation to take over these farmers who originally served the Bartles family. We will send someone to visit them in the near future and discuss the resettlement of these farmers with your housekeeper.
— Your dear friend, Charlie Rex.
The wording of your Lordship's personal letter was still very polite, but the intention was not polite at all.
They asked to take away a total of 40,000 slaves for free - this was simply cutting into the flesh of all the respectable local families!
The knife was so cruel that it made people vomit blood!
Baroness Virgil, who had just been severely beaten and lost her fiefdom not long ago, jumped up in anger and smashed cups and bottles after reading the letter roughly.
"Is that bastard trying to force me to death? Huh?! What kind of grudge do I have with that damn bastard?!"
Mrs. Virgil only had properties in the city and a tobacco farm outside the city. She was already living a tight life, and now she was asked to give away slaves. After reluctantly selling two farms in Everlook, she had already sold many slaves to other families. How could she live like this?
Although she was angry, after venting her anger, Mrs. Virgil still had to pick up the letter and read it carefully again with her red eyes.
The letter not only clearly pointed out the location of her industry where orc/human slaves were raised, but also clearly marked the source of the money as the Frank family and the amount of "benefits" she had received from Viscount Darcy.
At the end of the letter, a special paragraph was added... If these slaves died of illness or were injured before the handover was completed, the city hall would require Mrs. Virgil to pay the corresponding pension, the standard of which would be in line with the wartime pension for conscripted laborers stipulated in the Constitution of the Kingdom of the Rhine - although few lords would pay pensions for laborers, there were indeed relevant provisions in the law.
"...Do you really want me to die?" Mrs. Virgil cursed in grief and anger.
Even the way to kill the slaves and prevent Rex from taking advantage is blocked!
"Returning" these slaves that were earned with real money and their own abilities would indeed be a painful process for Mrs. Virgil, but it would not be a major setback. If she gritted her teeth, it would not be difficult to get through this stage.
But Mrs. Virgil was unwilling to give up. She paced back and forth in the living room like a madman for a long time, called the maid to change her clothes, and hurried out to discuss countermeasures with the noble ladies.
Soon, a group of noble ladies who were also troubled by the Lord's personal letters met in a private club on Sapphire Street in Midtown.
Then, these ladies who were concerned about their family business cursed Charlie Rex for more than an hour...
Despite the scolding and countless slogans of "absolutely not handing over the person", no noble lady took the lead in finding trouble with the City Hall - the counterexample of Baroness Virgil, who even lost her fiefdom, was sitting among them, and no one intended to follow in her footsteps.
The ladies were unable to form a resistance alliance, and the situation was similar among the gentlemen.
It has only been a few days since old Viscount Darcy died at the hands of a vampire, and the Frank family, whose appeal was second only to Darcy's family, was exposed and had their property ransacked and liquidated by the City Hall, with the entire family being exiled to the town. Baron Marcus, who also fell silently, is not even worth mentioning... At this moment, it really takes courage to stand up and challenge the City Hall.
A day later, a housekeeper from a respectable family sneaked into the city hall at night and discussed with the city hall whether they could find a remote place to hand over the slave, so as not to embarrass the master...
The slave owners who were forced to cut their flesh were in agony, while the city hall, which suddenly gained a large amount of labor, was both happy and painful.
The treasures that had just been seized from the long-time human trafficker Frank's house had barely even warmed up before they flowed out again.
The whole city hall is heartbroken, but there is really no way to save this expense:
The first thing was to organize the serfs whose citizenship had been restored to overhaul water conservancy projects, reclaim wasteland, and build new administrative villages on the two territories they owned, in Yongwang Town and Westem Town. Even if they had missed the spring plowing, they could still catch up in time for summer sowing.
Secondly, the coal mine copied from Frank's family was shut down for rectification, all supervisors were sent to the prisoner road construction team, the workers were resettled and the sick were treated, all the dangerous mines in the mining area were filled or blasted, and the earth operation equipment was purchased from Lord Yang for safe mining...
The grain processing plant doesn't need to be rebuilt, but the management has to be replaced, the operation process has to be optimized, and workers have to be recruited...
More manpower was organized to invest in the construction of the thermal power plant that had been shelved for a while, and to build roads where roads were needed in Tarantan...
With so many projects being rolled out at once, the city hall's limited staff was definitely not enough. Fortunately, a group of tools from the national team worked diligently to earn enough staff to bring in more tools, and a group of retired technical cadres came to the other world to continue to shine, so that the business could be maintained.
Yang Qiu didn't care whether the city hall was so busy that even the underage worker Brooke was so tired that he didn't see a bed for ten days or half a month. He raided the Frank family's manor alone and made some money back for his wallet after purchasing materials for the wizard tower. He then asked the city hall for two hundred contract workers and the national team for an engineer without hesitation, and started to build his wizard tower in the city lord's mansion.
As the core of the regional magic network, the first thing that needs to be ensured for the Mage Tower is its height, which cannot be lower than eighty meters - approximately the height of a twenty-story residential building.
With the technology in this world, building a building of this height would require a lot of special materials, but Yang Qiu didn't need to do that - he could just transport the building materials from Earth, and then rent equipment including tower cranes, excavators, etc. from the G Province Construction Department through the salesperson of the expert group. He could even borrow scaffolding...
The only difficulty was that the national team only had one undead engineer assigned to them, and the contract workers had no idea how to operate heavy engineering machinery and no experience in building high-rise buildings.
But this is still not a problem - just teach it slowly!
The two hundred contract workers requested from the city hall were all top performers in literacy schools. Although they were not as good as the Chinese migrant workers who generally had a high school education, they were more obedient and submissive. After knowing that they were going to build a wizard tower, these contract workers showed great enthusiasm and even did tasks like digging the foundation with dedication and piety!
Every day, when he woke up to the rumbling sounds of construction, he could see the foundation dug deep and half of the courtyard flattened and the busy contract workers when he opened the curtains. Yang Qiu felt particularly happy and didn't want to go back to Earth to sleep on a Simmons mattress...
He was as happy as an old farmer watching the wheat seedlings sprout little by little. His roommates, Brother Lowell and Kingsley Jean, couldn't stand the noise. One ran back to Westham to keep Ji Tang company, and the other moved to the city hall to live with Rex.
As the wizard tower that Yang Qiu had been dreaming about was being built up bit by bit, the neighboring territory of Odysseus was not peaceful.
After the battle in early March, Upton, the illusionist who had guarded the gate of the Odysseus family for a hundred years, said goodbye to his apprentices, leaving only a young wizard to guard the wizard tower.
With Upton's departure, the pressure that was already hanging over the Odysseus family was greatly reduced.
Phoenix returned to Bugatti, the main city of Odysseus territory. After reading the telegram sent back by his trusted secretary Miss Linda, he smiled lightly and lay back tiredly in the recliner.
The undead were indeed worth betting on. In just one month, the undead warrior named "There is an Orange Cat" managed the remote knight's territory very well.
This made Phoenix feel quite regretful... If these undead had appeared earlier, even three to five years earlier, giving her more time to cultivate an alliance with the undead, she would have more bargaining chips in her hand.
"Miss, the Earl has sent someone." The secretary knocked twice on the mayor's office door, opened it, and bowed respectfully to Phoenix.
"Got it." Phoenix sat up straight with the help of the armrest, rubbing his forehead, and said, "Just say I will go back tonight."
After forcing himself to finish a day's work, Phoenix turned down social engagements as it grew dark, got on a carriage and headed for his home outside the city.
The industry in the Odysseus territory is much more prosperous than that in the Innadri territory, but in contrast, it faces severe environmental problems - half of the sky in Bugatti, the largest city, is polluted by the black smoke that continuously emerges from factory chimneys. There are almost no decent families willing to live in the central city, and most of the nobles have bought houses outside the city.
This is probably the biggest difference between new industrial cities and conservative agricultural cities - in the former, only the poor and middle class will run to the most prosperous and densely populated areas of the city, while in the latter, the poor are mostly excluded from the prosperous urban areas.
The Earl's Mansion of the Odysseus family is located in the southern suburbs of Bugatti. The entire Earl's Mansion does not look very big, only half the size of the Crescent Manor, and the building is not as new as the Crescent Manor. The large house in the mansion with a history of more than two hundred years is inevitably prone to leaks or peeling walls no matter how well it is maintained. The Earl's family had to move to the new building in the west courtyard.
The Countess doesn't like the city of Bugatti and lives in her manor in the northern part of the territory all year round. Her eldest brother is keen on collecting novel monsters to fill his monster manor and is often not at home. Every time Phoenix comes back, the only people he can see are his father and his younger brother Parker who is strictly disciplined by his father, as well as... a bunch of relatives who live at home and don't leave.
After returning home, Phoenix spent some time to send away the cousins who always tried to get close to her to ask for official positions. She also showed concern for Parker's friendship problems. After dinner, she went to her father's study alone and had a detailed talk with her father.
"It's time to make a choice, Phoenix."
Behind the desk, the earl, wearing a large nightgown, was not as majestic as he was in front of his relatives. He sighed slightly and placed two envelopes decorated with exquisite gold thread in front of Phoenix: "There are letters from the capital and...'over there'."
Phoenix glanced at the beeswax on the envelope and said, "Father, what do you think?"
The Earl did not show a tense expression. Like an ordinary father, he did not hide his worries when he was alone with Phoenix: "When you were young, I told you - if you want to decide your own destiny, and you don't want to live your life like an ordinary noble lady, then the problems that your brother should face should be faced by you."
Phoenix was silent for a moment, then reached out and picked up the envelope on his left.
The signature on this envelope...is also Odysseus.
A letter from the royal family of Odis in Rose, a kingdom in the central part of the Navalon continent.
The Odysseus family of the Rhine Kingdom is a branch of the royal family of the Rose Kingdom!
Four hundred years ago, when the magic technology trend led by the Kenyan Empire swept across the Navalon continent along with an endless supply of Kenyan cloth, a prince from the Rose Kingdom, who had a very low inheritance line and could never have ascended to the throne without great luck, came to the Rhine with mechanical creations from the Kenyan Empire purchased with money supported by his mother's family.
It stands to reason that a prince with a low succession order does not have to fend for himself, and even if he cannot succeed to the throne, he can still get a dukedom. Unfortunately, this prince offended the eldest prince with the highest succession order, who claimed that he would exile him after succeeding to the throne. The King of Rose at the time did not show any aversion to this sibling hostility... For the future of his mother's family and for himself, this prince had to go far away.
Because they belonged to the same diocese of the Gold Coin Church, the Rhine royal family did not reject this foreign prince who came to seek refuge, and generously granted him the title of viscount of their country. Of course, it was just an empty title, and no fiefdom was given.
The ancestor of the Odysseus family settled down in the Rhine Kingdom, started his business with a factory, and relied on his financial resources to support the Rhine royal family to win several wars and obtain fiefdoms.
After the prince's death, his descendants continued to work diligently to develop the family business in the Rhine Kingdom. During the Rhine Kingdom's Protectorate War two hundred years ago, the Odysseus family actively contributed money and troops to protect the capital, and finally won the title of earl, as well as the Odysseus territory owned by the Odysseus family today.
Among the five earls of the Rhine Kingdom, none has the most solid foundation and the most clear and thorough family history than the Odysseus family. Every earl in their family has the confidence to boast that their family's success was entirely due to the efforts of their successors, without any shortcuts.
This should have been an aristocratic version of a family inspirational legend, but... the Odysseus family really managed their business too well, and even attracted the covetousness of their "relatives".
After Phoenix came of age and served as the governor of Bugatti City with the trust of his father, not long after, the Odysseus royal family, the Rose Kingdom's main family, sent a letter of "concern" for the candidate for Count Odysseus's successor, believing that Count Odysseus had no choice but to choose his second daughter because his eldest son was not good enough, and proposed to select an outstanding heir from the royal family to inherit Count Odysseus's family business.
Phoenix pulled out the letter and couldn't help showing her anger after just one glance... The content of this letter was even more outrageous. King Rose even listed several members of the royal family and said without question that he would send them in the summer so that her father could choose one of them as the heir!
Phoenix suppressed his anger, folded the letter, and picked up another envelope.
The letter was signed by a prince of the Rhine royal family.
Even though Phoenix had anticipated the content of Prince Rhine's letter, he still managed to hold back his nausea and pulled out the letter.
The content of the letter was exactly as expected, and it was exactly the same as the news brought back by the butler of the Odysseus family who ran the business in the royal capital - this prince proposed the idea of marrying Phoenix to Count Odysseus.
"How ridiculous!" Phoenix angrily slammed the letter on the table.
The Rhine royal family took into account the contributions of the Odysseus family over the past four hundred years, unlike the Rose royal family who did not care about their manners.
But he didn't have any good intentions.
The prince married the Phoenix. If the Phoenix inherited the territory of Odysseus, then this territory would be no different from belonging to the royal family, and the four hundred years of inheritance of the ancestors of the Odysseus family would be destroyed.
If Phoenix considers the family, gives up the inheritance rights and lets his brother become the next lord - then the Rhine royal family only needs to use some tricks to kill his brother, and the Odysseus family's property will still fall into the hands of the Rhine royal family!
The hundred years of service that the illusionist Upton promised to the Odysseus family had expired. Without the strict defense of this once-famous high-level illusionist, assassinating an earl's son would not be much more difficult than assassinating a national leader.
