Chapter 315 Two Sides of the Coin
Patton can naturally say things like "The more people who can't make a living, the more cultists there will be" because Patton himself came from the bottom of society.
He was born into an ordinary citizen family in Innadri. When he was a teenager, like John and other slum youths, he teamed up with his good friend Sam Hank who lived on the same street, and did odd jobs on the streets to supplement the family income.
The lives of teenagers who grow up on the streets are very cheap.
While the young masters of their age from wealthy families were attending school, dating, and playing around in elegant colleges, street boys like Patton and Sam were carrying heavy packages through sewage-filled alleys, helping people move while sweating, and fighting with their peers just to get a few copper coins of "business"...
People waiting for work on the roadside would fall asleep forever while waiting; people who worked together yesterday would die of abdominal pain in the middle of the night after eating something unclean the next day; or people you had known for several years would be taken away by the city police after stealing bread and never seen again... Patton had seen a lot of similar things in his youth.
Prayer cannot buy bread, and not everyone can receive God's blessing. This is a reality that Patton deeply realized in his youth.
But for Ben Ham Walton...this common sense that even a street boy could understand has troubled him for many years.
Walton's middle name comes from his godfather. He was blessed and baptized by the Fiery Sun Priest when he was born, and his family was once prominent in the Kenyan Empire.
When the Walton family was defeated in the territory war, the desperate Walton had to become a night watchman and pay off the war reparations of 10,000 gold coins at the cost of 20 years of his youth - for Walton, this was the most painful, worst and most unbearable memory.
But for ordinary people... Walton's experience is as magical as a legendary story - a full ten thousand gold coins! How many people can't make so much money in a lifetime, no, in several lifetimes!
Not to mention that after Walton retired, due to his outstanding performance and devout faith, he directly became a Vatican Knight of the Church of the Fiery Sun, and was granted fiefdom, subjects, and the position of head of the church.
Any civilian in the Kenyan Empire, if they heard Walton sighing and expressing his feelings about life in person, would probably smile and shed tears of envy and jealousy.
It is certainly impossible for Walton, the leader of the cult, to have a heart-to-heart talk with a civilian. According to his previous life trajectory, he may never know how difficult it is for ordinary civilians to survive.
Until he was forced to live in the backward and remote border town of Westram as a prisoner of war.
Even now, if someone had the audacity to utter blasphemous words against God in front of him, Walton would still find it a little irritating, but he would no longer interrupt or refute. He would just sit quietly by and listen.
It is not difficult to recruit refugees. The nobles in Adler's territory would like the impoverished families who cannot pay taxes to move as far away as possible. Maybe because Nadeli has opened his mouth, these guys will take the initiative to drive the refugees here.
The source of population is not a problem. The real problem is how to smoothly absorb the refugees into our own free citizens - legal citizens who are capable of creating wealth and paying taxes legally.
The city hall did not let Wagner take office empty-handed to develop the new town. The financial allocation was 40,000 gold coins. Of course, it was not cash - the city hall could not come up with such a large sum of cash - but various materials and assistance, such as food, seeds, farm tools, and subsidies for opening public coach routes had to come from this loan.
As soon as he took office, he had to bear a huge debt of 40,000 gold coins. One can imagine how much pressure Wagner was under... His face was full of vicissitudes and fatigue, which was completely from the heart.
Barton, a man who had done practical work, could understand his old boss's difficulties. He came up and explained the situation he had sorted out to Wagner: "All the buildings in the valley have been converted into residential houses. The maximum number of households that can be accommodated is about 600. Some families need to share a house. For the time being, we do not recommend the one-household-one-residence plan."
"Based on an average of five people per household, it can accommodate about 3,000 people. Let's calculate based on 3,000 people. By the time we can harvest the first crop in the fall, we will need to consume food, bedding, salt, oil, coal, and vegetables..."
Barton picked up the pen and calculated on the paper: "--The most conservative estimate is that the daily expenses for people's livelihood will start from 5,000 gold coins. I estimate that we may have to invest more."
Wagner took a deep breath. The "planned deficit" of 5,000 gold coins made this low-level non-commissioned officer, whose biggest worry in his life was whether he could get a full pension, feel dizzy.
Barton, the thoughtful brother, continued to give advice to his old boss: "Of course, this money can be saved a little, for example, in vegetables. We can open up a vegetable field on the west side of the town near the river. Plant a batch of vegetables with a short growth cycle, such as water spinach and lettuce, and harvest them in 20 to 30 days. This will save the cost of transporting them from Innadri."
"As for the daily fuel for residents, the trees cut down during the pioneering period can last for a while; when we go to clear the black market base here, we can also ask if there are open-pit coal mines in this area. If there are, the fuel expenses can be saved..."
"In terms of organizing the land reclamation, there will be Undead Archons to assist, right? I can also give you some of the grassroots talents discovered during the spring plowing organized by Yongwang Town. However, these people do not have regular job quotas. They receive subsidies from the Logistics Department for temporary workers. You have to pay for their wages and benefits yourself."
"No problem, the money can be squeezed out." Wagner breathed a sigh of relief. His brothers were still reliable. "I still need a group of people who know how to organize the construction of farmland water conservancy..."
"I borrowed the undead engineer who repaired the irrigation canal from Westram. I haven't returned him yet. How about I send him to you first? Remember to return him before next year, otherwise Tuttle Joe will be in trouble." Barton patted his chest generously. "What are your plans for the distribution of land?"
"Let's distribute it according to the best plan for self-employed farmers calculated by the City Hall. Each adult laborer will get 10 acres, and minors will get 3 acres. It's all wasteland anyway, and we all need to reclaim it ourselves. It can be done within three to five years."
After a pause, Wagner pressed his forehead and sighed, "The land in the south may have a title deed in the hands of an Adler noble. In order to prevent someone from coming to ask for money with the title deed in the future, we have to work hard to change the terrain in the next few years. We have to make sure that those guys can't find the land. This is another big project."
Patton nodded sympathetically... So, he was not jealous of this disputed territory at all - it would be best if Wagner could continue to be the head of this place smoothly, so that the city hall would not throw him over to save the situation one day.
Next, the two of them wrote and drew for a while, thinking about how to make good use of the limited manpower and material resources at hand to survive the first year of the new town...
When Patton suggested that Wagner shamelessly go to Brother Lowell to plead for help and ask Lord Yang to allow a branch of the Undead Chamber of Commerce to come to the new town, Walton, who had been listening for a while, couldn't help but blush.
The Undead Chamber of Commerce can supply cheap salt. There is the issue of transportation costs when returning to Innadri from New Town to purchase salt. If the Undead Chamber of Commerce can open a branch here, the transportation costs to New Town can be saved directly... This is the core purpose of these two people coming up with this idea.
Walton, who was once the son of a noble family, had the most subtle attitude towards this matter. Patton and Wagner Pitt, two soldiers and low-level non-commissioned officers from the local lords' armies of small border countries, did not consider shifting the transportation costs of edible salt to civilians at all.
This is easy to do, just raise the price of salt.
The refugees absorbed by the new town are temporarily unable to buy the expensive salt, so they will owe it first and repay it with the land they have reclaimed... In this way, Wagner Pitt can easily get a large piece of land that belongs to him personally, even if one day he is no longer the lord of this new town, those lands will still belong to him.
Many nobles started out this way, using their tiny powers to hoard land. The more land they owned, the more financial resources and power they naturally gained.
Of course... Walton was also very clear. He had been quietly observing the results for more than half a year. If Wagner Pete dared to have this idea, the City Hall would dare to get rid of him completely, confiscate his illegal gains, and make him pay a huge amount of compensation...
The seriousness and strictness of Innadelli City Hall in supervising its own internal governors and affairs officials was something Walton had never seen before. It was even more serious and rigorous than the church's supervision of suspected cult members - they would assume that everyone would be swallowed up by greed and would use public power for their own gain. On this premise, they formulated a series of strict rules and regulations and supervision procedures to strictly guard against all kinds of attacks.
After the governor or the affairs officer completed a decree issued by the city hall, the city hall would arrange groups of inspectors to visit the local area and verify repeatedly - for example, for the village-to-village radio access project promoted throughout the territory, as far as Walton knew, the Westham town hall would randomly select agents to ride bicycles to inspect the countryside at regular intervals, and if the radio station in any village was not operating normally, they would find trouble with the relevant personnel.
Even during the spring ploughing period, there are special agents monitoring the spring ploughing work in every village in Westram...If any village's wheat planting area is lower than in previous years, or if many wheat fields are used to plant soybeans (due to the emergence of oil pressing workshops, soybean prices have been rising), the village chief will be called to the town hall to be severely reprimanded.
Walton once thought that the Westham Town Hall (at that time he didn't know that the city hall was doing the same thing) was putting the cart before the horse. Such a strict and procedural regulatory system should be used to monitor cults that were more harmful to society. He boldly complained to Brother Lowell - Brother Lowell was from the Prosperity Church, and he himself was from the Fiery Sun Church. Both of them were religious people, and he believed that Brother Lowell should have a common language with him.
Walton still remembers Brother Lowell's reaction at that time... The black-robed inspector smiled strangely and said to him, "Have you noticed, Walton, that the people of Westram even pray less to the Lady of Gold Coin, so how could they turn to the evil god?"
Walton felt as if a thunderclap had suddenly exploded out of nowhere.
The black-robed supervisor of the Prosperity Church smiled again, and said to Walton with a sigh and a look of loneliness: "Perhaps this is the world that Yang pursues. Spellcasters always regard prayers to gods as weakness and undesirable."
Walton remembered asking the black-robed inspector this question. He remembered that he was very angry at the time: "This is not the right thing to do, inspector. How can people slacken their faith in God? This is blasphemy!"
The black-robed inspector was silent for a long time before answering him: "I can't judge whether this matter is right or wrong, Walton. I haven't found the answer yet. If you need a clear answer, then observe with your own eyes and think with your heart."
Walton has been searching for answers ever since.
And now, witnessing the conversation between the two new local lords of Innadri, Walton could feel that some of the questions in his mind had been answered.
"So, Brother Lowell does have an answer... He just knows that this answer is hard to convince people, so I need to find the answer myself."
Walton thought silently in his heart, and vaguely understood Brother Lowell's mood at that time... the kind of loneliness and melancholy that could not be explained to outsiders.
People did not slack off their prayers to God for blasphemous purposes, but they no longer needed to pray so frequently - when people had lords and governors who took good care of their lives and survival, they no longer needed to pin all their hopes on God's grace.
The promises and temptations of the evil god no longer have the terrifying power to attract people to fall.
Walton once thought that it was the righteous gods who resisted the invasion of the evil gods and that it was the righteous gods who protected all living beings.
He once believed in all of this with great conviction, and it was this belief that sustained him through the twenty years of his career as a night watchman facing darkness.
In the end, Walton discovered that the evil he hated, the evil he detested, the evil he once risked his life to eliminate, and the great and honorable existences he served, believed in, and upheld... were actually two sides of the same coin.
Thinking back to this, Walton felt a trembling pain in his heart, which made him have a brief difficulty breathing, and even the world in front of him gradually began to blur.
"Walton?" Barton noticed the strangeness of his new colleague and called out in surprise.
"…Nothing." Walton took a few deep breaths and forced an ugly smile, "It's just an old problem."
Patton glanced at Wagner, and seeing that Wagner did not express anything special, he did not pursue the matter further and continued to discuss with Wagner the support and assistance that Everwatch Town could provide.
While Patton, who was acting conscientiously as a "reliable old brother" under the pretext of assisting his old boss but was actually only trying to eliminate hidden dangers for himself, Mei, a resident of the western town of Adler, arrived at Innadri in a horse-drawn carriage.
In addition to the teenagers who were attending the literacy school, the other people sent in the same batch as Mei were the injured who needed medical treatment. The City Hall attached great importance to it. As soon as the convoy entered the city, someone came up to guide them, and all the injured were transferred away at the city gate... Before confirming whether the injured's illness is contagious, the City Hall needs to isolate these patients for treatment.
Young people like Mei were taken directly to the Youth Home in Xinfeng District for settlement. The buildings in the original club area were very spacious, and it would be a waste to convert them into residential houses, so they were all used as public welfare land.
The Youth Home consists of two four-story buildings with pointed roofs and white walls. The first floor is the activity venue of the City Hall's "Socialization Education" Activity Center. The public bathrooms, toilets, kitchens, and canteens are also all on the first floor. Above the second floor are large dormitories with twelve or eighteen people in a room, separated by gender and under fully closed management.
Adler's common language accent was not much different from Innadri's. Mei could understand what the staff were saying, but she had difficulty understanding the content of their speech, as many things were beyond her common sense.
She was pulled off the carriage in a daze, and then confusedly followed the queue to receive daily necessities and be assigned a dormitory. Mei was a little overwhelmed until she was taken to the two-story iron bed and someone pointed to the bed on the second floor and told her that was her future living space.
"...If you have any questions, please ask the head of your dormitory. She is the head of your dormitory." The staff called a girl who was shorter than Mei and introduced her. "Her name is Jenny. Although she is two years younger than you, she is already an old employee here."
The girl named Jenny had pigtails with a beautiful flower-shaped plastic hair accessory tied to the end of her pigtails. She waved to Mei cheerfully: "Good day, my name is Jenny."
"My name is Mei, good day." Mei felt a little ashamed of herself in front of this pretty girl and responded in a submissive manner.
"I'll leave it to you, Jenny." The staff was very busy and patted the little girl on the shoulder and left.
"Don't worry." Jenny nodded like a little adult, and enthusiastically took the small bag of daily necessities that Mei had just received from her. "Everyone in the dormitory has a bed and a table with a cabinet and drawers. The beds are ready, but you have to apply for bedding and a table from the dormitory manager. I'll take you to find the dormitory manager."
Mei was embarrassed to ask a girl younger than her to help her carry things, but she didn't have the courage to ask for it back. She was worried that the other party would think she was tactless, so she nodded nervously.
Jenny, the dormitory head who was only eleven years old, didn't care at all whether Mei was restrained or not. She took her downstairs to ask the dormitory manager for a table and bedding, and asked a boy passing by to help carry the things upstairs.
"In our girls' dormitory, boys are not allowed to enter after 5pm. But it's okay before 5pm."
"It's the weekend and there are no classes. If you want some pocket money, get up early tomorrow morning and we can go to the bar area to find some odd jobs. I suggest helping out in Mrs. Hank's delicatessen. Mrs. Hank is very generous and will give some unsold food to odd jobs so that people can take it back as snacks."
"The day after tomorrow morning, I have to go to school. When I hear the bell, I have to get up and wash up. I have to go to the cafeteria before seven o'clock, otherwise the delicious food will be snatched up..."
"The school is right next to it. When you came here, did you see the house with raspberries outside the wall? That's it..."
Jenny seemed to like talking very much and she said a lot to Mei. Amid the little girl's chattering, the uneasy Mei gradually calmed down. She seemed to see the future trajectory of her life and began to look forward to it.
After placing the table in the space between the beds, Jenny instructed Mei to put the daily necessities into the drawer under the table. The girls in the dormitory also came over to help make the beds.
"Did you just shave your hair? Then you won't need shampoo for a while. Can I exchange my soap for your shampoo?"
"Don't listen to Jenny and work in the delicatessen. Why don't you come with us to the garment refurbishment factory outside the city? You just need to sort out the bundled clothes and wash them. It's an easy job, almost the same as what you do at home. If you work a few days, you can get some nice clothes to wear!"
"What's wrong with the delicatessen? You were all very happy when I introduced it to you before!"
"You just like to eat the snacks Mrs. Hank gives you, hahaha..."
The youngest girl living in this dormitory was eleven-year-old Jenny, and the oldest was a seventeen-year-old orc girl. The orc girl patted her chest and said to Mei generously, "Going with them will only give you easy jobs, and there's no benefit. Why don't you go work on the farm with us? You can carry a bag of potatoes back after working for a day."
The girls immediately started to make noises like “Who wants to go?”, “Don’t listen to her?”, “Boys can’t do it”.
Mei could feel that these girls were trying to accept her in a friendly way, but it was this kindness that made Mei panic; she had too low self-esteem. She was not even sent here to study by her parents. Instead, she was sold by her family like an object and ended up here by chance. She even had an unreasonable fear that people would look down on her and reject her after knowing her background.
What made Mei even more embarrassed was that no matter who these girls were, they didn't look like they were from the same world as her - all of them had rosy complexions, plump cheeks, and were dressed neatly and cleanly. Many of them had beautiful hair accessories and bright and exquisite hairpins in their hair.
When the girls talked about a "celebrity" in the school, a girl whose cousin was Caroline, Mei felt even more out of tune with these girls... She had no idea who the Caroline that everyone was longing for was!
Mei, who had a huge fear in her heart, felt that hearing the girls' laughter was a torment.
Mei struggled until lights-out time, climbed onto the bed, and lay on the clean sheets given to her by the dormitory manager. She touched the soft sheets, the fluffy and clean quilt, and felt the mattress under the sheets. The fear in her heart did not dissipate, but became more and more intense.
Can she really get all of this?
Can she really have all this? She can live in a big, beautiful house with girls from good families, be friends with them, have the same things as them, go to school with them, and do odd jobs with them to earn pocket money?
These...are not all just dreams?
Will someone wake her up as soon as she falls asleep and tell her to stop dreaming?
Mei really couldn't believe that she would be the lucky one - in the house where she grew up, all she had was a corner with some dry straw as a cushion; because there were so many children in the family, her parents sometimes even forgot whether she had eaten lunch.
Can she really get what she couldn't get at home in this strange place where she has never been before?
Mei began to tremble uncontrollably, her eyes wide with fear.
It was unknown how long she stayed in the darkness. Under tremendous pressure and fear, this thirteen-year-old girl, who had experienced such a dramatic change in her life, finally could not control her emotions and burst into tears.
The girls in the same dormitory were startled. Some jumped out of bed barefoot and ran towards Mei's bed, while others turned on the lights.
Under the concerned gazes of the girls, Mei cried in shame as if she had done something wrong, and apologized repeatedly: "I'm sorry, I can't lie to you. Actually, I was... I was sold by my parents..."
She recounted her story in bits and pieces. She was sold to the town 's casino by her parents for one gold coin, and then taken to a small town in the wilderness and sold to a caravan from Tachia for three gold coins.
Listening to Mei's repeated apologies, the girls in the same dormitory looked at each other in confusion.
"Well... it seems like you are the one being sold, not the one selling others. Why do you have to apologize?" The orc girl scratched her head in confusion. "Many of my people were sold to Innadri. Do we all need to apologize?"
"That's right, it's so strange." Another orc girl said in confusion, "Why are you crying? It's not your fault."
Mei, who was immersed in pain and unable to extricate herself, was stunned.
One girl exclaimed, "Ah!" Then she suddenly realized, "Don't you think it's shameful that you were sold? Are you afraid that we will look down on you?"
Mei felt a pain in her heart and lowered her head silently.
"No way!" The girl who saw through Mei's little thoughts didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Didn't you hear the clerk say that everyone who lives here can go to school for free, without paying a penny. If the school charges money, our family can't afford the tuition, let alone let us girls come to study."
The little girl Jenny finally understood why her new roommate was sad. She pointed at her nose and said, "I definitely won't look down on you, Mei. My family used to live in a slum outside the city. My two brothers and I never went to school. My oldest brother John was even taken away to fight in a war!"
Another girl said, "My father is a gambler. He was taken to the Tarantan Wasteland to do hard labor. I heard from the clerk that he would not be back for several years. Fortunately, he was taken away. Otherwise, I would not be able to go to school even if it was a free school. He would definitely force me to work to earn money for his gambling."
Mei's mouth opened in shock.
The girls talked about their own origins one after another. All the young people in the juvenile home were orphans without guardians, or their families had no fixed residence temporarily, or their families lived far away and could not take care of the children. None of them came from a good family - they would look like they came from a good family, but their good complexion was only due to having enough meals and a regular schedule for a few months.
Jenny's older brother John digs river sand in the Knight Territory of the orange cat boss. Her mother also has a job and is not in the city. She and her second brother Barry both live in a juvenile home.
Understanding the knot in her new roommate's heart, the little girl who was elected as the dormitory leader despite being the youngest climbed onto Mei's bed, patted Mei's shoulder like a little adult and said, "Don't think too much. Since you are here, study hard and strive to graduate early. Then you can go to work earlier, earn money to support yourself, and no longer worry about being looked down upon."
As she spoke, the precocious little girl patted her chest proudly and said, "My mother used to be a laundry woman and had no formal job. She attended night school in our school for more than two months and her grades were better than my older brother's. Now she is working as a literacy teacher in Yongwang Town. Everyone praises her for being so great! I want to be a teacher like my mother, and you should join me!"
