Chapter 342 Pre-War Preparations (Part 2)
The leather craftsman in the yard looked at the gang members with a numb and dull expression.
No one dared to shake their head, and the bravest ones just looked away.
Old York, who was already in his forties or even fifties and could be considered an old man in this alien world, stared at the gang leader who asked the question for a few seconds, nodded stiffly, and said tremblingly: "Yes...those, those Innaderis are in the open space to the south."
Even if he didn't say it, someone would have said it, and it would have caused trouble for the leather craftsmen in this yard... These people would come and take a belt or a purse for free even without an excuse, let alone with an excuse.
The gang leader sneered, and it was unclear whether he "appreciated" Old York's tact or regretted that he had no excuse to make some extra money. He waved his hand and left with his men in a swagger.
The little boy who was dragged into the yard by the neighbor's woman watched with fear as the group of vicious adults left. He also watched helplessly as the adults in the yard lost interest in their previous heated discussions and fell silent one by one.
He seemed to vaguely understand why Grandpa York said that the vermicelli that was delicious and affordable at home could only be eaten once.
Ms. Mia, who was busy arranging the work of comforting the slum residents, learned half an hour later that the local gang had come looking for her.
"As expected, they're here." Ms. Mia, who took a break to catch her breath, said with emotion.
Mia was very familiar with this so-called local gang... In her hometown, Camor Town, the unions ruled by the two major families were similar in nature to local gangs.
Tens of thousands of weavers and tens of thousands of weavers have grown the two major families that manage the unions into a "monster" with a scale close to that of country nobles. With slums with as many as 300,000 to 400,000 permanent residents and a large number of civilians in the city, the scale of the gangs that can be "supported" is even more exaggerated.
Ban, who used to be a thug in the club, sighed with mixed emotions: "The characteristic products of backward areas, the bottom-level parasites bred by lazy politics... Ms. Zhao's description is really very vivid."
The nobles had no interest in managing the poor people at the bottom of the society who had little money and were troublesome, both inside and outside the city. Some ordinary civilians in Dutata who thought they were superior and looked down on the slum dwellers were actually the same as the poor people outside the city in the eyes of the nobles.
It's not just the city of Dutata, the same was true for the former Innadri - the work that the street offices and grassroots units were responsible for was all handed over to the gang members by the city hall at that time; including keeping the main streets clean, handling domestic garbage in the city, maintaining the city's sewers, maintaining basic order in civilian neighborhoods... and so on.
Local gangs that obtain power from official agencies can naturally "take root at the grassroots level" and use the power at hand to create their own profit space.
For example, monopolizing the dispatch of low-level workers, or monopolizing people's livelihood businesses.
Among these monopoly businesses, the most "sustainable" ones are food-related.
Ms. Mia's hometown, Kamor Town, the former Innadri, and... the current Dutata City, are all in the same situation: the rise and fall of food prices are half controlled by grain merchants backed by nobles, and half controlled by local gangs.
Ms. Mia thought for a moment and said, "It's a good thing that these people have come together on their own initiative. Ben, you will be in charge of this. Try to keep as many gang members as possible from the city."
"Okay." Ban nodded quickly, handed the work at hand to others, patted his butt and walked out.
Soon, Ben saw the first group of gang members who came over after smelling the fish.
As soon as this group of people came out of the slums, they stopped the volunteers and contract workers who were about to enter the alleys of the slums to continue the next step of comfort work. They acted arrogantly and said some words questioning the sinister intentions of outsiders, and their eyes were also dishonestly scanning the young women among the volunteers.
Ordinary residents would be afraid of the "Innadeli Merchant Group" consisting of thousands of strong men, but these gang members did not take the "merchant group" of thousands of people seriously.
Based on his previous "work experience", Ban recognized the leader of the gang at a glance and greeted him with a smile on his face.
"I see. We were so presumptuous as to openly sell cheap grain flour that the local bakery's business almost went out of business. This is indeed our fault." After understanding the gang members' intentions, Ban smiled and said, "How about this? We are willing to compensate for the losses. I wonder how we can reasonably compensate them?"
The gang leader was a little surprised. He probably didn't expect that only a few dozen people could scare this bald strong man who looked like a "gangster brother". He immediately asked for an exorbitant price.
Ban did not agree outright, as such words would be too fake and would easily arouse the other party's vigilance. He bargained with the other party for a long time in a fake manner, and then took the person to the big camp, saying that he wanted to see his "sincerity"...
And then, nothing happened.
Although there are no undead in the camp, there are hundreds of quasi-professional militiamen and dozens of professional operators. Controlling this group of gang members is almost like catching a kitten behind closed doors.
Next, Ban simply arranged a few operators to form groups of two to wait near the city gate. As long as they saw suspected gang members coming out of the city, they would take the initiative to lead the way for the "Taijun"...
Ban felt that catching them in batches was not efficient enough, so he simply treated the captured gang members to a good meal, asked about the activity areas of the major gangs in the city, and asked the operators to disguise themselves as slum dwellers and run into the city to deliver a letter for help...
Once the war starts, even the dumbest gang members will realize that the merchant groups that come to the slums to steal business are not really here to do business, and they may scatter in all directions - this was the case with Innadli, when they attacked the city, they didn't take care of the gang members, and who knows how many prisoners and road workers ran away - if they can capture a few more prisoners before the war, the progress of Tarantan's project can be accelerated.
On this side, Ben was happily grabbing the labor force, and on the other side, Mia was also not neglecting the slum pacification work that she was responsible for.
After Ban tricked the trouble-making gang members away, the tricycles used to sell vermicelli in the morning were pushed into the alleys of the slums by volunteers and contract workers.
This time, the tricycle was also loaded with a lot of goods - cotton socks, towels, small bags of salt, plastic bowls and basins, and other products from the Ertong store.
In addition...it is also equipped with a palm-sized radio and a battery-powered loudspeaker.
Because radios are relatively expensive and the goods are of various kinds, in order to prevent looting, five people are assigned to each tricycle, and three of the five must be young and strong men.
As soon as Mrs. Hank, the Berkeley siblings , and two contract workers pulled the tricycle into the alley where they were selling vermicelli in the morning, local residents who had just seen the gang members passing by nervously surrounded them and asked, "Madam, will you still sell vermicelli later?"
"Yes, we will bring the stove out around six o'clock." Mrs. Hank raised her voice so that residents farther away could hear her. "We will sell some groceries first and play a radio play from our Innadelli radio station."
"We're going to do business at the intersection ahead. If you need groceries, you can follow us!"
When the local residents heard that they could still buy cheap and filling vermicelli, the tension in their hearts eased a little. Many of them followed the tricycles curiously, wanting to see what good things these kind-hearted Innadeli people would sell.
As for radio dramas, not many people are interested in them... The life of enjoying leisure time by listening to the radio is too far away from the lower class people, and the residents have no corresponding concept at all.
Before noon, small tricycles equipped with horns, like the one Mrs. Hank is in charge of, appear punctually in the alleys deep in the slums.
Mrs. Hank carefully checked the time on the watch covered by her sleeve. When there were still thirty seconds to noon, she solemnly turned on the radio and pressed the horn.
At twelve o'clock, a "matrix" of more than sixty loudspeakers appeared in the sky above the slums, playing a bright and beautiful background music synchronously. A crisp and sweet female voice sang, floating into every corner of this slum that had been in place for hundreds of years and had no spiritual entertainment at all, and into the ears of every resident:
"My hometown is Westham, a beautiful town irrigated by the Barcelo River. My name is Caroline and I grew up in the town..."
If the Innadri people said to the residents of Dutata City, "We are all citizens of the Rhine Kingdom, we are all one family," it would be difficult to gain the recognition of the local residents.
The reason is simple. Except for the Kenyan Empire and the Sokri Empire, which are strong enough to make any citizen feel a strong sense of national pride when facing foreigners, most of the principalities and kingdoms in this alien world have no sense of existence for their own people...
Similar situations are also very common on the earth. Countless foreigners who have become naturalized Americans can turn around and sell out their motherland without any psychological burden. Anyone who talks about the glory of their motherland to Asian Americans, Israeli Americans, Indian Americans, and XX Americans will only be regarded as an idiot.
As for the fact that the people of Rhine generally have no sense of belonging to the Rhine Kingdom... Yang Qiu and the national team both took a wait-and-see attitude.
The Rhine royal family doesn't do much, so who cares about them!
The Rhine people have no sense of identity with the Rhine Kingdom, which is a good thing for a certain evil black magician who intends to steal the country!
The indigenous people had no sense of belonging to a kingdom, and no spiritual belief more reliable than the orthodox religion, so Yang Qiu established a sense of belonging to the land for them, nailed the local sentiments of the separated land into the minds of the indigenous people, and made the Baselo River, the mother river that nourishes this land, become the spiritual totem of the people!
Whether it is "Our Struggle", a light-hearted inspirational drama for young people, or "The Legend of Susan", a heroic legend that strives for an epic sense, they were all created for this purpose!
Cultural creation is what matters at times like this!
This set of mental nuclear bomb combination punches, which had been planned for a long time and had been tested within Innadelli itself, did not disappoint Yang Qiu and the national team's expectations.
Residents of the slums, who were doing handicrafts in their own shacks or working in local workshops, originally just looked up in amazement, curious about the source of the sound; after hearing the actress who played Caroline sing "the beautiful town on the land watered by the Barcelo River", most of them developed an inexplicable sense of familiarity for no reason.
The local residents are naturally very familiar with the Barcelo River. Every morning, many water carriers go to the upstream section of the river in the northeast to fetch clean river water, some for their own use and some to be taken to the city or sold in the slums.
No one knows where the town of Westram is, but since it is in the Barcelo River Basin, it must be not too far from the city of Dutata where they live!
In order to cooperate with the front-line work, on this afternoon, the Innadeli Radio Station did not play the songs from the other world in a loop, but instead broadcast the two radio dramas "Our Struggle" and "The Legend of Susan" in succession.
Compared with the large-scale dramas in this world, the length of these two radio dramas is much shorter. The broadcast time of one drama is about more than two hours, and when the broadcast ends, it is already 5:30 in the afternoon.
During the more than four hours of broadcasting, no quarrels or noises could be heard in the slum with as many as 260,000 to 270,000 residents. Only the sounds from the broadcasting "matrix" composed of more than 60 loudspeakers flowed and permeated the land, penetrated into the ears of every resident, and fell into the hearts of every resident.
Children playing in the streets, women and old men doing handicrafts outside their homes, men working in workshops, women washing clothes on the river bank, fishermen fishing in the shallow waters of the Barcelo River, countless people slowed down their movements and pace, listening quietly and attentively to the story that seemed not to be happening far away but to be very close to them.
The story of Caroline and her companions makes people yearn for the beautiful town of Westham, which is also next to the Barcelo River.
Susan Kenradison from Innadri, Webster Jack from Adler, Matthew Belt and Thomas Bullard from Tachia, these four civilian heroes who died tragically defending their hometown and the Barcelo River two hundred years ago, made countless people cry with heartache when they heard these four names for the first time.
Especially the plot about Webster from Adler, even Old York, a leather craftsman who has been sitting in the workshop for decades and has lost all hope and passion due to the hard life, couldn't help but shed tears.
"We in Adler also had such a great hero..."
After hearing Webster shout "Let's meet again in our hometown" to protect his companions and then being tragically overwhelmed by the monsters, Old York turned his back and secretly wiped his eyes.
The civilian hero who died in a foreign land, before his death, longed to return to his hometown and see the Barcelo River again, but it was a scenery that old York was tired of seeing.
And these familiar scenes suddenly became very important and meaningful in old York's heart.
