Chapter 438 Witnesses & Physical Evidence
The higher-ups in Lars City are impatient to govern the territory, but taxes still need to be collected.
The mayors of the dozen or so towns within the jurisdiction of Lars City are probably the most "unlucky" grassroots governors in the Rhine Kingdom - they have to take care of local public security and people's livelihood, and also be good tax officials.
The old mayor of Baboba Town is such an "unlucky guy". His personal wealth is less than one-tenth of the mayor of Westem Town who was overthrown by the players, but he worries ten times as much as the original mayor of Westem.
The Tarantan undead entered the country, the upper class of Lars City fled collectively, and the city hall had been taken over by the black magician Yang - after recognizing this fact, the old mayor did not hesitate... to kneel down.
The main thing is that even if he wanted to resist, it would be useless. The town of Baboba is lucky enough to pay taxes every year. There is no financial surplus at all, and it is impossible to have extra money to support soldiers... The largest "violent organization" in the town is the sheriff and the dozen or so militiamen under the sheriff's command. The old mayor would not be crazy enough to think that he could fight the undead with such little force.
What's even worse is that in other places, the consuls can still borrow private soldiers from the nobles, but here, even if you want to borrow, you can't - the geographical environment in the southern part of Taqia is too bad. Except for the area around Lars City, there are few decent plains in other places.
The local nobles were not willing to live in such a mountainous area for a long time. Even the nobles whose fiefs were here almost all lived in the city.
Anyway, the situation in Innadri and Adler territories has not become worse than before just because they were ruled by the Undead regime. Every year there are still a lot of caravans passing through Tachia Territory heading south... So what if they want to defect?
The old mayor, who looked old but was actually bright-minded, made the decision and then watched the Adler militia outside the town for a long time, making sure that the militia would pay for the vegetables and potatoes they bought from the townspeople and that they were not an unreasonable bandit army. Then he sent his servants to respectfully invite the Adler militia officers to the town hall and presented the local household registration list with both hands to show his sincerity.
The team officer was also a sensible man and did not accept the household registration list.
First, he reassured the old mayor by stating that the army could not interfere in civil affairs without orders. Then he told him to continue to fulfill his duties as the local governor and wait until the city hall sent someone... One should not rashly destroy the old order without being prepared to establish a new order. This was the first lesson the officer learned after entering the undead regime system.
The higher-ups would certainly not be pleased with the terrible laissez-faire governance model of Lars City, but before taking over the entire territory of Tachia, the team officer believed that they would not make any major moves - he was particularly familiar with the cautiousness of the Undead regime in regards to people's livelihood.
The old mayor was not appeased by the team officer's words.
The old mayor, who was worried that his surrender would not be accepted and that he might be liquidated by the new regime in the future, hesitated again and again and decided to put up a bigger bargaining chip -
"Your Excellency, I... I know the secret of the Lord of Lars City."
The old mayor, who was over 60 years old, wiped the sweat off his face and reported to the team officer with great courage: "Since your superior has taken over the city of Lars, I think... he should also know that something has happened to the night watchman in Lars."
The team officer, who was about to say goodbye and go back to do his work, was shocked.
"What do you know?!" The officer, looking shocked, quickly sat back down.
"I don't know much..." The old mayor swallowed and said tremblingly, "Although I don't know how those night watchmen were killed...but I think I may know why they were killed."
Next, the old mayor, sweating profusely, spoke out a secret that he had kept in his heart:
Before escaping, Lord Lars would send his stewards to various places every year to recruit "manor servants" and "farm workers".
The number of people taken away from each town and village was not large, and the recruitment sites were rotated every year, so people would not be recruited continuously from the same place... But over the years, all those who were recruited away have never come back.
The old mayor noticed this when he was young, but he didn't dare to inquire about it out of curiosity, let alone investigate it further.
The old mayor only has the title of lord, which is a "first-generation title" only available to mayors. When he leaves office as mayor, he automatically abdicates and cannot pass the title to his son. He dares not to provoke himself into things that he and his descendants absolutely cannot afford to provoke.
"Three years ago, no, it should be four years ago... When my cook went to the countryside to buy a kind of wild fruit that is a specialty of our area to make flavored jam, he met the night watchman and asked him for directions." The old mayor said with a look of fear, "That vicinity... Later I heard that the night watchman in the city was investigating an important case and rarely appeared in the city. I vaguely knew that something was wrong, so I quickly sent the cook to Odysseus Territory and told him never to come back."
"This isn't the first time this has happened. About a dozen years ago, two night watchmen 'disappeared' in the city. I didn't dare to ask what happened afterwards, but after that, people seemed to have forgotten about it..."
"Please understand, Your Excellency. Tachia is always so strange. There are often inexplicable and unreasonable things happening."
The team officer looked at the old mayor thoughtfully.
Agent Stanford and Captain Mace were able to discover that the people of Lars City ignored the Night Watch because the agent and the captain were outsiders.
The old mayor was able to notice that something was wrong. Obviously, he was not "daring" to inquire or "daring" to investigate further as he said.
The team officer was not wrong in his guess. If he had not personally gone to the quarantine camp to listen to the propaganda and confirmed with his own eyes that the undead regime was indeed ruthless towards the cult, and if he had not also seen the fact that the top leaders of Lars City fled without a fight, the old mayor would never have told this secret to a second person and would have kept it in his own coffin.
The team officer declined to comment on whether the old mayor was "inactive", as this was not within his authority.
What he cared more about was whether the information provided by the old mayor was accurate.
The clerks, operators, and non-commissioned officers of the militia who "went out" on board the ship this time are all within Mr. Yang's magic network matrix.
The team officer also knew that the affairs officer of the Night Watch branch in Lars City had betrayed the Night Watch and defected to the "Fallen Whisperer" sect.
Unfortunately, this traitor of the Gold Coin Church only revealed the clue that the "Whisperer" sect was entrenched in the Taqia Territory before he lost control and died suddenly, and was unable to provide more information.
Agent Stanford and Captain Mace searched the city for several days, and even with the help of the highly mobile Tarantan Undead, they only found a few low-level cultists who were connected to the traitor Sam Atwood.
In other words… although Mr. Yang, Agent Stanford and Captain Mace all knew that the upper class who fled from Lars City had ulterior motives, they were troubled by the fact that they could not find solid evidence to completely nail down those guys who abandoned the city and fled, and come up with an excuse to invade and not liberate Lars City that no one could find fault with… Ah!
"Mr. Mayor, can you guarantee that everything you said is true?" the officer asked cautiously.
The old mayor immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
The other party cares about whether the token of allegiance he submits is reliable, which means that the information he provides is valuable to the other party.
"Your Excellency, I know a few places that may have what you and your superiors need."
The militia officer strode out of the town hall and saw the helpful Tarantan undead who bumped into him, and immediately issued a mission invitation.
Miaobishenghua happily accepted the task and called on the large group on their way back to the city to turn back (it didn't take so many people to carry the prisoners back to the city), thus happily starting their legal looting journey.
The first clue provided by the old mayor was a fruit farm 40 kilometers east of Baboba Town.
This distance is a bit far for normal people, but for players... it only takes less than half an hour.
This half hour also includes the time to gather in the town of Baboba.
Rushing to the orchard farm covering three low hills at a very fast speed, the players did not think of using courtesy before force and rushed up directly with cheers...
In less than ten minutes, more than a hundred workers and thugs moving around the mountain were controlled by the players who swarmed in.
Another five minutes later, all the buildings, whether hidden in the orchard, in plain sight, or slightly camouflaged, were looted by the players.
Ten minutes later, the players who were searching the mountains for "mission clues" discovered the secret passage behind the mountain spring and found the orchard farm as the transit point for the "living sacrifice".
Fifteen minutes later, a player found a stack of living sacrifice transaction deeds hidden in the wall of one of the orchard farm buildings, as well as several unsigned letters with the seal of Tachia nobles.
An hour later, the captured orchard farm suspects and the carefully hidden transaction deeds and letters were brought back to Baboba Town by the large group of players.
The militia accepted the prisoners and some evidence without batting an eyelid, and issued the next mission.
The players set out again happily...
Before dark, this group of players successively destroyed four suspicious locations provided by the old mayor and collected some evidence of collusion between the local nobles of Lars City and the cult.
The militia officer was very satisfied with this super-efficient "Undead Speed" and issued one final mission: asking the players to send all the captured prisoners and evidence back to Lars City and hand them over to professionals .
"It's easier to complete tasks given by human NPCs than by zombie NPCs."
"That's right, not only are the rewards generous, but the treasure drops are also very comfortable!"
On the way to escort the prisoners, a group of players who had made a lot of money happily praised the militia officer who had made them run around in circles.
At 1 p.m. Earth time, which is 12 a.m. in the other world, players who were looking forward to receiving the "final reward for the hidden mission" rushed back to Lars City, nonchalantly jumped into the municipal building through the window, pried open the door of the Public Security Department, woke up Agent Stanford who had just fallen asleep, and smeared a lot of physical and witness evidence in his face.
In order to investigate clues and collect evidence, Agent Stanford, who has been working non-stop for several days: "..."
The agent looked stiffly down at the thick bag of evidence in his hand, then turned his head to look outside the corridor window at the hundreds of "witnesses" standing all over the City Hall courtyard. The expression on his face was indescribable.
