Chapter 512 Fine Tradition
There are hundreds of luxury single-family villas on Pine Avenue in the East City District of Moses Port.
The families who could live in this neighborhood were either rich or noble. The hostesses of families who did not have manors and horse farms were ashamed to go out and attend tea parties hosted by their neighbors. It would be too embarrassing if they had never seen the real thing and could not even join in the conversation when others were discussing expensive horses, purebred hunting dogs or the latest gas-powered cars.
At the end of Pine Avenue, in a mansion with a "Bartletts" nameplate, more than a dozen gentlemen were having a secret meeting in the study on the second floor.
"Now is our last chance. If we miss this opportunity, I don't need to tell you the consequences. Just look at Innadeli Territory and Adler Territory. Moses Port will no longer be our Moses Port. Your mansions and estates will probably be difficult to preserve."
The speaker was a thin middle-aged man with long cheeks and slightly loose skin on both sides. He had a sinister look and gnashed his teeth, as if he was filled with great hatred. "I'm not exaggerating. That hateful black magician is a complete liar, robber, and bandit. Those who believed in his lies will either have their entire family dragged out to build roads in the wilderness or be hanged on the gallows - this is known to everyone!"
The gentlemen in the study were silent, just smoking cigars and drinking red wine, and everyone had an undisguised look of embarrassment on their face.
"Gentlemen!" The thin man slapped the armrest and said in a serious tone, "Are you willing to just sit there and wait to die?"
"No matter what, this is too risky, Third Generation." A man with an exquisite beard spoke sadly, "The Principality of Lionel was once defeated by the undead, and even the prince was captured by the undead... Even if we are all willing to jointly give away the land of Moses Port and ask Lionel to intervene, it may not be useful."
Once someone started talking, the others started talking, saying, "That's right. At the beginning, there were only a few thousand undead fighting, and the Principality of Lionel was helpless. Now the number of undead has almost increased tenfold. Even if Grand Duke Lionel sends out all his troops, what can he do?"
"Not to mention the Nightmare Butcher. Even the court mages have given up fighting him, so what can we do?"
"Third generation, I sympathize with the Bartles family's past experiences, but now that things have come to this, why should we cling to the past?"
Adela III, who had become a completely different person with a thin face, looked uglier and uglier. He said loudly: "Gentlemen, this is not my family's business. Don't you read the newspaper? Don't you know what the Nightmare Butcher did to the nobles of Innader and Adler?"
The gentlemen who were invited by him still refused to accept this...
The secret meeting ended unpleasantly. The Third Generation sent the guests away in anger, and then turned around and couldn't help but get angry at his old housekeeper: "What are these bastards going on? Why do they suddenly change their temper?!"
After hearing the news that the Odysseus family had cooperated with the undead regime, he fled to the north in a hurry, and had to return to Moses Port in disgrace because he could not make it. After all this, Adela III lost a lot of weight and looked completely different from his previous chubby appearance. His butler Gould also changed a lot, with completely white hair and no energy, and looked like a completely old man.
Butler Gould, who was packing up the red wine, sighed and said bitterly, "You don't know... While you were entertaining the guests, Horn just rushed back to deliver a letter. The skeleton ship coming from the direction of Innadri will arrive at Moses Port in two hours at most."
The color instantly drained from Adela III's face. He staggered back half a step, then fell back into his chair with weak legs.
During the more than one year of exile, this former noble lord did not have an easy time.
Although he still retained the title of Viscount, he was already in a very tight spot due to his extravagant lifestyle and lack of financial resources. Even the leftover red wine from entertaining guests had to be collected and bottled by Butler Gould so that he could use it again when needed next time.
The nobles, who had no power or wealth, were not much better off than the ordinary middle class. They did not even learn of such a big event as the skeleton ship heading for Moses Port until the very end.
"These bastards, no one thought of reminding me..." Adela III muttered to himself with a pale face and fear, "Wait - these damn guys, are they going to make me take the blame for them without knowing it?!"
The Odysseus family began preparing for the move more than two months ago, and gradually moved factory workers to the north. Last month, news gradually came that the Odysseus family had summoned an army of undead to attack the southern border of the Rose Kingdom.
During these two months, the local nobles who had no chance to join in the "founding of the country" of the Odysseus family were also busy. They used many "tricks" to make money, such as buying up land at low prices, hoarding goods, and driving up prices.
Adela III didn't have the capital to grab land and make quick money, and as he had no power or influence, it was difficult for him to take advantage of the opportunity to gain too much advantage; but with the idea of revenge and causing trouble for the undead regime, he did meddle in it - among the various incredible negative rumors circulating in Moses Port, at least 20% of them could be attributed to Adela III.
III himself did not expect that his interference would bring much trouble to the Undead regime. He just did not want to give trouble to Charlie Rex who had seized his territory and the Nightmare Butcher who had taken away everything from him.
He thought hard and came up with the idea of donating land to the neighboring Principality of Lionel and dragging the neighbor into the water, just to make the undead regime have a headache; as for whether Lionel can become the master of the Territory of Odysseus, he doesn't care at all!
At this point, Sanshi slowly came to his senses... It turned out that those guys who usually got along so well with him deliberately didn't let him know that the Skeleton Fleet was about to arrive. They wanted to see him continue to be a clown and run into the guns of the Undead regime!
Someone has to be held responsible for the chaos in Moses Port over the past two months, and there is no more suitable scapegoat than him, the current head of the Bartles family and an exiled noble who has an old grudge against the Undead regime!
If it weren't for his loyal follower Horn (the commander of the Naderi City Defense Corps) who found out about this in advance and hurried back to deliver a message, he might not have known that the undead had already disembarked!
"How can this be possible!"
Adela III, who was shaking with fear, slammed the table and stood up, his loose-skinned face showing a ferocious expression: "These filthy, sewer bugs - since you are so disrespectful to me, don't blame me for being rude! !"
An hour and a half later, a fleet with large Q-version skull logos printed on their hulls sailed into the port of Moses.
The crew shouted as they dropped anchor, lowered the gangway, opened the cargo hold outlet, set up the side planks, and prepared to start unloading.
Osrian King, an orc warrior from the Logistics Department, jumped directly from the high deck onto the dock. He looked around and accurately found the foreman among the dock workers who didn't dare to approach him to solicit business but were reluctant to leave. He waved and shouted, "Hey, you, come here!"
There is a foreign settlement in Sailor Alley in the port area of Moses Port. Green-skinned, black-skinned, white-skinned, pointy-eared elves, short and sturdy halflings, and orcs with lizard tails can often be seen on the docks. The locals are not opposed to dealing with orcs. The foreman who was called came over with a smile on his face, not forgetting to take off his small hat to block the dust, and nodded and said, "Sir, what can I do for you?"
Osrian was just about to ask the foreman to gather the men together when a middle-aged man in a cloak and with wretched manners pushed the foreman aside and said to Osrian in the face: "You are working for those undead, right? Let me see the most senior person on your ship. I want to inform on you!"
A few minutes later, the cloaked man who claimed to be an informer was brought aboard.
Yang Qiu stared at the man with flickering eyes, cold sweat on his forehead and pretending to be calm for a while before he could barely match this man who was as thin as Feng Gong with the third life of the man whose face was as fat as Guo Degang.
Then the way he looked at Adela III became even weirder...
The reason why he was let go was not because Adela III did not deserve to die - although this second-generation rich man who looked down on the shabby land of Innaderi and was determined to return to the capital to enjoy the world of pleasure did not actually do many things that bullied men and women, but just because he indulged Baron Marcus's evil deeds, indifference to human nature, and rampant transactions during his tenure as lord, it was not unfair to hang him on the city wall as a warning to the public.
To put it bluntly, letting this guy go is just a show for others, so that those nobles who are destined to be crushed by the wheels of the undead regime will have some hope.
Yang Qiu originally thought that this guy would run away faster than anyone else after learning the news of the change of ownership of the Odysseus Territory, and might even have run off to the Nosk Federation. Unexpectedly, this guy was not only still there, but also took the initiative to come to the door and claim that he wanted to inform on the matter... Even with Yang Qiu's upbringing, he couldn't help but feel a sense of ridiculousness.
Well, this also means that his previous strategy of intentionally letting a small group of nobles go was effective. It is better to keep the frogs in the pot than to let them run away in a swarm.
"Long time no see, Sanshi." Thinking of this, Yang Qiu forced a half-serious smile and said politely, "I wonder if you have anything to say to me in person?"
Before Adela III came, he thought he would meet Charlie Rex or some senior civil servant, but he never expected that the person who came on the skeleton ship was Yang... On the surface, he relied on his "aristocratic cultivation" to barely maintain his composure, but he was already panicking in his heart; Yang Qiu just asked casually, and this guy threw all the bargaining he had planned beforehand behind his mind, and sold out all the nobles in the city like beans from a bamboo tube.
Moses Port is famous for its wealth, and half of the population is composed of landed nobles and half are wealthy nobles who made their fortunes by operating shipping.
The Odysseus family packed up their belongings and left, and almost all the wealthy aristocrats followed... such as the Leo family, who had built their fortune by working as white gloves for the old earl.
A small number of the nobles also followed him. Although the Odysseus family did not promise to give these people land after conquering the Rose Kingdom, it was obvious that when choosing a master between the Odysseus family and the Nightmare Butcher, it was not a difficult choice...
The nobles who have not moved yet are either greedy and hated by the Odysseus family, or they are too stupid to distinguish between crisis and opportunity. During the period when the Odysseus family was busy conquering the Rose Kingdom, these guys were frantically grabbing land and enclosing land in the local area. Not only was the vacant land taken away by these people through various means, but even the unhusked wheat was sold at a sky-high price of more than two silver coins per kilogram.
Why didn't Yang Qiu ask others to make this trip but come here personally? Because this trip would not be over unless someone was killed...
Since ancient times, the Chinese have had a fine tradition of using the heads of lunatics who profit from national disasters to stabilize the people's hearts. For example, those asset tycoons who are frantically making money by taking advantage of the global epidemic would have to be slaughtered for sacrifice in any era of China... Chatting and laughing with senior officials and giving speeches as if nothing had happened? Not happening.
Adela III tremblingly sold out all the nobles he knew before he realized that he had forgotten to ask for a price in advance.
It was also fortunate that this guy was so nervous that he did not dare to reveal his true face in front of Yang Qiu, otherwise the invisible rope that Yang Qiu quietly put around his neck after seeing him might have really hung him on the city wall at any time.
"In this turbulent time, instead of trying to stabilize people's hearts and keep the local peace, you have committed such a vile act. This is truly unforgivable." Yang Qiu said expressionlessly, "Third life, during the public trial, are you willing to come forward and identify the crimes of these villains?"
"Yes." The Third Generation said with a stiff upper lip, not daring to refuse.
"Very good, the people of Moses Port will remember your achievements." Yang Qiu nodded approvingly, turned around and waved to Ossirian King, who was standing nearby and was very angry.
