Lord Harland.

After listening to Vitas' words, Viscount Cisse fell into thinking for a long time.

Viscount Cisse knew about Luo Ning's bribery of the Harland family's liquor salesperson and the liquor brewing process.

Maybe it's because the benefits are too great, or maybe it's because they subconsciously feel that the Cisse family is stronger than the Harland family.

Viscount Cisse didn't care about the Harland family and decided to touch the interests of the Harland family. He easily decided to get involved in the wine industry and competed with the Harland family without discussing with other family members.

He never expected that Li Cha would be so ruthless, and directly hit Qicun of the Xisai family.

The casino was attacked and many people died, so it had to be temporarily closed.

In addition, compensation for the death of the gambler and the gambling money brought by the gambler must be paid.This amount of money added up to more than three thousand gold coins, which was also a considerable amount of money for the Xisai family.

Although the Viscounty of Cisse has been developed for thirty years and has a population of 120,000. The cultivated farmland exceeds the Harland family territory, and heavy taxes are levied on serfs. The annual income from various sources adds up to about 40,000 gold coins, including the profits from the casino. It accounts for eight thousand, the grain tax is about thirty thousand gold coins, and the remaining two thousand gold coins are commercial taxes.

On the whole, Viscount Cisse's financial income is not as good as that of the Harland family.

The Haaland family's annual trading profits exceed the fiscal revenue of the Viscounty of Cisse, not to mention tax and food profits.

The gold coins from the casino are very important to the Cisse family.

Richard attacked the Cisse family's casino. Viscount Cisse must ruthlessly retaliate against the Harland family and show his strength to protect the casino in order to convince the public.

Only in this way can the casino continue to operate.

Viscount Cisse knew the strength of the Harland family.After all, Li Cha has made a lot of military exploits, and expanded his army on a large scale last winter, and now he has troops in his hand.The strength is somewhat stronger than that of the Cisse family.

"I was blinded by profit and rashly involved in the alcohol trade. The decision was too hasty."

Viscount Cisse thought to himself that he didn't want to break out with the Harland family in his heart, but his current position forced him to be tough on the Harland family.

In the competition of nobles, toughness is a necessary quality, and it is also a kind of decisiveness to pretend to be soft and grandson.

How to grasp the scale is the true ability of a noble.

Richard sent people to attack the casino of the Cisse family. Although there was no direct evidence left behind, Viscount Cisse immediately made a decision to retaliate. The De family also suffered heavy losses in terms of interests.

Viscount Cisse knew in his heart that if the casino was really attacked by the Haaland family.

In the recent period, the Harland family must be prepared. It is very difficult to successfully attack an important target. He is going to endure for three months and wait for the Harland family's defense to relax before launching a surprise attack.

During this period of time, Viscount Cisse stepped up his infiltration of Harland's territory and sent many spies into Harland's territory.

After Richard led the action team back to the territory, he reiterated the importance of confidentiality to the action team members, and then distributed a bounty of 1,200 gold coins to the team members, and the remaining 4,000 gold coins were used as the territory's liquidity.

For every team member who participated in the operation, professionals received a bonus of thirty gold coins, and advanced students also received a bonus of fifteen gold coins.

Doing this job is equivalent to earning a year's salary.

After returning to the territory, facing the possible attack of the Cisse family, Li Cha strengthened his defenses.

Harland Territory is very vigilant against outsiders. Although the freedmen are not prohibited from moving in, the freedmen who move in must obey the arrangement of the territory and can only live near Vickburg.

Moreover, the freedmen who moved in would not be given any land, and could only engage in commercial or handicraft activities in Vickburg.

If you want to divide the land, you must sign a five-year slave contract.After the contract is completed, the fields and houses will be divided.

Stopa Territory, where Vicksburg is located, is an agricultural territory and there is nothing that needs to be kept secret.

In addition, the Harland Territory also prohibits the free movement of its citizens, especially those in the Stopa Territory, who are prohibited from entering Fort William and Fort Sophia.

Civil affairs officials will also give repeated orders to prohibit idlers from approaching the factory.

All strangers who dare to approach the factory will be arrested and sent to the mine, where they will mine together with the orc captives.

The factories in Harland's territory not only have security guards, but also garrisons nearby.

In the years since the factory was opened, more than a hundred people who dared to spy on the factory have been arrested. Some of them were spies, and some were simply too curious.

Regardless of whether they were spies sent by other nobles or people who were too curious, as long as they were sent to the mines and kept company with orcs, they would basically not survive for too long.

There are many innocent souls in the mines.

By pretending to be a caravan mercenary attack, Li Cha was naturally wary of the caravan coming in from outside.

All caravans coming from outside are not allowed to enter secret castles such as Fort William and Fort Sophia, and can only trade in the market outside Vic Fort.

The market is built on a flat land, surrounded by towering walls, and there are garrisons at the gate.

After the goods are counted in the market, the gold coins will be settled immediately. The caravan will go back with the gold coins and cannot move around the territory at will.

In recent years, Harland has arrested many businessmen wandering around.

Li Cha didn't care about the pleadings of the nobles behind him, and sent all those who did not obey the rules to the mine.

The territory of Harland is a typical mountainous territory, and there are only few roads to enter this territory.

Generally speaking, there is one mountain road, one flat road, and three water roads.

A mountain road leads directly from Barony Sharp to Fort William. This road passes through Iron Mountain Castle. There is a squadron stationed on the road and no commercial travelers are allowed to pass at all.

Ping Road is from Barony Dirham to Baron Stopa. This road can go all the way to Fort Heihe, and it is also the main road for caravans.

Through the three rivers, ships can approach important places such as the brick kiln factory, Fort William, and Fort Sophia. There are also checkpoints and garrisons to prohibit foreign ships from entering the territory.

In the Grant Kingdom, the rights of the lord are very important. If Richard objects, even official ships will not be able to enter the Harland territory.

Because the territory is very restrictive to outsiders, Li Cha is not afraid of the Viscount Cisse's attack.

A large garrison was stationed at Fort Vick.

Although the Harland Territory Brigade is small in size, it only has four and a half squadrons with less than 700 people.

But a regular army of 700 men was enough to defeat most of the attackers.

Unless Viscount Cisse sent hundreds of elite soldiers and launched a surprise attack, the Vicksburg garrison could be defeated.

But hundreds of able-bodied men entered the territory of Harland, and the intelligence department was not just for nothing. They would soon discover the anomaly, deploy troops in advance, and wipe out the invading enemies.

Three months passed slowly like this. Viscount Cisse had made all preparations, but the information he needed never came.

Viscount Cisse placed more than a dozen intelligence personnel in the Harland Territory.

Because of the policy of restricting the free movement of the citizens, these intelligence personnel could not penetrate into the core of Harland's territory at all, and could only live in difficulty near Vickburg.

Although Vickburg has a large population and good agricultural conditions, it is not the core of Harland's territory.

Most of the higher-ups in the territory are in Fort William, and even Sophia and Margaret returned to settle in Fort William after the war last year.

Sophia's magic laboratory has been moved to Fort William.

Unable to enter Fort William, and unable to contact the high-level officials of Fort Vic, these lurking spies could not obtain any useful information at all.

But the pressure from above was very tight, so I had no choice but to make up information to fool people.

And Vitas, the intelligence officer of the Viscount of Cisse, is quite shrewd, and these fabricated intelligence cannot be hidden from his eyes.

Because the Haaland territory restricts the movement of people, it is heavily guarded against intelligence personnel.

Vitas had no other way but to collect some public information from people lurking in Vicksburg to analyze the military, political, legal, and economic intelligence of the Haaland territory.

As Vitas learned more about Haaland's territory, he became more frightened and felt that the chance of winning was getting smaller and smaller. He began to dissuade Viscount Cisse in the hope of stopping the attack.

Because there is no exact information, the attack is very difficult to succeed.

Viscount Cisse once again summoned the territorial officials and asked Vitas to take action and come up with accurate information.

"My lord Viscount, the territory of Harland is a closed territory that does not welcome outsiders. They have a deep defense against intelligence infiltration, and there is also a capable intelligence force inside the territory.

It will take a long time for our personnel to slowly infiltrate key departments in the Haaland territory, and now there is no useful information at all.

I only know that the Harland family steel factory is in Iron Mountain Fort, and there is a garrison nearby.

A large-scale brick kiln was established in the Harland territory, which could produce a large amount of bricks every year. Even the roads near Vicksburg were paved with bricks. The kiln that produces bricks is less than 20 kilometers away from Vicksburg, and outsiders are also prohibited from approaching.

Through public intelligence analysis, we know that Fort William has four infantry brigades, one cavalry brigade, and a certain number of auxiliary troops in each castle.

Their brewery is near Fort William, which is also the core of their territory. According to some public information analysis, the Fort William garrison has four squadrons of infantry and a cavalry of 300 people. The number of Warcraft cavalry reaches 100.

Our intelligence personnel can only penetrate into Vicksburg, which is garrisoned by one brigade. The Haaland Territory brigade is smaller in size, with only four and a half squadrons of about seven hundred people.

That's all we can gather in a short period of time. "

For more than three months, Viscount Cisse thought of many ways, but he still couldn't restore the gamblers' trust in the casino.

After all, many people died in the casino that day.

A conflict broke out between Viscount Cisse and a big shot like Viscount Richard. Gamblers did not dare to go to Viscount Cisse's casino to avoid getting involved in the conflict.

There are no gamblers in the casino, so naturally it has to close.

Viscount Cisse heard about the conflict between Richard and the Holland family, and sent people to the royal capital to contact the Holland family, thus joining Prince Felix's camp.

Driven by the Huo Lan family, Wangdu set up a casino robbery investigation team.

The investigation team communicated with Li Cha, but they didn't even see Li Cha's face.Instead, he was told that the territory of Harland had fallen into a rebellion, and Viscount Richard was in the process of suppressing the rebellion.

If the investigation team leaves Vicburg, their safety will not be guaranteed by Viscount Richard.

The official investigation can't shake the nobles with deep roots.

Moreover, the Grant royal family has no tradition of being involved in noble conflicts.Prince Felix, only a small number of people can be mobilized.

Richard also found someone in the royal capital, and the Harland family aligned themselves with Prince Chris politically.

Whatever Prince Felix supports, Prince Chris will definitely oppose.

Official investigations have stalled and the casino business faces competition.

Because of the closure of Elena Castle Casino, many dignitaries in Flame Castle have already started to act, and established a new casino in Flame Castle to compete with the Cisse family for the market.

The Cisse family has deep roots in Flame Castle. The previous Viscount Cisse served as the commander of the Wild Lion Legion for twenty years.

However, it has been more than ten years since the commander of the Cisse Army left office, and many of the people he promoted back then have retired from active service.

The main foundation of the Harland family is in Black River Castle, and the relationship in Flame Castle is far inferior to that of Viscount Cisse.

But when it comes to conflicts of interest, favors often don't work, especially favors from more than ten years ago.

Once a casino is established in Flame Fort, there must be the protection of the high-level Wild Lion Legion behind it, and the security will surpass that of Elena Casino, and the Xisai family has no way to compete.

The situation has reached this point. Unless the Harland family nods to admit defeat, abandons the liquor business, and resolves conflicts, the casino can recover.

But the Flame Fort Casino has already opened, and it is difficult for the Xisai family to compete with the high-ranking officials of the Wild Lion Legion.

The casino business is bound to decline, which Viscount Cisse has already clearly understood.

It is simply not feasible to give up the liquor business.

Since he couldn't get any information and couldn't attack the foundation of the Harland family, Viscount Cisse could only launch a trade war.

He dispatched professionals in the territory to attack the Harland family's commercial salespeople everywhere. He killed many people in one time and robbed goods worth thousands of gold coins.

Of course, Richard would not show weakness if something like this happened. Immediately retaliate in kind, and also send professionals to attack everyone who has anything to do with Baron Cisse.

In the following months, hundreds of people were killed or injured in the two territories. Even professionals, more than ten people died in the two viscounties combined.

The conflict between the two sides has affected the stability of Northern Xinjiang and alarmed the top brass of the royal capital.

King Charles communicated with the Parliament of Nobles and sent high-ranking officials to mediate.

The mediating official was Richard's old acquaintance Jerram Holland. The inclination of King Charles can be known from the fact that people from the Holland family were sent to mediate.

After receiving this news, Li Cha's eyes flashed a gloomy coldness, and he kept this matter in his heart.

The capital sent people to mediate, and Li Cha had to make a gesture of agreeing with the mediation and willing to reconcile.

Under the preference of Jerram and others, the mediation team of the Royal Capital finally decided to divide the liquor market. The market in Gascoigne Province was assigned to Viscount Cisse, and the markets in Gerda Province and Lah Province belonged to Harland. family.