Mercenaries and Adventurers

Keel looked up at the tall, seemingly endless, glowing white city wall in front of him.

He sighed heavily.

"Can this city wall be touched?"

He asked Priest Batar.

"Of course, as long as you don't **** on it or do other insults, or nobody cares about you."

Although Priest Batar felt that this miraculous creation was very shocking, he actually didn't care much about it. When Kiel heard this, he crossed the road and lawn, jumped off the blood lick, and tried to touch this ancient creation with his palm.

From a close distance, the light emitted by the white stones of the city wall is neither strong nor dazzling. The surface of the white stone is slightly mottled and uneven. These are all traces left by the long years.

rustle-

The metal plate on the glove rubbed against the not-so-hard white stone, and Kiel quietly and carefully touched it with his palm. Not far away, Priest Batar and Bloodyaster stayed outside the checkpoint gate at the bottom of the city wall, quietly waiting for Kiel to return.

"Kiel's appearance reminds me of the first time I came here. Haha, I actually tried to rely on the gaps on the surface of the city wall and wanted to climb up directly."

Speaking of this, Xueyasite shook his head: "If the soldiers on patrol didn't get me down after climbing a few meters, I would probably fall to my death halfway through the climb."

Priest Batar nodded silently, looking at the sky.

The sun in the distance is about to fall below the black horizon in the west. Of course, it doesn’t matter if it’s dark or not. Anyway, because of the light from the white stone city wall, it’s always daytime here.

But humans still need rest.

"Should we spend the night inside the city walls tonight, or pass through the checkpoint and spend the night in the southern province?"

Priest Batar asked Bloodfang.

"My lord priest, I can't make the decision. You have to ask Kiel. He said where to rest, there it is."

Priest Batar looked at Xueyasite carefully: "I thought you were relatives, or members of the same family."

Shrugging his shoulders, Xueyasite smiled: "Then you are mistaken, Kiel and I met on the trade road some time ago. He is a knight servant of the Kendal people in the north, and I am a merchant following the army. The caravan guards hired by the army were specially sent to guide the army’s march on the grasslands, because I travel several times a year on the trade routes and I am very familiar with them.”

"Kill trusts you?"

"That's because I owe him my life! Just a while ago, when the army and the caravan were passing through the strange wind grassland, a large number of harpies attacked, and my horse was torn apart by those beasts and thrown from the sky , if it wasn’t for Keir’s desperate efforts to rescue me.”

Shaking his head, Xueyasite sighed for a while: "I guess this whole body of flesh and blood will be embedded in that piece of grass, by the way of being thrown from the air by monsters."

Priest Batar didn't know the intelligence and news about the Strange Wind Grassland and the Harpy, so he didn't actually understand what Bloodyaster said. He felt that it was just an ordinary monster crisis, and he didn't know how powerful the flying harpies were, and how dangerous the situation was at that time.

"So this time to save the kidnapped people, can you do it to the end? You know, this road is very dangerous no matter how you look at it."

Blood Fangste smiled indifferently: "Human enemies, well, it's not that I look down on those defeated and defeated troops who kidnapped people, but they are still far inferior to those damned monsters flying in the sky. Please rest assured, priest, I will follow wherever he goes before returning the grace of Kiel for saving his life."

"I hope so."

Priest Batar finished speaking in a low voice, and when he looked up, Kiel had already removed his helmet and was touching the ancient city wall with his forehead.

"Kill seems to like this ancient dwarf building?"

Priest Batar casually expressed doubts.

"Maybe, I've only heard a little about his past, but I don't know much about it. Just like we don't know about you, Keir never asked me what kind of experience I had when I was young."

-

Kiel carefully touched the ancient city wall with his forehead. His forehead was icy cold, but it gave off a solid sense of security.

Ever since he saw this city wall, an unspeakable emotion has surged in his heart.

He thought of the ancient city walls of his hometown in his previous life.

The same tall and long-lasting, it seems that time cannot be destroyed.

But the two lives are separated, and they can never go back.

All the experiences and emotions of the previous life are only memories in his soul.

That is his most precious thing.

No one else will see it.

-

For a while, the sun set in the distance, and the night, like a bedding, turned over and occupied the whole world.

Only then did Kiel lead the horse to the gate of the checkpoint, where his new companion was waiting.

"I kept you two waiting for a long time. I just saw such a spectacle of creation, and I was a little emotional. I couldn't control my emotions well."

Keel said this with apology.

"It's okay, everyone is the same."

As he said that, Xueyasite pointed to some church believers who were not far away and worshiped towards the white stone city wall. Those people had spread blankets on the lawn and were kneeling towards the glowing city wall one by one on the stalls.

Keir took a look and turned his head: "I'm not exaggerating that much. I really kowtowed to a pile of stones."

The three laughed and walked towards the checkpoint gate.

Unlike other places, the gate of the Whitestone City Wall checkpoint will not be closed even at night, and the soldiers on guard never need torches and braziers for lighting.

There are a lot of local soldiers guarding the city gate and they are well-equipped. Not only are there patrolling soldiers on the top of the white stone city wall tens of meters high, but the gate at the bottom is just the gates on the east and west sides of the three Unicom checkpoints on the left, middle and right. There are more than 300 soldiers on duty here.

And this does not count the soldiers stationed inside the city wall checkpoint, and a local military camp not far away. I heard that there are still thousands of soldiers stationed in that barracks all year round.

Viscount Montorka has firmly grasped this extremely important level to him.

Not to mention the military and political role, just collecting the customs duties of the two provinces every year can easily maintain the salaries of the soldiers.

When approaching the gate of the city, the guarding soldiers were very respectful just seeing the images of Kiel and Priest Batar. Kiel didn't even explain that he was not officially a knight, so he easily took the carriage and entered inside the level.

No one mentions customs duties and carriage checks at all.

Priest Batar has a normal face, because since he entered the church, he has never been charged city entry tax or customs duties anywhere.

The so-called checkpoint, of course, is not just a single city wall that can be called a checkpoint.

Even though the white stone city wall built by the dwarves a long time ago was the same as the real city wall, with only one facing west, but later, after the establishment of the Kingdom of St. Halls, the humans who migrated here were still in recent decades. Behind the Whitestone Wall was another human wall facing the southern province to the east.

When walking in the passage at the bottom of the white stone city wall, the dwarves deliberately made small concave holes on the walls on both sides. It seems that there used to be statues of dwarf gods and gods in them, but now there are only ones that have been chopped and destroyed by axes. , leaving only a roughly human-shaped pillar.

If it weren't for the short stature of the dwarves, even if their gods were as short as they were, Kiel wouldn't have been able to recognize the simple and low human-shaped pillars in the depression in the doorway as the statues of the dwarves' gods.

Because the entire Whitestone City Wall is built with Whitestone, and after the dwarves don't know how to tinker, it can glow continuously day and night, so there are no other lighting tools in the passage under the city wall, because they are not used at all.

Passing through the more than 30-meter-long luminous passage, what comes into view is the interior scene of a checkpoint full of urban characteristics of human society.

To translate it, it is a chaotic urban scene unique to human cities, which is completely different from the epic sacredness of the white stone city wall.

The low stone houses look like the old houses left by the dwarves, but on top of the stone dwarf-style houses, wooden human-style houses were forcibly added. The roof of the house is then covered with a roof made of bundles of straw, rather than tiles which are more useful. The street looked fairly spacious at first, but around the dwarves' houses, a circle of street-facing shops was artificially added to occupy the original street.

In the deep and narrow alleys, plum trees stretched out, stretching their canopies towards the direction of the Baishi city wall, just like sunflowers that can't turn their heads.

The noisy sound also followed the pavement, and the beggars from the south huddled together and gathered outside each tavern, hoping to catch some leftovers from the drinkers. Some backbone refugees gathered in groups of three or five, crowded on the streets, and loudly showed themselves to the caravans, which were common in the past but are now rare, and hoped that the caravans would include them with low employment prices, so as to No customs duties have been paid by virtue of the customs clearance exemption of the large caravan.

But the caravans were not fools. The stewards sat on horses or carriages, swore and flicked their whips, and drove away the approaching young fleeing people in a scary but harmless manner.

The smell of sweat and horse manure also rushed directly to Kiel and his party who had just stepped out of the passageway of the city wall. This strong smell could almost smoke people off their horses. If the entire checkpoint is not built on the only mountain pass between the north and south mountains, and the wind here is not small, otherwise the local people in the checkpoint may not be able to stand the smell.

"Hey, why is this—"

Keir's voice of dissatisfaction was lengthened, making the two companions laugh wryly: "That's it, only the west side of the Whitestone City Wall checkpoint can be seen. Once you enter, all the sense of sacredness and ancient atmosphere will be gone. gone."

Bloodfang also shrugged and raised his whip: "After the smell of excrement and the sacred things get closer, people lose any idea of ​​getting closer."

"Both of you! Hey." Then Keir could be heard whispering some unfamiliar words such as Paris Syndrome that he had never heard of.

"Find a place to live. It looks quite messy here. Why are there so many people from the southern provinces who don't come out here? They would rather be crowded in this small place than go to the nearby Montoka to get peace. Where does Cavin make a living?"

Kiel asked this question because the three of them rode on the main road of the checkpoint and drove around. When they looked around, they could see that there were many poor and white refugees crowded at the doorways of shops on both sides of the street. Although the street was crowded, because of Kiel's equipment, no matter whether it was the passing carriage or the crowd on the street, he didn't dare to approach.

Priest Batar answered Kiel's question.

"Because the soldiers under the Viscount Montoka deliberately increased the customs clearance fee. Before, each person only had to pay one copper coin for the customs clearance fee. Now, hmph, it takes fifty copper coins to allow a person to enter Mongolia. The boundary of Toca City. It has increased fifty times in one breath!"

"The confused people we saw fleeing on the way just now have already paid this too expensive customs clearance fee. It is obviously not easy to get here, but I didn't expect these guys to be so over the top and do it like this If it was normal times, the money might be squeezed out, but the people who fled here are in rags, and most of their wealth is left in the hometown where they fled, so how can they come up with this money?"

(Note that most of the wealth of ordinary people is property such as rural self-cultivated land and house furniture. When fleeing from their hometown, these things must not be taken away. However, ordinary people in rural areas do not have many coins that can be used at any time. For trading. Because most of the transactions in rural areas are physical transactions, such as the produced crops or primary processed products: processed animal skins and hemp ropes, etc. Their only source of coins is the caravans from the towns, but Caravans also mostly use metal tools and other high value-added products from urban areas to barter and use scissors to harvest products from rural areas. Physical coins are not easy to obtain.)

Priest Batar, who is also from the southern provinces, particularly dislikes this, but he is only a Saturnalian priest. The soldiers may let him walk around at will for the sake of the church, but to the people of other southern provinces, they do not like it. Out of greedy hands and feet, you have to squeeze a lot of money.

Keir curled his lips. He did have a different opinion, but it's not convenient to say it now, after all, it's still on the street.

It's not good to cause some trouble after people hear it.

-

In addition to the various shops on both sides of the main street for business travel and consumption in the checkpoint, there are the most local garrison buildings left.

However, most of the tall buildings belonging to the nobles were closed because there were not many soldiers stationed at this time, let alone free or even low-cost housing for refugees.

Most of those people gathered firewood and rags that could only be used for fire, and set up shacks in remote places not facing the street to live in Linshu. Most of the family huddled in a small shack. Fortunately, the spring was not very cold, so they could barely support themselves.

But it is very troublesome when it rains.

Kiel saw that at a street corner, some priests of the God of Wealth were holding water bottles, giving each of the refugees who came here a sip of blessed clear water.

Perhaps because of the addition of honey, which is rarely eaten by the public, the sweet water made everyone who was given a small sip show a rare smile.

"What are they doing?"

Facing Kiel's question, Priest Batar understood it with just a glance: "Clear water should be blessed, so that people who drink the water will not get sick easily. The effect is limited, but it is easy to do, as long as a few priests Responsible for praying to release divine spells, just a few trainee priests come out holding water."

"It's the same thing I saw in Montoka before, but the Saturnalia Church in big cities generally doesn't need to suppress diseases, and more is to allow religious farmers to have more energy? Or to relieve fatigue. As for Illness, there are so many churches in the city, you believe in that god, you can go to a church when you get sick. If you can’t reach the level of a formal believer, you can also spend coins to go to the church for treatment or buy some healing ointments or Potion."

Speaking of this, Priest Batar talked about other related topics: "Speaking of this, a famous priest in the church once believed that as long as the people can have a full stomach every day and eat a certain amount of fruits, meat, dairy products and other foods , In fact, human beings are not easy to get sick. Most of the reasons for getting sick are not having enough food and not eating well. This view has attracted a lot of criticism.”

"what's next?"

Keel wasn't interested in the subject, but Bloodfang was curious to know what happened next.

"Next, the famous priest got the approval of the God of Saturn, and specially summoned some authoritative priests of various churches, as well as some nobles and scholars. They heard that a large area was specially found in the northern part of the empire for experiments. Part of the area The people maintain the original production and life, and the people in some areas supply wheat flour and other major crops in unlimited quantities at low prices on the basis of the original."

"In some areas, the people are allocated a large number of learned priests to guide the people's production and life in an all-round way. The local nobles are ordered by the big nobles to reduce the scale and proportion of taxation in an all-round way, and the churches will make up for the difference."

Xueyasite’s eyes lit up, and he asked curiously what happened next~www.readwn.com~ In the end, the people in the area where nothing had changed rioted and captured the area with unlimited supply of major crops. Asking for others, just forcibly moving large quantities of crops back to their own homes. In areas where basic food is supplied in unlimited quantities, the local production and life are not only robbed by other areas, but they also gave up farming in the fields, and directly switched to buying the basic crops obtained by the church at a low price, and then trying to resell them In other places, I actually made a fortune by relying on this. "

Kiel saw that Bloodfang's face was distorted after hearing the result, and he laughed.

"What about the end?" Keel asked. He felt that the result in the last area must also be very unexpected.

Sure enough, Priest Batar did not disappoint Kiel: "The last area indeed prospered quickly under the guidance of a large number of priests from various churches, and initially let the priests see that after sufficient food, the physical fitness of the people and the incidence of diseases But people still like to find priests to use magic to cure diseases after they get sick. Because there are many priests in the area, people don’t know whether the power of healing also plays a role in suppressing diseases.”

"In the end, the various churches withdrew from the area after they didn't know whether the experiment was successful, and the local nobles also regained control of the area. A prosperous and well-organized area, in the next few years, it will be Because of the increase in the tax rate of the local nobles, they fell into depression again. The local educated people who had been educated by the church priests for many years tried to escape from the local area, tried to find out about the priests they knew before, and went to the past.”

Blood Yaster seemed to be hit, a little listless. But Kiel laughed loudly: "Priest Batar, what do you think is the problem?"