LIGHTNOVELONLINE
Chapter 152: Walton's Conundrum
Earth time, November 20. Half a month had passed since the start of the second beta.
It was the ninth month in OtherWorld, a time when agricultural farmers paid their tithes.
Young Master Parker Chapman Odysse, forced to "stay" at Weisshem Town Hall, endured a night full of nightmares.
In his nightmare, a man with black snaking hair, akin to a resurrected demon, stood atop a mountain of corpses under a blood-tinged sky, chanting curses that resonated powerfully.
This was the terrible curse that haunted Parker throughout his adolescence, deeply etched in his soul like the images from that old newspaper scrapbook
"When I am not present, you all may commit evil deeds.
"When no one knows, you all may commit evil deeds.
"But remember; evil that is committed will be accounted for.
"When the reckoning comes, all the sufferings of the victims will be repaid tenfold!
"The agony of shattered bones, the torment of flesh being peeled away will accompany your wails, offering a belated funeral procession to the victims!
"Justice may be delayed, but it will never be absent!!"
Parker awoke, drenched in sweat as if he were in the bloodstained palace his grandfather had once visited; that fearsome lunatic blustered among the corpses less than 20 meters away from him, snarling at him.
The voice grew louder, stronger, and closer.
"Good evening," the demonic figure in the nightmare extended its bloodstained claws, grasping his hand and sneering. "Do you know me?"
"Aaaaaahhhhh!!"
Parker's eyes jerked wide open.
An unfamiliar ceiling, and an unfamiliar room.
If not for his familiar manservant by his side and his concerned butler entering the room, Parker might have continued screaming
Supported by his manservant, Parker sat up and allowed the butler to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead. He asked weakly, "Why is it so noisy outside?"
"Villagers paying their grain taxes," his butler answered. "The yard is full of people, so it's bound to be noisy."
"Grain taxes?" Parker's mind struggled to catch up before he suddenly came to a realization. "We're still in Weisshem?!"
"Yes, Young Master," the butler said, gently steadying Parker's shoulder. "Please calm down, it's daytime now"
Parker shrugged off the butler's hand and jumped out of bed, rushing barefoot to the balcony and yanking the curtains open.
Having been assigned the best room in the town hall due to being a significant client, Parker found himself in a spacious bedroom with a large balcony on the third floor. From there, he could overlook the entire town hall courtyard and the street beyond.
The street and courtyard were swarming with local villagers using wooden carts, hand-pushed barrows, and flatbed mule carts to transport their grains. The bustling noise was headache-inducing, but the scene didn't seem too chaotic.
Wooden barricades were set up on the streets, with villagers queuing and moving forward in an organized manner to pay their taxes. Similar barricades in the courtyard directed villagers and their carts into three separate lanes leading to three tax collection points.
Parker, who generally disliked such bustling scenes, found some solace in seeing so many living people and breathed a sigh of relief.
He really had enough of those very active skeletons as well as that demon from his nightmare.
As his gaze turned below the balcony, Young Master Parker tensed up once more.
Directly below, in the empty space before the town hall building was the undead.
The grains collected at the three collection points were being moved by these undead to the storehouses on either side of the building.
The stark contrast between the lively villagers and this "undead supply line" brought back Parker's suffocating sensation.
"What difference does day or night in Weisshem even make?" Parker muttered in despair.
Meanwhile, at the northern end of Martin Street, Walton, commander of the Radiant Sun Church's cavalry unit, and his capable scout squatted by the side, observing the dense flow of people from Main Street to the town hall.
As a knight with his own land and peasants, Walton was no stranger to scenes of farmers paying their tithes. However, the sight of farmers queuing to pay their taxes and leaving jubilantly was new to him.
Knights granted a title invariably had their own lands and peasants. Even a family knight of a noble could acquire one or two small villages as their fief, with a dozen to several dozen peasant households as their subjects. Thus, Walton, a commander of a Radiant Sun Church cavalry unit, also had his own landa small town near the central-eastern part of the Kenyan Empire with nearly ten thousand inhabitants.
Of course, knights differed from true nobility. If a knight failed to produce a qualified heir or if their title was revoked, the fief would be reclaimed. Therefore, knights typically didn't invest much effort in managing their lands; securing their annual share of the grain tax was their main concern.
Walton, often away on duty, rarely visited his fief, only collecting his "dividends" periodically. The peasants he encountered while collecting the tax never exhibited the relaxed demeanor he witnessed now in Weisshem. They didn't chat or laugh with each other in long queues, eagerly waiting their turn to pay taxes as if fearing they might miss out.
Such enthusiasm in tax payment was unheard of to Walton, especially among the most ignorant peasants who never empathized with tax officials' difficulties. Although the deadline was before the eleventh month, they would usually delay until the last few days before paying up.
This left Walton perplexed While Rex could influence the townspeople of Weisshem, how could he possibly affect the villagers who didn't reside in the town?
As these doubts surfaced in his mind, yet another opinion was silently sprouting. Within the short day and a half he had spent in the city, the Weisshem Walton witnessed wasn't the one he had imagined.
He imagined Weisshem to be withering, riddled with chaos and lifelessness.
Contrary to his expectations, he witnessed a town that was vibrant and bustling with life. The townspeople and villagers he saw showed no signs of living in fear.
Having served as a night watchman for the faith for many years and seen countless ignorant folk bewitched by cults, Walton knew exactly what those led astray looked likecontrary to common belief, these people didn't appear deeply aggrieved. Instead, they seemed more active, confident, and optimistic than average people, yet also more irritable, angry, and prone to excitement, existing in a bizarre state between madness and calm.
But the people of Weisshem weren't like that.
They seemed entirely ordinary from any perspective. Housewives argued over whose garbage was disposed of wrongly, stall owners and customers haggled over how many potatoes a copper coin could buy, dirty wide-eyed children searched gleefully for discarded rum bottles, and young women strutted proudly, flaunting their new dresses
Weisshem's residents were not very different from those of Indahl or, in Walton's recollection, the people of the Kenyan Empire.
Yet, there were subtle differences he couldn't quite pinpoint.
He watched a family of villagers exit the town hall courtyard, beaming, and happily head toward the main street. Walton stood up and took a few steps out from the corner of Martin Street, watching the family vanish around a corner.
Villagers that left the town hall seemed to all head in the direction of Main Street.
After a moment of hesitation, Walton instructed his subordinate to continue watching the area while he adjusted the brim of his flat cap and walked in the direction to Main Street.
Only a few steps down, Walton discovered the secret as to why villagers were converged toward the area.
Some of the partially reconstructed buildings along this street had started to open for business.
Near the intersection close to the town hall, a two-story building had its entire ground floor opened up, displaying dozens of straw-lined baskets full of eggs. A woman in a town hall clerk's uniform stood on a stool at the store's entrance, waving her arms and shouting, "Egg sale! Four for a copper! Pick any you like!"
Walton initially thought he was hearing thingsWhen had eggs become so cheap?!
Evidently, his ears were just fine. This egg shop, with a town hall clerk doubling as a salesperson, was indeed selling at this incredibly low price
Nearly a hundred people swarmed the shop, frantically buying. Some robust farmwives even resorted to monopolizing a basket, forbidding others from picking eggs, infuriating the housewives who couldn't squeeze in, resulting in loud complaints.
Given the unbelievably low prices, some were still dissatisfied. Walton saw a housewife complain to the clerk, "Miss Jenny, why are these eggs so small, a whole size smaller than the ones Miss Mia and Miss Shirley sold on Martin Street yesterday?"
"Stop being so demanding!" someone retorted before Jenny could respond. "Yesterday's eggs were three for a copper, and now it's four for a copper. That's quite a discount!"
"Yes, indeed. These eggs are smaller, hence the price reduction," Jenny explained cheerfully. "It's still a good deal to get an extra egg, and the taste is the same. They're perfect for soups or frying."
"But they're still too small. I've never seen eggs this tiny before. The hens I raised in the countryside laid much bigger eggs," the complaining housewife grumbled while continuously picking the larger eggs and placing them into her basket.
"Make way, make way. Don't break anything!"
A robust farmwoman, having picked two large baskets of eggs, joyfully squeezed her way out of the store. Her rather boisterous movements invited a chorus of complaints from those she jostled past.
"What's with these country folks today, why are they so extravagant today? Usually, they even haggle when we are buying their potatoes," a townswoman grumbled irritably after her skirt was stepped on yet again.
"Don't you know? They've got money today. Look at those farmers lining up in the streets; they're here to sell their grain," An informed townsperson explained.
"Sell grain? Isn't it to submit their tithes?" a housewife asked the question that was in Walton's head.
"It's because Mr. Rex has abolished the local tax, along with our town's population tax," the knowledgeable townsman boasted. "I heard from my aunt who works at the Logistics Office that Mr. Rex is buying grain at this year's highest market price. Unshelled wheat is going for four copper a pound, soybeans for six, and even corn can be sold for a copper a pound."
As soon as this "insider information" was made public, the townsfolk inside the egg store were dumbfounded.
Farmers, after selling grain, had puffed out chests and extravagantly bought eggs, flaunting what they considered their newfound wealth
Weisshem, located near the Sorenson Mountains and with a higher altitude, coupled with nearly non-existent irrigation projects, had a rather backward agriculture. It was impossible to grow rice, a crop requiring plenty of water. The main crops were wheat, soybeans (considered a grain here), and corn.
The lack of irrigation and fertilizers meant the yields were pitifully low. Rex and Ji Tang's territory survey revealed that local wheat yields were only about 150 kilograms per acre, soybeans between 50 and 100, and corn, the easiest to grow, only about 350 to 400 pounds per acre.
In a world where food wasn't abundant and grain prices not cheap, it would seem logical for a farming family to live comfortably as long as they didn't slack off. In reality, even families producing grain could not guarantee wheat year-round, often relying on corn and potatoes.
The issue was the fluctuating grain prices during harvest season.
Or rather, it was a matter of the local lords' conscience. Farmers, or civilian-organized self-help groups, lacked the capability and funds to stockpile grain or influence market fluctuations.
Whether a farmer's family would have enough to eat the following year depended entirely on how much a local lord was willing to relax taxes during the harvest tax seasonafter all, when grain tax couldn't be paid in kind, it had to be paid in cash.
Walton, who had been standing at the entrance listening intently for a while, moved away slowly.
The voice in his heart, the one he was reluctant to acknowledge, sounded again.
Could Charlie Rex actually be an exceptionally rare kind of benevolent lord?
Deep down, Walton denied this ludicrous idea. That was a noble-born bastard willing to even follow a nefarious black mage!
How could such a fundamentally vile person, presented with such a golden opportunity, choose not to exploit it for personal gain but instead display benevolence!
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