The security team members followed behind the undead and sealed off the club area, bar area, casino area, and hotel area one after another. They put the last batch of hotel practitioners into their mobile prosions. There had been so many prisoners. More than two hundred strong young men were so tired that they could not even straighten their backs.
There was no other way. All the city police officers had been put in the prisoner camp. All the work had to be done by these security guards themselves...
After taking a short rest and quickly eating a few biscuits, Jimmie Voss, who had just been promoted to captain by the Rockets, wiped the sweat off his face and rode his bicycle to City Hall.
At this time, it was already dark in Indhal, but the city, which had been bustling all day, was still noisy.
It was not that there were suddenly more people engaging in nightlife... There were basically only on the streets, and the ones making the noise were all the undead running around.
As soon as Jimmy left the West City area and entered the road leading to the Central City area, several undead ran past him with a roar.
"The modeling of this city is so fucking awesome, so many details." "This is what we call a main city. Our exile town is nothing like this. Even refugee settlements aren't that shabby!" "There are no mission points. I can't even see any professional guilds..."
As usual, Jimmy ignored the noise of the undead and continued on his way on the bicycle that had originally belonged to the city police chief.
Although there had not been too many undead appearing in Weisshem on a normal day, the few times he had dealt with them were enough for Jimmy to learn to ignore these guys – during his patrol duty, he had heard the undead discussing things like "This person's clothes are quite nice, but it's a pity that we can't steal them" and "That house is really unique, but it's a pity that we can't get in" on the street more than once... If he had taken them all seriously, he would not have been able to do his job.
The Midtown area was a city within a city, and the access control was very strict. However, now that all the city police officers had been taken prisoner and the National Guard had been unable to resist and had surrendered... there was no difficulty in entering and exiting.
The city hall, which had been deserted during the day (the former officials were collectively captured and the former staff and clerks were absent from work), was now very lively. As soon as Jimmy entered the door, he saw that the courtyard with lights on was filled with iron-shell carriages, and many familiar and unfamiliar faces were busy unloading goods; many rooms of the three city hall buildings spliced together in a triangular shape were brightly lit, and occasionally you could hear voices like "XX file cannot be found" from a room.
"Jimmy, this way!" Rex, who was standing downstairs in the left annex building, saw Jimmy's uniform and immediately waved at him.
Jimmy trotted through the crowd quickly: "Mr. Rex."
"This is Agent Monk." Rex pointed to a man standing stiffly beside him, holding his bowler hat in his hand. "Tell him about our job requirements."
Jimmy, a young man, was promoted to the position of captain because of his quick mind and pragmatism. He instantly understood Rex's intention and politely asked the nervous Agent Monk to move aside...
The so-called detective referred to the staff under the sheriff, who was a civil servant in charge of urban security; the city police were responsible for maintaining order in the city, and solving cases and investigating were the jobs of the detectives.
The sheriff was arrested along with other high-ranking city hall officials. The detectives affiliated with the public security system still had value for absorption and transformation, just like the operators and clerks – this was the decision made by Ji Tang, Zhao Zhenzhen, and Rex after humbly listening to everyone's opinions.
Maintaining the operation of a city with a population of 300,000 was no small matter. It was impossible to dismiss all the people in the city hall, and Weisshem did not have that many people to transfer over...
Jimmy knew that there was a great possibility that he would be assigned to participate in public security work in Indhal. Mayor Ji Teng had also revealed that the structure of the existing public security system would be adjusted (reorganizing the city police and the public security team). In this way, the detectives who might be retained would become his future colleagues. No matter what, Jimmy had to be polite.
After briefly introducing the rules and regulations that needed to be followed when working for Lord Rex, Jimmy kindly reminded his future colleague: "Tomorrow morning, Mayor Ji Tang will ask for the operation to begin. We are a little short of manpower at the moment. If we can get more people to help, we can settle down sooner, which will be good for everyone."
Agent Monk was a middle-aged man in his thirties. He understood Jimmy's goodwill and nodded repeatedly in gratitude. "I understand, Captain Voss. My brothers and I are willing to help."
After bowing deeply to Jimmy, Agent Monk put on his hat and hurriedly said goodbye to tell his brothers the good news – it was not easy to find a job these days. Even if the new mayor was a bastard and the new mayor might be a ghost like the one in Weisshem Town, no one was willing to give up their job at City Hall. This was the pragmatism of the middle class.
After dealing with the agents, Jimmy was instructed by Rex to contact the agents in various departments... Indhal's several administrative departments had more than a hundred regular agents and hundreds of temporary agents; among these people, there were those with good reputations and those with bad reputations. Due to the current shortage of manpower, there was no condition for screening, so they could be brought in first and used for a while, and then they could be removed if they were not suitable.
Jimmy worked until the moon was at its highest point in the sky before he finally came out of the office of the Dongcheng District Commerce Department, exhausted...
With weak legs, Jimmy rode his bike through the Midtown area and returned to the prison dormitory in the West City area to rest. On the way back, waves of undead passed by him happily.
Some of the undead were wearing stolen clothes and posing in front of beautiful houses (actually they were taking screenshots); some of the undead were fighting in the street, with a large group of undead watching nearby (actually they were sparring); some of the undead were chattering and jumping around on the roofs of residents facing the street (actually they were playing parkour); some of the undead were laughing and chasing after drunks who came home late (actually... well, they were just harassing NPCs).
When passing by the inner city wall of the Midtown area, Jimmy even saw... a group of undead carrying something that looked like paint buckets, scribbling on the inner city wall.
Young Jimmy sighed, full of feelings.
A city filled with undead would not be dangerous even at night. For this reason, don't worry about whether they often did crazy and stupid things.
On the other side, Rex was so busy that he was almost exhausted before he had time to meet Yang Qiu.
Yang Qiu, who had pushed all matters to Rex and hidden away to meditate comfortably, certainly would not complain that Rex came too late.
"Tomorrow, find some time to summon the nobles of the city." After Rex sat down to catch his breath, Yang Qiu continued to throw the burden on his shoulders without any hesitation, "These guys will probably have trouble sleeping tonight. You have to comfort them to some extent, so that they won't cause trouble for us."
"But I can't make any promises, right?" Rex said.
"Of course." Yang Qiu smiled rudely, "They're unruly, you know that."
Rex imagined the scene... Well, Yang was telling the truth, and said immediately: "I'll try my best, but I can't guarantee it will work."
"You can give Weisshem to Tattle Joe." Yang Qiu said nonchalantly, "That guy has a good image and I heard his family background was not bad, although he does not have noble blood, but that's not important... If you are so generous to 'those who follow you', you leave more room for imagination to those nobles."
Rex knew that Yang looked down upon the standards of the aristocratic circle, and he could not help but smile bitterly.
After thinking seriously for a while, Rex said, "We closed down the black industries on St. Joseph Street today, which has offended the local nobles. It is not enough to just let them have room for luck. If these people unite and take extreme measures to test our bottom line, it is likely to cause unnecessary casualties."
Rex's father was the Viscount, and he knew one thing very clearly: the nobles who talked about honor and respectability on the surface could be truly shameless when their interests were endangered!
The shameless "common sense" of not feeling sorry for the death of other people's children was known to the children of the nobility when they were still kids themselves!
Yang Qiu thought about it and said, "How about this? You promise them all the high-ranking positions in the city hall and let them compete for it themselves."
Rex was stunned.
"Anyway, the City Hall's presence is strongest when the autumn tax comes, so they have nearly a year to wrestle." Yang Qiu said happily, "As the referee, you just need to try to play it safe so that they don't decide the winner so quickly. It's easy, right?"
Rex was at a loss for words again: "Well... okay."
Yang Qiu smiled and said, "Go to Zhao Zhenzhen for advice. She will give you enough interesting ideas. As for the Gold Coin Church, you don't have to worry about it. I will take care of it."
Rex thought of the reliable Ms. Zhao, and his expression suddenly relaxed a lot.
Indhal did not need nobles, or in other words, it did not need nobles who could dictate and obstruct the development direction of the twon. This was the consensus of everyone involved.
Weakening, dividing, and if necessary, driving out or even eliminating some of the nobles were things that had already been decided before the decision to go to war with the ruling family.
Yang Qiu was pleased to see the success of this "noble strategy" led by the national team, and was happy to contribute.
The "Tarantan family" and the Rhine nobility could not coexist. Yang Qiu was very clear about this when he allowed players to step onto the land of the Rhine Kingdom in the form of an expedition mission.
Without saying anything about honour, just say that the land area of Indhal was about half the size of G Province, and more than 50% of the ownership of the arable land was in the hands of local nobles (and a small number of foreign nobles). This contradiction was impossible to mediate.
The periodic collapse of the Chinese feudal dynasties was caused by land annexation. In Nadeli, there was also land annexation. The reason why it was still able to allow a large number of self-cultivating farmers to survive and had not yet triggered a large-scale peasant resistance movement was both cruel and realistic:
First, religion existed as a painkiller.
Although the brainwashing ability of the Gold Coin Church was actually much worse than that of many man-made sects on Earth, and could not make the poor masses wait for death in peace, it could still play a role in calming emotions and diverting conflicts, such as making the lower-class people believe that the suffering of the masses came from the omnipresent devil, and blaming their own misfortunes on invisible evildoers.
Second, the lower-class people were changing shifts too quickly.
More than 70% of the world's lower-class indigenous people had a life expectancy of no more than 40 years, and their infant mortality rate and child poverty were even worse than those in India. No matter how efficiently the lower-class women of childbearing age who had no right to refuse sex gave birth, it was difficult for them to create a baby boom like the one that had occurred on Earth. The countries on Earth that experienced a baby boom after World War II at least had a certain medical foundation, a more stable domestic environment than before World War II, and a higher food self-sufficiency rate.
With a land area of half a province, there were only less than two million agricultural population and less than 300,000 industrial population. Even if the agricultural potential of Indhal had not been fully tapped, the remaining arable land snatched by the nobles was indeed enough to barely feed the lower-class people...
Third, there was fierce infighting among the nobles.
The Bartles family seized Indhal in a territorial war more than a hundred years ago. The previous lord of Westram, Baron Marcus, also became the lord of Weisshem forty years ago.
As for where the losers went, no one knew... The fight between rentiers was assumed to be winner-takes-all, and no one really cared about the fate of the losers.
In short, Indhal was a place where you could not say there were starving people everywhere, but it was not a very convincing place to say that you could have some small happiness by working leisurely. It was not that good, but it was not so bad that people could not survive. As long as you were lucky and there were no major natural disasters or man-made disasters, you could still live...
But did Yang Qiu release the natural disasters to keep the status quo?
Definitely not.
Can we tolerate oppression as long as the conflict has not escalated to the point where the weaker party can no longer survive?
Leeches and mosquitoes only suck a little blood and won't kill people, but who can really tolerate leeches and mosquitoes lying on their body for a long time?
Anyway, Yang Qiu did not want to see such a scene in a land under his control.
The next day, when Ranger Tattle Joe woke up and heard that he had become the new master of Weisshem and the second puppet lord after Rex, he almost choked on his morning milk.