From a simple emotional perspective, what Yang Qiu wanted to do most was to drag out the more than 20 local nobles who monopolized more than 60% of the wealth in the Indhal territory one by one and hang them on street lamps.
The Bartles family also took more than they ate, but at least they maintained a city defense force to keep the area safe; the church, which also benefited from the people's money, at least stood on the front line of the dark invasion.
What did these nobles below the Bartles family do?
Land annexation, manipulation of grain prices, opening casinos and lending at high interest rates, forcing women of good families into prostitution, exploitation of workers, exploitation of farmers... They did not do anything that people should do, and did not leave out anything that people should not do.
Unfortunately... The situation was complex, and Yang Qiu was not young anymore, so he did not have the nerve to do anything too willful.
The most important point was that all the more than 20 towns in Nadeli's territory were fiefs of these small nobles. It was easy to eliminate the nobles in one go, and it was just a matter of issuing a few more tasks to the players, but there were no people to fill the power vacuum - this was the real fatal thing.
However, just because Yang Qiu could not kill them for now did not mean he would let these nobles go... He would just fatten them up first.
Rex sat there thinking for a long time, and it was unknown whether he had figured out the reason. He gave Yang Qiu a resentful look and left.
Yang Qiu ignored him. As an old man, there was no way he would bother with a kid. He just sat there calmly playing with his phone.
"What a lousy move!"
After a while, Yang Qiu cursed under his breath and quit the game.
"Well... my leisure time is over." After looking at the Earth time displayed on his mobile phone, Yang Qiu stretched and stood up slowly.
Currently, the average potential value of large groups of players was between 130 and 150, and the number of people who had gained enough reputation to take on second-level tasks was almost in the three digits.
Yang Qiu was a man of his word. He said that he would make these guys work on their second job transfer for at least half a month, so he would definitely cheat these idiots who would drag him out and scold him every day for no reason...
Of course, no matter how bad it was, the job transfer upgrade should still be given. If there was no difference between before and after, the players' enthusiasm for reputation would plummet, which was not conducive to long-term development - we should always take a long-term view!
After deciding to start the work, Yang Qiu first activated the mental field - the mental realm formed by the external mental power of high-level spellcasters - to cover the entire City Lord's Mansion.
Before advancing to the great magician level, Yang Qiu's mental field could only cover an area of ten meters around him. After the advancement, his mental field increased dozens of times, which was more than enough to cover the mansion of the former Bartles family.
Only by turning the entire City Lord's Mansion into his own "domain" could Yang Qiu perform black magic without any burden, so as to avoid causing those people in the church to overreact...
The great magician could cast forbidden spells instantly, and even most of the casting gestures could be omitted. Yang Qiu raised his hand and drew a line in the air. Immediately, a brilliant and slowly rotating pentagram magic circle appeared on the spacious living room floor.
This magic circle, which was similar to the semi-permanent spell of the teleportation point used by players, was a formal undead summoning technique - of course, it did not summon players, but real undead from the demon world who had no self-awareness and only fighting instincts.
Soon, black fog rose from the center of the formation, and a genuine undead wearing tattered armor, holding a scarlet spear, with faint green fire flashing in its eyes, appeared in the black fog.
Yang Qiu snapped his fingers, and the authentic undead that appeared in the magic circle with murderous aura instantly disintegrated into countless tiny bone fragments, and the broken undead armor and scarlet spear turned into black mist and dissipated.
Under the sweep of Yang Qiu's spiritual field, these bone fragments made from genuine undead materials that met the specifications slowly floated up, while those that did not meet the specifications turned into black mist and returned to the demon world.
Next, Yang Qiu patiently created semi-permanent rune skills for the second-level players...
When designing the player's profession, Yang Qiu had already decided on the rune skill direction to be provided to the players.
After completing the second transfer, warrior players could choose between the weapon master and the fury warrior branches. The former focused on survival, so a powerful defense skill had to be arranged; the latter focused on output, so a new burst skill was needed.
The second-level choices for knight players were Death Knight and Holy Spirit Knight. The former gave curse skills and the latter gave healing skills.
Mage players also had two advancement paths to choose from, Dark Warlock and Dark Prophet.
As for walkers, they could be divided into long-range bow users and close-range dagger users...
It took a lot of energy for one person to handle such a complex project, otherwise Yang Qiu would not have designed only four career paths... ahem.
In addition, just like the universal skill "Appraisal" that all first-level players had, he'd needed to design a universal skill that could motivate casual players to strive for the second level - those life players who logged in every day and did nothing were too lazy. They would rather stay in the city and paint randomly than do tasks to improve their reputation. Isn't this just occupying the toilet without doing anything? I can't tolerate it!
While Yang Qiu was conscientiously performing his duties as a game producer, Tattle Joe, the newly appointed lord of Weisshem, was doubting his life.
"...In other words, ever since I took over the position of Lord Weisshem, I owe Yang tens of thousands of gold coins? Are you kidding?!"
In the finance office of the town hall, Tattle looked at the undead mayor Ji Tang with a confused look on his face.
"Yes." Ji Tang nodded. "Please rest assured that this debt of Weisshem Town Hall does not require immediate repayment. We have already worked out... um, a repayment plan. Please see here. This is our goal for the fourth quarter of this year, and it has been roughly achieved -"
"What a joke!" Tattle could not stand it any longer and jumped up from his seat. "I quit. Find someone else. I did not want to be this puppet in the first place!!"
"Mr. Tuttle, your personal debt had exceeded one hundred gold coins, right?" Ji Tang said calmly, "Although Lord Yang does not allow puppet lords to use public assets, if the performance is excellent, the lord can get a very high performance bonus. Rex does not owe Lord Yang a penny."
Anyway, everyone inside knew that Tattle was pushed here because of his good image, so Ji Tang just went straight to the point.
Tuttle was silent for a while, then sat back down silently.
In fact, Tuttle had about a hundred gold coins on hand, and he had not yet spent the money he made from Hal last time; but if he was asked to take out his old banknotes to repay the "debt" that Yang had forced upon him, he would not be willing to do so no matter what!
After pondering the words of the undead mayor, Tuttle still felt something was wrong: "Wait a minute, if Rex has money, why haven't I seen him spend it? Doesn't he still live in the dormitory like those clerks?"
Ji Tang did not say anything, just looked at the "NPC" in front of him with a little sympathy.
Tuttle himself reacted.
"——The so-called performance bonus, in fact, is not given out, but is instead directly deducted for some reason?!" Tuttle was going crazy.
Ji Tang still said nothing, but his eyes were more sympathetic...
How should one put it... Lord Yang was a guy who would never spend a penny if he could avoid paying. It was indeed a pipe dream to expect to get free benefits from him.
For example, the dumplings provided to the prisoners who worked on the road construction were the dark dumplings that Ji Tang and Zhao Zhenzhen would never dare to sell to ordinary people in the Undead Delicatessen. Not to mention the skin, the dumpling fillings were made from the leftovers from the feed processing plant. If anyone dared to sell them in China, they would be invited to have tea with the police in no time...
It was not that these scraps from feed (also used to make cheap canned cat and dog food) were inedible to humans. American food manufacturers had been using this stuff to make hamburger patties and selling them in fast food restaurants for years.
Tuttle knew what kind of person Yang was. He was depressed for a while, then waved his hand at Ji Tang with a frustrated look on his face: "Come on, keep talking. Let me die with a clear mind."
Ji Tang then readily explained the financial (debt) situation of Weisshem Town Hall to Tuttle in a clear and orderly manner, bit by bit.
The debt situation of the Weisshem government was indeed serious, but this debt was not owed at that time. Some of the debt was expected to be owed - such as the cost of building railways.
Lord Yang only paid for half of the railway from Weisshem to the exile town deep in the Tarantan Wasteland, and the other half had to be paid by the Weisshem government.
It would take one or two years to pay back this money slowly (...), and it could be repaid slowly. The expert group had also specially found an expert in economics to develop a repayment plan for Ji Tang to ensure that the expenditure on building the railway would not drag down Weisshem's finances.
Currently, Weisshem's biggest debt pressure came from the industrial area on Town Avenue.
The factory building, land and manpower all belonged to Weisshem, but the machines were provided by Lord Yang. The principal and interest of the money had to be repaid as soon as possible - yes, Lord Yang was so good at doing business that he charged interest on debts. In this respect, he was more or less a human being, so the interest rate was not high, only 6% per year.
Tuttle had never heard of such a complicated account in the world. He could not hold on before Ji Tang finished introducing it. He said with a dying breath: "Please, man, stop nagging. I know I need to get into the state and participate in your work as soon as possible. I promise I won't make excuses... Just tell me what I need to do now."
Ji Tang was waiting for him to say this, and closed the account book happily: "It's actually very simple, just act as a spiritual leader like Rex."
Ten minutes later, Tuttle was dragged by Ji Tang to a workshop in a factory in the industrial zone.
Tattle was born in Kargath, the largest city in the Rhine Kingdom, which was more prosperous than Indhal. Of course he had seen machinery, right? After scanning the two production lines in the workshop and staring at what the female workers took out of the machines for a long time, he still had a confused look on his face and could not recognize what was being produced there.
Ji Tang showed Tuttle around the workshop and then took him to the warehouse. He took out a small piece of what looked like a piece of white bread from the carton containing the finished products and showed it to Tuttle: "You don't recognize this, do you?"
Tuttle shook his head.
"This is called a sanitary pad, it's used by women and has a similar function to toilet paper... Well, you know that women have menstrual periods, right?" Ji Tang said.
"...?" Tuttle looked confused.
Ji Tang then had to give this guy some basic knowledge about physiology ...
When Tuttle heard half of this, his hair almost stood up. He said in horror, "Wait, wait! What do you want me to do by telling me this?!"
Ji Tang said seriously: "Rex and I have done a survey. The sanitary products used by women in rural areas and towns during their menstrual period were mainly reusable cloth strips, which were not good at maintaining hygiene and were very harmful to their health. We need you to promote sanitary pads as a lord and let people accept this safer and more hygienic sanitary product-"
Tuttle was dumbfounded and shouted, "Wait a minute! Are you crazy, you undead? I am a man!"
Ji Tang frowned and said, "You want to say that because you are a man, this has nothing to do with you?"
"Of course! This kind of thing should be done by a woman. How could it be done by me?!" Tuttle said anxiously.
Ji Tang shook his head and raised his hand to nod at Tuttle: "Look, even you have this reaction. If you, as a lord, don't lead by example and fight a good propaganda war, how can you promote sanitary products?"
"These private matters between women shouldn't be discussed publicly!" Tuttle almost yelled.
Ji Tang had no expression on his face. He only said, "There is no textile factory in our Weisshem industrial zone. Other factories recruit both men and women. The only factory that recruits only female workers is this factory. And this sanitary products factory was the first to be fully staffed. Do you know what this means?"
Tuttle said angrily, "How should I know that?"
"It means that in Weisshem, women had narrower employment options than men." Ji Tang said, "In a family, it was difficult for women to become the breadwinners, and they often had to rely on the men in the family to make money."
"Isn't this normal?" Tuttle frowned.
"Without an economic source, it will be even more difficult for women in the family to use the family's common property for what you call 'private matters'." Ji Tang held up the sanitary pad in his hand. "We have repeatedly done cost accounting. Due to the immature industrial chain, this sanitary pad must be sold at least two copper coins for a pack of ten. If it is cheaper, the factory will find it difficult to guarantee profitability and cannot achieve sustainable development."
"It costs two copper coins every month to deal with menstruation. How many women in Weisshem do you think can afford this money without the support, understanding and recognition of their families?"