Chapter 160: No Money, What to Do? Then Fire Up the Printing Press! (23)

There are four zones inside Dawn Castle.

From the outside inward, they are the Military Alert Zone, the Council Zone, the Dawn Treasure Hall, and the Dawn Garden.

At this moment, Luosen's perfect replica is stationed in the Council Zone, meeting with top figures from all fields of the twenty‑five counties of Weilan to discuss new policies for governing Weilan.

The attendees are extremely numerous—averaging over 400 per county, totaling more than ten thousand people—cramming the Council Zone of Dawn Castle to the brim.

Only those who finally enter the glorious Hall of the Council Zone can discuss matters face‑to‑face with Luosen.

If they are cultivators, they must be at least of Advanced Peak level; if they are merchants, they must possess assets of at least fifty thousand Ogres.

But it is not limited to cultivators and merchants.

It also invited master craftsmen, highly respected rural elders, even bards, painters, and, surprisingly, prostitutes—traditionally deemed a lowly trade—were also invited.

Adhering strictly to the slogan of judging only ability and character, not background, it is essentially a supersized version of the Island Citizens' Assembly of those days.

In fact, the High Priest of the Holy Weilan Grand Temple and the Ai De Li An family insisted on holding the duke coronation first, but Luosen rejected it.

He knows the greatest source of his power, so he insists on first setting the basic governance plan for Weilan before arranging a time for the duke coronation ceremony.

While the current zone is in heated discussion, Luosen himself, together with his family, went to the Dawn Garden reserved for the Duke's residence.

Selena and the others knew Luosen had a puppet replica, but without close observation, they assumed the one in the Council Zone was merely a more advanced puppet.

At this moment, she walks arm‑in‑arm with her husband Luosen through the beautiful garden where she grew up, her mind awash with countless thoughts.

She thought she would never return in this lifetime, yet she never expected to come back so quickly.

"Darling, is the garden beautiful?"

Luosen's gaze sweeps over the thriving wave roses, watching the blue‑white floral tide ripple like surf in the breeze, and he sincerely praises, "It's a beautiful scenery I've never seen before."

Selena smiles, "Then shall we spend the rest of our lives here?"

But Luosen shakes his head.

"No, darling, this will become a secondary residence; Dawn City will remain the wealthiest city in all of Weilan, but the capital of Weilan cannot be situated by the sea."

Dawn City is a coastal city; not far beyond Storm Bay lies the Gilded Strait, and a further 200-plus kilometers is Aaron.

If war breaks out, a naval defeat could let Aaron's warships sail into Storm Bay and fire directly at Dawn Garden.

Naval battles depend not only on skill but also on a bit of luck.

A single slip could sink all one's possessions to the ocean floor.

Therefore, the capital of Weilan must not be so close to Aaron.

Selena startles, then immediately understands Luosen's reasoning.

Previously Weilan was Aaron's puppet, so having the capital in Dawn City was fine, but it certainly won't work in the future.

She asks softly, "Then where is the new capital planned to be built?"

"It's still under discussion."

"For now, the provisional site is the capital of Monte County, Mengdania, located in the middle reaches of the Oran River basin. It links Dawn City to Storm Bay via the Oran River, yet lies at least 300 km from the coast, and the Count of Monte County has also perished."

"I recall Mengdania being rather rudimentary."

"Simplicity is good; it's perfect for tearing down and redesigning from scratch."

"We will build according to the latest urban model, first constructing the most advanced water supply and drainage system so that a simple turn of a faucet provides crystal‑clear water to every household, and the streets will show no trace of waste or filth."

Selena's eyes sparkle as she hears, "That's great!"

"Finally, the city roads must be spacious, and we will build the widest, flattest highways between Mengdania, Dawn City, and all major cities of Weilan for freight transport, just like we once did on the island."

Regarding transportation, Luosen not only plans to develop this world's highways but also intends to introduce railways.

Trains pose little technical difficulty now; they can be built as long as money is invested.

Trains have large capacity, low transport cost, and high speed, greatly boosting the flow of people and goods among Weilan's provinces.

Selena finds herself lagging behind Luosen's thinking on these development details.

In fact, she has always felt her husband's mind is exceptionally unconventional, his imagination boundlessly rich, and oddly, the results are remarkably successful.

"Oh~ darling, just handle it yourself; you don't need to tell me."

She quickly adds, "But I worry this will cost a lot of money, right? Do we have that much?"

Luosen laughs heartily, raising his hand to smooth his wife's wind‑tousled sideburns.

"Rest assured, darling. I'll find a way to handle the money."

He has already decided to usher in the era of credit paper money.

No money? Then fire up the printing press! Of course, after the recent fake deposit‑note storm, Weilan's confidence in any kind of note has plummeted.

Even the Natural Alliance's bank note business has been severely affected.

Regaining public confidence will require a great deal of preparation.

Advancing this will be the main task of Duke Luosen for a long time to come.

If done well, he can flexibly allocate the nation's resources, later levy hefty minting taxes abroad, and vigorously siphon the Natural Alliance's lifeblood.

Of course, achieving the latter requires massive effort; it cannot be done in a short time.

Selena's voice comes from nearby.

"Darling, these servants look clumsy; I'll go help arrange a new home."

Luosen nods, "Go ahead, I'm also focusing on controlling the puppet Duke in the front courtyard."

Selena is very familiar with Dawn Castle, even knows most of its servants, and arranges everything with ease and enjoyment.

Under Ailiya's guard, Luosen sits in a shaded pavilion in the garden, beginning to examine a stack of freshly compiled Weilan data.

"All of Weilan has only two small civilian shipyards, capable of building wooden sailing cargo ships under 500 tons, with an annual capacity of five vessels."

"There is no capability to construct warships. All warships and large cargo ships are purchased entirely from Aaron."

"Tsk~~"

Although he had known this information for a long time, seeing the detailed shipyard data sparked in Luosen an urge to seize Laide from Graystone Island and give him a few hard slaps.

Although Aaron has restrictions, building a few more civilian shipyards and training shipwrights would be good too—two shipyards, five small ships per year, that's still a bit better than none.

"We need to expand quickly and build enough brand‑new warships!"

Luosen could easily imagine that, at most half a year, Aaron's Lion Fleet would surely seize the opportunity to head north, strike hard when he is unsteady.

This is bound to happen, not due to personal will or rational shift; even if Dan Ge doesn't want to do this, it's useless. Because among Aaron's 1.1 billion people, a huge interest group sucking blood from Weilan has already formed, and he has completely cut off their financial livelihood.

Cutting off someone's financial livelihood is like killing their parents; Dan Ge will surely be dragged by this huge interest group to desperately strike at Weilan.

This strike will surely be fierce, and it will be Weilan's founding war.

If Weilan doesn't strike back, then his fresh, hot‑off‑the‑press duke's throne will be gone.

Perhaps he himself could survive, but he would become a bereaved dog, and his family's fate might not be much better than that of the Southern County Marquis.

"We must build warships and fiercely develop aircraft. These two national treasures will receive absolute resources for development."

"Coastal defense weapons also need to be rushed; even if we can't win at sea, we must block the Lion Fleet's warships from landing."

Although there are already 10 new Black Stone warships, plus over 40 rebuilt gun‑sail ships received from the Dawn Duke, it's still not enough.

Because Aaron's ships are very large, numerous, have larger calibers, and will certainly employ the urgently developed Black Stone warships.

So this naval battle will be a true hard fight.

Before winning the imminent founding war, Luosen does not plan to invest too many resources elsewhere; at most he'll just make a token effort.

Luosen continued to look at the second statistical item.

"Weilan has 580,000 full‑time mages, 80,000 high‑level, 200,000 mid‑level, 300,000 low‑level; all are traditional mages who study new‑era spells, but their knowledge is severely detached from the latest arcane achievements."

"There are 2,890,000 informal mages with low‑level mana; aside from having mana, they're mostly just dabbling in martial arts."

Luosen smiled and said, "Pretty good, much better than the situation on White Sturgeon Island~"

Back then, White Sturgeon Island was truly dirt poor.

For these mages, Luosen's idea is to train them first, then put them to work.

If they lack the ability and aren't willing to learn, they can just stay wherever it's cool.

Then comes the third statistical item.

"The number of landless farmers in the south is 11,380,000; 60 % enter noble plantations to grow various cash crops, 40 % go into emerging factories and become workers."

That means about 4,500,000 are a completely new worker class, and if another over 6,000,000 are handled well, they too could become workers.

"With the fertile land of the southern plains plus the ultra‑high yield of potatoes as a staple, we simply don't need this many farmers."

"So I have enough workers."

"If these workers could also gain mana, I would have a large force of mana‑workers, and with an assembly line we could explosively boost production."

How do workers gain mana?

Obviously by spreading cultivation methods.

The worker class naturally has high organization and obedience; once they obtain the correct cultivation method and environment, a large batch of mana‑workers will soon emerge.

"Weilan's workers are mostly former farmers; the Island Enlightenment Thirteen Volumes is still too hard, so we need to simplify it and come up with a catchy, easy‑to‑remember chant."

As a Ten Rings mage, Luosen knows very well how to cultivate most efficiently.

He also knows that, by eliminating the dross and keeping the essence, even the dullest person, if they persist, can touch the mana ring and gain mana.

Next, the statistics are a rough survey of island resource distribution.

"Ha~ The black stone ore is unexpectedly rich, tsk tsk~~ really great!"

Black stone ore is the new era's fuel source; in Luosen's plan it is also an excellent fuel for the transitional period.

Weilan has enormous reserves, so for energy we need not worry about being constrained by others.

"However, the island is still too small, resources are unevenly distributed, and many resources simply aren't present—probably a common island ailment."

Weilan Giant Island is also an island; of course it's much larger than White Sturgeon Island and has far more resources, but its shortcomings remain very obvious.

There are not many new‑era mines; for example, iron ore is pitifully scarce.

And lacking iron ore in the new era is almost like being lame.

Although many places can substitute tempered materials, steel itself can also be tempered, and the performance limit after tempering is very high.

Tempered steel can exhibit performance far surpassing Earth's high‑performance steel, naturally enabling the creation of stronger arcane machinery.

So iron ore remains very important.

"Looks like we'll have to go out to sea and grab iron ore!"

After roughly surveying the island's manpower and material resources, he then turned to money, or more precisely, gold and silver currency.

"In the confiscated property of marquises and great nobles, the total cash comes to 49,820,000 ogres."

"The Southern County Marquis is really rich!"

This money is not little, but to realize Luosen's plans for various arcane industries, it's still far from enough.

"Dawn Bank needs to redeem certificates totaling 31,280,000 ogres, of which 5,310,000 ogres are fake deposits from Levinde."

Luosen frowned and said, "Levinde's little king, secretly pulling off such a large scale!"

Over five million ogres, accounting for a little less than half of Weilan Duke's previous fiscal revenue, must be made good by Levinde.

If not repaid, he will have to make the little king's life uneasy.

After basically finishing reviewing the statistics, Luosen closed the statistical book, gave it a pat, and said to Ailiya beside him, "Ah~~ Weilan is huge, but essentially it's just Aaron's big plantation."

There isn't much that can be brought out as valuable possessions.

Even the factories are only rough‑processing plants for a few cash crops, with hardly any textile mills.

High‑end arcane industries—there isn't a single one.

Ailiya chuckled: "It used to be, but not anymore, sir."

"That's right."

Stretching his waist, Luosen intended to check how Selena's arrangements were, but after just a few steps, news came from the front courtyard that a delegation from the Radiant Empire had arrived.

"Let me see the envoy of the Radiant Empire. Hmm, interesting; I'll let my doppelgänger meet them tonight."

"I'm swamped during the day, can't spare a moment; after dinner I still can't see him, because there are far too many people wanting to see him, each of them very important."

"We can only arrange a meeting late at night."

"Before I figure out the situation, my true self doesn't plan to show up, because Empress Zhuo Ya is suspected to be a Nine Rings mage, with terrifying magical cultivation."

"Although Luosen possesses Ten Rings power and also has his own special skill, kings don't meet kings; being extra cautious is never too much."

"(End of chapter)"