Chapter 421: Is This the Rhythm of the Whole Family Becoming Officials?

At the crack of dawn, John wrapped himself in his clothes and went out. A few days ago, when my lord had left, he had given him a few beef flatbreads, which he had treasured, mixing in a little each time to add some flavor and a hint of grease, eating them with thin gruel until yesterday.

Such treatment was already among the best in the entire slum district. Many people had long run out of food. Yesterday morning, two bodies that had starved to death were carried out. If things kept going like this, many more would starve to death.

There was food for sale on the black market, but the price had multiplied sixfold, draining the last copper coins from everyone. Damn that Count Gula—his grain merchant guild controlled the buying and selling of grain for the entire city, using the excuse that trade routes had been cut off to keep raising the price.

Word was it was all for the position of city lord. John couldn't understand these high-level power struggles, nor did he want to. He only hoped the market would recover quickly and grain prices return to normal.

He had hands and feet; even if it meant doing odd jobs hauling heavy sacks, he could always scrape together a meal. Unlike now, in this wretched state, he didn't even know where to beg.

The streets were getting more and more chaotic. From time to time, he'd see some furtive figures who looked a lot like slave-catching squads. Could it be that someone actually dared to seize people in the city and make them slaves?

Whether the slave-catching squads dared to seize free citizens and enslave them, he didn't know. But he did know that slave traders had begun eyeing the slums. These past two days, people had already been snooping around everywhere, probably waiting for the right moment.

John's household had two women, exactly the prime targets for slave traders. The only thing slave traders were better at than slave-catching squads was that they rarely used force—they wouldn't break into your home and drag you off.

But when you were starved to the point of death, they'd come knocking. Forget paying money—a few flatbreads would be enough to make you 'willingly' sign a contract of self-sale.

Thinking of this, John couldn't help worrying about the two women at home, couldn't help wanting to turn back. But his empty stomach reminded him that if he didn't go out and find food, his household would run out of provisions.

Stepping through the black, foul-smelling dirty water as he left the block, John was surprised to find that there were far more people on the streets outside, and at the street corner there were actually some grey-white skeletal frames.

John's heart jolted, and he was instantly thrilled. He hurried over to look.

He had never had much fondness for these skeletal frames before, because seeing them made him think of death. But now, no matter how he looked at them, these skeletal frames radiated a single word—familiarity.

The appearance of the skeleton guards meant that order had returned.

Without having experienced chaos, it's hard to understand how precious order is. Now he understood, and so did the people around him. Everyone's face wore an expression of relief.

John recognized a few slave traders—even their faces now wore kindly smiles. The daggers they usually deliberately exposed at their waists to intimidate people were now covered up tightly.

Look, order has returned. The ghosts have turned back into people.

A stir ran through the street. A bronze dragon flew past, followed by a squad of skeletons.

John shouted excitedly, "Lord Nai Ge!"

Running into a familiar face, and a special bronze dragon at that, with so many skeletons following behind, John immediately connected the return of order with Seeing Ange and his people.

Nai Ge turned his head, saw John, and his eyes lit up at once. His short claw pointed: "Good, you there—you've been conscripted. I'm appointing you as the constable right now. Lead the guards and keep this area safe."

Flying over without waiting for an answer, he slapped a badge into his hand. The skeletons behind Nai Ge immediately shifted their gaze onto him.

John held up the badge, somewhat dumbfounded, pointing at his own nose: "Me? Constable?"

"Yes, yes, yes, constable. We don't have enough hands. You do it. You know this place. Anyone who dares cause trouble, you arrest them."

Saying this, Nai Ge Li Si leaned close to his ear and continued in a low voice: "If you can't win, press here on the badge. With the badge, these skeleton guards will obey you. Don't let anyone snatch the badge from you."

"But..." John hesitated, though his tone carried a hint of excited eagerness to try.

"No buts. The mission of saving the city is handed over to you. Go on." Nai Ge Li Si said, shirking responsibility.

It wasn't that they didn't have enough hands, but that they didn't have enough hands who could lead a team. Apart from the little angel and the little zombie, everyone else had been sent out, but for an entire city, it was still a drop in the bucket.

As for the people of House Rhine, they had already gone to take over the key places like the city defenses, municipal affairs, and grain stores—there was simply no one to spare for maintaining public order.

It, a dignified god of knowledge, could only lead the skeleton guards patrolling back and forth on the streets, with no energy at all to go deep into every block.

And even if it had the energy, it wouldn't know where to start. Strangers in a strange land—only a ghost would know which places were hiding filth.

Who would have thought running into John would be exactly the manpower most familiar with the local environment?

"Right, have your wife and daughter come over too. We're going to set up stalls to hand out free food in a bit. Let them hand out the food. I'll have someone protect them. I'll just appoint them as municipal officials." Nai Ge Li Si casually handed out titles, not caring what rank municipal officials were.

John was trembling all over: "Th... this alright?" Is this the rhythm of the whole family becoming officials?

"What's not alright about it? Go on, bring more people you know over. At the very least, they can eat their fill." Seeing John dawdling, Nai Ge Li Si urged him with some impatience.

Before long, John had brought his own wife and daughter along with a bunch of people he knew. Hearing there would be a full meal, everyone's enthusiasm soared.

Before long, Seeing Ange came over to deliver grain, reaching out and producing a large sack of grain as if pulling it out of a storage space.

"Where did the grain come from?" Nai Ge Li Si asked.

Seeing Ange pointed in the direction of the grain merchant guild—the same guild where they had first entered the city to sell vegetables and run into John: "Confiscated."

With the trade routes cut off, to solve the city's grain crisis, there was only one method left—requisition.

Requisitioning the surplus grain from noble merchant houses and carrying out a reasonable redistribution. Of course, the process wasn't exactly peaceful. In Seeing Ange's eyes, it was understood as 'confiscating'—and he was the one who did the hands-on work.

A pile of skeletons surrounded the grain merchant guild completely. Seeing Ange blasted open the guild's main gate with magic. The little zombie and little angel howled, leading the skeletons charging in. Those arrogant mercenaries hurriedly clasped their heads, squatted on the ground, and surrendered.

Count Gula had fled, but all the grain he had hoarded fell into Seeing Ange's hands. To cultivate his bid for city lord, Count Gula had made many preparations, hoarding enough grain to handle the aftermath. Once he obtained the position of city lord, it would be legitimate—open the granaries, distribute grain, and the market would immediately stabilize.

Bai Yin Coin naturally did as expected, opening the granary doors, releasing grain at fair prices, and incidentally setting up several dozen distribution points so the poor could receive food for free.

With a large number of skeletons maintaining order, no one dared cut in line or fight over food. If they were human soldiers, they might warn a few times or drag people away. Skeleton guards wouldn't bother—just draw their blades and slash.

No one would try to reason with skeleton guards.

North Wind City's crisis was completely resolved overnight. Now they only needed to reopen the trade routes, and North Wind City could regain its former vitality.

"We've already gone to where the road is blocked and had a look. The mountain range cuts off the entire North Wind City from the desert, leaving only one mountain pass. At the time, we heard a giant boulder had rolled down from the pass and blocked it. When we went to look now, the entire pass has collapsed. It must be that Gula, unwilling to accept defeat, blew up the pass." Fei Wo said resentfully.

To clear out a completely collapsed mountain pass, the engineering workload would be far too great. The requisitioned grain had temporarily solved North Wind City's grain crisis, but with the road blocked, North Wind City's grain would eventually run out. What to do then?

When the topic of the engineering workload being too great came up, Du Luo Ken looked around and asked: "Where's my lord?"

A large engineering workload was for ordinary people. For Seeing Ange, it might be a matter of just over half a month.

Bai Yin Coin saw right through what Du Luo Ken was implying at a glance. Shaking his head, he said: "My lord has gone back to pioneer the wasteland. We can't trouble my lord anymore. If we can't even handle a single trade route ourselves and keep having to ask my lord for help, then what's the point of keeping this city? An asset that can't generate income but instead becomes a burden is a negative asset, and it should be discarded as soon as possible."

Fei Wo shivered all over. What? Negative asset? Discard it? How did it get to discarding? He had just become city lord, his butt hadn't even warmed the seat yet—how had he become a negative asset?

Du Luo Ken asked: "Then what do we do?"

Bai Yin Coin turned to Fei Wo and asked: "Is there any other road that leads outside?"

Fei Wo thought for a moment and said: "There is, actually. Following the mountain range south, there's a great rift valley. Someone built a cableway there. You can take the cableway across to the other side of the rift valley, then follow the rift valley through the mountain range to reach Rapid Current Fortress on the other side. That's a city even bigger than North Wind City. But the cableway can't transport grain."

"How wide is the rift valley?" Du Luo Ken's heart stirred, and he asked.

"About fifty meters, but extremely deep. Falling in would shatter you to pieces." Fei Wo said.

"Has no one ever thought of building a bridge over it?" Du Luo Ken asked.

"Build a bridge?" Fei Wo was stunned for a moment, then said hesitantly: "I heard people from House North Wind mention before that building a bridge over the rift valley requires considering all sorts of geological conditions, and the bridge structure needs all kinds of mechanics and stress calculations—a whole bunch of stuff. It would take at least a master-level engineering mage to have the ability to build a bridge. What does engineering mage even mean? I've never even heard of it."

"Ahem, ahem, ahem!" Durroken stepped forward slightly and said, "It shouldn't be too difficult. I'll go take a look, but I'd still like to ask my lord for help — cast an eye on it for me. Otherwise, if we measure bit by bit, who knows how long that'll take. How much longer can our food supply hold out?"

"Three months." Bai Yin Coin knew perfectly well how much money was in his own pocket.

"Then please, my lord, come take a look. We'll prepare some gifts — for instance, every seed we can find in the city — to ask my lord for help. That way it doesn't count as a negative asset, does it?" Durroken suggested.

"Good idea." Bai Yin Coin's eyes lit up.

Feiwo was completely baffled. Hadn't they just been talking about needing a 'Master-level' engineering mage? Why had the topic suddenly jumped to collecting seeds? That was quite a leap.

Bai Yin Coin explained with a smile, "If a mage's rank only goes up to Master, then anything above Master could be called King-level, right? In that case, this one here is the King of Alchemy, the King of Engineering Mages."

……

After the dam was completed and water had been impounded for several days, the water level of Shahe had already risen. All that was left was to dig lateral channels, and then vast stretches of land on both banks could be irrigated.

After Seeing Ange finished handling matters in the city, he couldn't wait to rush back and tend to his fields. This time, the area that needed to be reclaimed in one go was far too large — the four of them simply couldn't handle it all.

With no other choice, he picked a batch of 'clever' Ash Bone Skeletons to help out.

Back in Desert Town, Seeing Ange had already noticed a problem: the Ash Bone Skeletons here were smarter than those of the same rank on the main plane — at least as intelligent as Bai Yin Skeletons — and a small number of Bai Yin Skeletons could even possess the wisdom of Golden Skeletons, barely qualifying as Wise Skeletons.

With smarter skeletons, Seeing Ange found it much easier to order them about. At the very least, they could handle tasks like digging ditches, piling ridges, and cutting channels.

"These ash bones are really clever — what a pain. That Enlightenment Aura was supposed to be mine, but that dead bone snatched it away. I'm furious." Lord Nai Ge directed the Ash Bone Skeletons while cursing and grumbling.

Nobody paid it any attention.

Lord Nai Ge didn't mind either, and went on, "Should we go look for it? Find my Enlightenment Aura back, and then we could make these skeletons even smarter."

Still, nobody paid it any attention.

"Your Majesty also doesn't know how much territory he left behind. Let's go wander around outside — maybe we can find fertile fields bigger than this, far better than this wasteland."

Not a single sound in response.

After chattering away in various ways for quite a while, still nobody paid it any attention.

Realizing that Seeing Ange was dead set on farming, Lord Nai Ge finally sheepishly shut his mouth.

The irrigation channels were dug, the sluice gates opened to release water, the land was soaked, then the gates were closed again, and seeds were scattered.

What Seeing Ange chose to plant were desert jujubes, the variety best suited to growing in the wasteland. Around the roots of each jujube tree, a ring of worm ash had been pre-buried.

Every bit of that worm ash had been painstakingly gathered by Seeing Ange — a handful grabbed every dozen-odd minutes, little by little, accumulating into a lot.

As his soul grew, the interval between Seeing Ange's grabs had now shortened to once every sixteen minutes, and each time he could snatch up a big handful — but he couldn't grab spatial items.

He had tried grabbing storage bags or rings, but as long as there was something inside, he couldn't move them at all. Unless the storage space was emptied, he didn't know what the mechanism was.

Instead, if he withdrew his consciousness back into his main body, then transformed into Locke, and shoved things over from this side, he could push storage ornaments containing items across.

However, only those small storage spaces worked — the kind of large spaces of several hundred cubic meters that Big Cat had cut, those couldn't be pushed across.

Seeing Ange only did it once, shoving over six storage bags of about two cubic meters each. Two of the bags were filled with seeds, and the other four were stuffed with soul crystals — numbering at least several million.

From now on, wherever he needed money, he could simply pelt people with soul crystals.

The jujube trees grew rapidly. When they reached waist height, Seeing Ange temporarily paused the Quick-Death Aura.

Then, in the gaps between the jujube trees, he intercropped go-yams. This way, the jujube trees would shield them from the fierce sunlight, and the go-yams could grow more steadily.

Everything proceeded in an orderly fashion. Soon, plenty of green sprouted along both banks of Shahe.

Durroken and Bai Yin Coin drove their carriage over and couldn't help sighing, "It's truly strange. Clearly, my lord is an undead being, yet wherever he goes, he never brings death — instead, he brings endless vitality."

"Isn't that a good thing? Life is always more interesting than death. There were too few seeds in North Wind City — we didn't find any new kinds. I wonder if my lord will like these things." Durroken spoke as he glanced back at the carriage cabin behind him, where bundles of translucent items were stacked.