Day 2, nine a.m.

Jacques took Fat Orange to the address provided by his father to berth 27 of the Canal Pier.

The canal of the port of Mousse leads directly to the Rhonal River, which is connected to the seaport, and all kinds of supplies from the New World are unloaded from the sea boats, and then loaded onto the canal boats, which go north and eventually reach the towns of the Duchy of Cashia.

When the harvest season came, countless small boats loaded with grain came to the harbor along the Rhonard-Port Mousse canal, filled with ships carrying grain from the Kingdom of Light, and the prosperity of the Port of Mousse was established in this swallow.

In the early years, when Lee Baptiste was in charge of Port Mousse, glass products and steam engines were also the main commodities of Port Mousse, and later Lee Baptiste contributed the right to benefit from the nautical formation to the royal family, and disclosed all his inventions in the Guild of the Transcendent, and the industrial products of Port Mousse were no longer unique in the whole empire, and the cities of Lundinium and Grasse in the Duchy of Stuart came to dominate and became the industrial centers of the empire.

But the port of Musai also has a unique business, which is difficult for other cities to snatch, the grain trade of the Bright God Kingdom. The southern part of the Principality of Castile is a well-known grain-producing region, with fertile land, a suitable climate, and a well-developed waterway that can easily bring large quantities of grain to the port of Mousse. From there, the ship was loaded and drove along the coast for a few days to reach the harbor of Weijia in the Kingdom of Light.

The Kingdom of Light is located on a narrow peninsula extending eastward from the mainland, the area is only half of Castile, the central part is mountainous, the arable land is small, but the population is large. To the west, the area bordering the Duchy of Saxony was a desert, a territory ruled by alien beasts, and it was difficult for humans to pass through, so sea transportation became the main route of trade between the Kingdom of Light and the Empire. The Kingdom of Light practices a peculiar principle of equal distribution, in which all people have no private property and all resources are allocated by the church.

Since the failure of Western Sahara's eastern expedition to the Kingdom of Light, the Empire has reached a trade agreement with the Kingdom of Light that has lasted for more than 900 years, and the Empire has exchanged various materials for the source stones produced by the Kingdom of Light. Due to the fact that the population of the Bright Divine Kingdom has always been high, the output of arable land is unaffordable, and it has not colonized the New World, so for nearly three hundred years, the Bright Divine Kingdom has been exchanging source stones for food with the empire to fill the stomachs of the people.

The Imperial Family received the Source Stone and then paid silver coins to the Duchy of Castia, and the merchants of the Duchy used the riffle to buy grain from the peasants, and sent it to the port of Mousse to exchange it for silver coins with the officials of Castia.

The Guardian Virgin's Day is held every year after the first food trip to the sea, and gradually falls on the last weekend of July. At this time, the peasants had just received the Livre in exchange for the early rice, and had also planted the late rice, and after paying the taxes of the empire and the rent of the nobles, they still had some money in their hands, and the grand events could give them a reason and motivation to go into the city to consume.

At the beginning of July, the docks were extremely busy during the grain harvest season, so there was no incentive for the entire docklands to arrange for the real good men to train for the Battle of the Guardians.

Jacques stood at berth 27, in front of the small boat that had been in use for an unknown number of years.

About 10 meters long, 12 long oars are fixed on both sides of the hull with iron rings, and there is a seat at the stern that is more than one meter higher than the hull, just enough to seat a person, and a drum is fixed in front of the seat. The most eye-catching is the platform with the bow protruding at an angle of 45 degrees obliquely forward, the platform is only for one person to stand, in a triangular shape, similar to an exaggerated strike angle, supported by four logs, extending forward about four meters above the hull of the ship, which is the position for the guardian to stand. Behind the Guardian Platform, there is a metal pole suspended in the air for half a meter, and a metal ring is fixed at the top, and the one-person-high wooden statue of the Virgin is just attached to this ring, and the ring is stuck on the hip of the statue standing with a sword, maintaining balance, but if there is a slight external force, the moving ring will rotate, and the top-heavy statue will rotate and fall into the water. Jacques felt that if the Guardian didn't reach out to hold the statue, he would simply hit the hull of the ship and cause it to lose its balance and slide out of the ring.

At this time, several people gathered at berth 27, including an old sailor with white hair, a middle-aged uncle who had been drinking all morning, a big fat man of more than 300 pounds, a sickly young man with thin skin, and a man dressed as a clerk with fair skin and glasses, plus Jacques, a teenager with a pet cat, can be said to gather all kinds of crooked melons and cracked dates.

When the bald man who looked the strongest, saw Jacques, he stood up and greeted him. Jacques then learns that this strong man of New World Aboriginal descent named Ahsan is the captain and guardian of the dock rowing, working as a guard in the warehouse, and has competed for the docks for the fifth time in a row. The clerk with glasses is named Lynch, the vice-captain and drumming conductor, and the clerk of the Port Authority.

The last person to arrive, but Jacques's eyes lit up, was none other than his neighbor, Sammy Gillette.

The two had not seen each other since Sammy went to work on a fishing boat, and when they met again, Jacques found that Sammy had not only grown taller, but also darker and stronger. Ignoring the still somewhat childish faces of the two, judging from their height and stature alone, Jacques and Sammy are no longer adults. As soon as the two chatted, they learned that the owner of the fishing boat where Sammy worked had been allocated a quota for the competition, so he threw Sammy to meet the demand, and there was a subsidy of 300 livres per training day, and Sammy was also happy, so why not do it.

After all the members arrived, Ahsan asked each of them to introduce themselves, and there were six awakened among the fourteen people, the captain Kura Assang, the vice-captain Clerk Lynch, the drunkard dock porter Roman, the old sailor Royce, the college boy Jacques, and Harrison, a red-haired middle-aged man from Tavern Street.

Seeing that everyone had arrived, Ahsan ordered to board the boat and set off, and when Lutz, the big fat man of the port authority, got on the boat, he shook violently, and the statue of the saint fell into the canal with a pop. Eddie, a lean sailor, jumps into the water from a beautiful fish on the trestle, catches up with the statue of the Virgin that has drifted away, and drags it back to the ship.

While at the berth, Jacques noticed that the red-haired Harrison seemed to be a little afraid of cats, and when he saw Fat Orange approaching, he hid to the side. Jacques gets the captain's permission to bring Fat Orange to the ship as well. Once on board, Jacques and Harrison, both Awakened, were assigned to paddle in the first row. The red-haired Harrison stared nervously at Chubby Orange crouching at Jacques' feet, fine beads of sweat oozing from his forehead.

After boarding the boat and preparing to stop, the oarsmen first learn how to paddle to the beat of the drum of conductor Lynch.

The oars fluttered on both sides, and the little broken boat swayed and set off, ready to leave the busy canal and go to the wide waters of the harbor to practice.