County of Merlin, Fort Merlin. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

In the lavishly decorated ballroom, a large banquet is being held to celebrate the victory.

The guests with rough appearances and loud voices mingled with each other, and the banquet hall was filled with a noisy and pleasant atmosphere.

In the corner of the banquet, in a slightly cleaner corner, there were several men sitting with their heads bored and drinking, not saying a word, and occasionally frowning, and it was difficult to adapt to this particularly noisy atmosphere.

"Knight Edward, so you're here. ”

Baron Romong, who was holding a huge wine glass and blushing with a sip of wine, walked to the table with a little staggering steps, and said to the handsome young man in front of him: "Knight Edward, welcome to the Northern Faction!"

After speaking, Baron Romon took the wine glass, saluted the handsome young man, leaned up at the thick red neck, and poured the wine into his mouth with a grunt.

"Baron Romont, I toast you too. ”

Zhou Ming got up with a smile, took a small cup full of ale wine, tilted his head gracefully, and drank all the wine inside.

"Boy from the south, drink with a big glass, don't be like a girl!" The big voice of a big man next to him sounded, he was very unaccustomed to this way of drinking.

"Yes, boy, come from the south, change a big cup and drink a glass of wine for us, your cup is too small for a ten-year-old child. Another drunkard coaxed.

"Don't say that, Knight Edward's martial arts are extraordinary, I saw him kill at least ten knights of the Southern Sect on the battlefield that day, and none of them could walk ten moves in his hands. A slightly clearer man said.

"So what? The wine field is a battlefield, as long as you can't drink, you're still a!" the drunk man said disdainfully.

"You-!" Knight Morris pressed his hand on the hilt of his sword, and Huo Di stood up, he had always been mild-mannered, he was really fed up with these rude, savage, and no knightly northerners!

"Teacher, please sit down. ”

Zhou Ming raised his hand and pressed slightly, let the Maurice knight sit back, asked someone to replace a huge wine glass, and asked a coaxing man to pour him wine, and when the wine glass was about to overflow, he raised his glass and said loudly to the surrounding people: "Gentlemen, I salute you!"

After speaking, Zhou Ming raised his head and poured the golden ale wine into his mouth, a small amount of wine overflowed from the corner of his mouth, gurgling, and after a while, the ale wine in the huge cup was low.

The wine glass in his hand was put upside down, and not a drop of leftover wine fell down, but Zhou Ming, who had bulging green tendons near his temples, roared: "Good wine!"

"Good!"

"Well done!"

"It's a man!"

"This kid has an appetite for me!"

Even the owner of the scene, Earl William, who saw this scene on the side, also laughed and walked over, patted Zhou Ming's shoulder, and said loudly to everyone: "Don't call Edward Knight 'boy from the south' in the future, from today onwards, we are all northerners!"

"Yes, Beiyankee!

"Long live the North Yankees!"

"Cheers to the Northerners!"

For a while, the warm atmosphere at the celebration banquet reached its peak.

……

After attending the celebration banquet at Fort Merlin, on the way back to the Grand Collation, Zhou Ming saw that his father, Baron Connor, and his father-in-law, Baron Sean, were listless and unhappy all the way.

"Damn, damn it! I'm a damn Northern!" Baron Howard scolded all the way, unable to accept the reality that he had become a "Northerner".

Seeing this scene, Zhou Ming couldn't persuade anything, compared to being framed and killed, and the territory was divided and swallowed by others, some changes in his faction category were nothing at all.

It would be nice to give it some time to get used to it.

Four years.

Zhou Ming silently calculated in his heart that this 1,000-horse war was four years ahead of the 500-horse war in the previous life.

King Herrian, who is proficient in the art of power control, has played such a clever hand within a few days of coming to power, and if there is no guidance from a master behind him, it will definitely be impossible.

However, Helian still seriously underestimated the strength of the intelligence power in Zhou Ming's hands, and when the aristocratic court was arguing over the distribution of 1,000 horses, Zhou Ming already knew that after several years of balloon-like expansion and development, the Free Business Alliance, which has grown into a capital monster, will sooner or later have a fierce collision with the royal power.

It's just that I didn't expect this collision to come so early and so quickly, so that when King Herian announced that all the goods of the merchant alliance in the royal domain would be levied 50% of the commercial tax, he had to spend three months to do the ideological work of all the lords of the seven northern counties, state the interests, and introduce that once the free merchant alliance is dissolved, the northern lords will return to the original difficult and poor dilemma, and the lords of the northern land, who have finally lived a good life for a few days, have expressed that they will definitely stand on a fair position and safeguard the interests of the merchant alliance.

Of course, it is also to protect their own interests.

After all, what touches the soul more than morality is profit.

Therefore, at that meeting of the ruling meeting of the merchant alliance, the lords of the northern lands all abstained from voting, and although the 16 representatives of the south expressed their opposition, those foreign merchant alliance members who were not in the territory of the Wallis Kingdom would give you sanctions as long as they violated their interests, regardless of whether you were a royal territory or not!

The giant beast of capital, no matter if you are His Majesty the King or the King of Heaven, as long as you stop it from making money, it will bite you hard.

However, the Free Business Alliance in Zhou Ming's hands is still only a capital beast that has been developing for more than four years, its claws and teeth have not grown well, and it is not the ultimate form of devouring blood and flesh and swallowing everything.

So, soon after the influential 1,000-horse war, the huge negative effects soon became apparent.

Half a month after the end of the war, the Southern Business Alliance of the Kingdom of Warris, which almost copied the organizational structure of the Free Business Alliance, was established, in addition to all seven counties in the south, King Herian's royal domain also joined the Southern Business Alliance, and a senior royal family member served as the president of the Southern Business Alliance.

Subsequently, in order to compete with the Free Business Alliance for the market, the members of the Southern Business Alliance, on the one hand, concentrated their resources and made a large number of copycat imitations with reference to some of the best-selling products of the Free Business Alliance, and on the other hand, they also issued a "comprehensive blockade order" for all kinds of goods produced by the Free Business Alliance!

That is, prohibiting the passage of the caravans of the Free Merchants Alliance, burning the goods of the Free Merchants Alliance, and intercepting the traveling merchants who sell the goods of the Free Merchants Alliance!

In October alone, a month after the war, 544 traveling merchants who made a living selling the goods of the Free Merchant Alliance entered the southern territories and mysteriously died at the hands of various "thieves".

The various commercial activities of the Free Business Alliance soon fell into a low ebb.

In November, several even worse news came, the upper echelons of the kingdoms around the Kingdom of Volis, such as Chulin, Arino, and Iron Castle, issued "business restriction orders" one after another, and issued bans one after another, requiring their countries to join the aristocratic territory of the Free Business Alliance and must withdraw from the commercial organization of the Free Business Alliance!

Subsequently, the Chulin Business Alliance, the Arino Business Alliance, and the Iron Fort Kingdom Business Alliance, which were led by the upper echelons of these kingdoms, filled the market gap for all kinds of commercial goods after the withdrawal of the Free Business Alliance.

Among them, the "iron ban" adopted by the Iron Castle Kingdom is the most vicious, in order to prevent the lords of their own country, after selling the iron ingots to the Free Merchant Alliance, the Free Merchant Alliance will sell the fine iron tools that have increased the price tenfold back to the Iron Castle Kingdom, and the king of the Iron Castle Kingdom is determined to limit those hateful "Gran Collar Brand" iron tools to the point that they cannot sell one.

At the end of the year, when the domino wave of withdrawal and withdrawal from the last barony located on the border of the Chulin Kingdom, the Free Business Alliance in Zhou Ming's hands was left with only 84 members who were mostly in the northern border of the Warris Kingdom.

"Although, I expected this step for a long time, but it was still one to two years earlier than expected, but it doesn't matter, with the funds I have on hand at the moment, it shouldn't be too much of a problem to start the second step of the plan......"

Zhou Ming, who was buried on the desk, pondered slightly, and the quill pen in his hand wrote the words "Mercenary Union" on a blank piece of paper.