Chapter 207: City of Miracles

"Very well, you can go back and rest, I promise I won't call you over again."

I looked at the old man's rickety body in distress, following me for less than a year, as if he had sucked out all the energy in his life, and the whole person was aging at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The only thing to be thankful about is that his sons are now all well-spoken ministers of the earl's side, from a serf who has worked hard for most of his life with his face to the loess and his back to the sky, to what could be more gratifying and happy for a father to be among the knightly class today, seeing his children escape the fate of their death?

As the team brought a lot of female dependents, most of them Serena's best friends and personal female officers, as well as those tattered girls' gadgets, they were full of five carts, and it was a little difficult for the two horses to pull up, plus the knights and soldiers in charge of the guards, my squires and close ministers, the whole team marched very slowly, and it took almost half a day to barely see the smoke of the Nijmegen people preparing dinner.

Fortunately, the servants in the castle had been prepared for a long time to drive the carriage, and the group hurried to finally see the inhabitants of the outer city of Nijmegen rising the smoke of dinner before the sun set, and the taverns and shops at both ends of the central axis of the city lit the welcome lamps at the door, like a dragon lurking in the wilderness slowly awakening, shaking a dazzling golden scale.

There are still many unfinished walls of the outer city of Nijmegen, intermittently as if the noodles were bitten by naughty children, but from a distance there is already a little bit of the size of the city, you must know that in this era, the entire city surrounded by the city walls, there are only a handful of them, the vast Western European continent, full of lord's castles that occupy the king's land, and low farmsteads that are in tatters like wild mushrooms, and where there are two grocery stores, it can be called a small town, if you build a few more towers, Absolute medieval Manhattan, a city that only dukes and lords deserve to own.

Nijmegen Castle is built on a cliff by the river, with a cliff that is intimidating to apes that can climb it, and an artificially raised urn city and a wide moat on the other.

It is equivalent to turning the castle into a small island surrounded by water, and the drawbridge is an independent fortress that can be easily managed in the face of enemies ten times its size in the Middle Ages, when there was no air force.

Facing the gate of the castle, is a straight central axis street, led by the building Leonardo promised to the merchants of Utrecht, to build the Chamber of Commerce, has just started, but from the scale of its three in and three out of the area should be not small, which shows the old guy's ambition to lead the business world through the Chamber of Commerce.

The streets are lined with shops that occupy the vantage points and open their doors, luxury shops specializing in silk and spices, blacksmiths who provide smelting services, the famous Saxon mercenary unions, small grocers for the citizens, taverns and brothels that are indispensable for the pastime of the city, and the streets are lined up one after another, close to each other in close proximity to every inch of land, and I have only seen them in Venice and Rome.

I don't know how many of these dizzying shops are the nails that Leonardo secretly manipulates, who are not only responsible for keeping a close finger on the pulse of the market, just like the central bank's function in regulating the market, ensuring that all the money in circulation can be used by me when necessary, but also tasked with obtaining new information from all over the world through the traders of the merchants, and maintaining the efficient and accurate operation of the entire intelligence network.

There is an artificial canal being excavated in the middle of the outer city, which is currently in a state of stagnation due to labor and financial problems, but the construction will begin immediately at the beginning of next spring with the revival of the earth, which is a project that I am focusing on.

The two ends of the canal connect the Vaal River, which flows gently around Nijmegen, and are flanked by planned wharves and freight yards, which serve several important functions by controlling the throughput of ships through two huge water gates.

First of all, it is convenient for merchants to pick up and transport goods nearby, you must know that from here up and down hundreds of miles, all are gentle water, and the shallow draft ships during the wet season can even sail all the way to Cologne, which greatly saves the cost of unsafe and expensive land transportation.

Secondly, the canal also plays the role of opening the floodgates when the enemy is attacking the city, which can effectively protect the city from flooding, and most importantly, it is like a belt made of crystal, separating the outer city into the upper city where merchants are concentrated and the lower city where soldiers and residents are concentrated.

After the fall of the lower city, it can be used as another moat to increase the difficulty of the enemy's siege, and it has the effect of double insurance, which is also a masterpiece of my conceit, and even the masters of the architectural guild are willing to bow down and praise it again and again.

As I stood on the tower of the castle spire, overlooking the night view of the whole city, I suddenly felt a sense of heroism in my chest.

Through a year and a half, seeing my career from childhood to adulthood, just like watching a child grow up day by day, it is impossible to say that there is no effort and intentions, now I, both from the inside and outside, have become an authentic medieval knight, only in some dreams in the dead of night, I can still recall the bits and pieces of my previous life, this era has finally become my own era.

Although Nijmegen carried out large-scale construction according to my line of thought, and invested innumerable manpower, material and financial resources, in terms of scale, it still could not even compare with the small town of his hometown in later generations, and the two streets with a population of only a few were more than 100, and it was not a little short of the commercial metropolis that he wanted to build, and he could only encourage himself that the revolution had not yet succeeded, and that his comrades still needed to work hard.

Another important reason was that I stopped for a long time in front of the large Gothic window, even if the chamberlain reminded me a few times that it was time to go to bed......

That's right, I'm deliberately delaying time, wanting to wait for Serena to finish tossing her rags and fall asleep before going back, so as to save everyone the embarrassment of looking at each other, after so long, I still can't accept the reality of having sex with Serena, and hold the consciousness of a turtle with a shrunken head, and it is a while to be able to hide for a while.

How do you make me accept a woman who is in heat like a mare and keeps flattering the attendants and guards around her? Leonardo had to change her guards frequently, and almost died of heart failure from exhaustion.

It is true that Serena is a good steward who is difficult to find faults, and the internal accounts of the entire castle are well organized, treating the servants with grace and authority, uniting the families of the main vassals, using the influence of the pillow wind to firmly control the loyalty of the vassals, and creating a stable rear for me to fight with peace of mind, but I have a virgin complex, and it is difficult for me to think about nothing in my head after the candle is extinguished, and I want to be close to her from the bottom of my heart.

Especially today, when I met Miss Cresenti on a secret mission on the street, this feeling was even stronger.

I haven't seen her for a long time, she has become thinner and thinner, and the gloomy temperament on her body has become more and more intense, completely integrated into the intelligence work she is responsible for, and has become a shadow that is difficult to find.

The moment I looked at her, I opened my mouth to say something, but the owner of those beautiful eyes told me that everything is a thing of the past, please don't destroy the beauty buried in the bottom of my heart, or her stubborn choice to resist fate, which can't help but make people sigh.

Horrifyingly, the Countess of Friesland also came to Nijmegen, having chosen to be widowed for the rest of her life for her deceased husband, so she was sent to a monastery in the capital, Berlin, where many sinful women lived and widows who were also homeless and determined to devote themselves to Christ.

She didn't talk to me again on the way back, and I was ashamed of myself, so I could only forcibly extinguish the little flame of love in my heart, and ruled out the possibility of sparks from long-term love.

Fate always likes to play tricks on people, not only happily playing with my self-righteous love, but also dramatically bringing three women together in the same city, how ridiculous!

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When I entered Berlin belatedly, the dense tent camps outside the city had already shown that the entire German aristocratic lords had basically been economically well-organized, and everyone was gathered together according to their respective allegiance families, with the higher titles on the inside, the lower ones outside, and the camps of knights and squires on the outermost, forming a concentric circle that intertwined with each other, but on the whole, it was still centered on the five principalities, and the rest of the nobles were scattered and arranged.

Caravans, mainly hawkers and prostitutes, are parked at the edge of the forest far away, forming a bustling makeshift bazaar.

Now I am a vassal of His Majesty the Emperor, so naturally I can no longer join the camp in Upper Lorraine, but when I pass through the Duke's camp, there are still many old acquaintances who are very friendly to come up to say hello.

Only when I saw Zareth did I miss this good friend from the bottom of my heart, the first person I knew after coming to the Middle Ages, I haven't seen him for a long time and have been a little blessed, I guess my little life is not bad, but my head is very shaky, and his thick beard seems to have reversed hair, which looks funny.

"Lord Count, may God bless you!"

Seeing me from afar, Zareth bowed very humbly, given his status as a junior knight, he was naturally very different from me, but this feeling made me uncomfortable, and there was an indescribable strangeness, so I only nodded in response to the public.

It wasn't until I approached on horseback that I leaned down and patted my old friend on the shoulder and greeted him warmly:

"Hey, my good friend, how did you get fat after not seeing you in so long? Is it that practicing horseback riding on a woman wastes martial arts? As I spoke, I stabbed him in the ribs with my elbow, deliberately prolonging the sound and joking.

(End of chapter)