Chapter Twenty-Three: A Glimpse of the Imperial Capital

If you can stand at the top of the castle palace and look down on the city of Garcia, you can still see the exotic atmosphere you want to see at sunrise.

Looking down from the heights, there is a uniform town around the castle. The streets are beautiful with tight stones, and most of the stone covers on the ditches that Garcia built are still intact, and the stone and timber buildings are very regular. It is a residential and commercial area where Garcia's upper middle class families live, and the headquarters of several chambers of commerce are located here. Originally, these buildings were the only ones within the walls of Garcia, which were originally built.

Many of Garcia's most beautiful scenery comes from here. One of the reasons why Garcia is described by the painter is basically an ancient city within the old city walls, and one of the reasons for this is the beautiful streets. The stone-paved avenues are smooth and beautiful, but their maintenance is also complicated. Stone pavements must be repaired with mortar and suitable stones after they are damaged, but this is often not implemented. Once a gap appears, the wooden wheel often either knocks the notch off another corner or breaks it when it crosses the pit. Over time, the gap becomes an arcing pit, and the ditch on the side of the road is missing the cover. This is one of the reasons why stone roads cannot exist in the entire city. Of course, the bigger reason is that most of Garcia's officials are lazy in the municipal government - the outside area is rotten, and the dignitaries naturally can't see it, which is called dark under the lights.

After hundreds of years of development, fires and various social changes, Garcia's form has changed considerably, except for the castle and parts of the city center, which still retain its original form. The original city walls were crushed by the rapidly expanding city, and the walls and watchtowers that can be seen today are the product of the third construction. Traces of centuries of coexistence can be seen everywhere in the city. The remnants of the stone bridge on the Mineva River were destroyed by the last 100-year flood, and the remnants of the ancient city wall have been transformed into watchtowers that symbolize the center of the market...... By today's standards, it would be considered a "historic city".

Within the second construction of the city walls is a general residential area. The buildings here are starting to get cluttered, and perhaps a newly built brick house is next to a wooden house that is already creaking and creaking. With the exception of a few avenues that were forcibly opened to get in and out of the city, the other roads were already very narrow. Most roads are not paved with stones, and there are no culverts to divert excrement through sewers into the Mineva River. Emptying the toilet has become an important occupation in the region.

But this is Garcia's most economically prosperous area. A large number of shops, markets, have taken root in this inexpensive place. Only the chambers of commerce of large business favored the single-family buildings in the center of the city, where small merchants and artisans could gather, and even a few fellow villagers rented a small house as a storefront. Taverns, inns, bathhouses, cinemas and even dance halls and brothels for the trading of itinerant and local merchants dotted this not-so-humble town. If anything, what can represent Garcia? I'm afraid that this is the most qualified place to be able to show the style of the entire imperial capital.

In addition, the walls of Garcia until now are large slums. Seventy percent of Garcia's population lives here. Only the avenue leading to the city gate was flanked by buildings that looked identical to the previous area, and behind them were stacked houses at least a head shorter than them. The alleys that are not lit at night are off-limits even during the day for pedestrians, especially women and children. As long as people disappear into these forks in the road, no one knows where they have gone. Today this alley may still be a living road, and tomorrow a wall will stand in front of the escapees. As long as the houses are able, they can be raised or even extended at will, and the general streets, which have good lighting and can dry quickly after rain, are also facing a serious shortage of lighting. Residents living here may not see the sun all day long because the buildings are completely unplanned to block each other's light, for example, a tenant living on the ground floor has no way to interfere with the owner of the next door to raise the wooden house to block out the sunlight that he can only enjoy at noon. Over time, the whole slum has become a huge labyrinth for outsiders. Hanging corridors began to be erected between the houses, which were originally a solution to the dirty road surface, but the situation was made worse in the poorly lit areas. Gradually, the buildings in the low-rise and low-lying areas became slums within slums, where rats were rampant and emitted a terrible stench throughout the year. Even getting lost is commonplace. You can't get from the surface road to the alley where someone is. Sometimes you often have to climb a few stairs and go around the boardwalks where several houses are located, like climbing a canyon.

If we allow this slum to develop for another few hundred years, we may see a king-sized, rounded Kowloon Walled City. But this is the hematoma necessary to maintain Garcia's prosperity. If this unsightly hematoma is directly squeezed out, then Garcia will also lose blood and become an empty city. Of course, the dignitaries and nobles who built a manor outside the city and had dozens of servants per capita would not have thought of this. How many people were needed to maintain the navigation of the Mineva, to unload goods at the wharves and to move within the city, and to serve the life of the nobility. The bottom of this pyramid is so unbearable that everyone can only turn a blind eye.

Farther out of the city, a pre-set landing site begins with a group of helicopters coming from the assembly point in turn. Pilots began to carry out the mechanical maintenance necessary for long-distance trekking, soldiers began vigilant patrols either dispersed or concentrated, communications units began to be deployed in the center of the field, and medical teams were on standby to be ready to bring captured civilians back to helicopters with medical equipment. Several reporters who came to catch the big news used unmanned communication repeaters to convey text news and military intelligence to the portal base thousands of miles away. These text news will once again be turned into digital signals that pass through the network cable of the portal and reach the people of the whole country who are affected by these civilians. The interpreter began to make contact with Elta's receptionist under the protection of the soldiers. While Huang Yuan was busy sweating profusely, the helicopter group carrying VIP and TV crews in the rear, loaded with wearing parts and specially responding to the rescue of crashed people, was still on the way. The stars are beginning to reveal themselves in front of Garcia's beings, and negotiations to determine the fate of the empire for a long time to come are about to begin.