"In addition, Baron Hurd also spent a lot of money to hire animal trainers from the Canaanite border city of Media, to capture and train for him a kind of lion-body, eagle-faced, winged monster, this monster is said to be a close relative of the Sphinx, but the intelligence is much lower than the Sphinx, Baron Hurd domesticated these evil-natured, cruel and aggressive magical beasts, usually used slaves to fight with them to entertain guests, and when necessary, it can also be used as the air defense force of Mochizuki City." Joseph added.

"Half-scorpion and sphinx, interesting." A strange smile tugged at the corner of Roland's lips, "Are there any other interesting rumors about this Baron Hurd?" ”

"Oh, yes, one more thing!" Lyudmila leaned into Roland's ear and said, "Lady Sand Rose just mentioned that Baron Hurd seems to be secretly mining gold. ”

"Huh? Gold mine? Roland raised his eyebrows, interested, "Tell me specifically, what's going on?" ”

Lyudmila looked at the sand rose. Sand Rose spread her hands and smiled bitterly: "I don't know much about this matter, His Royal Highness the Prince should ask Mr. Joseph." ”

"I've only heard about the gold mine." Joseph cautiously opened his mouth, "There is a rich lapis lazuli mine near Mount Mochizuki, which was purchased by Baron Hurd more than ten years ago and hired to mine it, and the mined ore is processed into blue dye on the spot and used to print and dye cotton cloth, and he himself has always claimed that he started from this mine, and later used the profits of the lapis lazuli mine to buy cotton plantations, gradually expand the industry, and accumulate a wealth that rivals the wealth of the country, but these claims are not credible, and a lapis lazuli mine alone cannot support his extravagant life, Not to mention the purchase of cotton fields and bribery of high-ranking officials, there were rumors that the lapis lazuli mine was actually a gold mine, and Baron Hurd did not want to be known the truth about his fortune, so he made up lies and secretly mined gold in the name of lapis lazuli. ”

"So far I have no real evidence about the gold mines, but it is not difficult to see the clues from some unusual details," Joseph analyzed, "Baron Hurd did not hire miners to mine ore like others, but bought slaves from the slave market or sand bandits and sent them to the mountains to mine, and what is more unusual is that he refused to allow anyone to visit his mines, which were closely guarded by his private soldiers, and the slaves who entered the mines never saw the light of day, and were imprisoned and cut off from the outside world. Sick or old slaves were not given easier jobs as slave owners usually practiced, and were rumored to have been summarily executed, which was a real anomaly, and the slave owners treated slaves as their property, and few of them wasted them like Baron Hurd, suggesting that the so-called lapis lazuli mine may have hidden some kind of secret. ”

Roland listened to Joseph's narration and fell into deep thought.

After the establishment of the kingdom of Kolas, the first decree issued was to take back the ownerless mines to the state, and the mines under development were to be registered with the government.

Is Baron Hurd's mine not included in the registration and filing, is this out of arrogance and ignorance of the laws of the country, or is it out of greed and does not want to expose the secret gold mines by fulfilling the declaration formalities?

"Now that we've come to the Frontier, it's time for Baron Hurd's secrets to be revealed." Roland turned to Lyudmila, Veronica, Tonya, Sand Rose and Joseph and the others and smiled slightly, "Come back to the airship with me, if the battle goes well, today we will have dinner together in the castle of Baron Hurd in Mochizuki City to celebrate the victory." ”

"Fighting?" Sand Rose was taken aback, "Your Royal Highness, are you going to attack Mochizuki City now?" ”

"To be exact, take back Mochizuki Castle." Roland's indifferent tone was filled with disdain, "A group of moths occupy Mochizuki City, and they really think that they are the soil emperor of the frontier and can rule this land that does not belong to them for a long time, sorry, now they have to wake up from their sweet dreams and face reality." ”

……

Mochizuki Castle, the capital of the Gobi Frontier in the Far East, was founded in 1518 during the reign of the Assanian Emperor Charles III the Short, and the establishment of this border city marked an understanding between the empire and Canaan on the border issue, ending its expansion to the east and devoting resources to the more lucrative cause of colonizing the New World.

Mochizuki Castle, which has a history of more than 100 years, has a permanent population of about 50,000, of which two-thirds are humans, and one-third are half-giants, dwarves, halflings, and other ethnic minorities. During the imperial province era, Mochizuki Castle was positioned as a border fortress, and in its heyday there were 5,000 permanent border guards, and later the successor emperor abandoned Charles III's southern Xinjiang strategy and reduced the size of the southern Xinjiang garrison many times, and by the beginning of this century, the border guards of Mochizuki Castle had only one regiment left.

Not to mention guarding the vast territory of more than 400,000 square miles in southern Xinjiang, the more than 1,000 border guards are not even able to maintain daily patrols along the border, and of course it is impossible to prevent sand bandits from entering the country and harassing them. By the eve of the outbreak of the revolution in 1620, the so-called frontier guards in the southern part of the empire had degenerated into a "chengguan" in a corner of Mochizuki Castle, with outdated equipment, loose discipline, and poor training.

After the overthrow of the imperial rule by the Far Eastern Revolution in 1621, these imperial border guards were also panicked, and they did not have the courage to resist the Kolas legion, and they automatically collapsed and collapsed before the new government sent troops to take over southern Xinjiang, and most of the upper-level officers fled back to the empire with the gold and silver treasures they had looted in southern Xinjiang for many years, and the lower-level officers and ordinary soldiers did not save any property that could be squandered in the second half of their lives, and most of them settled down in southern Xinjiang, married wives and had children, Reluctant to give up the house and land and beautiful slave girls, they defected to Baron Hurd, who was the governor of southern Xinjiang at the time and the mayor of Mochizuki City, and transformed from the imperial border guards into Baron Hurd's private soldiers, and later used these private soldiers as a team to form a "slave hunting team" to hunt down those fugitive slaves who could not bear the whipping and endless labor for the lord of the manor.

At the beginning of the revolution in the Far East, the magnates of Mochizuki City were very panicked for a while, worried that their good days would never return with the change of dynasty, and they looked forward to the imperial army returning to the Far East day and night to eliminate the "rebel party". However, soon after, the rebel leader General Rudolph was crowned at Fort Atonement, proclaiming the independence of the Far East, and the southern frontier was also within the territory of the nascent kingdom of Koras, and successively announced land reform and abolition decrees, which dealt a heavy blow to the mentality of the slave owners of Mochizuki City.