More and more people began to appear around the settlements.

The farmers who had been here a month or two had spread the word of the place, and the farmers had told their fellow villagers with their purses that a town had appeared out of thin air on the monastery, and that everything would be bought and everything sold. Those who starved with whole pots of gold coins also heard about this place, and people said that prices in the place were returning to stability, that gold coins were in normal circulation, and that although they could not be used as freely as they used to be, there was no such thing as selling a wheat cake for a gold coin.

The clean flats were gone, the small turnip fields and rose gardens that the monks had planted had been removed, and the newly arrived residents had set up tents haphazardly, and the Valans had to set aside an entire area for the new arrivals. But many residents simply ignore any rules, walking around the settlement on their own and then setting up camp in a place of their choice to settle themselves and their families. Battles for good plots of land have arisen one after another, and the Valan soldiers are severely understaffed, and they are exhausted by various disputes on a daily basis. The rapid influx of inhabitants made it very difficult to supply food, and at the best of times merchants even had surplus meat to supply, and in recent times even brown bread has become sought-after.

Residents who have experienced famine have a pathological possessiveness of food: many residents, especially those with families, will use their money in exchange for whatever food they can get as soon as they have worked. People's confidence in gold coins has not been fully restored, and holding this thing makes people feel uneasy in their hearts, and they must spend it as soon as possible. This is often the case in monasteries. The gold and silver coins were paid at noon, and in the evening they were collected by the merchants of the monastery. This situation was a bit confusing to the brethren in the monastery. Such a quick deal has never been done in the past. People wonder if gold coins still have value. Why doesn't it mean anything to save now?

A few days ago. An old man from Creel came to Dean Innocent and said that he could help him conjure wealth out of thin air. The bombastic Oriental said that he was once a Veil, in the small city-state of Salander in the oasis, and that he knew the art of wealth, and that he only had to make a fuss about the pricing and supply of goods and it would roll in.

Lothar didn't trust this Creelian very much, "Wealth? We only controlled one stone mine, no gold or silver mines. You say we're going to have a lot of wealth, and I think you're bragging. ”

"Bragging?" The Creelian goatee trembled. There was a sly glint in his eyes, "You call those golden or white stones wealth?" No, I call them gold and silver, but I don't care if they are wealth. You should go out and take a look around, see how many people are working here, see how many stones, logs, and meat and grain are circulating around, and see how busy your ridiculous little dock is, and then come and talk to me about what wealth is. ”

"What does that mean?" Lothar couldn't quite understand, "Is it a riddle?" ”

"For those fools who think they can buy everything with gold coins. This is indeed a riddle. At this, the Creelian turned his head and said to the Gothic Director, who was frowning and not speaking, "Do you think it's a riddle too?" ”

"What you say is self-justifying. But you say you can make more wealth, I can't believe it. Goth said, "I'll introduce you to the Dean." He doesn't necessarily meet you. Do you have anything to bring to him? ”

The Creelian pinched the tip of his goatee and said, "Tell the Dean two things." First, my name is Hassan. In the future, it will be the treasurer of your monastery, yes, just tell him. Second, he was told that it was true that gold and silver could be exchanged for wealth, but it was by no means wealth itself. "If he can understand, he will sincerely invite me to stay, if he can't understand, then I will visit other people, such as Kalinin the Vychian, such as Gil the Nord, such as Giovanni the Valan, there are so many smart guys in this world, I can pick one by one until I pick one expert." ”

Lothar almost immediately wanted the Varan soldiers to kick the frighteningly loud creature out, but Goth, after taking a deep look at the Creelian, turned and went to the dean's lounge.

An hour later, the abbot sent for Hassan the Creelian, a fine linen coat, a pair of boots, a pair of leather slippers, enough wheat flour for a week, two loaves of bread, a bottle of wine, twenty quills, and a stack of Saland paper. A Waran soldier carefully pointed out a small room assigned to Hassan, and told Hassan that if his clothes were dirty, he could find a washerwoman, and if he was sick, he could boil hot water for drinking, and that the pots were shared, and that he should walk as far away as possible from his home when urinating and urinating.

Hassan took the things in stride, crouched down and packed his belongings, discarding the torn toe-baring shoes he had worn from Creel and replacing them with new ones. When he crouched down, Hassan was a tiresome tramp, and when he stood up, Hassan became the treasurer of the monastery. The treasurer wrapped all his possessions into a large bag, walked through the crowd, and walked towards his residence.

The abbot stood in a high room in the monastery and stood by the window looking at Hassan below.

The dean liked to stand by the window, looking out melancholy and pretending to be in deep thought, while concentrating on chatting with the people in the room behind him, which made him seem inscrutable.

"Lord Dean," said the Gothic Chief, "though I don't know what you think of him, I do think you were hasty in hiring him like that. You should let him be an advisor for a while. ”

"There's a lot more to be sloppy, and this won't be the last." Without looking back, the dean said, "Go and put up a notice to give free of charge a hundred loaves of bread and sixty bowls of oatmeal to the widows, children, and beggars who are unable to work, and tell them that this is to welcome the new treasurer, Hassan." ”

"Lord Dean," the goth director was a little dissatisfied. "You're so generous, you'll attract the flies of the whole world. Those who don't know how to learn will definitely flock to it when they hear the news. ”

"Then let them come." The dean turned around as he spoke, and Goth found that there was a wooden cross of the Eastern Church hanging on the dean's chest, the cross of the Western Church was only one horizontal and one vertical, while the Eastern one had a long and a short two horizontals, and below the two horizontals, there was a diagonal fold, this wooden cross Goth had not seen before, and when Goth was still thinking about this cross, the dean continued. "We'll always have a place for them here."

"The monastery doesn't have such a big place!" The goth steward said in a lost voice.

The goth director doesn't have the desperate messing habits of the dean, he is a down-to-earth and serious person, and his first consideration is how much people need to eat? How many beds do I need to sleep? How many rooms do you need? How many soldiers are needed to manage? How much cloth do you need? What if there is a thief? What should businessmen do if they raise prices? What to do if robbers lurk in the surrounding woods to raid travelers? The Goth Director was exhausted by these things, and if it weren't for the fact that the Abbey might be the only place where he could make a difference, Goth might have resigned from his position as Director long ago. People are trouble, and supervisors have complained more than once that more people equals more trouble.

"Who said to you," said the dean, sitting down, looking up at Goth. "We're going to stay in the convent forever?"

Goth thought for a moment about this, "Are you going to transfer out of here?" ”

"There are a hundred ways to get out of here," said the dean with interest, "and you chose the most boring one for me." All right. You get the food out of the way I said, and tomorrow morning, I'm going to let most people know who Hassan is. ”

"Do you understand what he's saying?"

"It doesn't matter much. Mr. Goth. ”

"Well, there's one more thing you need to know."

The goths began to complain again that the number of thieves was increasing.

After the destruction of the Triumvirate Tavern. Soon it reopened elsewhere. This time, the merchant seemed to be prepared to stay long, so he spent money on a tavern walled with wooden planks. He also built a wine shed out of straw, and he named it 'Eros Garland and Kiss', but the people always smashed the sign at night, scribbled on the wooden boards with mud, and wrote "The Triumvirate Hotel", and the merchants had no choice but to accept the name, and the drunkards stopped after that. Of course, the merchant's bad luck was not over, he had been to Swadia and had bought a recipe for a liquor called wolf hair, which was not sold well in Svadia because it was too strong, but it was very popular with the Wikiians and Valans, and as soon as the wolf hair was first sheared, it would be sold out. It was not long before the merchant discovered that a thief was watching him, and that he had woken up with only seven or eight of the ten vials of wolf hair he had prepared the night before, and that he had to report it to the sheriff, and that the Valans were too short to help him.

Betty, the shopkeeper, also reports that her baked bread is always stolen, and that tools and logs are stolen as long as they are left outside the door. Betty's sheep were originally going to be raised to produce milk and then make cheese, but the sheep were also stolen. There was already a black market in the settlements, where goods of unknown origin flowed, and because they were cheap, the inhabitants loved and hated it: everyone wanted to buy the neighbor's heirloom at a very cheap price, but they didn't want their own things to be taken from them. The Valans smashed the black market several times, but there were only a few people in the black market, and these guys were doing business here today, and they would run away to other places tomorrow, and they couldn't be guarded against it at all.

Even stones and logs were being stolen, and many of the new residents wanted to use them to improve their homes, but the monastery's own need for stone was not satisfied: it needed them in too many places, and now the monastery was like a hungry monster, devouring all kinds of building materials. The price of stone and wood was rising, and now the stonemasons of the quarry were so wealthy that they bought a vacant lot on the north side of the monastery to build a two-story building to house their families. The abbot had forbidden anyone outside the monastery to use the stones, but he was even more reluctant to offend the quarry, so he had to acquiesce to the plans of the stonemasons to build the house. This was not a good start, and soon many families began to find ways to get stones, and more and more people were 'ordering' stones and other building materials on the black market day by day. As a result, thefts occurred in places such as docks, estates, and workshops, and artisans had to send special personnel to look after the materials that had been piled up everywhere. Dissatisfaction with the sheriff of Valan grew day by day.

Lothar entered the house at this time and saved the Dean from the Gothic Director's complaints. Lothar took out a list and handed it to the Dean.

"Director Goth." Lothar laughed and said, "You're fat again!" ”

This sentence made the dean laugh, indeed, when the dean first met Goth, the flesh on Goth's face was tense, and at that time the dean remembered that Goth was still teaching a group of little girls to sing, and now let those girls come to see Goth, and half of them will definitely not recognize him. The flesh on Goth's face is now swollen and saggy, and the bags under his eyes are more pronounced. The backs of the hands are covered with thick flesh, and when you move a little, a layer of fine sweat will appear. Behind Mr. Goth's back, there was always a towel, and every once in a while, he had to ask the servants to help him change it, which was very troublesome.

"If you care about other issues as much as if I'm fat or not," Goth said solemnly, "we don't have so many thieves here." I'm only responsible for the progress of the building. But the law and order deteriorated, and I couldn't work properly. Brother Lothar, if I remember correctly, you should be responsible for these things. ”

"Indeed I am." Lothar said. "So I'm going to recruit a vigilante team among the locals."

Although Goth was not very good at analyzing the struggles between lords and lords, he knew some principles when serving in various noble families.

Foreign aristocrats were often overlooked by the all-foreigners. This rift generally takes a generation or two to break in, at that time. Either the nobility themselves were assimilated by the natives, gradually abandoning the customs of the past. Either the nobles used force to force their subjects to learn their own way of life, in short, the lords had to become like the people in order to avoid trouble. Now even the Goths could see that the Dean's hands were too haphazard, and that it was a terrible thing: the soldiers, mainly Valans, were the only force to be counted on in the moment of crisis; The monks were mostly East Wiecchians, and there was even a Berke monk; The people are even more diverse, Vychians, Creelians, Kujits, and among them, Wikibians are the majority.

It stands to reason that keeping Wikibians in power is the way a wise lord should go. On the contrary, those who are inferior in numbers should be promoted, and the weaker should be put in power, and they will be willing to help the lord maintain the status quo when they get the sweetness and always have a sense of crisis. This is the reason why Goth, although disgusted, still supports the dean's promotion of foreigners as consultants. Now that Lothar was about to form a vigilante team, Goth instinctively felt that he should resist it.

"The Valans' security team is a bit of a problem, but that's because of the lack of manpower." The Gothic director said word by word, while paying attention to the dean's eyes, hoping that the dean would understand his thoughts, "As far as I know, Giovanni has made a mess of Valankov, and many Valans who are close to the prince of Kalinin have fled to the city of Little East Lake. I know some of them, they have had a good relationship with you in the past, and they will be willing to help you. ”

"The Valans are good soldiers." The dean smiled and said, "But Kalinin-sama thinks so too. ”

"What do you mean?" Mr. Goth did not understand.

"Let's start with something else. Kalinin wrote me a letter in which he appreciated everything I had done here, and then, he said that I should begin to adjust the tribute to him according to the population. The dean tapped his fingers on the table. It started this year. ”

"What?" Goth was taken aback, "It's not fair, he gave all the surrounding territories tax exemptions for two years, and you're still his friend." ”

"Friends?" The dean frowned, and then immediately smiled and said, "Naturally, he is a friend, so he will put away the warmth to others, friends are like this, right." Of course, this is nothing, my friend Kalinin also said that because of Giovanni's treachery, he needs to gather all the Valans together, so that there will be no more disintegration and sectarianism within the Valans, so he will no longer allow the Valans to leave him and come to pay their allegiance to me. Since then, we have no new Varan here. ”

In addition to the Valan soldiers who followed the dean to the post, more than a dozen Valan soldiers came to defect one after another, and if Kalinin no longer allowed the soldiers to move freely, then they could only count on these people in the future.

"That would also allow a few of these dozens of Valan soldiers to start training recruits," Goth said, "and there are many Valan villages in the west, and we have plenty of food, so there is no problem in recruiting enough Valan recruits." It's a bad situation, but I can do my best to sustain it for a while. Until these recruits can be used. ”

"You are completely blind to the Wikidians," Lothar said sourly, "Didn't the Dean tell you about Kalinin's last decision?" ”

"What else is there to decide?" Goth asked Lothar.

"My friend Kalinin said," said the dean, who threw the letter on the table with a blank expression, "since he is still the count of Valankov, there is no reason why the Valans should not be loyal to him. He will recall the Valan soldiers who are currently in the monastery, leaving me with only two guards to guard me. On this day next week, the Varans will leave en masse. ”

"This news can't get out!" Goth was shocked, "Thieves will swarm." ”

"That's why I'm raising a team of locals," the playful look on Lothar's face faded away, revealing a military-like seriousness, "the first batch of sixteen, all of them are sturdy guys. But the Valans would take all their weapons and armor with them, and the sixteen would not even get a shield. ”

"Is this sixteen peasants?" Goth asked uneasily, "How do they keep the law and order, with pitchforks and flails?" ”

"It's not that bad, the monastery has an arsenal, and a few of the brothers have joined the army, so they can temporarily replace the Varans. Among the sixteen men was a fellow who claimed to be a squire of the knight's family, and the knight died of the plague, but left his armor to him. The only strange thing is that this squire can't ride a horse. ”

"It's definitely an impostor." Goth judged.

"But we only have counterfeits available." Lothar said, "Your Excellency, here's the list, take a look at it." ”

The dean took the page, scanned the name on it, nodded in acquiescence, and then asked a question, "Lothar, what is embroidered on the shield of the Valans, do you know?" ”

"It's a double-headed eagle," Lothar wondered why the dean said this, "it's the emblem of the Romanovs." ”

"Now we don't have any Varans here, which reminds me of one thing: I am now a vassal of Kalinin, not a retainer. Therefore, it is not appropriate for the shield of the newly recruited soldier to be embroidered with a double-headed eagle. This squad should have my own insignia embroidered to represent the monastery. ”

Lothar frowned and thought for a moment, "I don't see anything wrong. You say that, you must have already designed the emblem, right? ”

"That's right."

The Dean slowly spread out a roll of parchment on the table, and Goth and Lothar both leaned in.

On the pale yellow parchment was a shield emblem with no coats of arms such as a lion and a dragon, and the lines were so simple and clear that the two men looked at it for a while to see what it was.

A tree, a big tree that is lush.

"It's an oak tree."

The Brown family, was born. (To be continued.) )