"Can't there be some good news today?"
Muttering to himself, Dick opened the envelope and quickly glanced through the contents of the letter. As he read on, his frown gradually relaxed and he finally laughed out loud.
"Master, is this good news?"
"No, it's also bad news, but it's good bad news."
"Good bad news?"
"Our beloved Crown Prince Charles...is dead!"
"Ah!?" x3
He rubbed a small flame and burned the letter paper and the envelope in his hand into ashes. After learning the sad news of the Crown Prince's death, Dick could not hide the "sadness" on his face.
If nothing unexpected happens, the news of the crown prince's death should have reached the imperial capital by now. Those powerful people with connections must have received the news earlier than him, and may have already taken some action.
081. The Sizzling Powder Keg
After the Crown Prince's sudden death, all kinds of true and false rumors were rife. It was not until more than a month after the incident that Dick finally got a relatively complete picture of the whole incident through some special intelligence channels.
It’s not an assassination, but it’s better than assassination!
To put it simply, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, who is old but young at heart, was warmly received by the local lord when he passed through a certain earldom.
The earl, who was bent on currying favor with the Crown Prince, had long heard that the Crown Prince had some very peculiar hobbies and liked to chat with married women late into the night. So he catered to his tastes and took the initiative to introduce his young and beautiful concubine to the Crown Prince, and lent him his bedroom so that the two who had met too late could have an in-depth exchange.
The count's concubine was also a ruthless person. In order to win over the crown prince, she added some aphrodisiac powder into his wine. However, she didn't know that the nearly seventy-year-old crown prince had secretly taken the small pills she had prepared before entering the bedroom with her. As a result, the two drugs with the same effect combined powerfully, causing the crown prince to faint on the spot due to tachycardia.
After the accident, the delegation accompanying the Crown Prince on his tour was in chaos, especially the royal guards who were responsible for protecting the Crown Prince's safety. After hearing the screams of the Earl's concubine, they immediately broke into the room.
They immediately controlled the Earl's concubine and pulled out the Earl himself who was trying to eavesdrop from under the bed, but they failed to rescue His Royal Highness the Crown Prince.
After all, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince is old enough that he cannot be brought back even if the high priest uses resurrection magic, unless some god himself comes and is willing to use his divine power to extend his life.
In this way, the first heir to the empire died in a very undignified way on his way to the north.
The news spread quickly and at an unimaginable speed. After all, there were so many eyes on the Crown Prince, and there were also traitors in the delegation who were loyal to various forces.
In the Duke of Best's palace, the Crown Prince had just died in the first half of the night, and the old Duke received the news before dawn in the second half of the night.
After reading the secret letter handed to him by the old butler who woke him up late at night, the Duke pondered for a moment and immediately asked someone to take the message to the third prince Bailey.
The third prince Bailey is the prince supported by the Best family and is the second in line to the throne of the empire. With the death of the eldest prince Charles, he is now the new first in line to the throne.
It is worth mentioning that there are a total of five princes in the empire. The second and fourth princes died young. The eldest prince is 69 years old this year and has passed away at the age of 69. However, the remaining two princes are very young. The third prince is just 28 years old this year, and the fifth prince is only thirteen. They are the result of the old emperor's successful pregnancy at the age of 77.
You have to know that Crown Prince Charles is also a grandfather. His eldest grandson is already seventeen years old this year, but this child has to call the little boy who is four years younger than him "Fifth Uncle".
Logically speaking, there are only two princes left in the empire, one is 28 years old and the other is only 13. No matter how you think about it, the one who has reached adulthood should be made the new crown prince.
But Hesse VII, who was over 90 years old, had always favored his youngest son. In addition, there were empresses in the history of the Hesse Empire, so among the many married princesses, there were also some ambitious guys.
The current empire is like a powder keg. While various forces are engaging in verbal battles in the political arena, they are also privately strengthening their private armies in preparation for possible armed conflicts.
In the brutal history of the Hessian Empire, almost every change of imperial power would lead to bloodshed, the only difference was the amount of bloodshed.
Now that the Crown Prince has passed away unexpectedly, his death is very likely to become a ignited fuse, causing this growing powder keg to explode prematurely!
When the storm was about to come to the imperial capital, Dick, who was hiding far away in the northern border, was so "sad" because of the death of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince that he ate three bowls of wine!
"That's great. Now we don't have to worry about receiving the crown prince on his northern tour."
On the open-air terrace on the top floor of the castle, Dick sat at the dining table, basking in the warm midday sunshine of Lagog, while happily tasting the red wine stew made by Belfa. Turning his head to look down at the castle, he could also see the "improvisational performance" on the main entrance square.
With the joint efforts of the intelligence agency "Forget-Me-Not" and the private army, the criminals who destroyed the cornfield were soon arrested.
But what slightly surprised Dick was that the criminals were not the hands of unscrupulous profiteers, but some small landowners in Laguge.
These local small landlords, like the profiteers from outside, wanted to hoard goods and drive up grain prices in the spring to make some dirty money, but Dick ended up cutting off their source of income.
Therefore, there are those who don't know their own status and want to do something to retaliate against Dick.
When these people saw Dick promoting new crops locally, although they did not use the governor's authority to directly force all farmers to change their crops (because this would cause public resentment), they still issued an order requiring each village to plant no less than 50 acres of experimental fields.
So this group of people first spread rumors that this fast-growing crop would rob the soil of fertility and cause a reduction in yields of other crops, and then took the opportunity to incite farmers to destroy the experimental fields.
The private army that was sent to wait in ambush quickly caught several guys who were holding sickles and wanted to destroy the fields on the spot, and then followed the clues to find the instigators and the financial backers behind them.
Tia, who was in charge of commanding the operation, caught all the criminals in one fell swoop, and then, with Dick's permission, personally presided over the public trial and made the crimes of these people public.
"Destroying farmland is a capital crime, even in the flawed imperial laws. Fortunately, I am kind-hearted and cannot bear to kill."
Hearing Dick bragging, Black Gun, who was serving as a guard nearby, couldn't help but roll his eyes, thinking that you just can't bear to kill, so all those who can work have been sent to labor camps.
The labor reform farm established by Dick is now well-known in Laguge. Initially, those sent there were captured bandits and robbers, with sentences ranging from three years to life. Later, they caught some ordinary criminals, and as long as their sentences were more than three months, they would be sent in for re-education. This made the size of the farm quickly increase from the initial 5,000 people to 6,000.
Seeing that the labor camp farm was becoming more and more prosperous, Dick immediately decided to introduce a batch of textile machinery to ensure that the prisoners would not feel too bored when they were not farming in the winter.
Dick couldn't help but sigh in his heart. In an empire that was unwilling to promote even basic education, he was teaching "cutting-edge technology" such as operating sewing machines to a group of guilty prisoners for free. He was really too kind!
side do you want to stand on?
Time passed quickly and it was July. Hamuradi, who was deliberately left aside by Dick, could no longer sit still.
After parting with Dick that day, Hamradi lurked in the town, pretending to be mysterious and waiting confidently for the other party to contact him. As a result, he waited for a whole week.
At first, Hammuradi remained calm, thinking that the child must be too young. Such an awesome legendary figure like himself took the initiative to recognize him as his relative. If his adopted grandson was not so excited that he burst into tears, he would be terrified and it would take him some time to digest the news.
While waiting, he was also secretly observing in order to judge his grandson's abilities.
But as he waited, Hamradi realized that something seemed to be wrong. It seemed as if his grandson had forgotten about him and had no intention of contacting him at all.
This made Hamradi feel a little embarrassed. He didn't want to lower himself and take the initiative to contact her, but he also didn't want to waste time like this meaninglessly. Therefore, his situation was very awkward.
If it were someone else, with Hamradi's previous temper, he would choose a dark and windy night to sneak into the other person's house, use his magic weapon Shadow Blade to gently wake up the other person's sleeping soul, and give him a psychological trauma that would be remembered for a lifetime.
But facing Dick, none of his traditional old tricks were of any use.
Because Dick was more powerful than he had expected, and he had many capable people under him, including three Saint-level masters. He had seen it with his own eyes that night. If it really came down to a head-on clash of one against three, even a veteran master like him would have no choice but to temporarily avoid the limelight... that is, to run away.
Hammuradi still remembered the three women he had fought, two of whom were obviously twins, and they had public identities in Lagug, as centurions of the cavalry under the governor. It was said that Dick had specially organized a tournament after arriving in Lagug and recruited rural rangers. The general public thought that these two were high-level warriors and did not know their actual level.
You have to know that Saint-level masters are not just random people on the street. If you just hold a competition in a remote place like Laguge, you can attract two of them at once.
Therefore, Hamuradi concluded that they and Dick must have known each other for a long time, and the so-called martial arts competition was just a formality that allowed the two of them to have a public identity without revealing their true strength.
In addition to these beautiful masters whose origins are unknown, Dick has many Earth elites under his command, including a doctor in a clinic and a retainer in charge of agriculture. Hammuradi wants both of these talents to come over.
Hamradi approached Dick to get people. He wanted to rob him at first, but after accidentally discovering that Dick was related to him, he changed his tactics and wanted to deceive him. Not only did he want to take away the talents under Dick, he also wanted to get his hands on the "cold iron", a specialty of Laguge.
If Dick was not useful, Hamuradi would not have taken the initiative to recognize a lowly and tainted-blood person as his relative just because of blood relationship.
But this kid was so ungrateful that Hamuradi was furious.
Since its establishment, the Dead Tree Party has been working hard to restore the great Holy Kingdom of the Elven in their minds, but they have been busy for hundreds of years, stirring up trouble in human society, but have always achieved little results.
Hammuradi gradually realized that assassinating high-ranking officials, creating hatred, and inciting wars could indeed cause considerable trouble to the human race, but if the elves themselves did not recover, it would be in vain to weaken the human race's strength.
The elves have been devastated since the destruction of the Holy Kingdom, and have not recovered to this day. The remaining population is less than one million, less than one-tenth of the Holy Kingdom period.
On the other hand, the human race that replaced the elves, the Hessian Empire, the strongest human race, has a population of nearly 80 million. Add to that more than 30 countries and city-states such as Fenglu and Rodia, and the total population of the human race is conservatively estimated to be 500 million, which is 500 times that of the elves!
Therefore, many elders of the Dead Tree Party, including Han Muradi, believed that if they wanted to recover the Holy Kingdom, it was not enough to just stir up trouble on the human side, but they also had to restore the population of the elves.
So the Dead Tree Party came up with a so-called "Paradise Plan" to accelerate population reproduction.
You have to know that elves are not like humans. They are in estrus all year round and can give birth after ten months of pregnancy.
Under normal circumstances, a pure-blooded elf would not reach full adulthood until he was 300 years old, would get married at the age of 500, would be pregnant for 20 years, and would give birth once every 1 to 200 years, so at most he would give birth to three to four babies in his lifetime.
At this birth rate, it may take tens of thousands of years for the elves to recover to their peak population during the Holy Kingdom period.
But the old people of the Holy Nation of the Dead Tree Party could not wait any longer, so they decided to artificially speed up the process.
They first found several offshore islands far away from the mainland to build secret bases, then extradited some young elves to live on the islands, and later introduced "Earth technology" and used drugs and coercive means, just like breeding livestock, to force these elves to reproduce continuously.
At the same time, they also imitated the human race and absorbed the people of Earth for their own use.
Excellent doctors and agricultural experts, as well as high-yield crops like corn, are what their Dead Tree Party urgently needs right now.
After waiting for the eighth day, Hammuradi finally moved to Bengbu!
He took the initiative to contact Dick, but he didn't go straight to the main picture. Instead, he used the magic communication card to talk to Dick on the phone for a long time. The reason was very high-sounding. He said that he wanted to know more about his "good grandson" and wanted to ask about his daughter Yelina's experience over the years.
Dick thought to himself that you really know how to find people, but you had to ask him, who should know nothing.
Dick's biological mother in this life died when he was born. His father personally ordered her to be smothered to death on the delivery bed with a pillow. Dick witnessed her tragic death with his own eyes, but in order not to expose the truth that he was a soul traveler, he could only pretend that he didn't know.
During the years he lived in the Duke's Mansion, Dick didn't even know his biological mother's name, and people around him kept silent about it, only saying that she died of "difficult childbirth."
His third sister, who had a bad relationship with him, made up an even more vicious rumor, saying that Dick's mother was actually still alive, but after the old duke got tired of her, he sold her to the lowest-class brothel in the imperial capital, where she was abused by countless men every day and had long forgotten about her child.
Facing Hammuradi, Dick did not hide anything and told him everything he "should know".
The other party was silent for a while, then suddenly asked.
"Dick, do you hate the human race?"
"Can't say I like it."
Realizing where Hamuradi was trying to lead the conversation, Dick calmly agreed with him, while Hamuradi continued to ask.
"Then do you want to avenge your mother? Yelena is my daughter, Hamuradi. It was the human slave traders who took her away from me and turned her into a slave singer, who suffered humiliation and abuse. I don't believe that Yelena died of childbirth. She was killed by Rune Best!"
Hamradi's tone became more and more agitated, like an angry father who had just learned that his precious daughter was bullied by a scumbag, but Dick keenly heard the hidden meaning.
The other party was trying to induce him to hate the human race and stand on the side of the Dead Tree Party representing the elves. This routine was not unfamiliar to Dick, who had been on the Internet on Earth.
083. Ways to make money that most people don’t know
"This old man is trying to trick me!"
After listening for a while, Dick understood what Hamuradi was up to. This guy was most likely trying to drag him onto the Dead Tree Gang's pirate ship.
The other party is like a distant relative who pops out from some corner after you become rich. After meeting you, he tries to get close to you and then pretends to be mysterious and says that he has a way to make money. He won't tell this to ordinary people, but because you are a relative, he is willing to make money together with you.
If you throw it, it's like throwing a meat bun at a dog and there's no way it will come back.
If you don't vote, he will start to be sarcastic to you.
Han Muradi is undoubtedly the best of these relatives. He is the type who would dare to snatch it away by force if you don't give it to him.
As expected! As Hamuradi was talking, he began to "invite" Dick to join the Dead Tree Party, and even wrote a blank check, which would allow Dick to become the regional leader of the Restoration Army in the North. All the Dead Tree Party elves lurking in the North would obey his orders.
After hearing this, Dick couldn't help but sneer in his heart.
He really didn't know how powerful the Dead Tree Party was in the northern part of the empire, but he knew how bad the Dead Tree Party's reputation was around the world. Even the few remaining elven city-states were unwilling to have anything to do with this group of extremists.
Dick was about to refuse, but then he suddenly thought of the pirates who had not yet been dealt with, so he changed his words.
"Grandpa, I am flattered that you would invite me to join your great cause. I have to express my gratitude to you for your high regard."
Hearing Dick's words, Hamuradi's eyes lit up, thinking that this cheap grandson was quite sensible. Just as he was about to ask Dick for the person, he heard the other side speak first.
"Grandpa, you just said that you have great powers and have connections in both the black and white worlds in the North. Then you must be able to contact the fjord pirates in the north of my territory, right? To be honest, I have a way to make money here. I won't tell others, but you are my dear grandfather, so I will definitely ask you to make money together."
"Uh……"
Hearing the tone of the other party offering treasures, Hamuradi always felt that something was strange, but he couldn't put his finger on it for a while. However, Dick said that he had a way to make money, which really made Hamuradi a little tempted. Moreover, their Dead Tree Party did have some friendship with the fjord pirates in the north of Laguge. The two sides had always cooperated and did some shady business.
The Dead Tree Party was not actually poor, but that did not prevent them from being short of money. After all, their ultimate goal was to defeat the rising human race and rebuild the Holy Kingdom of the Elves, and there were too many places to spend money.
So after hesitating for a moment, Hamuradi did not ask Dick for help, but instead asked about "ways to make money". When Dick heard that the fish had taken the bait, the corners of his mouth could not help but rise...
"Anyway, this is the situation. My plan is to set a trap. Catch all the Dry Tree Gang and Fjord Pirates in the North. Do you have anything to add?"
In the "confidential meeting room" of the castle, Dick sat at the head of the conference table, his hands crossed and his chin supported, COSing Commander Ikari, with his capable retainers on both sides.
Tia was the first to raise her hand to ask to speak, and she went straight to the core issue as soon as she opened her mouth.
"How to deal with that Hamradi?"
"Kill him!"
