Chapter 14 Part1 (1/2)

014 Leveling Up (Part 1)

Pairs of little hands are placed before Liang Li Dong. If it was on Earth, children of this age normally have white and clean hands but here, he can only see pairs of brown-yellowish of hands filled with calluses. Even Behring as a girl, has big calluses on her hands. The commoners of this world are always hardworking, yet they can never fill their stomachs. If there is a minor drought, someone will starve to death. They worked hard in farming their small piece of land and of the crops harvested, 60% is pa.s.sed to the fief lord, the remaining 10% have to pa.s.s to the village head too, they only remain 30%.

When Liang Li dong became a lord in the game, he only imposed 20% crop tax. From what he can see, this is already very high, he even does not want to collect tax. However, Holevin’s policies does not allow him to do so. Lord collecting crop must be at least 20% and 60% at most……Holevin’s NPC lords all collect the highest crop tax, Liang Li Dong’s fief’s crop tax is the lowest, commercial tax is also the lowest hence it attracted a lot of NPC commoners to emigrate to his fief to live and develop.

His fief turned from a little penniless rural village into a major commercial city in a few years. Not taking into account the fluid population, there is more than 400,000 local citizens. Although it is incomparable to those historic cities that have millions in population, if it continues to develop at this speed, becoming millions in population is just a matter of 10 to 20 years of time. However, because too many commoners migrated to his fief from the surroundings, NPC lords that have fiefs next to his are very hostile to him and joined forces numerous times to attack his fief with all kinds of baffling reasons.

However, it is a pity that he has many player friends. To become a lord with a player ident.i.ty, there is only 4 in the whole server and all are of the Cla.s.s Divine n.o.ble while he is one of them.

Typically, players like to gather and move around in player lord’s fief because there is a sense of friendliness, hence the fiefs of that 4 players are referred to as 4 main cities by players. Players gather to this 4 cities by themselves and make all kinds of exchanges or commercial activities. Each time those n.o.bles nearby attack Liang Li Dong’s fief, players will voluntarily protect his fief, Cla.s.s-ers are not something those ordinary soldiers can stand up to. Furthermore, there is a major guild stationed in Liang Li Dong’s fief.

To players from major guilds, each time those enemy troops attack are very good opportunity to ‘grind’. They wish the enemies will just attack every day while Liang Li Dong was very wise too and implemented the policy of befriending distant states and strike at those neighboring.[1] His relations.h.i.+p with other Holevin n.o.bles are not bad but to those lords bordering his fief, he always hurled insults at them, brought small group of cavalry to their cities and shout using magic to hara.s.s them. Since they are the one to start it, Liang Li Dong played along and made life unbearable for those lords.

A few lords once wanted to seal off commercial routes of Liang Li Dong’s fief but because of the presence of players, this became just a dream. Merchants will put up an escort quest at the mercenaries’ guild and players will form small parties to accept the quest to ensure the merchants’ safety. If they encountered any border trying to make things difficult, they will just plow through. Players can revive after dying but NPC cannot. After some time, the few lords signed a peace treaty with Liang Li Dong privately. They were very humble and paid quite a price.

Liang Li Dong’s war against the lords almost always ended up in a victory except for that Prophecy event once.

In the game, Liang Li dong implemented low crop tax, low commercial tax and he even used the lord system to put up many maintaining law and order quest for players to accept which made the security in the fief very good, even ordinary commoners had a good life, at least they were full and warm.

Now that he sees these children hungry, sallow and dirty all over, his mood is a bit uncomfortable: “From now on, not only do you lot need to wash hands before writing, you have to keep your hands clean normally. Labor is a glorious activity but after labor, you still have to clean your hands and keep your hands as clean as possible. Also, you have to take a bath every day……If your body is dirty, that is a disrespect to words. This is it for today, but from tomorrow onward, you lot have to wash yourselves clean before coming. Your clothes can be old and patched but not dirty. I don’t accept students that profane words here, understand?”

All the children nod heavily.

Liang Li Dong did not preach anything complex to these children. In this age of low productivity, doing things in the name of religion has better effect than simply lecturing. At the start of many civilizations, the so-called etiquette are actually self-cleansing actions before wors.h.i.+ping G.o.ds and are evolution of religious rituals. A clean person has lower chance of getting ill. After faintly feeling this advantage, it slowly transformed into ordinary people’s daily life. In other words, the initial wors.h.i.+ping of religion or ancestors made human love to be clean.

Seeing that all the children has listened to his words, Liang Li Dong raises the board beside him and takes out the plant pigment that Village Head sent someone to deliver and wrote 3 light red words in Holevin language on the board:

‘I’

‘You’

‘He’

Holevin’s words are pictography too hence every word can represent 1 or multiple meanings and these 3 words are sufficiently simple to write. There is only 2 to 3 strokes and is very suitable to use it as rudimentary teaching materials.

The children are listening earnestly. After Liang Li Dong finished explaining the meaning and the way to write these 3 words, he made them practice on the sand, this is also the reason for making them gather beside the small river. Naturally, if there is sufficient money, they can use paper to practice writing but the problem is they are all children from poor families. A parchment’s normal price is 38 bronze coins……Except for small portion of very wealthy n.o.bles, no one is willing to use parchment to practice at the start of learning words.