Chapter 32 Part 1

Although Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang were graduates of a prestigious university, they were still naive, clear-eyed students who hadn’t been beaten down too much by society.

Only after becoming “village chiefs” did they realize how many pitfalls there were in infrastructure.

When building the streets and city walls, Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang assumed this was the main expense of town and village construction.

If you only looked at the money spent, construction costs were indeed the highest.

But in a thriving knight’s domain, once the city plan was laid out, the returns came in incredibly fast.

It was then that Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang realized something they often saw in the news back home—local government finances mostly didn’t come from taxes, but from selling land.

Their streets didn’t even have sewer systems yet, and all the major organizations had already staked their claims, mostly paying in full.

The residential and commercial districts were also explosively popular.

Back then, to be fair, they used the experience from their homeland’s hottest real estate markets and didn’t differentiate by status. They used a lottery system to determine who got the purchase qualifications.

That drove the people on the sidelines insane.

What? As long as I have money and luck, I can buy a house in the best location?

And I’m buying it directly from the lord, with no middlemen taking a cut?

The Adventurers’ Guild of Green Sand City was also going to open a branch in the knight’s domain. They frequently came to ask Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang about the construction progress so they could send people to build the guild hall as soon as possible.

The guild master laughed. “It’s the first time I’ve seen the Green Sand City Adventurers’ Guild so packed with adventurers coming to take quests that you can barely walk. The receptionists are utterly exhausted.”

Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang counted money at night.

Just from selling land, they had nearly recouped most of their construction debts.

Selling land really is profitable. Xia Xifeng wiped his face, suppressing the twitching at the corners of his mouth.

Compared to city construction, the money spent on developing supporting agricultural material production lines was just a drop in the bucket when looking only at the initial investment.

But when writing the plan, the two discovered that investment in agriculture was almost pure expenditure with no hope of making money in the short term.

It might even be more than just a short-term thing—this investment was a bottomless pit. Don’t even think about making it back.

Just like back home, for agriculture to be profitable, the scale had to be large, and one had to plant cash crops. It was very difficult to make money from basic food crops.

Small-scale peasant farming had almost nothing to do with profit.

And with the convenience of magical network energy, the meager taxes from farmers were practically a drop in the bucket for the entire knight’s domain.

No wonder lords so easily neglected the farmers.

If “people” themselves weren’t a resource, they might have treated farmers as parasites.

A very realistic and cruel viewpoint: if local governance only considers “profit,” then abandoning a group of people is more cost-effective than trying to drag them along.

When a lord built enough magical network stabilizers, he could even generously provide his poor citizens with almost free food just enough to keep them from starving, along with large quantities of strong, non-grain-distilled liquor to numb their minds.

Should you increase the yields of ordinary people’s fields, help them find work to support themselves, give them more education so more elites emerge—or spend a little money to let these people lie down and do nothing until they close their eyes for good? Which aligns better with “profit”?

But this didn’t align with the values Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang had grown up with.

With the productivity demonstrated by magical network technology, the two firmly believed that with production capacity matched to production relations, even if their citizens couldn’t sprint their way into the living standards of the able-bodied ordinary people back home, they should at least not have to subsist on black bread mixed with dirt and wheat chaff, and be able to buy themselves a cheap new set of clothes every change of season, right?

And when the apocalypse arrived, even with magical network stabilizers built, the network would still frequently fluctuate.

Farmers’ own fields, not reliant on the magical network, could be self-sufficient, so more people would survive.

Because of the values they’d grown up with, Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang couldn’t possibly give up subsidizing agriculture.

So this bottomless pit would probably remain unfilled forever.

“Did we move too fast?” Xia Xifeng muttered. “The knight’s domain isn’t even fully built yet, and we’re already thinking about using industry and commerce to subsidize agriculture.”

Qin Lang said, “It’s not quite a subsidy yet. We haven’t abolished the agricultural tax.”

Xia Xifeng rubbed his nose and grumbled, “Right, that’s true.”

Qin Lang asked, “Have you decided what to sell?”

Xia Xifeng nodded. “Simple mental protection items that even non-combat classes can afford.”

Thanks to the Blood Moon for bringing business opportunities.

After the Three Great Nations issued warrants for the Blood Moon Evil God Cult, they hadn’t yet discovered the enemy.

The Outer Gods had secretly been causing trouble for an unknown number of years, and their plotting was only exposed at the brink of victory by Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang, who had transmigrated. This showed just how covert their actions were.

The deities might be able to find clues in their Divine Domains, but for mortals to immediately ferret out the Outer Gods’ traces was far too difficult.

After all, this world was already quite chaotic to begin with.

Unable to catch the Blood Moon cultists, people could only resort to passive defense.

Current magic items were all handcrafted. Even if there were workshops, it was still just groups of people handcrafting on assembly lines, which was very inefficient.

Crafting magic items required mental power. The higher the maker’s mental power and the keener their perception of the magical network, the better the items they made.

If Xia Xifeng brought out machines, although the items made wouldn’t be as good as fully handcrafted ones—just barely better than nothing—that “nothing” was precisely his market.

No one wanted to die at the hands of cultists, and ordinary people didn’t want to die either.

Even in the worst-case scenario, if this item couldn’t save their lives, it could at least leave behind some evidence, letting others know what killed them, so they wouldn’t die a silent, unnoticed death.

Also, the item issuing an alarm after the fact could prevent them, once controlled, from being manipulated into harming those around them.

Lords needed this too.

They didn’t care about the lives of ordinary people, but they did care about these ordinary people “spreading the plague.”

Generous, kind-hearted lords would proactively place orders, allowing more citizens to obtain basic protection; stingy, selfish lords would also open up the market, letting citizens buy it themselves so they could collect another round of taxes.

The core trade for domains sending out merchant caravans wasn’t just the act of dispatching the caravan itself.

Long-distance merchant caravans were like the “commercial sales delegations” from Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang’s homeland. The caravan’s job was to promote goods, open trade routes, and secure more orders.

The domain had taken in the families of the dwarf merchant caravan. They were seasoned caravan sales elites.

Xia Xifeng very much wanted them to form a caravan again, but he worried they might have psychological trauma and couldn’t bring himself to ask.

This kind of “cold and ruthless” task naturally fell to Qin Lang.

The families of the dwarf merchant caravan indeed had many concerns, but the decision to re-form the dwarf merchant caravan passed almost unanimously.

“It’s always been dangerous out there. We can’t just hide at home forever, doing nothing,” an elder said calmly. “Dwarves are not so easily intimidated.”

Every time the dwarf merchant caravan had conducted trade, the caravan members rotated—some traveling, some on leave. It was impossible for them to drift around outside all year without returning home.

Many of the dwarves who had come to settle in the knight’s domain were former elite members.

Qin Lang used them as the backbone and also recruited citizens with business experience, forming the knight’s domain’s merchant caravan.

Even the halflings, who loved staying at home, had many sign up to join the caravan.

It seemed the young halflings didn’t truly love staying indoors after all. Though they were content with a peaceful pastoral life, they also had a spirit of adventure in their bones.

Leo became the caravan leader.

He had quite a skill for business. Even the original caravan leader acknowledged Leo’s “cunning.”

For the first long-distance caravan journey, Leo would personally lead the team.

Once he reached preliminary cooperation agreements with other lords, Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang would have to “change maps,” embarking on a new journey to travel the world and sign contracts.

By then, the basic operations of the knight’s domain would be running smoothly, and the official selection process would be complete. The two wouldn’t need to stay in the domain to oversee things. They could just manage remotely via communicator meetings every day.

“Before that, pick a name already!” Leo cornered the two. “If you don’t pick a name soon, I’m calling it Sun City!”

Perila, whose bald scalp had finally grown fuzz as thick as a kiwi fruit, nodded vigorously. “And just in time to apologize to our deities.”

Xia Xifeng actually wanted to use names like “Huaxia” or “Yan Huang,” but they just didn’t fit this world.

The two worlds had different languages. If he chose such a name, it could only be transliterated phonetically, which sounded weird and was hard to explain the origin of the city’s name.

A Western-style fantasy world appearing with an Eastern fantasy name didn’t match the aesthetic. It really bothered Xia Xifeng, the story player.

As for Qin Lang, he left it to Xia Xifeng to decide.

“Sun City… wouldn’t that be too arrogant?” Xia Xifeng said. “That name is too grandiose.”

Leo pointed at his own nose. “The Son of the Sun is here. The Sun Guardian family is here. Which city is more worthy of the name ‘City of the Sun’ than we are?”

Perila asked, “Is it that the deities you revere don’t agree?”

It was only then that Leo remembered Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang were also God’s Favored, and not members of the Sunflower Family.

He had completely forgotten that Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang weren’t his own blood relatives.

“Oh, right, pretend I didn’t say anything.” Leo asked, “Do you want to ask your deities?”

Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang exchanged a glance.

Using the Heavenly Father’s name for their city… that would be even more outrageous.

“Then let’s go with Sun.” Xia Xifeng was truly terrible at naming. Might as well borrow the Sun’s name. After all, both he and Qin Lang had already been written into the Sunflower Family’s genealogy. “A good, auspicious meaning—let’s call it Twin Suns City, wishing that the Twin Suns shine forever.”

“The Twin Suns will forever…” Leo’s words cut off halfway as he remembered that his own deities had been called stupid by Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang, and the fact that the Blood Moon had usurped so much of the Silver Moon’s Authority without the Silver Moon even knowing.

Uh… could it be that his deities nearly fell?

The Sun being able to fall… wouldn’t that be too stupid?

“Fine, let’s go with that.” Leo said, “The Twin Suns will definitely shine forever.”

Perila said gloomily, “The deities should forgive us now.”

The two reported to the Twin Suns, asking whether the deities would grant a name.

As long as the Twin Suns agreed, no one else’s objections mattered.

[Oh, this is so embarrassing, no need for this! I forgive them already! Don’t use our two divine names. How about ‘Hope City’?]

[[‘Hope City’ is very good.]]

Leo and Perila looked at each other.

They couldn’t use “Twin Suns” but could use “Hope”? They truly had no idea in what aspect Hope’s Sun’s “embarrassment” manifested.

Also, wasn’t the Hope deity’s tone a bit too lively?

At this moment, an irreverent thought towards the deities surfaced in Perila’s mind.

He thought perhaps he and Leo should swap identities.

Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang received an “oracle” that the Sun of Hope had forgiven them.