Don’t raise unruly people in extreme cold weather

Chapter 449: Riot
Although she was preparing for a war with the heretical sect, Perfecto had not forgotten why she went to the outer city slums.

She brought out the compressed biscuit manufacturing technology from the North, built a compressed biscuit production plant in the lower city, and began to produce compressed biscuits at a capacity of dozens of tons a day.

These cookies may look like small pieces, but they can be turned into a large bowl of thick paste by soaking them in water. After drinking it, you won't feel hungry for at least the whole day. It is a great choice for ordinary people to fill their stomachs.

After all, in the city of Langton now, it is difficult to find decent bread and food, even bran, rice bran and the like.

Among the people in the lower city of Langton, a considerable number of them can only survive by relying on the relief distributed by the empire and the church.

At this time, Perfect began to distribute compressed biscuits. For ordinary people... the impact was not that big. It just made them a little fuller than before when they received wheat porridge, but it did not improve the lives of ordinary people.

Of course, for the Langton City Government and the Empire itself, the compressed biscuit technology brought out by Perfectcot has undoubtedly greatly improved the poor situation facing the center of the Empire.

At the very least, the administrative staff in the core of the empire no longer need to worry about food issues, and they also have the spare capacity to use some of the compressed biscuits to provide relief to the slums in the outer city.

This is just the beginning of Perfectkot’s plans for the slums.

After feeding some of the poor in the outer city with compressed biscuits, Perfect began to recruit these poor people who had recovered some strength to serve as laborers to build fortifications for the guards stationed in the lower city.

Perfectcott's consistent principle is never to feed the people and let them do nothing after they are well fed. This is true in the North and in Langton as well.

After receiving relief, people in the lower city will invest in the construction of church shelters, energy towers and dungeons, and the poor in the outer city will of course also be put to use.

However, these people are not high-quality labor, and it is unrealistic to expect them to do some technical work. It is more appropriate to send them to build fortifications for the Guards.

The fortifications of this era certainly cannot be compared with the fortifications that had been developed to the extreme in Perfecto's cognition.

In fact, even with the assistance of Perfecto, the workers and technicians of that era would not be able to build fortifications like the Maginot Line. The most they could do was dig some trenches and build some barricades.

Although it is not impossible to build more defensive fortifications such as bastions, the Guards are only stationed in the lower town of Langton and do not intend to turn it into a battlefield.

So digging some trenches and building some barricades and bunkers are more than enough.

The poor people in the outer city responded with great enthusiasm. Even though these fortifications were to some extent used against them, they still enthusiastically threw themselves into the construction.

At this time of year, it is a blessing to have a job to support your family. Who has the extra time to care about so many things?
What's more, these poor people who have not received much education simply do not have enough knowledge to think about whether the fortifications built by the Guards are used against them. Their knowledge and experience are not enough to support them to understand such a complicated matter.

Thanks to relief and jobs, the situation in the slums in the outer city began to improve. At least the streets were no longer filled with carloads of people who had starved to death, and there were fewer corpses lying on the roadside that looked like zombies.

Most of the poor people were able to barely get enough food and clothing by relying on relief from the city government and working for the guards. This was already a very happy thing for most of them.

This also led to a considerable number of people no longer following those heretical sects that were causing trouble, but instead returning to live a peaceful life.

For ordinary people, faith and other things are empty. What really makes them obedient and follow is often just a bowl of porridge that can fill their stomachs.

With this bowl of porridge, they can be the most obedient subjects or the most lawless rebels. The difference between the two is just who distributes the bowl of porridge and who prevents them from having even a bowl of porridge.

When the empire ignored them and allowed them to freeze and starve to death, these poor lower-class people would naturally follow those heretical sects that obviously had ulterior motives just for a bite to eat.

Even though they knew that these heretical sects wanted to turn them into sacrificial offerings and cannon fodder to fight against the empire, they were willing to follow these heretical sects as long as they had something to eat.

However, when the Empire provided them with jobs and brought them relief food, they would naturally not risk being slaughtered as sacrifices or being massacred by the Empire's war machine to follow the heretical sects for a bite of food if they could fill their stomachs.

Most people just want to make a living and do not really believe that believing in gods as advocated by those heretical sects can bring salvation.

The church also preaches that believing in the Almighty Father can bring protection and salvation, but the people did not see the angels of the Almighty Father come to save them when they were about to starve to death.

So for the vast majority of people, no matter how good the propaganda is, it is not as real as a bowl of hot porridge.

And when they can fill their stomachs with a bowl of porridge without risking their lives, do we expect these ordinary people to resist the empire's war machine for the so-called beliefs preached by heretical sects?

I'm overthinking this a bit.

Of course, although the empire began to provide relief and gave jobs to a considerable number of people so that they could support their families, there were still some people who could not enjoy this treatment.

After all, the total amount of resources is limited, the number of jobs is limited, and Perfect doesn't want to support these people for nothing, so there will always be a part of the people who are still lacking that bowl of porridge.

It was inevitable that these people would turn to those heretical sects, becoming their sacrifices to the gods, as well as accomplices and cannon fodder in their fight against the empire.

Of course, Perfect knew about these things. Whether it was the Brotherhood, the Church, or the Empire's intelligence agencies, they all reported the relevant content to Perfect, letting her know that some of the poor had turned to the heretical sects.

But there is no way around it. Although compressed biscuits are made using alchemy and the raw materials are saved as much as possible, the production capacity is still limited.

There are hundreds of thousands of people in the outer city who are starving for food. Even if Perfect really sends all the compressed biscuits produced by the compressed biscuit factory to the outer city, it will not be enough to feed everyone.

Moreover, compared with the hundreds of thousands of people in the outer city, the millions of people in the upper and lower city also need food. Although human life is not a simple addition and subtraction, and it is not the case that whoever has more people can survive, it must be admitted that the people in the upper and lower city are superior to those in the outer city in terms of the work they can undertake and the value they produce.

This is a cruel fact, and it also indicates that Perfecto must abandon part of the population in the outer city.

In fact, if it weren't for Princess Anne's pleading with Perfectcot to discover the activities of the heretical sects in the outer city, she might have abandoned not just this small part of the outer city population, but the entire outer city.

This is actually another cruel fact, that is, when the end of the world comes, the empire cannot feed so many people.

Even though Perfect has now developed the technology to use alchemy to produce compressed biscuits out of almost nothing, it is still not enough to feed the nearly three million people in the city of Langton.

The officially registered population of Langton City is over 2.3 million, while the actual population is almost 2.7 million, not including the floating population.

It is conceivable how much food so many people consume every day.

So, you want to feed hundreds of thousands of people in the outer city with only dozens of tons of compressed biscuits produced by the compressed biscuit factory every day? I can only say that you are thinking too much.

Assuming that one person consumes 200 grams of compressed biscuits per day, at least two tons of compressed biscuits are needed to feed 10,000 people, and hundreds of thousands of people can eat at least hundreds of tons of compressed biscuits a day.

Even though the technology used by Perfect has created something out of nothing, it still has consumption, especially the alchemists who keep the compressed biscuit manufacturing machines running. They are the key to restricting the production of compressed biscuits.

Perfect was originally short of alchemists. Even if she sent all the alchemists that Langton could find to work, the output of compressed biscuits would still be limited. Perfect only used it as a supplement to normal food.

After all, even though many people have starved to death during this period, the remaining people in Langton still need to consume nearly a thousand tons of food every day. You can imagine how serious the food problem that Perfectcot is facing now!

Under such circumstances, even Princess Anne could not say anything harsh to Perfectoct. Abandoning the excess population had become a necessity.

"Look on the bright side, at least we don't have to watch them starve to death." In the office, Perfect joked to Princess Anne in a darkly humorous way.

Princess Anne also felt particularly helpless about this.

She wanted to save these people, but there was nothing she could do.

The food problem is the biggest problem plaguing the empire right now. The food production in the overseas colonies is insufficient and cannot be transported in. The food produced in the empire itself is as limited as the compressed biscuit factory in Perfect...

Right now, just feeding the people in the upper and lower cities every day has stretched the food reserves of the imperial center to the limit. If the outer city is added, it is simply forcing the Minister of Agriculture, who is responsible for food issues, to hang himself.

In fact, this is the first time that the Minister of Agriculture has wanted to hang himself. The problem of insufficient food is almost unsolvable.

"Instead of having to watch them starve to death, we have to watch them die in other ways. This is such a terrible situation that it's hard to laugh at!" Princess Anne couldn't help but shake her head, her tone full of unwillingness and anger.

Although she wanted to rush to the outer city area immediately to catch all the heretic sect members and kill them, Princess Anne also understood that it was meaningless to do so.

It's not that killing the heretics is meaningless, but it's meaningless for her to rush to the outer city area to kill those heretics now.

On the one hand, this is not the entirety of the heretic sect's manpower. It can even be said that they are just cannon fodder and peripheral personnel thrown out. As for the real core, Perfecto has only found one Lady Babaron so far, and it is still unknown who she is.

Therefore, it is meaningless to simply kill those people in the open. Not only will this fail to stop the other party's conspiracy, but it will also alert the enemy by cleaning out all those exposed people, thus losing the opportunity to eradicate the other party.

"Compared to this, I am more worried about what the other party is planning." Perfect was also worried about this matter, but her worries were different from what the princess thought: "Based on the information we have obtained so far, these heretical sects are likely planning something big, which may be related to summoning the gods they believe in. We may need to face the coming of the true God.

No one has ever truly witnessed the power of the true God, and even in the files of the church there are very few records related to this.

So I am very worried. I am worried that the empire does not have the power to suppress a true god, and things will get out of control.”

Heretical sects can summon the true God to descend, which is like a sword hanging over your head at any time, making you feel uneasy.

No matter how hard Perfect tried to maintain her rationality and calmness, she was still upset about this matter and couldn't even calm down and think about how to deal with and break the situation.

"If something like that really happens, the entire outer city and even the lower city will be reduced to a battlefield and be beaten to pieces. This will be a devastating blow to Langton. Langton will be finished without even the end of the world." Perfectcott's attitude seemed very pessimistic. She was obviously not optimistic about fighting the enemy in Langton.

"Yes, fighting in the city is not only a disaster for the warring parties, but also a disaster for the entire city." Princess Anne, who came from a military background, had personally fought on the battlefield. She knew clearly the devastation that war could bring.

She still clearly remembered that when she was in the Desert Kingdom, an ancient temple with thousands of years of history was attacked by local resistance forces. The entire ancient temple suffered severe damage, and even the civilians living around the ancient temple were massacred.

A small town that was bustling yesterday turned into ruins in just one night. Under the ruins were buried a large number of people who were killed without knowing what had happened.

In war, civilians are often the ones who suffer the most.

"Let's not talk about this for now. Right now, let alone delaying or defeating the gods after they descend, even the defense line that can withstand the attacks of the gods is very weak. How can we stop the attacks of the gods?" When he thought of this problem, Perfectoct felt overwhelmed.

Fortunately, the servant at the door reported to Perfect in time that Dr. Jones, whom Perfect sent to the desert kingdom, came back alive.

(End of this chapter)