When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

Chapter 997 Consumption and Desire

Horn picked up his iced tea and took a sip, his earlier glare at Sephiroth and Ksukur vanishing as if his face had turned pale.

Black Snake Bay had never encountered such barbarians before, and naturally, they were at a loss as to how to deal with them.

But Horn has it; isn't it just applying a formula?
There are countless formulas in history for solving these kinds of problems; just apply them.

Even if applying the formula fails, Horn still has the powerful Holy Alliance backing him up, so the margin for error is sufficient.

“You can’t just use suppression and oppression, and you can’t just use appeasement and pacification. You should use both methods.”

Rules scoffed, "We know that. The problem is, they're self-sufficient. What do they have to offer in exchange for amnesty?"

“Look, you’re in such a hurry again…” Horn spread his hands, intending to joke with Aunt Lulus, but when he caught Carrie’s unfriendly look out of the corner of his eye, he quickly changed his words.

"Ahem—There's an old saying in El: 'Without desires, one is strong.' These natives have no weaknesses precisely because they have no desires."

"Strong without desire?" Catherine was taken aback.

Carrie, Jeanne, and others were seen as uncouth men by Catherine.

They didn't find anything strange about it, but Catherine, having read through the Elric Classics, had never heard of this phrase before.

After it's over, we should ask where it came from.

“But desires, even if you don’t have them, you can create them.” Horn held up a finger. “Have you ever eaten cheese bread? Worn silk? Lived in a house that’s warm in winter and cool in summer?”

A beastman chieftain, dressed worse than a commoner of the Holy Alliance, doesn't he want to show his authority?

The beastmen in the jungle, sometimes hungry and sometimes full, don't they wish they could eat their fill every meal?
Not only that, we can also entice them to compete, with all the chiefs around you having crystal glasses.

These chiefs invited other chiefs who possessed the cup to a cocktail party. Guess who wasn't invited?

Seeing that Ksukku looked enlightened, Horn then smiled and spoke again.

"Alright, you've eaten white bread, worn silk clothes, and lived in a brick house. Now I'm going to slash you in the stomach. Does it hurt?"
I took your white bread, burned your silk clothes, occupied your brick house, and drove you into the jungle.

At this point, can you still get used to eating sweet bean porridge, wearing linen clothes, and living in a treehouse?
It's easy for people to go from frugality to extravagance, but difficult to go from extravagance to frugality. At this point, it's much easier to control them.

Therefore, instead of blocking them out, you should encourage trade and let them see the outside world.

"To them now, we are like frogs at the bottom of a well looking up at the moon; but once they emerge from the well, we will be like mayflies seeing the blue sky."

As the saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch; everything that is free has already had a price tag attached to it.

These natives ate the bread because it smelled so good, forgetting that they would have to pay back the full price later.

Although Horn only gave a slight hint, everyone present, including Ruffiel, suddenly understood.

But after a moment of realization, Lourdes' expression turned strange.

She felt like she'd seen Horn's method somewhere before, a strange sense of déjà vu.

"I see. So, should we negotiate peace with them first?" Ksuku perked up, having been thoroughly tormented by these natives.

"No, no, no." Having explained the principle, Horn was about to say what to do: "You should now exert all your strength to fight back, sparing no expense, and inflict heavy casualties on them in a short time."

Because you were begging them for favors in the early stages, if you want to gain the upper hand, you need to have leverage. But if you don't have leverage, you have to create it.

“We’re not here to play cards,” Saifei said, her mouth tightly shut but her voice muffled.

"This is just a metaphor. Let me put it this way: we need to use war to promote peace. They won't sit down and negotiate unless we beat them to the point of being unable to take it anymore."

In terms of battlefield performance, both the beastmen and the Holy Alliance soldiers are stable and capable in their battles, so there's no need to worry.

However, the beastmen and native humans always hid in the forest when the army arrived, resulting in few casualties but little gain, with the costs not outweighing the benefits.

Therefore, Horn demanded that they first reduce the value of these beastmen in terms of political maneuvering, regardless of cost, before negotiating.

"When it comes time for negotiations, we'll hold a big meeting, invite all the influential chiefs, and find a neutral location to hold the meeting."

Then a trade agreement would be signed, allowing missionary work in their territories. Caravans would also be allowed to enter and do business; we would even need to hire them, sell goods to them, and even conscript soldiers.

Even the children of chiefs can be sent to secondary school to be trained from a young age to be guides and friendly people.

They used to be carefree, but now that they have bottles and jars, they naturally can't run around anymore.

We can even invite powerful chiefs at the top to invest in our spice company, and in the future, we may even allow them to run for parliament.

Of course, this is on the premise that their region joins the federal government, complies with federal laws, and pays taxes…

Horn had reservations about whether snake people and vampires could be considered demi-humans, but he was certain that beastmen were demi-humans, not aliens.

Demi-humans are the kind of intelligent beings that Horne can win over, the kind of people who want to make as many friends as possible.

The Xinmin ethnic group, or the new Aier people, is not a community bound by blood ties or region.

It is bound by culture, beliefs, and human blood ties.

Therefore, Horn wanted to invent a demi-human to blur the physiological differences between beastmen, dwarves, and humans into differences similar to skin color and eye color.

In the future, beastmen will stand on equal footing with humans.

It's so diverse; even the right young man, Horn, was almost moved to tears.

"What if there are die-hards?" Kesuku asked again. "For example, they might not come to the conference and insist on opposing us?"

This time, however, he was extremely respectful and dared not be negligent in the slightest.

"Diehards, if they weren't both die-hard and stubborn, why would they be called diehards?"

Horn took another bite of melon, patted his round belly, leaned back on the cool stone bench, and made a throat-slitting gesture to Ksuk.

"However, don't do it, you'll get your hands dirty."

Call on the beastmen to kill the beastmen, call on the chieftains to kill the chieftains, settle scores and avenge each other.

If there's no enmity between you two, don't create hatred. Just march in with your troops in a fair and square manner, instead of resorting to underhanded tactics like stirring up trouble.

After Horn finished explaining his strategy, he looked at Lulus again, but her previous sour face was gone.

She looked Horn up and down with a smile, as if she were looking at a delicate side dish on a table, which made Horn feel uneasy all over.

"What would you like to eat? I'll cook for you myself tonight." Lourdes stood on the stone bench, picked up the teapot, and poured tea for Horn.

"How could I trouble you?" Horn quickly waved his hand, pretending to decline, but he still made sure that Lourdes poured him some tea without any hesitation.

But Catherine frowned and asked, "Isn't this still a losing proposition?"

Look, what they produce, we don't need, but what we produce, they can use.

So if we entice them to spend money, isn't that the same as giving them something for free?

If such a policy is to be implemented, the fiscal budget must be drawn from the Black Snake Bay Federation.

This will inevitably impact the Holy Alliance's businesses in Black Snake Bay, leading to a revision of the development plan for the following year.

As for why Catherine was so certain, it was because Black Snake Bay's finances were basically tied to spices and sugar.

Black Snake Bay only has these two organs that produce blood; it has no other organs capable of producing blood.

In Otatira's self-deprecating words, "The Black Serpent Bay Federation isn't a real country; we're just a transit port for the Holy Alliance Spice Company."

“Who says it’s all for nothing?” Horn couldn’t keep his smile from spreading across his face when he heard the question. “These beastmen themselves are a form of wealth, aren’t they? And they’re the kind of wealth that Black Serpent Bay is most in need of right now—labor.”

Ksukku, who had been grinning foolishly, suddenly froze, cold sweat pouring down his back.

For some reason, the once cheerful and sunny smile of the Holy Grandson now appeared unusually cold and cruel.

(End of this chapter)