Rose Empire

Initially, Apo planned to stay in Lanwan Viscountdom for a long time, so he wanted to exchange more Fuso at one time, but he was persuaded by others to keep Fuso and it might appreciate in value. Like most Sokyans, this was the first time Apo knew that the exchange rate between Dir and Fuso could fluctuate.

"Yes," the clerk nodded and said, "Today the exchange rate between Fuso and Dir has risen to 1:3.5."

"It's increased so much? When I asked yesterday, it was still 1:3.7," Apo said in surprise, "Did something happen?"

"I heard from the sea merchants that Fei Di won a great victory..." The clerk was happy to chat with the customers, and told them all the gossip he had heard today like pouring beans out of a bamboo tube.

From the clerk, Apo learned that Iger had performed a miracle in Fidelity, helping the citizen soldiers of Fidelity defeat the Delmer Alliance at the gates of their own city. The Delmers suffered heavy losses and retreated in a hurry...

With Awa's many years of service experience in the Aiye Alliance, he can naturally judge how much truth there is in this news.

Not to mention Apo, even Sandro couldn't help but complain after the clerk left: "The Bronze Pass has been breached, and the elite troops of the Aiye Alliance have been killed. If the remaining remnants of Feidi are to be relied upon to force the Delmer people to flee in panic, it really requires a miracle from the Lord God."

"It's probably false that the Delmers suffered heavy losses," Apo said, "but it's probably true that the Delmers withdrew their troops."

"The Delmes have already reached the city of Fido. Why are they withdrawing?" Sandro said puzzledly.

"Who knows..." Apo also frowned.

Dean smiled when he saw this and said, "Who cares why? Anyway, the Alliance is unlikely to recruit us to serve. In my opinion, the increase in the price of Deer is a good thing for us."

The upper age limit for the Ai Ye Alliance to recruit coalition forces is fifty years old. Sandro, the youngest of the three people present, is already fifty-one years old.

"That's right," Sandro laughed and asked, "I still have more than 2,000 dirhams. How much do you have?"

"I still have more than 5,000," said Dean.

Sandro almost jumped up when he heard this: "How do you have so much money? Have you been secretly hoarding dir without telling me and the captain?"

"I have already told the captain, but I just didn't tell you."

"You guy..."

Apo took a sip of water and listened to the quarrel between his two subordinates, but his heart felt heavy. For some reason, he couldn't help but wonder, is the price increase of Deer really a good thing?

However, exchange rates were beyond Awa's understanding, and he could never come to any conclusion.

Sokya Peninsula, Carmela City-State.

Marius is a freeman of the Carmela city-state, and he is already forty years old this year. Forty years old doesn't sound very old, but for a freeman, he is already considered long-lived, and there are very few of his peers in the village who can live to his age.

On this day, Marius and his fellow villagers spent more than two months digging herbs from the mountains and brought them to Carmela City to sell. Digging herbs is an important industry for Marius's village to survive, and Marius is a leader among herbalists. He has familiar herbal merchants in the city and can always sell his herbs at a relatively fair price, so the villagers will give all the herbs they dig to him to sell together.

However, Marius's deal today was not going too smoothly.

"What did you say? Azzam, I have so many roots of the herb and yet I can only sell them for half a dir." Marius stared at the merchant in front of him in disbelief.

"Yes, this is the current market situation..." said the businessman named Azam, spreading his hands helplessly.

"If you sell these roots of my licorice grass, you can earn at least two dirs. Don't be too greedy, Azzam." Marius complained.

"Then I have to be able to sell them too." Azzam sighed and said, "Marius, we have known each other for so many years, why would I cheat you of such a small amount of herbs? Go to my warehouse and see for yourself, there are so many herbs piled up that they can't be sold at all."

Marius saw that Azzam's demeanor did not seem fake, and asked in confusion: "What's going on? Doesn't everyone go to the doctor or take medicine anymore?"

"Who knows?" Azam also frowned, "Those shops and merchants suddenly had less medicine. Fortunately, I stocked up a batch of herbs in advance in the spring."

"Then what should I do with my medicines?" Marius asked anxiously.

"If you pack everything, I'll give you two dirs. That's the only price I can give you." Azam held up two fingers and said, "In fact, I don't want to buy any more herbs. I only bought these herbs from you because of our friendship over the years."

Marius pursed his lips and thought for a long time, then said, "I'll go look somewhere else."

"No matter which store you ask, no one will offer a higher price than me." Azam said and shook his head. "Forget it, you probably won't believe me. Go and see for yourself. It's the same everywhere."

In his heart, Marius was actually inclined to believe what Azzam said. He had a pretty good relationship with Azzam, but he could only sell it at this price. How much better could it be with someone else?

However, Marius's load contained the fruits of more than two months' labor of the whole village. How could he dare to sell it at such a low price? If he sold it, he would probably be scolded to death by the villagers.

Carrying a heavy load, Marius walked along the streets of Carmela, and one shop after another came into his sight, selling fish, meat, cloth, books, jewelry... everything. However, Marius felt something was wrong as he walked. Although these shops were open and the shelves were full of goods, there were not many customers. The clerks were too idle, and they were either chasing flies, or daydreaming, or talking about mountains, but few of them were serving customers.

Carmela was a good country that had not suffered any natural disasters or man-made calamities, but inexplicably, it faced a scene of decline in all industries.

Marius found the shop of another merchant who used to go to the village to buy herbs, but the merchant simply turned him away.

"Take a look at this herb. We dug it from the cliffs of Bald Eagle Mountain. It's definitely the best this year!" Marius tried to sell it using his not-so-skilled salesmanship.

The merchant waved his hands impatiently: "No, no, I don't lack herbs in my warehouse!"

Marius had no choice but to go to the next herbalist, but the result was the same. He went to three or five herbalists in a row, but the situation was similar. In desperation, Marius had to give up the herbalists and go directly to the clinics, pharmacies, and the doors of the rich to ask if they needed herbs.

Although some of these families saw that the herbs in Marius's basket were indeed good and wanted to buy some, they either bought less or offered a very low price. They were justified in saying, "Everything in the city is cheaper, why can't you sell your herbs cheaper?"

After walking around the city for an entire afternoon, Marius still failed to sell any of his herbs.

Looking at the setting sun, Marius sighed sadly, prepared to carry his load back to the village, and tell the villagers the truth about the situation in the city.

Before leaving the city, Marius remembered his wife's advice - the food at home had been eaten up, so he went to the grain store again.

Looking at the wooden sign hanging on the wall of the grain store, Marius felt that the burden on his heart was heavier than on his shoulders. He couldn't help licking his cracked lips and muttered to himself: "Everything in the city is cheaper, why can't the grain be sold at a lower price?"

PS: Thank you all for your monthly tickets and blade recommendation tickets, thank you very much.

PS2: Thank you (^~^). Feng, Chuan and Yingzi, Blood Moon Lone Wolf for your corrections. The previous errors have been corrected. @q@q@group ①7 bar ① wife ⑥

Volume 152: Chapter 139 Chapter A War Without Gunfire (I)

The Grey Knights' operations in the Sokya Peninsula finally showed results. The Grey Knights' intelligence network gradually reached most of the Aiye Alliance city-states, including Feidi. Therefore, not long after the Delmer Alliance withdrew from the Bronze Pass, relevant information was delivered to Charlotte by raven.

While Charlotte breathed a sigh of relief, she also felt deeply that the situation was becoming more and more dangerous and she had to hurry up.

Although she still didn't know what method the Feidi city-state used to force the Delmer Alliance to temporarily withdraw its troops, the situation where the Aiye Alliance was weak and the Delmer Alliance was strong would not change because of this withdrawal. The elite casualties would be difficult to replenish within ten years. Feidi could use a trick to make the Delmer people withdraw their troops once, but could it do it again a second or third time?

Charlotte didn't want to see a unified regime on the Sokya Peninsula. She watched the Delmer Alliance almost break through the Feidi City-State before, because it happened suddenly. Viscount Lanwan had just finished the Sokya War, and she herself was not prepared, so she could do nothing. Charlotte didn't want to experience the feeling of sitting at home and worrying for the second time.

In addition, the caravan under the Business Department of Yushu Town also brought back some news for Charlotte.

First, as Charlotte had thought, the Principality of Bonan was in chaos.

The captain of the Royal Knights, David Bojan, led his troops to hunt down the tribal leader Basha and entered the Principality of Bonan. Because David Bojan was eager to rush to the aid of Platinum City, he only transferred ten griffin teams from the border. The ground troops were insufficient. He could easily defeat the organized resistance of the tribesmen and beat the enemy to flee in panic, but he could not surround and strangle the remaining troops of Basha, so he asked the Principality of Bonan for help.

However, after learning that Fernandez Pastor, Duke of Bonan, had died at the gates of Platinum City, the eight sons of Duke Bonan not only did not come to David Bojan in indignation, but instantly became spirited and performed a good show of brothers fighting against each other for the captain.

Basha led tens of thousands of remnants of the army and swaggered through the defense lines of the eight sons of Duke Fernandez and returned to the Campe Mountains. He bypassed any castles he encountered along the way and avoided the duchy's army. Fernandez's sons ignored them and continued to fight their own battles.

Captain David was so angry that he cursed Duke Fernandez for being a nest of insects in front of many of his men.

Although Captain David thought those people were insects, they were of noble blood after all, and the new Duke of Bonan could only be chosen from those eight people. The most promising ones at the moment were Fernandez's eldest son, Fraser Paster, and the third son, Daniel Paster - Fernandez's second son was a cripple with short legs, so he lacked competitiveness - currently, both of them claimed to be the Duke of Bonan, accusing each other of being traitors, and the fight was in full swing.

Emperor Henry had sent envoys many times to recruit the army of the Duchy of Bonan to join the rebellion against Charlotte's grandfather, Ethel Hollowen. However, because the internal fighting in the Duchy of Bonan was so intense, the envoys not only returned empty-handed but also brought back the news that "the new Duke of Bonan requested His Majesty the Emperor to send troops to help the Duchy of Bonan quell the rebellion."

Although Charlotte didn't know how Henry would respond to this, she was sure that guy wouldn't be in a very good mood right now.

Secondly, there is the tense situation in the Principality of Greenfield.

Duke Jose Melfield of Greenfield continued to send reinforcements to Sean's camp.

As mentioned before, Sean Camp is a military stronghold set up by the Green Plains Principality to defend against the Kingdom of Gato on the border between the two countries. At this sensitive juncture, the Green Plains Principality once again sent more troops to the border between the two countries, which made it hard not to think too much.

Charlotte didn't know whether her father had made a decision, and she hoped the answer was "yes". Regardless of whether her father really wanted to go to war with her grandson, a clear strategic goal would allow the entire principality to move forward towards that goal without hesitation.

Unfortunately, Charlotte knew that Jose Melefield was a man of "many plans but indecisiveness", and the addition of troops to Sean's camp was most likely a move made by the nobles with the surname Melefield to push their father. These people wanted to promote the principality to a kingdom, to take the Melefield family a step further, and to gain more wealth and glory. This idea was understandable. However, their actions, coupled with their father's indecisiveness, were likely to push the Green Plains Principality into the most dangerous situation.

"Captain David is right, they are a bunch of insects!"

Charlotte wrote a letter to Jose Melfeld, trying her best to persuade her father to either declare war on the Kingdom of Cato immediately or withdraw troops from the border immediately and not to hesitate. At the same time, she decided to declare war on the Sokya city-states.

This war did not start with swords and flesh and blood. Charlotte's weapon this time was Dir.

The silent withdrawal of the Delmite Alliance, due to Charlotte's deliberate propaganda, turned into a great victory for Fidelity, and the Delmite people fled in panic.

With the Philippine government winning so happily, people naturally had more confidence in the continued existence of the dir. So the Elm Town Gold Exchange, as well as Charlotte's newly established Ambrato, Little Sasini, and Dorucocha Gold Exchanges took the opportunity to announce at the same time that the exchange rate of the dir would rise again, and it had risen directly to 1:3.5.

This wave of price hikes made the "Dier merchants" ecstatic, and they began to hoard Dier even more. Even some ordinary people who were not involved in business began to choose to keep Dier in their hands and no longer use or exchange it easily.

Under such circumstances, some merchants traveling to and from the Sokya Peninsula gradually discovered that their goods were becoming unsalable in some city-states in the north and central parts of the Sokya Peninsula.

In Charlotte's previous life, many people knew how disastrous excessive inflation could bring, but few people knew that severe deflation could also cause extremely negative effects.

This is not due to ignorance, but because a small amount of inflation is conducive to stimulating economic growth, and under the credit currency system, the cost of issuing currency is extremely low, so almost all modern countries naturally tend to over-issue currency. Therefore, modern people often hear that severe inflation in a certain country has caused an economic collapse, rather than severe deflation causing an economic depression.

So when is deflation common? Of course, it was in ancient societies that used metal as currency. The most typical example was the silver shortage in the late Ming Dynasty.

Due to a variety of reasons, including the reduction in silver imported from overseas, the corruption of the government's currency system and the large amount of silver hoarded by powerful landlords, the amount of silver on the market continued to decrease, the price of silver continued to rise, and the amount of silver exchanged for the products produced by farmers became less and less, but the "Single Whip Law" stipulated that the people must pay taxes in silver.

When the price of silver rose to the point where the crops grown on the farmers' land could no longer be exchanged for enough silver to pay taxes, the Ming Dynasty, the silver empire, was not far from its end.

Today, many city-states on the Sokya Peninsula are facing the same problem. There are fewer and fewer dirs circulating in the market. The closer the city-state is to the Lanwan Strait, the more serious the situation is.

"This is the transaction record sent back by the caravan to the city-state of Bataan. They purchased marine fish, wool, mutton, pottery jars, straw ropes and other daily necessities." Cecilia handed over a piece of letter paper and said to Charlotte, "I roughly calculated according to the method you gave. The price of goods in the city-state of Bataan has dropped by almost 50%. In other words, the actual currency value of the dir in Bataan has increased by about double."

"Tsk, this increase is faster than I expected. The gold exchange has only increased the deed by one-eighth." Charlotte said as she was busy dealing with official documents.

Cecilia was happy, but couldn't help but wonder, "The total amount of dirhams in our warehouse is less than 8.5 million, right? Why is there such a severe shortage of money in the market of Badan City-State?"

Charlotte shook the quill in her hand and said, "The dir we hoard is just a small part. The dir merchants, the wealthy, the powerful, and even the ordinary citizens hold the real big part. As long as they don't want to spend the money for the time being, it's no different from hoarding."

Cecilia suddenly realized and nodded thoughtfully.

Charlotte finished processing a document, raised her head, and asked, "Let's not talk about prices for now. Have the elders of Bataan and Carmela responded? What do they say about us setting up gold exchange offices in Bataan and Carmela?"

"With the Economic Cooperation Agreement in place, there is no reason for Bataan and Carmela City-State to reject the gold exchange," Cecilia replied immediately, "However, the Bataan Council of Elders requires our gold exchange to open the business of exchanging fuso for dir."

"Haha..." Charlotte couldn't help but smile. "This is what we originally planned to do. Since they asked for it, let's satisfy them."

Cecilia frowned slightly and said, "But didn't you say that we need to reserve at least 10 million dir before opening up the dir exchange business? We don't have enough dir in reserve yet."

"This is indeed a problem," Charlotte sighed in annoyance, "but time does not allow us to save money slowly any longer. If we don't have enough money, we can just borrow some from others..."

Just as Cecilia and Charlotte were talking, the door of the study was suddenly pushed open.

"Charlotte, I found some useful information about the matter you mentioned!"

Charlotte looked towards the door and saw no one. She looked down and saw a 1.30-meter-tall man walking into the study with a pile of information. The height of the parchment and books piled up almost exceeded her head.

Seeing that Lilith was walking unsteadily, Cecilia quickly reached out to help Lilith share some of the parchment.

"Thank you." Lilith let out a long sigh and thanked Cecilia, then excitedly said to Charlotte, "Charlotte, I tell you, this may be a huge discovery."

"What huge discovery?" Charlotte asked puzzledly.

"Didn't you ask me last time whether the legend of Saint Roman's sleepwalking to the Land of the Seven Sages was credible?" Lilith said as she placed the information in her arms on Charlotte's desk.

"Yes, that's right." Charlotte remembered that there was indeed such an incident. Saint Roman sleepwalked to the country of the seven sages. This incident sounded like an ordinary legend, but in this world where true gods exist, Charlotte did not dare to treat myths as fabricated rumors, so Charlotte consulted Lilith.

Lilith said at the time that she wasn't sure and needed to check it out. The investigation lasted for several days, and Charlotte almost forgot about it. Unexpectedly, Lilith seemed to have found out something.

"What did you find out?" Charlotte asked curiously.

Lilith took out a copy of the Canon and quickly turned to the chapter about the Kingdom of the Seven Sages. She said, "Look, the Canon has a detailed record of the Kingdom of the Seven Sages and even records the names and appearances of the seven sages. But..."

Lilith took out another yellowed ancient book and searched for the corresponding paragraph while saying:

"This is an ancient book from the Wimbledon Empire. Of course, it is not the original, but a copy made by later generations. It can be considered a collection of religious stories, and it is also the oldest book I can find that fully records the story of Saint Roman's dream journey to the Land of the Seven Sages. However, the story does not mention the representative elements of the Land of the Seven Sages in the Canon, such as any of the seven sages, or the towering statues of gods, or the rivers flowing with honey, etc. These elements exist in later versions, but it can be basically confirmed that they were added by later generations. However, whether it is the later version or the ancient original version, Saint Roman in the story is very sure that he has arrived at the Land of the Seven Sages. Don't you think it's strange?"

"It's really strange," Cecilia nodded involuntarily. "If Saint Roman hadn't seen the things recorded in the Canon, why would he think he had arrived at the Land of the Seven Sages?"

"Do you understand why?" Charlotte asked.

"I can't say I have completely figured it out, but I can only say I have a clue," Lilith said as she dug out a tattered notebook from her pile of documents. "This is the handwriting of an ordinary priest from the Wimbledon Empire period that I found in a church before. When this priest was an apprentice priest, Saint Roman was probably still alive. He wrote a sentence in his notebook..."

Lilith carefully turned to one of the pages and read: "Saint Roman was blessed by God and sent a messenger to lead him to sleepwalk to the kingdom of God on earth."

Lilith puts emphasis on “the kingdom of God on earth.”

"You mean..." Charlotte seemed to have figured out something. "Nowadays, we believe that the 'Kingdom of God on Earth' refers to the legendary 'Land of the Seven Sages', but in fact, Saint Roman may be heading to another 'Kingdom of God'?"

"Right." Lilith clapped her hands, "That's what I meant. Also, do you know who is the messenger who led Saint Roman to sleepwalk to the kingdom of God on earth?"

"It seems to be called Fitch..." Charlotte frowned and recalled.

Lilith laughed, patted the information at hand, and said confidently: "After repeated research, I found that the name of the messenger should be Feidi!"

"Eh?" Charlotte was stunned for a while, then smiled. "It seems that I really need to hurry up and take over the Sokya Peninsula."

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Volume 153: Chapter 140 Chapter A War Without Gunfire (Part )

Sokya Peninsula, Bataan City-State.

"I don't understand why Viscount Lanwan is allowed to come to Bataan to open a gold exchange?" Giovanni Draghi, with dark circles under his eyes, shouted in dissatisfaction in the room where the elders on duty in the Elders' Council handle daily work.

Elder Lester, who was handling official business, raised his eyelids and looked at Giovanni Draghi with a slightly disappointed look, then lowered his head and continued to work, saying, "What's so difficult to understand about this? According to the agreement, merchants from Viscount Lanwan's territory can do business freely in our city-state. Viscount Lanwan asked for the opinions of our Council of Elders, which is at best just a greeting to us."