197: Chapter 197 Setting the Rules

The chaos in Zhenhuang Pass lasted for an entire week.

From the first day the Wang Family announced their withdrawal, the entire northern region was like a row of toppling dominoes, with chain reactions exploding one after another.

Countless members of the Wang Family left those unimportant strongholds, all retreating back to their core territory.

The spies and scouts of various families squatted at the city gates, lay on rooftops, and hid in alleys, their eyes fixed intently on the retreating convoy.

Qin Ce was also mixed in with the crowd, wearing unremarkable grey cloth clothes and a tattered bamboo hat, leaning against a stone pillar at the city gate like an ordinary traveler waiting to leave the city.

The Wang Family's departure was grand and ostentatious.

Packing luggage, organizing documents, and assembling into groups, one team after another set off from various strongholds, marching along the main road toward the Wang Family's main base.

The withdrawal notice was even posted at the city gate of Zhenhuang Pass, in black and white, stamped with the Wang Family's great seal, phrased as politely as a farewell letter.

Leading the teams were several old stewards of the Wang Family in the north, each with a normal expression, showing no signs of reluctance or annoyance.

They methodically counted people, checked supplies, and arranged carriages and horses, as if they were performing a routine business adjustment rather than abandoning a territory they had operated for three generations.

Every family had a list of Wang Family personnel in their hands.

Those lists were compiled one by one over several years, or even over a decade.

The Zhao Family had their list, the Zhou Family had theirs, the Lin Family had their own, and the City Lord's Manor had its own as well.

They cross-referenced the names on the list with the retreating teams one by one—one, two, three... everyone on the list had withdrawn. Not a single person was left behind; it was a clean sweep.

What shocked them even more was that some people whose names were not on their lists also left.

Those people, they had always thought were their own secret agents, nails planted within the Wang Family.

Some were registered in the Zhao Family's intelligence system, some had received activity funds from the Zhou Family, and some even had independent ID numbers in the internal contact lists of certain factions.

It wasn't until they saw them leaving with the Wang Family convoy that they realized those nails had never belonged to them.

The Wang Family's reach was deeper than anyone had imagined.

This was no longer simple infiltration, but a complete muddle of the entire northern intelligence network.

No one could tell who belonged to whom or who was working for whom anymore.

But everyone confirmed it—the Wang Family was truly going to abandon these territories.

Thoroughly and completely.

Then, all the factions' eyes turned red with greed.

The Wang Family abandoned three-quarters of the northern region.

Countless fields, shops, factories, and mines were all vacated, waiting for someone to take over.

The news spread like a thunderclap. The Zhao Family, Zhou Family, Lin Family, City Lord's Manor, small and medium-sized factions, and independent teams—only one word remained in everyone's minds: snatch.

In the following days, this area turned into a frenzied land-grabbing movement.

Various factions frantically added manpower, assigned personnel, and seized key positions.

The vacant assets left behind by the Wang Family were occupied and renovated the very next day after the people departed.

The Zhao Family moved the fastest. Three large squads of over five hundred people thrust in like a red-hot knife. Land properties that were still being handed over on the first day were registered by the Zhao Family's steward with the land deeds on the second day.

The Zhou Family's reach was the longest. They took over everything the Wang Family withdrew from: transport routes, warehouses, and customer channels.

The Lin Family's people were deeply rooted in the administrative system. With one document and one official seal, a position would change masters.

Small and medium-sized factions grabbed whatever they could. If they couldn't snatch it, they stole it; if they couldn't steal it, they cheated; if they couldn't cheat, they fought for it.

In the process, a massive reshuffling, struggle, and slaughter occurred.

Many small, fragmented factions were directly wiped out, leaving not even a name behind.

Some places changed hands three times in a single night. They belonged to the Zhao Family in the morning, were snatched by the Zhou Family at noon, and were reclaimed by the Lin Family by evening.

On the ridges of fields, in the streets and alleys, and at the city gates, blood was everywhere.

Bodies were buried hastily, and some were not buried at all, simply thrown by the roadside to be gnawed on by wild dogs.

Especially Zhenhuang Pass.

This was the place the Wang Family controlled most thoroughly, and it was also where they withdrew most completely.

Once the Wang Family left, the administrative, taxation, and security systems all paralyzed.

The officials were gone, the guards were gone, and even the tax collectors were gone.

The fighting began on the first day, and by the third day, weapons were drawn.

They fought from the head of the street to the end of the alley, from the east of the city to the west, and from dawn until night.

Shop doors were torn down to be used as weapons, stalls were overturned, and goods were looted.

Someone set a fire in the East Market, burning down half the street.

Someone set up roadblocks in the West City to collect tolls.

Someone set up a temporary "black market" near the North Gate, specifically for reselling materials stolen from various warehouses.

Slaughter.

They died in batches.

The Zhao Family and the Zhou Family fought a battle at the North Gate, and seventeen people died.

The Lin Family and the Zhao Family fought a battle in the East Market, and twenty-three people died.

The small and medium-sized factions were even more bloodthirsty toward each other; a few dozen deaths were considered a small number.

Civilians began to flee with their families.

They weren't afraid of fierce beasts or beast tides; what they feared were those Beast Tamers who killed openly in the streets without any restraint.

When fighting and scrambling occurred even in broad daylight, who would dare stay in the city?

Long queues formed at the city gates, a chaotic mass of people pushing carts, carrying bundles, and holding children. When someone fell, those behind stepped over them.

Children cried, but the adults had no time to comfort them.

There was no anger on their faces, only fear and bewilderment.

On the city wall, several Wang Family spies stood there, laughing as they watched the chaos below.

They pulled out their communicators and sent the news back.

But the response from the other side was a meaningful sentence: "Let's see how Qin Ce cleans up this mess."

During this week, Qin Ce did not participate in any of the fighting.

He took the Seventh Squad and set up a temporary camp on a hill in Beimang Mountain.

The camp wasn't large, with about twenty tents arranged in a circle and a simple stove made of stacked stones in the middle.

Qin Ce did not intervene; he was only observing.

He would sit in the city for an entire day, watching the changes in Zhenhuang Pass, the factions pouring into the city, and the civilians fleeing from it.

His Nine-Star Insight was operating at full capacity, and nothing within a radius of several kilometers could escape his perception.

Who entered the city, who occupied which street, who set up a checkpoint at which intersection, who hid goods in which warehouse—this information flooded in like a tide, forming an increasingly clear map in his mind.

He was also compiling statistics.

A massive map was spread out before him, covered in lines and data—capital flows, material reserves, logistics nodes, tax structures, and the income and expenses of the people.

Every piece of data was something he had repeatedly cross-checked, calculated, and deduced.

Using statistical methods from his previous life, he recalculated all the customs data, tax records, and material transfer slips of Zhenhuang Pass from the past three years.

Which data matched, which didn't, which data had been manually altered, and which data had obvious logical loopholes—all were reconstructed by him on paper.

He designed an economic model for Zhenhuang Pass.

It encompassed all the capital, materials, logistics, taxation, and income and expenses of the entire Zhenhuang Pass.

The idea for this model came from macro-economic statistics of his previous life, starting from bottom-level data, summarizing layer by layer, and cross-validating.

Through this model, he couldn't say he understood every minute detail of Zhenhuang Pass, but he at least had a fundamental grasp of every industry.

He knew how many goods entered and left Zhenhuang Pass every month, which trade caravans took which roads, which pier had the largest throughput, and which street had the highest shop rents.

The deviation was around five percent.

Under the control system of the noble families in this world, internal corruption and waste were generally above twenty-five percent.

If a noble family could grasp seventy-five percent of the true situation of their territory, they were considered well-governed.

Qin Ce's economic model improved the control precision by fivefold.

This was a dimensional reduction strike at the data level. While the Zhao Family was still relying on a steward's "experience" to judge this year's harvest, Qin Ce could already calculate the yield per acre of every field, the tax potential of every street, and the profit margin of every industry.

This week, Qingluan hadn't been idle either.

It was hunting frantically in the depths of Beimang Mountain, harvesting Silver Rank fierce beasts and Bronze Rank beast swarms batch after batch.

Phoenix Flow surged behind it like a tide, and nine wind cores rotated around it like wheels.

The energy from being Reborn circulated ceaselessly within its body day and night, repairing the tiny damages brought by every battle while polishing its meridians to be wider, tougher, and smoother.

It soon leveled up from Silver Low-grade to mid-grade silver.

Qingluan had broken through.

Qingluan's feathers deepened in color by another layer, their silver-blue luster flowing in the sunlight like a thin layer of liquid metal.

The seventh day.

Qin Ce took the five squad leaders—Jiang Mo, Lei Gang, Sun Lie, Feng Bao, and Lin Qi—and entered Zhenhuang Pass for the first time.

They didn't go to snatch territory, fight for interests, or negotiate with any faction.

They went directly up to the gate tower of Zhenhuang Pass.

Standing on the gate tower and looking down, the entire Zhenhuang Pass was in full view.

People were fighting in the streets, some were running away, and some were stealing things.

In the distance, a plume of black smoke rose from the East Market, and a long line of fleeing civilians was blocked at the city gate.

The air was thick with the smell of burning and blood, mixed together like a boiling pot of chaos.

On the main street to the south, two groups were in a standoff, weapons in hand, with several groaning wounded lying at their feet.

At the entrance of a warehouse to the north, someone was smashing a lock, some were moving things inside, and someone was standing guard at the door.

In a residential area to the west, several Beast Tamers wearing different colored clothes were knocking on doors one by one, unsure if they were searching or extorting.

Jiang Mo's brow was furrowed tightly. "Captain, if this chaos continues, the entire Zhenhuang Pass will be ruined. Should we move in directly to sort it out?"

Lei Gang shook his head. "Moving in is useless. Even if all twenty-four of us move in, it's just a drop in the bucket. For a city this large, there are four city gates alone. Every street and alley needs patrolling, and every post needs someone on duty. With so few of us, we wouldn't even make a splash if we were thrown in."

"Then we just ignore it?" Jiang Mo asked.

"We'll manage it." Qin Ce's voice wasn't loud, but it was steady. "It's actually not hard."

Sun Lie stood nearby and was stunned for a moment upon hearing this.

He had once been a noble and knew how much manpower and resources were needed to govern a city.

For a city of Zhenhuang Pass's scale to go from chaos to stability, it would take at least a thousand-man army, a hundred-man administrative team, and at least a three-month adjustment period.

Qin Ce said it was "not hard," and he didn't believe it, but he didn't speak.

Having been by Qin Ce's side for a month, from Yinpinglu to Huhe Bay, from the Pterosaur to the five Silver Rank beast swarms, he had learned three things: follow orders, question less, and wait for the results.

Qin Ce pointed his finger toward the city below.

"In the entire Zhenhuang Pass, only ten percent of the people are causing trouble; the remaining ninety percent are ordinary folks. They are fleeing, hiding, and staying behind closed doors. They haven't participated in the fighting, the land-grabbing, or the arson. They are just waiting—waiting for someone who can let them live a stable life. As long as we ensure that ninety percent is stable, things won't get too out of hand here."

Feng Bao scratched his head. "That doesn't seem to make much of a difference, does it? The difficulty feels about the same. Ninety percent of the commoners is still tens of thousands of people. How can the twenty-four of us ensure their stability?"

Qin Ce didn't answer. He smiled slightly and turned to walk down the gate tower.

The eighth day.

In the early morning, when the first ray of sunlight hit the central square of Zhenhuang Pass, a massive stone monument was erected there.

The stone tablet was made from stone Qin Ce had Lei Gang and his men quarry from Beimang Mountain. It was smashed out punch by punch by the Black Iron War Ape, about ten feet high, entirely blackish-green, and its surface was polished as smooth as a mirror.

The inscription was written by Qin Ce himself, using Qingluan's wind-based ability. The strokes were sharp and powerful, every stroke carved deep into the stone.

Three rules were carved in the most prominent position on the stone tablet.

Rule One: All trade caravans entering or leaving the Zhenhuang Pass area, whether legal or smuggled, shall pay a ten percent commercial tax. Tax evaders and their associated factions will be cracked down upon.

This rule directly placed the word "smuggling" on the table.

Qin Ce didn't pretend that smuggling didn't exist in Zhenhuang Pass; he acknowledged its presence but set rules for it.

A ten percent tax rate was lower than the commercial tax anywhere else, so low that smugglers had no reason not to pay it.

Rule Two: All local residents of Zhenhuang Pass, whether for commercial tax, land tax, or handicraft tax, shall pay a ten percent tax. For those with multiple businesses, only the highest one shall be paid, and the rest are exempt. All other exorbitant taxes and levies are abolished. If anyone collects fees under any pretext, a report can be written on any wall in the city.

This rule reduced the tax burden of Zhenhuang Pass to one-third of its original level or even lower.

Paying only the highest tax for multiple businesses meant that a person who owned a shop, farmed land, and did handicrafts only needed to pay one tax. And the detail about "writing a report on any wall" was intentionally designed by Qin Ce—no need to go to the magistrate's office or submit a formal complaint; just find a wall and write it down.

Everyone could see it, and everyone could supervise.

Those who were reported would either change or die.

Rule Three: All local residents of Zhenhuang Pass are entitled to one guaranteed job per person, with a minimum monthly salary of five thousand. Those who are unemployed can apply at the Zhenhuang Pass City Hall.

Five thousand wasn't a large amount, but it was enough to feed a family of three.

More importantly, this rule gave every ordinary person a way out—even if you had nothing left, even if you were at the end of your rope, Zhenhuang Pass would give you a job to let you survive.

The three rules were simple and blunt, without any legal jargon or explanatory clauses.

Because they didn't need explanation.

Those who could understand them got it as soon as they read them.

For those who couldn't, explaining wouldn't help anyway.

...