The road to national restoration that began at the end of the century - #343 - Chapter 344: What do you want me to say?
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- #343 - Chapter 344: What do you want me to say?
December 31, 1001 in the Gregorian calendar
Sugui City, Krurod Empire, interior of the palace
Felicity: “The above is the report on how the Wanxi Liberation Force successfully repelled the Akitsu Empire’s army by using street fighting environment and tunnel tactics many times in the past month.
Zelen: “Not bad.”
Felicity: “Is that your comment? Don’t you have anything else to say?”
Zelen: “What do you want me to say about a group of black-haired kobolds that you don’t like very much?”
indeed.
Felicity’s own opinion of the black-haired kobolds is second only to the pig-headed men who openly set up fireworks everywhere. In particular, the black-haired kobolds have long had a collective social consensus of discriminating and suppressing women. From the fundamental education It completely “packages” women as accessories.
Felicity: “Then… okay. At least do you have any high opinions on the future and destiny of Wanxi’s liberation force?”
Zelen: “No. I don’t really believe that the black-haired kobold named Nagamasa can really make the Takagi Kingdom complete earth-shaking changes. After all, among the intelligent races in the world, the black-haired kobolds are at most inferior to Most of the chiefdoms in the Bronze Age or Stone Age are powerful. When they encounter a country like ours or the Negan Empire, it is absolutely inevitable to kneel down and surrender. What’s more, the black-haired kobold is a person with a strong sense of inferiority. The emotional race has long felt extremely ashamed of its history of becoming a slave force of other countries.”
Felicity: “However, if they are not servants, they are waiting to perish. None of their neighbors are easy to mess with, and none of them are truly good-tempered.”
Just like what Felicity said, the black-haired kobolds once killed an entire continent of native humans to extinction. Therefore, when countries around the world who know this period of history hear the name of the black-haired kobold, they take all kinds of precautions.
After all, the black-haired kobolds bully the weak and fear the strong, and they also have a strong bloodthirsty and love to kill, and they like to loot materials to nourish themselves. And after the Takagi Kingdom secretly betrayed the Negan Empire and took the initiative to become a servant of the Akitsu Empire, everyone knew what kind of existence this country was.
The drunken life and death of the upper class elite.
The ignorance of the lower classes.
How can a country like this become powerful?
This is also why the Negan Empire did not directly retaliate by force against the Takagi Kingdom for its betrayal.
The Negan Empire completely knows its roots and is truly confident.
Or maybe it’s because the Negan Empire’s battleships once entered the offshore area of the capital of the Takagi Kingdom and bombarded some “gangsters” who were openly showing off their power. The Negan Empire has not shown any signs of annoyance until now.
But no matter what, the fact is that the Negan Empire now takes the initiative to support the Wanxi Liberation Force as its own puppet, trying to let the Wanxi Liberation Force use the Takagi royal family to launch a new conspiracy to usurp the throne.
Is it just that history can easily happen again?
Zelen himself has very big doubts.
However, Zelen shook his head. If the Takagi Kingdom becomes a slave state of the Negan Empire again, there will actually not be much harm to the Crurod Empire.
In particular, the continent of Neoland is located on the other side of the ocean, geographically separated by an ocean. Even if the Negan Empire wants to do something against the Krorod Empire, it won’t be effective for a while.
The problem is that the series of criminal acts committed by the Takagi Kingdom in the Krurod Empire cannot be written off because of the Negan Empire. At the very least, the Takagi Kingdom must pay a large sum of war compensation.
Zelen: “Felicity, if the Takagi Kingdom admits that the war against our country failed, which was a criminal act that fundamentally harmed our country, what do you hope the Takagi Kingdom can do to apologize?”
Felicity: “Easy. Lose money, use their salt tax as collateral, and force them to abolish the tariffs on our country’s goods.”
Obviously, the educated Felicity knew that apart from gold, silver and jewelry, what else was most valuable in the Takagi Kingdom.
salt.
Unless it is a dead person, as long as it is a living creature, salt is an important strategic material that cannot be excluded. In the Takagi Kingdom, due to the cultural influence of the suzerainty of the Akitsu Empire, soybean paste, a seasoning that can effectively reduce salt consumption, has naturally become a favorite of many poor people.
Even in the Negan Empire, the people of the Negan Empire also have their own mischief.
But no matter how much salt is saved, every household of the black-haired kobolds throughout the Takagi Kingdom must have salt in stock. Otherwise, it would be difficult to preserve all kinds of fresh food in the tropical Takagi Kingdom. Not to mention that salt itself can determine whether an organism can survive and ensure whether it has enough strength to move around.
In fact, the Krorod Empire is also in the tropics. Salt is an important strategic resource that is easy to obtain. The Krorod Empire has specially written a large number of legal provisions for it to ensure its safe use.
After all, in addition to being used for eating, salt is also an important chemical raw material. Therefore, the salt tax based on salt is the first important fiscal revenue for many countries, and it is also a means to effectively control national life.
The reason is that although salt is easy to obtain, its preparation process is relatively complicated, and it is easy to produce salt of poor quality that harms the people. Therefore, most smart countries will strictly manage salt and severely punish private salt dealers who sell salt of unknown quality and make huge profits.
Yes.
There are many things in just one piece of table salt.
But the most critical thing is that controlling a country’s salt tax is equivalent to ensuring that the country will face “long-term blood loss.”
As for engaging in industry and so on…
The Akitsu Empire never thought of letting the Takagi Kingdom set up factories to develop industry. On the contrary, the Takagi royal family directly suppressed domestic industrial trends at the ruling level, resulting in the Takagi Kingdom’s army never having much development and achievements.
Even the most basic infantry and artillery cooperative operations, the Takagi Kingdom has probably never heard of it.
Even strictly speaking, the requirements for this infantry-artillery cooperative operation may be relatively high.
Anyway, Felicity’s answer made Zelen nodded slightly.
Zelen: “Then, the sheep-headed men here are still like nails. Can’t we drive them all into the sea?”
Felicity: “Although the Sheepheads don’t have many numbers, they have replica tanks and there is no shortage of cannon fodder that can be brought to the battlefield to fill the trenches. Moreover, they are magic-savvy, so it is difficult to break through from the front.”