Chapter 204 “secret city”
As time goes by, two months have already gone by in a blink of an eye. Although the winter snow has already receded, the chilling wind still lingers in this barren landscape. Nonetheless, there are already evidence of spring in certain locations.
The Northwest may be a land of bitter cold, though a bit short, but the spring season can be considered the best here.
The immigration process of Loulan City has mostly been completely. At the moment, the number of occupancies in the city numbers around 100,000, this included almost of the population in Anglia City.
The New capital city is located next to the Loulan Lake. Equipped a rarely seen fertile landscape in the Northwest, plus a well maintained road set, the general area around this miracle city is starting to show some life.
As for the migration department, they would always be swamped with long lines of people from around the province. Even if these individuals did not really want to move, they would still come around just to have a look at this miracle city in the warm season!
(1 li = 500 meter)
Just 10 li outside the Loulan City, a new military barrack have already been constructed and Du Wei’s first Tulip infantry division is formally completed. This 20,000 strong division is established around the 4,000 rebel soldiers as the backbone and a lot of new recruits. Later on, in order to solve the recruitment problem, Du Wei once again sent his people to Big Ear city and bribed that Biaideluo. Over the span of several months, more than 2,000 prisoners were sent over again. Though Biaideluo wasn’t very good in the political circle, but in this Sin City, he holds absolute authority. With only a few strokes of his pen, he could easily say they died or illness or exhaustion along their journey. Eventually, such a whopping figure is a little too big, so Biaideluo outright reported a plague and anyone he sent to Du Wei is presumed dead from the plague.
The upper command could care less for a place like Big Ear city, much less when there’s a plague running rampant. As he grew bolder, Biaideluo even had all the prisoners coming in for this spring sent over to Du Wei while they were still in transport.
Toward these prisoners, Du Wei promised they only needed to serve for three years before they are given their freedom. After the duration, he will even reward those with merit a piece of land that they can call their own! Since the Desa Province is sparsely populated anyways, it’s not like the reward will effect anything.
Now, the number of soldiers in Du Wei’s first Tulip division consisted of 4,000 rebel soldiers, 2,000 prisoners, and more than 10,000 recruits. If he really measured the quality of the troops, the ones that stood out the most other than the 4,000 elite regular troops are the 2,000 prisoners. During training sessions, more often than not, the capacity of these prisoners are much higher than the regular recruit!
Well, this is to be expected. When Du Wei spent his money to buy these prisoners, he only picked the youngest and strongest among them. He also did some background checks, but then again, there wasn’t much to verify to begin with. To be stuck in such a place like Sin City, their background can’t be all that big, or else their family would have already rescued them.
Just like Du Wei said, when these already desperate prisoners saw the ray of hope given to them, their willingness to endure hardship is much higher. In only a short period of time, quite a few of these individuals were already coming into shape. From Knight Robert’s view, he believed their fighting capability is only slightly lowered than the regular soldiers in the Northern Corp.
In recent months, General Totoro of the Northwestern Army sent someone over twice for money. In the first time, Du Wei once again used the ‘dragging’ method to fool the other party. Then for the second time, the other side’s attitude was much tougher. Du Wei thought it over and decided he still wasn’t willing to have a falling out with the Northwestern Army just yet. On top of this, the annual spring drill was drawing near, so this was definitely not the time to make any mistake. In the end, he finally gave in and paid the sum. In his mind, he considered the payment a fee to buy a safeguard.
Compared to the fully outfitted first infantry division, the cavalry division could use some work. After all, the training process of a cavalry is much more difficult. While the people of the Northwest is all weathered individuals, but Longbottom’s selection criteria is exceptionally strict. So far, the number of cavalry troops in Du Wei’s hand only numbered around 3,000 strong, half of which consisted of Longbottom’s old unit and the remaining half of new recruits.
Even though Longbottom’s level of abuse towards these new recruit could make anyone sigh with regret, but Longbottom assured Du Wei each of these cavalry kngihts can match up to any cavalry unit of the empire.
The truth is Longbottom originally recruited 5,000 people under him, but due to the harshness of his training, a lot of these people could not take it and left. Also, some were not meeting Longbottom’s requirement and were eventually kicked out also. Then later on, Longbottom even brought with him the remaining recruits and went out on a mysterious tour. No one knows what they did, but after they returned, their numbers dwindled once again.
It wasn’t until Du Wei asked him that he learned the truth. During that trip, Longbottom actually brought these people out for real life “combat”! According to Longbottom’s claim, a soldier cannot be a real soldier if they never seen blood! The reason for this is because sometimes the bravest of souls during a training session would instead become a useless deadweight, and some normally weak bodied individuals could be the fiercest of fighters when placed in a battlefield.
For this reason, he had these people outfitted with light armor and a few days of provision to go out to face off against multiple groups of bandits hiding in the desert.
Sure enough, when they came back, the temperaments of these new recruits all had a significant difference. Gone is the air of inexperience and what came out of it the sense of bloodshed from their eyes!
Longbottom may be harsh when leading, but he is definitely kind to his subordinates. After returning to the city of miracles, Longbottom immediately brought everyone to the brothel. In that single night, they managed to create so much trouble that Dadaneier had quite the headache in cleaning up the mess because he is after all the city defense chief. If not for Du Wei’s instruction that as long as they didn’t step out of bound too much, Dadaneier would have really tossed them all into jail cells.
Early in the morning hours, a carriage was carefully heading towards the governor castle at Loulan City. With more than 10 cavalry knights as escort, these individuals all looked vigilant as if they are ready for anything.
The passenger of this carriage is in fact Du Wei. When he received word last night, he immediately got ready and started to head for Loulan City.
In reality, Du Wei’s residence had long been moved to the new capital. This immense castle imitating the Rowling family castle in the Rowling Plains will hence forth act as his home and work office. It’s just that Du Wei had remained behind during this time in the already abandoned Anglia City.
After Anglia City was emptied of its residence, Du Wei not only didn’t abandon it, he even had took some manpower and materials to repair the collapsed part of the wall.
Anglia City may not be eligible for a capital, but because of its remoteness and the fact that it is backed against the Kilimanjaro Mountain, Du Wei had other plans for it.
As early as a month ago, after the last of its residents moved out, Du Wei ordered the city to be sealed off before beginning a wide arrange of constructions!
Because in Du Wei’s plan, this geographically isolated city would be the most ideal location for his backup production base!
Of course, the stuff produced here is not some ordinary weapon. There are no minerals in this barren landscape, so Du Wei cannot create conventional weapons. Nonetheless,….. Du Wei had a lot of things that he needed to manufacture! For example, things he’s not willing to expose yet and some secret weapon!
Besides, what other place is more fitting to be a production plant than an abandoned city?
No matter how tattered Anglia City was, it is still a city. Once the external wall is repaired and stationed with guards, no spy or undercover agent can expect to leave or get in!
And the people in the city have no need to leave because it is more than enough to be self-sufficient. With numerous living facilities like houses and well, Du Wei even set aside a large plot of land for farming! Using a closed off environment, this place will absolutely keep his secrets away from prying eyes!
For this abandoned city, Du Wei have completely handed over the management of the place to the two geniuses Solskjaer and the big headed Seth.
Afterwards, he bought about a thousand slaves from the Sin City and had them placed in this Anglia City – the group consisted of women, kids, and old gramps. Towards them, DU Wei promised that after give years of labor, he will grant them their freedom again! On top of this, they will even be given their own land!
As for these people, they suddenly went from being a slave to Du Wei’s production plant worker.
What caused these workers to both fear and be surprised is that prisoner slaves usually die off from a couple of years in harsh labor. However, in this production plant, the work was far from what they had imagined!
They even had a very comfortab0le homes to live in (originally belonged to the moved residents, these homes were left with ample food supplies) Du Wei even gave the order that they not only get to take a break during noon; they can even go back and rest in the evening.
And the work is not too heavy, just a little odd… .. Putting up several workshops in the city, these prisoners were then started their mass production cycle under Solskjaer’s guidance……
These people would of course not know this, but the stuff they were producing was the fire element (gunpowder) created by Solskjaer.
And the work done by Seth’s people was even more bizarre. In the large stretches of land set aside for farming inside the city, Seth had his slaves graft all kinds of trees. For those with talent, he set these individuals aside and had them learn how to engrave!
In the production base, the rules aren’t that strict. Dinner and break is garunteed, but Du Wei did have one rule and that is none can leave the city!
During this period, there was only one guy that tried to secretly flee, but before he could even get to the gate, he was already snatched up by the guards. Learning of this, Du Wei ruthlessly had his soldiers break the guy’s leg in front of everyone.
“I can give you hope… … But I can also take your life at any time!” Du Wei announced this to everyone: “So within the next five years, you better keep this in mind!”
Early today, Du Wei had no choice but to leave his production base because he received news that the Lister siblings are about to arrive at Loulan City.
In view of the good relations between him and the Lister Household, Du Wei would of course have to personally go receive them as the master of the Desa Province.
In particular, he is quite curious towards the little sister of the marquise……
