Chapter 177 - Murderous Intentions

Translator: TeamTWO

Editor: Jun

Out of the 5 basic buildings for a grade 2 city, the theater was automatically built, and the 3 altars only needed blueprints. The most annoying one had to be the chess courtyard as it required chess players, which needed an element of luck.

For the basic buildings for a grade 2 city, each blueprint was sold for 500 gold on the market.

These building blueprints, including the grade 1 city blueprints, were very difficult to obtain from raider camps. This was because such cultural buildings had nothing to do with raiders. Hence, the raider operation did not give Ouyang Shuo any blueprints that he could make use of.

Hence, to buy all the blueprints for the grade 2 town, he needed 2000 gold.

The population's upper limit of a grade 2 city had increased so much that based on the current refugee spawn rate, it needed 100 days before it would be reached. Hence, Ouyang Shuo needed to increase his population through other means.

Definitely, to other lords, upgrading to grade 3 city there was also a huge gap which was the rank restriction. Out of all the grade 1 cities in the Chinese region, apart from Ouyang Shuo, the others were still rank 2 earl. Zhan Lang and Bai Hua's rank 2 earl was even obtained through the reward for upgrading to grade 1 city.

To rank up from rank 2 earl to rank 1 earl, the merit points required were impossible to obtain from just the main map. Hence they were a long way away from rank 1 earl.

Which meant that even if they were able to reach the population upper limit and become a grade 2 city, it would just stop there.

One could imagine how intense the competition would be at the next battle quest.

The rank restriction had also shown during the batch of lords that had just upgraded to grade 1 township. This bunch of players from start to finish, at every upgrade of their territory, they weren't given any rewards and as such could only attack raider camps to earn limited merit points.

Hence, for them to upgrade to a grade 2 township was very difficult.

The pyramid effect was slowly showing. The importance of the rank was also slowly starting to gain attention.

The territory area of a grade 2 city had reached 5000 square kilometers, and Lianzhou Basin took up 240 thousand square kilometers. This meant that Shanhai Town had taken up 1/48 of the Lianzhou Basin. Ignoring the area that the nomads took up, the chances of Shanhai City overlapping with other territories were very massive.

As expected, on the second day after Shanhai City upgraded, the Military Intelligence secretary Songsan came into Ouyang Shuo's office.

"Sire I have important military information."

Ouyang Shuo was shocked, quickly saying, "Speak!"

Song San gathered his words before saying, "Last month, the investigation that sire asked the Military Intelligence Division to conduct has had some progress. After the territory upgraded, the few territories around us had already become right at our new border.

"Please be more specific!" Ouyang Shuo didn't show any emotions.

"Yes, sire!" Song San carried on. "These batches of territories are on our east and west sides. The west side had 5 grade 1 villages, and the east has 3. These are all grade 3 villages."

"How are the defenses of these villages?" Ouyang Shuo was ready to kill.

"These grade 3 villages have already reached the upper population limit, have one or two squadrons of protection troops, mostly made up of basic sword shield soldiers, and some are even militiamen. As for defenses, they are all simple fences which are the same as nothing to us." Song San understood what Ouyang Shuo wanted to hear.

"Then we don't need to hesitate, remove them." Ouyang Shuo had decided, turning to Songsan. "At 4 PM, organize an emergency meeting to plan related matters. You and Leng Qian should join."

"Yes, sire!"

After Song San said goodbye and left, Ouyang Shuo called the clerk Bai Nanpu and asked him to inform the Military Affairs Director Ge Hongliang, mixed regiment colonel Shi Wanshui, and the 5 majors to join the emergency military meeting.

4 PM, lord's manor meeting hall

After Songsan and Leng Qian reported about the player territories to the east and west, Ouyang Shuo said, "We have to destroy these players before they become threats. As for the specific operation, does the Military Affairs Department have any ideas?"

"What ideas can we have sire, this thing will be passed to the mixed regiment, and it will be done beautifully." Ge Hongliang hadn't said anything but Shi Wanshui started blabbering.

Ouyang Shuo frowned and scolded, "What are you doing, are you trying to rebel?"

If it wasn’t for the 5 majors of the mixed regiment being there, Ouyang Shuo might’ve been even harsher.

Ouyang Shuo noticed that ever since he became a colonel, Shi Wanshui had paid less attention and respect to the Military Affairs Director. Hence, he was furious.

He couldn't allow his leaders to be so arrogant, even a special level general like Shi Wanshui. Hence, he needed to crush that kind of attitude before it starts to spread.

One shouldn’t look at Ouyang Shuo and his cultured and gentle appearance, once he got angry, everyone in the military was afraid of him. Even Shi Wanshui didn't speak when he was chided by Ouyang Shuo.

Ouyang Shyo didn't want to make him look too bad and looked warmly at Ge Hongliang. "Director Ge, please speak."

Ge Hongliang apparently understood what was going on, but he still felt embarrassed. Although Ouyang Shuo trusted him, he wasn't a war general like Shi Wanshui was and just stayed cooped up on the city walls. Ge Hongliang calmed himself down and asked, "As for when to use the troops, does sire have any demands?"

Ouyang Shuo froze. "By the end of this month we must end the battle." The reason why Ouyang Shuo wanted to end it by this month was that, in the 7th month, the players would become level 0 and lose all their items when they died. As the first player to start a war, he would undoubtedly receive a lot of backlashes.

Zhu Hongliang nodded. "The old people said, before one faced the outside, one should ensure that their internal area is peaceful. Since we still have some time, I suggest using 10 days to destroy the raider camps in the territory. Seeing that the 7th month is going to come and the rice crops are going to be harvested, we must first protect them and ensure that they won't be eyed by raiders near the border. Additionally, as the territory size increases, the settlement must also move outwards. We can't only develop one core area in this 5000 square kilometers of land. Only by clearing out the raiders and ensuring internal safety can one set up new settlements and reclaim more farmland."

Ouyang Shuo was pleased. He raised his head and looked at everyone else. "Do you all understand Director Ge’s words?"

"Understood!" Everyone replied in unison.

"You are all generals and not purely soldiers. Although killing on the battlefield is important, to become a famous general, one must think and consider things from a higher perspective. Today, Director Zhu gave all of you a lesson. I hope all of you remember it in your hearts." Ouyang Shuo warned once again. However, he didn't specifically mention Shi Wanshui's name.

"Yes, sire!"

After the military meeting ended, Ouyang Shuo returned to his office. The territory had upgraded, and there was still a bunch of things for him to deal with.

Beihai City’s magistrate Gu Xiuwen sent a letter to ask for a sum of money from the main camp to be used to construct their first city wall. Beihai City's city wall would follow the standards set by the second wall of Shanhai City: 5 kilometers long, 12 meters high and 6 meters wide.

Apart from that, Gu Xiuwen also asked if he could start to build affiliate territories for Beihai City.

After Shanhai City upgraded, the 3 grade 1 townships could further develop 3 affiliate territories on their own, only that Ouyang Shuo didn't let them.

The reason was that the current Shanhai City, Beihai City, Qiushui Town, and Friendship Town were too close to one another. Like what Ge Hongliang said, to only develop one region and not make good use of the new space in the territory was an absolute waste.

The position of the affiliate territories couldn't be moved. If one said that for the first 3 affiliate territories Ouyang Shuo had a strategic consideration, then the second tier of affiliate territories Ouyang Shuo wasn't prepared to do so so quickly. He wanted to wait till the territory reached a Cherian scale before building the second tier affiliate territories.

Affiliate territories wasn't a never-ending cycle. A second tier was the max which meant that the future territory could only have 9 more affiliated territories. If not, Ouyang Shuo wouldn't have thought about building settlements to split the population to open up more land.

The difference between a settlement and an affiliate territory would be that an affiliate territory could grow and expand, every day having new refugees come in. A settlement was going to remain the same as how it was built. The growth of its population could only depend on the residents giving birth.

Similarly, if a player attacked other territories and claimed it as their own, they would lose their growing ability and become a significant settlement. The territory teleportation formation would also disappear.

This was also the reason why Ouyang Shuo didn't destroy other territories earlier. Not only did it make use of personnel, even if he succeeded in the attack and got rid of some territories, he also wouldn't be able to get anything. It would be a waste of time. The populations of these village-grade territories were even lesser than that of the mountain barbarian tribes or raider camps.

Even less needed to be said about the quality of the prisoners, as most of them were just commoners. Those special talents had loyalty to their original lords, so it wasn't an easy thing to make them work for you.

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