"The merchant Deustuya once sold at least thirty young children to the necromancers as alchemical raw materials." When Wu Jianshi said this, a bloated merchant turned pale and slumped in a chair. Two melee soldiers walked through the crowd, dragged him off the chair from the left and right, and carried him out of the room.
"Baron Diokno and his wife believed the nonsense that bathing in the blood of young girls could restore youth, and they killed at least forty slave girls."
"Asshole! I bought them all! They are all my slaves. How I want to deal with them is my business! In order to seize our land, you actually framed a decent noble like this..." An old man in his fifties stood up and cursed. However, he was immediately covered by the mouth of the warriors who rushed up and dragged out.
"Everyone, rest assured. I have all the evidence here, and we will present it one by one in the subsequent trial. We will never wrongly accuse a good person, nor will we let a bad person go. At this moment, Baron Diokno's house has been breached, and soon the Baroness will be reunited with the Baron in the dungeon."
Everyone then noticed that there were slight but continuous gunfire sounds coming from outside the window. There must be more than one house attacked by the guards. And the backbones of these families were still sitting in the room. One could imagine how much resistance their families still had.
A tall and strong man in his thirties suddenly burst out with fighting spirit and rushed towards the window, but before he ran three meters, a spiritual arrow shot out from Xiao Chen's hand and pierced directly into his head. The man's whole body went limp and he fell to the ground without a sound.
"Knight Decombe, in order to seize property, murdered six merchants from other places and took possession of the daughters of two of them. Humph, he deserves to die." Wu Jianshi said.
When the two soldiers went to pull the people away, they found that a fat merchant's feet were wet and smelled bad. The merchant stood up trembling and said, "I plead guilty, I plead guilty. I killed my two trading partners with poison and took over their business. But I plead guilty. I, I want to pay for my sins."
Wu Jianshi said: "I'm sorry, even if you plead guilty, I still have to arrest you. As for whether surrendering can reduce your crime, that is up to the judge. Also, when you become a criminal, all your property will be frozen." After that, the fat businessman was taken out as well.
Wu Jianshi read the names of the names one by one, and more than a dozen of the fifty or so family heads in the venue were taken out. When he finished announcing the names of the names, the remaining people all showed expressions of having survived a disaster. Xiao Chen could feel that when he walked onto the podium again, the expressions of the people around him were much more focused and humble.
Xiao Chen said: "Next, we have to talk about the issue of nobles. First of all, in our country, nobility is not recognized, and the nobles' fiefdoms and various privileges will not be recognized. Everyone present here, you are now a commoner like me.
As for your territory, we will not take it for nothing. We will use a redemption plan to complete the exchange of land from you to us."
"Ransom? Are you going to spend the golden axe to buy our territory?" asked Viscount Yosa, who had just escaped the disaster.
"No, the redemption is not done with cash. For the land, we assess it based on its size and then convert it into shares of the National Land Development Company. The National Land Development Company will be responsible for the development of a portion of state-owned land, including farmland, forestry, mines, fisheries, and industrial and residential land that will appear in the future. A portion of the company's profits will be distributed as dividends and handed over to you."
"Sir Xiao Chen, according to your wishes, we will hand over the land to you to manage, but we can only take a small part of the output? Wouldn't our income be much less than it is now?" asked Viscount Yosa.
"Do you know how many times the yield of our farmland near Hewan City is compared to your regular farmland?" Xiao Chen saw that everyone looked confused and smiled, "Five times."
Amid the exclamations of the crowd below, he continued, "We have adopted a variety of newly developed agricultural technologies, such as synthetic fertilizer technology, magic-assisted growth, and new insect repellents, which have greatly reduced pests and diseases and increased yields. This allows us to harvest more than five times as much as you do from the same piece of land. And as our breeding technology continues to improve, this numerical gap will become larger and larger. If you hand over a piece of land to us to manage, after deducting government taxes, farmers' wages, and the profits retained by the National Land Development Company itself, you will still get more money. If you grow various cash crops, the income will be even better. If it involves secondary processing of agricultural products, such as brewing, the income will increase again. And you no longer need to collect taxes, and you don't need to deal with farmers anymore."
"Does that mean our annual income will increase?" Viscount Yosa said.
"That's right, and if there are undeveloped forests, mines and other resources in the territory, the income will be even greater after we develop them. But this kind of profit sharing has a time limit. We set the redemption period to ten years. If the annual income of the National Land Development Company meets our expectations within ten years, the profit sharing in ten years will be enough for us to redeem these lands at the market price. Under normal circumstances, there will be a lot more profit." Xiao Chen said.
Viscount Josa said, "What if I give up becoming a Chinese?"
"Then you will be our captive enemy national. If we find that you have not fought against us in war, you will be released, but as an enemy, all your property in Suero will be confiscated."
Viscount Yosa pondered for a moment and said, "It seems that there are two choices, but in fact there is only one way to go. Don't you think this is unfair?"
Xiao Chen said: "Will you negotiate fairness with the conquerors? I believe that compared to many aggressive imperial nobles, we are already very friendly and care about your interests. If you follow Marquis Baldini's plan and let Suero fall into the hands of the imperial people, when the imperial army arrives here, I'm afraid your fate will not be optimistic, right?"
Viscount Yosa naturally knew what kind of character the imperial people had. On the northern border of the kingdom, the armies of the kingdom and the empire often harassed each other's towns, and both sides often challenged each other's bottom line. If the people who attacked were the imperial people, they would definitely consider seeking refuge. Thinking of this, he was speechless.