"Road closure?" Xu Yi looked forward in shock, thought for a while, got up and got out of the car.
When I walked at the front of the convoy, I saw that a wooden fence had been erected in the middle of the road to act as a roadblock, blocking the convoy.
Xu Yi looked far away and found that there was no construction in front of the road, and he could see several carriages running on the road, and pedestrians were not affected at all.
It seemed that they were the only ones blocking their own convoy.
Behind the roadblock stood more than a dozen soldiers wearing uniform armor. Judging from the logo on their chests, they were not the direct army of the kingdom, but the local city guard of Laimat City.
The person who was having a heated argument with Ancato at this time was a soldier who looked like a small boss.
"Ankato, what's going on?" Xu Yi stopped Ankato, who was red-necked and full of anger, and asked him.
"President, these guys didn't stop anyone, but stopped our convoy. I think they clearly deliberately made things difficult for us!" Ankato pointed at the soldiers and said angrily. "I clearly saw them putting up carriages and everything just now, but when our convoy arrived, they put up roadblocks again."
"Hey, didn't I tell you just now?" The little leader pointed to the road behind him. "This highway is under maintenance, so heavy vehicles like yours cannot be allowed to pass. Don't you understand?"
"But I clearly saw a large cargo carriage in front of you and you guys let it go. The cargo they pulled was not less than ours?" Ancato said unconvinced.
"How do you know they are heavier than you?" The little leader glared at Ankato, then turned to look at Xu Yi. "Hey. Are you the president? Let me tell you. This road is closed. Please take a detour."
"You should be polite to our president, I tell you, the president..."
Xu Yi raised his arm to stop Ankato from continuing. After pondering for a moment, he came to the little boss and said with a smile: "Sir, can you take a step to speak?"
The little boss looked at Xu Yi up and down. He smiled, waved to Xu Yi, and walked under a big tree next to the road.
Xu Yi followed him and came to the place behind the tree trunk that blocked everyone's view. Without saying a word, he took out a small money bag from his arms and handed it over.
"Sir, can you tell me what's going on with this road closure?"
The little boss was not polite, he took the money bag directly and weighed it in his hand. He quickly judged from experience that there were at least twenty gold coins in the purse, and the serious expression on his face immediately faded. Become cheerful and smile.
"Hey, well... To be honest, I don't know what's going on." The little boss smiled and explained: "Anyway, the city lord issued a strict order a week ago, instructing no magic motorcycle to pass through this highway. Before you, I have stopped the magic motorcycle fleets of several chambers of commerce."
After saying that, the little boss turned back to look at the motorcade parked on the road, and asked curiously: "Speaking of which chamber of commerce do you belong to? This is the first time I have seen a chamber of commerce with so many magic motorcycles."
"Haha, it's just a small chamber of commerce. You must have never heard of it, sir." Xu Yi answered vaguely, and then asked: "Sir, is there any possibility of accommodation? We all ran here, and if we turn back, what would happen? It’s such a waste of time, and there’s no place to rest for a while, right?”
While talking, Xu Yi took out a money bag from his arms and handed it over.
Looking at this money bag that was obviously bigger than the one before, the little boss swallowed involuntarily. His expression struggled for a while, but he still shook his head vigorously.
"No, the Lord of the City has strict orders this time. If I let you go, you might be caught directly in jail by the Lord of the City when you go back."
Seeing that the little boss was resolute, Xu Yi knew that there might be no room for accommodation this time. After thinking about it, he nodded, looked up at the distance on the road, and turned around to return to the convoy.
"President, how are you?" Ankato immediately came over and asked in a low voice.
Xu Yi shook his head: "Turn around, let's go another way."
Ankato immediately frowned: "Turn around now? But Sir, this is the only road near Laimat City."
"It's not a highway, and it's not impossible to walk on it. Besides, how much better do you think this highway is compared to those ordinary dirt roads?" Xu Yi asked back.
Ancato glanced at the bumpy road under his feet, sneered, and then glanced at the roadblocks on the road and the dozen soldiers behind the roadblocks, then turned and got in the car.
Seeing the first freight magic locomotive driven by Ancato himself begin to turn around with difficulty on this dilapidated road, Xu Yi returned to the medium-sized magic bus in the middle of the convoy.
After explaining it to Canby and others, everyone was puzzled.
"It makes sense to say that the road should be repaired. This road is so dilapidated that it should be repaired. But why is it only restricted to magic motorcycles?" Canby frowned. "Is this targeting our New Aircraft Chamber of Commerce?"
Xu Yi glanced at the horizon in the distance in front of the highway and found that he couldn't even see the walls of Laimat City. He shook his head and said: "I don't know. Maybe there is this reason, but it doesn't matter anymore. After all, this is not Bangta City, I'm too lazy to waste time negotiating with the city lord of Laimat City. And I just told Ankato that taking this road is not much different from taking an ordinary dirt road, right?"
Everyone in the car laughed.
"That's right, such a dilapidated road is probably not as good as some fairly flat old dirt roads."
"Tch, the previous road in our village was better than this broken road."
"Okay, let's go back and look down on those guys from the Armli Chamber of Commerce. They are really embarrassed to build such a broken road."
…
Xu Yi did not join in the banter, but opened the map again, pointed his finger on Anvilmar City on the map, and then drew all the way along the road leading to Sewell City.
In addition to pausing at Laimat City, his fingers also paused at the other two cities he passed through.
The situation of the other two cities is similar to that of Laimat City. They both rejected the investment application of the New Flying Chamber of Commerce because of their support for Prince Eric.
What Xu Yi is worried about now is that now that the Xinfei Chamber of Commerce's fleet has been refused entry in Laimat City, it is very likely that they will receive the same treatment in the other two cities.
Although the reason presented by Laimate City for prohibiting the passage of magic motorcycles due to the need for road construction, although there was no problem on the surface, Xu Yi still smelled a special smell that made him very uncomfortable.
If this matter was done by Laimate City deliberately against the Xinfei Chamber of Commerce, then Xu Yi would need to consider more issues.
The Xinfei Chamber of Commerce went to Sewell City to make large investments, not only because of the warm invitation of Earl Satsuma, but also because it was more convenient to cooperate with the Duke of Drake in Sewell City, and more importantly, for Xu Yi's general The strategy of spreading the magic industry throughout the Lampali Kingdom has a very important promotion effect.
So on this point, Xu Yi couldn't allow any mistakes. This time, he mobilized almost all the elites of the Xinfei Chamber of Commerce to come together, and even took action himself.
Now that Laimat City was blocking his way, Xu Yi couldn't help but start to consider a very practical problem.
After all, Sewell City is close to Bangta City by thousands of highways, and if the Xinfei Chamber of Commerce wants to invest and build in Sewell City, it will inevitably involve a large amount of transportation and exchange of personnel and materials, so the transportation issue is a top priority.
If you want fast and convenient transportation, the combination of magic motorcycles and roads is of course the best one at the moment.
But because most of the roads in the Lampali Kingdom are now built by the chambers of commerce of various cities or the cities themselves, the operating rights of these roads are in the hands of each city itself.
For example, if Laimate City does not want the magic motorcycles to pass by, then the New Flying Chamber of Commerce's fleet will not be able to pass.
If Laimat City and the other two cities impose restrictions on the Xinfei Chamber of Commerce, the transportation of the Xinfei Chamber of Commerce from Bonta City to Sewell City will inevitably be greatly affected.
So Xu Yi now began to seriously consider an issue. Perhaps the road transportation network in the Lampali Kingdom should be upgraded in advance.
In the past, due to financial constraints and insufficient awareness of road issues within the Kingdom of Lampali, most of the roads built in the Kingdom were built by each city. Therefore, although the total number of roads currently owned by the Kingdom of Lampali is The mileage exceeds 3,000 kilometers, but it is actually just a short section of highways in each city.
According to the standards on earth, these roads can only be regarded as county roads at best, not even provincial roads.
Although this can still make the road transportation network cover all cities in the kingdom, there are actually many problems.
What happened to Xinfei Chamber of Commerce today is one of them.
In addition, because each city has different capital investment in building roads, the quality of the roads is different. In addition, the roads built only connect the cities, which inevitably leads to many unnecessary twists and turns, so that the mileage of transportation through roads will increase. Much more than a straight line distance.
Taking the city from Bonta City to Sewell City as an example, the straight-line distance between the two cities is actually less than 700 kilometers, but if you follow the highways between cities, the total mileage will be more than a thousand kilometers. , more than half more.
Putting aside the extra shipping costs, Xu Yi felt that it was a bit of a waste just because of the extra time.
Xu Yi had thought about this problem before, but he just felt that the time had not come yet, so there was no need to worry.
But after encountering this problem in Laimat City today, he began to seriously consider how to solve this problem.
Xu Yi's finger drew a straight line between Bangta City and Sewell City on the map, and then began to look at the various situations near this straight line, thinking about the construction of such a line with a single mileage of more than 700 kilometers. It is the feasibility of the first national highway in the Lampali Kingdom. (To be continued...)