Slightly east of the Commonwealth of Gold Coins, there was a place called "Dahl's Territory."
This place belonged to the Dahl family. Like most of the nobles in the Commonwealth of Gold Coins, this family was a merchant family. About five or six generations ago, an ancestor relied on a little wisdom and soft tactics gained during the war — no one could verify what it was, but it could be assumed that there was no lack of deceit, violence, and conspiracies — to earn his first pot of gold. Then, he began to engage in profiteering, smuggling, lending, and the like.
This ancestor of the Dahl family was very good at business and had good foresight. He was always able to stab his former lord at the right time. After stabbing two lords in the back, he finally made a meteoric rise and became a noble who was qualified to own a territory.
At first, this ancestor was just a knight with a fief, and above him was a viscount. But for some reason, the viscount and his family were ambushed by bandits during a trip, and the whole family was unfortunately killed. When Knight Dahl learned of this, he was furious. Not only did he mobilize all the military forces in his territory, he even took out a large amount of wealth and hired a large number of adventurers to form a sizable army to investigate the cause of the death of the lord.
As the investigation went on, a huge conspiracy slowly surfaced — it turned out that the only baron under the lord's command had colluded with another knight to murder the lord.
The furious Knight Dahl and a few other knights immediately joined forces and launched an attack on these two conspirators. After a bloody battle, the traitors were eliminated, and one of the knights was sacrificed.
As a great hero in investigating the crime and eliminating the traitors, Knight Dahl was praised and supported by everyone, especially by the big shots from the capital. Soon, he became a baron, and together with a few other knights who belonged only to the capital, they jointly managed the territory.
In the years that followed, this area was considered peaceful and undisturbed. Although there was once a dispute over the inheritance of a knight family, and the final heir looked slightly similar to a member of the Dahl family, these were obviously slander.
The current Dahl's Territory could be considered a quiet and remote place.
It was a little far from the "Southeast Avenue" along the coast, and adventurers and caravans would not pass through here. Every generation of Baron Dahl had no interest in invading the Great Marsh to expand their territory. Without the support of the adventurers and mercenaries, they naturally would not use this place as their logistical base, and thus set off to develop or invade the Great Marsh.
On the contrary, there were some smugglers who were doing grey business between the Commonwealth of Gold Coins and the Great Marsh. However, this kind of business could not be seen in the light, and the scale could not be large.
So, in general, just as Baron Dahl was proud to say, the Dahl territory was peaceful and filled with an aura of leisure that made him feel comfortable.
Whenever he drank his tea on the balcony of the castle, and looked down at the territory under his feet, his heart was filled with a feeling of peace and comfort, and he often exclaimed, "Ah, ah, ah! How wonderful life is! "
But in the past few days, Baron Dahl was not in a good mood. Even his favorite afternoon tea had become less delicious.
Because in Dar City, there were a few more unpopular people who had done some unpopular things.
They came from a group of clergymen called the "Church of the Void Mask." There were about ten of them, three pastors, one priest, and the remaining six were Saint Samurai.
Damn it, all of them had official professional levels, and not a single one of them was a weakling!
After this group of clergymen came to Dar City, they first bought a relatively remote house. Because the house was old and dilapidated, they basically did not spend much money on it.
In fact, because the house and the surrounding area had been inhabited by poor people for a long time, it had almost become a place where beggars and thieves gathered. It was really a place where filth was hidden. Unless they needed to find someone to do something that was inconvenient to say, or they needed to find a few objects to hang on the gallows outside the city gates, otherwise, the reputable people in Dar City would definitely not go near it.
Why would a group of dignified clergymen, and the one leading them was even at the level of a middle-level, go to such a place? And they even bought a house and settled down there?
Could it be that this was a strange hobby of the god they believed in?
Remembering that the god they believed in seemed to be a big jellyfish, Baron Dahl felt that perhaps this guess was right.
This matter became a small joke in the upper class of Dar City, and people often brought it up during gatherings. Some people even laughed out loud, saying that these days, they were relying on this group of people to make jokes to pass their days.
But those clergymen were obviously not here to make jokes. After they settled down, the first thing they did was to take out money and hire the poor to work for them, renovate the house, and build the altar.
To be honest, the money they took out was not much, probably enough for the baron to hold a party, and the scale of the party would not be very big, let alone luxurious. But for the poor, this amount of money was already a lot, at least enough to buy food and prevent them from starving to death.
In addition to wages, the clergymen of the Church of the Void Mask also said that the poor people's clothes were too tattered, which went against the teachings of their King Jellyfish, so they gave them some rather thick clean clothes.
Those clothes did not fit very well, and they were also old. It could be seen that they were probably donated by those middle-class people when they were doing charity. But at least they were neatly sewn, and they were warm enough to wear.
And those clergymen also had a morbid pursuit of cleanliness. Every day, there were two Paladins patrolling the slums, urging them to do a good job of cleaning. There was even a priest who caught the poor every day as if they were criminals, taking them to take a bath and change their clothes. Baron Dar heard from one of his patrolling knights that once when he passed by the area, he happened to see a group of poor people taking a bath, and the stench made him sick!
After such a period of time, the slums gradually improved a little. The poor people were dressed neatly, their houses and streets were also cleaned, and because they could almost eat their fill, even their faces had some color.
So Baron Dar sent out the tax collectors.
Anyone who lived in Dar City, no matter what they did for a living, had to pay taxes.
Naturally, the poor also had to pay taxes. In the past, they had no money, and the tax collectors were too lazy to go to them. After all, there was nothing good to go to in that smelly place, and could they cut off the meat of the poor to offset the tax? Of course, if they had little girls, they could offset the tax. But little girls would probably have been bought or abducted long ago, and generally, it would not be the tax collectors' turn to collect the tax. Most of them would follow the traffickers who bought them.
Now that this group of poor people had some money, the tax collectors wanted them to make up for the taxes they owed.
Well, interest.
By right, this was a matter of course, but those clergymen came forward and said that according to the laws of the Commonwealth of Gold Coins, these taxes could not be counted as interest if they could not produce evidence at the time.
The Commonwealth of Gold Coins, which was founded on commerce, valued "evidence" the most.
Could not be counted as interest?! How much money was that?!
Because of this, both sides argued endlessly, and until now, there was no conclusion.
And this was the reason why Baron Dar was unhappy.
He was not short of money, but the money that belonged to him, even one copper coin less would make him very unhappy!
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