Cthulhu Gonfalon

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Felix was quick to act. Since she had been determined to take control of key industries of the Pyroxene Town, she made immediate adjustments.

She had planned to buy out these industries, but it was impossible to solve the problem with only money.

For example, there were two merchants in charge of the three veins of precious stones. One was a subordinate of a Baron in the Commonwealth of Gold Coins, and the other was the student of a magician. Personally, they were willing to sell these veins, but they didn't have the qualification to make the decision because they were not the bosses, just high-rank employees.

One more example was the guard captain of the town. He was a Sacred Warrior of the Goddess of Wealth, and he was rich and generous, so it was impossible to win him over with money—but it was still easy. Sui Xiong had a talk with the Goddess of Wealth, who had been interested in his experiment on social progress, then she sent an oracle to the Sacred Warrior, who had already grown tired of the cold of the Northwest. He happily passed over his title and packed up his things, starting his journey to the south in the cold weather. It was said that he was in a rush to see the peaches blossom in his hometown…

There was one more guy, the owner of a grocery store. He was in a position similar to the chairman of the League of Merchants and fanatical about authority. It would be to kill him to ask him to give up his authority. However, when Felix came to talk to him, he even agreed to devote his own property to urban construction on the premise of letting him be the deputy mayor of the town…

There were all kinds of problem. Some of them were easy to solve, while some were not.

Fortunately, Felix was both rich and powerful. Besides that, she had a lot of negotiation skills. Finally, with all kinds of methods, she solved all the problems in front of her and took control of these industries as she had planned.

It was inevitable to see blood and fights in this process. For example, the Baron from the Commonwealth of Gold Coins had sent an envoy there for a fight, the winner of which would win the ownership of the veins, or that evil magician who was unwilling to share his real name and had been good at explosion magic, Mr Fei. He had been attacked by a super bomb from a distance of over five miles that had bombed both his magic tower and himself into ashes, and so on.

It could be written into a novel of at least 200,000 words if they were to record all these examples in detail. But it wasn't worth mentioning.

The Church of the Goddess of Wealth had been influential in the Commonwealth of Gold Coins, while Sui Xiong and the Goddess of Wealth were allies, so under the mediation of the Church of the Goddess of Wealth, that fight was more like a show… Actually, it had no influence on Felix. She was a transformed mage, a Magic Bomber who had put great effort into fighting, so a fight would be the last thing she was scared of. Besides, such a Baron, who had no legendary masters in his subordinates, would be unable to send any masters more powerful than her.

As for the evil magician, he was an expert in explosion magic, which took precious stones and a human's soul as a catalyzer, but he was not skilled at all. The range of his magic tower was just three miles, which was even smaller than that of the Gold Metallurgy Magic Tower of Wendy. At that time, Felix was inspired to try the power of her Full Magic Bomb, so she tried it on his magic tower. It was a pity that the defense of his magic tower was too weak, or perhaps the super bomb had led to explosion of other bombs, but finally, with a small mushroom cloud, the magic tower that was hiding in the deep mountain and scaring the surrounding villages was gone.

People always said that forces didn't help clear up trouble, but were the troublemakers. To punish someone as a warning to others was a method that never went out of date. After the evil magician and his magic tower were annihilated together, many people who had held an ambiguous attitude towards Felix, or were even against her, changed their ideas and accepted Felix's suggestion immediately. They all rushed to sell their property and ran away with the money.

They ran away as quickly as if they were being chased by dinosaurs. Sui Xiong thought that if they could keep their speed, they might arrive in the south earlier than the Sacred Warrior whose power had reached the advanced level. Then they could usher in the warm spring and see the flowers together.

Finally, Felix achieved her goal. She took complete control of the core industries that related to people's livelihoods. Although she hadn't been given the title, she had become the real Hill Lord here.

Though there were less than five hundred people in her Hill. With the coming of spring, it was expected some of them might leave.

After taking complete control of the Pyroxene Town, Felix started to make adjustments in various industries.

Starting from the polar industry, she visited the veins and strengthened the areas prone to collapse and seepage with magic, then she adjusted the salaries of the miners. Under the premise of maintaining the system of payment by working hours, she increased their basic salary to ensure that they had enough money to support their families and make a living.

In this way, the income of the veins would decrease. However, since she didn't need to hand over most of the income or the high quality precious stones to the emperor, the total profit would increase a lot. The miners were happy with that, too.

Felix merged several major shops into one. It was enough to put the grain shop, grocery store, and other commodities into one. Haman was busy managing the shop during the daytime and learning knowledge at the Magic School at night. He was very tired, but he made no complaints about it. On the contrary, he smiled happily everyday with the black shadows under his eyes, like a donkey running in a carrot field.

Of course, not all people were miners in the Pyroxene Town, so Felix offered some other jobs, such as street cleaners and house constructors. The salaries for these jobs was lower than that of miners, but they could still make a living on it now that the commodity price had been stabilized. In fact, the most dangerous thing in the winter was suffering from the cold and starvation. Since their houses had been repaired to resist the cold weather, and they were provided with food and clothes, the winter was not as rough as before.

On the other hand, people who were not strong enough had died in the harsh days before. Those who could survive to the present had no reason to fall down again after their living conditions had improved.

Even so, many people died that winter.

Sui Xiong was very sad about that, but he forced himself not to do anything, because the social progress he pursued was not an absolute utopia built with the help of a god.

One couldn't rely on help from others forever. Even the gods would fall one day. The prosperity built with the help of gods wasn't real. To achieve real social progress, people had to rely on their own abilities.

He could help people with his knowledge and wisdom and guide them out some major difficulties, but he definitely would not build a society where people put all their hopes on the help of a god!

Fortunately, the winter was almost over, the weather beginning to turn warmer.

There was good news this winter, as well, since they found a high quality precious stone in the vein. Although it was far from enough to make up the deficit of purchasing grain, it at least helped reduce the financial deficit greatly.

The coming spring represented the start of a new round of work.

"The biggest problem facing the Pyroxene Town remains agriculture," Felix said with worries, looking at the survey report, "The land here is badly contaminated by negative power, and many of the divine temples that could help to purify the land have moved away. Now, relying on the power of the Church of the Royal Crown, the Goddess of Wealth, has been not enough to protect the out of town farmland from contamination."

This problem was outside of the ability of humans to solve. Only the gods could help.

When it was time for him to do something, Sui Xiong would never hesitate. He went to a place that had once been used as farmland outside town, exerting his divine power and laying down a wide range of purification boundaries.

This boundary was summarized by the exchanges of various churches in the exploration of the Northwest area. It had the highest cost-effective ratio in terms of continuous purification and only needed a small covering to protect the land within a certain range from the contamination of negative energy. However, the land couldn't be fertile, it could only grow Golden Vine.

Golden Vine was a special kind of plant. It had been found first by the Goddess Gaia in the small world, which had been the battlefield of the Sun God and the Death God. It was a strange world in which positive energy and negative energy were mixed together without interfering with each other. The Golden Vine absorbed all kinds of energy and transformed it into positive energy to drive out negative energy so as to maintain the environment for living beings.

Then the Golden Vine was brought to the Main Plane. They had tried to plant it on the edge of the Ash Forest, where it had not been badly contaminated, but just absorbing the energy from the sun was not enough for the Golden Vine to grow. After several trials, it was confirmed that the Golden Vine could grow well with magic power and = provide relatively safe food to the residents of the Ash Forest.

The most common magic power was the power of belief. That was why the villages in the Ash Forest had to rely on the church and the divine temple.

There was the divine temple of the Goddess of Wealth in the Pyroxene Town, but it couldn't provide enough magic power. That was another reason for Felix to set up the Magic School—they could connect to the Element Plane through a magic array and get a continuous magic power supply to power the growth of Golden Vine.

With the support of the Magic School, they were able to plant Golden Vine again.

Looking at the residents of the Pyroxene Town who were planting in the repurified farmland, Sui Xiong was lost in his thoughts.

The contamination of negative energy had been the largest problem for the residents in the Ash Forest. Many gods had tried to solve it, but all of them had failed.

The negative energy came from an ancient god who had fallen down there in the War of Gods. It was estimated that the power of that ancient god had advanced to the level of strong power, or even perhaps close to the level of great power. On the contrary, because of the existence of the Thunder of Godly punishment, there had been a lack of high-end power in the Main Plane, so even if they had wanted to help, there was nothing they could do.

If it was possible to shield this area from the Thunder of Godly punishment temporarily, only the power of Sui Xiong, Morani, and the Goddess of Wealth would be enough to purify all the contamination in the Ash Forest…

"Perhaps… Should I consider digging underground the Ash Forest and planting mushrooms that can absorb the negative energy there?"