The Pirates' Public Trial

The docks erupted completely.

"Twenty Copper Soul Coins a day? That's six hundred Copper Soul Coins a month—that's six Silver Soul Coins!"

"That's way better than farming!"

"I want to sign up! My family's got three workers—we'll all come!"

"You need three hundred people to expand the docks? Count me in!"

"I can work on the battery too! I learned the trade from the Old Stonemason when I was young!"

The farmers who barely scraped by from the fields, the laborers who took odd jobs on the docks, the ordinary people who had no martial souls, no craft, and could only survive by selling their strength—all of them were flushed with excitement.

Twenty Copper Soul Coins a day meant six Silver Soul Coins a month. In Dragon Ascending Town, that income definitely counted as upper-middle.

And the project would not last just a day or two, but several months, perhaps even half a year. To them, this was practically a windfall from heaven.

Xiao Yun looked at the excited faces below, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.

Twenty Copper Soul Coins a day was a number he had calculated carefully.

If it was too high, the finances could not bear it; too low, and it would not attract enough labor. This amount was just enough to let an ordinary family eat their fill without making them dependent on it.

What he needed was not a group of lazy men living off a lord's charity, but a group of ordinary people changing their lives through labor.

When the cheers gradually died down, Xiao Yun took another step forward.

"There is one more matter."

The docks quieted.

"Yesterday, three pirate ships from the Green Shark Pirate Group attacked Dragon Ascending Town. Before this, they once burned, killed, and looted in the