Restaurant

In the study of the Governor's Office, candles blazed brightly, casting Count Boles's cold, stern profile half in light and half in shadow.

He had buried himself in the piles of dossiers urgently gathered from every corner, his pen flying. At times, he drew sharp ink strokes over key passages with his quill; at times, he closed his eyes and gathered his focus, his knuckles unconsciously tapping against the hardwood desk.

The air was thick with the musty smell of old paper, the astringent scent of ink, and an almost congealed sense of oppression.

Yet the deeper he read, the deeper the furrow between Boles's brows became, and the chill in his eyes seemed almost ready to freeze into frost.

On the books, the acreage of military farms registered in the Herwenham region was enormous, worthy of being called the granary of the Northern Territory. Yet each year, the grain paid in by the Military households farming those lands was pitifully little, and the accounts were riddled with holes.

In the thick yellow household registers, the recorded numbers of adult males clearly failed to match the actual reports submitted from various localities. Concealed households, runaway households, and those who had fraudulently lodged fields under others' names were beyond counting, and the state's tax base had suffered a grave loss.

What enraged him even more was that many fields clearly marked as guard-station official fields, military farms used to support troops, had their ownership shockingly registered under the names of several completely unfamiliar private individuals. The powers entangled behind them were like roots and joints knotted in every direction!

"Smack!"

A crisp crack shattered the deathly silence of the study! Boles slammed the thick register recording land ownership down onto the desk, and the heavy force made even the tabletop tremble!