[After the book goes on sale, the notice at the top will be posted in the author's notes.]
[Notice: I wouldn't normally single out a reader's comment to address, but given how severe this reader's case of King Crimson is—they may not even have read the first three chapters—I'm making a separate clarification for the sake of the book.]
[This reader's first question was about the timeline. I clearly stated the current year in Chapter One: the eighty-fifth year of the ten-thousand-year gap between Peerless Tang Sect and Legend of the Dragon King. Anyone who has read the original works should know that the gap between Soul Land II and Soul Land III is ten thousand years.]
[As for the second question—what they're planning to develop and how vague the protagonist is—I clearly explained Rus Wang's intentions in a paragraph in Chapter One. Once the continent beneath their feet, which covers 44.76 million square kilometers, had been unified and the Chinese-style Western Fantasy Elves brought together, he was confident that, within the two-thousand-year protection period, he could build a nation where Soul Beasts and Elves lived as equals, with technology on par with Call of Duty 13.]
[The third question was: why were Soul Beasts and Elves still opposed to each other? At the beginning of Chapter Three, when the Female Water Dragon Thalassa first encountered the Elves, the story clearly explained that when Thalassa first arrived on the Zheer Continent, she found a group of upright, two-legged creatures that looked a lot like humans. Their ears were unusually long, however, and their Soul Power was so low it was practically nonexistent, which puzzled her. She didn't choose to take revenge on them as fellow members of the human race. Instead, she quietly observed them. During that time, she also saw several Soul Beasts, like herself, who had fled here and were carrying out retaliatory massacres against those two-legged beasts.]
[Reader, when you write a comment, could you please read the chapters carefully first, then offer your thoughts and critique rationally?]
"Grandpa."
Ever since that encounter, Rus Wang had been staying at Herundis Manor. That was why Toriya had been able to speak with him so soon after agreeing to Venicia's request at the curry shop that afternoon. Even when Rus Wang wasn't at the manor, Toriya had plenty of ways to contact him wherever he was.
"Um, could I ask you a favor?"
Looking at Rus Wang, who had transformed into a middle-aged man and was sitting in the office, Toriya could tell her grandfather wasn't in a good mood. The capital, Ravenna, had once again seen several thousand Elf workers go on strike that year.
"Oh? It's not often that little Toriya asks Grandpa for a favor. What is it?"
Toriya didn't beat around the bush with Rus Wang. She told him directly.
"That's what happened."
Toriya watched her grandfather Rus Wang's reaction. His eyes seemed brighter than usual, and then... he smiled.
"Grandpa?"
"It's wonderful that little Toriya cares about the people, but governing a country is like pulling one thread and moving the whole garment. That's especially true when the system itself is the problem. You can't solve it just by tweaking a few regulations... Come sit down, granddaughter."
Rus Wang looked at Toriya with pride. Though she had lived in luxury, she hadn't fallen into the habits of the nobility. On the contrary, her adventures in the Nanshan Rainforest had often made her act like a wildling. And the fact that she had gotten into high school through her own ability, scoring around 130 out of 150 in every subject on each monthly exam, showed she was more than capable of pursuing a university education.
Rus Wang went over to the sofa and patted the open space on the right side of the two-seater.
"All right."
After sitting down, Toriya looked a little uneasy. The evening seemed unusually quiet...
"Grandpa, what are you doing?"
Toriya asked.
"You'll find out in a moment."
Soon, the rhythmic sound of rubber soles stepping across the hardwood floor came from the doorway, followed by a knock.
Rus Wang's relaxed expression as he looked at his granddaughter immediately turned serious. He spoke to the person waiting outside the door. "Come in."
The person who entered was enough to make the children of the Elf Kingdom's wealthy and bureaucratic circles cry for their mothers: the son of the kingdom's first chancellor, the second-strongest Elf, owner of the Robin-Sick Hotel Group, and the highest Grand Mentor of the Grey Feather Division, the intelligence and internal affairs agency—Ulides Roderick.
Ulides entered the office with a Grey Feather Division deputy. His resolute expression shifted by a few pixels when he saw Toriya beside Rus Wang, but quickly returned to normal. He reported to Rus Wang, "Your Majesty, the factory owners in every city who violated government laws by forcing workers to work longer hours have all been arrested, along with their families, and taken to the Robin-Sick Hotel. Their enforcers and the local gangs have also been completely eliminated. We await your judgment."
"Try them according to the law." (Note: The Elves have a legal provision stating that if a factory owner makes workers work more than eleven hours a day for over a month, they will be executed if the facts are confirmed. If the factory owner provokes the people into defending their rights, whether the owner and management are executed, imprisoned, or fined depends on the circumstances.)
"Yes."
As the deputy beside Ulides picked up a Soul Communication Device and sent out the signal, Grey Feather Division operatives at Robin-Sick Hotels across the provinces took up their Soul Tool Guns and entered the rooms where the factory owners were staying...
After Ulides left, Toriya quietly asked her grandfather, "Grandpa, wasn't that deputy beside Uncle Ulides the Soul Douluo Irwin, who accompanied Father and Mother for tests a few months ago?"
"Yes, that was her."
Irwin had quite a story behind her. During the abrupt transition from the Classical Era to the Steam Age (see Chapter Eleven for details), the Elf Kingdom underwent some internal upheaval, and many of the seats at the top were left empty.
She had been rescued by Ulides when the Grey Feather Division wiped out the underground black market that had resurfaced in the capital. At the time, she was thirty-two and no illiterate. In fact, she had passed the classical examination and earned a doctorate, becoming a temple priestess. But later, she had been abducted and brought here. She knew full well that the powerful had done it because they coveted her body. After the Grey Feather Division rescued her, every part of her body had been examined for poison. Her meridians had been crippled, leaving her unable to use Soul Power. She had nearly lost an arm and a leg, and her eyes were filled with hatred for the powerful.
To Ulides, there was no doubt she was the best candidate to carry on his father's ideals and his own legacy as the second-generation Grand Mentor of the Grey Feather Division. He asked Rus Wang to provide medicine to heal her. Rus Wang agreed and personally used a small stamina potion from Seer to repair her meridians. It was the closest she had ever come to seeing the divine protector of the Elves.
From then on, she—who had already believed in Rus Wang—became fervent in her faith. But the more fervent she became, the more normal she seemed in everyday life. Ulides, the Grey Feather Division's Grand Mentor who had always regarded Rus Wang as an elder, knew this as well. As long as it didn't affect the Division's work, he would simply leave his elder Rus Wang to deal with her himself.
After Ulides left with his deputy, a horse-drawn carriage arrived at Herundis Manor. The current chancellor of the Elf Kingdom, accompanied only by a coachman and carrying a single document, quietly entered the manor. (The Elf Kingdom now had Soul Guidance Cars, handmade by Balus, but the dragon himself focused most of his efforts on researching the Two-Horned Imprint, while Elf professors and university students worked on industrializing the technology.)
"My chancellor, the cities that have adopted a market economy in recent years have seen riots. Has your cabinet come up with a solution in the pilot cities?"
"Your Majesty, we have indeed worked out a relevant solution in the pilot cities."
"Next, the entire country will fully adopt a planned economy, with demand, production, and supply all incorporated into the nation's eight-year plan."
During the nationwide protests, the Elf Kingdom's cabinet had previously focused most of its efforts on reclaiming land and developing rural areas. It had only applied a planned economy outside the cities, through the Construction Corps that cleared and developed new land, and the state-run farms established afterward. Privately owned farms and farmers accounted for a mere 0.8 percent of the country's total agricultural output. The government also encouraged unemployed Elves, vocational school students, and junior college students in the cities to go work in the countryside by offering them government positions. In other words, it urged the urban population to join the Construction Corps and register as members.
But those Elves weren't the main source of labor for the Construction Corps. Most came from rural areas and state-run farms. They were the rural Elves who hadn't made it into the top five percent in the nationwide primary school exam—the only students who could attend middle school for free—but whose families couldn't afford to send them otherwise.
Elves living in the countryside were the main contributors to the Elf Kingdom's population growth. Those minors who couldn't afford middle school were placed in the state-run farms in their hometowns for training. Once they reached a certain age, they were screened. Those with good overall abilities were selected for the Construction Corps, while the rest were assigned to newly built state-run farms.
At the time, ordinary Elves who failed to rank in the top five percent nationwide on the primary school exam and earn free tuition had to pay a year's worth of tuition equal to five years of an ordinary Elf's average salary if they wanted to attend middle school. (Please stop saying education was compulsory through university. Only a select few Elves could earn that opportunity through their intelligence and grades.) After six years of preschool education, half of whose expenses were covered by the government, and three years of fully compulsory primary education, the state offered free advancement to only a tiny number of students.
Those students then had to pass the nationwide screening for the top forty percent on the middle school and high school entrance exams (high school students had to learn differential and integral calculus in math—just imagine the difficulty of the university entrance exam). As a result, those who made it to university were all capable of becoming doctors and leaders in their fields. They were the products of an entirely elite education system.
For the processing materials and machinery needed to develop state-run farms and the Construction Corps, the government placed orders with the city's factories, which operated under a market economy (in the cities, the government's main role in the economy was to make and enforce laws, regulate the market, and ensure fair competition). At the end of each year, it collected sixty percent of each factory's profits in taxes.
The government took back part of the money the factory owners had hoarded away, keeping their hands tight around it, to cover the enormous shortfall in state expenses. To plug the rest of that gap before it burst the following year, the cabinet could only keep asking for money from Rus Wang's private treasury. (Yes, asking, not borrowing. Ever since Levant 198, the government had never repaid a single coin it got from Rus Wang, and Rus Wang never brought it up.)
But it was now clear that the country's two economic systems were no longer suitable. After enjoying fifty-eight years of prosperity from the steam engine, the factory owners had given in to their greed. They had begun to ignore the government's sword and do everything they could to squeeze their workers to the limits of what they could endure.
The chancellor's eyes turned cold. Those bloated factory owners had probably forgotten one thing: every Elf had Soul Power.
If His Majesty Rus Wang hadn't been the strongest fighter and kept the whole kingdom in check, maintaining the orderly society they had now, those weaklings who hadn't even reached level thirty would have been beaten to death by the enraged Elf workers. (Elf legal provision: Adult Elves are forbidden from using Soul Power to fight outside martial arts schools, whether in cities or the countryside. Violators face one year in prison, or five years in serious cases. Repeat offenders with three or more violations, or those who cause a death, will be sentenced to suspended execution or immediate execution, depending on the circumstances.)
"Very good. Convert the private enterprises into state-owned enterprises and implement the changes across the board."
Rus Wang was very satisfied with the success of the reforms in the pilot cities. There might be problems like those in the Soviet Union in the future, but Elves lived for a very long time, and it would be a long time before those kinds of problems necessarily arose.
"Have you decided on the working hours and hourly wages for the Elves?"
"We've drawn up a series of hourly wage rates. The minimum wage will be three copper coins per hour, and it will rise according to the technical requirements of each position, ensuring that most people can accept it. (There is no wage arrangement that will satisfy everyone.)"
"Thanks for all your hard work, Chancellor. Get a good night's sleep."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
After the chancellor left, Toriya sat beside Rus Wang, looking a little stunned.
"So the government departments had already been trying to solve this problem for years, but they needed to test the reforms in pilot cities to make sure the regulations were reasonable. That's why they kept holding off?"
"That's a very clever summary, little Toriya. Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish: you must be cautious, intervene sparingly, and keep policies stable instead of changing them too often. If a few years of protests were enough to make us replace the entire system of governance, the country would only descend into chaos."
Before you continue