Rus Wang's New Rule

During the winter wheat harvest in the Levant Region's thirteenth year—a season that was summer in the Southern Hemisphere and winter in ours—the harvest should have been a joyful one. But tens of thousands of elves fought around a city, heedless of Rus Wang's earlier warnings, utterly wrecking this Eden flowing with milk and honey. Long-simmering tensions soon spread throughout the Levant Region, fueled by a war on a scale never seen in the tribal era.

Countless village alliances were swept up in the fighting. Some suffered hundreds of casualties; others were overrun and reduced to slaves by tribal alliances.

During this time, many elves ventured into the Nanshan Rainforest to ask Rus Wang to intervene, but none received a response. By the following year, the war had dragged on for more than a year with no sign of abating. Then Rus Wang appeared in the Levant with eight giant dragons and inflicted Divine Punishment on the elf tribes that had started the war. After tens of thousands of elves were punished in a single day by the giant Rus Wang and the eight dragons, everything fell quiet.

The priests of the attacked elf tribes recorded the event as Divine Punishment, to warn future generations of elves about the price of starting a war. Over the next sixteen years, Rus Wang made many changes throughout the Levant Region, focusing on restoring livelihoods, improving production techniques, opening up trade, and building an administration.

By the Levant calendar's thirtieth year, Kairon, once the first village in the Levant Region, had become a city-state with a population of more than twenty thousand. Elves from abroad who came there were mostly officials or merchants from Ravenna, the royal capital (Temple City), or scholars seeking to study. Few came from other city-states. But relations had changed dramatically from the days of the isolated village alliances.

Over those years, Osuen had bought an estate outside the city for his wife, Liana, and their children. He still couldn't escape the enthusiastic elf populace electing him to the city-state's council. But compared to personally managing a village of more than ten thousand people, as he had in the past, his current post was little more than a leisurely way to pass the time.

After the Divine Punishment recorded by the elf priests, Rus Wang's control over the Levant Region had deepened and solidified. In the sixteen years since, no elven elders had dared to pay lip service to his decrees while secretly defying them.

Rus Wang made the former Temple City the capital of the Elf Kingdom and carried out a series of administrative reforms across all the villages in the Levant. Based on the population in the Levant's fifteenth year, villages with more than twenty thousand people and a favorable location were designated as provincial capitals; those with more than six thousand people became city-states, and those with more than five hundred became towns. Aside from the capital district, several city-states were grouped into each province. Each city-state had multiple towns under it, and each town had multiple villages.

Villages kept their elders as administrators, but their number increased from one to three, and they were joined by a priest sent from the capital's Church. Villages retained some means of self-defense, but their forces were classified as militia, and they were forbidden from keeping armor in secret. Anyone caught doing so would have their hands and feet chopped off, and the village elders would be punished as accomplices.

City-states and towns, meanwhile, were governed by city councils. Each year, council membership was adjusted according to population, and elves elected a set number of representatives by vote. The elected representatives were responsible for coordinating and dividing up districts, overseeing public events in their city-states or towns, maintaining and updating sanitation and basic infrastructure, and liaising with officials sent from the capital, Ravenna.

Besides collecting an annual tenth of the grain harvest and two-tenths of commercial taxes from city-states, towns, and villages, as well as a tenth of the resident taxes collected by city-states and towns, these officials also had to keep records of population, farmland, and changes in city council membership across their administrative districts. Among the officials, those known as lawyers stayed for years at a time, settling civil disputes in accordance with the law. Medical officers treated and cared for citizens suffering from basic ailments, provided they had paid the resident income tax.

Of course, what all the city-states, towns, and villages looked forward to most was the arrival of the examiners.

During the second week of September each year, examiners from the capital visited city-states and towns to recruit and assess talent. Anyone from a city-state, town, or village who considered themselves learned could take part in a three-day closed examination at a designated testing site.

Those who passed the first examination were called Scholars. They were exempt from resident taxes and allowed to observe examiners hearing cases and assist capital officials with arithmetic.

If Scholars passed and wanted to continue taking exams, they had to go to the provincial capital on a designated date the following year. They had to pass three rounds of closed examinations over nine days. Anyone who failed even one round was eliminated; those who passed were called Bachelors.

Besides being exempt from taxes themselves, Bachelors were provided with a standard-built courtyard by the provincial capital. The capital also regularly supplied them with provisions each year, including half a jin of spices, two kilograms of salt, forty kilograms of wheat flour, ten kilograms of corn flour or potatoes, and three pigs and sheep.

Then, if it happened to be the year of the capital's Bachelor examination, held once every five years, the Bachelors could travel to Ravenna under military escort, arranged by provincial officials, and take a six-day closed examination. Those who passed would then undergo a one-day assessment in Rus Wang's presence.

Afterward, the Bachelors whose rankings had been determined by the officials would leave their former status as Scholars behind and officially become Doctors, earning even more generous benefits.

Even at this point, under Rus Wang's plan, those who had earned academic honors still couldn't be considered proper officials. Though the Bachelor examinations inevitably included questions asking them to explain themselves on various matters, such as social conduct, writing about something and actually doing it were two different things. Besides, elves lived long lives, and Rus Wang's Elf Kingdom was still in its early stages, short of literate people everywhere. These Doctors wanted to become officials, didn't they? First, he'd put them to work as underlings.

These Doctors had to undergo an adaptation period of up to three years. During this time, they would take part in practical work involving public events, bookkeeping, and construction projects in and around the capital. In the end, the officials would assess and rank them, then submit their evaluations to Rus Wang. Only some of the higher-ranking Doctors would truly become officials.

Among the Doctors who failed, anyone not judged to be thoroughly corrupt could choose to join the Church and become a priest, or try again in five years. Those who chose to become priests would undergo training like medical officers, then be sent to villages to spread the faith and teach the elves to read. Over time, they could advance from villages to towns, then city-states, provinces, and even the capital.

As for the thoroughly corrupt, if Rus Wang's hidden "eyes" confirmed the officials' assessment, they couldn't be allowed to stay. They'd made it this far and were still utterly depraved. And hadn't they caused a death during their three-year adaptation period? They could be executed, and the offense would be considered paid.

As for the military, for now, it recruited from Ravenna, whose citizens had the highest literacy and level of civilization, and stationed them throughout the provinces to deal with certain Hundred-Year Soul Beasts that emerged from the Nanshan Rainforest. Once these capital citizens joined the military, their blood relatives—including their parents, siblings, and the next generation—were exempt from resident taxes. On top of that, the monthly day of roasted lamb seasoned with spices was a military mess privilege that even some elf officials couldn't enjoy.

Rus Wang didn't intend to reveal the Soul Power Level system so soon. Besides, he wanted elves to regard compatriots with higher cultivation levels as simply stronger than themselves.

First, most elves still thought in the uncivilized ways of the tribal era. Second, he had to consider the costs of ruling and give these elves, who had leaped straight from tribal life to a feudal kingdom, time to adjust.

Even the wise Osuen had been shocked and unable to understand when Rus Wang had first introduced him to a brush, paper made from wood pulp, and the art of forging iron. He had regarded them as divine creations.

In the Nanshan Rainforest, Rus Wang watched his five cubs, now grown to twenty-six years old, getting more and more fed up with their old man and acting as lively and restless as ever. Even someone as good-natured as him found them irritating and had to roar at them from time to time to scatter them. His wife, Thalassa, had left early to enjoy some peace and quiet with her good friend, the Dark Night Dragon.

"Oh, right. Speaking of my wife..."

At the thought of her, Rus Wang suddenly remembered something.

Thalassa had undergone a sudden acceleration in her hundred-thousand-year tribulation twenty-five years ago. Rus Wang had figured out why by investigating how much faster her age had increased after he took her and the other eight dragons on a tour of the Levant Region.

It was probably because he had taken her to inspect the Levant Region, where the elf priests had worshipped her as a goddess. Considering how faith worked in the Douluo World, it made sense that Thalassa's age had suddenly increased faster.

Still, Rus Wang didn't want his wife or his dragons to follow the same old path as their Dragon God ancestor. The Three Candies had already claimed the path of faith; even if Thalassa and the others wanted to follow it someday, there'd be no room left.

Besides, even the weather and elemental energy in the Nanshan Rainforest's Outer Circle matched what could only be found in the Star Dou Forest's Core Circle. For the several dragons with tens of thousands of years of cultivation, living in the Nanshan Rainforest's Core Circle didn't boost their age as much as faith did, but it still increased at a good pace. (The Nanshan Rainforest is divided into the Edge Zone → Outer Circle → Mixed Circle → Core Circle.)

Sometimes, taking the long way wasn't necessarily more troublesome than taking a shortcut.