After gazing at the first "small steel mill" in his hand for a long while, Zhao Cheng finally led the others down from the city wall and began strolling through Wu City.
Wu City's layout was much like that of most cities: the closer one got to the center, the wealthier it became; the nearer the walls, the poorer it was.
But because Wu City had once been a city of trade, the layout around its outer edge differed subtly from that of ordinary cities. Many houses, though built close to the city walls, were exceptionally spacious.
Such houses had been built for passing merchants to store their goods.
But that was all in the past.
Ever since Zhao Cheng took Wu City and followed it with a round of slaughter, these properties that had originally belonged to the great clans of the city had all been confiscated by the Heaven-Answering Army.
And though they had not harmed the common people in the slightest, this single campaign had brought a full seventy percent of Wu City's properties under the Heaven-Answering Army's ownership. This showed just how wealthy the great clans had been.
Of course, if those great clans had harbored no disloyalty, Zhao Cheng would not have thought much of such things. Houses were merely earth and stone; so long as he had people in hand, he could raise grand buildings in an instant, just as he had in the Chain Mountains.
At the end of the day, the most precious resource in this world was still people, not anything else.
Having seized these houses, Zhao Cheng did not distribute them directly among the people. Instead, he turned them into workshops and schools.
Now, as Zhao Cheng walked down the streets, he could hear the tender voices of children reading