novelraw #237 - Section 237
#237 - Section 237
Margaret took out her Soul Resonance Bracelet and sent a message: "Lord Roger, I met your sister when I went out just now, and we chatted for a while. She seemed to have misunderstood something, and then she exploded (? person ?)"
Roger: ???
My sister is such a good-tempered person, she exploded in anger?
Are you sure you weren't stirring things up?
Before he could finish analyzing the message, a maid came to report: "Master, Lady Angelina requests an audience."
Chapter 213: The Ultimate Secret to哄 (hōng - coax) Sister
Angelina's visit to Maotai Manor was not to chat with her younger brother, but to discuss the deepening reform of the empire's financial industry.
At this time, the major powers of the Eternal Night Continent were undergoing rapid changes, actively preparing for war or already fighting.
Only the Green Vine Empire had a different style, frantically accumulating internal strength, transforming from an agricultural country to an industrial country.
This is a huge, systemic project. It's not just about having the technology, building factories, producing various machines and military weapons, and then completing the upgrade to be considered an industrial country.
The difference between a modern country and a feudal country is a comprehensive improvement in systems, technology, mobilization capabilities, and national quality.
Not to mention the dimensional reduction in manufacturing capabilities, a blacksmith shop forging swords and knives is completely different from an aircraft carrier being produced like dumplings in terms of material throughput.
Education brings about citizens with more comprehensive physical, intellectual, and moral qualities, who have more comprehensive abilities in production and military affairs, actively pursue a better life, create greater value, and have stronger efficiency and stress resistance.
The free market brings about rich and vibrant products, transportation ensures the rational and rapid allocation of resources, communication ensures the flow of information, and extending this to the military results in an exponential increase in the central government's control over local areas and borders.
After a series of practices, everyone has discovered that what can truly stimulate all the people to work together for the same goal of building the Green Vine Empire to the greatest extent is not dreams, but shiny gold coins.
Whether it is a noble mage or a farmer working with their face to the soil, they will reveal a knowing smile when they see gold coins.
Gold coins represent purchasing power, a good life, beautiful women, and luxurious clothes and food. Everyone is willing to put in more sweat for it.
As for dreams, ideals, glory, and the future, these grand visions have a motivating effect, but ultimately it is only temporary, and it is not effective for everyone.
For most people, even passion is hard to resist the slow erosion of ordinary life.
The empire has experimented with many methods, and finally found that gold coins are the most practical.
At this time, the most popular learning programs in the Fearless Space are various vocational skills training, rather than theoretical or artistic advanced studies.
Because whether it is a combat profession or a production profession, as long as you have basic literacy and arithmetic skills, and master a skill, the increase in income is clear and visible.
Now that the empire is in a state of disrepair and industry is booming, there is an urgent need for workers and craftsmen. The empire also has large-scale infrastructure projects underway, which can be said to be able to digest any amount of labor. Everyone has a job.
There are many capitalists who offer high salaries to snatch people, and even prepay to train workers' skills in a targeted manner.
After all, it has been less than three years since people had enough to eat. Agriculture is still the most important industry in people's minds. The flow of people willing to enter the industrial field is increasing, but it is very slow and can only be slowly attracted by high income.
This attraction has extended to foreign countries, and many refugees will smuggle into the empire to find a job in a factory.
Under this increasingly frequent and large-scale economic flow, the amount of precious metals has become a bottleneck restricting the speed of the empire's economic development.
It's not that the empire can't earn that much money, but that the total amount of gold coins is limited.
This problem was already exposed when Sophie promoted the Soul Resonance Bracelet.
In this case, the issuance of paper money is very necessary.
Even paper money linked to metal reserves, rather than paper money linked to national credit, can greatly promote the empire's economic liquidity and accelerate commercial development.
But this is not a work that can be accomplished overnight. It will take a long time to change the people's consumption habits of the past ten thousand years, and for domestic and international merchants to accept this method.
Angelina has spent a lot of energy in this area, and has been researching and preparing, soliciting many opinions, and finally formulated a very stable imperial economic model.
The transition from gold coins to paper money, from domestic currency to international transaction settlement currency, has generated a clear timetable.
Prior to this, Angelina had already begun to establish a series of state-owned banks such as the Imperial Central Bank, the Imperial Agricultural Bank, the Imperial Industrial Bank, and the Imperial Construction Bank.
Then encourage other capital to enter and establish private banks, and promote notes similar to "Jiaozi" and "checks" to start, step by step to establish credit and change transaction habits.
When large-scale state-owned infrastructure projects such as railways, highways, communication facilities, and military fortresses are established, "agricultural coupons" and "industrial coupons" that can be exchanged for materials are also issued to laborers, so that people can get used to the feeling of spending paper as gold coins.
Not long ago, Angelina began to conduct research in various parts of the empire, listening to feedback from officials, merchants, factory owners, and citizens, and finally believed that the market had been fully prepared, and the empire's credit and transaction habits had been cultivated with a solid foundation.
She only returned to Aodu last night, ready to discuss it with Roger again, and then propose to the parliament that the Imperial Central Bank issue a universal material exchange note—the Green Vine Coin—based on the state-owned gold reserves.
This will be the first universal paper currency in the Eternal Night World. It was secretly designed and trial-produced by the Secret Law Society a year ago. After many revisions, the manufacturing process has become quite mature.
In terms of anti-counterfeiting, it also draws on many classic designs of modern banknotes.
The magical world has alchemy, and naturally there are means to identify illusions. The issuance of paper money naturally also has the problem of being counterfeited.
In this regard, the Soul Resonance Bracelet is connected to the virtual world entrance of the Fearless Space, and backed by the database of the Imperial Central Bank, it will also undertake the functions of currency verification and digital payment—the magic QR code has also been successfully developed.
Frankenstein and Afu have done a lot of verification methods in terms of encryption, involving many professional fields, exceeding Roger's understanding limit.
But it can basically be determined that ordinary legendary spellcasters cannot easily crack the multiple encryption methods used by Green Vine Coins and QR codes.
Of course, if these strong people are willing to pay enough price, there are definitely ways to forcibly disguise them.
It's just that with their ability to accumulate wealth, and the risks they might take in doing so, the benefits of regular channels are far higher.
In this way, the empire already has the technical foundation and market demand to practice new payment methods.
However, Angelina grew up in an environment where gold coins were used for transactions. There are still many uncertainties in the first implementation of this policy, and there are many new details encountered in this survey that need to be consulted with Roger, the chief designer.
As a result, on the way here, she met Margaret, and then was so angry that her mentality exploded, misunderstanding the relationship between the two!
However, walking from the door to Roger's study, Angelina's emotions gradually cooled down, and many of Margaret's words echoed in her ears.
Does she really understand Roger?
Angelina doesn't like Margaret, but if her younger brother really chooses to be with this little devil, and the two are in a free relationship, with her nature, she will definitely accept it in the end for the happiness of her younger brother.
So in the final analysis, the root cause of her breaking defense was not the misunderstanding that "Roger and Margaret are together", but the mentality that "Margaret actually understands臭弟弟 (chòu dìdi - stinky little brother) better than me", which led her emotions to the verge of collapse.
The person she hates the most has accidentally run ahead of her, snatched her treasure, and is still flaunting her power to her. Even a sister with a good temper can't stand it.
But Margaret was not present, and Angelina gradually calmed down, thinking about how to communicate with A-Jie next.
Directly hitting the mandarin ducks with a stick is likely to have the opposite effect, and children have rebellious periods.
It's best to bring it up inadvertently, first test Roger's true attitude, and then conduct rational communication.
With the intelligence Roger has shown now, he shouldn't become Margaret's simp, being deceived of his feelings for nothing, right?
What if there are some hidden secrets that she doesn't know?
Now that her younger brother is older, and has established his own career in the empire, he must also want face.
How much authority does the sister have left? Angelina herself doesn't have much confidence.
When she arrived outside Roger's study, Angelina's expression had returned to her usual appearance, with a faint, gentle smile, and no one could tell that she had just had a big fight with Margaret.
At least if Margaret hadn't reported it in advance, Roger would definitely not be able to tell.
The more beautiful a woman is, the more she can deceive people. Even the Imperial Right Prime Minister, known as Saint Angelina, also has equally superb acting skills.
Otherwise, how could she show an inclusive smile to the people she hates?
Of course, dealing with her own brother also requires using these brains, thinking about communication skills, rather than just scolding and beating him. As a sister, she unconsciously feels a little aggrieved.
But there's no way, who told him to be her brother?
He now has a status almost equal to her own, and he definitely can't get along as before.
So it's really a complex mentality of both looking forward to him making a name for himself and feeling that it's better to be a waste that is easier to manipulate!
Taking a deep breath, Angelina ordered her subordinates to report her visit.
"Sister, you're here." Roger greeted her with a faint smile, not surprised by his sister's expression at the moment. Of course, he wouldn't ask stupid questions like, 'Sister, did you quarrel with the little devil?'
Unlike Margaret, who acts on a whim, her sister is the epitome of a noble. Even if she is here to question him, she has to go through the whole process before opening her mouth.
For example, finish talking about today's business first, and then pretend to bring it up casually.
Although the two siblings haven't communicated for a while, Roger still knows Angelina well, both in and out of the game.
Roger respects her habits, and at the same time, while discussing the empire's financial industry plan with Angelina, he uses the Soul Resonance Bracelet to send and receive messages, quietly understanding what exactly happened between Angelina and Margaret.
The quarrel between the two Imperial Prime Ministers took place publicly at the gate, and many of Maotai Manor's servants heard or saw it from afar.
Although they didn't directly fight, the quarrel that unfolded for the sake of Young Master Roger still shocked many people.
It's just that these servants were either sent by the palace or personally trained by Angelina. They all know the rules. When encountering such things, they know that they can't discuss them randomly. If Roger doesn't ask them, they won't talk nonsense.
Of course, they won't hide anything when Roger asks. They can tell who the master is.
The matter is not complicated, and Roger quickly understood the cause and effect. It was just a misunderstanding caused by Margaret's indiscriminate words.
This is easy to explain, after all, he and Margaret don't have a substantive relationship.
Just tell her about the tasks they completed together, and what they talked about every day, and I believe that with Angelina's rationality, she will definitely resolve the misunderstanding.
But Roger also realized the deeper psychological reasons for Angelina's overreaction from the quarrel between the two.
This time it's easy to explain, but next time a similar misunderstanding may occur, but they may not be so lucky.
So Roger quietly arranged a wave of routines targeting Angelina's personality, preparing to consolidate the relationship between the siblings for a long time.
"Disguise a group of Sea God cultists and attack Maotai Manor, wait for my instructions."
Roger issued instructions to the Dark Night Guard Gold Sleeve who was on duty in Aodu.
After quietly making arrangements, Roger and Angelina had also talked almost enough.
The issuance of the Green Vine Coin has been discussed countless times at various levels, and various situation simulations have been carried out.
This time, the two of them were just making some minor adjustments based on Angelina's survey this time, and there were no major changes.
Angelina got up to pack up the documents, and seemed to mention unintentionally: "By the way, when I came just now, I met Margaret at the gate of your manor. Are you getting along well with her?"
Roger paused for half a second on purpose, pretending to observe his sister's expression, before saying: "...I guess we're friends?"
"That's surprising. How did you two become familiar?"
"Because of the Sea Country war, and the intelligence work targeting neighboring countries, the Dark Night Guard and the military have a lot of interaction."
"Why would you talk about these things at home?"
"We just chat casually during breakfast... Sister, what do you want to know?"
Roger deliberately asked knowingly, while giving orders to his subordinates to take action.
Angelina's expression hesitated. When Roger mentioned Margaret, he was very natural, without tension, and without any sweet expression.
As if she was just an ordinary friend?
Could that Margaret be deliberately fabricating things to anger her?
She's not that bored, is she?
Angelina quickly had a definite answer, confirming that Margaret was really that bored and vengeful, and could use all kinds of means to anger people.
So after chatting for a few sentences, Angelina was already suspecting that she had misunderstood.
If Margaret and Roger were really discussing destroying relations with other countries, then it could indeed be called a military secret, and even as the Right Prime Minister, she would not usually ask about it.
"No, I'm just curious that a rare guest has come to your mansion."
"Not rare, she comes and comes and gets used to it." Roger spread his hands and smiled, his expression suddenly changed: "If sister is not busy, I still have some political affairs questions that I want to ask you."
"Of course, that's good!"
A faint, imperceptible look of joy flashed in Angelina's eyes.
She is not afraid of trouble, but only afraid of losing value to the people she cares about, so she is very happy that Roger still has questions he is willing to ask her.
"It's about the magic crystal machinery order..."
Roger was halfway through his sentence when suddenly the entire room began to shake. The decorations on the tables and cabinets, and the murals on the walls all came crashing down. Then, a deafening explosion echoed from not far away.
“Enemy attack! You damned fanatics!”
A shrill alarm blared outside, accompanied by the shouts of the guards.
Roger and Angelina were heavily guarded, but the enemy seemed even stronger. They quickly broke through to the inner courtyard.
A guard sprinted in, urging the two adults to take the secret passage to the safe house for temporary shelter.
“I don’t believe a few mere fanatics could cause trouble in the Imperial capital!” Roger said dismissively, even craning his neck to look outside.
“Roger, safety is paramount.”
Angelina advised Roger, pulling him towards the secret passage.