The World Online

Chapter 1229 – Smoke Rises in Africa

Gaia 7th year, 1st month, 15th day, Imperial Capital.

Under Jiang Shang’s workings, the rumors regarding the Zhili Province were quashed with only the hidden currents remaining. 1st Imperial Governor Tian Wenjing had officially started his appointment yesterday.

To express his support, Ouyang Shuo personally wrote the ‘righteous and fair’ plaque outside the Imperial Governor office to show that Great Xia’s Imperial Governor was different from the Tang Dynasty one.

At the same time, to prevent debates and needless guesses, the Imperial Court released the definition of the new city region. It would be the industrialization region, steam engine civilization as well as the creation industry base.

The Imperial Court also expressed that the overall planning was being completed quickly, and they would try to finish it off by the 3rd month. During that period, the Imperial Court would set up requirements for people to enter based on the new planning.

Only then did the people calm down regarding the new city region.

However, although the new city region would be an industry region, it did not mean that all kinds of factories could be built there. For example, the steelmaking factories and coal burning factories were all moved outside of the city.

…

In the recent three months, Great Xia’s largest scale military organization had finally come to an end. The newly built five legion corps had all been completed and moved toward their camps.

Along with the Imperial Palace Guards being formed, the Privy Court made a major adjustment to the camps of the Guards legion corps, City protection legion corps, and Imperial Palace Guards.

The Guards Legion Corps change was obvious. Along with the imperial capital house being set up, the entire region would be their defensive zone. This helped to free up the City protection legion corps to expand outward.

The 1st legion would move into Beihai City to defend the south gate of the imperial capital.

The 2nd legion would move to Mulan Stronghold to defend the north gate.

The 3rd legion would move to Yunnan Province, the 4th to Chuannan Province, and the 5th to Lingnan Province to form the imperial capital’s first layer of defense.

The newly built Imperial Palace Guards would be the 2nd layer of defense, taking control of Chuanbei, Xiangnan, Jiangchuan, and Minnan Province.

With that, the Xiangjiang legion corps was freed up to focus and prepare for the unification of China.

Along with the Hedong legion corps moving toward Hedong Province, the Phoenix legion corps moved into Liaojin Province, and the Beijiang and Eagle legion corps in Xihai Province, 1.4 million troops built up Great Xia’s northern defensive line.

The Mongol Empire had no way to disturb the Great Xia border.

Last would be the Africa warzone.

Along with the Wolf and North Africa legion corps moving to North Africa, the North Africa Protector House relied on just two provinces to feed four legion corps, a total of 1.4 million troops.

For this matter, Ouyang Shuo had to instruct the Privy Court to send them batch after batch of grain.

However, this did not solve the root of the problem.

Due to that, Ouyang Shuo gave another decree; he ordered the completion of the Africa warzone headquarters to mobilize and start their occupation of East Africa.

Their first targets would be South Sudan and Kenya.

South Sudan had a total of a million players, while Kenya had four million. The imperial city guards of the two added up to no more than 250 thousand. Even if you considered the territory troops and the combat occupation players, they were not the opponents of Great Xia.

Furthermore, the Africa continent had not recovered from the calamity, and they were grievously lacking in grain. As Long as Africa warzone commander Baiqi played the grain card right, it would be basically taking candy from a baby.

With the decree given, the million troops immediately started to act.

At the same time, from the Beihai Bay to Gulf of Aden naval route, one thousand merchant ships belonging to the China Shipping Group started to transport back and forth under the protection of the Indian Ocean Squadron.

Great Xia, which had slept for three months, finally revealed its fangs once more.

…

Emperor palace, Imperial Reading Room.

Although the Battle of East Africa was brewing, Ouyang Shuo did not pay much attention to it. The war matters were completely in the hands of the Grand Council and the Africa warzone, so he would not interfere.

Professional matters should be left to the professionals.

As a ruler, his focus should be placed on the internal aspects of the Emperor dynasty.

Gaia stopping the refugee spawning meant that the population growth would enter a really slow period. However, the Imperial Court was industrializing, and the various enterprises and corporations desperately needed talents.

Without a huge quantity of fresh blood, the strategy of the Imperial Court would be affected.

Under this situation where population could not increase easily, the only way would be to improve the quality of the talents. More precisely, they had to make use of all the labor they had now.

Moreover, the most wasteful people resource was undoubtedly the huge player base.

Along with the Great Zhou Dynasty weakening, out of the 100 million China players, 90 million lived under Great Xia. However, in truth, a large portion of them were away from the system of the Emperor dynasty.

Based on rough estimates, what kind of players had been attracted into the system so far?

First, the elite players joined the army.

Secondly, a batch of players were running farms, shops, and could be said to be halfway into the system.

Thirdly, people like Meng Zhida, who were in the minority, were trusted by Ouyang Shuo and entered the Great Xia official field, schools, banks, and the like.

Apart from that, the rest did not have a connection to the Imperial Court, so they were using up less than 1%.

What a waste.

Behind all of these players were people that came from many different industries, forming up a complicated societal net that was enough to complete any societal matter asked of them.

In other words, every player was a talent.

However, why did no one notice this point?

After six years of change, not to mention the Lords, but even the adventure gamemode players had forged new identities, becoming ingrained in the game and forgetting their jobs in real life.

Six years of time were enough to change someone.

Secondly, since the territory had so many refugee spawns, the Lords naturally would not utilize the players to the greatest extent. They instead greatly used the refugees and saw them as their people. As for adventure gamemode players, there was a barrier, and they could not feel as close.

For example, at the start, Ouyang Shuo took a respectful but distant attitude toward the adventure gamemode players.

Of course, the reason why they were not close was not completely the fault of the Lords.

How could the adventure gamemode players easily accept that they were all entering the same game world but they had to live under someone and be managed them?

Only during the 6th year of Gaia did this unhappiness slowly disappear.

However, that did not mean that the players would accept it. First, the world situation was clear, and the disappearance of the imperial cities meant that players had no choice but to go under the dynasties.

It was impossible for the adventure gamemode players to open up a new section of land outside of the territories.

Secondly, along with the achievement value update, the game’s interests were closely connected to reality; this made the players stop treating the game as purely a game.

This sounded contradictory, but it was the truth.

Since the game and reality was the same, then for their own interests, players submitting was understandable. Players were all creatures that evolved, and their adaptability was really strong. As such, they could quickly adjust their mental states.

Living under a dynasty and living under an imperial city was not that different. The only difference would be the way that they saw it.

Living in an imperial city, although the players were restrained by all kinds of laws, they viewed the NPCs as a virtual presence. In the end, the NPCs were serving them, the players.

It was a natural sense of superiority.

Living under a Lord, this feeling would disappear and be replaced by a sense of loss.

“Comparing with others, the gap is just too huge.”

Maybe because this gap was too huge, so huge that no matter how they worked and struggled they could not make up for it, they felt better.

This was easy to understand.

Just like in reality, where everyone wanted to be the best.

When one faced someone that was only slightly better, they would feel jealous and would try to exceed them. However, when facing the rich people of the world, no matter how they tried, they could not climb past them.

After all, the two sides were not even on the same level.

Facing a billionaire, normal people would worship them but no sense of competition would rise up in their heart. Without this, there would not be the so-called sense of loss.

In the game world, the situation was the same. However, compared to ordinary players, Ouyang Shuo’s position was even more exaggerated than a billionaire.

As such, the players living in Great Xia were slowly recognizing Great Xia and did not have the sense of loss and unhappiness they had before.

This gave the Imperial Court the ability to make use of the players and their value.