Chapter 470 – Three-Dimensional Map
Early next morning, Zhao Hai and the others went out of the s.p.a.ce. After a good evening’s rest, all of their exhaustion has vanished. All of them were now very full of energy.
Upon coming out of the s.p.a.ce, Zhao Hai breathed the chilly air outside. Suddenly, he had the urge to smile, this was because he felt that Ark Continent’s G.o.d’s Grace Day is pretty much like the Chinese New Year. It’s a celebration that celebrates the past year as well as the fortunes of the upcoming year.
He had experienced a lot of things in this one year. But to be honest, when Zhao Hai thought about all he has done in this past year, all of it seemed to be like a dream. He still couldn’t fathom how he turned from an unemployed nerd to a n.o.ble youth of a falling n.o.ble clan. How did he turn from being unable to kill a chicken to someone who can kill a thousand people without even batting an eye? How did he turn from someone who blushes just from being looked at by a woman to a man with three fiance’s. All of these felt pretty much like a dream, but this dream was indeed true.
Laura looked at Zhao Hai who was just standing there. She walked over and gently told him, “What are you thinking about? It’s very cold outside, you should go indoors.”
Zhao Hai looked at Laura’s charming face. This kind of face would never interact with him back on earth. They were like heaven and earth. But in Ark Continent, he actually had a girl as a fiance’.
Seeing Zhao Hai staring at her, Laura’s face couldn’t help but turn red, her heartbeat going faster. But she still looked at Zhao Hai and asked, “What are you looking at?”
Zhao Hai smiled faintly and said, “I see a beautiful woman. For a beautiful woman to be with someone like me surely gives me a lot pressure.”
Laura looked at Zhao Hai and then turned to look behind her. There, she saw Nier chuckling while covering her mouth. Laura’s face couldn’t help but get redder, but her heart was actually touched. However, she still looked at Zhao Hai and said, “Talk fewer nonsense, people might treat you as a joke. Come inside quickly.”
Zhao Hai faintly smiled and then entered the room. They got up earlier today, the Calci Family slept quite late last night, therefore, Smith might possibly wake up late. Because of this, he had no way of inviting Zhao Hai to breakfast.
Just as Zhao Hai entered the room, Meg came in carrying milk. Drinking milk upon waking up each morning had become Zhao Hai and the others’ routine. However, Zhao Hai didn’t really like drinking milk, what he liked was soybean milk. But making soybean milk is very tedious, and there wasn’t any machine present to process soybeans. Grinding them manually would take a lot of time so Zhao Hai didn’t bother.
Additionally, this milk was made by the cows that they raised, so there aren’t any synthetic components within in them. Therefore, Zhao Hai can drink them without any worries no matter how much milk he drank.[1]
Zhao Hai was now used to drinking milk along with everyone. Not only his group, every person in Iron Mountain Fort drank milk everyday. Zhao Hai hoped that his people would develop strong bodies.
After drinking the milk, Zhao Hai looked at the weather and then turned his head to Megan and smiled, “It seems like uncle wouldn’t be able to get up early today. Right, these days I’ll have to ask your family to mark the businesses of the Robert family on the map. After a few more days, we shall act against them.”
Megan nodded and said, “Alright, but it might take quite some time. A millennium-old family like the Robert Family has hidden businesses. Businesses who didn’t bear the banner of the Robert Family. We must include these in order to deal an actual blow to the Robert Family. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be hurting their core.”
Zhao Hai nodded and said, “Good, we must find them as well. We shall deal with them from the bottom then we go to the top. We cannot just face them head on, or else they would retaliate.”
Megan nodded, then he turned to Zhao Hai and said, “Big Brother Hai, I’m afraid that there will be more banquets happening in the capital. Will you partic.i.p.ate in any of them?”
Zhao Hai smiled and said, “I’ll leave this matter to you, you know much more about the n.o.bles in Carson City. You go receive the invitations and tell me which one is good to join, I’ll be going to those ones.”
Megan looked at Zhao Hai and then she faintly smiled, “Right, when will you bring me to the Prairie? I would also like to see Brother Wales.”
Zhao Hai looked at the skies and said, “Soon, the Prairie is much colder than here. You’ve been used to staying here so you might get sick if we go there this time. Right, you must practice well so that you’ll reach 8th rank. When we go to the Prairie, I will have Brother Wales deliver those 100 thousand slaves, I’ll have them go to Iron Mountain Fort.”
Megan also knew about this, but she wasn’t expecting the Beastmen to give 100 thousand slaves, which was something impossible for a Human. This made Megan want to go to the Prairie even more.
When she heard Zhao Hai, Megan nodded and said, “Alright, rest a.s.sured, I will certainly practice hard and reach 8th rank soon. When that time comes, you can bring me to the Prairie.”
Seeing Megan, Laura cannot help but smile and said, “Why do you want to go to the Prairie that much? There’s nothing to see there, it’s much better to play in the s.p.a.ce than the Prairie. It isn’t as beautiful as one can imagine, winds are ever present there, the sunburns doesn’t help either.”
Megan smiled and said, “Even so, I still want to see it. I haven’t gone to the Prairie yet.”
Zhao Hai smiled and said, “Alright, let’s wait until you finish cultivating then I will certainly lead you to the Prairie.” At this time, a servant came, asking Zhao Hai to eat.
…
In the next days, Zhao Hai lightly attended the banquets. Those banquets that Zhao Hai visited were all taken care of by the Calci Family. Only in the Crook Family banquet did Zhao Hai go personally.
There was no other way to do this. Zhao Hai’s fame wasn’t the same as the Calci Family. When they send invitations, they would send the cards to the Calci Family. But for these banquets, it was quite rare for two people to attend. Because of this, everytime Zhao Hai brings Megan along, people would feel envious in their hearts.
Zhao Hai didn’t only attend the banquets outside, he also attended the one that the Calci Family hosted. Great n.o.bles hosting banquets this time of the year was quite a common practice. It was quite normal to have multiple banquets in one evening. Families could also choose to attend all of them, separating their members in order to attend the banquets.
Aside from attending banquets, Zhao Hai was also waiting. Megan and Smith had been working hard in marking the Robert Family stores for Zhao Hai. At the same time, Zhao Hai also marked everything in the s.p.a.ce monitor’s map.
Also, the Blood Hawk has also finished mapping the entirety of the Rosen Empire after five days of flying around. It was because of this that Zhao Hai was able to mark the Robert Family businesses. Zhao Hai took his time, he wanted to make the Robert Family suffer as much as possible.
After completing everything, Zhao Hai started to prepare, he had Cai’er look into these shops and investigate who were inside of them, and if ever they had some experts inside.
Cai’er’s work was very quick. In two days, all of the manpower of the Robert Family had been accounted for and were reported to Zhao Hai.
Looking at the numbers, Zhao Hai finally discovered how formidable millenium-old families were. Apart from the Robert Family’s shop in Carson City, their shops in both large and small cities reached more than 1300 shops altogether. Of these shops, 630 publicly waved the banner of the Robert Family while 700 weren’t. Even if it looked like small n.o.bles were managing these shops, they were actually owned by the Robert Family.
Most importantly, on 1000 of these shops, there was at least one 8th rank expert. Some major shops not only have 8th rank experts, there were also 7th and 6th rank experts present. All in all, there were more than 2,000 8th rank experts in all 1300 stores. This number really surprised Zhao Hai.
In the past, the Buda Clan only had Green and Merine as their 8th rank expert. Even so, the Clan was able to be popular in Aksu Empire. But the Robert Family actually had 2000 8th ranks on their various shops outside of the capital. This difference in strength was too great.
Actually, Zhao Hai didn’t know, but the reason why the Buda Clan was able to be popular was because they had the good graces of the Old Monarch. It wasn’t the Buda Clan that the people showed respect to, but the Old King.
As long as n.o.bles settle inside major Empires, they surely need to have a 9th rank expert in them. If they don’t, then they won’t be able to survive. If you don’t have any 9th rank experts, then you would need to attach yourself to those big n.o.bles. Your clan would then be regarded as a va.s.sal to that n.o.ble family.
After Zhao Hai took these into account, he was quite surprised to discover that there were a lot more human 9th ranks than those present inside the Carrion Swamp. Even if 9th rank Magic Beasts are much stronger than Human experts, they still cannot defeat the collective might of the Human Race. It was only because of Cai’er’s presence in the swamp as well as the poison mist inside did the Magic Beasts have the chance to hold the Humans off all this time. Because of this, the Human 9th ranks made an agreement with the 9th rank Magic Beasts.
When he found out the strength of these old clans, Zhao Hai’s buried his pride deep inside. Now, he was thinking about the strength of the Radiant Church.
The Calci Family and the Robert Family were both millenium-old clans. As such, the Calci Family’s strength shouldn’t be that much weaker than the Robert Family. But even if so, they were still suppressed by the Radiant Church. This fact surely cemented the idea that the Radiant Church was much more formidable than these old n.o.ble families. This made Zhao Hai even more cautious in his actions.
But Zhao Hai didn’t think too much into it, the Magic Beasts of the Carrion Swamp aren’t very easy to deal with either. In addition to their environment, their physiques were much better than the Human experts. In addition, the human 9th ranks were all separated into many families. It would be very difficult to unite all of them. If they can really unite, they would still have to conquer the Carrion Swamp.
Just when Zhao Hai was waiting for the opportune moment to attack, the chance suddenly came when Zhao Hai was sitting on the living room, looking at the monitor. The projection on the monitor wasn’t an ordinary map. This map was three-dimensional, just like those maps that sci-fi movies back on Earth have. With a wave of his hand, Zhao Hai can enlarge or shrink the projection. This was something that Cai’er had told him, it was a new ability of the s.p.a.ce.
Showed on the map was a holographic projection of the Rosen Empire. There were a lot of dots showed on several parts of the map. These dots were all Zhao Hai’s targets, the shops of the Robert Family as well as the locations of those small n.o.bles. These n.o.bles were the va.s.sals of the Robert Family. At this point, Zhao Hai was still undecided about whether he would also erase these small n.o.ble families.
Laura and the others were also with Zhao Hai, looking at the three-dimensional projection. Even if they had already seen this in the past few days, they were still very amazed everytime they see it. There are really a lot of surprises in the s.p.a.ce, such as this map.
The way the Ark Continent does it sbattles is very primitive. They hardly had complex things such as the Art of War. They generally have three avenues in battles, scouting and a.s.sa.s.sinations by the a.s.sa.s.sins, long distance warfare using magical cannons and ballistas, and lastly, large scale infantry battles. Everything depended on raw strength.
Because of this, the armies don’t have the need to have sand tables. In a war, a flat map was enough to handle command. Sand table discussions and battle plans were rarely done. Moreover, there was a miniscule amount of staff officers in each army, most of them were all military officers.
With rarity of sand tables, it was no surprise that Laura and the others would be surprised about the three dimensional map. This was because they simply didn’t have any idea about this three-dimensional map.
At this time, Megan came in from the outside. Megan was going to her father every day now. First reason was because of the matter about the shops, and the second reason was to see the invitations that were sent over and see if there are any banquets that Zhao Hai can attend.
Looking at Megan’s appearance, Zhao Hai couldn’t help but smile and said, “What happened? You look glad, is there something to be happy about?”
Megan looked at Zhao Hai and said, “Big Brother Hai, guess which family invitation just came in.”
Zhao Hai stared, seeing Megan’s faint smile, he suddenly thought of a person. He looked into Megan’s eyes and said, “Is it the Robert Family?”
Megan scowled at Zhao Hai, “Big Brother Hai, can guess wrong just one time? It’s very annoying, you don’t let me have a sense of achievement.”
Zhao Hai stared, “Is it really the Robert Family?” Then he opened the card and read the contents. He stared, it was because the name that was written inside was actually his, Zhao Hai Buda!
1. Maybe this has something to do with Chinese not trusting the milk that their country produces.