Goddess Wanhua Mirror

Previously, Barry checked the condition of the goods in the bottom deck, and snatched an unremarkable wood carving from a little girl. As a result, the group of quiet little slaves instantly went berserk.

The girl whom he had robbed of the wood carving stretched out her hands and grabbed Barry's wrist, dragged her into the cage forcefully, and then opened her mouth to bite.If it wasn't for the subordinates who heard the news and rushed to help, Barry would almost have two fingers bitten off by this crazy girl.

Barry, whose hands were blushing in a daze, was very annoyed, and replaced the ordinary slaves who pretended to be coolies. He absolutely wanted to make an example of others, and cut this crazy girl who dared to bite him into pieces, so that other brats could see it. Find your own means.

But helplessly, these "young birds" are all high-end goods, and there are exactly twelve of them, there is no extra "loss", so the anger turns to anger, but it can't be killed or beaten, fearing that it will break the appearance and let it go Buyers are not satisfied.

So in desperation, in order to prevent these little brats from making a fuss when the ship entered the port, Barry asked his subordinates to give them anesthesia to make them pass out first, and then hand them over to the buyer, so that he would not have to worry about it.

"A bunch of damn puppies, I wish you all will fall into the hands of perverts in the end, and your life will be worse than death in the future!"

In my heart, I "blessed" the children in the bilge viciously. The Dasha Sculpture ship landed smoothly, and the tax officer on duty in the port was the first to bear the brunt of it.However, whenever a merchant ship docks and wants to do business locally, it has to pay three kinds of taxes to the lord.

The first is the mooring tax, which is calculated according to the size of the vessel and the number of days it wants to stay in port.The second is the poll tax. As long as the sailors on the ship are not locals, they need to pay one silver coin each if they want to go ashore to rest.The third is the entry tax, which is 5% of the total price of the goods on board.

There is nothing to say about the first two taxes, and there is not much demand, and the ships passing by will not care about such a small amount of money.What is really important and easy to kill is the third tax. The tax officer at the port will board the ship to inspect the goods, and has the right to confiscate the contraband directly.

Therefore, those who receive "black orders" like Barry, in order to make it easier for the local tax officials to turn a blind eye to certain goods, must prepare a "filial piety" to the other party in advance.

Barry and the tax officer of Oyster Harbor are old acquaintances, good brothers who have gone to prostitution together, because they can feed each other very well every time they come, so the routine inspection is basically a procedure.

However, after not coming for nearly half a year, Barry was surprised to find that the tax collector at the port had changed. The greedy fat man had disappeared, replaced by a cold-faced young man.Barry traveled all over the world and visited countless people. When he looked at this person's face from afar, he concluded that this person was not easy to get along with.

"Good evening, my lord, may I ask what your name is?"

"My name is Geek, and I am the new port tax officer of Oyster Port. Now report your ship's name and let your crew gather on the deck. We are going to board the ship for routine inspections."

"Uh...no problem, my lord, but I haven't been to Oyster Harbor for half a year, let me ask a little bit, where is the original Master Jess?"

"The former tax officer Jess? He was executed by the lord last month for dereliction of duty. Now I am in charge here."

Hearing that his "old friend" had been executed, Barry kept a flattering smile on his face, but he couldn't help but "thump" in his heart.

He and that fat man can't even talk about having a good friendship, they were in collusion purely out of profit.When that guy died, Barry wasn't actually sad at all, he just felt troubled.

Because the tax officer has changed to a new person, he has to reconnect with him. He is afraid that this young man with [-] to [-] yuan in front of him will be as upright as his ice face.If oil and salt do not enter, it will be a lot of trouble for them to transport contraband to Oyster Harbor in the future.

So Barry brainstormed and decided to try it out first.

Under Barry's order, the [-] or so crew members of the Great Shark Eagle quickly gathered on the deck, while Barry, with a look of hospitality, invited the tax officials to board the ship, waiting on the sidelines. The dark old face, which had been ravaged by the sea wind, was squeezed into a flower.

Barry secretly touched his pocket, where there were three small pockets, originally prepared as small gifts for the former tax official.

A bag contained fifty imperial gold coins, which would be the first to be taken out after the meeting.The other two bags contained black pearls and rubies. If the gold coins did not satisfy the other party, these two more expensive gifts would be added to ensure that the target was captured.

Under normal circumstances, this three-piece set of bribery can always be successful. Nine out of ten tax officials in various places are corrupt, and the difference is only the size of their appetites.But occasionally, there will be some "wonderful works" in Barry's eyes, which cannot be bought by money.

There are too many people on the deck right now, Barry is not in a hurry to act, the best time is in the middle cabin, avoiding the accompanying guards.Based on his experience, as long as he observes the first look the other party shows when he sees the gold coin, it is enough to judge whether the other party is really greedy or pretending not to be greedy!

However, the young tax collector was not in a hurry to enter the cabin, but stood on the deck and looked around, then turned his head and asked Barry.

"You said just now that your ship is called the Great Shark Eagle. Is it the Great Sand Sculpture from Jinyinwan?"

"Uh... yes."

The tax officer asked a little deliberately, which made Barry feel more uneasy, because being identified by someone often means bad things.One situation is when someone treats him like a fat sheep, knowing that his boat is full of oil and water and the interior is not clean, so he just stares at it and wants to blackmail him severely.

As for the other situation... Barry didn't dare to think about it!

Before he could figure out what to do, the tax officer ordered the accompanying guards to enter the cabin to search.Barry wanted to keep up, but the tax officer suddenly reached out and stopped him, telling him to stay on the deck obediently and not move around.

The cabin under the deck of the Great Sand Sculpture has two floors. The first floor is the crew cabin and the general cargo warehouse. There is no problem with this floor. The problem is the second half of the bilge.

Not long after, a guard came to the tax official in a hurry, reported that there was a partition in the middle of the hold, but the door of the hold was locked, and asked if he could enter.

As soon as Barry heard this, his heart that was already hanging in his throat immediately raised his throat. He knew better than anyone else what was installed in the second half of the bilge.Therefore, regardless of the inappropriateness on the deck, he hastily stopped between the tax officer and the guards, and took out all three small bags from his arms with lightning speed.

"My lord, make, make a friend!"

End of this chapter

In the temple of the Goddess of the Four Seasons, Evan Ruth was enjoying his extremely sumptuous dinner. The successive setbacks in the battle of wits and courage with Lude did not affect his appetite much, and his appetite was still amazing.

However, before eating two bites of food, a monk suddenly stumbled in from the door.He has seen too many similar situations recently, so he didn't need the other party to ask, so he guessed that there must be nothing good.

"what happened again?"

"My lord, my lord bishop, it's not good! Just now at the port, the Great Shark Eagle, which came from Jinyinwan Bay, was seized by the newly appointed tax officer. It is said that there were slaves hidden on board."

"The Great Sand Sculpture? He was detained, what has it to do with me?"

Alan Ruth raised his hand and inserted a piece of well-fried duck breast, and looked at his subordinates with some inexplicable eyes.

He knew that the shipowners behind them were familiar to him, so Evan Ruth often entrusted them to purchase some good things that he could not get locally in Oyster Harbor. The cooperation in the past few years has been very pleasant.

However, Evan Ruth knew in his heart that due to the impact of the epidemic in the first half of the year, he had not ordered any goods from them in the past few months, so even if the big shark was caught, logically speaking, he would not be involved.

But the monk's next sentence made Evan Ruth, who was about to continue eating, poke the roast duck breast directly on his cheek.

"My lord bishop, the captain who was caught confessed, saying that the goods on board belonged to you, and your seal was on the manifest!"

"Fart! How is this possible!?"

Evan Ruth slapped the table fiercely, without caring to wipe off the fat on his face, he got up and was about to go out.Now he must rush to the Lord's Mansion as soon as possible to explain this clearly in front of Viscount Maple.

His intuition told him that someone was setting him up!

Evan Ruth himself has done many things like planting a frame in the past, and many routines are clear, but this is the first time he has been framed by others.

When he rushed to the Lord's Mansion in a hurry and saw the Viscount himself, the young tax official had already arrived here first.Evan Ruth had seen this man before, he was the viscount's distant nephew, a well-known young talent in the local area.But Evan Ruth had a bad impression of him, thinking that he was just an arrogant little boy with a cold face that seemed to look down upon everyone.

As soon as Evan Ruth entered the room, the Viscount, who was flipping through the documents, didn't look up, and the tax officer next to him had a somewhat unkind look in his eyes.

"My lord bishop, you came just in time, and I happen to have some things to confirm with you personally."

"Sir, Lord Viscount, please listen to my explanation!"

"Oh! I haven't asked anything yet, but His Excellency the Bishop knows what I'm going to ask you? You're very well informed!"

"This……"

The viscount's words broke out in cold sweat, and Evan Ruth lowered his head, showing sincerity and fear.The Kingdom of Duran is not a theocratic country. Although religious forces enjoy various privileges over ordinary people, they are still subject to the jurisdiction of the king and local lords.

The Viscount didn't say much, and directly pushed the document he was looking at to Evan Ruth, letting him go through it himself.Evan Ruth picked it up and looked at it for a while, then urgently argued.

"Master Viscount, this is a false accusation! I am the bishop of the Diocese of the Goddess of the Four Seasons in the northern diocese of Duran Kingdom. How could I do such a thing? This clearly shows that someone poured dirty water on me and the Goddess of the Four Seasons Sect!"

Facing the many criminal evidences listed for himself in the documents, Evan Ruth denied all of them, biting to death that this was a frame-up.But the Viscount just stared at him with a playful expression, making Evan Ruth feel uncomfortable.

Viscount Maple was not completely ignorant of what Evan Ruth had done in the past.After all, he was a local feudal lord, and he had so many people under him. Even if he didn't know the details of what happened in his own territory, he could still hear some rumors.

In the past, the Viscount turned a blind eye to Evan Ruth's actions, mainly because he was concerned about the relationship with the Goddess of the Four Seasons Cult, and many of the things he did were actually gray areas.

Evan Ruth is not the only one who is involved in slave trading and smuggling of contraband. As long as there is any powerful chamber of commerce in this city, no one is completely clean. Although the Viscount himself did not participate in it, he has more or less shared some of it. The advantage, so as long as the slave boats don't run to their own land to catch people, foreign slaves.

But the problem is that the Viscount pretended not to know before, because everything in the Oyster Port was working normally in the past, but now it is an extraordinary period.

You must know that the original source of this plague came from a stranded slave ship. Now the situation in the city has finally improved. During the sacrificial ceremony, a dozen or so slaves came here against the wind, but they were all young children, and it was clear that he, the lord, was not taken seriously.

This made the viscount, who already hated Evan Ruth very much, further drop his perception of him to the level of "disgust".

Even if there are still some doubts about the evidence itself, the Viscount doesn't care much about it anymore. He just wants to use this excuse to make the fat man in front of him disappear from his territory as quickly as possible.

"Bishop Evan Ruth, I think you should be clear that although I have no right to punish you, it is not impossible to deal with you, so I will give you two options now. The first option is to call yourself sick and retire. , I’ll just pretend that you have nothing to do with that cargo ship, and everyone can save face. The second option… I’ll send a letter to the archbishop of your church in the capital, asking him to replace it with a bishop of better character. You. Two choices, you choose yourself."

"My lord, I..."

"If you say one more word, I will treat you as the second choice!"

"I... I choose one."

Looking into the eyes of the Viscount, Evan Ruth knew that the Viscount was determined to expel him now, and he had no right to choose at all, and he couldn't help feeling a trace of unprecedented humiliation and unwillingness in his heart.

Three years ago, Evan Ruth was forced to move left to the northern parish because he was defeated in the power struggle within the sect in the royal capital. He originally wanted to make some achievements that would impress the higher-ups, and then he was promoted back, but in the end he failed Now the field.

Without talking nonsense with Evan Russ, the Viscount waved his hand and issued an order to evict the guest. Evan Russ had to leave the Viscount's territory within two weeks within a time limit. He didn't care where he went, as long as he didn't appear on his land again.

Evan Ruth left the lord's mansion disheartened, unable to vent the resentment in his heart for a while, but just happened to see a familiar face coming towards him, it was Lude who had repeatedly ruined his good deeds.

The old priest was wearing a mask as usual, his eyes were almost exposed on his entire face. When he saw Evan Ruth head-on, he smiled and bowed to him, and then greeted him.

"My lord, have you had dinner yet?"

End of this chapter

Watching Evan Ruth leave with a smile on his face, Lude could see that the Bishop was in a very upset mood. After all, he was repeatedly accused of being blamed, and no one would be happy.

And as the "behind the scenes" who planned and implemented all these actions, Lu De didn't feel the slightest bit of shame for what he did, and even had a little bit of pride in his heart!

Thanks to the habit and experience of being an undercover policeman in his previous life, no matter what Lu De does, the first step is always to start with collecting intelligence.Therefore, long before the outbreak of the plague in Oyster Harbor, he specially entrusted Hume to collect relevant information about the various sects in the northern part of the kingdom, so that his side would not be blinded in future contact.

This made Lude understand Oyster Harbor, understand the situation of the Northern Diocese of the Goddess of the Four Seasons here, and study Evan Ruth more carefully.

Starting from the other party's departure to Oyster Port, this guy's series of actions in the local area all show that he is an insidious villain who will do anything to achieve his goals.In order to drive out other local sects in Oyster Harbor, the methods he used included but were not limited to framing, spreading rumors, and even assassination.

But even though he knew that this fellow was not a good bird, Lu De did not say that he would fight Evan Ruth to the death, but put the overall situation first, and took the initiative to throw an olive branch to the other party, but it was a pity that he did not get any good intentions. respond.

So Lude also gave up his illusions and prepared for battle!

Lu De thinks that he is not the kind of pedantic good guy in the series, he will completely give up the initiative and wait for the bad guys to attack.He chose to act first, to get ahead of the bad guys, and to use their methods to make the bad guys have nowhere to go!

First of all, he hired someone to poison himself, guide local public opinion, and push Evan Ruth to the forefront, thereby restraining the other party's hands and feet, making it difficult for them to carry out harmful actions against him.

After Hume came back, Lude used the goddess of tools to sneak into the temple of the Goddess of the Four Seasons, stole his black account from Evan Ruth's study, and pretended to be nun Aria to order from a familiar black merchant. A group of slaves also specially told each other to send them to Oyster Port urgently.On my side, I wrote an anonymous report letter in advance and sent it to the young tax official who had just taken office and was eager to make contributions to prove himself.

So everything that happened next was a matter of course. The Great Shark Eagle was seized as soon as it entered the port, and all the evidence was directed at Evan Ruth.

And the viscount's perception of Evan Ruth has already fallen to the bottom, so when the incident broke out, the first thing he thought of was not to doubt whether the source of these criminal evidences was reliable or whether there was something strange about it?It's that I finally have a suitable excuse to expel this unsightly fat man from my land in a legitimate way, and I am so happy!

The development of the whole thing is all in Lude's plan, and it looks like a mastermind behind the scenes.But in reality, what Lu De did is not so much planting, but exposing!

Because all the things, lying and cheating and stealing, were things that Evan Ruth had actually done on other victims.

Although the local officials did not disclose any information to the public, by the evening of the next day, the incident on the Eagle Shark and the lord's decision to expel Evan Ruth became widely known throughout the city.

Since this terrible plague was caused by a slave ship, in this special period, the news of the "bishop's purchase of slaves" was particularly arousing to people's nerves. The believers even ran to the temple gate to fight against the epidemic, asking Evan Ruth to come out and apologize to the goddess and their believers in public.

Facing the overwhelming anger of the people, Evan Ruth was really scared and hid in the temple, not daring to come out to meet people.On the contrary, Lu De "accidentally" passed by the scene and persuaded these angry people not to be so impulsive.

Now that the epidemic has not passed, it is not the time to engage in group activities.

"According to the current trend, Evan Ruth's local reputation is basically completely ruined by you, and the prestige of the Goddess of the Four Seasons has also dropped sharply. It will be difficult to recover in three to five years. If you don't care about the purpose, Just looking at the means, you are more like a bad guy than that fat man!"

In the office of the isolation area hospital, Kumilad, who knew everything, was smiling and teasing Lude in front of him.

Lu De was noncommittal about this, and sat on the recliner like an old man who was shy from the cold because his body was too weak, and wrapped his little quilt tightly.

Seeing this, Hume couldn't help but roll his eyes at him.

"I said, there are no outsiders here, so you don't have to pretend anymore?"

"You don't understand! I'm brewing emotions. If I want to act like it, I'll get used to it and look natural. This is also preparation for the next step."

For Hume and Comillad, Lude did not hide his ongoing plan. He not only wanted to eliminate the plague and save the 10,000+ people in Oyster Harbor, but also created an opportunity to artificially create a "miracle" in the local area.

Lude had asked Hume before that the gods had rarely performed miracles in the world in the past 300 years. Apart from short-sighted miserliness, there were other reasons. Input and output are not directly proportional.

There are many reasons for this situation. In addition to the lack of the bonus of the original fire, which limits the space to a certain extent, it is also because most gods lack creativity and the way to show miracles is too old-fashioned.

The common miracles are nothing more than revealing one's true body at large-scale sacrificial activities, and then showing one or two unique skills like street performers in front of tens of thousands of believers, so that ordinary people can see how awesome they are.

But they can't create an atmosphere for the performance, and they can't mobilize the emotions of the audience. The believers have seen it a lot, so they naturally get used to it.You can't generate a lot of faith without strong emotional swings.

So when the gods found out that they had put in a lot of effort, but they were unable to make ends meet, they simply stopped doing such thankless things and relied on the clergy below to fool people and accept their faith lying down.

And these priests may be able to come up with good ideas, but they can't communicate with their gods face to face, and they can't get the cooperation of the other party. In the end, they still can't come up with any explosive effect that can attract people's attention.

In the final analysis, the gods are still burdened by their own idols, and they haven’t figured out a very simple truth for hundreds of years. "Performance effect", I want to attract people's attention.

And thousands of believers are exactly the audience they need to please!

End of this chapter

Throughout the ages, all major denominations have had so-called "saints", which generally refer to great men who have made great achievements, can be recognized by the majority of believers, and are blessed by the gods.There are also some who have heavy responsibilities, have gone through all kinds of difficulties and dangers, and completed missions that ordinary people cannot complete.

To put it plainly, it means that the advanced workers in the religious world have a higher social status than the chosen ones who are simply favored by the gods, and some saints can even be certified by more than one god.