Chapter 391 Railway Extension

With the rapid development of Williamburg, the nobles have bought land near Williamburg and built residential estates as temporary or long-term residences for their family members.

There are now thousands of foreign nobles, big and small, who live in Williamburg. These people basically live on the hillside outside the west city of Williamburg, forming several villa areas.

After 20 years of development, the living area of ​​Williamburg has expanded a lot. As the development of Harland Territory is getting faster and faster, the vacant land near Williamburg has been filled. If you want to continue to develop, you can only go deep into the mountains.

Due to the limitation of land supply, Williamburg is no longer suitable to be the capital of Harland Territory. The most suitable area now is actually the Losa Basin area.

The Losa Basin covers an area of ​​more than 3,600 square kilometers, and the mountains on the east and west sides are relatively flat, with a lot of room for expansion. If you want to fill this basin, you may need hundreds of millions of people.

But moving the capital is a very troublesome thing.

Many scientific research institutes and precision factories have been built near Williamburg, and a wizard tower has been built, as well as many hospitals and schools. It will take a huge amount of relocation funds to relocate so many institutions to the Losa Basin.

Moreover, there is a crater called the Princess Tomb in the Losa Basin. If this problem is not solved, the conditions for relocation are not yet ripe. However, Richard has already started to relocate some important factories.

Considering the great success of the Commodity Fair, Harland is preparing to adjust the schedule of the Commodity Fair this year.

The Commodity Fair will be extended for three days, and a large auction will be held in the last three days. Any item that passes the appraisal can be auctioned at the auction. Harland Territory only takes 3% of the auction price to provide a safety guarantee for the auction transaction.

Harland Territory has obtained a large number of dragon blood fruits this year and refined a large number of Styx potions of different levels, which will become the finale of the first auction.

Styx potions can directly increase magic power. Even the third-level low-level Styx potions are precious commodities worth thousands of gold coins.

The price of a medium-level Styx potion can even be auctioned for 70,000 to 80,000 gold coins, which is comparable to the price of high-level enchanted armor.

In the market of extraordinary items, the things used by magicians are always very expensive, and the potions that can increase mental power are even more priceless and very scarce in the market of extraordinary items.

Especially in countries like the Kingdom of Grant, it is particularly rare.

At this auction, Harland Territory also bought a variety of extraordinary items, reducing the time of searching and purchasing.

After the commodity fair, Richard led some professionals over the snow-capped mountains and returned to Fort William.

Last year, Harland Territory built its first railway and the steam locomotive was put into use for the first time.

Although this railway can only be regarded as a coal transportation line, the annual profit is very low and it takes about 40 to 50 years to recover the cost. However, the emergence of steam locomotives has increased the efficiency of road transportation and enabled Fort William to extend its power to remote grassroots.

Fort William’s senior officials have invested great enthusiasm in this new thing.

According to the plan of Governor Rogge, this year, only 30 kilometers of railway were planned to be built, extending from Fort William to the military station fort, but because of the capture of the dragon's nest, Harland Territory's income soared. The fiscal budget was very loose. Roger discussed with Richard and decided to strengthen railway construction and extend the railway from Fort William to Malte Castle.

Because the plan was temporarily adjusted, even in winter, the railway construction army was still rushing to meet the deadline.

Railway transportation has shown great superiority. In order to train personnel to build and manage railways, the Harland Territory established a railway school in March this year.

Because it was just established, the scale of the railway school is still relatively small, and only 60 students were recruited this year. However, the source of students in the railway school is very good, and they are rare middle school students in Harland Territory.

This year, Harland Territory once again expanded the enrollment scale. According to statistics from the education department, the territory has 24 primary schools and 6 middle schools in use, and thousands of primary school students graduate every year.

With the expansion of middle school enrollment, more than 500 middle school students will graduate every year starting this year. With the expansion of middle school students, higher education in the territory has also been put on the agenda and ushered in a relatively rapid development.

In March, Harland Territory established a railway college.

After conquering the Dragon's Nest, the fiscal revenue of Harland County increased greatly. In September, the iron and steel, accounting, normal, mechanical, political, legal, textile, and agricultural colleges began preparations and will be fully enrolled in the spring of next year.

Because it is the first year of higher education, the eight colleges are not large in scale, and the number of students enrolled ranges from 50 to 60, and from 20 to 30. According to the scale of high school students graduating this year, only half of the graduates can be enrolled.

The remaining half of the high school students will either become staff officers or civil servants, and a small number will enter factories and research institutes. Future scientific researchers will be slowly selected from universities.

As long as the high school students in Harland County are admitted to the eight colleges, they will not be charged tuition fees at all, and they will receive a subsidy of two silver coins every month. Students can receive subsidies for ten months a year, which is equivalent to half of the average income of adult men.

This money can not only make college students worry-free, but also take out a part to subsidize their families. Being admitted to the eight colleges is equivalent to passing the imperial examination on ancient Earth.

According to Richard's requirements, the admission rules of the eight colleges are quite transparent and are completely determined by the scores of high school students in various subjects.

The teachers of the five major colleges are partly high school students who graduated a few years earlier, partly backbone personnel from scientific research institutes, and a small number of outside scholars who are hired by Richard at high prices.

Although Richard knew that some teachers were just filling in the gaps and their own knowledge level was not as good as that of the fresh graduates of Harbin Middle School, the lack of teachers in higher education meant that Harland could only stumble forward.

It might take five or six years, until excellent students graduate and teach, and have teaching experience, before this situation can be alleviated.

It was late November, and the 100-kilometer railway from Malte Castle to the Fortress of the Army was about to be opened to traffic.

Richard entered the railway construction site early in the morning to inspect and found that the indentured servants were wearing thin clothes, their hands and feet were a little red from the cold, and dozens of people were carrying heavy rails and moving their feet with difficulty, looking very pitiful.

Richard looked through the list of indentured servants who built the railway and found that the mortality rate was relatively high. Indentured servants were an important asset of Harland, and the property loss was not small. Richard immediately frowned.

It was very hard to inspect in the morning in winter. Many civil servants in the rear could not bear it, and even Rogge did not accompany him. After all, the Harlanders did not have the habit of riding in sedan chairs, and riding horses in winter was very painful. The pampered middle and high-level civil servants were not used to such a hard life.

Compared with the territorial bureaucrats, Richard's life in the past two years has been more difficult.

In the past two years, Richard has been commanding operations at the No. 10 military station most of the time. Although he is the commander-in-chief, the No. 10 military station is the front line after all, and the conditions are far worse than those in the rear.

Most of the days, Richard, like ordinary soldiers, has irregular meal times and needs to lie on ice and drink snow.

After two years of wind and frost, Richard has looked a little older. Fighting a year of war requires ten years of mental effort. War not only tortures the soldiers' bodies, but also tortures their hearts.

Especially for Richard, the commander of the entire army, the psychological pressure is even greater. Every decision must be carefully weighed.

Countless times in the middle of the night, sweating profusely, and working hard for a long time, Richard, although only 35 years old, looks a little older than his brother Hayden. Now his appearance is closer to William at the age of 40, with wrinkles on his forehead, but more majestic.

"Has the labor insurance funds been distributed?" Richard's face suddenly became gloomy when he saw that the contract slaves lacked labor protection.

Finding that Richard was in a bad mood, the adjutant Green said cautiously: "I don't know about this matter yet. Your Excellency the Duke, wait a moment, I will go and ask first."

Not long after, Green hurried over and whispered: "According to the on-site management personnel, no labor insurance items have been distributed."

"I'm here, you send someone to notify Hayden and Roger, and make sure to investigate this matter at noon today and give an explanation to the railway construction personnel."

Under Richard's direct attention, this corruption case was quickly investigated.

According to the investigation, thirteen officials on this line embezzled labor insurance funds and resold labor insurance items. The gold coins embezzled by these people ranged from dozens to thousands. Such a large amount was enough to sentence them to death.

Richard would not show mercy to any corruption. These people were beheaded on the spot and their heads were hung on wooden stakes to deter others. The shops that cooperated with them to sell labor protection items were also implicated. The merchants and corrupt officials were executed together, and the goods in the shops were sealed.

Their families were also demoted to slaves, and their descendants could not be pardoned within a hundred years, let alone study and join the army.

It can be said that under this policy, their descendants cannot stand up. Permanently becoming slaves, according to the social situation in Harland Territory, it is highly likely that there will be no descendants. Even contract servants are unlikely to be willing to marry the descendants of criminals. Contract servants have far more human rights than criminal slaves.

The treatment of criminal slaves is the same as that of orc slaves. Their lives are like goods and they have no human rights. Criminal slaves and orc slaves are not counted in the household registration department, and their status in Harland Territory is even worse than that of sheep-bodied people.

Although a corruption case was found during the inspection today, Richard was not happy at all.

The railway department is the department that Harland Territory pays the most attention to. Even this department is extremely corrupt. Other places that cannot be seen are probably full of rats. When you see a rat on the street, there are actually countless rats hiding in the dark.

As the territory became larger, the population increased, and the affairs became more and more complicated, Richard was increasingly unable to manage the territory as meticulously as before.

In his previous life, Richard was just an ordinary person. Although he had undergone rigorous training in this life, his ability and scheming were fundamentally different from those in his previous life, he and a few assistants could not change the stubborn disease of bureaucracy at all. Think about it, corruption has become a trend in the Harland territory now.

Even if Richard established an inspection system, promoted a large number of inspectors, and let his brother Hayden manage the Inspection Office. But the Inspection Office is also a member of the bureaucratic system. With this system, corrupt officials cannot be controlled at all.

After the corrupt officials were found out, under Richard's personal attention, the seized goods were confiscated, and cotton shoes, cotton gloves, and winter clothes were distributed to the contract slaves who built the railway.

Seeing that the contract slaves had regained some morale, Richard also built a public cemetery on both sides of the railway, moved the slaves who died in the construction of the railway to the public cemetery, and carved a stone tablet and wrote an article to mourn.

Although the cemetery was not completed, Richard still returned to Fort William with a heavy heart.

Labor protection measures were added, and a public cemetery was built. The indentured servants were grateful to Richard from the bottom of their hearts, and they became more motivated to work. The progress of the railway construction was accelerated a lot, and it was finally completed on the third day of December.

After the railway from Malte Castle to the Fortress was opened to traffic, there are now two railway lines in the Harland Territory. One is a coal mine line, about 30 kilometers long, extending from the Tulun Coal Mine in the northwest of Fort William to the East City of Fort William.

The other line runs along the Harland Valley, from Malte Castle in the plain area to the Fortress, with a traffic distance of 97 kilometers. The completion of this section of the railway has greatly increased the supply capacity of the northern mountain defense line of the Harland Territory and greatly shortened the supply line. Now the Fortress has become a forward base and a stockpiling base for supplies.

Richard attended the railway opening celebration ceremony, then wrote letters to Sutton, Sylph and others, and also transferred Soros, Wilde and others back from the front line to prepare to enter the depths of the Snow Crystal Lake to find the remains of the Star Alliance and find the key to open the plane channel.

This matter has been delayed for so long, and now it is finally free, and the snow crystal fish has finished spawning and returned to the sea.

The snow crystal fish left, and the danger under the lake was reduced a lot, and the time for exploration was ripe. In order to deal with the hidden crisis, almost all the high-level professionals of Harland were dispatched this time. Although the expedition team entering the Snow Crystal Lake is small in number, they are all elite soldiers of Harland.

This expedition team has only a dozen people. Richard and Sophia are equivalent to small legendary mages. Sutton and Sylph are already ninth-level elves. Wendini is an eighth-ring magician. Eve and Wendy have also been promoted to sixth-ring mages.

Although Eve and Wendy are not high-level professionals yet, according to the experience of the Dawn Plane, the combat effectiveness of the sixth-ring magician is already a few points stronger than the eighth-ring golden knight.

Faced with complex environments and various dangerous magic traps, the sixth-ring magician is even more capable of surviving than the ninth-level epic knight. When in danger, the magician can open the dimensional space for refuge. In order to break the dimensional space, in addition to using magic means, brute force must use legendary power.

Wilde has been promoted to the eighth-level golden knight. Soros has the weakest combat effectiveness. He is also an eighth-level warrior and has a superb archery skill. The last two members of the team are Driffin and Rola, an eighth-level high elf.

Although the team is small, with five magicians, four knights, and two warriors, due to Richard and Sophia, and the Starlight Necklace, their combat power is a bit stronger than that of a legendary second-level magician.

Legendary second-level mages and priests are already very rare in the Dawn Plane.