Chapter 523: The Sword of the Imperial Banner Knight

After communicating with Xu Lai, the teleportation array connecting Conaston to the city of Martell was reopened.

The day he spent in Conaston was definitely the most tormenting day for Xu Lai since he came to this world.

He only brought a few free people with him. Now everyone has their own things to do, and he is the only one who is forced to receive all kinds of "characters" in Conaston.

Xu Lai is not a person who likes to socialize, especially when he is with a group of people he doesn't like but has to communicate with, or has to appease.

These people include municipal officials in Conaston, presidents of chambers of commerce who have settled in Conaston for a long time, and the so-called gentry class who have a certain influence in Conaston.

In fact, they are the so-called lords, presidents of certain associations, big businessmen and the like.

These people, except for the key ones such as the president of the Mercenary Association and the president of the Magician Association, the rest are not important to Xu Lai.

But even if they are not important, Xu Lai cannot treat them differently and must treat them equally.

Xu Lai is here to rule Conaston, not to destroy it, so the most important task at this stage is to appease the people.

Although Xu Lai was unwilling to admit it, this was the fact.

Only this group of people had the right to speak. Even if Xu Lai wanted to promulgate some measures to benefit the people, they had to convey and implement them.

Otherwise, with the illiterate population of hundreds of thousands, or even millions, in Conaston and nearby towns.

Even if Xu Lai's official documents and decrees were conveyed, no one could understand them, and the right of interpretation was in the hands of the mayors and village heads of various towns.

And no matter how generous Xu Lai treated the farmers, as long as these village heads and town heads added a little more when collecting taxes, the policies he arranged would become a joke.

It would harm himself, the farmers, and fatten these parasites.

It would be even more impossible to collect taxes separately from these people.

First, Xu Lai did not have so many reliable people, and second, the villagers and townspeople did not dare to offend these people.

They were just a group of ordinary people, not like Xu Lai, who had an army by his side.

Xu Lai did not want to use any of these people, but there was no other way now, so he could only use them for the time being.

But he still had to get a group of his own people over, and settle these people by the way.

Maybe the spies, assassins and other intelligence personnel or killers who were arranged to Qingfeng City were from these people.

Xu Lai never thought that he was very magnanimous. At the moment, there was really no way, and it was also to maintain the stability of Conaston.

The arrival of Tahan and others was a great help to Xu Lai.

Elena helped Xu Lai to take over the cathedral of the temple. She knew that this action was inconsistent with the purpose of the temple.

In order not to implicate others, she only brought a few assistants she was familiar with.

It was impossible to appease the people of the whole city by relying on a few priests, so they could only take over the cathedral first.

The original person in charge of the cathedral had been thrown into the teleportation array by Xu Lai. Xu Lai didn't know where this guy was teleported to, anyway, he was no longer in Conaston.

Now, Elena is the highest-ranking bishop. When the temple did not issue a clear order and did not allow the priests of Conaston Church to obey Elena's orders, Elena was the highest person in charge.

Moreover, Xu Lai was backing Elena up.

The disobedient one had been thrown away, and he was an archbishop.

The remaining pastors or priests would not dare to disobey Elena's orders unless the temple's top leaders gave a clear answer.

But it seemed that the temple's top leaders acquiesced to the current situation and did not issue any instructions.

So, after taking over the church, Elena led dozens of pastors in the church to appease the people everywhere.

Compared with the municipal officials of Conaston City, these pastors were more trusted by the people.

Under the strong assurances and promises of these pastors, most citizens were willing to believe that the army entering the city had no malicious intent, would neither harm them nor embezzle their personal property.

The promises and assurances of these pastors were not stressful, and they believed in this view more firmly than ordinary civilians.

They were all pastors who had been deeply influenced by the temple for decades. Which pastor would believe that the angel troops and paladin troops entering the city were a group of people who would massacre civilians?

Even though these troops are only recruiting soldiers, they are convinced that heroes who are allowed to recruit angels and paladins will never do such a thing.

Their trust is also reasonable.

It is hard to say about Cloud City, but the two arms of priests and paladins are not just recruited arms, they can also be considered as authorized arms.

People without authority cannot recruit these arms.

And such authority is controlled by the temple on the surface, but in fact, it is one of the divine powers of the God of War, after all, it is his priests who are recruited.

This means that even if someone has built a church that can recruit priests or priests, as long as the God of War takes back the authority, this person will still not be able to recruit.

Paladins, there is no way to recruit them at present, only those with authority can train them by themselves.

It is also because of these priests that there has not been any major riots in Conaston for the time being.

If these civilians make trouble, Xu Laike will have a headache. After all, they are just civilians, not a rebellious army, and they can't be killed casually.

Tahan did not come alone this time. He brought the helpers Xu Lai wanted.

Most of Joseph and the rangers under his command were brought over by Tahan.

These people were all brought back from the grasslands by Xu Lai, and everything from equipment to advancement was handled by Xu Lai.

Even their families, housing, etc., as long as Xu Lai can help, he will help.

It can be said that these people are Xu Lai's absolute confidants, and they are the people most worthy of Xu Lai's trust besides Tahan and other recruitment captains.

With them here, Xu Lai felt a lot more confident.

At least he doesn't have to worry about not being able to appease those people. If he can't appease those people with kind words, the worst he can do is kill the chicken to scare the monkeys.

After entering the city, Xu Lai hasn't killed many people yet. If he doesn't kill people, how can he establish his authority?

Therefore, at this moment, Xu Lai, who had backup, even couldn't wait to see someone jump out.

And in addition to them, Tahan also brought other foreign aid, the nephews of Jimmy Martell's family.

"Meet the lord."

The three leading young men dressed as knights are all named Martell. Except for the middle one named Gilon Martell, who is Jimmy's eldest son, the other two are Jimmy's nephews.

After sending all his nephews here, it seems that Jimmy has made up his mind to follow Xu Lai.

After all, his nephews and nephews are all around Xu Lai. If something goes wrong on Jimmy's side, these three people will have no place to go in the first place.

The key is that Xu Lai himself did not ask him to send someone over. It was Jimmy who took the initiative to send it over.

After seeing Xu Lai's powerful strength, Jimmy really wanted to hug Xu Lai's thigh.

Jimmy believed that after this battle, many other nobles would want to join Xu Lai.

Although he was the first to take refuge, he did not make any contribution to Xu Lai. Instead, Xu Lai sent troops to rescue him.

Xu Lai had made a promise to him at the beginning, but Xu Lai had nothing at the time. Now Xu Lai is about to become the new ruler of the grassland.

The change of status will inevitably bring about the inequality of status and status.

It would be stupid if Jimmy clung to Xu Lai's previous promise.

"Hello, hello." Xu Lai smiled and nodded to them.

In fact, after coming to this world and getting a new body, Xu Lai became obviously much younger.

His appearance may not have changed much, but his body should be at its peak. If his bone age were measured, he might be only 18 years old.

Although Jiron and the others are just trainee knights, to be honest, they are more useful than rangers like Joseph.

The reason is also very simple. As Jimmy's eldest son, Jilong has always been trained as a successor.

Despite their young age, their manners, manners in dealing with others, and propriety in doing things were far superior to those of civilian origins like Joseph.

Moreover, they have a wide range of people. In the city of Conaston, there are many more people who know them than those who know Xu Lai.

Many things can be handled better by them than by Xu Lai himself.

After getting to know each other, Xu Lai asked them to send the body to Elvi. He happened to stop by to preside over the resurrection ceremony.

Joseph took a team of rangers and a team of knights, a total of more than 20 high-level warriors, to take over the city's security team.

As a large city with more than 100,000 households and a fixed population of hundreds of thousands, the people responsible for public security in Conaston are not the security team, but the city guard. There is no full-time security department here at all.

Xu Lai gave Joseph great power, including the power of life and death.

If those city guards who surrendered were disobedient, they would kill as many as they wanted without reporting it, and they could be dealt with on the spot.

If any municipal officials come forward to stop you, no matter what the reason, they will be detained first.

If they still refused to obey the rules, they would simply kill them too. After occupying Conaston, no blood was shed at all. Even Xu Lai, a person who didn't really want to do evil, felt that something was missing.

Of course, it's not that he has to kill someone or anything, but that heavy punishments are used in troubled times. At this time, the heavier the punishment, the more it can deter people, and the more it can control others from causing trouble.

If there was a riot, more people would die, which would go against Xu Lai's original intention.

Moreover, although Xu Lai gave Joseph such rights, it did not mean that he could kill people at will. There must be a reason.

The officials left here will be handed over to Jilong and others.

The three of them are responsible for sorting out the situation in Conaston City in the shortest possible time.

Including the number of permanent residents, floating population, registered taxpayer population, military personnel, etc.

In addition to the population, there are also how many important municipal officials there are, how many administrative departments there are, and what matters they are responsible for, which ones are necessary, which ones are not necessary, and which ones can be ignored temporarily.

To stabilize people's hearts, the most important thing is to stabilize prices. As long as sufficient food supply can be ensured, ordinary people will decide who is in charge of your city.

Therefore, they now have to keep an eye on those businessmen, which is a very heavy task.

Fortunately, they are not just three people. In addition to the three of them, Jimmy also arranged a lot of servants, assistants and the like.

What's more, they also brought a large number of corpses.

Of course, corpses cannot be used, but here Xu has more than a hundred real angels and more than a hundred paper angels.

Thanks to Xu Lai's temporary moderate policy, after the defenders of Conaston retreated to the castle, Xu Lai did not encounter any resistance in the city.

Tens of thousands of defenders were beaten back to the castle while occupying the advantage of the city wall. The remaining few inferior city guards and mercenaries who worked for money would not risk their lives to resist.

Almost wherever Xu Lai went, there were surrenderers kneeling on the ground.

Roland, the captain of Xu Lai's personal guards, was responsible for temporarily controlling these surrendered soldiers.

Otherwise, Xu Lai would feel awkward. Except for some robot-like holy light knights, there was no one of his own around him, and he had no sense of security.

Without resistance, no one discovered these paper angels.

Unfortunately, these mirror angels and paladins can only inherit attack power and characteristics.

Because they have no mana, they can't cast spells.

More than a hundred angels, many of them are 9th-level seraphs, and after twelve o'clock, they can cast spells again, which can at least pull hundreds of people.

According to Xu Lai, living people are more important than recruiting soldiers, so he wants to give priority to resurrecting Jimmy's soldiers.

But Jilong told Xu Lai that Jimmy had promised Reina to give priority to resurrecting the heavy shield infantry and heavy armored spearmen who died in battle.

There were not many people, and most of them were shot to death by armor-piercing crossbowmen. Except for a bunch of arrows in their bodies, their bodies were intact.

But Xu Lai always felt awkward that a group of machines without complete souls were given priority to resurrect, while some living lives were abandoned.

Although the ownership of these recruited soldiers belonged to Xu Lai, those soldiers were loyal to Jimmy.

But Jimmy had already pledged his loyalty to him, would he care about such a small matter?

However, Jilong knelt in front of Xu Lai and refused to give priority to resurrecting his family members, and even preferred to burn all his family members with a fire.

Xu Lai had no choice but to agree.

Of course, he knew that both Reina and Jimmy were thinking about him, so he should not blame anyone.

It was just that he was the only one in the world who cared about the lives of ordinary people, which undoubtedly made Xu Lai very unhappy.

Fortunately, Tahan helped Xu Lai resolve this worry in time.

This guy actually seized Aini's battle flag.

[Knight's Sword]: Flag, one of the three major flags of the empire (the other two are the claw of the griffin and the shield of the infantry), given to the ancestors of the Aini family by the first Supreme King Aled.

Basic attributes: Increase the basic morale of the empire camp troops by +5, and when the flag is still flying, the morale of all knights is increased by an additional +15.

Special attributes: All troops' attack speed and movement speed increase by 10%, and all knights' attack speed and movement speed increase by an additional 10%.

Knight King Reward: All knight troops, attack +25, defense +25, life +25 (non-basic life, no sacred blood bottle bonus).

Xu Lai thought that the vanguard flag that Aini gave him was good enough.

But the vanguard flag is completely incomparable to the Behemoth King Flag that was once seized and the Sea King Flag given by Princess Naga.

But it was not until he saw the flag representing the empire that Xu Lai realized that the vanguard flag was simply garbage.

Only by raising such a flag can humans drive the arrogant orcs into the wilderness. (End of this chapter)