"Your Highness, do you know who sent these people?" Carter asked, approaching after Wade left.

"Besides the Church, only Tifice has pills. Garcia is now far away from Graycastle and is unlikely to still be thinking about me." Roland sighed, "Compared to the former, Tifice is more likely. He doesn't dare to easily send a large army away from the royal capital, but that doesn't mean he won't retaliate against me."

Fortunately, these attackers who infiltrated the crowd only carried pills and were not covered in huoyào. Otherwise, detonating in the crowd would have made the efforts of the past two months worthless.

Roland wasn't worried that the "suicide squad" he sent out would threaten him. In Nightingale's absence, he went everywhere with more than a dozen personal guards, and he also wore a God's Punishment Stone. Not to mention kèyào berserkers, even extraordinary witches would have a hard time approaching him under the suppression of ten revolving rifles.

He discovered that in less than a year since he took the position of lord, his mentality had undergone a great change. If he had seen this kind of situation when he first arrived, he would have inevitably felt weak in the knees and at a loss. But just now, although he felt a little nervous, he still pretended to be calm on the surface—he knew that the guards would stand in front of him, desperately blocking the enemy, and as the focus of the crowd's attention, he couldn't show the slightest sign of panic. This thought even surprised him.

"Call all the people from the envoy group and ask them about the detailed recruitment process," Roland turned to Barov and said, "I need to know where these people boarded the sailboat from."

"Yes, Your Highness." The chief of the City Hall looked somewhat gloomy, probably not expecting that his proud subordinate would make such a major mistake, and felt quite humiliated.

"Don't be too harsh on them either. Ask about the situation first."

After all the refugees had passed through the checkpoint, Roland returned to the castle office. The news brought back by the envoy group this time made him especially happy—in the Southern Territory, there were a large number of displaced people. Eagle City and Azurewater Port were destroyed by war, and many fields outside the city were abandoned. Coupled with the strange weather this year, the temperature in Graycastle dropped sharply, and the price of grain rose, even causing the price of slaves to drop by half.

As long as he could establish a reliable transportation channel, he could continuously bring these people into the Western Territory—in fact, according to the envoy group's report, after hearing the Border Town's development recruitment order, many refugees had already begun to move westward on their own initiative.

However, the difficulty lay in the "transportation channel."

The heavy snow of the Months of Demons sealed off all land traffic. To bring people in, they could only be transported via the Redwater River, and Border Town only had the Little Town, a ship that couldn't move without witches, which was far from meeting the demand—if ships were to be constantly traveling on the waterway, at least twenty inland sailboats would have to be invested.

For example, the envoy group sent out this time was caught in such a dilemma: only a small portion of the gold dragons they carried were used to win over refugees, and most of the rest were spent on hiring ships and settling personnel. Currently, only four hundred people have arrived in Border Town, and more than three thousand people are still stranded in Willow Town, Silverlight City, and Dragonfall Ridge, waiting for ships to transport them.

In addition, the shipowners are all aware of the current situation in the Western Territory and have raised prices very high. The estimated cost for just these three thousand people is already on par with the last rescue of the royal capital, which is not a long-term solution at all. Roland thought for a while and decided to send a letter of request to the Margaret Merchant Guild, hoping that they wouldn't quote a price several times higher for the sake of Lightning.

But to completely cut off this part of the expenditure, he still had to build ships himself—now the quality of steel bars and cement had been greatly improved, and he could completely build stronger, larger inland flat-bottomed boats, using steam engines as power, to build this Redwater River transportation line.

...

After lunch, Barov knocked on the door and walked in, "Your Highness, the situation has been roughly clarified."

"Speak."

"A disciple named Selun was responsible for attracting refugees to the Northern Lands. On the way back, due to a shortage of ships, he contacted a friend he had met in the royal capital, hoping that they could help inquire or hire some merchant ships willing to go to the Western Territory." Barov sighed, "The news should have been leaked from here... He settled the refugees in Silverlight City, which is only half a day away from the royal capital. It's not difficult for Tifice to interfere."

"How many people are currently stranded in Silverlight City?"

"About a hundred," Barov said in a low voice, "A merchant ship takes half a month to go back and forth. When the next batch of refugees arrives, we don't know what will happen. How about... immediately recalling the First Army team and abandoning these people?"

"No, no, no matter how many people Tifice inserts, we can eliminate them one by one. As long as we control the audit checkpoints well and let them pass through separately," Roland shook his head, "If we leave the refugees in Silverlight City alone, what if someone returns to the Northern Lands and publicizes their experiences? We'll never be able to attract people from there again."

With Sylvie's perspective observation and Nightingale's truth-telling interrogation, any spies and assassins would have nowhere to hide, so he wasn't worried about it, as long as they didn't harm other refugees.

"Yes, Your Highness." Barov coughed twice before asking, "Then... what about Selun's punishment, what do you think..."

"What do you think?"

He hesitated for a moment, "The occurrence of such a thing is due to his carelessness. I suggest removing his position in the City Hall and fining him two months' salary. Selun's mistake was not intentional and did not cause too much damage. It is not appropriate to send him to the North Slope Mining Area."

Roland couldn't help but laugh. The other party had written the expression of pain on his face, "Don't worry, I've already made a decision. Considering that he made this mistake due to a lack of experience, rather than subjective dereliction of duty, he can be dealt with leniently. After all, it was his first time holding such a position... I remember he's only in his twenties, right? In that case, after this lesson, he should be able to grow quickly. Just fine him two months' salary."

"As you command," Barov immediately bowed, "It will be done as you say."

The prince shook his head with a smile. Although he had spoken harshly at first, when it came to punishment, he showed an unobvious reluctance—after all, Selun had been by his side when he was in the royal capital and was also among the first group of disciples to arrive in Border Town. In Barov's eyes, he was almost like a child he had raised himself.

"You can go."

After dealing with this matter, Roland stretched. He took out a few blank sheets of paper from the drawer and was about to draw a sketch of a steam cement boat when Leaf suddenly ran in.

"Your Highness," she said excitedly, "The Longshot is back!"

"Really?" Roland jumped up and followed her quickly to the back garden. The huge hot air balloon was slowly descending, and the shadow of the balloon made the light in the yard a little darker.

As soon as the gondola landed, Anna jumped down. Roland opened his arms to greet her, and the latter smiled and hugged him gently.

"I'm back."