Er Mu - Release that Witch

“You can’t read or write?”

“Yes,” the middle-aged men nodded.

“Well, as a carpenter then…” Sirius turned his attention to the pile of questions on the table, looking for the one marked with carpenter, “Ah, found it. Let me ask you a few questions.

The preliminary trial method was an idea His Highness came up with, he had gathered craftsman from all kinds of industries, inquired them about specialized knowledge together with some problems and their corresponding method to deal with them. He then recorded all of their answers and formulated a set of questions. As a result, as long as they compared the given answers with the answers on the form during the audit, they would immediately know if the other party was lying or not. It was the first time that he had ever seen such a method used to detect lies. Barov couldn’t help but want to applaud the devil’s mind, if the other side wasn’t engaged in the industry, most civilians would never be able to understand these concepts. In case someone wanted to feign his occupation, as long as they asked two to three questions, the liar would be choked speechless.

“What kind of tool is used to flatten a wooden surface?”

“It’s… a carpenter’s plane, Sir.”

“What are the commonly used saws?”

“Frame saws and two-man saws, occasionally hand saws when cutting small items.”

Several questions later, Maser could almost answer all of them, and with every further right answer, his voice became more smooth and easy.

“Ah, it seems you are indeed a carpenter,” but the moment Sirius wanted to write down his identity into the register, Barov interrupted him.

“Sir?”

“Don’t be so quick with your judgment, first you have to examine his hands,” then he said to Maser, “Stretch out your hands.”

The moment Maser heard this command he felt startled, but he then spread out his hands with a look full of confusion on his face — the skin on his palms was very rough, fissured and had many traces of earth particles, furthermore below every finger were thick calluses, all in all, they looked very weather-beaten.

“If he was a carpenter, then his palms should not be so rough, especially those two pads beneath the palm, due to constantly rubbing over the wood, they should be smooth and hard. Furthermore, carpenters often need to use black paint to draw contour lines, therefore their palms will often be stained with a black ink that is hard to wash off, turning their palms black instead of yellow.” Barov calmly explained. “Another point, before he gave you an answer he would always break eye contact — many people who were trying to recall something that they didn’t usually do in the past, would show a similar kind of expression to this. However, if was a real carpenter, he would have given his answers in a very natural manner.”

“Understood… then,” Sirius’ eyes became large.

Barov looked at the astonished Maser, then said with a heavy voice, “You should have heard the warnings of the First Army when they called you over, any act of impersonation, deception or refusal of register will be severely punished. Either by being sentenced to work in the mines, or being expelled from the Western Territory, so if you understand this, do you still think you are a carpenter?”

“No, Sir, I was wrong!” Maser said, falling to his knees. “My neighbor was a carpenter, I would just often watch him work!”

“Then go over there and line up.”

Seeing the other flee, Sirius asked full of wonder, “Sir, how do you know all these things?”

“During the Months of Demons, I have done a census for His Highness. I had to deal with every carpenter in the town, and at that time I conveniently recorded such information,” Barov answered while pretending to be unconcerned. But when he saw the admiration and shock in the knight’s face, a feeling of pride arose within his heart.

Although the devil’s methods appeared to be clever, in the end, some people will eventually deceive it, and only people like himself, have the talent needed to make up for His Highness deficiency.

But under the influence of His Highness, their recent approach to deal with such problems was no longer the same as it was in the past… Barov couldn’t help but secretly sigh. For example, commoners of the previous kind, in the past it had been important to punish them with in a thunderous manner, in order intimidate those who would otherwise begin to stir. But nowadays he had to let all of them go, this was most likely because the Prince wanted to save gold royals — after all, every refugee here was worth a lot of money. In case they didn’t live and work in Border Town for several years, they would simply not have been worth the expenses of transporting them over such a long distance by ship.

When the next refugee passed the specialized inquiry, instead of immediately writing him into the register, Sirius first looked to Barov for his approval.

Who in return seized the man up, and then nodded, “Write his details into the register, I will take him to see His Highness.”

After going through a passage in the city wall, they came to a stop in front of a shed set up for His Highness, which was also the last checkpoint.

Here, they would receive His Highness’s personal inquiry. If it is confirmed that there is no problems, they would be given a “Resident Identity Card (ID)”, and from then would become a formal resident of Border Town. With the current lack of houses in the inner town, they had no other choice than to give priority and provide the first living places to the artisans. While the refugees with no particular skill, had no other option than to wait outside of the wall for two to three months.

Barov also possessed a ID card — it was a sheet of hard paper painted with color. It was almost palm sized and on the left upper corner was a painting of his head, which looked the same as a real person. While his name, address and number was written in the middle. The back of the card in turn was covered with the Graycastle’s crest and His Highness personal seal. No matter if it was the paper itself or the film it was wrapped into, they were both very strange. Whether it was by soaking it in water or trying to burn it in a fire, nothing could damage the ID card.

There was no doubt that this thing was certainly made by the witch named Soraya. It seemed that His Highness intended to spread the ID card to the whole town, so that in the future whether it was to buy food or pay, they would have to show their certificate.

Since His Royal Highness had awarded the medal to the young lady of the Pine Family during the Award and Honor Ceremony, it had become evident that the Prince no longer intended to hide the existence of the witch. Which in turn meant Barov had finally to come to a conclusion of who was right and who was wrong, the Devil or the Church… unexpectedly discovering that there was a faint hope within his heart that His Highness can defeat the Church and ultimately unify the Kingdom of Graycastle.

There was no doubt, the higher position His Highness could achieve, the greater the reward he could reap would become.

Of course, there was still a long way to go before they reached that moment, so it could still be put aside and considered later on. By now the population of Border Town had surpassed Longsong Stronghold’s, furthermore, His Royal Highness had also revealed his next year’s construction plan — once the town was connected with the stronghold, more than half of the Western Territory would be turned into one city, with a size that was undoubtedly larger than King’s City, becoming the most magnificent city of Graycastle. And at that time, as the City Hall Premier Minister, what kind of promotion would he receive?

Barov’s heart was full of expectation for the future.

Roland sat on his office chair, carefully looking over Barov’s report statistics.

It took the city hall three full days to sort out all 6000 refugees, coming out with the low number of 186 artisans who had managed to pass the audit in the end. Of course, this small number was also related to the effort they had put into the verification, after all, this involved the distribution of houses as well as IDs.

It was Roland’s vision that from now on, only people in possession of such an ID would be considered official citizens of Border Town. Thus he needed to install proper safety measures, while the numbers were still small, which would also help him to better control the his core supporters inside the town. Using this, when the population started growing further, he could use the strength of his people to help assimilate the newcomers among them. After all, humans were social animals, as long as the environment continued with this way of living, more and more people would eventually come to approve of his ideas. Furthermore, he would indeed lead his people into a better life.

“The final room arrangement for the artisans will be done by you, no matter if they are unmarried or have a family to feed, they will at least have their own apartment assigned to them,” Roland commanded.

“Yes,” Barov agreed, “May I ask Your Royal Highness, are these houses to be given as a present?

“They will be rented,” he shook his head, “The reason why the native citizens received houses as a gift was because most of them had already owned a house before this, it can be considered as exchanging their former house for a new home. But if we now also gift a house to the new inhabitants, they won’t be motivated to leave their houses and throw themselves into their work. Of course, we can still calculate a relatively cheap rent for them, and we can also tell them that as long as they work hard and save enough gold royals they could always buy their own house in the future.”

“I understand.”

For a moment Roland was silent, but then he suddenly asked: “After the Award and Honor Ceremony, how many people have fled the town?”

“Up to today, there have been none among the ranks of native civilians, and there were seven within the ranks of the serfs,” Barov paused. “However, there were more within the refugees from the Eastern Region, of them a total of one hundred and fifteen has already chosen to leave.”

“Is that so?” Roland softly sighed, the moment he had decided to push the witches to the front of the stage, he knew that something like this would happen. Therefore, in order to assess the public response and to avoid any accidents from happening, Roland had especially stationed a firearm teams several miles away from the town. There they could temporarily stop these people from running away and at the same time could also count the number of fleeing people, this way they could hold a survey on the general level of the acceptance of witches.

Even though the result wasn’t perfect, it was excellent that at least the Border Town’s natives had ultimately come to accept the existence of the witches, something which was along his prediction. The number of serfs who have fled was less than that he had expected, showing that the effect of the theater performance was quite good. Yet within the ranks of refugees from the Eastern Regions who had openly accepted the treatment from the witches and were moreover also in a desperate situation — with their houses destroyed and no homeland for them to return to — had more than a hundred people who had chosen to leave, which came as a bit of a surprise to Roland.

“Your Royal Highness, I suggest that we sentence all of these people who have tried to flee to death,” Barov said calmly, “Since they still decided to leave, even considering their situation, they must be people who have been deeply affected by the Church. So, for the foreseeable future, they will never choose to side with Your Highness. In all likelihood they will become firm believers of the Church, for people like them, there is no need to show any kindness.”

“This is not necessarily the case… the truly devoted believers of the Church should be those three hundred people who decided to not leave King’s City and instead face the demonic disease.” The Prince closed his eyes, “Perhaps these people are just unable to change their minds, still thinking that the witches are evil and this made them want to flee.”

“Even if that’s the case, they are still your potential enemies,” Barov insisted.

In fact, if he met that group of people on the battlefield, Roland would defeat them without any hesitation, but that didn’t mean that he was following this era’s backward way of thinking, wantonly swinging the butcher’s knife to kill a group of civilians. Something like that would be against his ethical belief. So after a short hesitation, he finally rejected the suggestion, “I will let Nightingale go and interrogate the runaways, in case there is a hidden spy or scout in their ranks, they will be seized and hanged, all the others will be expelled from the Western Territory.”