Ride and Cut

The waiter brought by Lyola brought three small and delicate porcelain cups on a tray.

"Since you are His Majesty's staff, is it possible that His Majesty is still staying in Cologne?" Li Cha took a sip from his cup, and unexpectedly found that it was high-grade rum. He thought it should be tea.

"No, I returned to the capital half a month ago." Judging by human standards, Liola's appearance is slightly exaggerated, and it is difficult to leave a good impression at first glance.

But when he held the cup to his mouth, his posture was impeccable, very elegant and noble, and no one could escape the slightest flaw.

Then—he raised his head suddenly and drank it all in one gulp, leaving nothing behind.

Just when Li Cha was staring sideways at him, he picked up the handkerchief in a more elegant and impeccable manner, and gently touched the corner of his lips, as if everything just now was just a dream, and it never happened at all.

"Absolutely a senior alcoholic." The lord immediately made a judgment in his heart, and then he took it up and did it himself.

Sauron looked at the two of them and had no choice but to follow suit, but he was neither a drunkard nor a lord of a mountain castle with amazing physique, so he was choked and coughed in a low voice.

"Master Liola, this is the last glass of the day. You must not drink any more, not even a drop." The waiter whispered as he poured the wine.

"Understood!" The impatience of the crippled goblin was as obvious as the lice on the bald man's head, and his tone was very harsh.

"Your Excellency Liola, what are you going to do in our Alpine Fort?" The lord clinked glasses with him, and the two of them had a tacit understanding and then nodded.

"You may not know that the mediation organized by the Church of Light will be restarted soon." Liola looked down at the empty glass in her hand, and suddenly raised it up and poured the last few drops of wine into her mouth, before showing a satisfied smile, "After all, the matter is of great importance. I have to make sure that everyone who is supposed to attend the meeting can attend the meeting in time."

"Of course it's okay." Li Cha was not surprised by this, but thought to himself that he was lucky. If the two of them went out in the morning for a few more days, it is estimated that his disappearance would be revealed.

"That's good." Liola grinned, "Your Gaoshan Fort's arms business has been temporarily suspended for a few months. I wondered if something happened, so I came here to take a look."

Li Cha was stunned for a moment, "It seems that as long as you open the door to do business, it will be difficult to hide it from those who are interested."

It is true that Alpine Castle is in the arms business, but its customers are basically indigenous tribes in the wilderness, and the trade route is far away from Cologne City.

Even the matter of owning iron mines has never been reported to the Noble Court. The lord always thought that it was good to keep it secret, and no outsiders knew about it.

"Wrong. For a conscientious person like me, it's not too difficult to hide it once in a while, otherwise the tax officer would have come to the door. If it weren't for Lord Liola, I really don't know how brave you are." Sauron shrugged, "But then again, how much tax has been missed by Gaoshan Castle? Hurry up and make up for it."

"Why do I have to make up for the tax that I have missed due to my own ability?" Seeing that it had been exposed, Li Cha also stood up as a bachelor, and choked Sauron back with a single sentence.

He turned his head and looked at Liola next to him with a suspicious expression on his face, "Could it be that we have spies in Gaoshan Castle?"

He has a system by his side, so he doesn't have to worry about traitors appearing among the Ripper's fighters, which is a great convenience. But in fact, there is still no way to avoid spies among the civilians, let alone completely avoid the possibility of information leakage.

"It's actually very obvious." Liola tapped the wheelchair with her index finger casually, and said intermittently in a more casual tone: "The equipment used by the Ripper fighters is obviously in the style of dwarves. It's no secret that the Alpine Fortress has dwarf leaders. You can tell that you have the ability to produce your own equipment.

"I checked the transaction records of various commercial firms in Cologne, and found that Woya Commercial Firm has purchased coal and blacksmith tools for you several times, but it has hardly bought iron ore. It can only mean that Alpine Fort has found the source of ore."

"There are blacksmiths and iron mines, so it's perfectly normal to want to run an arms business to make money. Of course, this is just a guess, but with this guess as a premise, it doesn't take much trouble to verify it a little bit. After all, there will always be some traces of the carriages coming and going."

"Everything is too obvious, there is no need for a spy." Liola slightly pushed the pillow under her neck, so that she could lean on it more comfortably: "Most of the time, as long as one follows a clue, there is no way to hide the truth."

"A very meticulous reasoning process." Li Cha maintained his demeanor with a smile on his face, but in fact he was cursing in his heart, wishing he could do this green-skinned bastard on the spot.

As the most prosperous commercial city in the entire Northeast Province, Cologne has numerous large and small commercial firms, and the trading methods are also complicated and diverse. It seems easy to count all the procurement items in a territory, but in fact it is more troublesome than picking out all the seeds of a watermelon!

How could ordinary people notice such trivial details!

"No." Liola shook her head, showing a smug smile, "It's not because I'm meticulous, but because your attempts to hide it are too perfunctory. If you want to hide a cat, you have to hide the whole cat. What's the matter with just hiding a strand of hair?"

"Is it so obvious?" Sauron covered his forehead, and by looking at his expression, he knew that he must be doubting himself.

As the chief officer of the Noble Court in the Northeast Province, theoretically he is the one who should be in charge of the activities of the nobles in the province, but he has never found Xiao Jiujiu from Gaoshanbao.

But to say that Sauron was dereliction of duty, that would be too unfair to him. Because in other provinces and even other countries, the management is almost the same extensive - the officials maintain the overall situation stable, the nobles and lords below are prosperous, and both sides take it as their greatest duty not to cause trouble for the other party, and muddling along is the common pursuit of everyone.

"Yes." Liola certainly didn't know what modesty meant. Before Sauron finished speaking, he immediately continued to answer:

"Even if it is difficult to count the transaction items, it is not difficult to find that their financial situation is obviously abnormal-it can be inferred from the entry and exit records of the city gate of Cologne. The monthly financial expenditure of Alpine Castle is huge, and the loot alone is not enough, and there must be additional income."

"Understood." Sauron sighed and stopped talking.

Although he has been dragged down by official duties for a long time, Sauron is also a mage after all, and he pursues the truth all his life. It was obviously not easy for him to be taught by goblins.

"In your opinion, how can we really conceal the existence of an iron mine?"

"Unless you don't use it at all, otherwise..." Liola thought for a while, shaking her head: "It's difficult. Any action will leave traces, including those done to erase traces, and new traces will also be left. To find clues, you only need to find the tip of the iceberg. To erase clues, you need to eliminate the entire iceberg. The difficulty is not in the same order of magnitude."

"Why on earth—why did Pompeii expel the Church of the Ice and Snow Goddess and welcome the Church of the Holy Light as the state religion? Why did Stuart do the opposite?" Richard finally asked the question he was most concerned about.