Chapter 226 : Conspiracy, Eavesdropping
Chapter 226: Conspiracy, Eavesdropping
Puente Kingdom
The king’s representative of Puente, Caski, sat together with Prince Elio, who had secretly arrived from the Kingdom of Ikesia. The two of them leisurely drank tea while watching the dancers gracefully performing below the stage.
The two sat together discussing how to give Seris something unpleasant to deal with next.
“How confident is this plan?” Prince Elio pondered.
“The feasibility is very high. Our country has already privately met with the King of Kabansia. He has shown extremely strong hostility toward the Seris Alliance.”
At the mention of the Alliance, a trace of disgust flashed through Caski’s eyes.
Over the past years, the Seris Alliance had thoroughly tormented these old-established kingdoms. The sharp decline in external trade had caused internal conflicts to intensify, yet there had been no way to redirect them outward.
It wasn’t as if the Puente Kingdom had never tried anything. Their earlier attempt to rob an Alliance trade convoy had been a probing attack.
But the Alliance had developed far too quickly. From regarding them as savages, to opponents, and now as a deadly enemy—
By the time they truly reacted and began to take them seriously, it was already too late.
There was no need to even mention targeting the Alliance. The internal conflict between capitalists born from industrialization and the nobility alone was enough to give them a splitting headache.
In the early stages, noble landlords could still exploit these new capitalist merchants, but capital would never die—it would only return in different forms.
These new capitalist merchants were extremely clever. They never confronted the nobility head-on—that would be like an egg striking a stone.
Instead, they were adept at shifting contradictions. Through fluctuations in wages and prices, they successfully stirred up conflict between the common people and the nobility. The civilianization of firearms had further planted the seeds of unrest.
Especially as musket technology continued to iterate and gradually approached the level of the Alliance’s standard bolt-action rifles, the foundation of noble rule was constantly being shaken.
It had to be understood that standardized bolt-action rifles were themselves a watershed of industrial standards.
High-strength barrels and fully metallic bullets represented breakthroughs in mass steel production, metal smelting, and mechanical processing.
From these technologies, different weapons for various needs could be developed in reverse—such as revolvers, Sten submachine guns, and shotguns, all of which were no longer difficult to manufacture.
If the existence of magic made bloodline a barrier to equality of status, then firearms were the weight that caused the heavily tilted scale to begin to fluctuate again.
Especially revolvers, which had a decent rate of fire and were cheap, and shotguns, which at close range could kill intermediate mages in a single blast or injure advanced mages—their voices spoke loudly.
Various uprisings, large and small, roamed through forests and mountains. The smallest groups numbered only a few people, while the larger ones reached hundreds. Ordinary lord militias were no match for these bandits skilled in ambush tactics.
If things continued like this, they simply wouldn’t be able to hold on. Thus, the nobility began negotiating with the capitalist groups, shifting their contradictions outward and jointly seeking to extract benefits from external regions.
To achieve this goal, two major obstacles lay before them.
First—where should they vent, and where was the market?
At present, due to the Alliance’s transport capacity being diverted elsewhere, their industrial products had begun to sell again. However, they likely wouldn’t be able to hold onto this market for long. To sustain profits, they would have to directly face the Alliance’s merchant guild organizations.
The merchant guilds of the Seris Alliance were the most vicious corporate organizations they had ever seen.
How vicious? So vicious that they would sell goods at a loss!
Their products typically entered the market at prices so low that no one could understand them.
Then, large numbers of related factories and shops would be forced into bankruptcy and closure. After seizing the market, they would restore prices—sometimes even higher than before.
This extremely shameless strategy left the industries of other countries with almost no ability to resist.
Relying on the powerful Alliance behind them, other nations dared not impose punitive tariffs. They could only subsidize certain businesses through supportive policies.
Yet these enterprises, through internal resource transfers, had extremely strong endurance. They could maintain prices close to their competitors for long periods, compensating losses through profits elsewhere.
At the national level, however, it was impossible to continuously subsidize an entire industry. Eventually, some kingdoms would give up—and the moment they did, the market was lost entirely.
So although it was somewhat embarrassing, they had to admit that under normal circumstances, they simply couldn’t hold onto this market gap.
Second—how should the Alliance be dealt with, and how could they be made too busy to care about anything else?
The Six-Nation Alliance launching a war far away from the Alliance’s territory, forcing the Seris Alliance to maintain a long supply line, was a good example.
And the Kabansia Kingdom, which had been nearly erased from the subcontinent, had also come into their view.
First, due to the Alliance’s intentional and unintentional disaster relief, all of Kabansia’s possibilities had been destroyed—it had become a purely consumption-based market.
Second, there were numerous grievances between Kabansia and the Seris Alliance. They could use its hand to stir chaos in the Alliance’s backyard.
As the Seris Alliance expanded its influence outward, it seemed to have forgotten that such a uniquely structured state still existed in the subcontinent. This gave them room to operate.
Through this opportunity, they could dump their weapons and products into the Kabansia Kingdom. At the same time, they could create difficulties for the former trade chain of [Alliance – Suriya Kingdom – Other Nations].
After all, if a country fought two wars simultaneously, its attention to domestic livelihood would inevitably decrease, and production would also decline.
They could then take over the role the Alliance previously played in the trade system, selling products across the entire continent.
If they could achieve this goal, the pressure within their countries would instantly be reduced.
The common people were simple—if you didn’t give them food, they would find a way to feed themselves. But if they could get even a single meal, no one would willingly hide in forests every day, starving and suffering.
The two nations’ thoughts were completely aligned. Under the current circumstances, it was best to band together against the pressure from the Alliance and secure space for their survival.
And the Kabansia Kingdom was the most suitable blade in their hands.
Even in the worst-case scenario, if it failed, they wouldn’t lose much. If they could exchange weapons aid for some of Kabansia’s mineral resources or land profits, they would still gain.
Grain prices in the Kabansia Kingdom were cheap, but that didn’t mean grain elsewhere was equally inexpensive.
Moreover, the subcontinent produced large amounts of sugar made from sugarcane and tobacco leaves. Kabansia had similar climatic conditions and could also cultivate sugarcane and tobacco.
However, neither of them realized that inside the royal portrait hanging in their room, a small device was silently at work.
The principle of the eavesdropping device was mainly based on phenomena such as the reflection, refraction, interference, and diffraction of sound waves. The one hidden within the mural was an air-medium capacitor.
Its structure was very simple, consisting of an air inlet channel, a support ring, a membrane, a silver-plated cylindrical cavity, and an antenna.
The distance between the membrane and the silver-plated cylindrical cavity was extremely small, forming an air dielectric capacitor.
Based on electromagnetic principles, when sound waves vibrated the membrane, it caused changes in the capacitance of the air capacitor, which in turn affected the electromagnetic field within the resonant cavity. The antenna then received and recorded the sound signals.
With a signal device emitting specific sound waves to obtain reflected waves, and after filtering out noise interference, clear audio could be heard.