Chapter 2: The Forest
On the day Emily's family set off, five carriages were parked in the Chamber of Commerce Square.
The first car carried her clothes, the second her jewelry and cosmetics, the third her father Robert's wine and cigars, and the fourth her mother Helen's bathtub and silk sheets—she said there were no proper bathhouses in the forest, and she couldn't go a day without a bath. The fifth car carried Emily, Robert, Helen, and her younger brother Thomas, that little rascal who learned to whip people at sixteen.
I stood at the second-floor window, watching their convoy slowly drive out of the city gate. Emily lifted the curtain and waved upstairs. I was too far away to see her expression, but I guessed she was smiling.
“President,” Vera stood behind me, “there are natives in the primeval forest, forest dwellers who have been gathering herbs for generations. They are few in number but familiar with the terrain.”
“I know,” I said.
In her previous life, Emily enslaved the forest dwellers in just one month. She locked up their medicine storehouse, seized their herb-gathering routes, and imprisoned over sixty forest dwellers in a cave as forced labor. The white-haired old herbalist was thrown into a water dungeon, and those who escaped had their legs broken and were hung at the cave entrance as a public spectacle—not to intimidate, but because Emily thought it "looked good hanging there."
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
"Continue to report on the fortress's progress."
“Deep exploration in the mine has begun, the three underground caverns are being expanded, and the blueprints for the water circulation system have been drawn up. All we need is money.” Vera flipped through her notebook, her brow furrowed. “The fortress is currently 47,000 gold pounds in debt, owed by the previous lord. The miners haven’t been paid for three months, and they might go on strike tomorrow.”
“I’ll take care of the money.” I turned around. “Starting tomorrow, the security team will be reorganized. Those who draw salaries without working, those who oppress miners, and those who collude with the black market will all be eliminated.”
Vera glanced at me and nodded. She didn't ask where the money came from, nor did she ask why I had suddenly become so decisive. This is what I admire most about her—she doesn't ask why she does things, she only asks how.
That night, I went to the black market.
In my previous life, I spent five years in the forest. I didn't learn much else, but I learned how to deal with the black market. I knew which merchants had the food that miners desperately needed, which channels were available to buy building materials at low prices, and how to use future ore production as collateral to obtain current funds.
I paid off my debt of 47,000 jin in three days.
When the news reached Emily, she was taking a bath in a cave in the primeval forest. She snatched her mother Helen's bathtub away, saying, "It's too hot in the forest, I want to use it first."
"Where did my brother get so much money?" she asked her father, Robert.
Robert puffed on his cigar and waved his hand dismissively: "Who cares? That fortress is a mess. Even if we pay off the debt, it'll still be a disaster."
Emily thought about it and agreed that it made sense, so she stopped caring.
She had something more important to do—those forest people were getting in her way.
On the seventh day after entering the forest, Emily ordered the forest dwellers' medicine storehouse to be sealed off.
Those people had made a living by gathering herbs for generations. They had no land, no livestock, and herbs were their only means of survival. Emily stood on the high platform of the cave, holding a seven-leaf Ganoderma lucidum in her hand, and announced to the more than sixty forest dwellers kneeling below: "From today onwards, all the herbs you gather belong to me. Pay your quota every day, and you will receive a bowl of porridge and a pot of water. If you don't pay your quota, you will go hungry."
No one dared to resist.
Because her father, Robert, stood behind her, holding a nine-headed bullskin whip. That whip was left behind by the previous lord; it was stained with blood and had been used to beat people. The end of the whip was embedded with iron filings, and a single lash would tear flesh apart.
A young man in the woods clenched his fist, but an old man beside him pressed it down. The old man shook his head at him, his eyes filled with fear and despair that had been suppressed for too long.
That night, the young man tried to escape. Robert whipped him, breaking his leg bone, and then ordered his men to drag him to the cave entrance and hang him from the rock wall with iron chains.
"Hang it up for three days, so everyone can see what happens if you try to escape."
Three days later, the young man's legs had turned black and necrotic. No one dared to go up and save him. His mother knelt at the entrance of the cave and cried for a day and a night, until she fell silent—not that she stopped crying, but that her voice became hoarse.
Emily stood in her new home deep in the cave, trying on her new dress in front of the mirror, and was in a good mood.
“Take a picture and send it to my brother,” she said to her attendant, “so he can see how beautiful the forest is.”
When the photo was sent to my phone, I was supervising the construction on the third basement level of Forge Fortress. The photo showed Emily smiling in front of a waterfall; the lighting was perfect, the composition exquisite, and the caption read: "Brother, the water here is so clear, do you want to come and play?"
I saved the photo, but there was no reply.
Then I put my phone in my pocket and continued watching the workers pour the sand-proof wall. Three thousand two hundred precast concrete slabs were completed before my eyes.
Sixty days later, the fortress was 80% complete.
In Emily's forest, the number of inhabitants had dwindled from over sixty to less than forty. Some died, some fled, and the remaining ones, weakened by hunger and beatings, became numb herb-gathering machines.
Emily's herbal medicine warehouse was overflowing with rare herbs. She had traded the lives of the forest dwellers for her first fortune—on the black market, a century-old Ganoderma lucidum could fetch fifty gold pounds, and a snow lotus could buy a carriage. She exchanged all of this money for silk, jewelry, and perfume.
She sent a second message to Forge Keep: "I heard your fortress is still leaking? Poor brother."
I stared at the screen, and the corners of my mouth slowly curved into a smile.
Pitiful?
The moment you see sandworms emerge from the ground, you'll know what true pity is.
I put my phone back in my pocket and continued working.
