Chapter 446 — Broadcast
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
For the people of the Horsman region, what they had lived through in recent days was far more complicated than everything their ancestors had experienced over several generations combined.
The Horsman family that had ruled this land collapsed overnight; the masters of the castle were replaced by "administrative officials" from Cecil; the concise yet rigorous decrees of the Administrative Hall supplanted the old lords' laws; population resettlement and land distribution followed close behind; the disciplined Cecil army replaced those slack and greedy private retainers of the nobility and enforced the new lord's orders to the letter; and along with all this came one engineering corps after another, one construction site after another...
The changes came so swiftly that their effects were naturally mixed, for better and for worse.
Many felt uneasy, at a loss before all these brand-new things; some could not fathom what those never-before-heard "Cecil laws" and "Cecil order" were even for. The Horsman people, long accustomed to a loose and chaotic way of life, often gathered together to discuss the "incomprehensible" parts of the new laws — such as the ban on relieving oneself in the streets, and the centralized disposal of refuse — while others had noticed the good side of the Cecilans' arrival.
The officials of the Administrative Hall were plainly more reasonable than lords and knights; the laws they issued were enforced strictly, not according to the whim of whatever magistrate happened to hold office. The Cecil soldiers were more disciplined — since occupying the castle and the watchposts they had not taken so much as a scrap from the nearby common folk, and had even helped repair houses. The new lord's promise of land distribution was no empty slogan either; at least the first batch of settlers who had moved to the outskirts of the city had each received their own plot. Though many worried the lord might take the land back at any moment, for the time being at least, they had land in their hands...
For most people, it did not matter who their lord was, nor whose banner flew above the castle; so long as the people's food and clothing were assured, a ruler in this age could reap unimaginable support — and the new Administrative Hall at least guaranteed that much. So even though the new decrees were not easily put into practice, the Horsman Administrative Hall's remaking and construction of this land was still proceeding on schedule.
At the old Horsman castle — now the seat of the Administrative Hall — a group of arcanotechnicians and soldiers were busily at work in the square before the fortress.
These "engineering corps" from the Cecil region had become frequent visitors to the territory of late. As the situation across the Horsman region stabilized, more and more Cecil construction teams entered the area, bringing with them incredible arcanotechnology and using all manner of wondrous machines to build houses and facilities.
The Horsman people called those arcanotechnicians in cloth work uniforms "Cecil sorcerers," because they were always seen using wondrous spells to put up buildings — yet these arcanotechnicians all insisted they were ordinary folk, and so the locals had given them that name.
Whenever the "Cecil sorcerers" worked, there was always a crowd watching. The Horsman people had gradually grown used to the wondrous things the Cecilans brought to this land, and under the Administrative Hall's propaganda had little by little come into contact with this incredible arcanotechnology. But after all, too little time had passed; the so-called "Arcane Age" was still a novel and curious phrase to these locals. The "noble sorcery" that had once stood high above them, belonging only to the aristocracy, was now so close at hand — and the vast majority of common folk could not resist such curiosity.