Chapter 146: Ice Breaking Operation, Prelude

Sitting in the mayor's seat, Zhou Mingrui reached out and took out the files that had been piled up like a mountain and covered with dust.

"Here are the government affairs accumulated over the past time in Tingen City."

Medea stretched out his hand and pointed in front of him, and the next moment invisible wind appeared.

The breeze swept through every corner of the archive room, carrying away the dust, and the environment here became clean.

"Thank you." Zhou Mingrui said, then opened the file in his hand. As expected, it was a case in which a worker died due to illegal oppression in the factory.

There are many cases of this kind, and it can be said that they involve almost all the factory owners in Tingen. Every one of those capitalists has risen to fame by committing crimes.

"Who should we target?" Leonard flipped through the files in his hand, trying to choose a very abstract capitalist.

Unfortunately, there are too many people who meet this condition. Almost every archivist he has met is a master of abstract art, a great artist who shines in this field.

"Mr. Vickrol, the tobacconist."

Listening to Zhou Mingrui's words, Leonard touched his head, turned to the description page of the tobacco merchant Mr. Vickrol, and looked at his corresponding information.

"Tobacco is the key word, Watson."

“What’s wrong with tobacco?”

"Believe me, Watson, there is something seriously wrong with this thing."

The word "tobacco" is something that Zhou Mingrui remembers very clearly.

Merchants who run tobacco businesses have always been making quick money. They are used to making a lot of money by selling tobacco and processing it into something "dangerous" in a day...

Once you step on the evil accelerator, it will be impossible to brake again!

Either fall off the cliff or die suddenly on the way...

"What do we do?" Leonard asked directly.

"The population of Tingen City is limited. He is definitely not just dumping in Tingen City. He must be selling in other cities as well."

"So, you intend to rely on the taxation plan to deal with and rectify the situation."

Zhou Mingrui nodded.

The Loen royal family did not announce a ban on the use of addictive substances made from tobacco. This type of cigarettes and advanced versions of tobacco products are all products protected by the relevant laws of the Loen Kingdom.

And the people here don't realize what smoking these things means.

The stress and problems caused by tobacco punch products, which have more than one effect, such as addictive, hallucinogenic, and paralyzing, are unimaginable.

Zhou Mingrui knew that he had no way of directly announcing a ban on the consumption of addictive hallucinogenic products such as tobacco. The laws of the Loen royal family did not yet contain such a provision, so he could only use the knife of tax exports to gradually rectify the tobacco industry.

"Let's go and investigate the corresponding industry."

After Zhou Mingrui finished organizing, several people rushed in different directions to work on corresponding content.

Medea stretched out his hands and tapped his palms, happily heading to the neighborhood corresponding to the middle class in Tingen City.

"What happened here?" Leonard looked at Iron Cross Street in disbelief.

He didn't know what had happened, and why when he came here again, he saw the same out-of-control and chaos as in the lower streets.

If we say that there was still some order here originally, the shops and passers-by at least still retained some vitality, and when asked about their opinions on Tingen City, passers-by also described it as a thriving city.

Now, no one knows what happened, but everything here seems to have changed, from a neighborhood where there was still hope to a doomsday land engulfed by chaos.

Living people? Just zombies.

Leonard stopped a passerby, pulled him to the deserted street, and loudly asked what had happened.

The passerby hung his head like a dead person, and uttered weak words to tell Leonard the truth.

"The machines came, the steam machines replaced us, we lost our jobs, we lost our houses, our wives, our children were sold.

I have nothing left...

Leonard pinched the man's shoulder, feeling the touch of flesh and bone, and quickly reached out and pressed his shoulder a few times. There was no flesh, like a skeleton covered with skin.

"This is it." Suddenly, Leonard noticed a package in the bag of the passerby.

"Let go!" The passerby used up his last bit of strength. He looked at Leonard ferociously and stared at the package with red eyes.

"What's in here..."

"The source is tobacco." The old man told Leonard the answer.

Leonard let go, returned the package to the passerby, and watched him run away in the street in embarrassment.

He stepped on the puddles on the street that had not yet disappeared, and the passers-by whose feet were already wet didn't care at all. He held the package as if it was his life.

"Old man, can tobacco bring such a disaster?"

Leonard found it hard to understand.

After all, this thing was a normal commodity a few months ago.

"Boy, what impact do you think tobacco will have in this turbulent time?"

Leonard knew the answer after a simple thought.

In such turbulent times, when steam engines replaced workers, causing large-scale layoffs, the number of unemployed people soared, and social contradictions became increasingly fierce, what would the factory owners and capitalists do?
The answer is conflict transfer.

——If it is impossible to transfer outside, then the natural choice is ordinary citizens of Tingen City.

Let the ordinary people of Tingen City suffer a little more for our great benefit!

These people chose to sacrifice these unstable factors for their own interests and eliminate these workers who might bring them danger.

...Tobacco is one of the means.

It is an evil weapon, a butcher knife that kills without shedding blood.

Trying to understand the principle behind this, Leonard seemed to see those well-dressed celebrities stepping on a mountain of corpses, enjoying happiness in the blood.

Leonard clenched his fingers, not caring at all that his nails pierced his palm and dripped bright red blood.

"Old man, is this the evil of human nature?"

"I do not know."

Shaking his head, Leonard adjusted his hat and walked deeper into the cave with his hands in his pockets.

As he went deeper and deeper, Leonard saw that the closer he got to the deep, originally normal slums, the more homeless people and tramps there were lying on the street corners...

In this shocking scene, Leonard seemed to see the sin burning here.

"Lawyer Watson, please come with us."

Leonard turned his head and found himself surrounded by a group of gang members.

"What do you want to do?" Leonard suppressed the idea of ​​using extraordinary power to solve the problem and used his identity as a lawyer to intimidate.

The leader was a burly man who seemed to have just changed his career from a dock porter and had a perfect job.

"Our old man wants to see you."

After hearing this, Leonard thought for two seconds and nodded.

Anyway, let's meet the gang leader here first.

Led by the gang members, Leonard soon met the so-called "gang leader" here.

He was the person Leonard met last time, and also an ordinary person whom Medea had met once.

"Boss, people have been brought here."

(End of this chapter)