Chapter 863: Chapter 465: The Continuation of the Calvin Clan (2)
Ronald’s hand clearly trembled for a moment.
The Earl’s Domain, exclusive trade rights—he knew all too well what that meant.
In that brief instant, wealth, status, the family’s future all exploded in his mind.
He took a deep breath, forced down the surge of emotion, and bowed solemnly: “It is my honor to serve you, my lord.”
Louis merely waved his hand: “You’re not serving me. And there will be Red Tide officials assisting you as well.”
After the meeting ended, the Attendant stepped forward to guide Rachel and her husband out.
Just before leaving the room, Rachel couldn’t help but look back.
Louis had already sat back behind his desk, head lowered as he opened a report.
The gentle smile had vanished from his face, replaced by a stranger’s calm and focus.
……
After Rachel left, that deliberately maintained gentle air dispersed as well.
The old butler Bradley, who had been waiting in the corner, finally took a step forward: “Patriarch.”
Louis did not look up; he only let out a light “Mm.”
Bradley placed a file on the desk, its cover printed with a line of words—”Current Status Register of Members of the Calvin Clan.”
His voice dropped a shade lower, yet remained clear: “The tally is finished. Aside from Miss Rachel, all direct blood relatives have… withered away.
The only remaining survivors are a few collateral branches with rather distant ties. They were usually ignored by the family and mostly hid in country wineries or on the edges of old lands, so they avoided the purge.”
Louis’s gaze lingered for a moment on those red crosses, his expression unchanged: “For the surviving collateral branches, ensure basic food rations, shelter, and medical care—enough so they don’t starve to death.”
“But no titles, no stipends, and no inheritance privileges of any kind. I don’t feed parasites.”
Bradley’s pen paused slightly, then continued to move.
Louis raised his eyes to him: “If they want a good life, they can sit the exams for the Red Tide civil service system, or bee Knights. Same rules as for outsiders.”
Bradley lowered his head in reply: “Yes, my lord. I will not grant any special favors.”
He looked at Louis sitting behind the desk, and overlapped his silhouette with that of another Duke Calvin.
He recalled his years in the Southeast Province, when the Calvin Clan had still been the most illustrious family there.
The banquets blazed with light, the halls packed with relatives and vassals, everyone scrambling to mingle, terrified of being overlooked.
And that young master sitting quietly in the corner, always watching it all in silence.
Back then, no one would have imagined the family would collapse so quickly, that nearly all of them would end up dead.
Yet it was that most inconspicuous child who personally raised the Calvin banner to the highest point in this world.
While Bradley was lost in his memories, Louis rose and walked to the massive world map on the side wall of the study.
The metal map was lit to a cold, hard clarity; the mountains, sea routes, and power borders of each region were precisely etched, like a chessboard.
His fingertip tapped lightly twice on the map, stopping over a region that had just been marked as occupied.
The Avalonia Islands—originally the main territory of the Golden Feather Flower Religious Authority Country—were now entirely shaded in the deep gray that signified “cleared.”
“This land is ruined.” Louis wasn’t exaggerating.
Standing beside him, Bradley understood all too well what that sentence meant.
Though the Church Authority Country had been utterly destroyed, centuries of parasitism had already seeped into every layer of this land.
The soil, the groundwater, even the microorganisms in the air had undergone irreversible alienation.
In preliminary postwar surveys, engineers had already reported: fleshy fungi were continually sprouting from the surface; some plant life showed skeletal traits; even insects were showing tendencies toward deformity.
This wasn’t the kind of place you could just rinse off and move back into.
“Send in the engineer corps,” Louis went on, his eyes never leaving the map. “Flamethrowers, steam shovels, white phosphorus shells—use everything.”
“Plow everything within three meters below the surface.”
Bradley was slightly taken aback, but raised no objection; he only hurriedly noted the orders on the pad he carried.
Louis paused for a moment, then added, “After the cleanup, establish a naval blockade line. Declare it an absolute forbidden zone. No one lives there for at least a hundred years.”
Bradley lowered his head: “Understood, my lord.”
Louis’s finger then moved northward.
Beyond the islands, it came to rest on the vast expanse of the Southeast Province. The colors there were uneven, with most towns marked as “mildly infected zones.”
It hadn’t pletely fallen into a land of monsters, yet it was just as ravaged.
For years, millions of civilians had habitually inhaled Golden Feather Flower pollen, forced or willing, to connect themselves to that divine network.
Even though the network had been severed, its aftereffects remained etched on them: spiritual enervation, dulled reactions, atrophied limbs…
Like a crowd of addicts whose crutch had suddenly been yanked away.
Bradley hesitated slightly, but still spoke: “My lord, the condition of that segment of the population… is very unstable. If we don’t apply some form of fort, I fear there will be large-scale riots, even self-harm and suicide.”
Louis listened, then the corner of his mouth twitched: “fort?”
Bradley was stunned.
Louis’s gaze remained on the map, but his tone hardened: “Their minds are broken, not because they’re underfed. It’s because they think too much and do too little.”
“Then make sure they don’t have time to think.” He raised his hand and tapped several of the hardest-hit areas. “Use Frost Leaf Sedative in coordination, and start with forced detox. Cut off all residual sources of poison.”
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