Empire of Shadows

Any country that chooses war is making a huge gamble.

Win the gamble, and everything is fine. Just like the war that is currently breaking out, apart from the Federation’s continent and the Empire’s side which have not yet been affected, 80% of the countries on the Tanfit continent, as well as some surrounding regions and island countries, are all gradually being affected by the war.

This is the largest war in human history, in terms of the scale of participating countries!

Some federal scholars and experts believe that as the war progresses, it is very likely that several countries on the Empire’s side will also be affected.

Because the ”stakes” are simply too big.

So big that it’s impossible for either side to concede defeat.

It’s like two players sitting on opposite sides of a gambling table. At the beginning, they were just betting five or ten dollars, just like those frictions on the border.

Even if they conceded defeat, it was just a verbal apology, or no apology at all, just a tough stance that this was it.

But as they have invested more and more, now, the past, and even the future, the moment they have bet everything on the gambling table, it is destined that before this gambling game has drained their last cent, they will not stop continuing to expand the scale.

Now more and more countries are being implicated. They have also stood by the gambling table and have begun to put in their own stakes. What about next?Once the Dantra Republic is likely to be defeated, will they ask the Empire for aid?

This is very possible!

It’s nothing more than signing a series of treaties and clauses. Now, a small group of people believe that the Federation has set a good example for the Dantra Republic.

They can completely learn from Slad, promise to give the dominant position to the Empire, and then have the Empire send more troops, give them more material aid, and let this war truly become a ”World War”!

This possibility is very high, precisely because their stakes are too big. No one can afford to lose.

They can even sign all kinds of excessive clauses, just asking to protect their principal.

As for the manpower, resources, and the development potential of the country consumed in the war?

That’s not a problem at all, but an internal conflict that has been consumed.

For the ruling class, the initial purpose of the war’s outbreak was to resolve these conflicts, the surplus population, the dissatisfaction of the lower classes with their access to benefits, and all kinds of problems.

The Federation is also very vigilant about these, vigilant about continuing to expand the scale and intensity of the war. After all, if this war develops further, no one knows if it will become the fuse for the destruction of the world.

We must thank humanity for not having yet invented a weapon that can destroy humanity itself. Otherwise, this would be the ”Final Era” of human history.

The domestic war in Rapa is also the same. Diego has decided to use a civil war to resolve the differences, which means that he has taken the initiative to sit at the gambling table.

It’s just that at this stage, for the others, their participation is not that high, unlike Diego.

Diego can’t afford to lose. Once he loses this civil war, it means that he will die, and the Ravila family will become a thing of the past.

Besides Diego himself, there is no one else who can feel his intense helplessness at this time.

After all, for these ruling groups, Diego might have put all his stakes on the table, but they haven’t.

A young Rapa boy, dragging his tired steps, returned home from outside. It was already evening, and the temperature had gradually cooled down a bit, and people had become a little more energetic.

The two girls squatting at the door, the moment they saw him come back from outside, a pure smile suddenly bloomed on their dirty faces.

”Brother...”

The two of them pounced over, which brought a trace of a smile to the Rapa boy’s face. Perhaps this was the reason for his hard work outside.

His father was a riverbed gold prospector, the kind of person who would, wearing underwear or nothing at all, jump naked into the sewage river to look for some valuable things.

This kind of person also called himself a ”gold prospector,” but in fact, what they were prospecting for was not gold, but just some ordinary, can’t-be-more-ordinary, garbage.

But it was this garbage that had supported their family’s life.

In one of his jobs, he had stepped on a piece of steel on the riverbed, which was about seven or eight kilograms heavy, and was covered in rust.

This piece of rusted scrap iron had sold for a lot of money, which had greatly alleviated the tight family finances.

But what they didn’t know was that his father’s foot, when he had stepped on this piece of scrap iron that had been cut from god knows where, had been pierced.

At that time, he had not paid any attention, had just simply cleaned it with not-so-clean well water, had found a small strip of cloth and had wrapped it, and that was how he had treated the wound.

A few days later, he had started to have a fever, and then convulsions, and then soon, the family had, with some confusion, watched him die on his own bed.

An old man in the slum street said that their father, because he had offended the river god, had been cursed by the river god, and had died under the curse.

This had also made the Rapa boy, who had originally intended to become a riverbed gold prospector like his father, be forbidden by his mother from going into the river.

Their family had already lost their labor force, and could not lose another.

So for a long time, he could only find some odd jobs to do, five dollars today, ten tomorrow.

This money was not even enough to fill their stomachs.

So his two younger sisters were, at this time, just wrapped in some of his old clothes, and did not have their own.

Perhaps it was the embrace and laughter of his family that had washed away some of the dust that had settled on his soul from his tiring work. He picked up his two younger sisters and walked towards the tent they lived in.

His mother was making dinner, a kind of food that he himself didn’t know what to call.

Using some edible grass leaves and roots, the fibers of these things are very difficult to digest. After eating them, you won’t get hungry so easily.

Then she would mix in the tree wheat flour produced by the wheat flour tree, add a little oil, rub it hard, and then continuously heat it.

The starch of the tree wheat flour will gradually form a ball. After it has formed a ball, it is mixed with these other things, and then it is pinched into one round ball after another. This is their dinner.

To be honest, it’s not tasty at all. You have to drink a lot of water after eating it, otherwise, it’s easy to get constipated.

But it can also provide some of the necessities for living, and can also provide a feeling of satiety. This is the food of the poor.

Unlike the rich, they never consider the taste, the color, the aroma. They only consider whether they will be disturbed by hunger.

After eating a few balls, he was a little full. These things can’t be chewed, because as soon as you chew, you can’t eat it. You can only dip it in a little oil, and then swallow it in one gulp, and then drink some water.

It wasn’t that the young man was full, but that he knew that he had eaten enough, because his sisters and his mother had not eaten yet, and were all waiting by the dinner table.

Only after he, this labor force, had eaten his fill, would they eat.

Although it was not tasty, dinner was still a rare, warm moment for the family.

He took out thirty dollars from his pocket and handed it to his mother, which made his mother’s eyes widen. ”Where did you get so much money?”

She, while asking, had flattened the money, had straightened it, and after counting it twice, had finally put it away.

The young man said with a silly smile, ”I found a good job today, helping people to move things at the construction site in the factory district over there.”

”If I don’t eat the food they provide, they will give me thirty dollars.”

”If I eat their food, it’s only twenty.”

”I was thinking that I don’t need ten dollars for my own food, so I came back to eat.”

His mother seemed to have thought of something. ”Is it a federal people’s construction site?”

The young man nodded. ”Yes, it’s a federal people’s construction site.”

In the slums, there are some rumors about the federal people. Some say that the federal people have to eat people to live. Some also say that they have to drink human blood to live.

In short, to demonize and to vilify the federal people has already become a kind of political correctness. It is very difficult for anyone to find out where these rumors had started, but they are indeed widely circulated among the people.

Some people don’t want the common people to get too close to the federal people, but this can only be said to be these people’s fantasy.

With more and more factories starting to be built, and to start production, the contact between the federal people and the Rapa people will only be more and more.

”Since they are giving you so much money, you must work hard!”

His mother had exhorted him, and then she had thought of something. ”By the way, in the afternoon, before you had come back, some federal people had come over and had said some things.”

”It’s about them wanting to handle something for the local people who live in this area...” She paused for a moment, as if she were searching for a certain fragment in her memory.

After a few seconds, she had finally found what she was looking for. ”Yes, an identity card.”

”They said they want to help us to get an identity card, to register our personal information or something, but it’s all voluntary.”

The young man had also heard about this today. He had, at work, heard the formal construction workers say that in the future, when the federal people recruit workers, they will give priority to recruiting from the local people who have an identity card.

Only when the local people in this situation have been fully recruited, will they then go and recruit the local people who do not have an identity card.

And after you have gotten an identity card, your income will be a few dollars to a few dozen dollars more—

This depends on the income level of the person who is getting it.

For example, a worker who only has 500 a month, after he has an identity card, his income may, from 500, rise to 550 or 600.

And for those technical workers who can get two or three thousand, it is only then possible for them to go from two or three thousand, to three or four thousand or a few hundred more.

”Did they say where to get it?” he asked.

His mother frowned and thought for a moment. ”It seems to be by the river.”

The sky was gradually getting dark. Along with the chirping of insects and the slums beginning to become lively, the breath of life began to permeate.

The young man sat at the entrance of his home, on the one hand watching his two younger sisters, and on the other hand listening, or occasionally participating in the neighbors’ idle chat.

This was one of the few pleasures and leisure activities for the poor people of Rapa. Everyone would sit together, or sit at the entrance of their own homes, and then talk about some of the things they had encountered at work during the day.

The most popular are those who can go to the city center to work. They will talk about some of the things that others simply can’t imagine, for example, what the shopping malls are like, and that there are free, clean, direct-drinking fountains on the side of the road in the rich district.

The young man didn’t know what a direct-drinking fountain was. It was only after someone had explained that he had learned that it was clean water that could be directly drunk!

You know, clean water, in Rapa, requires one dollar a bucket, and it’s also limited every day. If you go late, there won’t be any left!

Because the rivers, including the groundwater, have a large amount of garbage and what-he-doesn’t-know in them. Anyway, you can’t just drink it, you will get sick.

If you tell them the water is dirty, they may not listen to you.

But as long as you tell them that they will get sick if they drink it, they will be obedient.

The power of poverty is so great that it can easily change a person’s living habits!

Through these people’s idle chat, a world that he had been longing for, but did not fully understand, had slowly unfolded in his mind.

He really wanted to go to the rich district, but he knew that he couldn’t go at present.

There are many police patrolling the rich district. If you don’t have a set of at least clean and tidy clothes, they will use the wooden sticks in their hands to drive you out from inside, and will also beat you.

Because the poor, without permission, are not allowed to enter the territory of the rich.

Just like the Rapa Grand Hotel. Even if Lance was the one who had invited, those commoners and poor people were not allowed to enter the hotel.

As for the escorts?

That’s another matter. After all, the foreigners like them.

What else is more important than satisfying the physiological and emotional needs of these foreigners?

Every time they talked about these things, the young man was always full of expectation and yearning.

Today they had chatted about some other things, and as they had chatted, they had come to the matter of the identity card.

”This identity card, you can’t just get it!” a neighborly uncle had suddenly expressed his point of view.

The people around were all talking about this, and had immediately been attracted by his words.

This uncle was forty-seven or forty-eight. In a slum, he was already considered to be one of the longer-lived.

Before, the Federation had also reported on some of the poor and backward places in the Yalan region. Some of the federal people were also very worried about whether their health could be guaranteed.

In fact, they had thought too much, because most of the Rapa people would not live to the age where they would be worried about problems.

To be in one’s forties, here, is 100% an old person. The fact that he could live so long, naturally also had something that was convincing. People always subconsciously look up to those who have lived longer, hoping that they can also live longer.

”This is a conspiracy of the foreigners. These blood-sucking foreigners want to, through these identity cards, to make a menu!”

”Just like the farms in the rich district. Those rich people will make a mark on the healthy and strong pigs, cattle, and sheep. When they want to eat, they will choose from them.”

”The purpose of their making identity cards for us is also, when they need it, to kill us!”

He had said it as if it were true. Some of the middle-aged people were clearly half-believing, half-doubting.

The Rapa boy, after hearing this, couldn’t help but laugh. ”Uncle, I have been working on a federal people’s construction site recently. They don’t drink blood, nor do they eat people.”

”They are the same as us, they have to eat. It’s just that their food is much better than ours.”

”There is beef, fish, and also whole-wheat steamed wheat kernels and bread made from wheat flour.”

Speaking of this, the attention of the people around was immediately attracted to the young man. This had made the old uncle a little ashamed and annoyed. ”What do you know!”

He didn’t like his authority being challenged, but the people’s attention at this time was not on this. They had begun to ask the young man what those federal people were really like, and also their usual performance.

At this stage, the low-level society who could come into contact with the federal people were, after all, still a minority. On the one hand, the investors and tourists from the Federation or other countries would not venture into these slums.

Secondly, because the city center and the rich district did not allow the pariahs to enter, they also could not come into contact with each other.

Occasionally, there were some who could work in the city center or the rich district, but they would not venture to get in touch with the federal people. Who knew if this was something that the gentlemen didn’t like?

With the young man’s idle chat, the old uncle had also soon been attracted by the stories he had told.

The happy time is always short. At a little after seven, close to eight, the temperature had already dropped to a suitable temperature for rest. People had also, one after another, returned to their homes to start to prepare for tomorrow’s work.

Of course, there were also some who were working on their beds. After all, this could also be considered one of the few, low-cost entertainment activities.

But it also had a fatal flaw, which was that once you got pregnant, it would become a big trouble. So in the entire slum, in any place, there would be this indescribable smell. They had casually disposed of it on the ground, on the walls, and even on the streets.

In the middle of the night, no one would go and peek at these things.

The young man had also gone to sleep with his family. What he was thinking about in his mind was whether he should go and ask tomorrow if he should get an identity card.

He longed to have a stable job, which could improve his and his family’s situation. At the very least, to let his two younger sisters have their own clothes, and to let them also have a piece of meat, even if it was a piece that a rich person had bitten and left.

With these longings and a yearning for the future, he had slowly fallen into a dream.