Chapter 244 (1/2)

Chapter 244 Identity Registration

Outside of the western city walls, under the guidance of the First Army, the refugees were undergoing an unprecedented identification inspection.

By now, Barov had naturally come to understand that the resource which His Highness regarded as the most important was people. In order to bring all of these people back to Border Town, His Highness had spent a lot of gold royals and had even sent the First Army on an expedition to King’s City. When Barov had seen the final bill from Margaret’s chamber of commerce, he had almost climbed up the wall.

Adding up the caravan’s charter fees, the transportation fees, and the fees for the food supply after half a month, the Prince had spent more than two thousand gold royals, which was equivalent to the price of four steam engines. If they hadn’t received the deposit for the transformation of two ships by last month, Barov was afraid that the financial report statistics this time would have shown a deficit.

After the evacuation of the people, the task of creating this cumbersome and huge statistics had all been placed on his shoulders. Almost all of the City Hall officials and apprentices had been dispatched to set up the wooden sheds and the related lines for the crowd, so that they could start with writing the classification statistics. Seeing the more than a dozen lines of fugitives all slowly going through the inspection, it was as if Barov was seeing a group of moving coins.

Compared to the lines for the ordinary civilians’ registration, the line for the professionals that he himself was personally responsible for was far more deserted. Until now, there had only been fifty to sixty people come in.

“I am… a carpenter,” a middle-aged man said after slowly walking over, “I heard that any craftsman can get their own place to live?”

“That’s right,” Seney Darley then further asked. “What’s your name? Are you able to read?”

The former knight of the Wolf Family had come over from the Ministry of Agriculture. But he had managed not to make any mistake, which left Barov very satisfied that he chose him for this task. Although this had to do with demographic statistics, the City Hall unfortunately only had a small number of people who had learned how to read and write, so without any better option, they had no other choice but to pull all of the literate people from the other departments together here.

“Uh… to answer Sir, my name is Maser.” The other party paused, “I must admit, I have never learned how to read.

“You can’t read or write?”

“Yes,” the middle-aged men nodded.

“Well, as a carpenter then…” Sirius turned his attention to the pile of questions on the table, looking for the one marked with carpenter, “Ah, found it. Let me ask you a few questions.

The preliminary trial method was an idea His Highness came up with, he had gathered craftsman from all kinds of industries, inquired them about specialized knowledge together with some problems and their corresponding method to deal with them. He then recorded all of their answers and formulated a set of questions. As a result, as long as they compared the given answers with the answers on the form during the audit, they would immediately know if the other party was lying or not. It was the first time that he had ever seen such a method used to detect lies. Barov couldn’t help but want to applaud the devil’s mind, if the other side wasn’t engaged in the industry, most civilians would never be able to understand these concepts. In case someone wanted to feign his occupation, as long as they asked two to three questions, the liar would be choked speechless.

“What kind of tool is used to flatten a wooden surface?”

“It’s… a carpenter’s plane, Sir.”

“What are the commonly used saws?”

“Frame saws and two-man saws, occasionally hand saws when cutting small items.”

Several questions later, Maser could almost answer all of them, and with every further right answer, his voice became more smooth and easy.

“Ah, it seems you are indeed a carpenter,” but the moment Sirius wanted to write down his identity into the register, Barov interrupted him.

“Sir?”