Chapter 174 The Counterfeit Human Ring?
The Human Ring has been massively popularized in the empire, and buyers have never been restricted. Naturally, it has also been propagated by spies, black-market traders and others, and has flowed into surrounding countries.
Even though the Night Watch has intelligence on these smuggling activities, the empire doesn't restrict them, and has even given them the green light in secret, promoting their spread to more countries.
The empire alone cannot sustain a sufficiently prosperous fearless space, and the internet should be global and open, with all the world's intelligent beings eligible to use it.
Moreover, as the actual controller of the Fearless Space, the patent owner of the Huan Ring, and the arbiter of all its standards, the empire is not afraid of other countries joining the Fearless Space.
Unfortunately, due to domestic demand, already exhausted stock, and the limited speed of capacity expansion after revenue returns, the total number of Huan Rings brought into surrounding countries is limited.
As a result, the price of the Huan Ring has risen up to hundreds of gold coins per piece, which is unaffordable for ordinary people.
At this stage, only nobles and magicians inside the empire can afford to buy the Huan Ring. However, rulers and clergymen have also shown critical interest in logging into the Fearless Space for analysis.
The Secret Society can distinguish logins from other countries, but Roger didn't prohibit them. Unlike the Magicians' Camp.
The Magicians' Camp restricts logins from other countries because they share true insights and countless pieces of valuable information. If foreign spies copy the information, it will not only result in significant losses but also reveal many of their strategies.
However, the space of fearlessness is different; it serves as a means of entertainment. Even though there are forums, the most frequent discussions are about farming and how to yield more crops.
Would the nobles and lords of other nations care about this kind of information?
Instead, there is a large amount of addictive information that provides relaxation and leisure. This kind of widely popular entertainment is not afraid of being plagiarized and is, in fact, the simplest form of cultural output.
The cultural output is not the Confucius Institutes, rather it is the popcorn products that can resonate with the largest population.
Do works like Dragon Ball, The Avengers, and Harry Potter require profound meaning in order to truly be popular around the world?
The most important thing is to tell an interesting story rather than to preach from the heights of a pulpit and proclaim what has been accomplished.
The definition of the Fearless Space is like this; its creation will become the platform for the Empire's cultural output. The Empire has long since organized the finest cultural workers and, under the epoch-making leadership of Roger, is preparing to sell its platform once it has enough users.
This is just the eve before the storm arrives.
However, the powerful neighbors surrounding the Empire are completely unaware of this novel cultural warfare tactic.
The powerful ones who control this world, such as the Moon Shadow Priests of the Elven Empire, the Grand Forge-Master of the Dwarf Tribe, the Lady-Mothers of the Dark Territory, and the Mad Necromancers of the Bone Burial Ground, have all obtained the soul-chasing bracelets through their respective channels.
Coincidentally, they logged into the Fearless Space, eager to find out what the Green Vines Empire was up to.
In the past few years, the relentless conquests of the Queen of Eternal night were their nightmare, fearing that one day the madwoman would bring the war to their doorstep.
However, now that the Queen of Eternal night has ceased all wars and announced a period of recuperation, they have not relaxed but rather become more anxious about what kind of trap she is setting up.
As of now, it seems that the Empire has not become more terrifying but rather, as they had hoped, has declined.
When all the major religious powers unite, crushing the Green Vines Empire would be a piece of cake.
However, in one-on-one combat situations, no country dares to claim that they can absolutely withstand the iron hooves of the Green Vines Empire, unless their own deities personally intervene.
In fact, due to the Seven Gods' strategies and machinations over the past years, they have fostered hatred among different races to harvest more power from believers. So how can these religious nations genuinely unite?
For example, the fallen elves who were expelled to the dark regions by the Elven Empire, have an irreconcilable blood feud with their own people. They will never unite unless they are truly facing a life-and-death crisis.
Even if the churches cooperate, the believers cannot be easily swayed unless extensive brainwashing is achieved.
In this situation, the Eternal Night world is now in a typical "one over many" pattern, with Green Vines Empire being the only extreme in the world, every move they make will be closely watched by countless eyes.
They were wary of Green Vines Empire becoming an uncontrollable enemy and hoped to nip it in the bud before a real threat emerged.
Whereas Green Vines Empire aimed to seize the opportunity and accomplish development by sweeping all those countries before they found out the Empire's true potential.
Under this scenario, there had been a covert intelligence war going on incessantly.
The neighboring countries wanted to unearth the real situation of the Empire, while the Empire tried hard to feed them with misleading information.
After Night Watch gained full control over the capital city of Odur and other major cities of the Empire, the espionage efforts by its neighboring countries were easily monitored and controlled.
So, from this stage onwards, the intelligence that these spies saw was what the Empire wanted them to see.
Superficially, of course, all the information presented was accurate.
But, though classified as real, it was actually taken out of context, changed in presentation order, with the key points obscured. Thus, the conclusion reached based on that information could be completely opposite to reality.
This is a maneuver that can be easily achieved with an asymmetric information advantage.
For example, an incident occurred where the brief news reported a dispute between the defense army and civilians in the city of Audu. The defense army injured the civilians and was subsequently suspended from duty.
Upon reading this message, it is easy to conclude that the city defense army has a low status, weak combat effectiveness, and can be easily bullied even by civilians.
However, this message is incomplete. The full situation is that the city defense army is enforcing the law improperly, forcibly taking away civilians, and was punished by the higher-ups after the incident was exposed.
It is true that the incident of seizing weapons did occur, and all the information in that notification is true and verifiable.
However, the real mistake made by the city defense army here is "enforcing the law improperly", and they were punished for this. The intelligence analysts of neighboring countries don't know this and only think that the military strength of the empire is declining, and the country's prestige is being trampled upon.
In order to win the final victory in this intelligence war, the Night Watch specially arranged a female spy named Jinxiu, who led a team of professionals to establish a department called the "Tianyuan Empire" that is fully responsible for intelligence processing.
They pass on this "real news" with countless layers of filters to foreign spies active within the empire to show how chaotic the situation is in the Empire and how bad the current situation is.
These intelligence reports look very real, but upon analysis, there is always a certain smell of suspicion. And these spies don't have access to all the information under the control of the Night Watch, their every move is under surveillance, making it extremely difficult for them to verify anything. They can only relay back these processed information.
As the saying goes, rumors spread fast while debunking them can be tough, even those spies who are talented beyond measure cannot solve the problems that already exist in this web of suspicion within the enemy's borders.
It has to be said that the "Tianyuan Empire" plan has been very successful so far, as for the neighboring countries, the chaos within the empire caused by antagonizing the entire noble class, leading to a lack of control, has plunged the entire country into chaos and decline, which is a situation they are happy to see.
Even with the strong power and past performance of the Eternal Night Queen, this situation should not have happened. But after ruling out all impossibilities, the only thing that remains is the possibility--
This is the information we analyzed from intelligence. How could it be false?
Clearly, the Eternal Night Queen's desire for personal glory resulted in her failure to control the country.
Hurray!
Therefore, according to the surrounding nations' intelligence. While the Green Vines Empire remains a significant threat. The level of danger is decreasing, and various alertness and apprehension levels are rapidly declining.
Judging by the performance of the city defense army, the Green Vines Empire still has a foundation but is now a toothless tiger. The Eternal Night Queen valued the common people too much and elevated them to an undeserved height, so this grand empire is bound to be destroyed sooner or later!
In this world where might makes right, there is no such thing as all glory belonging to the working people. One legendary strongman can defeat ten thousand ordinary people.
Therefore, in the typical ruler's mind, it is foolish to offend the noble class while maintaining the interests of the common people.
Thus, under the known circumstances of the empire's declining national power and internal chaos, using powerful magical strength, an Undaunted Space was created that included various entertainment facilities and sectors. Its purpose is evident:
This is a super cheap but nonetheless effective entertainment method.
The Undaunted Space has a time flow rate of ten to one. An hour of entertainment at night gives one an equal amount of joy time as a day of work.
On the surface, you gave the serf a day off, but in reality, he thought he had rested for ten days. The extra nine days are just free labor for the lord, aren't they?
In the fearless space, one can indulge in feasting and violence, vent emotions and enjoy the warmth of the lovely system ladies...
The workers have done what they wanted to do and are very happy and satisfied. They now have more energy to invest in production work, without wasting any real material resources.
How wonderful this sight must be!
The rulers and intelligence agencies of neighboring countries were not fools. They quickly conducted a detailed analysis to find the real purpose of the fearless space based on past intelligence and reached a conclusion:
The promotion of the Netherworld Soul Bracelet is aimed to undermining the increasingly strong will to resist of the imperial people, diverting their attention from their miserable lives, corrupting them further, and ultimately making them serve the empire.
The services in the fearless space are now all free. Once these commoners get used to this kind of enjoyment and cannot live without this virtual world, they will then be forced to pay for it. Isn't that same as directly harvesting the fruits of their labor?
Let them know that free things are the most expensive ones!
The various stimulations constructed in the virtual space are no different from the real world, but the peasants under normal circumstances cannot afford to enjoy them in their lifetimes.
Among the materials delivered to these countries by the Night Watch, there is also the secretly developed "nutritious fast food".
The provided energy is abundant and guarantees good health, but the taste is quite unpleasant to save on production costs.
With the fearless space dining option and the virtual delicacies, even the commoners can swallow nutritious fast food despite its unpalatability.
Thus the empire's grain consumption will significantly decrease, and the commoners will thrive and grow like livestock...
"We should also have such a good thing!"
Almost all of the rulers have issued the same orders to their magic advisors.
Although they mocked the Green Vines Empire for making a mess of their own country, is their domestic situation really better than the picture that was painted by the "Pastoral Empire"?
Not at all. Their internal pressure is similar, and if the virtual beauty of the fearless space can replace bloody suppression, that is absolutely an ideal method!
It is not the ideal thing if people become spiritually addicted to the virtual world, but still work hard in the real world to create a better life for the nobles.
Thus began the activity of cracking the fearless space and imitating the soul bracelet.
However, the end result was not optimistic.
The principle of the nihun bracelet is not complicated. Many countries have successfully cracked it and even replicated it.
However, they don't have the foundation for magical industrialization. Facing such a magical item, it is impossible to mass-produce it on an assembly line. Instead, it requires the collaboration of both wizards and alchemists to handcraft it entirely.
Due to well-known reasons, the labor remuneration for wizards is very high and their quantity is also limited. Therefore, the nihun bracelet has become a normal magical equipment that is "costing hundreds of gold coins and having a limited output, which cannot be popularized among all people."
"So how did the Eternal Night Empire produce it?" a certain Duke asked.
"The only explanation is that the Secret Society has special means. If you give me 80 million gold coins, I can solve it in 10 years." His magic consultant said confidently.
Then, this magic consultant was dismissed. But the Duke could not find a new one...
The cracking of the Fearless Space went smoothly, but not completely.
The more powerful wizards could easily see through this thing. It was the heart demon's domain of the Eris Magic Worm, which they transformed.
Making a Fearless Space that covers hundreds of millions of people was beyond their capabilities. But creating an imitation product that can accommodate tens of thousands of people was very simple.
It’s like an official server and a private server. As long as there is a game server-side, more experienced players can build a server by looking at the documentation.
However, to create a server capable of accommodating millions of players online, both technical expertise and scale are indispensable issues.
Now, that these wizards have seen the details of the fearless space it can be crudely imitated, but they have encountered a critical problem that has stumped them.
They could not find the Eris Maggots in the star realm.
Afu, the little boy, sang tirelessly and caught all the nearby Eris Maggots. It is unknown if there are any left in the deeper parts of the star realm, but within the scope of the empire's exploration, there are almost none that escaped the notice.
These neighboring countries want to counterfeit and study the fearless space - they know the principle behind it, but they don't have the raw materials, which has caused a bottleneck.
It's just like the situation where a chip is not allowed to be exported from the lighthouse - no matter how good the other parts are, if the core technology is held up, it's useless.
However, at the moment, the Green Vines Empire is the one holding the throat of other countries in the Eternal night world.
At the start of the project, Roger already predicted the current situation.
The neighboring countries are eager for a Spirit-Matching Wristband and their own fearless space, but they cannot obtain them at all.
At this moment, the young queen of the orc tribe announced a shocking message to friendly nations:
Through some special channels, we obtained crucial technology from the Green Vines Empire, successfully replicated the Soul Mimicking Bracelet and the Fearless Space, and will soon make them available for purchase by all nations.
