Chapter 269: Eternal High-Quality Leeks

A year and a half passed in a flash.

October 305AC.

In this year or so, the North, the Iron Islands, the Riverlands, and the Crownlands have completely completed the reform, and a large number of family-based enterprises have been established.

What surprised Jack was that this group of nobles were not all fools.

Many nobles joined forces with the families with whom they had good relationships and quickly occupied the market of some industries.

Jack only symbolically promulgated the anti-monopoly law. After all, Jack did not want Westeros to develop too fast.

And these families who transformed from nobles to businessmen also changed from the initial resistance to the current real fragrance.

Anyway, everyone has no military power now, so there is no risk of war. Instead, studying the laws issued by the empire has become the top priority.

And doing business makes money really fast, especially Jack recruits civilians to build infrastructure, and the money they earn naturally has to be spent on food, clothing, housing and transportation.

The only thing that makes them unhappy is that they are equal to untouchables in front of the law, and have no privileges at all.

Fortunately, many things can be solved with money.

Compared with the four rapidly developing provinces, the five places of Vale, Westerland, Reach, Stormland, and Dorne are still the same.

In the past year or so, the long night has covered the entire Westeros from the North.

The arrival of the long night is three to five months earlier than expected.

The coal resources in the North are very rich. In the past few years, the North has produced a large amount of honeycomb coal.

In addition, in the past year and a half, Jack replanned and utilized the land, combined with the use of fertilizers, and stockpiled a lot of food.

However, compared with Jack's step-by-step approach, the old nobles who were harvested by Jack were not so comfortable.

Due to the backward planting technology and Jack's non-sale of fertilizers, they did not recover much in the past year and a half.

Now even the southernmost Dorne has entered the long night, indicating that the real long night has arrived.

The old nobles who did not have much reserve materials found their lords one after another.

I hope that their lords can talk to Jack about the promised interest-free material loans.

Now, several major families gathered in the city of Slor again.

Olenna and Doran were the most confident when they came to Jack this time.

The reason was naturally Margaery and Arianne, who married Jack.

Doran was even more confident than Olenna.

Because Arianne gave birth to a son, and Margaery gave birth to twin daughters.

Of course, Jack himself did not have the idea of ​​favoring boys over girls, and Margaery's eldest daughter was still canonized as the honorary prince of the River Bay.

But this was only limited to Jack.

Others still favored boys over girls, and this was the mainstream.

This kind of thinking could not be changed in a short time.

With current technology, boys are still more productive than girls.

They thought it would be a very smooth trip to the North, but Jack once again refreshed their concept of cunning.

Jack agreed to lend them supplies, but the amount of supplies was too large, and Jack said he could only lend them little by little.

And two conditions were attached, the first condition was to allow imperial companies to build factories in their fiefdoms.

The second condition is to allow civilians to move freely.

The first condition is fine, but the second condition is unacceptable to them.

They are not stupid. In Westeros, farmers are actually the private property of the lord.

Although they are free people in law, in fact, they even need the permission of the lord to leave the village.

If free people can move freely, who will farm for them?

You must know that most of the nobles rely on their farmers to farm and pay taxes.

However, Jack did not give them any room for negotiation, but directly threw the words to them.

"Either agree to my conditions, or wait for death slowly in the long night, or you can try to unite against me!"

Looking at Jack's "showdown, I won't pretend anymore" look, Olenna and others gnashed their teeth in hatred.

However, they did not have the courage to go to war with Jack, nor did they want to wait for death in the long night, and finally accepted Jack's conditions reluctantly.

The reactions of Olenna and others were all within Jack's expectations.

Although Jack has the strength to forcibly reform the entire Westeros, it will consume a lot of materials and population, which is not worth it.

So Jack chose to cut the meat with a blunt knife. Jack had too many good cards in his hand, which made the old nobles not have the courage to go all in and unite to fight him.

These old nobles have fallen into the vortex of "cutting five cities today and ten cities tomorrow".

When Jack has almost harvested the wealth in their hands, they have lost the ability to resist.

At that time, they may have to rely on Jack's loan to transform the family business.

Once Jack takes the shares of their family business, they will be excellent leeks for eternity.