Chapter 120: An Inauspicious Beginning

  Victor and his party arrived at their destination, the town of Heimann, just as evening was falling.

  There were only a few wisps of smoke in the small town, and a large group of crows circled overhead. The air was filled with the stench of rotting organic matter, making people want to vomit at the smell. Under the reflection of the sunset, the entire town of Heimun looked like a ghost town.

  Looking at the small town that only had a few households left, everyone furrowed their brows, except for the Xilang family and the mage whose face was always hidden under his hood, no one's mood was good.

  "Anyway, let's get settled first. The sanitary conditions here aren't great, and this is a town that the Plague God's corpse passed through, so try to understand." Victor said somewhat uncomfortably.

  Lin Yatou said indifferently: "This is a common sight in the Dailuo Valley, it's nothing to be surprised about." After finishing speaking, he led the way and walked in first.

  The town's city wall was extremely dilapidated and overgrown with all sorts of moss and fungi, looking very disgusting.

  Even the bluestone roads in the small town are overgrown with various plants, and if it weren't for the smoke rising from a few households, one might really think this was a dead city.

  Everyone was secretly shocked at this dilapidated sight.

  After entering the small town, there wasn't a single guard to stop them. Even frail children would hide behind trees and peek at them timidly.

  As they walked on the smooth bluestone road, Victor said in a low voice: "We only eat our own food, all water must be boiled before drinking, and be careful of the residents here." Irene grumbled to express her dissatisfaction with this smelly place, while others silently unloaded their luggage from the carriage.

  The town has been ruined to a certain extent, and all kinds of businesses have moved into the only hotel in this small town.

  The inn had only a bald-headed boss, not even a servant. The boss served Victor and his party personally. When talking about this small town, the boss also sighed, since the corpse of the corrupt god passed through here, the residents of the town got many strange diseases and moved out one after another. Now those who stayed were people who found it hard to leave their hometown. As time went by, I'm afraid young people wouldn't want to stay either, and didn't know how long they could hold on like this.

  After listening to the boss's complaints, everyone remained silent, and their hearts became even heavier.

  The next day, after everyone had washed and dressed, they visited the mayor of the town.

  Town Governor Tolovsky was a short, fat man who was always sweating, but this also made his skin white and rosy, like a hard-boiled egg.

  The five senses on his face are almost squeezed together, making him look like a kind of indescribable comedy.

  "Great God above! You've finally arrived!" The mayor greeted them with a tearful and passionate welcome, then before they even entered the town hall, Torovsky handed over the mayor's seal and sword to Victor, saying with tears in his eyes: "Everything in this small town is now in your hands! I completely trust you! Farewell!"

  He finished speaking and mounted a thin horse, quickly leaving the small town. It was clear that he had been waiting for a long time, and at this moment, he didn't even want to stay for one minute, so he left quickly.

  Everyone looked at this scene with a gloomy face, and after a moment, Victor burst out laughing.

  "This way, this town is already ours! No one can disrupt our plans anymore! We have become the masters of this small town!" Victor exclaimed happily.

  "First, we need to gather all the townspeople here, it's time to start our plan." Victor arranged for everyone except Sirang's mother to go door-to-door inviting residents to gather in the town square for a meeting.

  At noon, all the townspeople finally gathered together. Victor counted them and found that there were only over 200 people, all of whom were old, weak, sick or disabled. Even the few children looked extremely thin and malnourished. His brow furrowed again.

  "What kind of life is this...?" Si Lang thought to himself.

  "Ladies and gentlemen. I am the new Guardian Captain and Mayor of Heimstadt, my name is Victor von Neumann." Victor stood on a small step and began to speak loudly to the residents.

  Xī Lǎng stood offstage, quietly observing the townspeople.

  The deformed proportions are a bit too high, many people have tumors growing on their bodies, and some even have skin-covered tumors. The twisted blood vessels throb outside. Some people's skin directly grows green mold, and others have heavy tree bark growing on their limbs, looking very frightening. Some people's eyeballs bulge out, with green fungal threads wriggling in the gap between the eye socket and the eyeball.

  This should also be a trace left by the god of decay passing through here.

  Victor was still using all sorts of grandiose words to deceive the residents in front of him, but there was only a desperate glow in the eyes of these residents. Not one bit were they stirred up.

  Victor's dry speech on the small table did not stir up the emotions of the residents, but only made them acknowledge Victor as their new mayor. However, it seems that no matter who comes to be the mayor, it doesn't make a difference.

  Victor ordered that all food be thoroughly steamed before eating, and all water must be boiled before use. He also introduced a stream of running water in the middle of the town, draining all the domestic waste from the town through a small creek, slightly suppressing the foul smell in the town.

  Victor then used his limited funds to purchase some herbal materials from the residents, requisitioned the town hall, and worked with Father Ivan and thief Ileana to produce a treatment potion.

  Ling Ya, Matake and Xiran then recruited ten residents who were still relatively healthy as members of the guard team to be in charge of purchasing these materials and supervising the sanitation work in the town.

  In just ten short days, they had produced nearly a hundred potions and it was also the time when they were supposed to meet up with those adventurers.

  A small office was swept very clean. On the table in the middle, a simple shelf was set up, and several bottles of green medicine were hung on it.

  Soon, merchant teams came from afar, but the number was not many, only two or three representatives of merchant teams, and the largest branch of merchant teams had chain stores in only three or four cities.

  It seems that these adventurers aren't very capable after all.

  It's just that a lot of adventurers have come, nearly two hundred people, almost as many as the native residents of the town.

  Victor's face was gloomy, almost dripping with water.

  The dinner was simple and quickly got to the point, auctioning off the exclusive rights to buy out a year's worth of therapeutic medicine.