Start with the Soul Forge

Chapter 354 354. Update is late, it’s numb... (Third update)
War, war never changes.

Even if a so-called [Peace Treaty] was signed, in Mo Hao's opinion, it was just a [half-time break], not the end of the war.

Human desires and history textbooks were all teaching him one thing.

That is, human beings never learn any lessons, including him.

Perhaps he was tired of sketching, or perhaps it was because he had previously rejected the president of the Danube Academy of Arts, Mo Hao did not plan to continue looking for a place to paint today.

Part of the reason was that he did not plan to continue meeting with the principal, and part of the reason was that he felt he had observed enough.

Enough information has been collected on the surface. If we want to go deeper, we must get rid of the position of a bystander and join the bonfire that is about to be ignited.

A bonfire destined to burn countless lives and peace.

Durmstrang, this is the name of a beer hall, which sounds a bit like the style of the northern countries.

There were many people sitting in the beer hall, mostly unemployed workers and radical political groups that had sprung up like mushrooms after the defeat.

Of course, the average lifespan of most of these groups is less than two months.

But it is undeniable that their dissatisfaction with the status quo and their radical remarks against the parliamentary and aristocratic masters have frightened some people.

[Eminia] It hasn't been long since the king and his entire family were sent to the guillotine, and those confusing corpses are still being pecked by crows.

Upon hearing the news, Mo Hao couldn't help but complain that the people of [Eminia] were bold enough. After chopping up the bodies, they didn't bury or burn them immediately. Instead, they left them there for people to visit, without worrying about the rotting of the bodies causing hygiene problems or even the birth of a plague.

I don’t know whether this is ignorance or fearlessness.

There were quite a few people in the beer hall. According to Mo Hao's observation, most of them were young and middle-aged men. Their common characteristic was that they were not rich.

And, they all lost their economic sources due to the recent war defeat treaty.

Because the bosses cannot afford to support so many workers, and these people have to support their families and face rising food prices.

After sitting down for less than ten minutes, Mo Hao heard at least three different voices complaining about losing their jobs and having no income, and they had already started borrowing money from [Zhi Feiren].

The Zhifei people are a cross-border ethnic group widely distributed in various countries. They have their own unique culture and are relatively wealthy.

Compared to the people of the current [Leinigman Empire], I'm afraid homeless people can be considered wealthy, at least they don't owe money.

Due to the signing of the defeat treaty, every citizen of the [Leinigeman Empire] was burdened with huge debts and lost their original jobs.

The Zhifei people seem to be a race that is very good at making money, and they claim to get excess profits from every business.

It’s just that most of their so-called “business” is just lending money to others, then collecting the principal on an agreed date and charging interest based on the pre-agreed rate.

Well, if you take the interest rate out of the equation, this could be considered a win-win situation.

The borrower gets the funds, and the lender gets back the principal and return after a period of time.

If the interest rate is also taken into account, this loan will have only another name: [usury].

"You're crazy, going to borrow money from Zhifei!"

"Don't you know? The family on the corner, Jiaji, who is very strong and never gives in to others' work, had his house taken away just because he borrowed money from Zhifei."

"I have no choice. I have no choice. Eva is sick and I just lost my job. If I don't lend her the money, I will have to watch Eva die."

"How much did you borrow?" "Ten thousand. You will have to pay back a total of sixteen thousand in one month..."

Mo Hao's strong physique allowed him to hear clearly any sound he wanted to hear in the noisy beer hall. Having learned interest calculation before, Mo Hao silently calculated the interest rate based on the principal and repayment he had just heard.

The answer came out in a short while.

According to the principle of borrowing 60 and repaying , this is a super high-interest loan with a monthly interest rate of %.

Before traveling through time, Mo Hao remembered that the annual interest rate recognized in the country was around 15%.

A complete loan shark.

But what surprised Mo Hao was the conversation that followed.

"Only 16,000? Ruel, can you take me to meet them? You know I lost my job, Lina is in poor health, and the landlord is asking for the rent..."

"Okay, I'll take you there after we finish drinking."

Judging from this conversation, usury with a monthly interest rate of 60% seems to be considered conscientious.

What kind of magical world is this?

If it were before he traveled through time, if someone dared to tell him that there was a loan with a monthly interest rate of 60%, even if the call came from a bank, he would do nothing for the next three days and go to the bank to find trouble with the bastard who made the call.

There is no need to even listen to whether it is compound interest, because this thing is basically aimed at making him a slave for generations.

Giving the bastard who dared to say that a concussion would be the best option.

At this time, some people began to stand up and speak to other people in the beer hall.

I don’t know if he was drunk or stage fright, but his pronunciation was not clear and his speech was not coherent, and it seemed like he had no experience of speaking in public before.

The other people in the beer hall just glanced and then looked away.

Obviously, what the man said was completely unappealing.

Mo Hao paid attention to a few sentences and then stopped paying attention to it because it was just a purposeless complaint.

He blamed the Congress and the nobles for signing the treaty of defeat, blamed his boss for firing him after working so hard, and blamed his colleague who did the same job as him but only took one-third of the salary in exchange for the chance to stay on the day he was fired.

Apart from complaining, he had no intention of expressing anything else.

Even on the most basic question of "what he wants", there was not a single word.

It was as if he thought that others would understand what he wanted even without him saying it, and that that thing was innate and could be obtained by just reaching out.

Mo Hao now understood why the average lifespan of various small political groups was less than two months. A group that couldn't even make people understand what they wanted was nothing more than a group of COSPLAY enthusiasts.

It's even OOC.

(Out Of Character, this term is usually used to describe the deviation of the character's personality and behavior from the original setting in the secondary creation)
Listening to those meaningless words, Mo Hao couldn't help but sneer, "Hey."

His laughter attracted the people sitting at the same table. With the current number of people in the beer hall, there were no more individual seats, so those who wanted to drink had to share a table.

"You seem to disagree with what he said."

(End of this chapter)