Chapter 493 – Golden Island Finally Belongs To Someone

The scale of the Aksu Empire fleet was well known to all the people because all of them were looking into this event. What the Aksu Empire sent this time weren’t only ship crews and some combatants, they also sent in artisans to help make the naval base.

The people on the more than 500 battleships, along with some artisans and coolies, all add up to hundreds of thousands of people, how many people was that? Moreover, those hundreds of thousands were turned into undead by Zhao Hai. If he wasn’t a devil, then what was he?

Although there were other people who killed more than a hundred thousand people before, most of them were still relatively lenient. On the other hand, Zhao Hai didn’t even bat an eye when killing those more than a hundred thousand people and then turning them into undead.

This announcement by Zhao Hai made every single person in the continent shocked, they were even more shocked by Zhao Hai’s strength. What kind of person can make more than a hundred thousand undead? How strong was Zhao Hai really? All of these questions placed Zhao Hai behind a mysterious veil.

The major influences in the continent wanted to lift this veil not only because of curiosity, but also for their interests. Zhao Hai’s strength and methods were really scary.

When people went to investigate Zhao Hai, they suddenly discovered that he quite had a terrible youth. For the first eighteen years of his life, he was a standard playboy; overbearing, prideful, and didn’t learn any talent nor skill. He was a low class playboy.

When he drank the Water of Nothingness and banished to the Black Wastelands, he suddenly made his transformation. Several months later, a person named Zhao Hai appeared on the continent.

As soon as he came out, he immediately took care of an group of undead mercenaries before he established his own business. Then, he became an enemy of both the Radiant Church as well as the Markey Family. After killing their people, Zhao Hai then ran away to the Prairie.

After coming out of the prairie, he turned into another appearance as he arrived at Rosen Empire. There, he managed to bring down Grand Duke Lionheart, having Lionheart’s entire clan slaughtered. Then, he was acted upon by the Calci Family, where in the end, the family admitted defeat. Zhao Hai also rescued the Purcell Duchy from their demise, obtaining about 100 thousand undead in the process. He also revealed that he had at least 10 thousand undead Beastman cavalry. When he extinguished the Robert Family, people found out about his method, he killed every single person of the Robert Family, not even a living witness remained. Moreover, he also turned all of the Robert Family into undead. Then, their investigations arrived to the Aksu Empire’s fleet.

Now, from the people’s calculation, Zhao Hai should already have about 1 million undead in his hand! About 1 million Advanced level undead? What did this represent? Not to say any ordinary noble clan, even millenium-old clans and the giant Rosen Empire might not even dare to offend him easily.

One could say that people cannot connect the previous Zhao Hai to his present form. In the past, the Buda Clan doesn’t even have a 9th rank expert, and was also dumped into the Black Wasteland. However, this was not the case this time, people have heard that Zhao Hai has 9th rank experts among his people. And adding on his status as the son-in-law of the Calci Family as well as the Eternal Ally of the Crook Family, those who would dare offend him would probably might as well have their heads bashed in by a closing gate.

The moment Zhao Hai stepped foot on Golden Island, the whole continent turned silent, even the Aksu Empire didn’t make a sound.

Then, Zhao Hai immediately stated that Golden Island would be turned into the continent’s first free harbor. Anyone can come here for business, regardless of status and background. As long as they pay taxes and don’t stir up any trouble, they can do business on the island. At the same time, Zhao Hai also stated that on a 1000 li radius around the island, his policy of non-violence must also be followed. Those who dared violate his rules would be killed immediately!

If it was the past Zhao Hai who issued this killing order, people wouldn’t have believed it. But now, Zhao Hai’s voice wasn’t something that the major influences wouldn’t dare to not listen to.

Strength decides everything, and Zhao Hai did have the strength. Therefore, this killing order was immediately followed. This was because people were very aware of the current strength of the Buda Clan.

The more than 500 undead-filled battleships of the Buda Clan can certainly enforce the rule on a 1000 li radius.

After Zhao Hai released his statement, the Aksu Empire released another announcement that was very thought provoking: Count Zhao Hai Buda of the Aksu Empire has been awarded the title of Third-Class Marquis. The Buda Clan is also awarded the fief of Golden Island as their perpetual domain.

This statement was really interesting. The relationship between Zhao Hai and the Aksu Empire was very well known. It can be said that this statement was the Aksu Empire’s way of admitting defeat.

This made the people on the continent very puzzled. They couldn’t understand why the Aksu Empire suddenly admitted defeat. They should at least send 9th rank experts to deal with Zhao Hai.

Then, a piece of information immediately circulated. The Aksu Empire did indeed send out 9th rank experts to deal with Zhao Hai. But the five 9th ranks that they sent out to Golden Island wasn’t able to return. This made the Aksu Empire accept their defeat.

Although not confirmed, the people of the continent believed that this information was real. This was because they knew that if the Aksu Empire didn’t send 9th ranks to the island, they wouldn’t admit their defeat this easily.

No matter what reason, the Aksu Empire’s statement settled the matter of Golden Island’s ownership once and for all. From now on, the Buda Clan would own the entirety of the island.

When this matter was settled, the people turned their attention to what Zhao Hai said before, turning the island into a free harbor.

‘Free Harbor’, this was the first time that such a word appeared on the Continent. But even with this, the nobles immediately knew what this free harbor would do.

This free harbor would give the pirates a place to publicly sell their loot. This was very attractive, however, nobody still went to Golden Island because they were scared. After all, this was a place where hundreds of thousands of people have died, it was not a mystery that they would be afraid.

With the people’s response, Zhao Hai didn’t worry. At this moment, he was inspecting Golden Island.

Although Zhao Hai had already seen the island on the monitor, being here today felt very different. Zhao Hai now knew why pirates occupied the place, it was because the destruction brought by gold mining was extremely serious.

The entire island looked like a worm eaten apple, full of holes. The way the people mined this place was much different from how Dwarves mined Iron Mountain.

Dwarf mining didn’t leave behind a lot of tunnels, if there wasn’t a lake in the middle, Zhao Hai would have been certain that the Dwarves made a city inside Iron Mountain. On the other hand, Golden Island was very different. There were a lot of tunnels here, so many that Zhao Hai wasn’t able to count all of them. So he let Cai’er do the counting and in the end, the large and small tunnels numbered up to more than 20 thousand.

These twenty thousand tunnels made the originally small Golden Island look like face full of sores, horrifying to look at. Also, even if the vegetation slowly came back to the island after a thousand years, with the prior destruction of the island, there were no tall trees that grew here, only weeds were present.

There were two mountains in Golden Island, making a T-shaped structure in the island. But these two mountains were riddled with tunnels as well, they had suffered very serious destruction.

But fortunately, the original miners on the island still had a bit of brain left. Although the tunnels weren’t connected, there were roads made on the mountainside since transporting ores was difficult. Although many years has passed since then, the roads can still be used.

Zhao Hai looked at the tunnels in the island and can see traces of people living on some of them. What Zhao Hai was puzzled about was the fact that there were no Magic Beasts that can be seen on the island.

Although it was strange, Zhao Hai didn’t think too much about it. Aksu Empire’s naval base was constructed on the tunnels of the island. From what Zhao Hai saw, the naval based used nearly a thousand tunnels and caves for places of rest. It also had one of the largest piers of the island, which was also constructed in between stone walls. Looking at the naval base, it wouldn’t be a problem for it to be home to tens of thousands of people.

The base was built underneath a part of the T-shaped mountain formation. Because of the joint effort from Mages, workers, and warriors, the base was built to a very high standard. This base was completely ready for Zhao Hai to use. The undead who weren’t on board the ships were made to stay in the naval base.

For the Golden Island to successfully become a free harbor, it needed ironclad rules that should be enforced. These undead would be the on the island to keep the place in order.

Besides the undead, Zhao Hai had also released large quantities of marine Magic Beasts to protect the waters around the island as well as to monitor the surrounding activities.

In reality, Zhao Hai wasn’t really very invested in Golden Island. For him, this was only a place to make money. When speaking about environment, he much prefers Ape Island, where the atmosphere was better than Golden Island.

Zhao Hai decided to stay at the base after arriving at the island. Then, he transferred some managers from Iron Mountain fort to manage the administrative matters of the island. The other matters were handed over to the undead.

What Zhao Hai needed to do right now was to repair the island’s roads, only then can he be comfortable opening the island for business.

Zhao Hai already thought about the situation. Nobody came to the island because nobody took the first step. But he wasn’t afraid of this not happening, he had the Calci Family, the Crook Family, the Shelley Family, and Charlie. All of them wanted to do business in the island and open their own stores. Also, Zhao Hai didn’t believe that these people would be so clean to not have one or two privateer groups under their control. As long as those pirates enter the island and take the first step, others would follow.