Undermining me again!
Undermining me again!
Reina felt like he was about to faint from the anger this Pupu was causing him.
However, he had been in the officialdom of Calradia for many years after all.
Although he wasn’t incredibly deep, he had enough of a poker face to get by.
He quickly suppressed his churning emotions, and a smile once again plastered itself onto his face.
“Lord Hero, you’re truly wronging me! Even if I had the courage of the heavens, I wouldn’t dare embezzle the army’s pay from those beneath me.”
“Really?”
Jon raised an eyebrow suspiciously.
“Exactly!”
Reina widened his eyes on purpose, staring directly into Jon’s eyes to put on an act of being deeply aggrieved.
His voice was heavy and raspy.
“If you really don’t trust me, I can show you the account books °^”
Jon’s first reaction was to decline.
After all, he had just recently started learning how to read and couldn’t understand them at all.
To his surprise, Lia, who was sitting on his shoulder, suddenly nodded vigorously.
“Good!”
“Lili, can you understand them?”
Jon asked curiously.
“Teacher Anna already taught Lili arithmetic class~” Lia put her small hands on her hips and proudly puffed out her chest.
Her delicate and well-proportioned body looked even more graceful under the light.
“Lili can calculate clearly!”
“Alright then.”
Jon rubbed Lia’s small head and turned to Reina, saying seriously, “Then we shall take a look.”
Reina’s mouth hung half-open as he stared at the Pupu in horror.
The absurdity and confusion in his heart were simply beyond words.
‘Literacy? This Pupu actually knows how to read? She can even understand account books! If she’s a Pupu, then what’s my son? A walking piece of meat?’
Regarding the audit, he had originally bet on the fact that the Hero was illiterate and would never agree.
He never expected a literate Pupu to come out of nowhere!
But if they really wanted to check the accounts, he wasn’t afraid.
For all the accounts in Bray City, he had spent a large sum of money to hire professional priests from the Church of the God of Wisdom to handle them personally.
That priest had patted his chest and guaranteed that they were absolutely seamless.
A Pupu… trying to compete with a professional?
Heh!
Two large crates of account books were quickly brought in.
During the meal, Reina opened that bottle of fake wine for the Hero.
Because the name of this wine was so famous, even Jon recognized it and felt quite surprised.
“Senior, I remember this wine… it’s produced by a very famous winery in the Imperial Capital. Even Princess Margaret loves to drink it. The price should be quite high, right?”
“Lord Hero has a good eye.”
Reina immediately followed the lead.
“This wine is the Secret Nightberry Wine produced by the Royal Winery. Only 3,000 bottles are sold to the public every year. I specifically bought it to entertain a distinguished guest like you. It cost me a whole silver coin!”
“Oh.”
Jon nodded in sudden realization, and then…
There was no “and then.”
The smile on Reina’s face almost froze.
Wait?
What about the rest?
Don’t you feel like something is wrong with high-end wine bought for one Silver Coulomb?
His routine was intended for the Imperial Commissioner to see through the fake wine.
Then, amidst the other party’s contempt and his own “sudden realization,” he would take the opportunity to switch to a slightly lower-tier but genuine good wine and penalize himself with three drinks to heat up the atmosphere.
It would both demonstrate his “integrity and frugality” and satisfy the Commissioner’s sense of superiority—a classic scene where both host and guest are happy.
To prevent the Hero from not being able to taste the quality, he even specifically emphasized that the “selling price was one silver coin.”
In the end, this Lord Hero seemed to truly believe that high-end wine costing one silver coin was reasonable.
The routine had failed completely.
Instead, it was that Pupu who hugged the Hero’s ear and giggled foolishly for a long time.
“Stewed Egg! Stewed Egg! This wine isn’t bad,” Lia suddenly spoke up with innocent curiosity.
“I’ll give you a gold coin. Can you help us get ten more bottles? Oh, by the way, we’ll take them to let the Emperor have a taste too~”
“Ten bottles? Are you kidding me!” Reina almost jumped up.
“You f—…”
But the Hero merely threw a glance his way, making him swallow the rest of his words.
“What’s wrong?”
Jon was both puzzled and vigilant.
He immediately shielded Lia in his palm and shifted his legs into a stance that made it easy to exert force.
His entire being was like a sharp sword that would unsheathe and draw blood in the next instant.
“No… it’s nothing…”
Reina recalled this Lord Hero’s glorious battle record and suddenly let it go.
He closed his eyes and shouted to his wife outside the door, “Gail, go to my cellar, take the ten bottles from the highest point, and wrap them up for the Lord Hero.”
“Understood! You old fossil!” the City Lord’s wife answered loudly from outside, her tone faintly carrying a hint of schadenfreude.
As soon as the account books arrived, Lia immediately climbed to the top of Jon’s head.
With a standard diving posture, she skillfully plunged into the vast sea of books.
She randomly pulled out a thick ledger and began flipping through it quickly.
When it came to auditing accounts, Lia could be considered highly experienced.
It was nothing more than practice making perfect.
The “Six-Year Compulsory Education” she had promoted in the Demon Realm hadn’t produced many serious scientists, but it had created an endless stream of outlaws specialized in tax evasion.
The Third Demon Realm, “Eldorado,” just like the Seventh Demon Realm, could be described as a place of outstanding people and spirits, possessing extremely rare high-intelligence demonic talents.
Unfortunately, these high-intelligence talents were either greedy and loved money to the point where they would sell their own mothers, or their heads were full of nothing but food, with all 800 of their wits growing inside their stomachs.
Otherwise, they were jealous to the bone, even comparing the size of a certain hole on their bodies with others.
Their commonality was that immediately after completing their compulsory education, they would figure out how to use exquisite methods to evade taxes, commit corruption, and create fake accounts.
The devil rises one foot, but the way rises ten.
In the process of battling wits and courage against them, Lia, a logical-minded person, forced herself to delve deeper and deeper into the study of “Accounting,” and her cultivation in it grew naturally.
So… how could there be a naturally versatile Demon King? It was simply forced out by the “blessed land” of the Demon Realm.
To be fair, the level of fake accounting in Bray City was fairly decent in Lia’s eyes, but that was all.
The methods were still crude, ultimately unable to escape the few basic tricks of money laundering.
“Friend! There’s a problem with their accounts!”
Before long, Lia had picked out several obvious loopholes.
She closed the ledger with a smile.
City Lord Reina’s heart sank violently.
Jon carefully lifted Lia out of the sea of books and gently stroked her back.
His voice was as gentle as if he were praising a cute junior who had just finished a performance.
“Is that so? Lili is so amazing. Tell me about it?”
“After July of last year, food expenditures clearly decreased, but the number of soldiers receiving pay actually increased by 20%. This shows that ghost personnel are receiving pay. There are also several special taxes that should appear every month but occasionally disappear for a few months for no reason. In addition…”
“Enough, enough, enough!”
City Lord Reina hurriedly interrupted.
His face was crumpled like a withered chrysanthemum, and his eyes were filled with doubt, shock, and confusion as he stared fixedly at the Pupu.
“I admit it. I’ll admit it, alright? But Lord Hero, in the entire Thousand River Territory, I’m not the only one doing this.”
“Then can you make up for the back pay owed to those poor soldiers?” Jon frowned and asked in a heavy voice.
Reina was suddenly at a loss for words.
That was naturally impossible, because the amount he had embezzled… was truly a bit too much.
Recalling Teacher Jonathan’s instructions, Jon simply took advantage of his “reckless youth” image and said straightforwardly, “Although Demon King Lia has been executed, his remnants are still active everywhere.
This record-breaking torrential rain is very likely the work of the Demon King’s remnants acting in the shadows. As a Frontline Commander, I have the right to execute officials on the spot who are ineffective in resisting demons…”
“Fine, fine, fine!” Reina quickly yielded.
It was mainly because this Hero acted so purely that Reina honestly couldn’t tell if the other party was trying to scare him or truly thought that way.
“I’ll issue a payment for the back pay right now and then immediately send them out to provide disaster relief and save people. Will that work? Lord Hero?”
Jon was about to nod in agreement when Lia, on his shoulder, spoke once again.
Her voice was crisp and firm:
“No!”