Unparalleled Double Harmony

Chapter 514 The Lord Arrives
As the saying goes, the mouth is the storyteller and the legs are the singer.

The ranger team, aliased as the "High Hard Circus", traveled for five days in the blink of an eye after leaving the camp.

On the morning of the fifth day, their convoy finally came out of the seemingly endless wasteland and forest and arrived at a fairly prosperous town.

This town called "Onești" belongs to a lord named Koman Gabriel Basta.

Speaking of Coman, he really has something.

It is said that when György II Rakoczi led more than 20,000 Romanian troops to Poland to take advantage of the situation, Koman's father was one of Rakoczi's adjutants. Of course, after the Poles recovered their breath, they defeated Rakoczi's grandson and made him flee back home in disgrace, abandoning nearly half of his troops.

This incident directly led to the end of a golden age in Romania. Rakoczi was deposed for a time and died a few years later.

However, after returning to his country, Commann's father managed to escape the accountability for this "failed invasion" - he used the ill-gotten gains he had obtained from burning, killing and looting in Poland, and after lobbying the nobles up and down the parliament, he returned safely to his territory.

Ordinarily, a guy like this who is a war criminal should keep a low profile after escaping accountability.

But Coman's father didn't think so. He felt that he had plundered so much wealth with great difficulty, but in the end he almost lost it all in order to save his life. It was too painful... No, I have to get it back from somewhere else.

So, from then on, Old Deng began to "create" some exorbitant taxes and levies in his territory from time to time, such as "cooking tax", "loitering tax", "adulthood tax", "ugly tax"... Anyway, no matter what you do or don't do, there is a reason for you to pay taxes.

As a result of his actions, naturally, the people in his territory were living in misery in just a few years.

Then, our lord Comman came on the scene.

That year, Coman was only in his early twenties. One day, he found his father and said that he wanted to hold a "celebration" to let the people in the territory celebrate and praise his wise leadership.

Koeman's father is too old and confused to believe this.

Then on the day of the celebration, when the group of ordinary people who were forced to come by the soldiers stood there with dark faces, watching the old man boasting happily on the stage, Coman suddenly came up to the stage, shouted loudly, raised his sword, and killed his own father cleanly and efficiently.

When the head fell to the ground and the people stood there in shock and silence, Coman took the opportunity to start a speech.

Anyway, the core content of the speech is that what he did today was to sacrifice his own relatives for the sake of justice and to plead for the people.

In order to show his sincerity, he immediately announced that from today onwards, all the exorbitant taxes created by his father in the territory he took over would be abolished.

What else can the people say?

Koeman is here, and Oneşti is at peace! Koeman is here, and there is a clear sky!

But in reality, this matter is not as simple as it seems.

After all, Coman's father is a noble lord certified by the royal family. Can you kill him just like that? Can you replace him just by killing him?
To put it bluntly, the fact that Koman dared to kill the lord in public like this shows that... "beheading" is already the final step of the whole thing.

Before this, he had already established contact with the group of people in the Council of Nobles and secretly completed a series of exchanges of political interests, which would ensure that he could "succession" smoothly after completing this task.

In any case, this is indeed a happy event for the people.

For those people in the Parliament of Nobles, they had received the money for the "arrangement" in the beginning, and they also solved the problem of holding the war criminals accountable through Commann's "sacrifice of relatives for the greater good", which was a huge profit.

For Coman, it is his wish to take over the position of lord before his father has conquered all the territories.

Anyway, everyone is very satisfied with this matter except Koeman's father.

In a blink of an eye, decades have passed, and Oneşti has indeed prospered under Koeman's governance.

In this era of constant war, it is rare that ordinary people can live and work in peace and contentment in a small town like this one.

Generally speaking, if a circus passed through a relatively wealthy town like this, it would have to stop and perform, otherwise it would seem a bit suspicious.

So, the rangers, just like a real circus, set up the caravan in an open space on the edge of the town, put up a sign that read "Show starts tomorrow night" there, and started setting up tents.

As expected, their arrival not only attracted the attention of local people, but even Coman, who was far away in the castle, received the news from his men within half a day.

In Europe at that time, unless you lived in certain large cities, entertainment was quite scarce. Some people might have only seen a circus once or twice in their entire lives, and might not have the conditions to go in and watch it. So even Coman became curious about this "High Hard Circus" that came out of nowhere.

He thought for a moment, then ordered his men: "Go tell the head of the circus that the lord will come to see their performance tomorrow, and ask them to prepare well. If they perform well, there will be a reward."

At noon that day, Lao Feng received this message, and then he began to think: Although our group of people can indeed put together some seemingly legitimate circus shows, we are not a real circus after all... With our few tricks, it is definitely enough to fool the country bumpkins, but now a noble lord has shown up. What if he has seen the world and finds out something wrong?

Lao Feng is a person who has always considered things carefully, so you can't blame him for thinking too much.

At that time, if the nobles were unhappy with you, they would accuse you of a crime, such as "You knew I came to see the show, but you deliberately messed it up to humiliate me?" and so on. They would arrest your entire group and throw you into prison or even kill you.

Although not all nobles are so arrogant, the proportion of such people is not low.

The rangers might not be afraid of conflict with the soldiers, and they would have no problem resisting arrest by force, but the price they paid would be that the disguise they had worked so hard to create might not be usable as soon as they arrived at the first town, which was a situation that Lao Feng did not want to see.

Therefore, he gathered some people and held another small meeting in the afternoon.

Some people say why is it “some people”?

Well, drunkards like Zhuangke who can't offer any constructive suggestions, or reckless men whose intelligence is really not very good (most of these types of brothers were exposed in the last meeting to discuss how to disguise themselves), and people that Lao Feng thinks are not very important (namely Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai), there is no need for them to participate in this discussion.

"Everyone, do you have any ideas?" After all the participants arrived, Lao Feng explained the situation and asked for everyone's opinions.

"If you ask me, we might as well run away overnight..." said one person.

"How can that be possible? That would be the same as being exposed. Besides, our convoy is definitely not as fast as the lord's cavalry. If the enemy sees that we are behaving strangely and mobilizes a troop to chase us, it will be even more troublesome," another person continued.

"How about this... I sneak into the lord's castle tonight and give him some medicine so that he can't get up tomorrow?"

"When you say 'I can't get up tomorrow', does that mean I can't get up only tomorrow, or will I never get up again from tomorrow onwards?"

"Of course, that's only tomorrow. Killing innocent people is not a good idea."

"Wow~ You still have such a convenient medicine?"

"Hehe... Actually, the success rate of my medicine is only 50-50. There is a 50-50 chance that he will never get up again."

"What the hell..."

Seeing that these guys kept coming up with useless ideas and making no progress, Tyrael spoke up: "Is it possible... that we can slightly modify and improve the content of the program? As long as the performance tomorrow night is acceptable, can't we get by?"

"Hmm..." Old Feng nodded. "Tyrael's idea makes sense. Previously, we just wanted to fool our fellow villagers, so we simply assigned who would be responsible for what performance and how much time would be needed for the performance. We planned to improvise everything else. Now it seems that this arrangement was really perfunctory."

"That's right. We should hurry up and review the content of each program to see which ones are qualified or outstanding, and which ones are shabby even we can see, and then change the latter as soon as possible." Tyrael continued.

"But..." Lao Feng thought for a moment and then said, "Even if we want to do this, there is only one day left until tomorrow night's performance. Is there still time to improve it?"

Tyrael continued, "There's a saying in Da'an, 'Sharpen your spear before the battle, even if it's not sharp, it's still bright.' It's better to change it than not to change it at all. Maybe it will have a miraculous effect."

"Then...you two should handle this matter?" a brother next to him interrupted.

His idea was also what most people present thought, because they also knew that the most reliable people present were Lao Feng and Tyrael who proposed this idea.

"I think we can call Sun and Huang. They are the most knowledgeable people I know and they can definitely help." Tyrael replied.

"What? Those two clowns?" Old Feng immediately looked embarrassed. "Tyrael, I know you have a close relationship with them, and you strongly recommended them, but I have to remind you... When we were assigning the programs before, they were the two who had the most perfunctory attitude among all the people."

"No, no..." Tyrael explained awkwardly, "They are too professional, so they feel relaxed..."

"Are you sure?" Lao Feng still had doubts.

But no matter what, he was finally persuaded by Tyrael and went to call Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai.

Soon after, the "review team" consisting of four of them began to question the performers one by one according to the program.

You wouldn't know if you didn't check, there are so many scumbags.

Take the animal trainer for example... According to the jargon, this guy is a "beast hunter" who has a white tiger and a black panther, and can command them as he pleases.

But when asked what he was going to perform on stage, he was confused again. After a long pause, he said: "How about I let them run around me?"

Finally, Sun Huang had to tell him about the "fire ring" move, and that he could also perform tricks like "put your head into the beast's mouth and let it keep its mouth open without biting" or "pretend to be attacked by a beast, but actually just roll around and play".

As for the knife-throwing player, when asked what he was going to perform, he actually replied, "I'm going to put up a few targets on the stage and perform a show of hitting the target every time."

After hearing this, even Lao Feng couldn't hold back his excitement and asked him what the point of this was.
In the end, someone else has to tell him that he has to at least blindfold himself when throwing the knives to make it more interesting, or he can just not shoot at the target and find someone with an apple on his head for you to shoot at.

Things like this, anyway, after checking it out, I feel like... It's a good thing I checked it out, otherwise, even if the lord doesn't come tomorrow night, the villagers will smash up your place.

The four of them worked until midnight, and finally finished looking through the questions for each program. When they had some free time, Lao Feng said to Shuang Xie, "You two, I have to apologize to you. At first, Tyrael said that you two were both 'nobles of the great country' and well-informed, but I refused to believe him... Now it seems that I was influenced by the elders' words and had a prejudice against you."

Sun Huang heard this and looked at each other, wondering how we became nobles. Then they turned to look at Tyrael, and when they saw him winking at them, they understood after a while. You can talk about other things, Lao Feng doesn't understand either, but when he heard the word "noble", at least he thought he understood it.

"Heh... these are all trivial matters. You don't have to take them to heart, Old Feng." So, Sun Yixie followed suit and gave a wicked smile, saying to Old Feng, "I might as well tell you that this Mr. Huang... his real full name is 'Dongli Chuimao Ase Potettou Magiktailon Corleone Huang'. He was awarded the plaque 'For His Meritorious Service to the Nation' by our Great Emperor and enjoys special state subsidies."

Huang Donglai looked at it from the side and thought to himself, "Hey! Damn it, you bastard is trying to discredit me in every possible way, right?"

So he immediately took over the conversation, pointed at Sun Yixie, and said to Old Feng: "And this guy...his real name is 'Magiji Jiadenuo Naixunnuoweifu Ovisrustuwomen Aifonaitingwan Yifeng'. He was also awarded the 'Meritorious Service to Protect the Country' plaque by our Emperor Dazhen, and enjoys special state subsidies."

Old Feng was also shocked when he heard this. How come Sun Sang's original name didn't even have the word "Sun" in it? Was this how the nobles of Dazhu named their children? And the names of these two people were so long... Could their ancestors be royal relatives?

Let’s put it this way, Lao Feng now has only four words to describe them - awe and respect.

"Oh! I was so rude before. I'm sorry." Although Lao Feng was not a snobbish person, he did have a better impression of these colleagues of "noble origin" because he "felt" that... he himself should also be a descendant of a declining noble family. It's just that he grew up in an orphanage, so he had no other evidence or clues except his ambiguous name.

When Sun Huang saw the other party like this, he naturally took advantage of the situation and threw all kinds of rogue and fake righteous words at him.

After one night, the two of them suddenly went from being two inconspicuous clowns in the circus to being Lao Feng's right-hand men.

But the next day, they regretted it a little bit...

When we didn’t take you two seriously, no one cared if you slacked off. But now that we treat you as masters, why don’t we use force to kill you?
The next day, the job of "guiding and improving" each program was naturally thrown to Shuang Xie. The two were so busy that day that they didn't even have time to eat.

Oh, of course, the food in this circus isn’t that great, so skipping a couple of meals isn’t a big loss… We’ll talk about this in detail later, so I won’t go into details now.

In short, the day passed quickly and the sky gradually darkened.

As the lord's carriage and the cavalry escorting him appeared on the sunset horizon, the first performance of the "High Hard Circus" was about to begin.