Munitions Empire-Chapter 956 - The less you know, the happier you are

Chapter 956: The less you know, the happier you are. Chapter 956: The less you know, the happier you are. In the increasingly frequent and massive trade activities, the rulers of the Orc Empire realized that they had some very serious problems.

Former tribal systems now seemed too sloppy and primitive in the face of such trade and exchange. Gradually, they began to discover that they could no longer control the situation.

The orc tribes near Shu Country in the south were living better and better days, leveraging their geographical advantage to reap substantial trade profits.

Grains, once unthinkable for the Orc Empire, were brought into these tribes for sale, and they quickly learned from human merchants the technique of marking up prices to resell northward.

These orc tribes became compradors for human merchants and quickly rose to become a small portion of beneficiaries who grew wealthy first within the Orc Empire.

However, the problem was that the Orc Empire had no power to restrain these tribes. Their management was too lax, so that each of these grassroots tribes looked like independent mini-states.

The Great Tang Group would not concern themselves with the internal issues arising within the Orc Empire; they were simply selling outdated goods to the Orc Empire to make a profit.

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As for what the Orc Empire could offer in return, it was nothing more than gold, silver, and gems.

Regrettably, it was the northern orc tribes that produced these items: this created an interesting phenomenon where southern orcs, with their geographical edge, traded with humans, while northern orcs were the producers of orcish trade goods.

Thus, a great north-south trade war erupted within the Orc Empire. The southern orcs raised the prices of grains, weapons, equipment parts, trying to reap a harvest from the northern orcs. In return, the northern orcs started hiking the prices of gold and silver, forcing the southerners to exchange more goods for them.

Originally, the southern orcs would have an absolute advantage in this confrontation, as they could temporarily do without precious metals and gems, but the northern orcs could not live without staple foods like grain.

But the crux of the matter was: Shu Country’s trade routes only accepted precious metals like gold, and the purchase prices didn’t fluctuate much.

This, in turn, choked the southern orcs; no matter how much they spent on acquiring goods, they could only exchange them for food supplies at the prices set by humans. Then they had to mark up these goods to sell to the northern orcs, only to be severely overcharged in gold in return, effectively subsidizing the purchase of human supplies at the original price.

Beyond the growing divide between northern and southern orcs, the upper echelons of the Orc Empire wanted to increase control over the tribes, which also caused confrontations between regions and the higher levels of the Orc Empire.

The leaders of the various tribes did not want the Empire to interfere in their affairs, yet they all wanted the food supply subsidies given by the Empire.

The loose management prevented the Orc Empire from mobilizing on a large scale, which also made it impossible for their troops to significantly improve their combat effectiveness.

In the past, when the Empire waged war, the troops were conscripted from the warriors of various tribes. Each tribe had to send out warriors in proportion to their population, as if it were a kind of human sacrifice.

But now, the wealthy tribes began to raise objections, thinking that the number of people was no longer a fair measure of a tribe’s contribution to the military effort.

Those who controlled gold mines within their territories or could trade had spare funds to improve their weaponry. For them, weapons and equipment also needed to be accounted for.

Should one compare 40 infantrymen from others to 40 truck drivers from their side, plus an additional 20 trucks? That would be far too unfair! Trucks cost money, and so do the artillery and even the shells.

For many years, they could not win on the battlefield, and no one considered a “battle results distribution law.” Without additional rewards for those who made greater efforts, the system was inherently unfair to those tribes.

Modern warfare does not allow the Orc Empire to employ a gimmick of deploying only infantry, so well-equipped tribes began demanding a calculation system: one truck should be worth at least 30 people, right? If our village contributes one truck, we shouldn’t need to contribute any more people, right?

Similar issues erupted daily within the Orc Empire, and the Great Chieftain and High Priests were all at their wits’ end.

Even because food was plentiful and population decline targets were met ahead of schedule, the Orc Empire unprecedentedly canceled Great Tang’s 3-year offensive campaign plan against Qin Country’s western wall.

However, even though they halted their offensive plans, the war near the Iron Fist Fortress did not cease. Qin Country’s slaver teams came one after another, and the battles near the Iron Fist Fortress even escalated.

Previously, orc offensives were just a matter of dispatching some troops to strike at Qin Country’s defense line. Now both sides invested heavily in artillery, deployed aircraft, and the intensity of the fighting was multiplied several times over.

Qin Country’s Great Wind Type 1 fighter jets often appeared in formations of two, hunting orc planes that took off for reconnaissance and to correct artillery fire. After acquiring some Anti-Aircraft Guns, the orcs began to protect their own aircraft. The two sides were engaged in a breathtaking back-and-forth in the skies.

Yet, ultimately, this kind of skirmishing was outdated. The high-level officials of Qin Country, who were used to grand scenes, were actually always fantasizing about one day possessing a vast fleet of aircraft like the Great Tang Empire.

Tang Mo, who had already begun to accumulate a reserve, saw that the various nations of the Eastern Continent were frantically purchasing airplanes designed by Tang Country and felt a bit tempted himself.

Subsequently, they also took out tens of millions of Gold Coins, pleading with the Great Tang Empire to “tailor-make” the DO-17 bomber specifically for their nation.

This type of airplane, originally belonging to San Dezi, was sold to Qin Country by Tang Mo, which effectively split ties with the Poplar Empire that had purchased the HE-111 bomber.

However, since Qin Country only bought the design and related technology, they would need some time to establish their production line and equip their DO-17 bombers.

During this time, the Orc Empire, which had already spent money buying the Shireck-designed, earlier-produced Shireck Type 2 single-wing fighter jets, could still hold their own in the air to some extent.

Once Qin Country’s bombers began to enter service, they would have advantages in both speed and altitude, making bombing the Orc Empire almost a risk-free endeavor.

At that time, whether the Orcs would purchase more advanced fighter jets or more anti-aircraft guns would depend on what was going on in those ugly brutes’ heads.

Interestingly, Mirage Country, which had always been secretly developing its navy in hopes to regain control of the northern region of the Endless Sea, finally seemed to step out from the shadow of two consecutive war failures, purchasing a set of new bomber blueprints from the Great Tang Empire.

Emperor Tang Mo of the Great Tang Empire, full of twisted humor, provided Mirage Country with blueprints for what was known as the Type 97 Land Attack Plane.

As for the performance of this bomber, it actually wasn’t much worse compared to those purchased by various nations; after all, they were all products of Earth’s 1930s civilization, more or less on the same level.

But for Tang Mo personally, this Type 96 bomber was mixed with too much personal sentiment — any nation that used these weapons was noted down in his little book…

Coming back to the Orc Empire: unable to strengthen their control over local areas, the high-level officials of the Orc Empire had no choice but to reject the proposal to build railways within their own territory.

It was a reluctant decision for them: even though they knew the construction of railways would facilitate their control over local tribes, they still didn’t dare to take such a step.

More than controlling the unruly tribes, the Orc Emperor was worried about humans launching a sudden attack on the Orc Empire in the future: driving straight through along the railways built by the Beastmen themselves, which would result in the immediate collapse of the Orc Empire.

The Orc Emperor, who had carefully studied the rise of the Great Tang Empire, noticed a detail that other countries either didn’t notice or pretended to ignore out of helplessness: the better the roadways, the faster the attackers could advance using them.

For the Orc Empire, such an advance was even more deadly: their cities and settlements were heavily dependent on water sources, so they were primarily distributed along rivers. If these were connected by roads, it would be akin to bundling up the best parts of the Orc Empire and waiting for others to take them.

Thus, the Orc Emperor preferred to maintain the backward state of transportation to increase the difficulty for those who might attempt to attack the Orc Empire.

That way, at least they wouldn’t face the terrifying situation of enemies driving straight in along the roads after losing a city on the border, unstoppable.

However, this decision, in turn, certainly limited the development of transportation within the Orc Empire and affected the speed of internal goods circulation.

With the introduction of wireless telegraphy, the connection between the high-level and grassroots layers of the Orc Empire became a bit tighter than before, but such progress was clearly not keeping up with the development in other regions of the world.

The Orc Empire, with its national conditions, was still adapting little by little to the changes in the world, but what they didn’t know was that in the distant Great Tang Empire, there were things emerging that could turn their understanding upside down.

It has been said that in this world, the less you know, the happier you are… For the Orcs, this was definitely true.

Because if they knew that, while they were still struggling to repair a biplane, there were already people flying planes faster than the speed of sound, they would be very troubled.

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If the Orcs knew that many nations were now frantically assembling bomber fleets that were faster than their fighter jets, they probably wouldn’t be in such good spirits.

If the Orcs knew that their powerful 130mm caliber howitzers were Shireck’s outdated products, and the technology they used was already a decade old, they wouldn’t be as happy as they are now.

If they knew that the Great Tang Empire already possessed ballistic missiles capable of striking targets 2,000 kilometers away, which could easily attack the Orc Empire’s royal court if deployed behind the Qin Country’s western wall defense line… they would probably cry.

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There’s one more update, making up for yesterday’s, that you can all view tomorrow morning. Dragon Spirit has made up 8 updates in February and still owes everyone 12 updates. The catch-up will continue slowly in March…