To the self-proclaimed intelligentsia of the Domus Empire, news of the Falcon Estate’s internal affairs over the two months following Dan Falcon’s death read like a grotesque farce.
In the gilded taverns of Oakhaven, the counting houses of the Kanif and Dyilan families, and the martial halls of Duke Lucius Vane, the report was met not with fear, but with ringing, uninhibited laughter.
“So-called experts”—imperial guild assayers, senior agricultural ministers, and high-strung trade brokers—published scathing assessments of the sickly fifteen-year-old heir.
To men who spent their lives calculating interest rates and land rents, Julian Falcon’s actions were the unmistakable tantrums of a spoiled child playing at management.
“The boy has lost his mind,” proclaimed Master Corvus in the high courts of Oakhaven, waving courier dispatches before a crowd of laughing speculators.
“While his external trade routes are choked and his bills of exchange are rejected across five provinces, Julian Falcon is spending solid gold sovereigns on… manure! He is ordering his peasants to dig trenches for animal waste and plant turnips instead of golden wheat! It is a masterclass in economic suicide.”
The agricultural guilds were equally dismissive.
For centuries, traditional farming had relied on leaving half the soil fallow.
To force the land to produce crops continuously without rest—and to fill valuable arable acreage with clover and cattle feed—was viewed by seasoned agronomists as a lunacy that would destroy the valley’s soil within a single season.
The consensus among the grand lords was unanimous: Julian was not merely failing to arrest the Falcon Estate’s demise; his ignorant, foolish whims were actively quickening its total collapse.
Even in distant Aishan, where Clara Matilin prepared her carriage to ride north, the local factors shook their heads in pity.
The great merchant empire built by Dan Falcon was being run into the dirt by an invalid who prioritized farm dirt over high finance.
Yet, within the borders of the Falcon Duchy itself, a strange, quiet schism was taking root.
The tenant farmers, veteran bailiffs, and local village elders who actually walked the fields were the first to stop laughing.
They had initially grumbled at Julian’s bizarre mandates, expecting ruin.
But as the weeks passed, they witnessed something that bordered on the miraculous.
Fields treated with the fermented compost were darker, richer, and bursting with thick, vibrant stalks.
The clover-planted sectors restored the soil with terrifying speed, while the vast turnip yields kept livestock fat, healthy, and thriving through wet, cold spells.
A quiet awe spread through the peasantry.
Among the common folk who tilled the earth, whispers began to circulate that the pale young master possessed a strange, divine insight into the soil.
They began to sense that a profound, quiet revolution was unfolding right beneath their boots.
However, when those same locals looked beyond the green fields toward the estate’s commercial ledgers, their awe vanished, replaced by profound disappointment. You are reading on NovelPing, the official source.
“The young lord may be a saint of the soil,” the local merchants and guild factors whispered behind locked doors, “but when it comes to business, he is undeniably, catastrophically stupid.”
To the local merchant class, Julian’s commercial strategy was utterly incomprehensible.
He had allowed the external shipping lines to freeze completely.
He made no effort to negotiate with the harbor factors in the South or buy off the mercenaries harassing the eastern passes.
He refused to export raw alum or salt, cutting off the estate’s primary streams of liquid revenue.
To the local business minds, Julian was a boy who understood how to grow a carrot, but possessed no earthly idea how to run a duchy.
Through all of it—the mocking tavern songs in Oakhaven, the condescending letters from regional barons, and the quiet doubts of his own local merchants—Julian Falcon remained utterly indifferent.
For two full months following his father’s tragic death, Julian ignored the noise of the outside world entirely.
He did not waste his breath defending his reputation.
He did not write letters to the Imperial Guilds, nor did he offer explanations to his local bailiffs.
Sitting in his study, flanked by Sir Johannes and Father Luik, his pale face remained impassive as reports of the Empire’s mockery were read aloud.
Let the vultures laugh.
Let the ‘experts’ celebrate his impending ruin.
The arrogance of the old world was the ultimate camouflage for the creation of the new.
While the world mocked his farming, Julian was draining the staggering, subterranean gold reserves of his father’s deepest vaults to finance a project of absolute, terrifying secrecy.
Deep inside the inner perimeter of the Falcon valley, guarded by razor-sharp granite cliffs, high timber palisades, and heavily armed patrols of loyal household knights who shot unauthorized trespassers on sight, a massive industrial complex was rising.
Whatever happened inside those massive, windowless stone halls was shrouded in total, unyielding shadow.
No guild spy, imperial scout, or curious noble ever set foot within two leagues of the perimeter.
Only veteran craftsmen, sworn retainers, and land-bound families whose loyalty to the Falcon name spanned generations were selected.
Every worker was paid in solid silver—amounts so astronomical that a single month’s wage could secure a family’s comfort for a decade.
But that wealth came with absolute, binding terms: once a craftsman entered the inner valley factories, he did not leave.
They lived in heavily fortified, comfortable barracks within the restricted zone, isolated from the outside world.
Even more astounding was the internal organization of the labor itself.
Through extreme, cold technical division, Julian implemented the world’s first system of total industrial compartmentalization.
Not a single worker inside those stone walls understood what he was building.
In one isolated workshop, a team of blacksmiths spent twelve hours a day forging standardized, hardened steel cylinders, believing they were making heavy hydraulic pump fittings for deep water wells.
In a second, separate hall half a mile away, woodworkers carved precise, uniform wooden stocks out of seasoned walnut, operating under the assumption that the pieces were decorative furniture legs for the capital’s high nobility.
In a third facility, chemical workers mixed precise proportions of sulfur, charcoal, and purified saltpeter under heavy ventilation, believing the dark gray powder was a new synthetic fertilizer compound for the young master’s agricultural experiments.
Each section operated in complete isolation.
Workers were forbidden from discussing their specific tasks outside their immediate workrooms.
Blueprints were broken down into individual, meaningless sub-components, with only Julian holding the master assembly diagrams in his mind.
A man could spend two months stamping uniform copper caps without ever knowing those caps were destined to ignite high-explosive propellant charges.
To the workers, the factories were places of eerie, magical discipline.
Black smoke belched from tall, stone chimneys into the mountain sky, waterwheels churned relentlessly along the diverted alpine streams, and the rhythmic, thunderous thud of heavy trip-hammers echoed off the canyon walls from dawn until dusk.
Yet, if you asked any smith, mason, or laborer what the final product of their endless labor was, they would only offer a blank, honest shake of the head.
They did not know.
No one knew.