Chapter 843: Chapter 366: Bright Lamp Report
Early the next morning, Wu Chang and Erin were awakened by the maid. When they walked out of the bedroom, they saw Raventon already sitting at the dining table.
"Chef Brown’s cinnamon apple sauce today is even better than the one I had at Deer Hunter Restaurant. Can you pack two portions for me to take away?"
Wu Chang sat at the head of the table, glanced at Raventon, and joked with a laugh:
"You’re really treating my home like a restaurant, coming to eat and now even packing food to go."
Raventon replied matter-of-factly, "Food not appreciated by diners is the greatest tragedy for gourmet dishes. I’m doing you a favor."
Wu Chang asked, "So you’re saying I should thank you?"
Raventon bowed slightly and said, "No need to mention it. Serving you is my honor."
Wu Chang rolled his eyes and began to enjoy today’s breakfast.
The main dish was roast pork with apple sauce. In Wu Chang’s view, this absolutely belonged to "dark cuisine," but surprisingly, it tasted good.
At least in Stilan, the culinary basin, it was definitely above average. No wonder the previous owner of the villa specifically hired this chef from Fran.
This is Stilan, the center of the world.
The new aristocrats, to satisfy their appetites, can hire a chef from the neighboring country Fran specifically to serve them.
For instance, Wu Chang’s chef Brown used to serve at a high-end restaurant in Fran’s capital, and to lure him over, the villa’s previous owner offered a price of three hundred gold pounds a year.
The annual salary alone for a chef was equivalent to the food expenses for a family of four for ten years, or even more.
And this refers to families that live in the worker districts and have stable lives.
Even without accounting for colonies, just considering Stilan itself, tens of thousands of poor people die of hunger each year due to the Corn Laws.
The saying "The gates of the rich smell of wine and meat, the roads have frozen bones" holds true even in the world’s most prosperous city, Stilan.
After breakfast, they continued to investigate the assassination of the Prime Minister.
The target today was the Chartist movement.
However, they did not immediately go to find workers to demonstrate, but instead went to the Gray Church slums, just as yesterday, with Raventon again acting as the coachman.
When they arrived at the Thomas family’s home, they saw that Thomas’s sister Gray was already able to get out of bed and move around, and her complexion looked much better.
They had just eaten breakfast; together, they had less than half a pound of black bread, a little butter, and two small bowls of oatmeal porridge, costing less than a penny.
By price comparison, it was akin to the scraps of meat Raventon picked from his teeth after breakfast and the sauce wiped from the corners of his mouth with a napkin.
Erin checked Gray’s body again to ensure there were no remaining toxins in her system, and then asked her to call in the surrounding residents in need of treatment to continue last night’s healing.
Wu Chang and Raventon found Thomas and inquired about the Miner Thieves.
"Thomas, among your group of Miner Thieves, do you know someone named Mick?"
Thomas nodded and said, "Yes, he’s the leader of the Miner Thieves. Every time they sell coal essence to the black market and start sharing the money, he shows up."
"Mr. Sean, if you want to find him for something, I’m afraid it’s not possible."
"I heard from the companions that when the coal mine exploded, he was in the deep mining area and didn’t have time to get out."
Wu Chang and Raventon exchanged a look; this meant that Mick discovered the Extraordinary Refining Machine not long before the Steam Council orchestrated the coal mine explosion.
"Do you know who was close to Mick, like when you needed to convey information to Mick, who would you usually hand the message to?"
Thomas thought for a moment, then shook his head and said:
"I’m sorry, Mr. Sean, you might not believe this, but Mick has a special trait that naturally draws people to him."
"Back at Pine Tree Coal Mine, he was always surrounded by many people. If you wanted to find him, you just had to ask around at Mine 37, and someone would know where he was."
Wu Chang raised an eyebrow, surprised that Mick had quite the personal charm.
But it made sense; he remembered resentment in the Steam Council members mentioning that Communication Magic is Noble Magic, passed down only within noble Extraordinary families.
This showed that Mick was not an ordinary Extraordinary Miner Thief but came from a prestigious family, at least formerly prestigious.
He then asked, "Have you heard him being close to any big figures?"
Thomas repeated, confused, "Big figures?"
To him, too many people could be considered big figures.
Wu Chang added, "Not too big, small nobility is fine."
The term ’small nobility’ touched a blind spot in Thomas’s knowledge, and he shook his head:
"If someone at the mine knew a noble, it would be spread and known to everyone by the next day. I don’t recall hearing such rumors."
"However..."
"I mentioned to you yesterday that a while ago, when everyone went to the city to demonstrate, they thought I was too small and didn’t let me follow, just had me do some message delivery tasks."
"Most of the time, I was responsible for conveying verbal messages, but only once did a companion from the Miner Thieves ask me to deliver a paper letter."
Upon hearing about the paper letter, Wu Chang and Raventon became alert.
In Stilan, most lower-level workers start working as child laborers from the age of five or six, so their level of education can be imagined.
Especially miners and textile workers, only less than a quarter of them can write their own names.
Their low level of education is also why Prime Minister Logan believes they lack political judgment.
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