Super Righteous Player
Chapter 92 - 91 This is a World Where Looks Matter_1

Chapter 92: Chapter 91 This is a World Where Looks Matter_1

Inside Old Alvin’s estate, there wasn’t much that could be directly taken away.

But thankfully, nearly everything that could be taken away was ordinary money.

Besides a few exquisitely crafted pure silver ornaments set with gems, there were also four bags of silver coins—of the fifty-coin variety. And fifty paper notes worth one pound each.

There were no Gold Coins stored... but hidden in a secret compartment were an entire twelve gold bars.

This Annan was actually quite easy to understand.

In the current Kingdom of Noah, Gold Coins were actually not a common currency in circulation, but paper notes called "Gold Pounds" were.

Because the predecessor Pope of the Silver Baron, Radiance III, while studying economic laws, had proposed a theory—if people have two Gold Coins in hand, one with a higher gold content and one with a lower, people tend to spend the one with the lower value and save or even melt down the one with the higher value to make jewelry.

By the same token, the real value of a Gold Coin compared to a Silver Coin is also subject to fluctuation.

Gold and Silver are materials needed to create cursed objects in different fields; gold dust and silver coins are consumables for Mr. Radiance and the Silver Baron’s priests when using Divine Arts...

In the Kingdom of Noah, because of the faith in the Silver Baron, the demand for silver is obviously higher than for gold, so people tend to save the more valuable silver coins and use Gold Coins more. Eventually, the smaller denomination silver coins will leave the circulation market.

This is naturally something the Silver Baron cannot tolerate.

So Radiance III came up with a simple countermeasure:

If the goal was to make silver coins the currency in circulation, then they had to do the opposite... that is, find a way to make ordinary people think that Gold Coins were more valuable than silver coins.

But the Church, after all, could not influence the internal laws of the kingdom, could not directly abolish Gold Coins... that was clearly not acceptable.

So in the end, they chose to start a paper money business in recent years.

They would collect a certain amount of gold and silver and exchange it for large-denomination paper notes.

The value of a one-pound paper note was equal to one Gold Pound. And this paper note could be exchanged for an equal value of silver coins at any temple of the Silver Baron—this was very simple for the priests and they did not have to worry about a shortage of stock or counterfeit money.

When priests used Divine Arts, they would sacrifice the silver coins used as materials to the Silver Baron. And the priests in other places could pray to the Silver Baron, and if they had a valid reason and could convince the Silver Baron, they could receive a certain amount of silver coins.

—That is, reimbursements.

And because both gold and silver coins could be exchanged for paper money, but paper money could only be exchanged for silver coins... this eventually led to a gradual decrease in the Gold Coins circulating on the market. For large expenditures, people tended to use paper notes. Paper notes were certainly much lighter than gold and more convenient to carry.

The reason Tan Juan initially brought some Gold Coins was to give them to the Silver Baron’s priests, to be exchanged for an equal amount of silver coins— and the action of nobles actively submitting their stored gold greatly pleased the Silver Baron.

And the priests of the Silver Baron were also very willing to recover Gold Coins.

Because this clearly caused the number of silver coins on the market to gradually increase.

So for Old Alvin, storing Gold Coins and gold bars was basically no different. After all, both were to be exchanged at the church in an emergency.

The Silver Baron’s aim was simple and pure.

It was to have silver coins circulate as widely as possible in everyone’s hands. The more frequently and the greater the amount, the better... but it had to be silver coins.

Gold Coins didn’t count.

Gold Coins from different countries had different patterns and varying gold content...

But every silver coin had the exact same amount of silver and shape—the creation of Silver Coins is the most basic Divine Art of the Silver Baron, which is used to conveniently extract silver from ores and other materials in proportion, and mass produce standardized silver coins.

As a result, each silver coin bore the face of the Silver Baron.

It was a young man in his twenties, wearing a monocle, with a radiant and sunny smile, a slim face, and middle-parted curly hair, looking like the boy-next-door.

He looked no different from ordinary people.

Rather, all True Gods were like this... True Gods look just like ordinary people. That’s why people affectionately call them by intimate titles like "the Silver Baron," "the Mysterious Lady," "Old Grandmother," and so forth.

False Gods, however, are different.

When a False God manifests in the world, his incarnation will always have at least one feature that is clearly not human.

The closer a False God is to a True God, the more human they look; if you can tell they’re not human just by looking at them, then they must be False Gods; and if they’re particularly ugly and terrifying, you know they’re Evil Gods.

In some sense, this is indeed a world that judges by appearances...

The Silver Baron, even among all True Gods, is the easiest for mortals to recognize.

Because to see what other True Gods look like, you have to go to a parish-level church and look at paintings.

But the Silver Baron is seen every day.

The commoners may not know what the King looks like, but they definitely know what the Silver Baron looks like.

"...Is this why you had me move all these things?"

Salvatore, with a bag of silver coins in each hand and a corpse on his back, panted as he climbed onto the carriage like a delivery boy.

"Yes, I love Sir Silver Baron,"

Annan said righteously, "And naturally, I also love these little darlings bearing the image of Sir Silver Baron."

Indifferently, he grabbed two bags of Gold Coins with one hand and a heavy gold bar with the other, followed Salvatore onto the carriage, and muttered softly enough for his senior to hear, "And besides, the corpse is the main thing, right..."

"Um... ah."

Salvatore placed the silver coins and the corpse inside the compartment, took a deep breath, and relaxed, sweat appearing on his face.

He then glared at Annan irritably, "I can’t have you, a child, carrying a corpse, can I?

You’re taking gold bars, fine... but was there any need to take these silver coins? They’re so heavy... If you’re short on money, you could have just exchanged a gold bar for some spending cash. Or you could have borrowed from me at the very least."

"I’m taking all this money so that I don’t have to borrow from you,"

Annan said seriously, "And now I can pay back what I borrowed before."

At first, he had no issues with borrowing money from his senior, and indeed it felt great...

But the generosity of Salvatore has been so boundless that it always left Annan with an unsettling feeling of being kept. What’s worse, Salvatore didn’t seem to have a real sense of "Annan always coming to him for money"—as soon as Annan asked, he gave.

This called for a sense of guilt from exploiting Kaise too much.

Upon hearing this, Salvatore voiced an "oh," "Come to think of it, did you borrow some money from me before? How much was it?"

So you don’t even remember the amount?

To this day, Annan had no idea how much money Salvatore actually had...

But Annan’s pride and morality were still urging him to pay back Salvatore’s money quickly—however, from another perspective, the money Annan used to pay back Salvatore might as well have been taken from someone else’s home, and he had done so with a clear conscience.

The previous analysis by Salvatore was good and made sense, and now it belonged to me.

—I plan to repay you with money for your intention to murder me; as for your grandson, I will not harm him anymore, and I will protect him until he inherits your estate.

A fair trade.

Annan pleasedly set a new task for himself.

"Speaking of which," Annan asked curiously, looking at Salvatore, "Who is our coachman?"

Salvatore seemingly had expected the need to transport a body, so he came in a carriage.

But Annan noticed that the man driving the carriage, while not exactly imposing, clearly didn’t look like a regular coachman.

That was normal.

Which common coachman would dare to move a corpse late at night, let alone the freshly dead body of a Viscount...

"He came to thank you,"

Salvatore introduced to Annan.