Generally speaking, the undead did not accept the allegiance of living people, because to most undead, the living were either food or experimental material.
Among undead creatures, only anomalies like vampires would fall in love with their food, which was why vampires did not get along very well with other undead either.
Just as a normal person would find it hard to accept marrying a roasted chicken, the general reaction was: *I respect your kink, but please stay far away from me.*
Furthermore, mortals who became romantically involved with vampires either turned into vampires themselves or were burned at the stake as vampires.
Interspecies romance on this continent rarely ended well.
When even true love fared so terribly, master-servant relationships were out of the question; more often than not, it was either a lich enslaving humans or a necromancer contracting a lich.
Anbaixiu had no such inclinations. After blazing the trail of aberrant skeletons, his need for human remains had plummeted. His simulated soul technology had completely replaced uncontrollable human souls, so Anbaixiu had no need to farm humans as lab rats.
What he needed was money.
Mortals would normally never seek refuge under an evil creature like a lich. But the City of Alchemy was currently facing an economic crisis unseen in a century. Vast numbers of freemen were fleeing due to tax hikes by their lords, and Anbaixiu planned to seize this opportunity to take in some mortals.
Running a business was nowhere near as lucrative as collecting taxes. Even the poorest lord in the City of Alchemy was wealthier than Anbaixiu.
Behind Anbaixiu's castle lay a vast expanse of fertile land. Once cleared and cultivated, supporting three to five thousand people would be no problem at all.
This was a one-time deal made between the Alchemists' Council and Anbaixiu: two potion formulas in exchange for perpetual ownership of the land and permanent tax exemption, though it could neither be inherited nor gifted. If a paladin ever scattered Anbaixiu's ashes and smashed his phylactery, the land would automatically revert to the council.
The tax-free condition alone saved Anbaixiu massive overhead. Where other lords levied an eighty percent tax, he could easily charge sixty percent.
Rules were meant to be broken. Undercutting the competition felt great in the moment, and continuously undercutting them felt great forever. If anyone was to blame, blame the economic crisis that forced living souls to become subjects of a lich.
After Anbaixiu's moral interrogation, Raul was finally convinced that he had met an enlightened master unseen throughout history. *The master lich only taxes sixty percent? What kind of great philanthropist is this?*
If word of this got out, tens of thousands of freemen would likely flood into this master lich's domain, and those human lords would probably assemble an army to wage a crusade against this merciful lich.
In Raul's imagination, Anbaixiu sat at the negotiation table and said in a grave voice to the noble lords: "Humans, please treat your fellow kind with kindness."
Moved by such mercy, Raul became even more certain that he had misjudged Anbaixiu. With an attitude of penance and repentance, Raul resolved to do everything he could to help Anbaixiu recruit other fleeing freemen.
Only Isabel kept feeling that something was amiss, as if the two of them had fallen completely into a trap carefully laid by this lich.
Yet that didn't seem quite right either. Their intrusion into the lich's territory was purely an accident. No matter how powerful a lich was, he wouldn't waste divination magic on a couple of mere mortals.
It had never crossed Isabel's mind that a lich could be short on money—after all, he could easily just rob people.
It was hardly unusual for liches to pillage human lords for money and people. Once, a lich who harbored a deep hatred for humanity cast an enhanced Cloudkill spell, causing millions to succumb to plague and die.
It would be strange for an evil creature *not* to attack humans.
Because of this, no matter how she thought about it, Isabel felt something was off, convinced that Anbaixiu was hiding something. But that was not something a mere apprentice alchemist could figure out.
About a day later, Raul returned, and this time he brought back ten living, breathing people.
The moment they laid eyes on Anbaixiu, their legs went weak with terror, and several turned to flee on the spot.
Fortunately, Raul commanded the aberrant skeleton to block their path. Some cursed Raul at the top of their lungs as a human traitor working for a lich, while others wept profusely, begging for mercy by crying that they had eighty-year-old mothers and eight-year-old children to feed. At that moment, Anbaixiu's foresight became evident. Once the Tranquility Potions were poured down their throats, the shrieks—rivaling the sound of ghouls singing opera—swiftly died down.
Calm was the prerequisite for communication. Only then did Raul drop the bombshell of Anbaixiu's sixty-percent tax rate, which promptly swayed their hearts.
*Only sixty percent tax? Is this lich lord an angel in disguise?*
Before the tax hikes, they had already had to pay eighty percent. Now, it was an insane ninety percent, with two years of taxes demanded in advance!
It was precisely because they couldn't endure it that they had chosen to flee.
Yet while a person could run, their homestead could not. The property these fleeing freemen left behind in their lords' domains was bound to be confiscated in full.
Faced with the choice between selling themselves into slavery and losing their property versus simply losing their property, most of them had had no real choice.
And once they lost everything, even freemen with skilled crafts were very likely to starve to death. This tax hike wasn't the folly of a single lord; all vassals of the Alchemists' Council were affected, leaving them with nowhere to run.
Now, they seemed to have a new option.
Seeking refuge with a lich—before this, contemplating such a thing for even half a second would have been an insult to their own race. But when one's very survival was on the line, to hell with race! Follow the master lich, and there would be meat to eat.
After receiving Anbaixiu's promises and seeing the environment around the castle, the runaway freemen decided to pledge allegiance to Anbaixiu and become his subjects.
Anbaixiu knew his plan was more than half accomplished. These ten-odd people would soon help him cultivate the persona of a benevolent master lich, drawing even more freemen to his banner.
Anbaixiu appointed Isabel as head maid to arrange temporary lodgings for them in the castle.
Meanwhile, Anbaixiu had to temporarily set aside his necromantic experiments and head to the actual City of Alchemy to make purchases. The freemen could not all live in Anbaixiu's castle; they needed to find spots to build new houses, cultivate fields, and raise livestock.
However, as refugees, they carried at most a small dagger and a little loose change. They couldn't take their houses with them on the run. Completely penniless and destitute, they required Anbaixiu to provide everything for them.
Not for free, of course—for rent.
Whether it was tools, seeds, or livestock, leasing was standard practice, and the rent depended entirely on the lord's mood. A benevolent lord would lower interest to attract new freemen, while a tyrannical lord would ratchet up interest mercilessly, hoping the tenant farmers would be forced to sell their children and degrade from freemen into slaves.
There was no right or wrong in such practices. Benevolent lords had been slaughtered along with their whole families by their subjects, while tyrannical lords did not necessarily fail to die of old age in their beds.
This was a world where might made right.
Anbaixiu had too many items to buy, and their unit prices were low. Opting for teleportation delivery would incur huge shipping losses; visiting the merchants in person and taking the time to rent carriages to transport the goods back was far more cost-effective.
Still, going to the City of Alchemy meant altering his appearance, or he would invite unnecessary trouble.
Anbaixiu stood before a massive mirror and cast an Alter Self spell on himself.
His terrifying skeletal form melted away, replaced by a handsome youth with black hair and dark eyes.
This had been his exact appearance before transmigrating.
Chapter 8