My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!
Episode-158

Chapter : 315

As the guards began to haul the broken, weeping men from the hall, Lloyd felt a complex mixture of emotions. A cold, grim satisfaction at the justice, however brutal, being served. A flicker of pity, quickly suppressed, for the sheer, self-inflicted totality of their ruin. And a profound, almost startling, realization.

He looked at his father, at the stern, unyielding ruler who had just dismantled the lives of eight men with the cool, dispassionate efficiency of a master chess player removing pieces from the board. And he saw not just a father, not just a Duke, but a teacher.

This entire, elaborate, public spectacle… it hadn't just been for the conspirators. It had been for him. For Lloyd.

It was a lesson. A lesson in power. In how to wield it, how to protect it, how to demonstrate it. A lesson in the ruthless, pragmatic, and often brutal, necessities of rule. He had taught Lloyd that innovation invites attack. That success breeds resentment. And that a threat, once identified, must be neutralized not just privately, but publicly, decisively, in a way that sends a clear, unambiguous message to any others who might be watching from the shadows.

He had orchestrated this entire event, from the timing of the Royal Decree to the public confessions, not just to punish the guilty, but to educate the heir. To show him, in no uncertain terms, what it truly meant to lead, to protect, to rule.

Welcome to the Great Game, his father had said. This, Lloyd now understood, was his first, brutal, and incredibly effective, lesson. And the tuition, it seemed, had been paid in full by the shattered lives and ruined fortunes of eight very foolish, very desperate, men.

—

The Grand Hall was a chamber of judgment, the air thick with the metallic scent of fear and the cloying sweetness of spilled wine from the earlier, aborted celebration. The eight conspirators—the five portly, self-important Bathhouse owners and the three grim-faced, now utterly terrified, Masters of the Washerman’s Guild—knelt on the cold stone floor, their earlier bluster and denials replaced by a shared, pathetic, and deeply primal terror. Arch Duke Roy Ferrum’s verdict, delivered with the cold, dispassionate finality of a glacier carving its path through a mountain, had not just ruined them; it had erased them.

Ninety percent of their assets seized. Their Guild leadership stripped. Their very right to conduct commerce within the capital revoked. And a lifetime of public shame, of being living cautionary tales, awaited them. It was a punishment more comprehensive, more soul-crushing, than a simple execution.

Lloyd watched the scene from behind his father’s chair, the cold satisfaction he had felt moments before slowly, unexpectedly, giving way to something else. Something… familiar. A memory, not from this life, but from his eighty years on Earth, a ghost from a different kind of history, a different kind of revolution.

He remembered the history books, the old black-and-white photographs. The faces of the weavers in Manchester, their looms made obsolete by the thunderous, relentless power of the steam-driven textile mills. The faces of the proud, skilled artisans, the carriage makers, their hands, which could shape wood and leather into works of art, suddenly useless against the cold, efficient, unthinking power of the assembly line. He remembered the stories of their desperation, their fear, their angry, futile protests against a future that was arriving with the force of a freight train, a future that had no place for them.

They had been called Luddites. Resistors of progress. Fools who had tried to smash the machines that were making them obsolete. But Lloyd, the engineer, the innovator, had always felt a flicker of sympathy for them. They weren't just fighting machines; they were fighting their own extinction. They were fighting for their dignity, for their families, for the only way of life they had ever known. Their methods had been wrong, yes. Destructive. Futile. But their fear… their fear had been real.

He looked at the eight kneeling men, at their ashen faces, their trembling shoulders, their tear-streaked cheeks. And he saw not just criminals, not just greedy merchants who had committed a monstrous act. He saw… the weavers of Manchester. He saw the carriage makers of Detroit. He saw the desperate, terrified faces of men staring into the abyss of their own obsolescence.

Their crime was heinous. Using a child as a weapon was unforgivable. But their motive… their motive, he now understood with a sudden, profound clarity, was not born of pure, simple malice. It was born of fear. The primal, existential fear of being left behind.

Chapter : 316

And he, Lloyd Ferrum, with his otherworldly knowledge, his disruptive innovations, his revolutionary cleansing elixir… he was their steam engine. He was their assembly line. He was the future that was threatening to erase them.

The realization settled in his gut, a cold, heavy stone. Punishment was easy. Justice, in its brutal, ducal form, had been served. But it didn't solve the underlying problem. It didn't address the fear. It simply crushed it, leaving behind a legacy of bitterness, of resentment, that could fester in the dark corners of the city for generations. Punishing these eight men wouldn’t stop the next group of desperate artisans, the next guild of obsolete craftsmen, from fighting back when his next innovation threatened their livelihoods. Because there would be a next innovation. And a next.

This wasn’t a problem to be solved with a sword, or a fine, or a royal decree. This was a problem that required… a different kind of engineering. Social engineering. Economic engineering.

He looked at his father, at the stern, implacable ruler who saw the world in terms of threats and assets, of loyalty and treason. Roy had done what a Duke does: he had eliminated a threat to the stability of his house. It was logical. It was efficient. It was… incomplete.

A new idea, audacious, radical, and probably completely insane, began to form in Lloyd’s mind. An idea born not of the Major General, not of the vengeful heir, but of the eighty-year-old man who had seen worlds rise and fall, who understood that true, lasting progress was not about crushing the old, but about finding a way to integrate it, to transform it, into the new.

These men… they weren't just his enemies. They weren't just criminals. They were his first, most desperate, most terrified customers. They were the key.

He took a deep breath, the decision solidifying in his mind with a startling, almost terrifying, clarity. He was about to do something incredibly foolish. He was about to interrupt his father in the middle of a flawlessly executed political power play. He was about to defend the very men who had tried to ruin him.

He stepped forward.

A single step, from the shadows behind his father’s throne into the harsh, judgmental light of the Grand Hall. The movement was quiet, yet it was a sonic boom in the tense silence. Every eye in the hall, including his father’s, which narrowed instantly with a flicker of dangerous, questioning surprise, snapped to him.

“Father,” Lloyd began, his voice calm, steady, yet ringing with a new, strange authority that was entirely his own. It wasn’t the confidence of the tournament champion, nor the quiet focus of the factory owner. It was the voice of a leader about to propose a new, unexpected path. “A moment, if I may.”

Roy Ferrum’s expression was thunderous. What are you doing? his eyes screamed. The victory is won. The lesson is taught. Do not interfere.

Lloyd met his father’s furious gaze without flinching. He turned his attention to the eight kneeling men, who looked up at him with a mixture of terror and confusion.

“You say you acted out of desperation,” Lloyd said, his voice quiet but carrying to every corner of the hall. He addressed the lead Bathhouse owner, a man named Marcus whose face was a puffy, tear-streaked ruin. “Tell me, Master Marcus. Explain this desperation. What, precisely, did you fear?”

Marcus stared, bewildered. He looked at the Arch Duke, who seemed frozen in a state of controlled, simmering rage at his son’s interruption. He looked back at Lloyd. He saw not a taunt, not a trick, but a genuine question in the young lord’s eyes.

With a ragged, shuddering sob, the man’s carefully constructed defenses, even his fear of the Duke, crumbled under the weight of this unexpected, almost gentle, inquiry. The truth, the raw, pathetic, terrified truth, spilled out of him.

“We… we feared ruin, my lord!” he cried, his voice cracking, the words a torrent of long-suppressed panic. “We feared obsolescence! Your… your elixir… it has decimated us! The nobles, our primary clients, they no longer come to the bathhouses for a true, deep clean. They say… they say they can achieve a better result in their own homes now, with your product. Our attendance has dropped by more than half in a single month! Our profits… they are gone!”