Chapter 769.3: You Are What You Eat! Yiwu!

After The Biography of L and The Mad Rat’s Diary, Red Soil had finally begun serializing its third section, The Earth. It seemed poised to enter its bloody central subject.

Port Gallon’s Survivor’s Daily nearly sold out. Some who had previously known nothing about Red Soil read The Earth, then returned to purchase the earlier issues containing The Biography of L and The Mad Rat’s Diary.

Several booksellers began considering compiling the serialized short stories into a collection so that readers would not need to cut them out of newspapers one issue at a time.

They were unable to contact Mr. Rat, but they received a letter sent from French Fry Harbor.

[You may publish it however you wish. Donate my share to the League.]

The letter inspired many young people in Port Gallon, as well as the members of the Federation.

Mr. Rat was right beside them, and he was watching them!

A faint glimmer of dawn seemed to appear upon the horizon, and the future appeared filled with light.

Boulder Town had only one Bore the Awakener. They had tens of thousands!

Inspired by the Survivor’s Daily and Red Soil, young people transformed their simple and still somewhat immature ideas into poetry, paintings, melodies, and songs, weaving them into a corner of Port Gallon’s hurried streetscape.

Upon the foundation of the belief that the gods do not exist, the people added another creed.

They needed to unite, just like the residents of Boulder Town! Even if the people possessed ten thousand different ideas, one idea was shared by all. They would pull down those one thousand pillars and smash the old shackles!

...

While a storm was brewing in Port Gallon, a certain hot-tempered and furious young man finally met the army he had been longing to see.

It could hardly be called an army. It resembled refugees or peasant bandits, and was not even comparable to his forces when he had attacked Camp Rowell.

At least back then, he and his subordinates still possessed some courage and reckless bravery, and were willing to fight. The group wore rags that barely covered their bodies and carried farming tools. They hid in an uninhabited valley within Tiger State, where Tiger Clan influence was deeply entrenched. They cultivated wasteland beyond the reach of the nobles, surviving on supplies delivered with great difficulty by their Moon Clan compatriots.

Occasionally, they still had to eat soil or cause trouble for nearby minor nobles.

After all, the Moon Clan population was large, and many of its men and women were attractive. Most nobles had purchased at least a few Moonfolk as slaves or concubines. Robbing those nobles in the name of rescuing their compatriots was entirely reasonable.

Furthermore, they stole only people and food without killing anyone, so the disturbances remained small. Some minor nobles truly had no means of dealing with them, while the great nobles regarded them as fleas and could not be bothered to intervene. Their presence conveniently provided an excuse for the great nobles to annex the lands of smaller nobles and suppress property prices.

As for the Tiger Army, its main forces were stationed along the border of Rowell State and were even less interested in them.

At the moment, anyone with the slightest strength was busy managing his own territory. Who would waste time suppressing bandits on behalf of the Xilande Empire? Instead, they could use the Moon Clan as a pretext to demand more money from the Court.

For that reason, the Moon Clan members believed their disguise was excellent. They thought pretending to be refugees fleeing the war would allow them to evade the Tiger Army’s spies. They never imagined that even Axin, a gang leader far away in Port Gallon, could locate them with ease.

Everything was every bit as pathetic as the battle reports had described.

The Tiger Clan centurion who escorted Laxi there had even joked that if they encountered each other on the battlefield next time and did not wish to fight, they should simply throw their equipment onto the ground and run so that everyone could make money together.

What profound humiliation!

“Goddamn it...” Looking at the young men sitting lazily along the field ridges, Laxi cursed through gritted teeth. He abruptly drew the pistol from his waist and pulled the trigger toward the sky.

Bang!

The thunderous sound startled the Moon Clan members working in the fields. They looked up and saw a vicious-looking man standing beside the field with a group of demons behind him, appearing as though he wanted to devour them.

A middle-aged man standing in the field stared at him blankly, then suddenly recognized his face. His astonished expression became as exaggerated as though he had seen a ghost. “L-Laxi?!”

Laxi did not even look at him. He reached out, seized a boy by the neck, hauled the skinny child from the field like a chick, and threw him onto the ground.

“It hurts... It hurts, it hurts...” The boy cried out in pain, tears squeezing from his eyes.

Unexpectedly, when the demon saw him crying, he kicked him in the backside. “If you’re afraid of pain, go home and find your parents. Stop following these people and fooling around! Go and bring your parents here!”

The boy spoke timidly, terror filling his eyes. “I don’t have parents... I was sold nearby. Everyone here rescued me.”

“No parents? Heh. Then wipe those tears from your eyes, or I’ll send you down to meet them myself!”

Releasing the child, Laxi glared fiercely at the farmer attempting to stop him, then turned toward the resistance soldiers approaching with rifles.

The disturbance at the village entrance had finally attracted attention. Those people did not even know how to arrange sentries, but at least they were not deaf. They could still hear a gunshot.

They stared at him warily and with hostility, holding their rifles ready but not daring to point them in his direction.

Some recognized him as the ruthless man who had captured Camp Rowell and hanged its commanding officer from the tower.

No matter how much support the New Alliance had provided, or how many cannons and rifles it had given them, Laxi had indeed been the one who captured the camp.

Laxi ignored their fire pokers and merely narrowed his eyes at them before speaking. “I told you that you might as well go farm, and you actually started plowing fields. Look at how pathetic you are. Do you expect the girls in French Fry Harbor to support you for the rest of your lives, or do you expect Baiyue Strait Development Company to support you forever?”

A middle-aged man gathered his courage, stepped forward, and stared fiercely at him. “What do you mean by that?!”

Laxi narrowed his eyes at him. “Are you in charge here?”

“I am–”

Before the man could finish, Laxi slapped him across the head and sent him directly into the field. “You’re in charge of fuck all!”

That was something a New Alliance instructor had shouted at Laxi during training. Now he returned the exact phrase to that man.

It was those farmer’s fault that Ample Time had been transferred away! It was because they had been wasting his money, causing the administrator to take notice of him!

At least, that was how Laxi saw it.

The slap was loud enough to immediately ignite the fury of the resistance fighters. One young man after another raised his rifle, pointing them all at Laxi and the hundred-plus officers behind him.

“No! Don’t shoot!” The man who had fallen into the field ignored his own condition and shouted in horror toward his comrades in the resistance.

However, Laxi acted as though the fire was still not large enough. He stepped directly toward the young men, seized the barrel of one man’s rifle, and pressed it against his chest. “Come on! Shoot me! Kill the compatriot who came to save you! Do it!”

The young man’s face turned pale. His hands shook around the rifle as though it might discharge at any moment.

Clearly, he had participated in few battles, received little firearms training, and had hardly been given any opportunity to practice.

After all, the safety was still engaged. The weapon had merely been chambered...

Seeing the cowardice in his eyes, Laxi tore the rifle from his hands and shoved it against his chest. The impact sent him stumbling backward two steps before the others caught him.

“Did no one fucking teach you? When you’re going to kill someone, disengage the safety! Weld the sling to your shoulder! If anyone tries to take your gun, smash the stock into his face! Losing your weapon on the battlefield means losing your life. Consider yourself fortunate, brat. The one who took your gun was me.”

Countless gazes settled upon him. Some held anger, some astonishment, some embarrassment and shame. But in some eyes, hope began to burn. That included the man sitting in the field who had claimed to be in charge.

He understood better than anyone that they were neither survivors of French Fry Harbor nor survivors of Port Gallon.

What they needed was not someone who could lead them in farming. They needed someone who could lead them to victory!

Laxi swept his gaze across everyone, not only the resistance soldiers blocking him at the village entrance, but also the farmers in the nearby fields who had straightened their backs and were staring at him.

“If you want to farm, stay here and farm until you’ve had enough. When you’ve had enough of being pathetic, get the fuck up and follow me.”

A resistance officer gulped and stared at him. “Where are we going...?”

“Where?” Laxi chuckled. With the setting sun behind him, he looked toward the northeast and narrowed his eyes slightly at the dim sky. He had already decided while traveling over.

Fighting the Tiger Army was unrealistic. Those men possessed weapons and provisions, and their combat strength was already no weaker than that of the Gray Wolf Army. They had nearly eaten up the Gray Wolf Army stationed along the same border.

As the people of the New Alliance had said, fighting them would only result in being farmed like wild monsters. They needed to open a new battlefield, and the best choice was the northeastern corner of the Poro Province.

The region bordered the Tzobar Mountains. Beyond them lay Silvermoon Bay. The Tassen River flowed down from the mountains and irrigated an alluvial plain known as the Tassen Plains. Marginal ethnic groups of the Poro Province lived there, along with some believers from Silvermoon Bay. On the Empire’s administrative map, the land was called Mammoth State. It shared a freshwater source with Silvermoon Bay and possessed fertility no worse than Rowell State.

Most importantly, the mountains were high and the emperor was far away, while the region lay close to the New Alliance’s supply network.

Although its level of development was lower, that weakness also had advantages. It possessed no road network connecting it to the Heavenly City and did not lie beside the Everflowing River. Supplies required by armies loyal to the Xilande Empire would be difficult to transport into the region.

Furthermore, poor regions never lacked potential soldiers! Only there could Laxi gather an enormous army.

Attempting an uprising in Tiger State, where the Tiger Clan formed the majority, would be suicide!

“If we remain trapped in this mountain valley, we’ll starve sooner or later. If you want to live, follow me and fight toward the coast!”