Outside the porridge shed, there was a huge queue of victims.
Auster thought, the king is not a thing, but the church is still good in general. That Solarius also made up rumors about the remnants of the Titans and the stupid organization, without even taking a look at what he looked like. Well, I remember he looked like Hugh Jackman, he was quite handsome.
Windsor obviously didn't want to get close to the church. Tommy's mouth watered when he looked at the fine grain white porridge. He pretended to be strong and said that he was not hungry, urging his mother to leave quickly. Windsor looked around, and finally walked over carefully with Tommy. Oster followed suit.
You have to listen to the sermon before you can eat porridge. The fat and white pastor is preaching the doctrine of the Holy Light on the stage;
"In the beginning, when the Titans created humans, they used different materials. Commoners were made from clay, nobles were carved from stone, and priests were cast from steel. Therefore, high-level people are born noble, and the power of the Holy Light will Favor them, and low-level people cannot learn it in their lifetime. As for the untouchable class, they are not Titan creations at all, but inferior creatures like orcs, elves, trolls, kobolds, etc., which are inhuman and inhuman, so they are born and eternal slaves .”
This set of lies, which are despicable on earth, are half-truths and half-false historical facts in this world. Auster heard this very uncomfortable. There is nothing more desperate than the fate determined by birth. And what he said next was even more difficult for him to accept;
"If low-level people want to obtain salvation, they can only believe in the teachings of the Holy Light. After serving the Holy Light devoutly for a lifetime, their souls will be promoted when reincarnated. And if they believe in false gods, such as Loa and the Harvest Witch, or disobey Those of high rank will be punished. This disaster in the west is a lesson to the pagans for their luxury and blasphemy. Only by being devoted to good deeds can you be liberated as soon as possible..."
This is a typical view of religious famine and discriminatory remarks wearing tinted glasses. Not to mention whether Ai Xing has a theory of soul reincarnation, it is undoubtedly superstitious to simply regard crop diseases as a matter of faith. Sure enough, the routines are all the same.
After waiting in line for a while, everyone who entered the shed to drink porridge had to kneel down and swear in front of the holy book to "renounce all other beliefs and from now on believe in the Holy Light and its incarnation, the Titan" before being allowed in.
Although Auster was disdainful, the white porridge was placed in front of him. You have to say that if someone has a short mouth, he will never lose a piece of meat. After swearing happily, he followed Windsor and his son into the shed and received the porridge. Before he could take a few sips, he suddenly heard a commotion outside the shed.
Not long after, a group of soldiers with the emblem of the Holy Light tattooed on their shirts opened the shed and broke in. Several victims tried to escape but were caught on the spot. Outside, the holy soldiers had surrounded the porridge shed, checking the victims one by one. Once they found a brand on their forehead, they would immediately take them away and put them in a cage.
It seemed that these soldiers were probably the lord's pickets, and the branded ones were runaway serfs. As far as Auster knows, although the Kingdom of Stormwind has legislated to abolish slavery, in the Knight Dominion to which the church belongs, the abolition bill is not popular. There is a widespread slavery system that Auster hates as a modern person, serfdom.
Although personal slavery is illegal, doing so in the name of the Holy Light is. Just like what the fat priest said, legend has it that when Titan created various races, he divided them into priests, nobles, and civilians. Slaves are not regarded as human beings at all. Everything about them, including their lives, is the private property of the knight lord. The master can possess, dispose, buy and sell them at will, and even kill them.
Due to historical and practical reasons, almost half of the Kingdom of Storm's territory is owned by the Holy Light Church and has been entrusted to hundreds of paladin lords. These lords have no affiliation with the kingdom and can be said to be small independent countries;
Don’t forget, this is a world where gods and magic really exist. The church is not a weak and incompetent fraud group, but a genuine spokesperson of the Holy Light. It has the most powerful military force, the Holy Knights, and its status and power are real. Higher than the royal family. The royal power is conferred by the pope, so a large part of the royal family's obligation is to protect the rights and interests of the church.
In the prefectures and counties directly under the Kingdom, most of them were free farmers and farm laborers. Free farmers are also called homesteaders. As the name suggests, they are people who have one-third of an acre of land and rely on planting the land to harvest food. Farmers who have no land, or who have too little land to support their families, will rent other people's land to cultivate, which is called farm labor. Generally, the land owned by squires, nobles, royal families or wealthy free peasants cannot be cultivated, so they lease it to farm laborers for a long time. The farm laborers paid a certain percentage of their remuneration, and the rest of the harvest was theirs. There are also hired workers who do not rent land but help others manage their fields and receive compensation.
Father Auster was a small farmer among free farmers. He usually farmed by himself and hired long-term and short-term laborers to help him during the busy farming season. Old Brown was a kind man and never defaulted on paying his employees no matter how difficult the situation was. Whether they are renting land for farming or doing chores, they have no attachment to the landowners. They can leave after settling their accounts. The serfs of the knights were different. They had no personal freedom and were not allowed to leave their land and masters for life.
It seems that since the outbreak of the Western Wilderness disaster, many serfs took advantage of the breakdown of order in the famine years and fled their territories, which caused great losses to the slave owners' property. However, the kingdom has a series of laws to protect the rights of church lords, such as the law of pariah status and the law of fugitives. Even if these slaves escape from the knight territory, no matter where they escape, as long as they are still in the kingdom, their identities will not change and they will be wanted. and capture.
Oster murmured in his heart, looking at this situation, it is not just to attract the serfs among the victims by giving out porridge, so as to catch all the turtles in the jar.
Moreover, there were also Kingdom tax officers among the pickets, who not only arrested serfs, but also imprisoned many homeless people without household registration documents and tax payment certificates. Thinking of the bridge being blocked by the Kingdom's legions and the suffering of the victims, the Kingdom and the Church didn't forget to join forces to search for it. It's such a shame!
Oster thought about how to get away with it, and turned around to see the Windsor mother and son looking very frightened. They lowered their heads and trembled into a ball, tightly pulling the headscarf on their foreheads;
Remembering that they had been wearing headscarves since they met and never took them off when sleeping, Oster already understood something.
Looking around, he saw that the instructors were busy arresting people on the other side. He had an idea and knocked down a pillar of the porridge shed nearby. Not long after, the entire shed collapsed, and the scene suddenly became chaotic. The victims fled in all directions, and the instructors shouted and tried to maintain order.
Aussie pulled Windsor and her son away, and as soon as they left the porridge shack, after walking a few steps, several training soldiers happened to come towards them. Without any time to think, he pushed the mother and son into the grass in the corner and told them to run quickly.
"What should you do?" Windsor asked in panic.
"It doesn't matter, I said, I will definitely repay you." After saying that, Oster opened his arms, shouted and walked up to meet the instructors. Seeing that the other party's attention was attracted, he turned around and ran in the other direction.
Oster is quite confident in his footwork. When he was in his hometown, he relied on his feet to avoid being rounded up again and again after he provoked the neighbors by playing games. These soldiers wearing heavy armor couldn't catch up with him at all. When he turned around and saw the Windsor mother and son escaping smoothly without anyone noticing, he felt relieved a little.
However, the good luck did not last long. As the sound of horse hooves came, a golden light flashed. Oster was unable to dodge and was passed by the tall and galloping war horse, falling to the ground. If he dodges a little slower, it won't just be as simple as throwing a dog and eating its shit.
Riding on the horse is a shining golden knight. No matter how you look at it, it is a high-definition real version of the Paladin. He is dressed in exaggeratedly thick plate armor, and even the war horse is covered with gorgeous horse armor; but it moves like the wind, moving freely without any sense of heaviness, which is probably due to some kind of enchantment effect.
Originally, in the medieval world, the cavalry was a crushing force, and with the addition of magical power, it became a living tank. The paladin rode a tall horse and ran rampant, knocking over several victims who were trying to escape. The remaining people knelt down to beg for mercy, and order was quickly maintained.
