Warhammer: Empire Reboot

"Because this place belongs to me."

Ilancia looked at him and understood the meaning behind his words.

If it belongs to him, then it must operate according to his methods.

They swept over the high slope.

A psychic field enveloped the two figures, suppressing light, smell, sound, and vital signs to extremely low levels. People on the ground could not see them, and the field servants did not sound an alarm.

Ilancia followed Lawson at low altitude.

The wind brushed past my face.

Farmland unfolds beneath your feet.

She saw rows of crop patches of different colors divided into neat modules, each with water quality monitoring columns and soil monitoring points at its edge. Large agricultural machines moved slowly through the fields, their robotic arms clearing weeds at fixed intervals, and the spraying equipment emitted not a thick mist of pesticides, but a thin curtain of water.

Some farmers followed behind the machine, checking the blades, recording data, and adjusting the guide frame.

Their physical condition was completely different from that of the farm workers on Damocles III.

They were wearing gray-green work clothes, some with straw hats, some with their sleeves rolled up to their elbows, and others arguing with their colleagues about what to have for lunch while checking the irrigation pipes.

Several children were walking towards school on the ridge of the field, carrying their schoolbags.

The backpacks are all the same style, clearly indicating that they were distributed uniformly.

One of the children took a few steps, then squatted down by the ditch and reached out to grab something. The other child urged him on, but he pretended not to hear.

When Ilancia saw this scene, her sense of unease intensified.

It is not uncommon for imperial children to appear in the agricultural world.

But they usually don't carry backpacks to school.

They would be assigned to labor teams at a younger age to learn how to identify pests, carry fertilizer, clean pipes, and repair greenhouse films.

In many agricultural worlds, a child who can read is already considered to have received extra attention from the God-Emperor.

Lawson led her to the edge of a farmland.

Not far away was a low farmhouse.

Outside the farmhouse, there was a clothesline, and clothes swayed gently in the wind. Next to it was a tool shed, with several small farm machines parked outside, still bearing traces of mud from being washed off.

There were quite a few people in the field.

Adult men and women are working, several elderly people are sitting under the shade of trees sorting seeds, and a keystone sequencer is standing at the end of the road, checking data with the farm manager.

It's clear from Ilancia that the management here is not lax.

Every irrigation canal, every field, every worker, and every machine is part of the system.

Just then, a scream came from behind the farmhouse.

A boy of about ten years old rushed out of the back door of the house, barefoot, his trousers covered in mud. He ran very fast, looking back as he ran, clutching half a muddy wooden plank in his arms, as if using it as a shield.

A young woman rushed out from behind.

She was carrying a thin twig in her hand, and her hair wasn't tied up properly, so she had obviously just come out from the kitchen or the laundry tub.

"stop!"

The boy didn't stand.

He ran wildly along the ridge of the field, as if a beastman were chasing him.

The people in the field stopped what they were doing.

Someone straightened up and asked in a loud voice, "Lina, what has your little brat gotten into trouble this time?"

The young woman was furious.

"He put bugs in the teacher's water cup!"

The field was quiet for a moment.

Then laughter broke out.

An old man put down the seed sieve he was holding and laughed until he coughed.

"Then you should smoke it!"

Another farmer shouted, "Is it a small bug or a big bug? If it's a big bug, it means he has good observation skills; he can be sent to biology class for extra practice!"

The boy ran and shouted, "I just wanted to prove what the teacher said about insects being attracted to water!"

The young woman was so angry that she swung the tree branch askew.

"You're proving nothing! The teacher only realized it after taking a sip!"

The laughter around them grew even louder.

A man repairing an irrigation pipe was leaning on the pipe, laughing so hard he couldn't straighten up.

"This kid's got guts; he managed to trick the teacher into taking a sip!"

The young woman turned and cursed at him.

The man immediately shut up, and the people around him laughed even harder.

The boy ran across the ridge, trying to squeeze between the two old men.

One of the elderly men slowly stretched out his leg.

The boy couldn't stop in time and almost fell into the vegetable patch.

The young woman seized the opportunity to catch up and grabbed him by the back of his collar.

The boy immediately screamed in pain.

"Mom! Mom! I was wrong! Don't hit me! Don't hit me! By the grace of the ruler, I want to file a complaint for domestic violence!"

The young woman raised her hand and lashed him with two tree branches, striking his buttocks.

"You're going to file a complaint again?"

Snapped.

"You even know about domestic violence?"

Snapped.

"When you put bugs in the teacher's cup, did you not consider that teachers also have human rights?"

The boy cried and howled like a banshee.

"The teacher said that all life is worth observing!"

"Then you are worth observing."

Snapped!

The people around laughed even harder.

An elderly man waved: "Lina, don't smoke too hard, you have class this afternoon."

The young woman, panting, threw the branch to the ground and grabbed the boy by the back of his collar.

"Go apologize now."

The boy hugged his bottom, tears welling up in his eyes.

"Could you put on your shoes first?"

Why didn't you think of your shoes when you were running?

"That was an emergency evacuation."

"I told you to leave."

She carried the boy and walked towards the school.

As they passed by the field, a middle-aged farmer deliberately lowered his voice and said to the boy, "Next time, remember not to let the bugs float to the surface before you put them out."

The boy's eyes lit up.

The young woman turned around abruptly.

The middle-aged farmer immediately bent down to examine the soil, pretending that he hadn't said anything.

The people around burst into laughter.

Ilancia stood in the psychic field, watching this scene, speechless for a moment.

This is certainly not a major event.

Even trivial matters.

A child skips school to play a prank, a mother chases after him and spanks him, neighbors watch the spectacle, and farmers tease each other.

In any normal society, this would be considered commonplace.

But Ilancia had just read Damocles.

I've seen child laborers carving stars in the pipes of a shipyard.

I've seen farmers and workers waiting to die in the mist of pesticides.

I saw the hospital assign the twelve-year-old child to the chimney scraping team.

I've seen stories of juvenile delinquents being suspended for six hours for stealing cooling water.

Those people also have children.

There is also a mother.

There are also neighbors.

But such laughter is absent from their daily lives.

If their children were to put bugs in their teacher's water cup, the prerequisite would be that they first have a teacher, a water cup, and the capacity to be naughty enough not to fear dying in the office the next day.

Ilancia finally understood why this scene was so jarring.

Not because it is grand.

Because it is so small.